

1 of 468 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times

January 1, 1990, Monday, Late Edition - Final

For the Elderly, a New Way to ''Stay Well''

SECTION: Section 1; Page 27, Column 2; Metropolitan Desk

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Elderly citizens exercising at the Demotsis Senior Center in Astoria, Queens, as part of ''Stay Well,'' a fitness program developed by New York City's Department for the Aging. Page 28. (The New York Times/John Sotomayor)

TYPE: Caption

Copyright 1990 The New York Times Company



2 of 468 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times

January 1, 1990, Monday, Late Edition - Final

A Legion of Volunteers Helps Elderly Keep Fit

BYLINE: By KATHLEEN TELTSCH

SECTION: Section 1; Page 28, Column 1; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 1088 words

As older Americans strive for healthier, more active lives, New York City is offering to help, by sharing its innovative fitness regimen tailored for men and women over age 60.
Called ''Stay Well,'' the program was developed by the city's Department for the Aging and includes exercises, advice on stress management, invigorating walking tours and health education - all led by trained volunteers who must be at least 60 themselves.
Stay Well now reaches 3,500 New Yorkers weekly, mainly at 80 centers for the elderly throughout the city. Beginning in March, private donors have agreed to finance its introduction at five sites still to be selected in New York State outside the city. Several states also are studying Stay Well, as is the Federal Government. 
''We're following New York City's initiative closely because it challenges the stereotype that there is no need to focus on health promotion once people are old,'' said Dr. Joyce T. Berry, acting United States Commissioner on Aging. ''We know much can be done to avoid some diseases with good health habits, exercise, diet control and proper use of medication.''
 
'You Are All Gorgeous'
The concept of using elderly people to teach their contemporaries was particularly appealing, Dr. Berry said. ''Older people represent a valuable resource which we can tap more than we are doing,'' she said.
At a Stay Well exercise class last week in Astoria, Queens, Anna Modifica, a 79-year-old great-grandmother, fired instructions, and 21 students obligingly flexed their feet, swung their arms, wiggled and stretched. ''You are all gorgeous,'' Mrs. Modifica said as she demanded more flexing and wiggling.
''She's not Jane Fonda, but she's a terrific model for other seniors,'' said Fran Friedman, director of Health Promotion Services at the city's Department for the Aging. ''It's less intimidating to be taught by one of your peers. You say to yourself, 'If she can do it, I can do it.' ''
Stay Well was originated by Janet S. Sainer, the departing Commissioner of the Department for the Aging. She secured financial support for an experimental three-year program from the Florence V. Burden Foundation, the New York Community Trust, the Exxon Corporation, Metropolitan Life and the Uris Brothers Foundations and Morgan Guarantee Trust Company.
 
Concern About Hypertension
Impressed by older New Yorkers' response, the city agreed in 1986 to take over the program when the private sponsors ended their participation as planned. The program is a $200,000-a-year operation, a small item in the department's $88 million budget.
Dr. Prema Mathai-Davis, the department's newly named Commissioner, said centers for the elderly offered an opportunity to reach large numbers of the estimated 1.3 million New Yorkers over age 60.
Mrs. Sainer, who is 71 and became Commissioner in 1978, said Stay Well evolved from her concern about hypertension among older people. In 1980, she invited doctors from New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center to screen and monitor the blood pressure of participants at a center for the elderly at St. Malachy's Church on West 59th Street in Manhattan.
Today, blood-pressure testing and recording participants' progress is a regular feature of Stay Well. Instructors learn the technique during their orientation courses, which are given at least twice a year.
''We also wanted to get the seniors out of their chairs,'' Mrs. Sainer said, ''so we developed the exercise classes with technical help from the New York Academy of Medicine.'' #400 Volunteer Instructors Costs of Stay Well are kept low by using volunteers like Mrs. Modifica, who instructs two or three classes a week at the Hellenic American Neighborhood Action Committee center in Astoria, and Agnes Brown, who leads a class at the East Flatbush Senior Center in Brooklyn in association with the Young Men's and Young Women's Hebrew Associations.
The two women are among 400 instructors. The only material rewards they receive are yellow T-shirts with the Stay Well rainbow logo that they get after completing 12 weeks of instruction and an intensive six-week follow-up course.
Mrs. Brown, a 67-year-old grandmother, ties her T-shirt smartly over her slim torso and begins her sessions with an inspirational poem. She ends it by insisting that her students open their eyes wide, growl and lunge like lions. ''I want you to go into lunch smiling as if you haven't a care in the world,'' she says.
Stay Well is not the only health-promotion program designed for the elderly, but it is in the forefront, said Dr. Stephanie J. FallCreek, director of New Mexico's State Agency on the Aging.
Dr. FallCreek said one of Stay Well's advantages was its adaptability for use at centers in lower-income neighborhoods. ''Many programs succeed with middle-class Anglo populations, which are easier to reach and generally have a higher health level than we find among the poor or minority groups - the groups that stand to benefit most,'' she said.
 
Technical Advice
As a first step toward extending Stay Well, the Department for the Aging compiled a handbook on the program; 5,000 copies of the $10 manual have been distributed. Copies are available from Stay Well, the Department for the Aging, New York, N.Y. 10007.
To introduce Stay Well outside the city, all-day workshops will be held for health officials and community-center representatives. The department plans to continue providing technical advice and assistance to communities interested in developing programs.
These costs will be met by the Brookdale Foundation Group, which contributed $50,000; two anonymous donors who gave $25,000 each, and the Exxon Corporation's gift of $30,000.
In cooperation with the city department, the Brookdale Group also publishes the ''Age Base Directory,'' a national compilation of health-promotion programs for older adults. The directory is available without charge from the foundation, at 126 East 56th Street, New York, N.Y. 10022.
The Brookdale Group combines three philanthropies established in the 1920's by the late Henry L. Schwartz, a founder of Paragon Oil, and his four brothers.
''We believe firmly that new and useful methods should not remain in one spot but should be replicated,'' said the foundation's president, Stephen L. Schwartz, Henry's nephew.
A third generation of family members is continuing a tradition of concern for the elderly that began, Mr. Schwartz said, ''when my uncle looked in the mirror one day and saw the gray in his hair.''

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1990 The New York Times Company



3 of 468 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times

January 1, 1990, Monday, Late Edition - Final

Longer Lives for Aging Cargo Ships

BYLINE: By AGIS SALPUKAS

SECTION: Section 1; Page 31, Column 3; Financial Desk

LENGTH: 1395 words

With demand outstripping capacity and freight rates rising, the new year might seem ripe for a flood of orders for new bulk-cargo ships - a flood reminiscent of those in the early 1970's and the early 1980's. But that will not be the case this time, many people in the industry say.
Instead, some experts and executives say, the emphasis in the next few years will be on finding ways to extend the life of the current fleet of freighters and tankers.
''The world will have to be content with the existing fleet of elderly ladies - warts, face lifts and all,'' said Basil Papachristidis, the chairman of Papachristidis Ltd., a major shipping company in London.
 
Recalling a Mistake of the Past
There are a number of reasons. Shipowners worry about repeating a mistake of the past: ordering new ships when cargo rates were rising only to have them delivered when the market had softened. 
Lenders have made credit more scarce because many businesses have grown more reluctant to sign the long-term contracts that help guarantee a loan will be paid off, and because state subsidies for shipyards are falling.
Also, new ships have become much more expensive, and the capacity to build them has been cut so drastically that even the modest amount of current orders has filled up the leading shipyards.
As a result, shipyard capacity is expected to become even tighter in the coming years, industry executives say, and shipping rates are expected to continue to go up.
Another possible result, some industry people said, is an increase in spills and accidents that accompany the aging of the fleet, although most large spills have been caused by human error on newer tankers and ships.
 
Higher Prices Are Expected
With the emphasis switched to maintaining the existing fleet, the value of ships is rising, leading to speculation and the buying and selling of many ships. ''The squeeze is on,'' said Michael S. Hudner, president of B & H Ocean Carriers Ltd., at a recent conference on shipping at the American Stock Exchange. ''In the next two to five years, you are going to see a big increase in the price of ships.''
The Greek family that owns Tsakos Shipping and Trading is typical of many shipowners. Nikolas P. Tsakos said his company, which owns its own shipyard, could easily begin building new ships now that there has been a strong recovery in shipping rates.
Instead, he said, the yard in Uruguay is mainly being used to overhaul and upgrade some of the existing fleet of 35 ships. ''We believe we can do well by maintaining our second-hand vessels,'' he said.
Because such attitudes prevail, shipyard capacity is expected to grow by only about 2 percent in the next two years, Ocean Shipping Consultants reported. But demand for bulk shipping is expected to grow by about 2.5 percent. What is more, as the proportion of older vessels increases, the time consumed by breakdowns and overhauls rises, making capacity even tighter and raising rates.
Michael G. Jolliffe, the chairman of Global Ocean Carriers Ltd., said rates for bulk ships have been rising steadily. As an example, he said, one of his company's bulk carriers, the Global Star, had been chartered at $13,500 a day but would be re-chartered at $14,500 a day.
But many people in the industry think shipping rates will have to rise 40 to 60 percent before shipowners feel confident enough to place large orders for new ships.
 
'It's Too Risky'
Shipowners recall that in the past big orders were placed in the middle of an upswing in cargo rates and the ships were delivered several years later, when the industry was in a recession.
''You can't order now and get a ship a year from now,'' said Roberto Giorgi, a managing director of V. Ships, a large shipping company. ''If you order now, it's delivered in 1992 or 1993. It's too risky.''
He and other shipowners cite the example of the Sanko Steamship Company, a Japanese shipping concern that was forced to seek bankruptcy protection in 1985. The company, an operator of large tankers, with 263 vessels, had ordered about 150 new ships during the upturn that began in 1980, only to have most of them delivered after shipping rates had fallen.
Another reason for the slow growth in new orders, Mr. Papachristidis said, is that banks were more generous with credit in the past because businesses often agreed to long-term charter rates for a new ship. The long-term rates guaranteed a certain revenue even when spot rates fell and helped assure the owner and the bank that the cost of the ship could be paid off.
 
Uncertainty About Rates
Now, because of greater uncertainty about the course of rates, businesses are more reluctant to lock themselves in for 10-year agreements. What is more, governments in nations like Japan and South Korea have reduced or eliminated subsidies for shipyards, vastly increasing the cost, and therefore the risk, of ordering new ships.
Some industry people predict that many of the reclusive families that own important shipping companies will therefore be forced to disclose their finances and operations to attract capital from the public markets.
''The older generation resists, seeking to keep it in the family by inheritance and marriages,'' said Costas Grammenos, a professor specializing in shipping at the City University Business School in London. ''A large percentage of the new generation have studied the industry and favor a different approach.''
He said younger members of ship-owning families who favor a more open and modern company might be in conflict with their more conservative elders.
 
Time-Consuming and Expensive
Even if money can be raised to order a new ship, building it has become more time-consuming and expensive.
Shipyard capacity has shrunk by about 60 percent in the last decade. The capacity that exists has been filled with orders, mostly for large tankers. A new ship can therefore not be delivered until about two to two-and-a-half years from now.
Employment at Japanese shipyards, which produce about half the world's ships, has shrunk to 34,000 from 150,000 in 1975, with many workers moving to high-technology industries. So it could be difficult to find skilled workers quickly to reopen a mothballed shipyard. In the United States, there is not much shipyard capacity left for building commercial ships.
Joachim Chao, a director of Global Ocean Carriers, a shipping company, said the Japanese have little incentive to increase capacity and instead are seeking to drive up prices to be able to make a profit.
''They are not going to repeat the mistakes of the past,'' he said. $85 Million Tankers Falling state subsidies, rising labor rates, general inflation and tightening shipyard capacity have all contributed to a large increase in the price of cargo ships. But while the price of a large tanker has risen to about $85 million, from half that amount 10 years ago, the Japanese yards are still unable to make a profit.
Vincent Cannaliato Jr., a senior vice president at the investment firm Smith Barney, Harris Upham, estimated that the true cost of such a tanker was $115 million and that the shortfall was being made up by state subsidies in Japan.
Thus, some industry experts and executives predict that the emphasis in the next few years will be on finding ways to extend the life of the existing fleet.
It could cost $200 billion to overhaul the world's shipping fleets in the next decade, said Mr. Grammenos of the City University Business School.
Some industry people worry that as ships age the risk of spills and accidents will rise. But many shipowners say the life of bulk ships, normally about 25 years, can safely be extended to 30 years with proper maintenance. But the task will not be easy, because some of the most vulnerable parts of a ship are hard to reach.
 
Investing in Ships
There is also concern about whether companies that still want long-term charter agreements will accept them for older ships.
The lack of surplus shipyard capacity has stimulated the formation of new shipping companies that exist primarily to capitalize on the rising value of current ships rather than to operate ships long term.
Mr. Jolliffe of Global Ocean Carriers estimated that the six bulk-cargo vessels that the company bought with a public offering for $46.7 million in 1988 have appreciated to $55 million.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: photo of ships docked in Montevideo, Uruguay

Copyright 1990 The New York Times Company



4 of 468 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times

January 1, 1990, Monday, Late Edition - Final

SPORTS OF THE TIMES;
1989 Postcards Range From Tragic to Bizarre

BYLINE: By George Vecsey

SECTION: Section 1; Page 39, Column 1; Sports Desk

LENGTH: 1003 words

BETWEEN a riot and an earthquake, death and scandal, the games seemed a bit anticlimactic this year. But for one wandering sports columnist, 1989 did have its moments, from datelines as diverse as Trinidad and Paris.
Paris in Kentucky, that is. Can't get cornbread in that other Paris. 
TEMPE, Ariz., Jan. 2 - Almost Heaven, West Virginia, is no match for Subway Alumni, Mountain Alumni and all Irish rooters as Notre Dame wins unofficial national football title, 34-21, in Fiesta Bowl.
MIAMI, Jan. 22 - After riots following the deaths of two men in Miami, the Super Bowl begins under a pall. The finish becomes the best in the 23 games as Joe Montana produces a winning drive in the final minute for San Francisco's 20-16 victory.
SEATTLE, April 3 - Louis Ford, still wearing his mailman's uniform, flies in with an impromptu gift ticket minutes after his adopted son, Rumeal Robinson, sinks two foul shots to give Michigan the national basketball championship, 80-79, over Seton Hall.
LOUISVILLE, Ky., May 6 - Easy Goer proves he doesn't like the mud by finishing behind Sunday Silence in the Derby.
PARIS, Ky., May 7 - During a visit to horse country, the bluegrass authority Fara Bushnell takes photograph of columnist petting a large red stallion at Claiborne Farm. Photograph will become even more treasured later in the year when Secretariat is put down at the age of 19.
HARRISBURG, Pa., May 8 - Greg LeMond looks positively cadaverous as he huddles in bed with the flu. Recovering from shotgun accident, appendectomy and other injuries, biker barely finishes the first Tour de Trump. Anybody who could have predicted LeMond would win the Tour de France in July would have been summarily hooted off the tour's motorcade.
BALTIMORE, May 20 - Arthur Hancock, sometime country singer, belts out the chorus from ''R-E-S-P-E-C-T,'' the old Aretha Franklin R&B tune, after his Sunday Silence makes it two straight over Easy Goer in Preakness in one of the greatest stretch duels in Triple Crown history.
NEW YORK, June 10 - The mud dries just in time for the ground crew to give Long Island-based Easy Goer the hard surface he loves, and Easy Goer responds with one of the great Belmonts, roaring around the far turn to beat Sunday Silence.
WIMBLEDON, England, July 4 - Chris Evert gives her country a birthday present as she stages one of her finest rallies, from a 2-5 deficit to defeat Laura Golarsa of Italy in the third set. The soon-to-retire Evert, 34, joins elders John McEnroe, 30, and Martina Navratilova, 32, in the final four days of Wimbledon, giving cheer to old folks everywhere. But young Boris Becker and Steffi Graf of West Germany will win the heaviest hardware.
BRIDGEHAMPTON, L.I. July 31 - Michael Matz, who survived crash landing of United Flight 232 near Sioux City, Iowa, on July 19, wins the Hampton Classic horse show only 12 days later. So great is his concentration that he even gives lessons between his own rides.
MAMARONECK, N.Y., Aug. 7 - Casually scuttled by new owner in Dallas, a former Giant named Tom Landry comes home to be honored by Mara family and the old boys at a golf outing.
DETROIT, Aug. 18 - Inevitably, Dallas Green is dismissed, but in his closing weeks he has given the interfering Yankee owner a nickname that will live through the next dozen shuffles in the Steinbrenner reign of error: Manager George.
NEW YORK, Aug. 24 - Still denying he did anything wrong, Pete Rose is banned from baseball for gambling violations.
NEW YORK, Sept. 1 - Word arrives that A. Bartlett Giamatti has died of a heart attack at the age of 51, after only five months as commissioner, leaving a legacy of an eloquent passion for the sport.
NEW YORK, Sept. 5 - Chris Evert receives standing ovation after losing to Zina Garrison in quarterfinals of her last Grand Slam tournament.
TORONTO, Sept. 29 - For the first time, two black managers battle for a division title. Cito Gaston's Blue Jays will defeat Frank Robinson's Orioles, with baseball edging just a little closer to the time when race and color will not be an issue.
WASHINGTON, Oct. 2 - The former Yale first baseman George Bush entertains reporters at the White House, glad to talk baseball for 30 minutes rather than brewing Panama troubles.
SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 17 - Never have 15 seconds seemed so long as during the earthquake at 5:04 P.M.: long enough to watch light stanchions shimmy and concrete overhangs shake. As immensity of the disaster sinks in, World Series is postponed indefinitely.
SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 22 - Ignoring a few calls to cancel the games, the new commissioner, Francis T. Vincent Jr., sets Oct. 27 as date for resumption, citing Winston Churchill during blitz of London and saying, ''It is important for us to carry on.''
SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 28 - The Athletics decline the usual champagne orgy in the clubhouse to stage a family celebration of the World Series sweep. In this tasteful setting, Nathalie Stewart is able to savor her son David's selection as World Series hero, for two victories and frequent visits to the disaster sites in their hometown.
PORT-OF-SPAIN, Trinidad, Nov. 19 -Paul Caligiuri scores the most important goal in American soccer history, to beat Trinidad and Tobago, 1-0, and send the United States to the World Cup in Italy next June. After the game, broken-hearted fans, wearing red outfits, graciously congratulate American reporters, who can only mumble, ''Thanks for being such good hosts.''
MIAMI, Dec. 6 - Nadia Comaneci is instantly transformed from heroine to pariah when it turns that out her defection from troubled Rumania was mainly to take up with a married father of four, in the same town where his family lives.
MIAMI, Dec. 30 - Although recently taunted via ''Catholics vs. Convicts'' T-shirts, Miami fans gird themselves to root for Notre Dame to stop undefeated Colorado in Orange Bowl on New Year's night, to maintain Miami's chance for a national title.
Miami fans rooting for Notre Dame? Bizarre ending to bizarre year.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: photo of Kelly Downs and his son (NYT/G. Paul Burnett)

Copyright 1990 The New York Times Company



5 of 468 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times

January 2, 1990, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

THE DOCTOR'S WORLD;
In Health Care, a Question of Quality: Cost-Control Efforts Raise Concerns

BYLINE: By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN, M.D.

SECTION: Section C; Page 3, Column 1; Science Desk

LENGTH: 1155 words

HAVE Government measures to control health care costs reduced the quality of care and increased death rates among the elderly?
Although there is no definitive answer yet, recent small studies have raised troubling questions that demand scrutiny, several health care experts say.
One of the latest studies tracked the death rates of elderly residents of Hennepin County, Minn., which includes Minneapolis, from 1970 to 1986. The age-adjusted annual rate declined steadily for years, but it leveled off after 1983, when Federal cost-containment efforts began in earnest and the average length of hospital stays started to decline. 
Dr. Nicole Lurie, an author of the study, said the results prompted her team to initiate further studies because ''we need to learn if the problem is cause for alarm.''
The cost-control measures are aimed at reducing the number of admissions to hospitals and shortening the length of stay for those covered by Medicare and Medicaid health insurance programs. Medicare covers the elderly and Medicaid the indigent.
Proponents note that it is often less expensive to treat people on an out-patient basis, rather than in a hospital. And they say that costs can be controlled without sacrificing quality. As an incentive to control costs, Medicare now reimburses hospitals a fixed amount for specific categories; previously, the payments were simply based on what the hospital charged. Researchers say that it is extremely difficult to assess whether cost-containment efforts are directly affecting the quality of care because so many variables are involved. Moreover, they note, the censuses that provide the raw material for study are conducted only once a decade, and publication of the nation's death statistics lags by several years.
In addition, the researchers said adverse effects may not show up in national surveys because of variations in the way states and cities provide health care. Adverse affects may also hit certain groups, like the poor or chronically ill, yet not be apparent in broader studies.
Thus studies limited to certain areas and groups may bring the problem into sharper focus. For that reason, the Minneapolis study, which was published in the November issue of the American Journal of Public Health, has stirred interest among health economists.
The study determined death rates by dividing the population by the number of deaths in a year. The rate is adjusted to account for age so that when two groups are compared, the rate for the group that includes more elderly people is not unfairly skewed.
In Hennepin County, the death rates were significantly above the projections for 1984 through 1987, Dr. Lurie's team said. The projections were based on the steady decrease from 1970 to 1982.
The study also reinforced concerns that the early discharge of elderly patients from hospitals to nursing homes may increase death rates. The researchers found that death rates for nursing home residents increased from 1982 to 1986.
The length of hospital stays for elderly people dropped by more than half from 1982 to 1986, the latest figures available, Dr. Lurie said. ''Our study raises warning flags that the same phenomenom may be occurring unrecognized elsewhere,'' Dr. Lurie said in an interview. ''When you see as drastic an increase in death rates as we have seen in Minneapolis, you need to be deeply concerned.''
She said her team from the Hennepin County Medical Center and Minnesota Health Department is undertaking further studies to determine to what degree Federal and local regulations contributed to the change.
The local measures included a moratorium on additional nursing home beds, screening of nursing home applicants before admission, and a rapid growth in enrollment by Medicare beneficiaries in health maintenance organizations. H.M.O. enrollees pay a fixed amount for a specified range of care, if needed.
Because Dr. Lurie's study was designed to evaluate overall health statistics and not individual records, she said her team could not determine whether the quality of care might have contributed to the deaths. The team is now reviewing medical records of the nursing home patients.
The team is also studying whether more terminally ill patients in Minneapolis were transferred to nursing homes just before death under the new regulations. Such a shift might not reflect quality of care issues; rather, it may signal more efficient health care delivery.
But Dr. Lurie said, ''If hospitals are discharging sick patients who are not terminally ill to nursing homes that do not have the staff or equipment to care for them properly, then we have a serious problem.'' In earlier studies, Dr. Mark A. Sager and a team at the University of Wisconsin found that the proportion of deaths occurring in nursing homes increased significantly after the regulatory changes, while there were fewer deaths in hospitals. Because nursing homes seem to have assumed a greater burden in tending to sicker people, Dr. Sager said it is critical to learn whether the homes provide enough nursing and physician care.
Dr. Sager and other experts suggested that the Minneapolis findings may reflect an unusual confluence of Government regulations and local systems of health care delivery. A relatively large number of Minneapolis residents, including the elderly, receive care through H.M.O.'s. In emphasizing preventive medicine and cost containment, H.M.O.'s often provide incentives to staff members to keep patients out of a hospital.
If the findings are attributable to this combination of factors, ''the study has significant national policy implications,'' Dr. Sager said. ''The question is: how hard should Medicare push to enroll everyone in Medicare H.M.O.'s? Maybe they should not push very hard.''
Earlier studies have found conflicting evidence about the impact of government regulations.
In 1988, Dr. Stephen Shortell and Dr. Edward F. X. Hughes of Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., reported that the death rate was up to 10 percent higher in hospitals in states that stringently regulate care than in hospitals elsewhere.
But Dr. Gary Gaumer and colleagues at Abt Associates Inc. in Cambridge, Mass., used a different statistical method and reported in July that they had found no indication that cost-saving efforts in heavily regulated states were directly linked to death rates.
Nevertheless, the team found indications that the actual declines in death rates ''were not as large as those that would have occurred in the absence of'' government regulations.
There is much evidence that benefit programs can improve health care. In one study, Dr. Jack Hadley, co-director of the Center for Health Policy Studies at Georgetown University, reported in 1988 that the more Medicare spent for each beneficiary, the lower the death rates. The results, Dr. Hadley said, ''suggest that cost containment is not a costless policy.''

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Graphs showing the average annual days in the hospital for Medicaid recipients in Hennepin County, Minn.; the mortality rates for all county residents 65 years or older (source: American Journal of Public Helath) (NYT)

Copyright 1990 The New York Times Company



6 of 468 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times

January 2, 1990, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

Business and Health;
Time to Confront Health-Care Issue

BYLINE: By Milt Freudenheim

SECTION: Section D; Page 2, Column 1; Financial Desk

LENGTH: 782 words

ADMINISTRATION officials, members of Congress and executives who buy or provide health care are girding for a broad debate on the future of the troubled medical system.
The problems include access to care for the 37 million Americans not covered by health insurance, long-term care for the elderly and spending that is expected to exceed $600 billion, about 12 percent of the gross national product in 1990.
Insurers are feeling pressure to loosen restrictions that are blamed for increasing the numbers of the uninsured, but there is widespread reluctance to spend even more money for change.
''I expect a national debate, vigorous discussion on the issues of long-term care, providing for the medically uninsured and other problems,'' said Louis W. Sullivan, the Secretary of Health and Human Services. 
Employers and Government officials say rising health costs threaten competitiveness and the efforts to reduce budget deficits. But some say the cost and access issues cannot be separated.
Two-thirds of the uninsured have full-time jobs, often at businesses with fewer than 25 employees, regarded as expensive to insure. Many small employers have dropped insurance. And people who have had expensive illnesses are often denied coverage.
Insurers have met with members of Congress and physicians' groups to discuss limiting rate increases and restrictions on coverage. ''I have a feeling that the insurance industry knows that there will have to be changes,'' said Senator John D. Rockefeller 4th, Democrat of West Virginia.
Bernard R. Tresnowski, president of the national Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association commented: ''The answer may be to permit insurance carriers to operate in that market under certain standards of behavior.''
A Government commission is scheduled to present a health-care plan to President Bush in March. Senator Rockefeller, the group's chairman, has suggested that employers be required to provide health insurance for their employees or to pay a tax to a fund to protect uninsured people.
Mr. Rockefeller said the Administration would face a fight in Congress if Mr. Bush proceeds with a reported plan to cut $8.5 billion from the Medicare and Medicaid budgets next year.
Mr. Rockefeller's group has not said how much the Senator's suggestion would cost. But Deborah Steelman, a Bush Presidential campaign adviser and chairwoman of an advisory council on Social Security, said the annual cost of comprehensive improvements might be $30 billion to $50 billion.
Although such costly changes are unlikely in 1990, Ms. Steelman said, a first step could be to expand the Federal-state Medicaid program. ''To bring in everyone who is under the poverty line, including single men and kids up to 18, as well as pregnant women and people with traumatic illnesses might cost $10 billion,'' she said.
Representative Bill Gradison, Republican of Ohio and a vice chairman of the Congressional commission, would go further. He said he wants to ''break the tie between Medicaid and poverty, so people above the poverty line can participate.''
Mr. Gradison noted that Congress has started in that direction by extending Medicaid eligibility for pregnant mothers and young children. ''But nothing comprehensive can be done without some new source of revenue,'' he said. ''We are moving closer to the kind of crisis that might force action to be taken. An increasing number of hospitals are eliminating whole services such as emergency rooms or trauma centers, or just closing their doors completely.''
Robert N. Beck, an executive vice president at the Bank of America, said that in Los Angeles, ''three hospitals have closed their emergency rooms, which puts more pressure on the county hospital.''
Establishing standards of proper medical care is a priority for many physicians. ''We see 1990 as the beginning of the era of accountability in the medical profession,'' said Dr. James S. Todd of the American Medical Association. He cited a new law that would revise Medicare payments, based on such criteria as the doctor' time, training, overhead expenses and intensity of effort.
Recommendations will come from several influential quarters. In addition to the reports due from the Congressional commission and Ms. Steelman's council, employers in the Washington Business Group and the National Association of Manufacturers are also drafting policy proposals. ''Employers, unions, medical groups, everybody is coming up with their own solutions,'' Mr. Wardrop said. ''But if we don't reach some consensus, the number of Americans without access will go to 40 million, costs will rise to 15 percent of the G.N.P., and the quality won't get any better.''

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: drawing

Copyright 1990 The New York Times Company



7 of 468 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times

January 3, 1990, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

New Chief to Be Named at Federal Health Agency

BYLINE: By PHILIP J. HILTS, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section A; Page 16, Column 4; National Desk

LENGTH: 454 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Jan. 2

Dr. William Roper, the top health adviser at the White House, will be named head of the Federal Centers for Disease Control, Federal officials said today.
Dr. Roper, 41 years old, is an architect of a new policy for paying physicians under the Medicare health insurance program for the elderly. Under the old system, physicians were reimbursed based on the determination of what is considered reasonable and customary. The new system bases payments on the value of the services doctors render, as weighed by many factors. 
Dr. Roper has also been known for his efforts to improve measurements of the quality of health care services that are paid for under Medicare, as well as for establishing a new group to test the effectiveness of some medical treatments.
 
Headed Medicare Agency
Dr. Roper, a pediatrician, left his job as chief health officer in Birmingham, Ala., to become a White House fellow and then President Ronald Reagan's special assistant for health policy. In 1986, he became the administrator of the Health Care Financing Administration, which is responsibility for Medicare. It is one of the largest Government agencies, with an annual budget of $110 billion. Dr. Roper returned to the White House as the top health adviser early in 1989.
The Centers for Disease Control is one of the most visible arms of the Department of Health and Human Services, with 5,000 employees, a $1 billion annual budget and a mission to prevent premature death and disease.
It monitors the occurence of infectious diseases, like AIDS and measles, and has an emergency medical detective force to spot new epidemics and uncover their causes.
 
Health Posts Remain Unfilled
The job as head of C.D.C. has been one of several important health posts that has remained unfilled since President Bush took office. Others include the director of the National Institutes of Health, the administrator of the Health Resources and Services Administration, and the more recently vacated job of Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration.
Dr. James O. Mason, the former head of the Centers for Disease Control, left the job at the beginning of 1989 to move up two ranks, becoming the Assistant Secretary for Health.
Dr. Roper's decision to take the job was first reported in a Washington newsletter, Medicine and Health, on Friday, and officials at the Department of Health and Human Services and the White House today confirmed that Dr. Roper is expected to be named head of the C.D.C.
From 1977 to 1983, Dr. Roper was the chief health officer in Birmingham and an assistant Alabama health officer. He also was on the faculty of the University of Alabama School of Public Health and the Department of Pediatrics.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1990 The New York Times Company



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The New York Times

January 3, 1990, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

About New York;
Hey, Come On In, The Polar Bears Are Just Fiii-ine!

BYLINE: By DOUGLAS MARTIN

SECTION: Section B; Page 1, Column 1; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 771 words

Approaching a wintry Coney Island by elevated subway, you are struck by a motionless Wonder Wheel, a lifeless Cyclone roller coaster. Alighting, you see boarded-up arcades, kiddie rides guarded by razor ribbon, frozen hints of faraway summer. It's 30 degrees and a bitter wind chews at the cheeks. What to do but go swimming? The Coney Island Polar Bear Club assembles this time of year for dips in the icy Atlantic. We had joined them for reasons ever more elusive as the moment of our plunge approached. We glanced tremulously around at the sundry folks with whom we had chosen to contract hypothermia.
There was a tugboat captain, a rabbi, an elderly woman with a red bow on the back of her swimsuit, a bodybuilder who models for Playgirl, a postal clerk, a stockbroker who once ran up Pike's Peak, three Catholic priests, assorted fraternity brothers, a cadre of Russian emigres and a retired accountant who believes his polar bear experience was the key to survival when he was wounded in the Italian Alps during World War II. 
Perhaps 100 in all, each with a story to tell -none of them short. We couldn't escape a man from Belgium determined to display a picture of him and three fun-loving friends playing cards in a hole they had cut through the ice. Or a Japanese chap who kept saying that sunrise might have been an even jollier time to assemble.
Health seemed a big drawing card. We were informed that polar bears (ursine presumably, human certainly) never get colds. They never need sleeping pills. They claim the strength of, well, bears. ''You feel like you can pick up a car,'' said Al Mottola, the 75-year-old president.
So it has been since the organization was founded in 1903 by a man called Mr. Body, whose business was publishing a magazine called Sexology.
But even Mr. Body might have been startled by a Connecticut teacher's remark that cold-water swims are a nice substitute for sex. ''Take what you can get,'' he advised.
As more people stripped down for the swim, at least one participant's nerves were jangling badly. But a fully dressed woman smiled serenely. She turned out to be there to observe her husband, an airline pilot. His considerable life insurance was indeed paid up, thank you very much.
''Keep moving,'' was the kind advice of Bonnie Hartes, who likes to give her minute bikinis names like Shark Bait, Jungle Fever or Pink Ice, today's shimmering model. ''You don't enjoy it as much if your fingers and toes freeze up,'' she said.
''You just have to run until you fall - that's the only way,'' said Diane Lord, who used to work in the Bronx Zoo until she caught something from the monkeys.
Suddenly it was 1 P.M., and we were part of a thundering herd screaming like banshees and tumbling off the boardwalk stairs onto the beach, heading straight for the ocean. D-Day in reverse! As our toes touched water, we recalled hearing that the ankles are toughest. Decidedly wrong. Suffice it to say that our foreheads felt a degree of constriction and pure pain unknown since Torquemada's reign.
So we joined hands and bounced about in a circle and laughed and shouted and in no time at all - maybe 1,000 years, give or take a century - it was all over.
There is a kind of cold that cuts to the marrow, persisting well after you have found a place of greater warmth. So imagine our delight that the first person greeting us on our hasty retreat was a vendor of hot knishes. With mustard, please.
But a nearby polar bear was on the prowl for a glass of ice water. Really. It was clearly time to make a beeline to Coney Island's coziest corner, the little dining room in the back of Nathan's original hot dog stand at Surf and Stillwell Avenues. Swinging doors, porthole windows, 10 little tables. We downed a chili dog and cheese fries, absorbed the warmth and began to entertain the thought of remaining alive. ''You feel like at home, huh?'' a waiter said.
The truth is that we still felt cold. The ''N'' train took us to the ''L,'' which took us a few blocks from the Russian and Turkish Baths at 268 East 10th Street. We headed straight for the radiant heat room where the temperature never drops below 270 degrees. Cold-water faucets endlessly fill buckets that once contained pickled herring. Pink, panting, perspiring palpitating people toss the water over well-seared heads.
''I like it hot,'' purred a woman being not too gently scrubbed with a broom made of oak leaves. She must. We discovered that in the hands of an expert (sadist?) each leaf stings like a blazing ember.
Thankfully, there is a swimming pool of frigid water outside the fiery chamber's door.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1990 The New York Times Company



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The New York Times

January 3, 1990, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

A Deficit of $65 Million Is Seen in Connecticut

BYLINE: By KIRK JOHNSON, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section B; Page 2, Column 1; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 732 words

DATELINE: HARTFORD, Jan. 2

Budget officials said today that falling sales-tax revenues and rising welfare costs will leave Connecticut with a budget deficit of $65 million for the fiscal year ending June 30.
The announcement, coming six months after the state enacted the largest tax increase in its history to solve last year's problems, erased the hopes of state officials who had hoped to avoid budget pain in an election year.
Gov. William A. O'Neill, flanked at a news conference by dozens of commissioners and department heads called to the Capitol for a budget briefing, said that in response to the projections, he had ordered an immediate 2 percent cut in appropriations for most agencies, a reduction of 2,000 state jobs over the next 18 months, and curtailment of overtime, travel expenses and consulting contracts.
Mr. O'Neill said the appropriation cuts would save about $20 million over the next six months, while the job cutback would save perhaps $80 million a year once it was fully in effect in 1991. But he said that with continued weakness in consumer spending, sales-tax revenues - which contribute two-thirds of the state budget - could fall further still. 
 
'Everything Is on the Table'
''If the income isn't there, the outgo can't be there, either,'' Mr. O'Neill said.
Mr. O'Neill said that ''as of this moment'' he did not intend to ask for further tax increases when he presents his budget to the General Assembly next month. But he stressed repeatedly that ''everything is on the table'' as the budget situation unfolds.
Budget officials said the numbers have spiraled downward in just the last few months. The last projection, for example, a month ago, called for a $3.2 million surplus for the fiscal year ending June 30. Three months ago, the projected surplus was $92.9 million.
The General Assembly's Office of Fiscal Analysis has projected a deficit of $51.5 million in the current fiscal year and a shortfall of $417 million in the next.
 
Long-Term Care for Elderly
The state's Secretary of Policy and Management, Anthony V. Milano, said the projected $65 million deficit reflects nearly $55 million in higher-than-expected Medicaid payments, particularly for long-term care for the elderly.
He said that $25 million more in housing and energy costs have resulted from a recent court order requiring the state to provide long-term shelter to homeless families, who were previously put up in motels for a maximum of 100 days.
And the sales tax, raised to 8 percent from 7.5 percent on July 1 and the highest state sales-tax rate in the nation, has brought in $27 million less than expected. Corporate income taxes have brought $25 million less. Connecticut has a tax on dividends and interest but no broad-based income tax.
Mr. Milano said that the effects of cutting 2,000 state jobs will not be felt immediately, and will also be partially obscured by an early-retirement package that induced about 3,000 workers to leave their jobs over the last six months.
 
Jobs Will Be Eliminated
About 1,000 of the new job cuts, for example, will be applied to jobs that are now unfilled because of the retirement plan, he said. The remaining 1,000 will be eliminated as they open up because of future retirements, transfers and deaths, he added.
Mr. O'Neill said he hoped residents would not be hurt by the employment cuts, but they probably would be inconvenienced, if only by longer lines for things like driver-license renewals. Emergency services, he stressed, will be maintained.
Mr. O'Neill, whose popularity dropped last year after he signed into law almost $900 million in higher taxes, has vowed to run for re-election to a third four-year term this fall if his health permits. Asked whether the new numbers and the likelihood of another difficult legislative session gave him any reason to reconsider his decision, Mr. O'Neill responded that he was more determined than ever.
Mr. O'Neill's Republican challengers, who already are using last year's tax increases as a main element of their attacks, also seemed determined to use the new budget figures for all they're worth politically.
United States Representative John G. Rowland, for example, generally said to be the Republican front-runner, said in a statement that he thought the budget news had ''dashed the optimism and hope that Connecticut residents brought to the start of this new decade.''

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1990 The New York Times Company



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The New York Times

January 3, 1990, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Fare Rises But Riders Keep Cool

BYLINE: By FRANK J. PRIAL

SECTION: Section B; Page 3, Column 1; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 516 words

On the first working day of the new year yesterday, most New Yorkers appeared to greet the transit fare increase with resignation, indifference and pockets filled with tokens bought at the old price.
The fare went to $1.15, from $1, at midnight on Sunday.
Long lines expected at token booths and bus stops yesterday morning did not materialized in most cases. Most regular riders apparently took the Transit Authority's advice and stocked up on tokens before the fare changed. 
''I bought 300 over the last couple of days,'' said one traveler at the Union Square BMT stop who declined to give his name. ''I saved $45 but I felt guilty, so I gave it all to the Salvation Army.''
 
Millions of Tokens Hoarded
On Monday the Transit Authority said the public had bought 55 million tokens as of Thursday and many millions more over the weekend. Normally about 25 million tokens are in circulation, the authority said.
''What can you do?'' asked Inez Serrano of Brooklyn, an office cleaner. ''You have to pay it. You have to get to work somehow. What are people going to do, drive into Manhattan? That's crazy.''
Two groups of riders were less apathetic: those who can no longer transfer without charge from a bus to the subway and must now pay a double fare, and elderly people, who can no longer use a token bought in advance to obtain a free return-trip ticket.
''I think it stinks,'' said David Garcia, 25 years old, of Brooklyn, a United Parcel Service employee, ''especially the bus transfer deal. I'd like to see more bus transfers, not less, and speedier service. I take the bus to the train every day. Now my commuting costs are doubled.''
Doubled, plus 15 percent. Mr. Garcia paid $2 for a round trip last week; now he must pay $4.60.
Riders over 65 who are entitled to travel for half fare, discovered yesterday that the tokens they had purchased in advance were not honored when they asked for a return-trip ticket. They were told they would have to buy a token at the booth to get the return-trip voucher.
 
Closing 'All the Loopholes'
''That's always been the rule,'' said Bob Slovak, a Transit Authority spokesman, ''but everyone let it slip in recent years. The idea is to close up all the loopholes in fare cheating, even the smallest.''
Mr. Slovak explained that some riders over 65, a very small number, were using one token to collect return-fare tickets at several booths. The return tickets are good for 90 days.
''So what am I supposed to do with the tokens I bought, if they won't take them at the booth?'' asked one elderly rider who asked that his name not be used.
Mr. Slovak said transit officials planned to meet today to discuss the senior-citizen fare.
One group of entrepreneurs - panhandlers - had already begun to profit from the new fare yesterday. One man stood next to the change booth at the Port Authority Bus Terminal subway stop at 40th Street and Eighth Avenue.
''Any loose change?'' he asked each token buyer. About one in five people gave him change, something rarely seen in the subway system since the 90-cent fare ended in 1985.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Commuters seemed to greet the transit fare increase with resignation yesterday. At the IRT Borough Hall station in Brooklyn, a rider bought a 10-pack of tokens at the new price of $1.15 each. (NYT/John Sotomayor)

Copyright 1990 The New York Times Company



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The New York Times

January 3, 1990, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final
Correction Appended

Rise in Health Insurance Rates Levels Off

BYLINE: By MILT FREUDENHEIM

SECTION: Section D; Page 1, Column 3; Financial Desk

LENGTH: 962 words

After several years of climbing steeply, increases in health insurance rates are leveling off in many parts of the country, according to executives of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, the nation's largest health insurer.
The trend in premium rates reflects a dramatic turnaround at the network of Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans, which provide benefits for 75 million people.
''It appears we are going to end 1989 with a $1 billion gain,'' said Bernard R. Tresnowski, president of the association, which is based in Chicago. The association's 74 health plans lost $1 billion in 1988 and $2 billion in 1987. 
While rates vary across the country and even among groups of different sizes and ages in the same city, the most severe increases seem to be moderating, as insurers played catch-up in a cycle of health-care costs that are still mounting.
In Michigan, for example, insurance rates will rise less than 9 percent on average for groups whose policies come up for annual renewal this month. This contrasts with increases of 18 percent to 25 percent on such policies in the first half of 1989, said Rudolph Di Fasio, a spokesman for Michigan Blue Cross.
Albert A. Cardone, chairman of Empire Blue Cross and Blue Shield, the New York State insurer, said his company was asking regulators for increases averaging 11.6 percent. But he added that costs for the Blue Cross ''supplementary'' insurance, which augments Federal Medicare coverage for the elderly, would rise 27 percent, largely because of the recent Congressional repeal of the Medicare catastrophic coverage.
Mr. Tresnowski said health insurers had just completed a cycle of three years of losses, which would probably be followed by three years of gains - the excess of income over costs.
''The cycle was triggered by unforeseen costs, as care was moved outside of hospitals to ambulatory settings such as doctors' offices, and benefits were expanded in areas such as alcohol and substance abuse,'' Mr. Tresnowski said. ''It took us a while to recognize the trend and then to raise our prices accordingly.''
Frederick F. Cue, a senior vice president of the Blue Cross Association, said that while insurance claims by doctors and hospitals were still growing, the increases were not any larger in 1989 than in 1988.
He said the turnaround in Blue Cross financial results was helped by cost-cutting, including staff layoffs, as well as by the 1989 rate increases, particularly at health maintenance organizations.
''Nationally, we went from a $200 million loss in H.M.O.'s in 1988 to a slight profit in 1989,'' he said. Mr. Cue said 56 of the 74 Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans would report gains for 1989.
 
Income From Investments
Mr. Cardone at Empire, which has 10.5 million subscribers, said the insurer expected to show a surplus of about $40 million in 1989, down from $53 million in 1988. It lost $56 million in 1987. He said Empire had ''a slight loss'' in its 1989 insurance business, which it made up with income from investments.
The separate Blue Cross and Blue Shield companies in California also said they did well in 1989. ''We had a gain of about $42 million through Oct. 31, compared with losses of $9 million in 1988 and $56 million in 1987,'' said Leonard D. Schaeffer, chairman of Blue Cross of California. Blue Shield of California reported a net gain of $31 million for the first 10 months of 1989, compared with a $6 million gain in 1988 and a $36.5 million loss in 1987.
New Jersey's Blue Cross and Blue Shield plan, which lost $278 million in 1987 and 1988, also made a comeback. It will end up about $60 million ahead for 1989, said Joan Boyle, the plan's executive vice president. She said her company had requested rate increases averaging about 20 percent for groups and 32 percent for individuals in 1990.
 
Accumulated Deficit
Even with the ''significant improvement'' in 1989, she said, New Jersey Blue Cross will still have an accumulated deficit of $228 million, which it hopes to wipe out by the end of 1991.
In other turnarounds, Eugene J. Ott, chief operating officer of Independence Blue Cross in Philadelphia, said net income after Federal taxes would exceed $60 million in 1989, compared with $8 million in 1988 and $38 million in 1987.
Patrick M. Sheridan, executive vice president of the Associated Insurance Companies, which operates as Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Indiana, said profit would be about $20 million in 1989, after a $69 million loss in 1988.
In Washington D.C., Blue Cross and Blue Shield of the National Capital, has ''made a small gain, a couple of million dollars, in 1989,'' said Raymond D. Freson, a spokesman for the plan. He said the company lost $42 million in 1988.
 
Dramatic Results
Perhaps the most dramatic results were in Michigan, where Blue Cross has 4.4 million subscribers, about half the state's population. ''We added $186 million to reserves through the end of October,'' said Robert H. Naftaly, a senior vice president and chief financial officer of the Michigan association. He said the total gain for 1989 would be $200 million, in contrast to losses of $66 million in 1988 and $300 million in 1987.
Mr. Naftaly said his compoany had reduced its annual operating expenses by $100 million and received approval from state officials for ''self-sustaining rates in all our lines,'' including its formerly money-losing health maintenance organization. He said it negotiated contracts with 196 hospitals that provide monetary ''incentives'' for institutions that discharge patients promptly.
But Mr. Tresnowski at the Blue Cross Association in Chicago said the cycle of surpluses would last only through this year and 1991. ''Then we will look for another down period in 1992,'' he said.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

CORRECTION-DATE: January 4, 1990, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

 CORRECTION:
An article in Business Day yesterday about a turnaround in the health insurance business of Blue Cross and Blue Shield associations misstated 1987 financial results for the Independence Blue Cross Association in Philadelphia. It had a loss of $38 million.

Copyright 1990 The New York Times Company



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The New York Times

January 4, 1990, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

Subway Voucher Policy Rescinded by T.A.

SECTION: Section B; Page 3, Column 1; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 148 words

The Transit Authority reversed itself yesterday and rescinded an order that stopped riders over 65 years old from using subway tokens bought before Jan. 1 to obtain a free return-trip voucher, a transit spokesman said.
When the subway fare went to $1.15 from $1 on Jan. 1, many elderly riders had tokens bought at the old fare, which subway clerks would not honor when they asked for a free voucher. Under new transit rules, the clerks would issue the vouchers only for tokens purchased at the higher fare.
''We did not mean to single out senior citizens,'' the spokesman, Bob Slovak, said. ''It's not fair that they got stuck, so we reversed ourselves.''
Mr. Slovak said Transit Authority policy had been to provide free return-trip vouchers to the elderly when they showed a token. Now, he said, they will not only have to show the token, but surrender it to get the voucher.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1990 The New York Times Company



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The New York Times

January 5, 1990, Friday, Late Edition - Final

New Jersey Blue Cross Wins Overall 24.6% Rise in Rates

BYLINE: By JOSEPH F. SULLIVAN, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section B; Page 2, Column 1; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 696 words

DATELINE: NEWARK, Jan. 4

New Jersey Blue Cross and Blue Shield today was granted an overall increase in rates of 24.6 percent, effective Feb. 15, for 605,000 subscribers. The insurer had sought a 33 percent increase.
The increase approved by the State Insurance Commissioner, Kenneth D. Merin, translates into an average of 26.4 percent for 350,000 individual medical and hospital subscribers and 21.3 percent for 255,000 elderly people whose policies cover costs not paid by Medicare.
Because Blue Cross is permitted to adjust rates based on the subscriber's age, sex and place of residence, some could see their premiums increase by up to 60 percent. 
 
Insured Groups Not Affected
About 3.4 million Blue Cross subscribers who are members of large insured groups are not affected by the increases. Rates for these groups are adjusted periodically by Blue Cross, depending on the cost of their claims.
A coalition of public-interest organizations had opposed any increase, saying it would fall most heavily on the elderly and the poor. However, Commissioner Merin said a review by his staff and the New Jersey Public Advocate of data submitted by Blue Cross showed that some increase was justified.
Joan Boyle, executive vice president of Blue Cross, said the corporation remained convinced that its request for a 33 percent increase for individual subscribers and 28 percent for those with Medicare supplemental policies was justified.
Blue Cross ended 1989 with a deficit of about $220 million; it had expected to reduce that to $125 million by the end of this year if it received its full request. Under the increase approved by Mr. Merin, the nonprofit corporation projected a deficit of $152 million.
The Insurance Commissioner said the approved rise would generate $97 million in additional revenue.
For the last two years, Blue Cross has been allowed to vary the rates according to age, sex and place of residence, so that those making greatest use of health care pay higher premiums. Mr. Merin said he found some ''overall inconsistencies'' in the demographics being applied by Blue Cross and ordered adjustments.
 
Rates for a Typical Family
The Insurance Commissioner said that because of this recalculation, the impact of the new rates on individual premiums was not immediately available. Applying the new rates to a typical family policy, however, would increase the premium to $4,221 annually from $3,416, and would increase the Medicare supplemental premium to $552 from $460.
The use of demographic factors has been attacked as unfair by the coalition, which includes the New Jersey Public Health Association, the National Organization of Women of New Jersey, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund Inc., the American Association of Retired Persons and the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey.
Mr. Merin defended the use of factors like residence, saying they were used by most Blue Cross organizations in other states. Health care, for example, is more costly in northern New Jersey than in the southern counties, he said.
Treatment for heart failure and shock in Essex County costs $3,323 on the average, according to the New Jersey Health Department, while the same procedure costs $3,118 in Middlesex County in the central part of the state and $2,580 in Gloucester County in the south.
 
Future Increases Expected
''Demographic areas are not based on urban versus suburban, or rich versus poor, but rather on the cost of medical care in a particular area and the likelihood that a particular group will seek medical care,'' Mr. Merin said. Women of child-bearing age are one of the groups charged higher premiums.
The Commissioner said Blue Cross would need further rate increases in the future because medical costs continue to rise. He said the increases would continue until Congress or the New Jersey Legislature changed the way the health industry was paid.
He said a legislative study commission had recommended a number of reforms, including the creation of a high-risk pool to cover people with health problems who have have been denied coverage by private insurers. The Legislature has yet to act on the recommendation, the Commissioner said.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1990 The New York Times Company



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The New York Times

January 7, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Bank's New Name Irks Brooklynites

SECTION: Section 1; Part 1, Page 28, Column 3; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 613 words

It's happening again. Brooklyn is losing another piece of its identity.
To many Brooklynites, it was bad enough when Brooklyn's daily newspaper, The Daily Eagle, folded in 1955 and when the Dodgers left Ebbets Field in 1957.
And in several months, another institution, the Williamsburgh Savings Bank in downtown Brooklyn - housed in the tallest building in the borough of 2.2 million - will change its name to the Manhattan Savings Bank after its merger with that bank. The merger is expected to be approved by the regulatory authorities sometime in May or June, said J. Phillip Burgess, a spokesman for the Republic New York Corporation, a bank holding company that acquired the two banks. It is the parent company of the Republic National Bank of New York. 
The building will still be called the Williamsburgh Savings Bank Building, Mr. Burgess said. But he said that Manhattan Savings Bank officials wanted to retain the name of their bank.
 
Some Brooklynites Are Rankled
''Our position is that people don't bank with a name but with an account officer,'' he said. ''People are more concerned with their money being in a safe place than what the name is.''
The change in the bank's name rankles some proud Brooklynites who are tired of living in the shadow of their more glittering cousin on the opposite shore of the East River.
''Manhattan of all names,'' said Berkeley Chandler, who has been a customer at the bank for 14 years. ''Manhattan's got enough.'' Judith Johnson, a customer representative at the bank, who has lived in Brooklyn for 19 years, said of the change, ''I don't agree with it.''
 
Wary of Name Change
She predicted that many elderly customers who have been coming to the bank since they were children would be wary of coming to a bank with an unfamiliar name.
''The name change will affect depositors,'' she said. ''I think they will take their money out.''
But to some Brooklynites, it is only the bank's presence that is important.
''I wouldn't care what they call it as long as I come in here,'' said Lenwood Poindexter, 66 years old, who has been a customer for about 13 years.
Emma Foster, who has lived in Brooklyn for 41 years, agreed. ''It doesn't matter to me,'' she said. ''A bank is a bank.''
 
Will Double Its Assets
The merger will double Williamsburgh's assets, to about $6 billion, and for some customers the bank's financial status is all that matters.
''Why not?'' asked Ida Zanders, who has lived in Brooklyn for 30 years and been a bank customer for 20. ''What's wrong with the name? It sounds nice. As long as I get my money.'' But some of Brooklyn's leaders viewed the name change as a another way that New York City's most populated borough was losing its identity.
''It's disappointing to lose that name,'' said Robert Bailey, president of the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce. ''It's like losing a piece of history.''
Mr. Bailey added that Brooklyn is ''too often seen as the orphan child of Manhattan.''
Even Howard Golden, Brooklyn's Borough President, is displeased. He wrote a letter last month to the chairmen of the Republic National Bank and the Williamsburgh Savings Bank, asking them not to change the name.
''Preserving the name of the Williamsburgh Savings Bank means preserving a piece of Brooklyn's history that began and lives in the hearts of all Brooklynites,'' Mr. Golden wrote. A spokesman for the Borough President said there had been no response.
Founded in 1851, the bank opened its headquarters at One Hanson Place in 1929. The 512-foot building, with a four-faced clock tower, is the tallest building in Brooklyn.
The building was designated a landmark on Nov. 15, 1977.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: The Williamsburgh Savings Bank towering over downtown Brooklyn. Later this year, the institution will change its name to the Manhattan Savings Bank. (NYT/Jim Wilson)

Copyright 1990 The New York Times Company



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The New York Times

January 7, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

WHAT'S NEW IN SILVER;
In Marketing, It's Bracketing Brides and the Over-45 Set

BYLINE: By FROMA HARROP; Froma Harrop is a staff writer for the Providence Journal-Bulletin in Rhode Island. She frequently covers the silver industry.

SECTION: Section 3; Page 17, Column 5; Financial Desk

LENGTH: 587 words

The manufacture of sterling flatware is among the oldest industries in the nation. None of the leading silversmiths is less than a century old, and some trace their origins to before the American Revolution. From one generation to the next, these companies had always considered their market to be forever green. In their view, silver virtually sells itself. 
Only recently has it occurred to them that Americans might spend more of their discretionary income on sterling if it were advertised more heavily. Silversmiths have long advertised in bridal magazines to reach newlyweds, their primary market, who account for 46 percent of all sterling flatware sales and about 30 percent of all sales of holloware - serving pieces like tea sets, pitchers and bowls. But to stir interest among other customers, the Silversmiths Guild and the Silver Trust International, a group of mining companies, recently embarked on a $500,000 advertising campaign.
In October, the groups began placing advertisements in Vanity Fair, Metropolitan Home, Bon Appetit, Gourmet, House & Garden and Southern Accents. (''The South has always been very strong for sterling,'' according to Mr. Johnston of the guild.) The advertisements show tables attractively laden with silver flatware, bowls, trays and other items, proclaiming sterling as ''The Eternal Element of Style.''
One target is people over the age of 45. ''The older people have more discretionary income than any group, including baby boomers, and they are the fastest-growing segment,'' said William Weydemeyer, president of the National Tabletop Association and chairman of Taunton Silversmiths, which makes silverplated products. ''These are the people who grew up with our product.''
By contrast, the children of the baby boom are considered a lost generation for sterling. Having grown up in the politically radical 60's and 70's, this huge post-World War II cohort got married late and without traditional fanfare. ''During the hippie era, big weddings were out,'' Mr. Johnston noted. ''People were getting married in the pasture with a guitar and no one was giving silver presents.''
But the industry believes that with a little prodding the group could return to a more elegant table. Their ''psychographics'' may augur well for silver sales. Having paired up and formed households based on dual incomes, these baby boomers are now tiring of fast-paced living and eating on the run. They are raising families and ''want to look back to the home,'' Mr. Johnston said.
That has fueled sales of practical things like kitchen tools and housewares, agrees Lawrence H. Wortzel, professor of marketing at Boston University, but he says that to ''project that to silver, we are on a little more tenuous ground.'' Still, he adds, ''my viscera tell me that if crystal, china and silver manufacturers do some intelligently creative promotion, they could really increase their sales in the 90's.''
Silversmiths have attempted to modernize their images to reflect contemporary lifestyles. Towle, for example, runs advertisements showing a silver fork sticking into a carton of Chinese takeout. The overall message is that sterling is for everyday eating, that the utensils can be tossed into a dishwasher. And, it is emphasized, the more sterling is used, the less it must be polished. Most silver makers have even introduced more modern designs, though they note that the best-selling patterns these days, like Wallace's French Regency, are updated versions of traditionals.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1990 The New York Times Company



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The New York Times

January 7, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Togetherness After the Age of Reason

BYLINE: By JANE ADAMS; JANE ADAMS's latest book, ''Wake Up Sleeping Beauty,'' will be published by Morrow in June. She lives in Seattle.

SECTION: Section 5; Page 41, Column 1; Travel Desk

LENGTH: 1204 words

WHEN my children were young, we took separate vacations. Each June I packed them off to their grandparents, a continent away, and when they returned, we were all glad to see each other again. I'd had a respite from single parenthood, and they'd had a month of unqualified approval and unlimited indulgence. Thus restored and renewed, we managed to negotiate the shoals of togetherness for another year.
Once they'd reached the age of reason - somewhere between training pants and training bras - we took our first family vacation. We went to Disneyland, where he had tantrums because he was too small to ride the Matterhorn alone and I was too chicken to accompany him, and she had nightmares inspired by the Mad Hatter, who had never scared her when he was just a drawing in her favorite book.
That was it for vacations en famille until a few years ago, when I realized that they were adults; young adults, but adults nonetheless. They would soon be entrenched in their own lives, careers and families. But until then, the world beckoned. Unlike many of my friends who waited to have children until they had done everything else, I waited to do everything else - especially travel - until after I had children. Although I might be too old to hitchhike through Europe, I wasn't ready for senior citizen cruises, either. 
''Are we having a princess attack?'' asked my son. It was dawn on the Dark Continent. As I struggled out of my sleeping bag, slapping at mosquitoes, I felt every muscle protest the previous day's long, jouncing journey in the Land Rover and that night's restless sleep with only a few inches of foam rubber separating my body from the Serengeti's unforgiving contours. Adventure travel, they call it, but as I sipped the tea he'd brought me, without even being asked, I reflected that this was the real adventure - not discovering Africa, but discovering him.
At 21, he'd come into his own. Or perhaps I had just noticed. I was awed by his confident competence in a wild and rugged environment; although I'd dutifully praised the outdoor leadership award he earned in high school I never realized how much more useful than an A in algebra it would be on a trip like this. Not only that, but he had done his homework - I learned as much from him about the geology of the Rift Valley, the prehistory of the Olduvai Gorge, the rituals of Masai warriors, the migratory practices of wildebeests and the mating habits of crown crested cranes, as I did from our guide.
And through him I met a younger generation of East Africans than would likely have been as responsive to my interest in their lives, their traditions and their dreams if I'd been part of one of those pricey, predictable tours that go from one expensive lodge to the next. There were the children who dogged his steps in the village near our camp in Zanzibar, the young Mombasans on the ferry to Prison Island, and the students from all over the globe who sang ''We Are the World'' in the accents of a dozen different countries instead of ''Auld Lang Syne'' on New Year's Eve in Lake Manyara. And at the center was this surprisingly gregarious, interesting and capable person - my grown son, whom I saw that way for the first time.
The next year I went traveling with my daughter, who had spent her junior year in college studying weaving in Central America. We went to Spain, because she's fluent in Spanish and is interested in developing what she calls her Latin aesthetic.
To have a daughter with such an aspiration is, at the very least, testament that at least 50 percent of the effort I put in all those years doggedly trying to expose them to culture wasn't wasted. For he is allergic to what is known in our family as the C word. For him, museums, galleries, concerts, temples and churches inspire only uncontrollable yawning. But for weeks before we left, she sent me pages of notes about must-see exhibitions, galleries, artisans, designers, even an obscure little robot museum in Barcelona she'd heard of. In Granada, after driving for hours through the mountains she was still eager to stay up until midnight to hear a concert in the Alhambra gardens we had seen advertised on a poster in town. In Madrid, she translated for me at the theater.
I remember the first time she came home from school - kindergarten it must have been - with knowledge she didn't get from me. I was shocked and a little sad when I realized that a larger world had already begun to claim her. I feel those same mixed emotions now when we travel together - equal parts pride and nostalgia, as well as the anticipation of realizing how much she has to teach me and how eager I am to learn. Meanwhile, we linger for hours at sidewalk cafes, where the expresso grows cold in the cup as she reads her book while I read mine.
My son would say that's rude, which is what I used to say when I had to set a good example. Reading at the table was one of my private pleasures; happily now it's one of hers, too. Unlike, say, scuba diving, which appeals to her about as much as the C word does to him. But he'll lug my scuba gear and his own wherever I take him in my endless search for the perfect coral reef. He started diving with me a few years ago and although I have more experience, his reflexes, stamina and technical knowledge surpass mine. I like that - I feel totally safe with him as my dive buddy. What he used to like best about diving with me, he recently told me, is that when we were underwater, I couldn't ask him to share his feelings. But he laughed when he said it, and since at the time we were sharing a tiny cabin and a big ocean on a live-aboard dive boat in the Caribbean, I didn't have to. It was clear that he was totally content, exactly as I was.
THE daughter doesn't dive, but she shops. Oh, how she shops. Who else would I take to a souk in Morocco, a batik stall in Bali, a market in Mexico? He doesn't understand that you can spend a whole day shopping, not buy a thing and have a wonderful time. But that's O.K., because she does.
We travel by twos whenever we can - when I have the money and one of them has the time. But at Christmas we're all together in some place we've chosen because we've never been there before, may never get there again, and it offers something for everyone.
Bali's been the best of the holiday trips so far - he surfed and dived and hiked up on the volcanoes, and she spent her time in the artisan's villages with woodcarvers, weavers, silversmiths and painters. I went on some jaunts with her and others with him, and once in a while I followed my own inclinations, lazed on the beach with a trashy book and a tall drink.
At sunset we convened back at our bungalow, mixed up a pitcher of mango punch and shared the details of our day. And I thought, as I always do, about what an opportunity this had been to strengthen the connections between us even as distance, autonomy and differing priorities tug at the ties that bind. And how in the maps of memory as well as the atlas on the coffee table I would someday retrace the steps of this journey, which has been so much more than simply the sum of the miles we've traveled together. And how later, after I'm gone, they will, too.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Drawing

Copyright 1990 The New York Times Company



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The New York Times

January 7, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

BLACKBOARD;
Portrait Of the Artist As Elderly

BYLINE: By Marialisa Calta

SECTION: Section 4A; Page 11, Column 4; Education Life

LENGTH: 602 words

AN 87-year-old woman once told Nola Denslow: ''They try to keep us alive so long, and then they don't know what to do with us when they succeed.''
But Ms. Denslow knows. As the force behind a program called ''Out and About,'' she provides elderly Vermonters from all over Lamoille County with professional-level training in music, dance, visual arts, poetry and prose. Her clients have won prizes, sold artwork, been published. More important, said Ms. Denslow, ''They have transcended their physical limitations and confinement. They have stretched their horizons - and ours - far and wide.'' 
Ms. Denslow, an artist and former teacher, transformed a traditional day-care center for the elderly in Morrisville into a nontraditional arts-education program three years ago, when she became executive director. She has been busy since then digging up grants and donations to run the nonprofit program. It serves 45 clients at a cost of about $148,000 a year, half of it coming from the state.
Representative Peter Smith, Republican of Vermont, sees ''Out and About'' as a national model. Mr. Smith, whose Congressional offices in Vermont and Washington, D.C., are decorated with paintings by the elderly artists, said he also hoped to sponsor legislation that would make such programs eligible for Medicare financing.
''Out and About'' is housed in a small clapboard building next to Morrisville's hospital. Inside, a group of retirees who once held positions as diverse as housewife, nurse, electrician, farmer, teacher and Fulbright scholar - all ranging in age from 69 to 97 - create paintings and sculpture under the guidance of seven artists-in-residence. To be eligible, these adults must meet the state's legal definition of frailty, which covers a range of disabilities. Some workshop participants suffer from Alzheimer's disease, others from brain tumors, lung cancer, and arthritis.
''It's been sort of like coming back out into the open, back into life, really being part of things again,'' said Alice Barmann, who at age 86, and with a severe heart condition, has become an avid writer and painter.
Without ''Out and About,'' Orison Shedd, 71, a retired farmer, says he might never have created the intricate line drawings he has sold around the state. Nina Hooper, 87, a retired teacher with glaucoma and cataracts, says she might not have resumed watercolor painting and could never have won a spot on the ''Very Special Arts'' 1990 calendar published by the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.
Dr. Herbert M. Gale, a retired theology professor from Wellesley College, might not have been able to work on the sequel to his book, ''The Use of Analogy in the Letters of Paul.'' Dr. Gale, who is 82, said writing had become difficult since he developed Parkinson's disease three years ago. The personal computer that he is learning to use through the program eases the writing task.
''Out and About'' runs from 10 A.M to 3 P.M. weekdays, and provides transportation, breakfast and lunch and some basic medical care such as nutrition counseling and blood-pressure screening. It also offers field trips to museums, art shows, concerts and theater. Most clients - some who live with family, some in nursing homes and some alone - attend three times a week; Ms. Denslow said most donated about $3 each day for the services.
Maude Holman, a watercolorist and writer, said the program had reinforced one of her basic tenets. ''To put it succinctly,'' said the 93-year-old Mrs. Holman, in tones accented by years spent in Boston society, ''I don't believe in age.''

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo of elderly woman at the piano (The New York Times/Paul Boisvert)

Copyright 1990 The New York Times Company



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The New York Times

January 10, 1990, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

London Journal;
At the Secular Funeral, a Tango May Be Tasteful

BYLINE: By SHEILA RULE, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section A; Page 4, Column 3; Foreign Desk

LENGTH: 956 words

DATELINE: LONDON, Jan. 8

The mourners listened solemnly to the song of praise for the deceased, a man who loved to dance. Then, in their own creative tribute, they did a sedate tango out the door.
The ceremony was one of what clergymen and others say is a growing number of nonreligious funerals in Britain. The British Humanist Association, a national charity that represents the viewpoints and rights of nonreligious people and offers secular services for funerals, weddings and other occasions, says it gets about 200 inquiries a week about such funerals. 
''For so long there have only been religious ceremonies available to people in Britain,'' said Meredith MacArdle, the association's director of public relations. ''The church has had a stranglehold on social ceremonies. But Britain is now essentially a secular country, so we are filling a gap.''
Demand for secular funerals is reportedly coming not only from people who are not religious but also from those who want to avoid routine, cliche-ridden services conducted by clergymen who know nothing about the deceased.
 
'Every Life Is Singular'
The vast majority of friends and relatives do not seek anything as dramatic as the tango-flavored ceremony, association officials say, but all want a personalized service that includes words, music or activities that help to celebrate the memory of the individual.
''We all die, but every life is singular,'' said Maeve Denby, national coordinator for the association. She has personally conducted more than 760 funerals over the last four years, including the one in which mourners danced and another in which the sons of a former circus worker performed a solemn juggling routine in front of his coffin.
''Increasingly, families are getting fed up with vicars who say the same generalized earth-to-earth and dust-to-dust words for everyone, words that have nothing to do with the person who died. And people have grown up. They don't believe we are all going to fly off with little wings on our shoulders when we die.''
How many of the 650,000 Britons who die each year are given nonreligious funeral services is unclear. But the association says that the number of ceremonies it conducts has quadrupled in the last couple of years to several hundred a week around the country. In addition, its do-it-yourself handbook, ''Funerals Without God: A Practical Guide to Nonreligious Funerals,'' is selling briskly.
 
Personalized Services
The association's volunteer officiants, who get a minister's standard fee of about $40 for conducting a ceremony, have almost doubled in number to 160 over the last six months. Ms. Denby says that volunteers, often elderly people who have experienced the grief associated with death, spend several hours talking with family members to gather information that will personalize the funeral services. Volunteers are trained to allow the families to take part as much as possible.
''A ceremony is a human need to comfort and help the living,'' Ms. MacArdle said. ''That's where religion makes a mistake. It concentrates on the dead and takes out of the family's hands the responsibility for saying goodbye. We believe part of the process of overcoming grief involves having the family take part in the process, the ceremony. Perhaps that is another reason we are becoming more popular.''
Bishop Michael Henshall, who is chairman of a Church of England committee on funerals, said he believes that nonreligious funerals are growing primarily among a ''sophisticated minority'' in London. A vast majority of Britons are still ''residually Christian,'' Bishop Henshall said, a belief supported by an opinion poll published last month in The Sunday Times.
Nearly three-quarters of those polled said that they believed in God but that the religious service and sermon had become irrelevant to everyday life. A little over half go to a religious service at some time during the year, but only 15 percent go to church at least once a week. #7 Funerals in a Day ''Being residually Christian doesn't mean they go to church in big numbers,'' Bishop Henshall said, ''but underneath the surface their residual faith makes them want to turn to an authorized God man at points of bereavement. What is true is that because we have a reduced number of clergy and because there are many, many funerals, it is almost impossible for a busy parish priest to give detailed pastoral care.
''I was speaking to a priest today who has seven funerals to conduct tomorrow and he is not going to be able to visit or prepare a sermon in a way he would like. The institutional church, for a variety of reasons, has come to lack a certain credibility in this country at the moment and is regarded as stuffy, a bit dull and not always sparkling.
''There is probably a tendency for the nonreligious funeral to grow once the bandwagon starts and others start to jump on it. But I can't see it becoming as yet a major thing in this country because Britain is still basically residually Christian and would resist it, although who could say in the next decade.''
The British Humanist Association urges its volunteers to get to know as much as possible about the deceased in order to talk freely and knowledgeably about the person at the funeral service. The biggest compliment, Ms. Denby said, is when mourners say to officiants, ''You must have known him.'' But how freely do you talk when the deceased was an unsavory character?
''I had one three months ago,'' Ms. Denby said. ''He was not only a jerk but potty as well; went around stealing things. There was no way to say he was a marvelous person; I had to relate his real nature. So I said he was like this but that maybe that helps us to understand the variety of human nature.''

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: The British Humanist Association, which represents the viewpoints and rights of nonreligious people, says it gets about 200 inquiries each week about secular funerals. ''Britain is now essentially a secular country, so we are filling a gap,'' said Meredith MacArdle, seated, association's public relations director. With her is Maeve Denby, national coordinator. (Network and Contact/Laurie Sparham for The New York Times)

Copyright 1990 The New York Times Company



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The New York Times

January 10, 1990, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

A Nursing Aide Admits Killing Elderly Patient

BYLINE: AP

SECTION: Section A; Page 24, Column 1; National Desk

LENGTH: 168 words

DATELINE: PALATKA, Fla., Jan. 9

A former nursing assistant with AIDS who confessed killing seven elderly patients, then said the confessions were untrue, pleaded guilty today to murdering one of those patients and was sentenced to life in prison.
Jeffrey Feltner, 27 years old, who has said he gave bogus confessions to draw attention to poor conditions in nursing homes, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in the death of a 75-year-old woman after prosecutors played recordings of his previous statements about the deaths. 
''Feltner heard his taped confessions and after hearing the evidence entered a plea of guilty,'' said an assistant state attorney, David Damore. A jury had been seated for his trial.
Mr. Feltner confessed numerous times in a year-long investigation of the seven suspicious retirement home deaths, the police said, adding that the victims had been smothered.
Mr. Feltner was sentenced to life with a mandatory minimum of 25 years. He could have faced the death penalty if convicted of first-degree murder.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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The New York Times

January 10, 1990, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Nursing Homes To Increase Beds For AIDS Cases

BYLINE: By BRUCE LAMBERT

SECTION: Section B; Page 3, Column 1; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 510 words

New York State and the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York, which operates the only AIDS nursing home in New York City, announced plans yesterday to increase by nearly five-fold the number of AIDS beds there and in nursing homes elsewhere.
The plan calls for the number of such beds for AIDS patients to rise to over 200, from the current 44, by the end of this year. State health officials have authorized construction loans for some of the expansion, and state approval of other construction loans is pending. 
The archdiocese has also proposed another 266 beds for later construction, subject to state approval.
AIDS and health-care experts say the city needs hundreds of nursing-home beds for AIDS patients who are ready to be transferred from hospitals but have no place to go. They say that nursing homes are cheaper to operate than hospitals, provide a more comfortable setting for patients and would help relieve the critical overcrowding that public and private hospitals in the city have been experiencing for the last two years.
 
Praise and Demonstration
Contributing to the need for AIDS nursing homes is the fact that conventional nursing homes for the elderly are already full. In addition, some homes have been accused of turning away AIDS patients for discriminatory reasons.
The announcement of the new beds was made at a joint news conference by John Cardinal O'Connor and Gov. Mario M. Cuomo after they toured the existing 44-bed AIDS section of the archdiocese's Terence Cardinal Cooke Health Care Center on Fifth Avenue at 105th Street in Manhattan.
The plan of the archdiocese calls for adding 106 beds at the Cooke Center, for opening 42 beds at its Little Flower Park Avenue Residence at 106th Street in East Harlem and 16 beds at the former Northern Dispensary dental clinic at 165 Waverly Place in Greenwich Village. The 266 beds to be constructed after this year are proposed for three sites in Manhattan that have yet to be determined, the archdiocese said.
At the news conference, Mr. Cuomo praised Cardinal O'Connor and the archdiocese for leadership in providing AIDS services.
 
Issue of Condoms
But outside the building, demonstrators from the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power picketed against the Cardinal. They criticized him and the Catholic Church for refusing to promote condoms as an AIDS preventive and for not offering more education about AIDS.
Inside, the Cardinal said that condoms are not 100 percent effective and that their use should not be encouraged.
Two other organizations have announced plans to open AIDS nursing homes in the city this year. Bronx Lebanon Hospital is building a home with 120 beds, and two private agencies, HELP and Project Samaritan, are teaming up to build a Bronx nursing home that will have 66 beds.
New York City's Health and Hospitals Corporation provides 86 long-term care beds for AIDS patients at its Bird S. Coler Memorial Hospital and Home and Goldwater Memorial Hospital on Roosevelt Island, but they are not technically classified as nursing homes.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: photo: New York State and the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York announced plans to increase nursing home beds for AIDS patients to 208, from the current 44. With Gov. Mario M. Cuomo and John Cardinal O'Connor after a tour of the AIDS unit at Terence Cardinal Cooke Health Care Center in Manhattan was Dr. David Axelrod, center, the state's Health Commissioner. (NYT/Vic DeLucia)

Copyright 1990 The New York Times Company



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The New York Times

January 11, 1990, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

Police Say Man's Family Cut Respirator

BYLINE: JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.

SECTION: Section B; Page 1, Column 5; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 872 words

After disconnecting the respirator that was keeping an elderly Brooklyn man alive, three of his children physically held doctors back from reconnecting the life-support equipment, the police and officials at Kings County Hospital said yesterday.
Prosecutors in the Brooklyn District Attorney's office said they were considering whether to press homicide charges against the children of Leon Myskza, 78 years old, a retired tailor from the Sunset Park section of Brooklyn.
The New York City Medical Examiner has ruled the death a homicide, and if the charges are filed, it would be the first such homicide case in New York State, law experts said.
Mr. Myskza had been taken to the hospital late Saturday after falling at his home. He suffered life-threatening head injuries, the police and hospital officials said. There is no indication that foul play was involved in the fall, the police said. 
 
Patient Underwent Brain Surgery
Early Sunday, staff surgeons operated on Mr. Myskza's brain, hospital officials said. After the operation, Mr. Myskza was placed on a respirator in the intensive-care unit, a common procedure for elderly people who have been under a heavy anesthetic.
Later that day doctors told Mr. Myskza's children and other relatives that he had no chance of surviving, said a hospital official who asked not to be identified. The family asked the doctors to issue a do-not-resuscitate order, which bars doctors from reviving a patient whose heart or brain has stopped functioning, a hospital official said.
At about 10 A.M. the following day Mr. Myskza's daughters Elizabeth Kalash and Mary Myskza, and a son, Edward, entered his cubicle and turned off the respirator, police investigators said.
At 11:30 A.M. an alarm warned nurses that Mr. Myskza's heart had stopped beating.
When doctors and nurses tried to reach the patient and reconnect the respirator, the children blocked their path, and a loud argument erupted between the family and the doctors. Mr. Myskza was pronounced dead a short while later, and hospital officials immediately summoned the police.
No one has been arrested in the death pending the District Attorney's decision and a grand jury review of the evidence, Chief Joseph DeMartino, commander of Brooklyn detectives, said yesterday.
 
'You Can't Kill Him'
''The question in my mind is was this person alive when they pulled the plug,'' Chief DeMartino said. ''Even though you know somebody's dying, you can't kill him.''
The Medical Examiner's autopsy report, released Tuesday, said Mr. Myszka had died from ''the disconnection of life support following an operation for blunt impact head injury.'' A spokeswoman for the office, Ellen Borakove, said yesterday that at the moment the respirator was turned off, Mr. Myska's lower brain was still functioning and that he was not legally brain dead.
Experts on such cases said yesterday that the Medical Examiner's interpretation of the death as a homicide posed difficult questions about the state's relatively strict laws governing when doctors, at the request of a family, can legally remove life-sustaining machines from an unconscious person who they believe has no chance to survive.
 
'Convincing Evidence' Needed
Fenella Rouse, executive director of the Manhattan chapter of the Society for the Right to Die, said yesterday that under New York State law, no one could remove a life-support system from an incapacitated or unconscious patient deemed without chance of survival unless there was ''clear and convincing evidence'' that the person would prefer to die.
Doran Weber, an analyst with the society, said: ''All right-to-die cases deal with people who are not technically dead. We feel it shows that the New York law is pretty conservative on this issue.''
Family members reached by telephone yesterday declined to be interviewed, and several critical questions about their motives and their culpability under the law remain unanswered, Ms. Rouse and other experts said.
Among the questions, they said, are whether doctors told the family that there were legal ways to disconnect the respirator without resorting to force and whether the family was under the mistaken impression that a do-not-resuscitate order meant that the respirator could be legally removed, Legal Removal at Issue Ms. Rouse said one crucial question before the District Attorney was whether doctors had misled the family and had not told them they could legally remove the respirator if they could prove that Mr. Myskza had expressed that desire in the past.
But the New York requirement to demonstrate that the patient has clearly said or written that he would prefer to be disconnected from life support is one of the most stringent in the country, experts said.
''Here is another family driven to despair by a public policy that is contrary to the best interests of the patient,'' said the Rev. John Paris, a scholar with the Center for Clinical Medical Ethics at the University of Chicago. ''In any state but New York, if the family were told that prognosis and clearly communicated to the physician that the patient would not want to be maintained that way, there would be no hesitation in shutting off the respirator.''

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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The New York Times

January 12, 1990, Friday, Late Edition - Final

Review/Film;
At Long Last, The Story of A Gangster's Redemption

BYLINE: ''The Plot Against Harry'' was shown as part of last year's New York Film Festival. Following are excerpts from Janet Maslin's review, which appeared in The New York Times on Sept. 23, 1989. It opens today at Cinema Studio, Broadway and 66th Street.

SECTION: Section C; Page 13, Column 1; Weekend Desk

LENGTH: 606 words

Harry Plotnik has been kept under wraps for 20 years, but he is none the worse for wear. Harry is the glum Jewish gangster at the center of ''The Plot Against Harry,'' a funny, sharply drawn and appealingly modest film that very nearly missed seeing the light of day.
Michael Roemer, who directed this beautifully crisp black-and-white film in 1969 (with Robert Young as cinematographer), only recently found the wherewithal to assemble it into a finished version. But the time lag is an unexpected boon. The mid-60's types who populate the film, from street hoods and call girls to lacquer-haired, comically dolled-up suburbanites, have been made that much more colorful by two intervening decades. 
Although ''The Plot Against Harry'' is nominally about how Harry evolves from hardened tough guy into a warm-hearted, noncriminal family man, its real focus is on the subordinate characters and the settings in which they appear. The film captures the pre-psychedelic mid-60's with festive documentarylike scenes depicting, among other things, a party held in a subway car; a laughably genteel trade fashion show for buyers of women's lingerie; a dog training class; a hush-hush induction ceremony for a fraternal lodge, and various weddings and bar mitzvahs, one of which involves a candlelight parade of elderly relatives. It captures the details of these things humorously and perfectly, right down to the chopped-liver chicken at the last of these affairs.
Mr. Roemer never lets these settings run away from him. Though the film's narrative is relatively loose, the viewer's attention is guided very carefully. The film's opening scene, for instance, shows what looks like some sort of restaurant kitchen, and gradually reveals - through overheard dialogue, an institutional atmosphere and a glimpse of metal dishes - that the setting is in fact a prison. From this, it moves to Harry (Martin Priest), who is being released from his cell for what turns out to be the last time. Even on this more or less auspicious occasion, Harry retains the look of faint disgust that is his habitual expression.
Back on the street, immediately in control of the various small-time hoods who know him as Mr. P., Harry appears not much better off than he was in jail. He is a gloomy guy, whether lounging in a silk dressing gown as various employees pay court, or visiting his elderly sister Mae (Ellen Herbert), who isn't sure what Harry does for a living but knows he treats her like a prince.
But during the course of the film, Harry discovers it is time for a change. Fate arrives in the form of Harry's former wife, Kay (Maxine Woods), and his grown-up daughters, who haven't seen him in about 20 years and haven't missed him much, either. Harry quite literally runs into his former family and, since their car is wrecked, invites them to ride in his limousine, where they marvel at the various telephones. But they remain understandably wary of Harry himself until, having been told by a doctor that he has a dangerously enlarged heart, he embarks upon a campaign to go straight.
Aside from the admirably unflappable Mr. Priest, who had a small role in ''Nothing but a Man'' - Mr. Roemer's highly praised, very-low-budget 1964 film about the troubles faced by a black laborer in the South - most of the actors here are amateurs. And Mr. Roemer knows exactly how to use them. The performances in ''The Plot Against Harry'' have an engagingly natural quality that never slackens into vagueness; the players are made to seem real, but they are not encouraged to ramble. Behind the film's easygoing mood there is firm directorial control.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: photo: Martin Priest

TYPE: Review

Copyright 1990 The New York Times Company



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The New York Times

January 13, 1990, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

After Fatal Purse-Theft, A 'Safe' Area Is Edgy

BYLINE: By DONATELLA LORCH

SECTION: Section 1; Page 31, Column 1; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 858 words

Park Avenue at 92d Street is in a neighborhood that residents call peaceful and beautiful. When the Brick Church preschool lets out, mothers, nannies and children crowd the sidewalk. Doormen help tenants with grocery bags. Elderly women stroll ''the Avenue.''
But three days ago a 59-year-old woman crossing Park Avenue at 92d Street was killed in a purse-snatching, and suddenly the residents' long-held assumptions that their neighborhood is safe are being challenged. Confronted with the woman's death, many people there are stunned, afraid and improvising new ways to protect themselves. 
''This isn't supposed to happen here,'' said a 78-year-old woman, hugging her purse to her chest yesterday on 92d Street.
It is not that the neighborhood has been immune to crime. Known as Carnegie Hill and covering the lower East 90's from roughly Fifth to Lexington Avenues, the area has known frequent car break-ins and occasional muggings, and in the last several months it has been part of a larger area struck by a pattern mugger who rides a bicycle and has attacked six elderly women. But the police say that these incidents are unrelated to the death of the purse-snatching victim, Kim Stapleton.
 
In Broad Daylight
What shocked people more than anything else about Mrs. Stapleton's death was the fact that it took place in the middle of the day - shortly after noon - and only a few hundred feet from where the Brick Church children were coming out of school.
''This is a peaceful, lovely, beautiful neighborhood,'' said Nancy Wright, a silver-haired resident of 1160 Park Avenue. ''You don't realize it can happen here, too.''
Mrs. Stapleton, of 61 East 92d Street, was on the way to lunch with her sister when a passenger in a van opened the door, reached out and grabbed her by the head and shoulders to get at her pocketbook, which was strapped across her chest. She was dragged along the pavement and run over by the van, dying instantly, the police said.
Hours later, in the Gravesend section of Brooklyn, a 74-year-old woman was seriously hurt in a similar purse-snatching. The woman, Marie Paolillo, of 1990 East 23d Street in Gravesend, suffered multiple trauma, a right hip fracture and a broken rib as she was dragged 70 feet along East 28th Street between Avenues U and V at 4:35 P.M. In the attack, she had struggled with a man who had stopped the van, brandished a knife and grabbed her shoulder purse by the strap. She is recovering in Coney Island Hospital.
 
New Jersey Plates
The van in this case was black, and the police believe it had New Jersey plates. But they said they believed that the two incidents were not related.
And last night, the police said a similar attack had occurred on Monday in Forest Hills, Queens. A man in a van attacked an unidentified woman in front of 103-25 68th Avenue and stole her purse, the police said. She suffered a cut on her hand when her purse strap was cut with a knife.
The police said the Queens attack did not appear to be connected to either of the other incidents.
In each case the police have no suspects. Witnesses to the Park Avenue attack described the van as blue or gray with New York license plates, and they said the plates ended with the digits 229. The police said they have only been able to narrow the search to 17,000 car registrations.
The police are looking for other witnesses, including the driver of a yellow medallion cab who was behind the van on Park Avenue and left the scene after calling the police. They have also set up a hot line, (212) 598-0071, for information on either incident.
 
Wearing the Purse Under the Coat
Along Park Avenue and its sidestreets, many women said they are now taking precautions, like paying attention to people around them and waiting to cross streets away from the curb. House keys are being kept in coat pockets. Valuables are being left at home. And doormen are being asked to keep an eye on elderly tenants.
Many of the residents have lived there for more than 20 years, shop at the same grocery stores, walk their dogs together and stop to chat on the corners.
''People are really afraid,'' said Fiore Perri, who has been the doorman at 1150 Park Avenue for 39 years. ''People get mugged here but not killed.'' Mr. Perri said that his building held a security meeting last night and that many tenants were asking him to watch out for them when they crossed the street.
 
At Church, Self-Defense Course
Leslie Merlin, a pastor at the Brick Presbyterian Church, on Park Avenue at 91st Street, is helping organize a workshop on self-defense. She is preparing talks on how to avoid being victimized.
''Whenever I can, I don't carry a bag,'' she said.
In Gravesend, a quiet neighborhood of private homes, Mrs. Paolillo's neighbors are also frightened. The police said that there is little crime around East 28th Street, where Mrs. Paolillo was robbed.
''We were pretty cautious before this,'' said Candy Ginsberg, 33, who lives on East 28th Street. ''People go out at night, they get fruit, they get fish at the new store. I just don't know what people can do to keep the neighborhood safe.''

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


GRAPHIC: ''You don't realize it can happen here too'' (NYT/Eddie Hausner); Fiore Perri, doorman at 1150 Park Avenue, said tenants were asking him to keep an eye on them crossing streets. (NYT)
Photo: ''This is a peaceful, lovely, beautiful neighborhood,'' said Nancy Wright, left, who has lived on Park Avenue and 92d Street for 40 years.

Copyright 1990 The New York Times Company



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The New York Times

January 14, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

After Rumania, Chinese Reproach Themselves

BYLINE: By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section 1; Part 1, Page 10, Column 1; Foreign Desk

LENGTH: 814 words

DATELINE: BEIJING, Jan. 13

The success of the popular rebellion in Rumania seems to have accentuated the mood of self-reproach in the capital. Young Chinese intellectuals wonder aloud why the Rumanians persevered, even in the face of gunfire, to overthrow the Government, while last June the Chinese protesters eventually retreated after being bloodily put down.
''Some people are saying that Chinese just aren't made of the same stuff as the Rumanians,'' a university professor commented bleakly the other day.
A Government official added, in the same despairing tone: ''Chinese aren't like the Rumanians. We aren't willing to fight for an ideal.'' 
Such attitudes, which ignore the courage in the face of gunfire that many Chinese showed in June, and the risk of jail and disgrace that they braved, are the latest manifestation of the self-reproach that has periodically swept Chinese intellectual circles in the last 100 years.
The gloom has been fostered in recent years by such books as ''The Ugly Chinaman'' and the television series ''River Elegy,'' both of which mock the history and traditions that most Chinese have been taught to revere. In an unlikely show of support for the feudalist past, the Communist Party has vigorously denounced this pessimism and has hailed the glories of Chinese civilization.
 
Love of 'Airplane Tickets'
 One consequence of this despair has been a fervent search by young Chinese for a way to go abroad. In the early 1950's, many young intellectuals gave up jobs in the United States to return and build a ''new China.'' Now, especially among university-educated Chinese, the talk frequently is of how to emigrate.
Some private business people are asking about emigrating to countries like Belize and Panama in the hope that they can later move to the United States or Canada. Others are hoping to marry an American.
''Do you know anyone who is looking for a Chinese wife?'' one woman asked an American friend.
And students at Beijing's universities have a new slang description for an American boyfriend or girlfriend: ''airplane tickets.''
 
Watching the Old Men
 When knowledgeable Chinese or foreign diplomats are asked to name the most powerful people in China, three names usually come up: Deng Xiaoping, Yang Shangkun and Chen Yun.
Mr. Deng, who is 85 years old, has officially retired but unofficially remains the paramount leader. Mr. Yang, who is 82, holds the ceremonial post of President but derives power from his hold over the army. Mr. Chen, who is 84, is China's economic mastermind and patron of the nation's central planners.
Their continued domination of China is embarrassing for the party in two respects. First, after a decade in which transition to younger leaders was a constant theme, the nation remains ruled by a triumvirate whose average age exceeds that of Mao Zedong at the time of his death - 82. Second, the party has stressed the need for rule by law and institutions, yet none of the three relies for power on any formal position. Indeed, these days none is even a member of the Communist Party Central Committee.
''It's just like the end of the Qing Dynasty, when Empress Dowager Ci Xi ruled from behind the screen,'' a university professor complained. Ci Xi, who is widely reviled, monopolized power and even imprisoned the Emperor in 1898 when he ordered a series of sweeping changes in the Chinese Government.
Mr. Deng, Mr. Yang and Mr. Chen face daunting challenges: widespread popular opposition, passive resistance within the party, a troubled economy and hostility abroad. But perhaps the most difficult challenge comes from the actuarial tables, and it is this knowledge of their age and mortality that is a wellspring of hope among young dissidents.
Indeed, because there are different views among these three men, a pivotal question being asked these days is not ''When will they die?'' but ''In what order will they die?''
Some foreign diplomats believe that the order in which they die will be crucial to future policy, because as each dies his proteges will lose influence. The longest-lived will be the victor, according to this scenario.
Mr. Chen, who has appeared in public only once in the last two years, is said to be quite feeble but mentally alert. Mr. Deng is said to have prostate problems, but it is not clear how severe they are. Mr. Yang appears entirely healthy and looks much younger than his age. Thus most forecasts are that Mr. Chen will die first, then Mr. Deng and last Mr. Yang.
Mr. Chen's death is widely expected to hurt Prime Minister Li Peng and the cause of central planning generally. The impact of Mr. Deng's death, if it came after Mr. Chen's, would depend on the policies taken by Mr. Yang. There is little indication what these would be, for Mr. Yang has rarely taken the initiative in economic or foreign policy and so his ideas remain something of a mystery.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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The New York Times

January 14, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Campus Life: Evergreen State;
School Seeks Minority Voices In Its Classrooms

SECTION: Section 1; Part 2, Page 33, Column 2; Style Desk

LENGTH: 525 words

DATELINE: OLYMPIA, Wash.

Evergreen State College has announced a new admissions policy that it hopes will increase the number of minority and handicapped students at the school, as well as add more diversity to its classrooms.
The policy, school officials said, will give preference to minority and handicapped applicants, as well as veterans, older people and those whose parents never attended college. The policy, which goes into effect this fall, replaces one in which students ranked in the top 50 percent of their class were admitted on a first come, first served basis. 
''Basically, we are saying our society is made up of various and diverse populations and our student body ought to reflect the population at large,'' said Arnaldo Rodriquez, the college's dean of enrollment services. He said the college's minority population has averaged about 10 percent of its 6,000 students.
Mr. Rodriquez said he hopes the new policy would double the minority population over the next 5 to 10 years.
 
Diversity of Expression
The policy drew strong support from students who helped form the college's new student government.
Brendan Williams, a sophomore from Iowa City and a co-founder of the student government, said the college has lacked a real diversity of expression. ''You don't want to go into a seminar with 20 clones of yourself,'' he said, adding that the new admissions policy ''will create a more tolerant atmosphere.''
Mary Lou O'Neil, a senior from Seattle, said she thought the new admissions policy was wonderful.
''It will change Evergreen for the better,'' she said. She predicted that in 10 years the college would be a true example of a multi-cultural living environment. ''It is much better to live it than just be taught it,'' she said.
 
New Minimum Standards
While the student leaders strongly endorsed the new policy, they conceded most students probably knew little about it.
Mr. Rodriquez said the change was spurred in part by a directive from the state's Higher Education Coordinating Board, which supervises all state colleges and universities.
The directive set new minimum standards for admission that are based on scores produced by a combination of high school grade point averages and standardized exams, like the Scholastic Aptitude Test.
Mr. Rodriquez said Evergreen will also continue to require applicants to be in the top 50 percent of their classes. Additional points will be awarded to people over 25 years old, Vietnam veterans, members of minority groups and applicants whose parents did not attend college.
 
Other States Do It
College officials believe the new policy will gradually change the student body, which averages 24 years old. Mr. Rodriquez said that while the policy is new to Washington, some states, like California, already have a similar policy.
Evergreen State College, which was founded in 1967, was the first in the nation to create a curriculum around interdisciplinary seminars, like ''Intelligence, Society and the Computer'' or ''Political Ecology.''
Evergreen students do not take written tests. There are no grades, no required courses and no traditional academic departments.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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The New York Times

January 14, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

THE REGION;
Inside the Department of Pain and Suffering

BYLINE: By JOSH BARBANEL

SECTION: Section 4; Page 5, Column 1; Week in Review Desk

LENGTH: 2085 words

ALMOST from the day it was set up in 1966 as New York City's main weapon in the war on poverty, the huge Human Resources Administration has itself been under attack. Mayor David N. Dinkins has called running it ''the toughest job in the City of New York,'' even tougher than being Mayor. James Dumpson, a former administrator who heads the Mayor's committee to find a new executive, has called the agency ''an administrative monstrosity'' that should be dismembered.
Despite the complaints, the agency, with a $5.5 billion budget and 32,000 employees, continues to serve more than 1.25 million poor people, sluggishly adapting to a perpetual if shifting set of emergencies with limited resources and limited political support, complex Federal and state requirements, a low-paid staff, litigious advocacy groups and a public that is unforgiving of its failures.
''As long as there are poor people there will be an H.R.A.,'' said William J. Grinker, the last of the five commissioners in the 12-year tenure of Mayor Edward I. Koch. 
The behemoth provides hundreds of millions of dollars in welfare, food stamp and Medicaid benefits each month. It investigates child abuse and runs a growing and overloaded foster care system. It provides rooms for 3,800 families in hotels and shelters, and beds for 9,000 single men and women, sometimes on armory floors. It helps collect child support payments from absent parents, provides day care for 41,000 children and Head Start and city preschool programs for 12,000. It runs or oversees 181 centers for the elderly, offers services for people with AIDS, provides home care workers for 46,000 people who need help managing for themselves, and looks after the affairs of 2,700 people who can no longer get by on their own. It carries out its mission at more than 700 sites across the city.
 
Changing Missions
Though this bureaucracy appears awesomely immutable, it has slowly but constantly changed and reorganized in response to changing circumstances. Ten years ago, drug use appeared on the wane, homelessness was a problem largely confined to Bowery flophouses, and the number of children in foster care was in the midst of a sharp decline.
Now the agency is coping with a steady rise in complaints of abuse and neglect of children, and serving the homeless has become a priority. And as it struggles, and on occasion stumbles, the agency has faced intensive criticism.
''It is the whipping boy for problems that have suddenly overwhelmed the city,'' said Mitchell Sviridoff, who designed the agency and served as its first commissioner under former Mayor John V. Lindsay. ''All cities have been overrun by the combination of crack and AIDS. Whoever runs H.R.A. will be blamed for unsolved problems, for not being totally effective.''
And as crack undermines the stability of many already fragile families - often concentrated in the poorest neighborhoods - planners are looking to change the agency once again. There is a broad consensus that old-fashioned social work in new friendly neighborhood centers is needed to help families who might have difficulty finding help from the complicated bureaucracy. In the last few years, H.R.A. officials have made some strides in management of some of the agency's biggest problems. Welfare checks have been replaced with an electronic payment system that cut waste and check-cashing charges to clients, while reducing overpayments and inappropriate case closings. Fewer families are homeless, as some notorious welfare hotels have been shut down and families placed in city apartments.
Despite continuing skepticism and complaints about the way some children are treated, the Child Welfare Administration has reported improved training and accountability and reduced the caseloads of child-care workers even as complaints of abuse and neglect are rising.
''We have now pretty much begun to deal with the front-end emergencies,'' said Gordon Berlin, executive deputy administrator of the H.R.A. ''We now have to look at exits - how to help families move closer to independence.'' The Human Resources Administration was set up in the heyday of the war on poverty. The idea at the time was to combine several independent and often-warring anti-poverty agencies with the existing welfare and youth offices and a new employment and training program to achieve ''a more unified and systematic attack on poverty.''
Mr. Sviridoff said he thought that putting services in one agency could quickly lead to better coordination. But the idea failed, he said, because of turf battles, legislative requirements and bureaucratic inertia.
Nevertheless, while other ''super agencies'' set up during the Lindsay era were later eliminated, the H.R.A. remained, although youth and employment programs were weaned away during the Koch administration. There was some logic in that. H.R.A.'s programs operated under related provisions of Federal and state laws, and whether a service was intended for a child or a parent, it often served the same household. ''The major reason it hasn't disappeared even though the world has changed is that nobody can come up with a better idea,'' said Stanley Brezenoff, a former H.R.A. administrator and First Deputy Mayor in the Koch administration.
But the logic was the logic of the bureaucracy, rather than of people seeking help. There was typically one office for welfare benefits, and another for day-care services, still another for child welfare.
A series of reports recommended that various services be relocated to neighborhood sites. The most recent was a reorganization plan a commission prepared for Mayor Koch in 1985, which led to three limited ''multi-service'' centers. They combined offices for several different city programs in the same building, and welfare clerks were encouraged to recommend other services to clients.
''Every H.R.A. administrator has been for decentralizing service delivery,'' Mr. Brezenoff said. He said the major impediments were costs - usually the reorganization called for more services - and the lack of a plan that could achieve clear results. But with more families in trouble, policymakers have stepped up the search for ways to improve services.
 
Caseworkers to Clerks
Up until the late 1960's caseworkers were assigned to all families on welfare. They visited homes, kept track of family problems, offered help. Then, largely in response to the notion that welfare was a right, not a gift, the caseworkers were replaced by clerks, who processed applications and determined eligibility. The welfare system was transformed into a banking operation.
Many planners in New York now say this was a mistake. In August, a few months before he left office, Mr. Grinker called for the establishment of family service centers, small, attractive offices in which groups of five welfare eligibility workers would be teamed with two caseworkers. The caseworkers would keep track of families and help them obtain the help they needed.
In a separate effort, a coalition of a hundred social-service advocates, known as the Agenda for Children Tomorrow Project, is drafting a proposal to establish community offices where a wide selection of city, state and private assistance, from welfare to mental health to law enforcement, would be available. The proposal is to be sent to Mayor Dinkins.
Eric Brettschneider, a former H.R.A. official who is coordinating the project, said that until recently the notion that the H.R.A. brought services together was a fiction.
''In fact, H.R.A.'s components didn't work in harmony,'' he said. ''They worked more often at odds with one another with occasional instances of cooperation.''
Michael J. Dowling, the state's deputy secretary for human services, said the state was also exploring new approaches, and that most of these plans harked back to the help provided by settlement houses to generations of New Yorkers.
Meanwhile, Mayor Dinkins will have to sift through these plans while the city is under intensive pressure to cut costs. Mr. Dinkins said that no agency will be spared, but Norman Steisel, the First Deputy Mayor, said proposals for neighborhood centers were, at least, ''interesting,'' despite the possible cost.
''The mayor's interest is in having a greater neighborhood focus and integration of services,'' he said.
 
THE MANY MANDATES OF HUMAN RESOURCES
Child Welfare Administration: Investigates allegations of abuse and neglect, provides preventive services to help families stay together, places children in foster care and arranges adoptions.
Agency for Child Development: Offers child-care services through day-care and preschool programs like Head Start to prepare children from low-income families for kindergarten.
Office of Family Services: Helps families facing homelessness by providing counseling and aid in applying for public assistance, food stamps and Medicaid.
Crisis Intervention Services: Finds temporary shelter for homeless families and helps move them into permanent housing.
Special Services for Adults: Operates homeless shelters, helps find permanent housing, runs home care for the elderly and senior citizen centers, and coordinates social services for people with AIDS.
Income Maintenance: Provides assistance like Aid to Families with Dependent Children and food stamps, helps prevent eviction.
Medicaid Eligibility: Determines who is eligible for the state-run Medicaid program.
Home Care Services: Offers housekeeping and health services to the disabled, allowing them to remain in their own homes.
Office of Employment Services: Provides job placement and training to employable welfare recipients.
Office of Child Support Enforcement: Collects child-support payments and locates legally responsible parents.
 
ONE FAMILY'S JOURNEY THROUGH THE MAZE
Most of the 250,000 families receiving welfare in New York City can obtain benefits - up to $539 a month for a mother and two children - without much trouble.
But for families unfamiliar with the system, or those struggling with other problems, like drug abuse or homelessness, finding the way through the complex and often disorganized poverty bureaucracy can be a daunting and disheartening experience.
The increase in these troubled families has led to calls for family centers in neighborhoods where trained workers can help a family find assistance for many different kinds of problems.
Eric Brettschneider, a former official of the Human Resources Administration who, with a citizens group, is drafting a proposal for ''user friendly'' neighborhood centers, said he once came across a family that was being assisted by 58 different workers in 28 city and state agencies.
''The system reveals how it breaks down through these multiple-problem families,'' he said. ''Crack kids were once abused kids, delinquents were once victims of abuse and neglect, kids once in foster care are now homeless families.''
Workers at the Children's Aid Society, a private agency under contract with the city, told the story of Andrea J., a single woman in her 30's with three children. She was receiving aid under a society program, financed by the H.R.A., that was intended to prevent the need for foster care.
Miss J. lived in a housing project in Harlem with her three children, ages 14, 8 and 2. She became a crack addict, and city workers took two of her children away and gave temporary custody to the children's grandmother, Miss J.'s mother.
Later, after the children had been returned to her, Miss J. got in a fight outside her building and said her life had been threatened. The family temporarily moved out of the apartment and into a city homeless shelter.
If the caseworker for the Children's Aid Society had not intervened, the H.R.A. would likely have stopped paying the rent on the Harlem apartment and the family would have been evicted.
The caseworker also worked with Housing Authority officials and persuaded them to find the family an apartment in a different neighborhood.
But the caseworker was only one of a handful of professionals working, with little coordination, to keep the family together. At various times a drug counselor, a caseworker from the city's Victims Services Agency and a worker from the city's Child Welfare Administration were also involved.
Even so, Miss J's 8-year-old son tried to strangle himself after a family argument, and was placed in an upstate residential treatment program where he is being treated for depression.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photos: A shelter for homeless men at the Atlantic Avenue Armory in Brooklyn. Sheltering the homeless is a major function of the Human Resources Administration (Impact Visuals/George Cohen); Woman and her child seeking help at a welfare office in the Bronx (The New York Times/Vic DeLucia); graphs showing number of reports of child abuse and neglect and number of children in foster care, 1982-89 (Source: Human Resources Administration)

Copyright 1990 The New York Times Company



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The New York Times

January 14, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

CONNECTICUT GUIDE

SECTION: Section 12CN; Page 13, Column 1; Connecticut Weekly Desk

LENGTH: 1084 words


 
CHARLES IVES
Charles Ives, the Danbury-born composer who died in 1954 at the age of 80, is considered by many music authorities to have been America's most original composer, responsible for innovations often attributed to Stravinsky and Hindemith. The son of a band master, his early compositions incorporating fragments of jazz, ragtime, revival hymns and patriotic tunes were ridiculed so mercilessly that he took up a career in insurance to support his family, composing evenings and on weekends.
When recognition came, he maintained an attitude of rugged individualism, even giving away the money from a Pulitzer Prize he received in 1947 for his Third Symphony.
His music and spirit are captured in a recital called ''Charles Ives: A Musical-Dramatic Portrait'' with David Majoras, a baritone who incorporates several costume and makeup changes, and monologues taken from Ives's own writings, into a one-man program of Ives's songs. The performance begins at 8 P.M. Friday in Sprague Hall on the Yale campus in New Haven, where Ives was a student. 
Mr. Majoras made his debut with the Arizona Opera in 1979 and has since appeared with the Wolf Trap Opera, Boise Opera and the San Francisco Opera. Admission is free. Call 432-4158 for more information.
 
YOUNGER ARCHITECTS
''10/10 & Under,'' the title of a traveling exhibition organized by the Connecticut Society of Architects in New Haven, refers to architectural firms that have been in business 10 years or less and have 10 or fewer employees. ''We want to promote newer, younger firms,'' said Linda Griffith, administrative assistant at the society. ''Young architects have a hard time branching out on their own after working for established firms.''
The 10 winners were chosen out of about 30 entries. Four hundred firms throughout the state are members of the society.
One house in the show, designed by J. P. Franzen Associates of Southport, is based on Thomas Jefferson's Monticello. An addition to the Darien Library was designed by Neil Hauck Architects of Darien. A pool and bathhouse facility at the Towers at Park Place, a condominium complex in Hartford, is the work of Goldberg and Lenane Architects of Hartford, and Straus-Edwards Associates of Woodbury designed a large addition and renovation at Southmayd, a home for the elderly in Waterbury.
Each project is represented by a yard-square storyboard with drawings, photographs and text showing how the design was conceived and executed. ''We hope it will better acquaint the public with the process of architecture and with some of the younger, innovative practitioners,'' said Ms. Griffith.
The exhibition may be seen at the Oliver Wolcott Library in Litchfield to Feb. 2. Hours are 10 A.M. to 9 P.M. Tuesday to Thursday, and 10 A.M. to 5 P.M. Friday and Saturday. The show will be seen at various sites throughout the state until April; call the society at 865-2195 for further information.
 
STUDENT ART
Tim Rollins, a special education teacher for learning and emotionally disabled students at a South Bronx school in New York, has created an unusual afterschool project called Art and Knowledge Workshop. One painting that emerged from the program, titled ''Metamorphosis'' and completed in 1989, was acquired by the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, where an exhibition of student art executed under Mr. Rollins's supervision opens today and remains on view to April 22.
The works in ''Tim Rollins + K.O.S.'' (for ''Kids of Survival'') evolved out of free-expression drawings done by students, 14 to 19 years old, while Mr. Rollins read to them from classics of world literature. Daniel Defoe's ''Journal of the Plague Year,'' about the 17th-century plague in Europe, was interpreted as the AIDS crisis in the South Bronx. Ray Bradbury's ''Farenheit 451'' inspired a series of works on censorship. Other pieces were generated by Nathaniel Hawthorne's ''Scarlet Letter,'' Malcolm X's autobiography, ''By Any Means Necessary,'' and by listening to Schubert's score for ''Winterreise.''
An informal lecture about their work will be given by Mr. Rollins and some of the students at 2 P.M. today in the Courant Room of the museum. Exhibition hours are from 11 A.M. to 5 P.M. Tuesday to Sunday. Admission is $3, $1.50 for students and the elderly. No admission is charged on Thursdays and from 11 A.M. to 1 P.M. Saturdays. Call 278-2670 for more information.
 
GEORGE BALANCHINE
The 40 years of George Balanchine's reign at American Ballet Theater are covered in a feature-length film to be shown at the Yale Art Gallery, 1080 Chapel Street, New Haven, at 3 P.M. today. ''Dancing for Mr. B.: Six Balanchine Ballerinas'' had its premiere at the New York Film Festival in October.
The film begins in the early 1940's and documents the relationships between the choreographer and the dancers Mary Ellen Moylan, Maria Tallchief, Melissa Hayden, Allegra Kent, Merrill Ashley and Darci Kistler.
Archival footage coupled with contemporary scenes of the older dancers as teachers, interviews with the ballerinas on the subject of their mentor, and excerpts from performances are included in the film. It will be introduced by Deborah Dickson, co-director with Anne Belle and an Academy Award nominee. Admission is free.
 
PLAYS IN PROGRESS
It's Winterfest time again at Yale, when the university's acclaimed Repertory Theater presents its 10th annual series of plays in progress Monday to Feb. 10. Four plays will be seen in rotation in two theaters. At the University Theater, 222 York Street, the offerings are ''Daylight in Exile'' by James D'Entremont, set in 1967 in Tunisia and dealing with the struggles of a troupe of Peace Corps volunteers, and Sam Kelley's ''Pill Hill,'' about African-American men seeking the American dream in Chicago's steel mills.
Scheduled at the Yale Repertory Theater, York and Chapel Streets, are ''Rust and Ruin'' by William Snowden and ''Dinosaurs'' by Doug Wright. The first takes place in a decrepit trailer in Georgia, where the children of an alcoholic farmer have returned for a joyless birthday celebration. ''Dinosaurs'' explores the odd goings on among the proprietor of a Dinosaur Park, a roving evangelist, a country music queen and an 8-year-old girl.
A Winterpass entitles the purchaser to see all four plays for $50. Single tickets are $18 and $25. Performances are at 8 P.M. weeknights, 2 and 8:30 P.M. Saturdays. Call 432-1234 for reservations and more information. $90ELEANOR CHARLES

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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The New York Times

January 14, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

ABOUT LONG ISLAND;
Have Cast, Will Travel: Performing for the Love of It

BYLINE: By FRED McMORROW

SECTION: Section 12LI; Page 2, Column 1; Long Island Weekly Desk

LENGTH: 1045 words

THE reason you sit down to the piano even if they all laugh is something that Bob Gemson, Dr. Stuart Rappaport, Hayley Kobilinsky and Barbara Brand know only too well.
Dr. Rappaport put it this way: ''If I have a talent, a gift, I want to share it with the world.''
Dr. Rappaport, a heroic baritone, is an optometrist in Cedarhurst. At the age of 12, Miss Kobilinsky of Oceanside, a soprano, is a member of two opera companies in Brooklyn and in Queens. Ms. Brand is a deeper-ranging singer, a pianist and a choral director in the New York City schools. 
They and Mr. Gemson, who retired from teaching at East Meadow High School 10 years ago, all share the same talent. They are most musical and they love to perform.
They and about 11 other people of various ages form Have Cast, Will Travel, a troupe of itinerant players directed by Mr. Gemson from his home in Valley Stream. Miss Kobilinsky is the youngest. Josephine Sarnoff, 80, of Merrick, is the eldest. She's a tap dancer.
Mr. Gemson also performs. He is a fine stand-up comic. Only for friends will he show that he really knows how to play the violin, his practical clown- prop. He is in the tradition of Jack Benny and Henny Youngman. He is also an accomplished pianist. Most of all, he says, he is an organizer.
The Manhattan-born Mr. Gemson had performed in and learned to manage variety revues at Catskills camps since he was in his teens. Later he did so in World War II with the Army.
He had a Fordham law degree but, like a lot of veterans, what he'd thought he'd like to be when he entered the service wasn't what he wanted to be and do when he got out. It wasn't the law. At East Meadow High, he taught courses related to the law.
Mr. Gemson told a nonperforming visitor all about this one recent night in his home as his volunteer charges were rehearsing in his living room.
Through the coming year, they will have as their stage the ballrooms or auditoriums of residences for the elderly, recreation centers or the auditoriums of places of worship. In fact, they have a date to entertain the elderly at 1:30 P.M. Tuesday, Feb. 20, at Blessed Sacrament Roman Catholic Church in Valley Stream.
When the time came, 10 years ago, whatever he thought he might like to do in retirement, Mr. Gemson just kept on creating, producing, sometimes writing, directing and performing in community variety shows.
His shows are not slapdash, anything-goes productions. Anything does not go: new volunteers are put through auditions, and Mr. Gemson has the rare extra talent of knowing when, and how, to say no.
The auditions and most of the rehearsals are held in the living room of the sprawling, early-baby-boom house that Bob and Miriam Gemson have shared since television was Milton Berle. Mrs. Gemson, a former teacher who retired last June, stays out of the act.
''When that gang comes in here, my stage is the kitchen,'' she said. ''Iced tea, hot coffee, cookies.'' Hungry. Like real actors. Also like real actors, the company is complete with a stage mother. Miss Kobilinsky came to the rehearsal with her mother, Estelle, who sat quietly while adoring Hayley's ''Getting to Know You'' and ''Matchmaker, Matchmaker'' to the piano accompaniment of Ms. Brand and, later, Mike Epstein of Cedarhurst, a mathematician and piano teacher.
There are two pianists, Mr. Gemson said, so that Ms. Brand can be spelled at the keys and get up and sing.
At one point, sitting at the piano to illustrate a point to someone who had never heard the tune, Ms. Brand played and vamped ''Ten Cents a Dance.'' It was suggested to her by older parties, Ms. Brand being so young that Rodgers and Hart's tribute to Roseland does not want rhythm. It's a dirge.  Up for audition that recent night was Elisa Karnis of Merrick, who introduced herself shyly as ''an aspiring singer.'' Now, a Long Island living room is hardly the work stage of the Shubert Theater, but this was not a tin-eared audience.
Her singing of ''On My Own'' from ''Les Miserables'' told her listeners she could stop the guessing and aspiring; she was there.
Mr. Epstein played for Ms. Brand's enormous-voiced singing of ''Someone to Watch Over Me,'' in which she approached the final bar from a high E. He is a most musicianly player. The sheet music to the Gershwin ballad had been misplaced; he faked it, playing impeccably from memory.
Michelle Colwill of North Merrick turned into a percolating ''Honey Bun'' from ''South Pacific,'' and for a more modern encore, ''Little Girls'' from ''Annie.''
The company's song-and-dance man is Morty Bishop of Valley Stream, a salesman of costume jewelry. His performing style is apparently based on two models, the Great George M. and the Great Durante.
Mr. Bishop gave his regards to Broadway, he saluted the grand old flag and he memorialized ''Harrigan, That's Me.'' ''He's got real stage presence, that one,'' Mr. Gemson said. Mr. Gemson himself brought out his violin. At the piano, Ms. Brand started the beat-beat-beat of the tom-tom of ''Night and Day.'' Mr. Gemson looked marvelously angry at the long introduction. Then he played marvelously off key.
He announced that he would eat his violin. He placed the wide end in his jaws and began to saw at the strings, producing sounds out of a bad dream. His players begged him to do more, but Mr. Gemson reminded them that they, not he, were there to rehearse.
Frank Venezia of Woodside, a stockbroker, sang ''Where or When'' and other gentle old tunes of the Crosby era (the one before the Sinatra era). They were standards that have lived past those long-gone days, but most of the younger performers did not recognize them.
At that, the visitor asked Mr. Gemson: How would an audience of grandfathers and grandmothers react to these youngsters? How could they identify?
It is because they were grandfathers and grandmothers of younger people that they identify, he said.
''You know, 'Oh, my daughter likes that number,' 'Oh, my grandson likes that number,' '' Mr. Gemson said.
Straw hat or top hat, amateur or professional, all variety companies have their favorite places to perform in. The Gemson company will present its major production in May at the East Meadow Public Library. For Have Cast, that's like playing the Palace.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo; Bob Gemson, Barbara Brand and Dr. Stuart Rappaport (NYT/Michael Shavel)

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The New York Times

January 15, 1990, Monday, Late Edition - Final

Puberty Rite for Girls Is Bitter Issue Across Africa

BYLINE: By JANE PERLEZ, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section A; Page 6, Column 3; Foreign Desk

LENGTH: 1404 words

DATELINE: NAIROBI, Kenya, Jan. 11

In the sprawling cattle country of southwestern Kenya, a 12-year-old girl walked bravely along a dirt track, swathed in a brightly colored cloth and carrying an open black umbrella. Shilling notes dangled from her headgear, framing her face, as village people dressed in tree branches clapped and sang to her.
The girl had just been circumcised in a ceremonial rite of passage of the Kuria tribe. A local woman was paid about $6 to perform the procedure, in which the girl's clitoris was cut with a knife or razor. There was no anesthetic.
The circumcision of women, traditionally a means of guarding virginity or discouraging sexual intercourse outside marriage, is common in more than 20 African countries. In some societies, the operation involves slitting the hood of the clitoris; in others, the clitoris is completely excised and the sides of the vulva are stitched together, a process known as infibulation. 
Reports from the United Nations suggest that the practice affects 20 million to 70 million women. Statistics are unreliable because the procedure is often performed clandestinely, usually by a local woman with no formal training.
 
Infection, Perhaps Death
The operation can have severe consequences. It limits a woman's ability to enjoy sex and can result in bleeding and lead to tetanus and other infections, including damage to the fallopian tubes, which can cause infertility. Deaths are not uncommon.  Practiced among Muslims, Christians and animists, the tradition of circumcising women dates to the Phoenicians in the fifth century.
For 10 years now, groups of African and European women, often under the banner of the United Nations, have been campaigning to end the ritual. To advance their cause, they have emphasized the medical hazards rather than the moral issues. But progress toward ending the practice has been slow.
In the Sudan, for example, the procedure remains common. Last year, a woman in her mid-20's from an educated family told a Western friend that she would undergo the operation on her own, even though her family had decided against having her circumcised. She said she felt that her fiance wished her to undergo the procedure. In Somalia, the circumcision of women is widely practiced outside the cities. Educated women, including the elite who have attended universities abroad, still feel pressure to have their daughters circumcised, not so much from men as from their mothers and grandmothers.
 
Pressure From Older Women
''The older women still feel young girls are never going to get married unless they are circumcised,'' said Raakiya Omaar, a Somali who heads Africa Watch, a London-based human-rights organization. ''It's very much the wife having to fight her mother or his mother not to have it done.''
The recent ceremony of the Kuria tribe, in which a number of girls were circumcised, prompted President Daniel arap Moi of Kenya to reiterate his opposition to the practice. His predecessor, Jomo Kenyatta, had endorsed circumcision of women as a form of nationalist resistance to colonial interference.
Mr. Moi is one of the few African heads of state to oppose the practice publicly, a stand he repeated in early January. Apparently feeling secure enough to withstand a traditionalist backlash, he outlawed the circumcision of women soon after he came to power in 1982.
Other leaders who have spoken against the practice are Thomas Sankara of Burkina Faso, who was deposed and executed in October, and Abdou Diouf of Senegal.
 
Laws Accomplish Little
But laws against circumcising women have had little effect on long-held customs. ''It is one of the practices that will die, but it will take time,'' said Joyce Naisho, a nurse with the African Medical and Research Foundation. The influence of Christianity and wider education has helped curb the practice in Kenya, she said.
Yet the Masai, the tribe to which Mrs. Naisho belongs, and the Kalenjin, the people of President Moi, are among the groups that still practice the removal of the clitoris, she said.
Among the Masai, circumcision marks a girl's passage to adulthood. ''Once a girl starts menstruating, they consider circumcision,'' Mrs. Naisho said.
Usually, she said, a midwife or a woman who specializes in circumcising women takes the girl to the nearest river very early in the morning, when the water is at its coldest. The cold water helps to arrest the bleeding. A homemade razor blade is used to cut the clitoris.
For two or three years after the procedure, the Masai girls abstain from sexual intercourse, Mrs. Naisho said. Then they are ''shaved, cleansed and given away to marriage.''
 
'Ready for Marriage'
The social pressure to be circumcised is often overwhelming. Nelson Monanka, a 44-year-old farmer of the Kuria tribe, had his three daughters circumcised several weeks ago. ''Customs demand that they be circumcised at this stage to fit in the community,'' he said. ''They are also happy to be among the well-respected women here.
''There is no way girls can command respect here if they are not circumcised and ready for marriage,'' he said. Mr. Monanka's house was one of many flying flags to show that a member of the family had been circumcised.
The number of deaths from the procedure is not known in Kenya because the practice is largely covert. Mr. Moi banned the procedure after learning that 14 girls died and 9 others were taken to hospitals in critical condition after being circumcised.
 
Many Painful Operations
The more extreme form of circumcision, infibulation, which is also called Pharaonic circumcision, is practiced in the Sudan, Somalia and Nigeria. It is usually performed on younger girls, from age 3 to about ages 6 or 7, and has far more serious effects.
Many women undergo a painful series of de-circumcisions and re-circumcisions after each childbirth. Scars from circumcisions are cut open before delivery and stitched together afterward. This causes severe hemorrhaging, prolongs delivery and increases the risk of fetal brain damage.
Girls are subjected to the more extreme procedure at a young age so that they will be unable to have sexual intercourse before marriage, said Awa Thiam, a researcher at the Department of Cultural Anthropology at the University of Dakar in Senegal.
''The girl who has been infibulated cannot have relations with a man before her de-infibulation, which in principle takes place only on the day the marriage is consummated and which is terribly painful,'' Dr. Thiam wrote in a paper for the United Nations Scientific and Educational Organization.
In the Sudan, this extreme form of circumcision is viewed as a way of preserving a girl's virginity and discouraging immorality. Excising the sensitive parts of the genitalia decreases sexual sensation, and the smaller vaginal opening makes penetration painful, leaving the girl fearful of sexual intercourse.
Many women in the Sudan and in other African societies accept circumcision because they are taught to believe that sexual pleasure is the exclusive right of men.
 
A Quandary for Doctors
Such wide acceptance of the procedure poses an ethical quandary for qualified doctors working in hospitals. In Nairobi and in rural Kenyan centers with small hospitals, parents approach doctors and ask them to perform hygienic circumcisions. The parents say they will take their daughters to local midwives if the doctors refuse.
''It is completely against medical ethics and I have refused to do it,'' said Dr. Zolia Lyco, an obstetrician who has worked in Nigeria and Kenya. ''At some mission hospitals where they see a lot of damage done by local people, I think they'd do it.''
Like many African women, Grace Ogot, Assistant Minister for Culture and Social Services in Kenya, wants to see an end to circumcision of women. She joined President Moi last week in condemning the practice, saying that it leaves ''permanent mental and physical trauma which at a later date in adulthood results in injurious childbirth to both mother and child.''
But arguments that the circumcision of women is a means of gratifying men and denying women pleasure are often detrimental here, many say.
''It is such a long, embedded social tradition that if Western people say, 'this is barbaric,' it backfires,'' said Miss Omaar, the Somali who heads Africa Watch. ''Emphasis must be put on the medical aspects, not on the sexual issues.''

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: photo: A girl from the Kuria tribe in Kenya, center, after being circumcised in a ritual used to discourage women from having unsanctioned sexual intercourse. The practice is common in 20 African countries and affects 20 million to 70 million women, the United Nations estimates. (NYT/Waigwa Kiboi)

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The New York Times

January 15, 1990, Monday, Late Edition - Final

Washington Talk;
Scoring Political Points On Social Security Tax

BYLINE: By DAVID E. ROSENBAUM, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section A; Page 12, Column 1; National Desk

LENGTH: 737 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Jan. 14

Despite Republican claims, Federal taxes over all were not cut in the Reagan-Bush years. But Democrats have failed to persuade voters of that, or to call attention to the way the mix of taxes has changed.
That is mostly what is behind Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan's proposal to cut the Social Security payroll tax.
The New York Democrat has already succeeded in scoring political points by embarrassing President Bush, forcing the White House to express disapproval of a plan that would cut workers' taxes by more than $60 billion in the next two years. That, from a President who has made opposition to higher taxes the cornerstone of his political philosophy. 
And Senator Moynihan, who offered his plan just before New Year's Day and then left for Africa on a trip for the Foreign Relations Committee, has also managed to generate an unusual amount of debate on two points that he and some other Democrats have been harping on without much notice for years.
The first is that in the last decade lower income taxes were offset by higher Social Security taxes. The proportion of Federal taxes paid now is just under 20 percent of the gross national product, the same as at the beginning of the last decade.
Income taxes were sharply reduced. The top rate in the 1980's fell to 28 percent from 70 percent, providing a boon to the wealthy and some tax relief for the middle class and the working poor.
But at the same time, payroll taxes went way up. As of Jan. 1, workers and their employers are each paying 7.65 percent, 6.2 percent for retirement under Social Security and 1.45 percent for Medicare, the health insurance program for the elderly and disabled. The tax is paid on the first $51,300 earned. At the beginning of the decade, the payroll rate was 6.13 percent on the first $29,700 of income.
Nearly three-quarters of all Americans now pay more in payroll taxes than they do in income taxes. In the view of many Democrats, that is an abomination. Income taxes increase the more a taxpayer earns. Social Security taxes, on the other hand, are paid at the same rate by all workers, and those making $500,000 a year pay no more than those making $51,300. This year, the maximum payroll tax will total $3,924.45.
Senator Moynihan's other point is that the growing surplus of Social Security revenue, which will exceed $250 billion by the year 2000, is being used to mask the deficit in the Government's operating budget rather than to guarantee pension benefits for today's workers when they retire.
In the current fiscal year, the Government is taking in $65 billion more in Social Security taxes than it is paying out in benefits. If it were not for the Social Security surplus, the deficit, by the Bush Administration's accounting, would be more than half again what it says it is, about $165 billion instead of $100 billion. The main reason the overall deficit has fallen in recent years is not so much that spending has been cut, but that Social Security taxes have been increased.
Using Social Security revenue in effect for day-to-day government expenses, Mr. Moynihan says, is a perversion of the reason a schedule of rising payroll taxes was set in 1983. The Senator was a key member of a Presidential commission that established the new rates.
The theory behind the new rates, he says, was to allow money to be invested in productive ventures, thus promoting economic growth and producing the revenue needed for retirement benefits in the next century.
Mr. Moynihan says that since that is not being done, the only reasonable action is to cut the Social Security tax rate. He would reduce it this year to 6.06 percent (7.51 percent with Medicare), where it was in 1989, and reduce it further in 1991 to 5.1 percent (6.55 percent with Medicare). So far, only a few conservative Republicans and no Democrats have embraced the proposal. But tax cuts are so popular that lawmakers may feel compelled to vote for the plan if Mr. Moynihan presses his case.
Democratic leaders are hoping he will not do so. They are glorying in the political mileage the Senator is getting, but deep down they think the last thing the country needs is a tax cut of any kind.
''The Moynihan proposal reflects our frustration,'' said Representative Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri, the House majority leader. But like the other leaders in the House and the Senate, he said he was unwilling to make a commitment.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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The New York Times

January 16, 1990, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

Men at 65: New Findings On Well-Being

BYLINE: By DANIEL GOLEMAN

SECTION: Section C; Page 1, Column 1; Science Desk

LENGTH: 1309 words

THE secret of emotional health among older men is not a successful career, a happy marriage or a stable childhood, new findings suggest. It lies instead in an ability to handle life's blows without passivity, blame or bitterness.
The findings, which contradict widely held theories about the importance of early life for emotional well-being in adulthood, are among recent conclusions of a study of 173 men who have been scrutinized at five-year intervals since they graduated from Harvard in the early 1940's.
The project, known as the Grant study after the W. T. Grant Foundation, which initially supported it, is one of a handful that have intensively assessed people at regular intervals through their adult years. Such studies are particularly valuable for the understanding of psychological development because they allow researchers to see what factors matter, for better or worse, later in life. 
The researchers defined emotional health at 65 as the ''clear ability to play and to work and to love,'' and a feeling of satisfaction with life.
These were among their findings:
* Pragmatism and dependability are particularly important.
* Many factors in early life, even devastating problems in childhood, had virtually no effect on well-being at 65.
* Being close to one's siblings at college age was strongly linked to emotional health at 65.
* Severe depression earlier in life caused problems that persisted.
* Traits that were important at college age, like the ability to make friends easily, were unimportant later in life.
The latest data were collected by George E. Vaillant, a psychiatrist at Dartmouth Medical School. He and his wife, Caroline O. Vaillant, a social worker, reported the findings in an article in the January issue of The American Journal of Psychiatry. In 1977 Dr. Vaillant published a book, ''Adaptation to Life'' (Little, Brown), based on findings of how the men fared at the age of 47.
The men hardly represent a cross-section of Americans. All were Harvard undergraduates, white, and in good mental and physical health when selected. The researchers say that by avoiding complicating factors like sex, economic status and race, they were able to focus on more subtle forces that propel one person forward while another lags.
One of the most surprising results, Dr. Vaillant said, was that having been close to one's brothers and sisters at college age strongly predicted emotional well-being in adulthood - far more strongly, for example, than having had a good marriage or successful career. Those who were only children or who said they were distant from their siblings at college age fared poorly at 65 compared with those who had at least one close brother or sister.
Before age 50, the most powerful predictors of adult mental health were an emotionally close home life as a child and parents who encouraged trust and initiative. But by 65 those factors faded in significance, and closeness to siblings in childhood ''became as powerful a predictor of later-life adjustment'' as three other factors taken together: family closeness, good relations with parents and the absence of emotional problems in childhood. Dr. Vaillant said researchers could only guess at the reasons. ''It's intriguing, a sleeper variable that didn't show up as important until the men reached 65,'' said Dr. Vaillant. ''I would guess that those who were close early in life had the seeds of a good relationship late in life.''
At the age of 47, the quality of relationships with siblings was not an important factor; having a good marriage and enjoyable job were more strongly related with life satisfaction and emotional health. But in the decade before retirement age, neither mattered as much as did having been close to a sibling earlier in life.
 
'Lots of Surprises'
By and large, those most satisfied at 47 were still happy at 65. But ''there were lots of surprises,'' said Dr. Vaillant. Poor health or alcoholism in that 18-year span set some men back; those with ''strong stoicism'' at 47 were doing well at 65.
The researchers found little evidence that several factors long assumed to be important in lifelong psychological development had much effect on well-being at 65. They included being poor or orphaned in childhood, having parents who divorced (or who were happily married) and having emotional problems in childhood or college.
For instance, of the 204 men in the original group, 13 felt troubled enough during college to have seen a psychiatrist. But by the age of 65 these men fared no worse than the rest of the group.
''In the long run, people are extraordinarily adaptable,'' Dr. Vaillant said. ''Given enough time, people recover and change; a half-century perspective shows that time heals.''
One of the most devastating experiences over the course of life was a severe depression, Dr. Vaillant found. Of the 204 men, 21 had such a depression at some point between the ages of 21 and 50. In the latest study, 15 of the 21 were chronically ill or had died.
''I expected that the men in the study would be better-adapted and protected than most,'' Dr. Vaillant said. ''If they got depressed, it would pass with little lasting effect. But depression led to a greater global disruption of life than any other single factor.''
 
Buffers Against Depression
Having close family relations may have been a buffer against depression, since the researchers found that having had a ''bleak childhood'' predicted depression later in life. But not all of those who had a difficult childhood became depressed. And for those who escaped depression, bad times in childhood seemed to have little long-term effect.
Only 7 percent of those who did well at 65 had not been close to a brother or sister, Dr. Vaillant said. Of the 21 men who became seriously depressed at some point in their lives, 12 were only children or said they were estranged from their siblings by college age.
Whether they were only children or were distant from brothers and sisters, he said, ''the effects of the isolation seem to be the same in later life.'' Psychoanalytic theories of depression hold that emotional warmth early in life, whether with parents or siblings, can be a buffer against depression later.
One of the most potent predictors of well-being at 65 was the ability to handle emotional crisis maturely. Immature reactions included becoming bitter or prejudiced, collecting injustices, feigning cheerfulness and chronically complaining without allowing anyone to help.
The best way to handle emotional crisis, the study found, is to control the first impulse and give a more measured response. ''It's having the capacity to hold a conflict or impulse in consciousness without acting on it,'' Dr. Vaillant said. ''You can acknowledge the clouds, but also see the silver lining.''
Two lifelong traits, pragmatism and dependability, also emerged as particularly important to emotional health at 65 - more so than being clever in analytic work or having a creative flair.
Those who in college had been seen as being good at practical organization in their course work, rather than as having a theoretical, speculative or scholarly bent, were among the healthiest in mind at retirement age, the study found. So were those who as college sophomores were rated by a psychiatrist as ''steady, stable, dependable, thorough, sincere and trustworthy.''
On the other hand, traits that seemed important for psychological adjustment in college mattered less and less over the years. Among these were spontaneity and the ability to make friends easily.
By 65, being pragmatic and well-organized was the trait that most strongly predicted well-being. ''It's another way of measuring perseverance,'' Dr. Vaillant said. ''At this age, perseverance is more important than whether you can run the bases fast.''

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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The New York Times

January 16, 1990, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

Streptococcal Infections Are Rising in U.S.

BYLINE: AP

SECTION: Section C; Page 8, Column 4; Science Desk

LENGTH: 427 words

DATELINE: ATLANTA, Jan. 15

Serious streptococcal infections, including strep throat and rheumatic fever, are on the rise and have re-emerged as a public health problem, Federal health officials say.
In its weekly report on Thursday, the Centers for Disease Control said Group A streptococcus bacteria, which cause rheumatic fever, strep throat and impetigo, have caused several outbreaks of disease.
In the first eight months of 1989, for example, one hospital in Colorado reported 19 cases of streptococcal bacteremia, a serious feverish infection that pervades the bloodstream. The number was up from 8 in all of 1988 and 3 in 1987. The infection occurs most often among the elderly, including nursing home residents. 
 
Need for Early Treatment
Some cases might have been prevented if doctors had better treated the original infection before it reached the bloodstream, said Dr. Ben Schwartz of the Centers for Disease Control.
''Many of these patients had respiratory infections; others had skin infections,'' he said. ''It's conceivable that if they had been treated early, it may not have spread to the severe bacteremia that occurred.''
That outbreak followed reports of an outbreak of infections resembling toxic shock in 1987 and clusters of rheumatic fever in 1985 and 1986.
The centers also reported an outbreak of strep throat among 186 trainees at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas in December 1988 and January 1989. The outbreak resulted in precautionary penicillin treatments for more than 6,000 trainees, the first such program at the base in more than 15 years.
The agency said the outbreak showed that streptococcus diseases, which struck many recruits in World Wars I and II, still pose a risk at military training centers.
 
Outbreaks Abroad
''A number of different, severe strep infections do seem to be increasing in certain areas,'' Dr. Schwartz said. ''We need to gather similar information from other areas and see if this is a localized problem or a problem that's more widespread.''
The agency has also received reports of streptococcal bacteremia outbreaks in England and Scandinavia, suggesting ''widespread changes'' in the pattern of this disease.
Most streptococcus infections are mild, like a typical case of strep throat, and most cases can be cleared up with antibiotics like penicillin. ''Very rarely does it spread to cause an infection in the blood,'' Dr. Schwartz said.
Severe infections like bacteremia and scarlet fever were once much more common than they are today. One reason for the decline is the use of modern antibiotics.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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The New York Times

January 17, 1990, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Laws Aim to Turn Off Ear-Splitting 'Boom' Cars

BYLINE: By KATHERINE BISHOP, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section A; Page 16, Column 2; National Desk

LENGTH: 1095 words

DATELINE: SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 16

Acting on citizens' complaints, states are beginning to take action against the latest violation of the social contract: the boom car.
Cities in California, Florida and New Jersey have already passed local legislation to force drivers with loud car stereos to turn down the volume, and public outrage is persuading legislators to take statewide action in some areas to help restore public tranquillity.
''Everybody's cars are booming,'' said Jesse (Chuy) Varela, the host of a radio program for cruising teen-agers that is heard all over the San Francisco Bay Area from KPFA radio in Berkeley. ''It's the whole rebel spirit that every teen-age generation has, but with the new technology, it's kind of getting out of hand.'' 
Young people are converting cars into rolling radio stations by stuffing them with dozens of speakers, compact disk ''jukeboxes'' and amplifiers capable of booming rock and rap music at decibel levels powerful enough to rattle neighbors' windows, ruin their own hearing and assault their captive audience on the street. They are being spurred on by technological advances in automobile sound and by national competitions with names like ''Sound Quake'' and ''Thunder on Wheels.'' The equipment is being installed by shops with slogans like ''We Build Ground Pounders.''
 
California and Hawaii Act
California, where the boom car phenomenon began before spreading to the South and Midwest, became the first state to pass legislation aimed at controlling the noise. The law, which took effect Jan. 1, makes it illegal to operate a car sound system that can be heard 50 feet away. Offenders are subject to a $50 fine for the first offense, with fines increasing for subsequent violations.
The Hawaii State Legislature plans to consider a measure this month that would impose fines and even provide for confiscation of such sound systems when motorists are convicted of the petty misdemeanor of noise pollution.
While California and Hawaii are the only states to take action so far, other states may soon follow. Cheryl Hollins, executive vice president of the Car Audio Specialists Association, which represents the mobile stereo industry, said, ''We expect more legislation if users don't curb the way they use the equipment.''
Renay Montane, a legislative aide to State Senator Cecil Green, a Democrat who sponsored the California law, said hundreds of local governments have passed similar legislation. Among them are Jersey City, Camden, N.J., Long Beach, Calif., and dozens of suburbs of Los Angeles.
John Andsell, the Mayor of Bellflower near Los Angeles, testified in favor of the statewide California legislation. He cited problems ranging from captive audiences in cars stuck in traffic next to boom cars to concerns that the drivers of those cars cannot hear sirens of emergency vehicles to complaints from elderly people with hearing aids who are ''thrown off kilter'' by the further amplification of the already-blasting sound.
 
Little Room for Passengers
Those who compete in sound competitions say the thump of a high-decibel stereo is addictive. ''You ask yourself, 'If 200 watts sound good, what will 400 watts sound like?' '' said Pat Brister, the manager of Sound Experience in Arlington Heights, a suburb of Chicago. Mr. Brister won honors two years in a row in the power category at the ''Thunder on Wheels'' competition in New Orleans. His 15-speaker system packing 890 watts was installed in a 1987 Thunderbird, leaving enough space for ''a passenger and maybe a folding toothbrush,'' he said.
Other competitors report even more powerful motivations. ''I like attention,'' said Scott Starr of Canfield, Ohio, a suburb of Youngstown. Mr. Starr, who is 20 years old, says his $35,000 sound system, installed in a mini-van that includes 25 speakers, allows his mother to hear him coming home ''from three miles away.''
Mr. Starr was the winner in the amateur class at the First International Auto Sound Invitational Challenge held last November in Tempe, Ariz. The 149 decibels the system is capable of producing - equivalent to the sound of a jet taking off as heard from the deck of an aircraft carrier - is an attention grabber. He said young adults loved to crowd around the van at shopping malls to appreciate its sheer ''awesomeness.''
Describing the complaints he gets from older drivers ''when I pull up beside people and their car starts rattling,'' he boasted, ''I can vibrate them from two car lengths away.''
 
'I'm Young and Stupid'
Asked whether he was worried that he might be harming his hearing, Mr. Starr said: ''They tell me it will hurt me down the line, but I don't care. I'm young and stupid, I guess.''
Joanne M. Rooney, the executive director of the International Auto Sound Challenge Association of Riverside, Calif., which sponsors the competition, denied that her organization fostered boom cars.
''We want to recreate the quality of a live performance whether it's Beethoven or Pink Floyd,'' Mrs. Rooney said. Her organization, which was the only one that formally opposed the California legislation, argues that sound competitions provide an outlet for showing off sound systems ''without annoying the neighbors.''
She said drivers who go booming ''are like peacocks strutting their stuff around a female,'' adding, ''They want to be noticed.''
Experts say the cumulative effect of close exposure to these noise levels can cause permanent hearing loss.
Karen L. Jackson, the information co-ordinator for the National Institute on Deafness at the National Institutes of Health, said damage to hearing from prolonged exposure to high-volume music would be among the topics at a three-day conference on noise and hearing loss to begin Monday in Bethesda, Md.
While industry experts object to characterizations of the loudness of boom systems as misleading and even ''ludicrous,'' hearing specialists have likened the levels of sound produced by a boom car to a chorus of pneumatic drills. Amplified rock music, which can reach 140 decibels, is rated dangerous by experts.
Sitting in the back seat of a car whose trunk is loaded with woofers that are each capable of handling 600 watts certainly produces a kidney-pounding experience. ''The sensation of the sound pressure is a thrill,'' said Tony Alvarez of Peter's Auto Radio in San Francisco.
While booming is generally associated with rock and rap music, some devotees prefer to boom the classics.
''They play the 1812 Overture,'' Mrs. Rooney said, ''and when it hits that cannon, you're going to hit the peak.''

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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The New York Times

January 19, 1990, Friday, Late Edition - Final

Fight Over Tax Cut Heats Up As Bush and Moynihan Dig In

BYLINE: By DAVID E. ROSENBAUM, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section A; Page 1, Column 4; National Desk

LENGTH: 1070 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Jan. 18

An emerging battle over whether to cut Social Security taxes heated up today with President Bush sharply criticizing the proposed cut while the author of the proposal, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, said he would not budge.
Their statements indicated that Mr. Moynihan's proposal could trigger a fierce political and legislative battle over a sensitive issue.
Mr. Bush called the Senator's proposal to cut Social Security taxes a ''charade'' that would lead to a tax increase or lower retirement benefits. Mr. Moynihan, in his first interview on the subject since he made the proposal three weeks ago, insisted that he intended neither a political trap nor a gambit to force other taxes to be raised. He also strongly rejected the suggestion that he wanted to lower retirement payments. 
Mr. Moynihan, a New York Democrat, last month proposed repealing the Jan. 1 increase in the Social Security payroll tax, calling it regressive and unfair. He also assailed the Bush Administration for using the $52 billion surplus in the Social Security Trust Fund to finance the Federal deficit.
 
Quayle Exhorts Party on Issue
At the White House today, President Bush repeated the charges his aides have been making for days. ''It's an effort to get me to raise taxes on the American people by the charade of cutting them, or cut benefits,'' the President said of the Moynihan proposal, ''and I'm not going to do it to the older people of the country.''
With both sides jockeying for political advantage, Vice President Quayle also weighed in on what has become one of the hottest topics of an especially slow period in Washington.
In an interview with The Associated Press, the Vice President said: ''Let me tell you something. Cut these taxes the way Moynihan is talking about, you have to cut benefits at some time, and the President and the Republican Party now have an opportunity to show the American people, once and for all, that the Republicans are as committed to the integrity of this Social Security trust fund as anybody.''
 
Moynihan Sees No Budget Link
Senator Moynihan was interviewed by in a telephone call to Jerusalem, where he is winding up a trip for the Foreign Relations Committee to Africa and the Middle East.
''No, no, no,'' the Senator said when asked whether his proposal was a trap to force an increase in the income tax or some other tax. ''It is not fair to say I want to raise taxes to offset the Social Security tax cut.''
The Social Security system, he continued, ''edges on the sacred, and to see its revenues debauched this way is an independent question that stands apart from the budget deficit, a tax increase or any other question.''
 
How It's Being Paid
As of Jan. 1, workers and their employers are each paying a 7.65 percent payroll tax, 6.2 percent for retirement under Social Security and 1.45 percent for Medicare, the health insurance program for the elderly and disabled. The Social Security rate rose from 6.06 percent last year and the overall rate from 7.51 percent.
The tax is paid on the first $51,300 of wages. The maximum tax this year is $3,924.45.
Mr. Moynihan would repeal this year's increase and reduce the Social Security portion of the tax to 5.1 percent next year, saving workers and their employers as much as $560 apiece.
 
Social Security and Income Tax
He argued that in the Reagan and Bush years the Social Security tax had been increased to balance a cut in income taxes. That is ''inequitable,'' he said, because the poor and the middle class are affected more by the Social Security tax and less by the income tax.
Income tax rates increase the more a taxpayer earns from all sources. Social Security taxes are paid at the same rate by all workers, they are assessed only on wages and not on interest, dividends or capital gains, and they are not paid at all on wages above $51,300.
''We now have the most regressive tax system in the Western world,'' Mr. Moynihan said.
Congress has been in recess since Mr. Moynihan offered his proposal just before New Year's Day. Democrats have reveled in the political discomfort it has caused President Bush and his Republican allies, but no Democrat has yet endorsed the Moynihan plan. The only support Mr. Moynihan has gained has come from a few conservative Republican lawmakers.
The view of most Democrats is that Mr. Moynihan should be applauded for underscoring the inequities of the tax system and the extent to which Social Security revenue is being used to mask the size of the Government's budget deficit. But the Democrats, and most moderate Republicans, also believe that the country cannot afford a tax cut of any kind.
 
Schumer Sees Economic Danger
Reflecting that conviction, Representative Charles E. Schumer, a Brooklyn Democrat who is on the Banking and Budget committees, said a tax cut would drive up the deficit, cause more Government borrowing, soak up private savings and damage long-term economic growth.
Senator Moynihan said he hoped that the President and Congress could get together and agree on ways to reduce the budget deficit, by cutting spending or increasing some other tax. But even without that, he said, the Social Security tax should be lowered. ''If the deficit is increased, that would be bad,'' he said. ''But if we have to go through a small crisis to straighten things out, fine, let's do it.''
Mr. Moynihan observed that he had long supported an increased gasoline tax, but he said he would not stick his neck out and suggest any tax increase now unless Mr. Bush did likewise.
The issue is being driven by partisan politics. Senator Moynihan has embarrassed Republicans by proposing a tax cut. It is the same kind of proposal that helped Republicans win the last three Presidential elections.
 
Help to All Workers Seen
Mr. Moynihan said that a reduction in the Social Security tax would help all workers, while the Bush plan to lower the capital gains tax rate would largely help the wealthy.
The rejoinder today from Mr. Bush and Mr. Quayle - that Mr. Moynihan's plan would lead to a cut in Social Security benefits - was similarly a move to capture a Democratic stronghold, the party's long-time advocacy of higher retirement payments.
Mr. Moynihan maintains that the money raised today through Social Security taxes affects future benefits only indirectly. He said he planned nothing that would lower those benefits.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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The New York Times

January 19, 1990, Friday, Late Edition - Final

High Cholesterol Poses Heart Risk in Older Men, Study Says

BYLINE: By JANE E. BRODY

SECTION: Section A; Page 19, Column 3; National Desk

LENGTH: 514 words

Older men whose cholesterol levels are above normal face an increased risk of developing coronary heart disease, according to new findings from a large, ongoing study.
The findings contradict the prevailing medical view that high cholesterol levels are less important in the elderly than in younger people. The study, involving 1,480 men over 65 years of age, showed that, as with the middle-aged, those with higher blood levels of cholesterol on average face a 60 to 70 percent greater risk of suffering a heart attack than similar men with lower cholesterol levels. 
In fact, those in the study whose cholesterol levels were 250 milligrams per 100 milliliters of blood serum or higher were more than twice as likely to develop heart disease as men with cholesterol levels of 200 milligrams or lower.
The results are described in today's issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association by Dr. Richard Benfante and Dr. Dwayne Reed of the Kuakini Medical Center in Honolulu.
 
Earlier Study Cited
The study's subjects are among more than 8,000 men in Honolulu who have been followed since the mid-1960's to determine what influences their chances of developing heart disease. Before this study, few large studies had examined the fate of older people with respect to coronary risk factors.
But the first hint that a raised cholesterol level was an important risk factor for heart disease in older people came three years ago in results from the Framingham, Mass., Heart Study, which included both men and women.
These findings are important because a national program now seeks to measure cholesterol levels in all adult Americans and encourages dietary and other treatments for those found to have high cholesterol levels that may set the stage for clinical heart disease. Without abundant, clear-cut evidence that high blood cholesterol is dangerous for the elderly, physicians have been reluctant to press treatment on older people, many of whom are already obliged to follow special diets and take multiple medications for other ailments.
 
Other Known Risk Factors
Both in Honolulu and in Framingham, raised cholesterol levels in older people were shown to increase their coronary risk independent of other known risk factors, such as high blood pressure, cigarette smoking, diabetes, age and obesity. Both studies showed that as cholesterol levels rose, so did the men's chances of suffering a heart attack.
The Honolulu researchers concluded that when older men are found to have elevated cholesterol levels they should be treated in the same way that younger men with high cholesterol are treated. A more detailed analysis of the fats in their blood should be made and they should be placed on a cholesterol-lowering diet. Only if diet fails to correct the problem is drug treatment advised.
According to the national guidelines, people should be urged to take steps to lower their cholesterol level if it is at or above 240 milligrams per 100 milliliters of blood serum. The overall goal is to reduce blood cholesterol to 200 milligrams or less.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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The New York Times

January 21, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Cranston Decides to Fight in Effort to Overcome Image in Savings and Loan Failure

BYLINE: By KATHERINE BISHOP, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section 1; Part 1, Page 24, Column 2; National Desk

LENGTH: 702 words

DATELINE: LOS ANGELES, Jan. 19

Declaring himself ''bloodied but unbowed,'' Senator Alan Cranston has abandoned his tactic of lying low in the Lincoln Savings and Loan failure and come out swinging in a fight to save his political life.
In a two-day blitz of California's major cities, Senator Cranston, a Democrat, assailed his chief accuser, Edwin J. Gray, formerly the Reagan Administration's chief regulator of savings and loan institutions, as a ''political hack.'' Mr. Cranston said he was aiming his attack at Mr. Gray because the nation's most expensive savings and loan failure ''happened on his watch.''
At a news conference here today, Mr. Cranston accused Mr. Gray, the former chairman of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, of treating the regulatory board as a personal ''good ship Lollipop'' by benefiting from junkets and lavish expense-account living. ''When it turned into the Titanic, he began looking for scapegoats,'' Mr. Cranston said. 
 
Vows to Seeks Fifth Term
One of the Senate's most powerful members as Democratic whip, Mr. Cranston is now facing a re-election battle for his fifth term in 1992 in a state whose voters are increasingly Republican. And a poll conducted last month by the Mervin Field Institute found that nearly two in every three voters surveyed said they were not inclined to vote for Mr. Cranston.
Despite these findings and public statements from other Democratic officeholders here urging him to rethink his candidacy, Mr. Cranston said this week that he will seek re-election.
He said he would carry out his promise to find a way to help the approximately 23,000 Californians who bought millions of dollars in uninsured bonds from Lincoln's parent company, the American Continental Corporation.
''These bonds are now worthless,'' Mr. Cranston said, ''and many widows and elderly people have lost their life savings. I've talked to some of them and I know how tragic the situation is. It is Edwin Gray who bears the responsibility, and he cannot escape that truth.''
Many investors have said they thought the bonds were insured by the Government because they were sold at branches of Lincoln Savings.
 
Senator Is Accused of Pressure
Mr. Cranston, who with four other Senators met with Mr. Gray in April 1987, has been accused of pressuring the regulators to quickly end their audit of Lincoln Savings. The meetings are the subject of an investigation by the Senate ethics committee. Mr. Cranston accepted nearly $900,000 in donations for his party or for groups he controlled or founded from the former chairman of American Continental, Charles B. Keating Jr. of Phoenix.
The Government took control of Lincoln in April 1989, and the company's failure may cost taxpayers more than $2 billion in bailout money.
Mr. Cranston said today that he had no knowledge of the sale of American Continental bonds at Lincoln branches at the time he met with Mr. Gray. But he acknowledged here and at earlier news conferences in Sacramento that Mr. Keating was seeking a rapid conclusion to the audit as well.
 
Cranston Releases Evidence
Mr. Cranston released copies of documents today that were gathered by the General Accounting Office at his request. He said the documents showed that the Federal Government was negligent in letting the bond sales continue after agents working for Mr. Gray raised questions about the financial state of American Continental and Lincoln Savings, and because regulators failed to make on-site inspections of bond sales at the Lincoln offices.
But in releasing the documents, Mr. Cranston may have hurt his own case. Summaries of regulatory oversight on both a Federal and state level point to a complex system of jurisdictions that resulted in the failure to detect Lincoln's financial difficulties, rather than pinpointing Mr. Gray's agency.
Mr. Cranston said he would sponsor legislation that would allow holders of the worthless bonds to pursue civil law suits against the Federal Government if suits currently filed against American Continental and Mr. Keating failed to repay them.
Mr. Cranston conceded that legal proceedings in the case would take years and would not be resolved before the 1992 election, but he said he would still win.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Senator Alan Cranston of California, who is trying to save his political life in the wake of the failure of the Lincoln Savings and Loan. (Agence France-Presse)

Copyright 1990 The New York Times Company



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The New York Times

January 21, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Cordelia T. Pitman, Student, to Marry

SECTION: Section 1; Part 2, Page 47, Column 5; Society Desk

LENGTH: 173 words

Cordelia Taylor Pitman and Winslow James Furber plan to marry in June, her parents, Virginia Bradley Pitman of New York and Bay Head, N.J., and Dr. Walter Clarkson Pitman 3d of New York, have announced. The prospective bridegroom is a son of Mr. and Mrs. Edward B. Furber of Bow, N.H.
Miss Pitman, 26 years old, expects to receive a master's degree in architecture from Columbia University in May. She is a graduate of the Church of the Heavenly Rest Day School in New York, the Spence School and Middlebury College. Her father is a geophysicist and a senior research scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory of Columbia University in Palisades, N.Y. Her mother is the director in New York of Meals-on-Wheels America, which assists programs that deliver food to elderly people at home.
Mr. Furber, 26, a graduate of Middlebury, owns the Winslow J. Furber Marine Sculptor Studio and Gallery in York Harbor, Me. His father is a senior vice president of Amoskeag Bank Shares, a bank holding company in Manchester, N.H.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Cordelia Pitman (Bachrach)

Copyright 1990 The New York Times Company



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The New York Times

January 21, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Cold, in the Winter Years

SECTION: Section 4; Page 20, Column 1; Editorial Desk

LENGTH: 256 words

The golden years. Senior citizenship. These aren't necessarily euphemisms for age and infirmity. Many Americans age gracefully, in good health, with sound finances and close to children and grandchildren. A half-century of advances in medicine and Social Security has made retirement something to look forward to. For many.  For many others, the winter of life is not warmed by any such golden glow. What they are closest to is pain, poverty, loneliness and despair. They may lack a permanent home or -look at the streets - any home at all. That is why The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund pays special attention to older adults. The fund tries to bring warmth and comfort to shivering bodies and desolate minds. It helps many to retain their independence and to avoid institutionalization. For instance, many can remain in their own homes if given assistance, like regular visits by trained and caring aides who can help them shop and cook and provide occasional companionship.
That's wiser and warmer than sending people to nursing homes, and it's also much cheaper. But it's not free.
The eight social service agencies that share in the fund's proceeds focus on such crucial support, while also dealing with the entire range of needs starting in childhood.
The holiday season is past but the appeal continues, now and through the year. All who care are asked to help.
Tax-deductible contributions should be sent to The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund, Post Office Box 5193, General Post Office, New York, N.Y. 10087.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo of elderly man (Paul Fusco/Magnum)

TYPE: Editorial

Copyright 1990 The New York Times Company



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The New York Times

January 21, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

PUBLIC & PRIVATE;
Rooms Of Their Own

BYLINE: By Anna Quindlen

SECTION: Section 4; Page 21, Column 6; Editorial Desk

LENGTH: 786 words

When Ellen Baxter was working on a report about the homeless people of New York City, she went into shelters and subway stations and parks to talk to them about their lives. The problem was enormous but her conclusion was simple. ''It was so obvious to me that what they wanted was a place to live,'' she says. ''They wanted a key and a room where they could lock the door.''
That was 10 years ago, and in that time the number of homeless people has multiplied and the patience of the public has worn thin. It seems the homeless have always been with us, and it's begun to occur to us that lots of them are people we don't like very much. 
Ten years ago some of the homeless were older people, disenfranchised by misfortune or fire or expensive building rehabilitations. Some were former mental patients sent to the streets by government policy that said large institutions were an affront to humanity but provided few small ones in their place. ''Lady, could you spare a quarter,'' said the men, their faces vermilion from years of Thunderbird. If a wild woman zoomed by, shouting imprecations at President Kennedy and the Pope, you looked twice.
Today no one looks twice. The old homeless are still on the streets, but the holes in the societal safety net have spit out new companions. Young men roving the bus terminal, just out of jail, some of them, and seemingly looking for a way back in. Young women pushing strollers in midtown at midnight, tired of the four walls of the welfare hotel and three kids under the age of 4. In one subway station a homeless man lies on the floor at the foot of the stairs and orders passers-by, ''Put the money in the cup.''
This has made people angry, and no wonder. Problem is, some of them get angry at the homeless. ''Not in my neighborhood,'' we say about shelters, but it's already too late. If they're not in your neighborhood yet, sleeping in the doorways, looking through the dumpsters for dinner, they will be soon. To explain our antipathy we say that the problem is too big and intractable to solve.
While we've been saying that, people like Ellen Baxter have been quietly trying to solve it. In 1986, Ms. Baxter opened The Heights in a stolid gray apartment building with a panoramic view of the feed to the George Washington Bridge. The building is furnished with vanilla-and-gilt French provincial furniture, a donation from the Pierre Hotel.
There are 55 permanent tenants, veterans of such diverse venues as the 181st Street subway station, High Bridge Park and the Fort Washington Armory, where 800 beds may be lined up across the floor on any given night to welcome those who have no place to go. Visualizing it in the mind's eye makes it easy to understand why homeless people do not like shelters.
The people who live in The Heights, and the three other buildings Ms. Baxter now oversees, are people with problems. They are people, some of them, who have smoked crack and passed out drunk and spent time in psychiatric wards, and who may do so in the future.
But they once were homeless and now are living with leases, with keys, some with jobs, all with dignity. Their subsidized rent comes out of a welter of entitlement programs and, in some cases, their own wages. They still may not be people we like very much. That shouldn't matter, but it does. We like to like the people we help, to have a poster child. It is time to grow up about this. Public policy cannot be determined by our collective warm fuzzies.
We may have one of two motives in this matter, vastly different but leading us to the same place. We can demand that government finance more small permanent residences like The Heights because that is the right thing to do, because we have looked into the faces of homeless men and women and occasionally recognized ourselves. That probably requires more than most of us can find within ourselves at this point, after explaining to our children why the man is swearing at the fire hydrant, after having someone urinate in our doorway.
So there is another reason to demand that government support those groups that have found humane and permanent solutions. The Heights costs about $15 per person per day, including the cost of its staff of social workers and counselors. The armory, that vast expanse of temporary beds, costs at least twice that.
Look at it from a purely selfish point of view as well. You want the sidewalks and the parks to be clear again. You want to be left alone and not importuned for a dollar a dozen times a day. And up in Washington Heights, and in other quietly compassionate places all over this city, there are people who can help make that happen in a way that will not shame us as human beings.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

TYPE: Op-ed

Copyright 1990 The New York Times Company



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The New York Times

January 21, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

WE HAVE MET THE ELDERLY AND THEY ARE US

BYLINE: By HAROLD L. SHEPPARD; Harold L. Sheppard is the director of the International Exchange Center on Gerontology at the University of South Florida, Tampa.

SECTION: Section 7; Page 36, Column 1; Book Review Desk

LENGTH: 959 words


RISKING OLD AGE IN AMERICA
By Richard J. Margolis.
202 pp. Boulder, Colo.:
Westview Press.
Cloth, $36.50. Paper, $14.95.
This book is a product of a grant from the Families United for Senior Action Foundation, an advocacy group for the elderly poor. It is intended as an antidote to the negative image of the greedy, overly affluent elderly, an image frequently found on the Op-Ed pages even of respectable publications. 
''Risking Old Age in America'' may achieve its purpose (though, for some, the detailed descriptions of the plight of specific individuals, rather than evoking chords of sympathy, will no doubt elicit charges of sob-sister pathos). Underlying the book's statistical and anecdotal material is the haunting reminder that, as I. M. Rubinow, the pioneer spokesman for social insurance, explained 60 years ago, ''the aged are not a class. They are a stage of our own lives.'' The phenomena of aging and of being old cannot be adequately dealt with by equating them with race or gender. Discussions of the elderly are not about ''them,'' but about our present or future selves.
Richard J. Margolis, a freelance journalist and columnist for The New Leader, walks us through the flaws in the assistance we provide for the elderly - income maintenance, housing, health care, home care and nursing-home care - using statistics and heart-rending accounts to remind us of the downside in the never-ending debate about how well off America's senior citizens really are. Yet paradoxically, in his biting chapter on the country's most important program for the elderly, Social Security, he seems at times to side with his opponents in the debate, the right-wing enemies of the program. (Obviously, Social Security is no longer a sacred cow, no matter what one's political disposition.) For Mr. Margolis, Social Security's greatest defect is that the system is not designed to beget egalitarianism in our old age, since it does not compensate those who were victims of various forms of discrimination during their preretirement years - for instance, wives who were not paid for housework. But it is not clear if Mr. Margolis would prefer a flat-rate pension system, which, when used in Europe, eventually meant measly benefits, and therefore led to programs similar to our wage-related system. And while, in one breath, he attacks the regressive taxation rate through which people contribute to Social Security, in the next he acknowledges the system's progressive payout formula. He also claims that most Americans believe the program collects payroll taxes and puts the money into trust-fund accounts with individual names on each account. But as far back as 1981, a Harris poll found that nearly 80 percent knew that their payroll taxes are, in effect, transfer payments for the currently retired.
Mr. Margolis does stress that Social Security is a compact between generations, ''whereby younger workers help to support retired workers in exchange for their own future protection.'' He might have added that it is also a program for workers today: it provides income for their families in the event of a wage-earner's death before retirement, and it assures income in case a worker becomes disabled. At present, there are at least three million children receiving checks as a right, due to the death or disability of their young working parents.
The book's final chapter, about nursing homes - aptly entitled ''Exile: The Perils of Institutionalization'' - may be the best demonstration of the principle that the aged represent one stage of life. It is not widely enough known that only a single year, or sometimes less, of nursing home expenses is sufficient to impoverish most families. In this connection, one of the book's weaknesses is that it does not adequately make the point that many of the risks of growing old are not intrinsic to the aging process, but depend on how a society chooses to provide for its elderly. That weakness could have been avoided by pointing to Canada and most of Western Europe, where the phenomenon of families impoverishing themselves to care for aged parents is extremely rare or nonexistent.
Perhaps Mr. Margolis feels he has treated this issue through his references to the historical uniqueness of the United States, specifically its roots in a deeply established Puritanism that can be seen as one of the root causes of our disdain for the welfare state. Mr. Margolis quotes the Mayflower Compact, with its insistence that ''willful poverty should find no lodgment,'' and he reminds us of the 18th- and 19th-century practice of auctioning off paupers (many of them aged) as laborers to the persons or families who would provide for them at the least cost. Later, this pattern changed into one in which a town would contract out the care of its poor to someone who would house them under one roof - what the historian Robert Kelso refers to as ''a privately operated almshouse where the profit to the keeper was the object sought.'' Mr. Margolis likens this to today's profit-oriented nursing homes.
Overall, the author paints a portrait of a society that is too profit-oriented to develop humane programs to meet the challenges of income, housing and health for the elderly. Yet in his well-intentioned attempt to counteract the smug image of the affluent elderly, he may have painted himself into a corner. At one point in his epilogue, he gloomily claims that ''widespread fatalism may be considered the hex of the Great Deficit,'' perhaps the most notable domestic heritage of the Reagan regnum. But his final statement is an expression of hope that the public will force a change in our current policies, that somehow the fatalism he perceives will not, after all, prove fatal.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Drawing

TYPE: Review

Copyright 1990 The New York Times Company



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The New York Times

January 22, 1990, Monday, Late Edition - Final

Congressional Leaders Take Issue With Moynihan Plan to Cut Taxes

BYLINE: By DAVID E. ROSENBAUM, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section B; Page 7, Column 1; National Desk

LENGTH: 888 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Jan. 21

Congressional leaders of both parties took issue today with Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan's proposal to cut Social Security taxes, and President Bush's budget director, Richard G. Darman, called the plan ''the most irresponsible idea of the '90's.''
But Senator Moynihan, a New York Democrat, said, ''If we can't get behind an issue like this, a principle, I'm not sure who needs the Democratic Party.''
The three television networks devoted their Sunday interview programs to the issue, underscoring, on the weekend before Congress reconvenes, the degree to which the Moynihan proposal has struck a nerve in the body politic.
Mr. Darman and the lawmakers broke no new ground substantively, but each time they speak out on the matter they seem to sharpen their words and raise the political stakes. 
 
The Moynihan Proposal
Just before New Year's Day, Senator Moynihan proposed rescinding the Social Security tax increase that went into effect this year and reducing the payroll levy still further next year.
Workers and their employers now pay 7.65 percent - 6.2 percent for retirement under Social Security and 1.45 percent for Medicare, the medical insurance program for the elderly and the disabled. The Social Security part is up from 6.06 percent last year. Mr. Moynihan would cut it to 5.1 percent in 1991. The tax is paid on the first $51,300 of wages.
In the last decade, the portion of the Government's day-to-day expenses paid for by Social Security taxes has risen dramatically. Mr. Moynihan maintains that it is unfair to finance an increasing share of the Government's operating budget with a tax that falls most heavily on the poor and the middle class, and that it is deceptive to disguise the true size of the budget deficit.
''We are abusing a trust,'' the Senator said today. ''We are taking moneys given for retirement benefits, for widows and orphans and for the disabled, and we're using it as if it were general revenue.''
 
Deficit Fears Cited
The Democratic leaders praised Mr. Moynihan for calling attention to inequities in the tax and budget systems, but they did not support his plan. They said they needed time to study the matter, but worried that cutting taxes by more than $60 billion over the next two years would seriously worsen the overall budget deficit.
''If I had to make a decision today to do it or not to do it, I'd probably say, 'Don't do it,''' said the Speaker of the House, Thomas S. Foley of Washington.
The Senate majority leader, George J. Mitchell of Maine, was careful not to say specifically whether he supported or opposed the Moynihan proposal, but he kept returning to this point: ''We have to be responsible with respect to the deficit.''
Republican Congressional leaders left no doubt where they stood. Bob Dole of Kansas, the Senate minority leader, and Newt Gingrich of Georgia, the House Republican whip, said cutting the Social Security tax would force an increase in other taxes or a reduction in retirement benefits.
 
Dole and Mitchell Disagree
Mr. Moynihan was interviewed on the CBS News program ''Face the Nation,'' and Mr. Foley on the NBC News program ''Meet the Press.'' The other lawmakers and Mr. Darman were interviewed on the ABC News program ''This Week with David Brinkley.''
Speaking of the proposed tax cut, Mr. Dole asserted: ''It's not going to pass. I'd be willing to bet.'' Mr. Mitchell disagreed, saying, ''There's a very real possibility that it might pass.''
Whatever the outlook for passage, Mr. Darman said the proposal had complicated the political scene. ''Senator Moynihan has, in effect, thrown a grenade into the middle of the House and the Senate,'' the budget director said. ''We're going to have a lot of shrapnel in the air, and what he's hoping is that somehow they're all going to make it into a beautiful face. I think this is a risky strategy.''
Outside the studio, Mr. Darman said it was not likely that the President would sign the proposal if Congress passed it. Last week Mr. Bush said the plan would lead to a tax increase or lower retirement benefits.
 
Rise in Other Taxes Favored
Senator Moynihan and most of the other Democrats interviewed today indicated that they would favor raising other taxes to offset a cut in the Social Security tax, but they said they would not make such a proposal unless Mr. Bush took the lead.
''Everyone in Washington knows we can't have any change in the revenue system of the country without the President's approval,'' Mr. Foley said.
Despite their wariness about the Moynihan plan, the Democratic leaders were quick to take advantage of the political discomfort it has caused Mr. Bush, who has made low taxes the cornerstone of his political philosophy. Mr. Foley and Mr. Mitchell emphasized that the plan would mostly benefit low- and middle-income workers, while the President's proposal for a capital gains tax cut would, in Mr. Foley's words, give ''a windfall to the richest, most affluent people in the country.''
But the Democrats themselves seemed a bit uncomfortable, torn by a tax cut proposal that they view as poor public policy however attractive it is politically in an election year.
Senator Mitchell said the Democrats were in the position of trying to ''be responsible so that the President can continue to be irresponsible.''

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (AP)

Copyright 1990 The New York Times Company



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The New York Times

January 24, 1990, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

EXTRADITION SET FOR ACCUSED NAZI

BYLINE: By SETH MYDANS, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section A; Page 14, Column 5; National Desk

LENGTH: 659 words

DATELINE: LOS ANGELES, Jan. 23

A Federal judge today ordered the extradition of a retired grocery clerk to West Germany to face charges that he killed three prisoners while serving as a Nazi concentration camp guard in World War II.
The Justice Department said the action against the man, Bruno Karl Blach, was only the fourth time the United States had extradited a person accused of Nazi war crimes.
The director of the department's Office of Special Investigations, Neal M. Sher, said his office had tracked Mr. Blach through documents over the last six or seven years while he lived a quiet life in La Habra, Calif. ''This is what Nazi hunting is all about in the United States,'' Mr. Sher said. 
At a brief appearance today before the United States Magistrate, Ralph Gessen, the white-haired Mr. Blach, 69 years old, waived his right to an extradition hearing. The judge ordered him to be turned over immediately to the West German authorities at Los Angeles International Airport.
 
'Tired of Fighting This'
''He was tired of fighting this,'' said Mr. Blach's lawyer, Ron Parker. ''It's a cloud that would not go away. He will go back to Germany to see if they have anything or not.''
Mr. Blach, who had lived in the United States as a legal resident since 1956 but never became a citizen, is accused of killing three prisoners in a 200-kilometer forced march in April 1945 from the Wiener Neudorf concentration camp to the Mauthausen camp.
One of these prisoners, an elderly and disabled Polish Jew, was shot when he was too weak to keep up in the forced march, said Murray Stein, the senior counsel for the Justice Department in the case.
In April 1987 a United States Immigration Court ordered Mr. Blach's deportation after determining that he had served as an SS guard and dog handler at the Nazi concentration camps of Dachau and Wiener Neudorf from 1940 to 1945. Mr. Blach was appealing the order.
He has in the past admitted through his lawyer to being a camp guard and being present at the march, but has denied the accusations of killings.
He did not speak to reporters today but in 1985 he told The Los Angeles Times that he had been forced to follow orders. ''When you are drafted, what do you do?'' he said. ''I didn't have any choice. I had to do what they told me.''
 
Request for Extradition
Last June a West German court issued an arrest warrant for Mr. Blach charging him with three killings. West Germany requested his extradition under its 1978 extradition treaty with the United States.
Mr. Blach was arrested and has been held without bail since last October.
Previously the United States officials investigating Nazi war crimes have extradited one person to West Germany, one to Yugoslavia and one to Israel.
In 1973 Hermine Braunsteiner-Ryan of Queens, N.Y., was extradited to West Germany. She was sentenced in 1989 and is still serving a life sentence on multiple charges of murder.
In 1986 Andrija Artukovic of Surfside, Calif., the former interior minister of Croatia, was extradited to Yugoslavia and sentenced to death in 1986 after being convicted of mass murder. He died in prison in 1988 pending a decision on his appeal for clemency.
Also in 1986, John Demjanjuk of Cleveland was extradited to Israel, where he was convicted in 1988 of mass murder at the gas chambers of the Treblinka death camp in Poland. He was sentenced to death and his appeal is now before the Israeli Supreme Court.
Mr. Sher said his office, which was created in 1979 to track former Nazis in the United States, is currently pursuing 600 other cases, 25 of which are now at various stages of court proceedings.
''The Blach case is an excellent example of how we investigate these cases,'' he said, ''and how at this late date after the war we are able to find these people.''
He said his office, which includes lawyers, historians, investigators and translators, engages for the most part in slow, painstaking searches of records and documents.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Bruno Karl Blach (AP)

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The New York Times

January 26, 1990, Friday, Late Edition - Final

Not Too Late for Flu Shots

SECTION: Section B; Page 7, Column 1; National Desk

LENGTH: 261 words

Experts on influenza say it is not too late to obtain immunization against the disease in the face of a nationwide epidemic declared yesterday by the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta.
Ideally, doctors say, it would be better to have had flu shots in November. But shots given now would take effect in about two weeks and protect anyone exposed to the disease after that. Epidemiologists at the centers in Atlanta say they do not know when the epidemic will reach its peak.
The epidemiologists in Atlanta recommend that all persons over the age of 65 be immunized, as well as anyone in chronically ill health, particularly those with heart and respiratory problems, diabetes mellitus and asthma. These groups are most vulnerable to pneumonia, the main complication of the flu, and to kidney failure and heart attacks that can also be brought on by the disease.
Those who are allergic to eggs should not take the vaccine, doctors say, because it is grown in eggs. They also warn that children and teen-agers who get the flu should not be given aspirin, which has been linked to Reye's syndrome, a rare disease that can be fatal.
Flu shots are generally available in doctor's offices and through local health departments, which provide free immunization to senior citizens and the chronically ill in most communities. In New York City, the Bureau of Immunization customarily offers free shots at immunization clinics and senior centers throughout the city. For further information on the New York City program, call (212) 349-2664, from 9 A.M. to 5 P.M.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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The New York Times

January 26, 1990, Friday, Late Edition - Final
Correction Appended

Anna Hedgeman Is Dead at 90; Aide to Mayor Wagner in 1950's

BYLINE: By JOAN COOK

SECTION: Section D; Page 18, Column 1; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 438 words

Anna Arnold Hedgeman, an educator, civil rights advocate and the first black woman to be a member of a mayoral cabinet in New York City, died Jan. 17 in Harlem Hospital. She was 90 years old and had lived in Harlem for many years.
Mrs. Hedgeman was an assistant to Mayor Robert F. Wagner from 1954 to 1958. Earlier she had been executive director of the National Council for a Permanent Fair Employment Practices Commission and assistant to Oscar R. Ewing, Administrator of the Federal Security Agency, now part of the Department of Health and Human Services. 
As an executive of the Young Women's Christian Association for 12 years, she helped to develop a variety of international programs in education.
In 1963 Mrs. Hedgeman joined the staff of the Commission on Religion and Race of the National Council of Churches. The commission was intended to mobilize the resources of Protestant and Orthodox churches to work against racial injustice in American life. Mrs. Hedgeman retired at the end of 1967.
 
Ran for Council President
Before joining the commission, Mrs. Hedgeman was a consultant to the American Missionary Association of the United Church of Christ.
A Democrat, she ran for Congress in 1960 as an insurgent from the East Bronx and lost. In 1965 she was an unsuccessful candidate for City Council President on the Reform Democratic ticket with Representative William Fitz Ryan.
In 1953, at the request of Chester Bowles, the United States Ambassador to India, Mrs. Hedgeman spent three months in India as an exchange leader for the State Department. She was also the keynote speaker at the first Conference of the Women of Africa and African Descent at Accra, Ghana, in 1960.
Mrs. Hedgeman was honored for her work in race relations by, among others, the National Urban League, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Schomburg Collection of Negro Literature, the National Council of Negro Women and the A.F.L.-C.I.O. In 1983 she received a ''pioneer woman'' award from the New York State Conference on Midlife and Older Women.
She was born in Marshalltown, Iowa, grew up in Anoka, Minn., and graduated from Hamline University in St. Paul, Minn. After graduation, she moved to Holly Springs, Miss., to teach at Rust College. She moved north and, after she married, settled in Brooklyn.
She was the author of ''The Trumpet Sounds'' (Holt, Rinehart & Company, 1964) and ''The Gift of Chaos'' (Oxford University Press, 1977).
She was married for 54 years to the late Merritt A. Hedgeman, an interpreter of black folk music and opera.
There are no immediate survivors.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

CORRECTION-DATE: February 8, 1990, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

 CORRECTION:
An obituary on Jan. 26 about Anna Arnold Hedgeman, a civil rights advocate and former mayoral aide, misidentified the New York City mayoral candidate on whose ticket she ran in 1965. He was Representative William Fitts Ryan.

GRAPHIC: photo: Anna Arnold Hedgeman (NYT)

TYPE: Obituary

Copyright 1990 The New York Times Company



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The New York Times

January 27, 1990, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

Weighing Health: Big Derriere vs. Fat Belly

BYLINE: AP

SECTION: Section 1; Page 28, Column 1; National Desk

LENGTH: 625 words

DATELINE: BOSTON, Jan. 26

It is healthier to be shaped like a pear than an apple, and now experts believe they know why: cholesterol levels are closely linked with where people carry their fat.
Researchers have long noticed that people with fat posteriors tend to have healthier hearts than those with big bellies, but the reason for this was unclear.
A new study offers a possible explanation. It shows that people with beefy hips and trim waists have higher levels of high-density lipoprotein, a protective form of cholesterol, than do those with potbellies and small derrieres. 
''When patients come in, we advise them to lose weight,'' Dr. Richard E. Ostlund Jr. said. ''This paper suggests that more important than that is how the fat is distributed.''
 
Smoking Also Addressed
Dr. Ostlund's study, conducted at the Washington University School of Medicine, was published Thursday in The New England Journal of Medicine.
In a separate study in the journal, doctors from the Boston University School of Medicine addressed another aspect of heart health. The researchers found that women who smoke face nearly four times the usual risk of heart attacks before the age of 65, but the danger quickly eases when they quit the habit.
Earlier research had shown that the high risk of heart attacks in male smokers goes away within a few years of stopping. The new work is the first to show that this happens in women, too.
 
Differences in Aging
Dr. Ostlund's cholesterol study, conducted with healthy elderly people, found that body shape alone could account for a large portion of the differences in high-density lipoprotein, or HDL, cholesterol levels.
Doctors have found that the more HDL people have in the blood, the lower the chances of heart attacks. Women typically have higher HDL levels than men. As they age, women also tend to put on weight around the hips, while men are more prone to larger bellies.
Experts have long suspected that differences in sex hormones might explain the HDL disparity between men and women. But the new study suggests that body shape, not sex, could be the key. It found that pear-shaped men tend to have high HDL, while apple-shaped women have lower HDL.
''The fat around your hips, the good fat that women have, is predominantly subcutaneous fat,'' or just underneath the skin, Dr. Ostlund said. ''But the fat you have in your belly is intra-abdominal fat. The difference is where the blood supply of those two areas drains.''
Abdominal fat surrounds the intestines, and its blood supply drains directly to the liver. ''The liver is sensitive to things that fat cells put out,'' he said. ''The metabolism of the liver may be changed because of the intra-abdominal fat,'' including the liver's production of HDL.
 
Not Easy to Change
The blood from hip fat does not drain directly to the liver and so has less impact on the way it works, Dr. Ostlund said.
But he acknowledged: ''It's very hard to change your waist-to-hip ratio. You can do it if you lose a massive amount of weight, but losing 10 to 20 pounds doesn't change it very much.''
In the study of smoking, the researchers found that the risk of suffering a first heart attack in women who smoke was 3.6 times that of those who had never smoked. But within three years of giving up smoking, the risk had dropped to the point where it was no higher than that of the non-smokers.
The analysis was conducted by Dr. Lynn Rosenberg and colleagues from the Sloan Epidemiology Unit at Boston University.
The work was based on 910 women who were admitted for heart attacks at 71 hospitals in Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York and Rhode Island. Their smoking habits were compared with those of 2,375 women who were in the hospitals for other reasons.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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The New York Times

January 28, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

For Work Force, 2 Million Who'd Quit Retirement

BYLINE: By TAMAR LEWIN

SECTION: Section 1; Part 1, Page 18, Column 1; National Desk

LENGTH: 663 words

Nearly two million nonworking Americans 50 to 64 years old are ready and able to work, a new survey shows.
''The excitement of this study is that the pool of qualified older workers is so much larger than anyone knew, and with everyone worrying about the labor shortages forecast for early next century, that's very important,'' said Thomas W. Moloney, senior vice president of the Commonwealth Fund, the New-York based philanthropy that commissioned the study.
''This study,'' he went on, ''disproves the conventional wisdom that there are not many people in this age range ready and able to work, that they aren't healthy enough to work, or aren't prepared to take the jobs that there is a demand for.''
Since there are only about two million new people entering the labor force each year, he said, it is significant that the survey produced an estimate that there is a pool of another two million qualified older workers. 
 
The Numbers Game
That estimate, based on a survey by Louis Harris & Associates, is more than three times the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimate of 630,000. Bruce Klein, a bureau economist, says both estimates may be right since the Government number does not include workers not seeking jobs.
The survey, conducted by telephone last March through last September, covered 3,509 older Americans - 1,751 men 55 to 64 years old and 1,758 women 50 to 59. The women were younger because women leave the work force earlier than men; the survey tried to focus on the years when workers typically leave the work force.
In portions of the survey not yet analyzed, those surveyed were also asked when and why they left work and how they fared outside the work force.
From the participants' responses the researchers inferred results applicable to the 21.5 million Americans in those age brackets. Of that group, 13.3 million are working, 4.7 million do not want to work, and 1.6 million are unable to work, mostly for health reasons. The remaining workers, nearly 2 million, are ready and able. #1.1 Million Pass All Tests The projections of the data were done by Harris and I.C.F., a District of Columbia consulting company.
About 800,000 of the estimated 2 million people were not prime candidates for new jobs. the researchers said, but more than 1.1 million would be highly qualified and motivated since they have reasonable wage expectations, would accept difficult working conditions, and have interest in available jobs: managerial, computer, sales, home day care, teacher's aide.
The survey has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus seven percentage points. The participants were asked how far they would be willing to commute, what jobs and job conditions they would accept and for what pay. The reasons that these people are not working include employer discrimination against older workers and the workers' perceptions of the employers' attitudes.
 
Comparison of Incomes
''As ready and willing and capable as these people are, 60 percent are discouraged from seeking employment, and the most frequently given reason is that they don't think people want to hire them,'' said Mr. Moloney.
The study found that only 6 percent of the qualified older people had incomes of $50,000 or above, as against 25 percent of employed older people.
Two-thirds of the qualified older workers would work full time, and 86 percent said they would work part time. The researchers reported that three-quarters of the qualified older workers were high school or college graduates, as against 85 percent of the working older people. Sixty-four percent of the available workers had five or more years of experience on the last job, against 77 percent of older people now employed.
''There's a skill bust coming because the education and skills of the workers coming up are not up to the levels of the current work force,'' Mr. Moloney said, ''so it is very good news to find that there are so many capable committed older workers available.''

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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The New York Times

January 28, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final
Correction Appended

BUDGET OUTLOOK;
Numbers Tomorrow, To Be Followed By Heavy Politics

BYLINE: By DAVID E. ROSENBAUM

SECTION: Section 4; Page 1, Column 1; Week in Review Desk

LENGTH: 1016 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON

Gradually over the last several weeks, the basic elements of the budget President Bush will send Congress tomorrow have seeped out.
He will propose spending $1.2 trillion in the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1, leaving a deficit of $63.1 billion. He will ask Congress to approve $295 billion for the Pentagon, $4 billion more than this year but about $6 billion, or 2 percent, less than what would be needed for the Pentagon to keep pace with inflation.
He will suggest a large spending increase for drug control and a small one for education programs. He will ask for a cut in the capital gains tax and a new kind of savings account to encourage Americans to put money aside. Invoking the theme of ''America the Beautiful,'' he will recommend modest new programs to protect the environment. And he will advocate changing the Medicare law, so the medical insurance program for the elderly and disabled would cost the Government billions of dollars less. 
Of course, he will seek no new taxes.
The prospects are dim that the new budget will be taken more seriously than those in the past few years. The debate over military spending, for instance, will not be over whether to cut President Bush's request but over how much to cut it by and whether to trim spending on personnel or weapons systems. The new savings account Mr. Bush is proposing will have no more standing than competing proposals by several lawmakers.
As soon as they see Mr. Bush's budget, the Democrats will begin demanding more money for drug control, education and other areas popular with their constituents. Mr. Bush is certain to oppose and even veto measures throughout the year on the ground that they exceed his budget levels. So the budget will serve one essential function. It will be the main battleground for the election year's political wars.
In terms of money, the Federal budget is larger than all other countries' entire economies except those of the Soviet Union and Japan. The book with all the numbers is larger than the Manhattan telephone directory. But despite the months of work that went into putting the documents together, they will probably gather dust once they are delivered to Congress.
Until relatively recently, Presidents' budgets were a blueprint for all Government activities. Working from the master plan, Congress made minor changes, taking small amounts from some areas and putting the money in others. But as is the case in parliamentary democracies, the Government ran mostly according to the initial proposals of its chief executive.
But in the last decade, Presidents' budgets have become, in the words of Stanley E. Collender, a budget specialist at Price Waterhouse, the accounting firm, ''more of a wish list than a series of proposals that can be adopted.''
There are two main reasons for the declining importance of Presidential budgets.
First, Congressional budget procedures put in place in the mid-1970's gave Congress the structure and expertise to challenge Presidential priorities. Until then, the executive branch had all the computers and analysts, and Congress had no choice but to accept their judgments. In addition, rivalry among Congressional committees prevented a unified assessment of spending and taxes. But the establishment of budget committees in the House and Senate and the creation of the Congressional Budget Office with its staff of more than 200 economists and other professionals put Congress, to whom the Constitution gives the power of the purse, on an equal footing.
Second, and probably more important, the Reagan and Bush Administrations turned their budgets into openly political documents that they knew stood no chance of adoption. Every year since 1985, for example, the Presidents have proposed large increases in military spending; Congress has reduced the President's Pentagon budget request by an average of 2 percent a year. Year after year, the Presidents proposed abolishing or trimming the same domestic programs, including mass transit subsidies, the Legal Services Agency and the Economic Development Administration; each year Congress continued the appropriations. Last year, President Bush made modest education proposals like rewarding successful schools and recognizing superior teachers; Congress never paid them a glance.
''We've been led down the primrose path so often that their budgets are just dead on arrival,'' said Senator Robert C. Byrd, the West Virginia Democrat who heads the Appropriations Committee. Senator Pete V. Domenici of New Mexico, the top Republican on the Budget Committee, said Mr. Reagan's ideological approach to the budget made the document ''less relevant and far more cantankerous.''
The Gramm-Rudman-Hollings law, which sets mandatory deficit ceilings each year, has further reduced the significance of Presidents' budgets. ''Gramm-Rudman sets a total no one can possibly hit with serious policy proposals,'' said Joseph White, a budget expert at the Brookings Institution. As a result, Presidents and lawmakers resort to accounting tricks like moving paydays from one year to another and leaving out of the budget much of the money being spent to rescue savings and loan institutions.
''Presidents' budgets crossed the line into total unacceptability when they had to deal with deficits,'' said Edwin L. Dale Jr., a top aide to Richard G. Darman, the budget director. He emphasized that he was talking about previous budgets and not the one that will go to Congress this week.
Many economists are skeptical of Mr. Darman's contention that continued economic growth can be counted on to whittle away significantly at the budget deficit. The Administration's economic assumptions are somewhat more optimistic than the consensus of private economists for this year, and they are much more optimistic in the years ahead.
In an unusual essay that Mr. Darman wrote to introduce the new budget, he maintained that the Administration's economic forecasts were not ''outside the credible range.'' This budget, he wrote, will be ''seriously presented'' and should be ''treated seriously.''

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

CORRECTION-DATE: January 29, 1990, Monday, Late Edition - Final

 CORRECTION:
A front-page article in some copies yesterday about the Bush Administration's proposed budget for 1991 misstated the Administration's estimate of the deficit for the fiscal year 1990, which ends Sept. 30. The estimate is $123.8 billion.

GRAPHIC: Drawing; graph of projected Federal expenditures for fiscal 1990 (Source: Congressional Budget Office)

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The New York Times

January 30, 1990, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

In Shanghai, the Mystery of the Midnight Fire

BYLINE: By SHERYL WuDUNN, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section A; Page 8, Column 1; Foreign Desk

LENGTH: 467 words

DATELINE: SHANGHAI, Jan. 25

When a guest house for senior officials burned down last week, it stirred talk about arson and the injury and possible death of an elderly party leader.
It had all the signs of a mystery. A senior official apparently was staying in a grand old mansion; fire broke out in the middle of the night; other mansions in the courtyard were untouched; the next morning, 100 investigators and security guards photographed and combed the area, and newspapers carried no accounts of the fire. 
The elderly leader who was thought to be inside was Song Renqiong, an 81-year-old friend of Deng Xiaoping and a former member of the Communist Party Politburo. Since 1985, Mr. Song has been vice chairman of the influential Central Advisory Commission.
 
Speculation Is Dismissed
Some people say Mr. Song was killed in the fire, along with three other people. Asked about that, the Foreign Ministry said that such speculation was groundless. A Shanghai official denied that Mr. Song had been killed in the fire, nor would he confirm that the fire took place. [The New China News Agency said Sunday night that Mr. Song was among a number of elderly leaders who wrote slogans for children during the Chinese Lunar New Year festivities. The report seemed to confirm that he is alive, and it may have been intended to rebut rumors about his death.] Two other Chinese with access to information about the incident said that Mr. Song was indeed in the guest house that burned, but that he was not killed. One said that Mr. Song was critically injured, but was taken off the critical list on Thursday, a week after the incident. He added that Mr. Song's doctor, who was with him, was killed.
 
Rumors Spreading
Already, rumors are spreading of an assassination plot against Mr. Song. But assassination is rare in China, as is murder itself, and it is hard to imagine a motive for murdering a man in his 80's and outside the highest circle of power. On the other hand, since the violent crackdown in June, China's leaders have taken greater precautions against the possibility of attack. Prime Minister Li Peng, for example, once arrived at a Soviet diplomatic function in an armor-plated limousine.
The fire broke out the night of Jan. 18, burning out an old mansion in the Xingguo Guest House, which is for high officials. By morning, 100 policemen and investigators were combing the courtyard, sealing off the compound to regular traffic, according to a foreigner who works in a next-door mansion in the same courtyard.
The intrigue about the fire has been bolstered by the sudden arrival in Shanghai of President Yang Shangkun and Mr. Deng himself. Prime Minister Li also turned up in neighboring Jiangsu Province, although he seemed to have had a full schedule and so his visit may not have been related.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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The New York Times

January 31, 1990, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

A Panel Hears Tales of Fears and 'Wilding'

BYLINE: By LEONARD BUDER

SECTION: Section B; Page 3, Column 1; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 522 words

In a voice choked with emotion, a Brooklyn mother told a City Hall hearing yesterday that when she sends her children to school by public transportation each morning, she worries she will not see them alive again because of marauding groups of violent youths.
''We wish them a good day, pay attention in school, be good, but we don't say what's in our hearts: ''Come back alive, come back to me this afternoon,' '' said the mother, Elba Haggerty, who has two children in Abraham Lincoln High School, where she is president of the parents' association, and another child in Brooklyn Technical High School.
''I might have to bury my child. No, I don't want that. I want my children to bury me,'' she said before a hushed audience at a hearing on the perils children encounter on the way to school -youth violence and ''wilding.'' 
Another parent described how one of her sons was attacked and injured by a gang of 20 youths on a subway on his way home from school in October and how another was stopped, harassed and searched on a street by six youths.
 
Hostile Looks End in Death
''Sending your child to school is the most dangerous thing you can ask him to do,'' said the parent, Mary Lou Guillen Fuller.
The hearing was held by City Council President Andrew J. Stein, and Family Court judges, probation officials and police officers also spoke. Mr. Stein said he wanted to focus attention on youth violence and wilding and to send the message that ''if you hurt other people, you are going to be punished.''
''Children can't ride to school on the subway without fear of being attacked,'' Mr. Stein said. ''Senior citizens can't walk to centers without fearing groups of marauding youths. The time has come for society to show some backbone or we are going to descend into chaos.''
Two Abraham Lincoln High School students, Erin Brown, 17 years old, and Lee Ann Witsell, 16, said at the hearing that they saw their friend and classmate, Larry Ashby, 18, fatally stabbed in the subway in December as the result of a dispute that had started with two students simply giving each other hostile looks.
''I'm scared now every time I go on a train,'' Ms. Brown said.
 
Problem Called Citywide
Accompanied by a group of his students, Dr. Jack M. Pollock, the principal of Abraham Lincoln High School in the Coney Island section of Brooklyn, said the problem was citywide, and that he and other educators had created ''Principals for Safe Passage'' to try to do something about it.
Susan D. Alter, a City Councilwoman from Brooklyn, said that wilding was growing, and that Flatbush, Midwood and Canarsie had become targets of gangs on the subway.
She said that ''the Transit Authority has reported that over 50 percent of the crimes occurring in subways in New York City are the result of this wilding behavior of young people between the ages of 12 and 15.''
But Albert O'Leary, a spokesman for the transit police, said by telephone later that the department kept no figures for crimes committed by groups of youths. He noted, however, that half of those who were arrested last year for robbery were 17 or under.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Lee Ann Witsell, 16 years old, told of seeing a classmate stabbed to death in the subway. (NYT/Jack Manning)

Copyright 1990 The New York Times Company



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The New York Times

February 1, 1990, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

HEALTH;
PERSONAL HEALTH

BYLINE: By Jane E. Brody

SECTION: Section B; Page 10, Column 1; National Desk

LENGTH: 1386 words

The aromas of freshly baked bread, the air after a spring rain or a rose by any other name are lost to millions of Americans who have a muted or absent sense of smell.
Nearly everyone in the throes of a bad cold has temporarily been unable to smell a thing. Just imagine that loss persisting for the rest of your life.
Though not as disruptive as lost vision or hearing, the inability to detect or identify odors can seriously diminish a person's quality of life, sometimes resulting in malnutrition or persistent depression. Without an ability to smell, foods taste bland and unappetizing and life is missing a dimension that is rarely appreciated until it is gone. 
An impaired sense of smell can also prevent recognition of warning signals of potentially fatal hazards, like a gas leak, spoiled food or smoke from a fire. Experts believe that many elderly people who succumb in house fires or to otherwise nonfatal ailments complicated by malnutrition are really the victims of an inability to smell.
Tests of hundreds of thousands of workers revealed that about 1 percent have major problems with the sense of smell, said Dr. Richard L. Doty, director of the Smell and Taste Center at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.
The problem is far worse among older people. More than half of Americans from the age of 65 to 80 and three-fourths of those over 80 have serious problems in detecting odors, Dr. Doty's studies have shown. Among nearly 2,000 people tested, a quarter of those 65 to 80 and half the people over 80 were unable to smell anything.
Dr. Doty and his colleagues developed a scratch-and-sniff test that has greatly simplified the diagnosis of smell deficits. The test is now widely used throughout the world. The center he directs is one of six federally financed units that study the underappreciated senses of smell and taste, and offer diagnostic and treatment services to those whose chemical senses, as they are called, are impaired.
In addition to these centers, about 2,000 physicians or medical groups throughout the country know how to detect and treat chemosensory loss. The physicians who treat this problem are usually ear, nose and throat specialists; psychologists, nutritionists and neurologists are also involved.
Still, problems with these senses are often overlooked or considered trivial by physicians, said Dr. Terence M. Davidson, chief of head and neck surgery at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in San Diego. Many physicians and people who are afflicted assume nothing can be done to correct or circumvent the disability, the surgeon said.
Dr. Davidson urges a full medical evaluation of all smell disorders to determine their cause and, if possible, correct the problem and restore the lost olfactory sense. In addition to an assessment of the degree of lost sensitivity, a complete examination might include measurements of air pressure in the nasal cavities, a microscopic look at the cells lining the nasal cavities, allergy tests and a CT scan (computerized X-ray) of the head to check for sinus inflammation, tumors or anatomical defects.
 
Sense of Smell
Odors are carried by airborne molecules that impinge on a tiny patch of cells on the roof of the uppermost nasal cavity. These olfactory cells bear receptors that unite with odor molecules. Nerve endings in the region pick up the odor signals and transfer them directly to the brain's olfactory bulb, which records the nature of the odor.
You will be unable to smell if odor molecules cannot reach the receptor cells in the nose, if these receptor cells are damaged or destroyed, if the nerve pathway to the brain is disrupted or if the olfactory region of the brain is itself destroyed.
Food tastes bland when you cannot smell because most of what people call taste or flavor is really odor. When you chew or swallow, odor-bearing molecules from the food travel through the back of the mouth and into the upper nasal cavity, where they stimulate the olfactory cells.
The taste buds in the tongue detect sweetness, sourness, bitterness and salt. Other chemosensors in the oral and nasal cavities - endings from the trigeminal nerve, which extends from the brain to three parts of the face - detect irritants like the hotness of chili peppers and the coolness of menthol. The sense of smell adds critical flavor nuances that enable you to distinguish between potato and carrot, steak and shrimp, apple and chocolate. You can simulate the problem by holding your nose as you eat. Try a piece of chocolate, for instance; you may taste something sweet, but the special flavor of chocolate will be missing until you release the pressure on your nose.
 
Causes of Damage
Dr. Doty's studies of people who are 5 to 99 years old showed that on average, the sense of smell is most acute between 20 and 40 and that throughout life, girls and women are better able to detect and identify odors than boys and men are. As people age, odor-sensitive cells in the nasal cavity are gradually replaced by ordinary respiratory-tract lining cells that have no special ability to detect odor molecules.
While some people are born without an ability to smell and many others lose olfactory cells with age, an accident or illness of some sort is responsible in most cases for the lost sense of smell in young and middle-aged people. Among 750 people with persistent olfactory loss who were examined at the University of Pennsylvania clinic, 28 different causes were identified. Dr. Doty attributed more than 60 percent of the cases to sinus disease, upper respiratory viral infections like influenza, and head injuries.
Of these, most losses are permanent. Viral infections, for example, can destroy the odor-sensitive olfactory cells, and head injuries can disrupt nerve connections to the brain. But Dr. Doty estimated that one in five problems is correctable. For example, in many cases of chronic sinus disease, treatment of the underlying problem can restore the sense of smell. Nasal sinus congestion caused by allergies and blockage of air flow caused by nasal polyps are also often correctable.
Dr. Doty noted that since the passageway through which odoriferous molecules must travel is only about 1 millimeter wide, it can easily be blocked by even minor inflammation. This is why the congestion that accompanies a common cold so often impairs taste and smell.
Prolonged exposure to toxic substances, including air pollutants, industrial chemicals, tobacco smoke and certain drugs, can diminish and sometimes permanently destroy the sensitivity of olfactory cells. But the sense of smell generally improves when a smoker quits or when a toxic medication is stopped.
Dr. Doty said a loss in smell acuity may also be the first sign of neurological diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. In addition, radiation therapy for cancer in the head and neck can result in permanent loss of the sense of smell.
 
What to Do
The first step is to realize that there is a problem in odor perception, particularly for older people, who may not recognize a gradual loss. As foods begin to taste flavorless, people may add salt or sweeteners to the point of creating a health hazard. Instead, flavor concentrates and extracts might be used to enhance natural flavors and more pungent seasonings could be added, like those common to Mexican and Indian cuisine. People can also be taught to pay more attention to the appearance, texture and temperature of foods to enhance their appeal when taste is limited.
To reduce the risk of accidents, smoke detectors should be installed in the kitchen and all living areas where the person is likely to fall asleep. Industrial-grade gas detectors should also be installed, near the ceiling for natural gas, which is lighter than air, and near the floor for propane and gasoline, which are heavier than air.
To avoid food poisoning, all perishable foods should be kept frozen or refrigerated until it is time to prepare them. All leftovers and other prepared foods should be dated with the day of preparation or purchase and promptly chilled. If there is no one available to check foods for freshness, a person who cannot smell should maintain a strict schedule for discarding leftovers to reduce the risk of consuming spoiled foods.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: diagram

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The New York Times

February 2, 1990, Friday, Late Edition - Final

New Player in Debate Over National Health Insurance: Bush

BYLINE: By PHILIP J. HILTS, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section A; Page 19, Column 3; National Desk

LENGTH: 627 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Feb. 1

By calling for a review of the nation's health care system, President Bush has brought the White House into the the debate over national health insurance and raised the possibility that he might offer his own proposal, Administration and Congressional officials said today.
In his State of the Union address Wednesday, the President called for ''careful consideration'' of the recommendations of several health care studies now under way. He assigned Dr. Louis W. Sullivan, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, to lead a review of ''recommendations on the quality, accessibility and cost'' of health care in the United States.
Until now, the Administration has considered such broad questions only at lower levels in the Department of Health and Human Services. The Domestic Policy Council, where this new review will take place, is a White House advisory group that is critical to forming Administration policy. 
 
Report Expected by Fall
A Congressional staff aide, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said: ''The significance of his statement is that universal health care has been elevated to a Presidential matter. He has put himself out there for the first time, saying that he wants an Administration position on the issue, one that will come from the White House directly.''
In an interview today, Dr. Sullivan said the President intended to give him ''the public and official responsibility and leadership for pulling together all the recommendations and options.'' He said his review would deal not just with cutting medical costs but also with quality of care and access to care, as well as the needs of people who have no health insurance.
Dr. Sullivan said that he was not sure what form his final recommendations would take but that they would be ''intended for specific actions.''
''What we are coming up with is an overview of the entire system,'' he said. ''My position will be to develop real improvements in the health care system and to control costs.''
Several commissions are already studying the issues. The Bipartisan Commission on Health Care, led by Senator John D. Rockefeller 4th, Democrat of West Virginia, is expected to issue a report in March. The Advisory Committee on Social Security is expected to report in July. A task force on the health care system led by Constance Horner, Under Secretary of Health and Human Services, is expected to report in October. #37 Million Without Insurance These panels have focused on two issues: the 37 million Americans, most of them employed, who have no medical insurance; and long-term care for the elderly. At least some of the panels' reports are expected to suggest some way of assuring that Americans can get health insurance through their employers.
In Congress, Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, and Representative Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California, are developing a proposal that employers be required to offer health insurance and to pay for a substantial part of it. A public program would cover the unemployed.
Senator Rockefeller said Mr. Bush's comments were encouraging but added, ''I only hope the President agrees that it's time to provide leaderhsip aimed at results and real solutions to our health care problems, instead of spending too much more time studying those problems.''
The United States' health care system is the most expensive in the world. But health care experts say it offers services to far fewer people, in proportion to the population, than do those in most Western countries.
Humphrey Taylor, president of the polling concern Louis Harris & Associates, said that while Americans were satisfied with specific health services, their dissatisfaction with the system was also the highest in the world.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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The New York Times

February 4, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Using Proteges as Pawns, China's Aging Masters Vie to Plot Policy

BYLINE: By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section 1; Part 1, Page 26, Column 3; Foreign Desk

LENGTH: 872 words

DATELINE: BEIJING, Feb. 3

China's aging rulers are engaged in intense jockeying over national policy and a possible shuffling of Communist Party and Government posts, Chinese officials say.
The bargaining may result in changes in the leadership that will take over from the old-line rulers, the officials say, and determine what political and economic directions China will take in the aftermath of the violent crackdown on dissent last June.
The two main protagonists facing what may be their last contest are Deng Xiaoping, the 85-year-old senior leader, who favors continued economic liberalization, and Chen Yun, 84, the mastermind of central planning.
Mr. Chen is little known in the West, and he has appeared in public only once in the last two years. By the time he retired just over two years ago, he had served on the Communist Party Central Committee for 56 years and on the Politburo for more than four decades, in both cases longer than Mr. Deng. 
He is backed by leaders like Peng Zhen, a former leader of the legislature, and Deng Yingchao, the widow of Prime Minister Zhou Enlai, making up in part for what he lacks in prestige compared with Mr. Deng. #2 Rivals Who Cooperate For all the complex jockeying taking place, Mr. Deng and Mr. Chen are not feuding. They are friends and colleagues as well as rivals, and their intertwined cooperation and competition has lasted for many years.
Mr. Chen, who is ailing, lives in the leadership compound known as Zhongnanhai. Mr. Deng, who is also somewhat frail, lives just north of Zhongnanhai. They were able to agree in May on the selection of Jiang Zemin as party leader, and it is assumed that they will continue to bargain with each other and maintain official harmony despite their disagreements on policy.
That the main competition is among the retired patrons rather than the proteges whose careers are at stake is characteristic of China.
The jockeying was described by several Chinese officials with independent access to high-level information. So far, it is not clear whether firm decisions have been made, and some officials are skeptical that an agreement can be reached in the coming months on any major shift in Government and party posts.
A resolution is likely to involve compromise by both sides so that a consensus can be maintained in the circle of about a dozen octogenarians who hold ultimate power in China.
 
Deputy Premier's Fate
The only change that several officials said was already largely settled was the resignation of 72-year-old Yao Yilin as Deputy Prime Minister, which they said would take place at the close of the National People's Congress in April.
One official said that President Yang Shangkun, 82, would retire at the same time, and others said that there was pressure on Prime Minister Li Peng to accept a shift to the less powerful post of President or head of the Congress. Other officials predicted that Mr. Yang and Mr. Li would retain their positions, mainly because of a need to maintain continuity.
''It's very tense now in the leadership because of the personnel decisions,'' said a Chinese with high connections. ''It'll be tense until things are decided before the National People's Congress.''
Each side has different aims involving personnel changes and policies. Mr. Deng, for example, is said to favor the removal of Deputy Prime Minister Yao and Prime Minister Li from their posts, and a renewed emphasis on economic restructuring and improved relations with the West.
Mr. Chen is a patron of Mr. Yao and Mr. Li and opposes the transfer at least of Mr. Li. But he might be willing to sacrifice both if they were given other posts, like the presidency or head of the congress, and if he gained some valuable bargaining chips. Mr. Chen is believed to favor the promotion of Zou Jiahua, the recently appointed head of the Planning Commission, to an even higher post. One official said the central planners also want the right to criticize the ousted party leader, Zhao Ziyang, and his market-oriented economic policies, A Sense Deng Has an Edge The most common, though not universal, view seems to be that Mr. Deng has the upper hand, although nobody knows if he will press harder for policies or for personnel changes.
''Deng is clearly ahead now,'' said a Chinese official who has been reliable in the past. The official said that Mr. Deng had succeeded in moderating hard-line economic policies.
One of the puzzles in Beijing these days is the letter of resignation that apparently was submitted recently by Tian Jiyun, a Deputy Prime Minister associated with the disgraced Mr. Zhao. The resignation, which was reported by the South China Morning Post of Hong Kong and confirmed by two other people familiar with the incident, was not accepted by the leadership.
Mr. Tian, who is about 60, reportedly has found his influence slipping since Mr. Zhao's fall from power, and particularly since he openly attacked the economic policies of Prime Minister Li at the Central Committee's fifth plenum in November.
The letter of resignation could signal that he is in political trouble and has nothing more to lose, or alternatively that he now feels more secure and is using the threat to put pressure on Prime Minister Li.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photos: China's top rulers are jockeying to set the nation's course. The protagonists are Deng Xiaoping, left (AP), the senior Chinese leader, and Chen Yun, the mastermind of central planning. (Camera Press)

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The New York Times

February 4, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

FORUM;
Mr. Bush, You Must Raise Taxes

BYLINE: by LEE H. HAMILTON; Representative Lee H. Hamilton is a Democrat from Indiana.

SECTION: Section 3; Page 13, Column 2; Financial Desk

LENGTH: 969 words

At the end of 1989, as chairman of the Congressional Joint Economic Committee, I issued a report that concluded our top economic policy priority in 1990 should be eliminating the Federal budget deficit. Unfortunately, the budget proposed by President Bush last week breaks no new ground in dealing with the deficit.
The Office of Management and Budget director Richard G. Darman makes a compelling case against the deficit and its attendant erosion of our economic future. But the Administration proposes only a tired list of tried-and-failed tax ''incentives'' that give away more than they get; tried-and-rejected spending cuts that have failed to garner a majority of votes from even the President's party in Congress; and $13.9 billion of ''revenue enhancements.'' 
The letters I received after the report was issued indicate that most Americans are seriously concerned about the deficit. They have an intuitive understanding of how the deficit has soaked up savings and eroded our economy over the long term by pre-empting domestically financed investment. However, the same Americans question the need for any kind of tax increase.
Why must a tax increase be part of a workable deficit reduction plan? In part, this conclusion is an economic judgment - we cannot grow our way out of the deficit. It is also a political judgment - other approaches to reducing the deficit, including relying on spending cuts alone, have not worked in the past and will not work in the future.
The deficit has been stuck at over $150 billion for the last three years, despite forecasts that were far lower. In fact, Congress and the Administration claimed to meet the Gramm-Rudman deficit reduction targets in each of those three years, but the actual deficits turned out to be far higher. The deficit has not faded away, contrary to the forecasts, because economic growth has been slower than predicted and interest rates have been higher, which reduces the Government's revenues and increases its interest costs. Future growth is unlikely to match the Administration's rosy forecast, in part because the Federal Reserve has clearly signaled its resolve to hold growth at about its current level to control inflation.
We have not reduced the deficit through spending cuts, despite the determination of the Reagan Administration. That is because there are not sufficient opportunities to cut spending without harming important national interests. Interest on the national debt - which is the fastest growing single item in the budget and cannot be cut - along with Social Security, Medicare for the elderly and defense spending, accounts for approximately 70 percent of total spending. This leaves little else to cut. And because these four programs are so large and have grown so fast over the last decade, the rest of the budget has been squeezed.
Many of the programs often thought of as targets to balance the budget are in fact quite small. Our deficit in 1989 was $152 billion. Against that figure, total American foreign aid was less than $7 billion, and much of that assistance comes back to the United States as expenditures for American farm products and manufactured goods. The total Congressional budget (which includes maintenance of the buildings and grounds, the Capitol Police, the Library of Congress and other activities that are often forgotten) was less than $2 billion. No cuts in these small programs, however desirable, could possibly eliminate the deficit.
The ''peace dividend'' that is expected to follow from reduced tensions in Eastern Europe is welcome, but it will be years in coming.
There were many good ideas about cutting the deficit in the 1984 Grace Commission report to the Reagan Administration, and most of them have been adopted. However, although the Commission claimed to have found enormous potential savings in the budget, a review revealed that the savings would be only one-third of what was originally claimed and that 16 percent of those savings would come as a result of higher taxes rather than spending cuts. In addition, much of the rest of the savings would come not from eliminating inefficiency or waste, but from cutting actual services delivered.
Likewise, procedural tools proposed to reduce the deficit - budget-process reforms and balanced budget amendments - would have limited effect. You cannot solve a substantive problem with a procedure; hard decisions must still be made, and in the absence of the will to make them, a way will be found to circumvent the procedure. Our experience with Gramm-Rudman proves this. A line-item veto would apply only to a small fraction of spending; it could not reduce Social Security benefits, Medicare payments, the interest on the debt, or defense or other costs involving long-term contractual obligations. Further, a President with a line-item veto would be likely to bargain for spending for a program he wants,like Star Wars, by offering not to veto a program that a member of Congress wants, like a new dam or Federal building in his or her state or district. The result would be more spending.
My best political judgment, on the basis of the experience of the last decade, is that we are unlikely to eliminate the deficit either through spending cuts or tax increases alone. Neither course is politically acceptable. Therefore, the only realistic solution is a package deal that includes both spending cuts and a moderate tax increase. There are many options for such a moderate tax increase that would not involve increases in income tax rates.
The deficit is so large that everyone will be unhappy with at least some elements of any program to eliminate it. We will never break the political gridlock unless we all agree to accept some changes that we do not like, in order to improve our economic future.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Lee H. Hamilton (NYT/George Tames); drawing

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The New York Times

February 4, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Not All the Drama Is on the Stage

BYLINE: By JENNIFER DUNNING; JENNIFER DUNNING writes about dance for The New York Times.

SECTION: Section 5; Page 8, Column 1; Travel Desk

LENGTH: 2185 words

BARCELONA is a city of innate theatricality. It is a theatricality that springs, in large part, from the vivid contrasts that make Barcelona so engaging. Laundry hangs from lines draped across apartment houses on some of the most cosmospolitan of streets. A city plaza that bursts with Saturday night street-fair festivities, complete with the skulking ladrones and murmuring gitanos - petty thieves and gypsies - that tourists are warned about, is taken over by elderly men selling stamps and antique postcards on the sunny Sunday morning that follows. A stroll down the Ramblas or a quiet beer at a sidewalk cafe along that bustling pedestrian thoroughfare is likely to yield one human drama after another a few moments. ''More, perhaps, than any city in the world,'' Rose MacCauley wrote of Barcelona, ''it gives an impression of tempestuous, surging, irrepressible life and brio.''
But Barcelona is also a city with a deeply ingrained theatrical tradition that reflects both its turbulent history as the capital of Catalonia and its status as the longtime center of the arts in Spain. A glorious landmark of that tradition - and a good start for a theater tour of Barcelona - is the Palau de la Musica Catalana on Carrer Amadeu Vives. 
It is not possible to step back into these narrow old streets for a full look at the Palau, one of the most colorfully exotic buildings in a city filled with architectural fantasies. But even if it were, the riot of columns, domes, rounded balconies and busts of great composers, carried out in soft-colored ceramics and mosaics and red brick, would be almost too much for the eye.
Symphonic and choral music are presented at the Palau, which was built by the Orfeo Catala, a choral group that has played an important part in the musical history of Barcelona. Opened in 1908, the Palau is considered the city's best concert hall and one of the masterpieces of the modernista architectural movement in Barcelona. Lluis Domenech i Montaner, its architect and a leader, with Antonio Gaudi, of the movement, seems to have poured all his ideas about the new architecture into this building, in which are joined the influences of the English Arts and Crafts Movement and Art Nouveau, and a newly revived pride in Catalan crafts and materials. The recently rehabilitated interior is as eye-filling - a rich mix of stained glass and ceramics, of ornate lamps and graceful statuary that are perfectly at home amid the curving lines of the auditorium.
Red velvet and gold predominate in the Gran Teatre del Liceu, about halfway down the Ramblas. From the outside, the Liceu looks like a modest wren in comparison to the Bird of Paradise that is the Palau. But the interior is a model of grandeur and elegance, and yet remarkably jewel-like and intimate.
THE Liceu was the idea of young militiamen who formed a musical society and produced an opera in 1838. The new opera house they envisioned was opened nine years later on the site of a monastery, paid for in large part by shareholders in the company the soldiers had formed. Those who invested were owners not only of the house but of their seats. And a third of the seats in today's Liceu have been inherited by descendants of those original shareholders.
Built at a time of expansion in Barcelona, with the rise of a powerful bourgeoisie, the 2,700-seat Liceu was one of many erected in cities throughout Europe in the mid-18th century. But Josep Oriol Mestres, the Catalan architect who designed the Liceu, did Barcelona proud, for the theater is considered today to be one of Europe's leading opera houses.
The house that began life as the city's most adventurous music theater is now a bastion of tradition. But the Liceu is distinguished by that very Spanish blend of elegance and piquant detail. No visit to the Liceu is complete, for example, without at least a quick glance through one or another of the doors leading to the proscenium boxes on the second floor into large anterooms decorated by the box owners. Some have the look of neglected finery common to old European railway cars. Others look like miniature Liceus, resplendent with murals and mirrors, brocades and velvets, fake mantelpieces and swathes of heavy curtaining.
The Liceu has long been a focus of social protest. Idealism of a different sort pervades the airy, gracefully functional Teatre Lliure, or Free Theater, on Carrer Leopold Alas. The leading Catalan-language theater in the city by virtue of productions whose brilliantly theatrical innovation bridges any language barrier, the Lliure has never lost its ties to the community it sprang from, in an area that remained a small-scaled working class neighborhood as Barcelona expanded around it. The Lliure building was once a workers' cooperative that housed an amateur theater. And something of that proletarian aura lingers about the theater and its handsome little bar and restaurant, which are open independent of the theater's schedule.
The Lliure was founded in 1976 by a 14-member theater cooperative that included young actors, directors, set designers and administrative and technical staff. Led today by a charter member of the group, the charismatic Fabia Puigserver, the Lliure presents works by such authors as Brecht, Shakespeare, Chekhov, Moliere and Genet as well as leading Catalan playwrights and new drama and music in a tiny black box-style theater whose changes in stage shape are themselves a subject of much audience anticipation. Theatrical productions in the house, which can seat from 200 to 350 people, tend to run for three months.
Barcelona's other major Catalan theater is the Companyia Flotats, in the Teatre Poliorama on the Ramblas, an extremely comfortable house whose lobby is notable for its ticket booth, which looks like a giant, ornate old armoire. Led by Josep Maria Flotats, an actor-director who worked extensively with the Comedie Francaise and other French theaters, the company is known for somewhat lighter theater fare than the Lliure, though theater that often touches on social issues. Typical is Copi's ''Una Visita Inoportuna,'' the winter season's production, an absurdist black comedy about a man who entertains a succession of friends, including the inopportune visitor Death, in a hospital room on the second anniversary of his being stricken with AIDS.
The Mercat de los Flors, housed in handsome buildings erected for Barcelona's 1929 International Exhibition on Montjuic mountain, is another important stop on any theater tour of the city. Just up the hill, too, is the Teatre Grec, an open-air amphitheater carved out of the mountain and its forests and gardens, that may be seen year round but presents performances only in summer.
The main house of the Mercat de los Flors was first used as a theater by Peter Brook, who had been searching for protean theater space in 1983 for ''Carmen.'' A huge auditorium with an outstandingly pretty lobby and a bar and restaurant overlooking the rooftops of Barcelona, the 999-seat theater today presents leading drama, dance and music experimentalists. Its visionary young director, Andreu Morte i Teres, has also claimed an adjoining building for less established experimentalist work. Once a flower market, Espai B is an immense space of an indoor theater that can accommodate up to 4,000.
A good deal of dance is presented in Espai B, and Barcelona boasts an even more adventurous dance theater in La Fabrica, a former textile factory on Carrer Perill. Founded in 1980 by Norma Axenfeld-Pereira and Maria Antonia Gelabert, La Fabrica is a dance studio by day and a rough-hewn little theater by night, with stadium seating for 230 and presentations of the newest in modern dance, particularly by Spanish choreographers.
Similarly unusual theater, dance, music and poetry readings are offered by Barcelona's noted Institut del Teatre on Sant Pere mes Baix, under the direction of Jordi Coca, the Catalan theater scholar, and Miguel Montes and Joan Abellan, the heads of the dance and drama departments. The institute boasts two small theaters.
The professional theater presented in La Sala Gran, which seats 300, tends to be first plays and drama that tends not to be produced by other theaters, often directed by new directors. The cozy little La Cuina, which is on the site of a former cooking school, seats 142 and exists to offer ''a cultural context,'' as Mr. Coca puts it, in the form of debates, videos, discussions and readings that have to do with the work presented in the larger theater.
AND finally, to end a Barcelona theater tour on a colorfully indigenous note, visits are in order to Bodega Bohemia and Bar Pastis, where the patrons and settings are theater in themselves. The Bohemia, said to be a favorite hangout of Pina Bausch, the dark expressionist of German contemporary dance, opened its doors in 1893 and the paper streamers and tinfoil shrine look as if they haven't been touched since.
At the Bohemia, a bar on Carrer Lancaster, elderly cabaret singers mount a tiny stage and sing songs from other times to music pounded out on an battered upright piano by an equally ancient pianist. One recent visit yielded a performance in Catalan of the title song from ''Cabaret'' and several songs in a wandering old soprano voice by a red-wigged ''newly arrived star from Paris.'' Patrons occasionally get up to belt out impassioned original tributes to Catalonia. But it is the singers who are the draw, and they perform with bracing dignity.
The later it gets, the livelier the human drama at the Pastis, a tiny bar on Carrer Santa Monica just off the Ramblas. One or two of the dusty bottles over the bar do contain the liqueur pastis. But it is atmosphere that draws many to the place. Opened in 1947 by Quime Ballester and Carme Pericas, Valencians just back from a visit to Marseilles and eager to re-create a little of that city, the Pastis has become known as a shrine to Edith Piaf. Piaf's songs are still played on a phonograph behind the bar, and the singer is commemorated in dusty art scattered about the two-table room. But the Pastis is even more inhabited by the spirits of Quime, whose dark, drunken paintings adorn the grimy walls, and Carme, who took to playing two Piaf records almost obsessively after Quime's death, and who greeted old, familiar faces with ''How long you've been away!''
Transvestite prostitutes stroll by the windows, and from time to time a prospective customer peers in, then darts away, quickly realizing his mistake. The Pastis has been home over the years - to lovers and bohemians, young political activists and women-friends meeting for a drink together after a long day. It is also Barcelona at its most inherently and casually theatrical.
 
THE BARCELONA BEAT
 
Drama and Music
Gran Teatre del Liceu (61 Rambla de Caputxins; telephone 318-9277). ''Cosi Fan Tutti,'' through Feb. 20; ''I Puritani,'' March 2 through March 13; ''Boris Godunov,'' March 24 to April 7. Tickets from $44 to $72.
Palau de la Musica Catalana (Carrer Amadeu Vives; 301-1104). Performances in February and March by the Orquestra Ciutat de Barcelona, Concept de Ibercamera, Orquestra Solistes de Catalunya, Euroconcert de Budapest, Coro Madrigal, Orquestra les Cordes de Budapest and Ibercamera Orquestra de Cadaques. Tickets $4.50 to $36.
Mercat de los Flors (59 Carrer Lleida; 426-1875). Modern dance companies from France and Italy, February; festival of Italian modern dance, March 2 and 3; Catalan theater companies in plays by Tirso de Molina, Samuel Beckett and Heinrich Muller, March 7 to 18 and March 22 to April 1; Companya Danca Metros, March 22 to April 1. Tickets $7.20 to $9. Teatre Lliure (2 Carrer Leopold Alas; 218-9251). In February, Luigi Pirandello's ''The Giants of the Mountain,'' performed by the Companiya Teatre Lliure; ''La Musica i el Cine: Novi Vavilon,'' the Chamber Orchestra of the Teatre Lliure, and a poetry reading. In March, ''The Giants of the Mountain'' continues; music by Ravel, Berio, Montsalvatge and Hindemith, Chamber Orchestra; Benjamin Britten's ''Noyes Fludde,'' Chamber Orchestra; poetry reading. Tickets $5.80 to $9; there are also half-price days each week. Companyia Flotats (Teatre Poliorama, 115 Rambla Estudis; 317-7599). Copi's ''Visita Inoportuna,'' through March 4; Chekhov's ''Three Sisters'' opens April 3. Tickets $5.90 to $11.70. Teatres de l'Institut (7 Sant Pere mes Baix; 317-2078).  Theater workshops, through March 11; dance season, April 17 to 29. Tickets $9. La Fabrica (10 Carrer Perill; 257-4417. L'irregular Danza, Feb. 24 and 25; Timanfaya, March 9 and 10; Danza al Teatre Obert, Centre Dramatic Generalitat de Catalunya, March 29, 30 and 31, and April 1, April 5, 6 and 7. Tickets $5.40 and $9.
 
Night Life
Bodega Bohemia (2 Carrer Lancaster; 302-5061). Open every day from 10:30 P.M. to 3 A.M. No cover charge. Bar Pastis (4 Carrer Santa Monica; 318-7980).  Open Monday through Thursday, 7:30 P.M. to 2 A.M., Fridays and Saturdays, 7:30 P.M. to 3 A.M. Sundays, 6:30 P.M. to 1:30 A.M. Best time to go is after 11:30 P.M.    - J. D.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photos: The box office at the Poliorama, home of Companyia Flotats, looks like an armoire; The Palau de la Musica, a hall designed by Domenech in 1908; The elegant boxes in the Liceu Theater, a leading opera house (pg. 8); Children playing in the Teatre Grec, an open-air amphitheater carved into Montjuic Mountain; Looking from behind the scenes at the Lliure Theater, once a workers' cooperative (pg. 9) (Amilcar de Leon); map of Barcelona (pg. 8)

Copyright 1990 The New York Times Company



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The New York Times

February 7, 1990, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Washington Talk;
Are Incumbents Playing With a Stacked Deck?

BYLINE: By ROBIN TONER, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section A; Page 18, Column 5; National Desk

LENGTH: 688 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Feb. 6

By any measure, Representative Dan Rostenkowski, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, had a tumultuous year in 1989.
The Chicago Democrat was in the thick of the fight over tax policy. He clashed bitterly with many elderly people over the Medicare program to protect the aged from the cost of extended illnesses. It was the kind of year that might have made enemies. But when the filing deadline passed not long ago, not a single person, Democrat or Republican, had filed to run against Mr. Rostenkowski in 1990. 
He is perhaps the ultimate safe incumbent, with a heavily Democratic district, a still powerful party organization and a campaign war chest of more than $1 million, enough to daunt the most optimistic challenger.
His ward-based political strength harks back to an earlier era. But in other respects, his circumstance underscores the nature of House elections in the late 1980's. They were very, very good to incumbents.
In 1986 and 1988, 98 percent of House members who sought re-election were returned to office. Most had some competition on the ballot, but still won comfortably. More than 85 percent were elected with at least 60 percent of the vote. Many people in both parties predict that the House elections of 1990 will run about the same, with only the slightest of shifts.
These statistics are at the heart of many political debates in Washington these days, from the effort to rewrite laws governing campaign finance to the first jousting over Congressional redistricting that will occur in 1991.
To some, the basic question is: Has the political system stifled competition and stacked the deck in favor of incumbents? Those who raise that question cite factors ranging from the laws on fund raising to the perquisites that come with Congressional office to the way Congressional district lines are drawn.
''The issue is whether we have any kind of real, competitive electoral process, particularly in the House of Representatives,'' said Fred Wertheimer, head of Common Cause, the Washington advocacy group.
Republicans, who last held a majority in the House in 1954, have argued that the current system has created a permanent Congress, and by extension a well-nigh permanent Democratic majority. Democrats counter that incumbents have always had high re-election rates. Thomas S. Foley, the House Speaker, has noted that all 45 incumbents seeking re-election in 1792 were successful.
Thomas Mann, director of governmental studies at the Brookings Institution, a Washington research group, says the last few election cycles have been unusually comfortable for incumbents. The re-election rates for 1980 and 1982 were about 90 percent, considerably lower than in recent years. But Mr. Mann argues that the rise in re-election rates largely reflects the temper of the late 1980's. ''The national times were good and there was little sentiment for throw the rascals out,'' he said.
Still, many advocates of new campaign financing laws argue that the current fund-raising system gives unfair advantage to incumbents.
''You've got incumbents sloshing around in huge amounts of money, most of which they don't need, while challengers are starving,'' Mr. Wertheimer said. For example, Common Cause said, political action committees gave $82 million to incumbents and $9 million to challengers in the 1988 House races.
The threat of a permanent Congress has become a rallying cry for many Republicans this year as they take to the political trenches, hoping to expand their power in governors' offices and state legislatures, which will help draw the lines in the 1991 redistricting.
''Ninety-eight percent!'' Lee Atwater, the national Republican chairman, declared not long ago, referring to the re-election rates. ''For the Democrats, those odds aren't good enough. They want to draw district boundaries even tighter to protect themselves.''
In the meantime, a drive to limit terms in Congress is making some noise. A fund-raising solicitation for one such effort was recently mailed to LaVerne Rostenkowski, the wife of the Ways and Means chairman who came to Congress in 1958.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1990 The New York Times Company



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The New York Times

February 8, 1990, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

HEALTH;
Personal Health

BYLINE: By Jane E. Brody

SECTION: Section B; Page 13, Column 1; National Desk

LENGTH: 1459 words

An 80-year-old Nevada woman whose health problems dictate a salt-free, sugar-free, low-fat diet complains that ''nothing tastes good anymore.''
An 88-year-old widower in rural Minnesota with limited kitchen skills lives on a very narrow menu except for the five dinners a week delivered to him by Meals-on-Wheels volunteers.
A 78-year-old Brooklyn woman with a chronic disorder that impairs chewing and swallowing struggles each day to consume enough nutritionally balanced food to maintain her weight and well-being.
These elderly people are more typical than not. Experts say the health and longevity of millions of older Americans are being undermined because they are not following wholesome diets. 
As people age, the obstacles to good nutrition multiply even while eating properly becomes increasingly important to optimal health. Even temporary nutritional failings that are readily tolerated by young, healthy people can adversely affect the health of older people, especially if they are ill to begin with.
The problem is likely to worsen as growing millions of Americans live into their 70's, 80's and beyond without the knowledge and social support needed to assure healthful eating habits. Elderly men living alone are especially at risk, a recent study showed, because many are unaccustomed to planning, shopping and preparing for meals.
But solutions, some of them simple, are available if the elderly and their family and friends are aware of the difficulties. The first step may be to persuade older people that whatever their current age and state of health, it is not too late to make health-promoting dietary changes.
In the absence of scientifically established nutritional goals for older people, some take a nihilistic attitude, contending one can never really know what is best. But the all-too-common notion that ''I've eaten this way all my life and I see no reason to change now'' can eventually result in illness that might have been prevented or postponed by changes in diet and exercise habits.
On the other hand, some older people overreact to sound nutritional advice or to nutritional quackery, becoming fanatical about sticking to diets prescribed by physicians, friends or faddists. Out of fear or ignorance they may restrict their diets to the point of inducing nutritional inadequacies.
 
The Problems
Leading the long list is a basic lack of knowledge about how the nutritional needs of older people may differ from those of younger adults. Studies are just now getting under way to determine if there are special nutrient requirements for people over 50 and whether further changes occur when people reach 75 or 80.
As people age, changing physical factors can affect nutrient needs. These include a gradual loss of muscle and bone tissue, an increase in body fat and a shift of body fat to the abdomen. Along with a gradual decline in physical activity, these changes in body composition mean that older people need fewer calories to maintain a normal body weight.
But the need for essential nutrients - protein, vitamins and minerals -is believed to be at least as great as for younger adults. This means there is less room in an older person's diet for high-calorie but low-nutrient foods like sweets, snacks, alcohol and fats. More attention, not less, must be paid to the nutritional value of foods consumed as people age.
Many older people live alone and have no one to eat with regularly, a situation that does not invite thoughtful meal planning and preparation. A recent study sponsored by the National Institute on Aging showed that nutritionally poor diets are regularly consumed by 16 percent of people over 65 who live alone.
The problem is not money, according to the study by Dr. Maradee Davis and colleagues at the University of California at San Francisco. Rather, inexperience and lack of motivation are often obstacles to preparing wholesome meals. Older men who become widowed and do not know how to cook may end up relying on packaged meals and take-out foods that may be nutritionally inappropriate. Dr. Davis's study showed that 16 percent of men 55 to 64 years old and 25 percent of those over 75 who live alone had poor diets.
Gradual mental deterioration or persistent emotional depression are other common impediments to a wholesome diet among older people. An estimated 12 to 14 percent of elderly Americans are chronically depressed and often suffer progressive weight loss as a result.
Other contributing factors include physical impairments that limit mobility, and a loss of appetite that may stem from the inevitable decline in taste buds and odor receptors that accompanies aging. Those without natural teeth or with advanced gum disease may be restricted to a diet of soft foods that are low in fiber and essential nutrients.
In addition, nutritional status can be undermined by various chronic ailments that necessitate bland or highly restricted diets or by medications and diseases that impair absorption through the digestive tract or increase the need for certain nutrients. These problems are often exaggerated for the elderly who live in nursing homes or other institutional settings where they may be dependent on others to feed them and where they have no choice about the timing and kinds of foods they are given.
 
Possible Solutions
Educating older people about nutritional needs and how to overcome common obstacles to a good diet is crucial to improving their nutritional well-being. Toward that end, the American Institute for Cancer Research (1759 R Street N.W., Washington, D.C. 20009) has prepared an excellent pamphlet, ''Be Your Best: Nutrition After Fifty,'' that outlines dietary needs and how to meet them.
Among the ''helpful hints'' suggested in this pamphlet and by other experts on nutrition for the elderly are these:
* If you dine alone, make eating more exciting by trying new foods or recipes frequently, by eating near a window or by treating yourself like a special guest. Whenever possible, try to eat with other people, perhaps in community meal programs or by reciprocal invitations with others who live alone.
* Anticipate your reluctance to cook for yourself and prepare larger recipes when you do cook. Then freeze the leftovers in individual portions (be sure to label the containers) for later use. A microwave oven for quick defrosting or easy reheating is an ideal kitchen tool for older people.
* To cope with a sluggish appetite, increase your use of ''safe'' seasonings like herbs, spices, lemon juice, peppers, garlic and vinegar. This is especially helpful for those who must restrict their use of salt.
* If your meal capacity is reduced, eat small amounts at a time but eat more often than three times a day. For example, the Brooklyn woman who has trouble chewing and swallowing eats six small meals a day instead of three big ones.
* Strive to get more nutritive value for your food dollar. Check unit prices for best buys. For example, light tuna packed in water is less expensive than albacore or chunk types, powdered skim milk costs less than liquid milk, and hot cereals and rice you cook yourself cost less and are more nourishing than instant varieties.
* Take advantage of store specials, even if it means buying more than you can eat at one time. For example, when turkey is on sale, buy a whole one, roast it whole and freeze the leftovers in several portions, or have the butcher cut it up so that you can prepare small amounts at a time.
* Ask your physician to refer you to a consulting dietitian for advice on nutrition and meal planning. Or check the yellow pages for listings of registered dietitians. This is especially important for people who must live on special diets. In many communities the county office for the aging, the health department or the Cooperative Extension Service offer free counseling by a registered dietitian.
* Take advantage of community meal programs for the elderly.
* Resist nutritional quackery and faddism. Elderly Americans take more vitamin and mineral supplements than any other age group. In the process, many waste limited financial resources and some compromise their health by taking large doses of one or more nutrients.
Misconceptions about the role and value of supplements are common among the elderly. For example, more than 40 percent of people over 65 recently surveyed in Eugene, Ore., incorrectly believed that vitamin pills provided energy.
This survey also showed that more than half of older people rely on their physicians for nutritional advice. Since few doctors are schooled in nutrition, the researchers suggested that physicians make more use of dietitians to provide nutritional services for their patients.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Table showing various nutrients and the sources from which they come (source: American Institute for Cancer Research)

Copyright 1990 The New York Times Company



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The New York Times

February 9, 1990, Friday, Late Edition - Final

Experts on Homeless Push for an Old Idea: S.R.O.'s in New York

BYLINE: By ALAN FINDER

SECTION: Section A; Page 1, Column 1; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 2012 words

A consensus is emerging among experts on homelessness and housing in New York that if government wants to move tens of thousands of homeless people off the streets and out of shelters, it will have to reinvent an old idea: the single-room-occupancy hotel.
The city financed the building of about 1,000 rooms for single adults last year and has promised to build a total of 5,000 rooms by 1992. But experts say the city will have to build many times that number to mount a serious attack on homelessness.
For decades, single-room-occupancy hotels, or S.R.O.'s, were unappreciated, if not feared by New Yorkers. They were often viewed as cheap, shabby housing, havens for drug traffickers and other criminals. 
But the private hotels were also inexpensive housing of last resort for many single men and women who could not afford real apartments. Among those who found a welcome home in the hotels - where people generally live alone in small rooms, sharing bathrooms and kitchens - were the working poor, elderly pensioners, and the destitute, the disabled and the infirm.
The hotels' importance to some of New York's most vulnerable groups did not become clear until the late 1970's and 80's, when tens of thousands of S.R.O. rooms, most of them in Manhattan, were converted or demolished to make way for upper-income housing or commercial space. The number of people living on the city's streets, in its subways and in bus and rail terminals soared.
To find permanent housing now for these people, the city should revert to the model of the single-room hotels, dozens of experts on low-income housing, advocates for the homeless, elected officials and even some developers said in interviews.
Market forces and some government policies, including tax abatements, made it attractive for private owners in Manhattan to convert their hotels to more profitable luxury apartments and office space, the experts said. To reinvent the S.R.O. hotel as a cure for homelessness, they said, the government should provide the financing and nonprofit groups should manage the hotels. Some people also suggested that private companies be encouraged to build and operate small residential hotels, particularly outside Manhattan.
In essence, the experts want the city to modify its $5.1 billion 12-year housing plan - which centers on building affordable apartments for families -by creating thousands of new rooms for single adults in renovated hotels or new buildings.
More than 3,000 apartments have been created for families in the last three years in the poorest neighborhoods, nearly all of them in formerly abandoned buildings. An additional 13,000 are under construction, and work is to begin soon on 20,000 more.
Many proponents said they were hopeful that they could persuade the administration of Mayor David N. Dinkins to expand the housing plan to include perhaps 10,000 to 20,000 new residential-hotel rooms in the next few years. The Deputy Mayor for Policy and Planning, Barbara J. Fife, said the administration understood that there was ''a real housing crisis'' for single adults and that she hoped a strategy could be developed soon.
 
Court Ruling Creates New Sense of Urgency
The need to expand the hotel stock has taken on more urgency in the last two months, since the courts struck down one of New York's foremost weapons to prevent the spread of homelessness - a law protecting S.R.O. hotels from alteration or demolition.
In 1985, the city tried to halt the loss of thousands of residential hotel rooms - the estimates range from 35,000 to 100,000 - by imposing the moratorium on their alteration or demolition. The ban was ruled unconstitutional last July by New York State's highest court, the Court of Appeals.
The court said the law deprived owners of the right to determine how their properties would be used. The United States Supreme Court decided in November not to consider the city's appeal, thereby dooming the moratorium.
Housing experts have been debating since then what the city and state should do to preserve and expand the critical housing resource.
Although the city is facing serious fiscal problems, it is likely to continue to spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year for new housing. The effort, which is part of the capital budget, is financed by issuing bonds that are paid back over many years.
Experts on the homeless want the Dinkins administration to expand significantly on the 5,000 new S.R.O. rooms promised by the Koch administration.
The Coalition for the Homeless has proposed creating an additional 15,000 S.R.O. rooms in the next three years.
''You want people off the streets?'' the chairman of the group, Robert M. Hayes, asked. ''Give them somewhere to go.''
Mr. Hayes said it would cost $500 million to build the additional units, and he argued that they could be financed with money earmarked for related purposes. He said the effort could be backed by nearly $300 million in capital money previously set aside for new shelters for the homeless and from money in existing state programs.
''It's a linchpin to getting people off the streets,'' Mr. Hayes said. ''Would it satisfy the total need? No. But would every New Yorker see a difference? Absolutely.'' More than 9,000 homeless single adults have sought refuge in municipal shelters on recent nights. Tens of thousands of other homeless men and women are living on the streets.
 
Safeguarding the 40,000 Now Living in the Hotels
In addition to creating residential hotels, the city has to devise a strategy to help preserve the low-cost rooms of the estimated 40,000 to 45,000 people still living in S.R.O. hotels, said lawyers who represent the tenants. That includes strict enforcement of state rent laws that protect hotel tenants, even in the absence of the city's moratorium.
The lawyers have presented their own proposals to the Dinkins adminstration. Among them is a request that the city buy or seize through eminent domain some of the largest residential hotels in Manhattan before they are emptied and altered or demolished.
''This is the perfect opportunity for the new Mayor to demonstrate what he wants to do about low-income housing for single adults,'' said Saralee E. Evans, director of the West Side S.R.O. Law Project, which represents hotel tenants.
The city has purchased more than a half-dozen S.R.O. hotels in recent years, many of them on the Upper West Side. The city paid for renovations and turned the hotels over to nonprofit groups to manage. The S.R.O. Law Project lawyers want the city to step up that effort dramatically.
Ms. Evans said the city should start with the largest S.R.O. hotel, the Times Square Hotel at Eighth Avenue and 43d Street. The city took over the daily operation of the hotel last month. Its corporate owner has declared bankruptcy, and there were many complaints about the way a caretaker was running the hotel.
Ms. Evans and other tenants' lawyers said they were heartened by the quick response from the Dinkins administration. They would now like to see the city buy the hotel and turn it over to a nonprofit group. Deputy Mayor Fife said discussions were under way on the future of the 735-room hotel, which has about 200 long-term S.R.O. tenants.
''If the city can save this hotel for low-income people, it would be a symbol,'' Ms. Evans said. ''It would send a message that we care about these people.''
 
Issue of Independence: How Many Services?
Many experts said that a substantial portion of the homeless adult population, along with many S.R.O. residents, have physical or emotional disabilities and other problems, including drug or alcohol abuse, that require them to live under supervised conditions. The need for social services adds greatly to the cost of operating the new S.R.O. hotels being created by the city and nonprofit agencies.
A significant number of the homeless and S.R.O. tenants, perhaps a third or more, are employable and able to live on their own in unsupervised residential hotels, many experts said.
Some experts even argue that private companies should be encouraged to build and operate, for a profit, new residential hotels.
That would require the city and state to change zoning regulations, building codes and other laws. Only nonprofit institutions like universities and social-service agencies are now allowed to build dormitories and other single-room housing.
 
Encouraging Developers To Build S.R.O. Hotels
George McDonald, the president of the Doe Fund, a foundation that works on behalf of the homeless, contended that private companies could build small residential hotels, perhaps two or three stories tall and with about 100 rooms, for $18,000 a room. By renting the rooms for $75 or $80 a week to working single people, the companies could make profits, Mr. McDonald said.
He added that he had spoken to developers and bankers who were interested in the concept. He also cited a program in San Diego that has resulted in the production of more than 1,000 S.R.O. rooms in the last three years.
''You can build new housing for single poor people,'' Mr. McDonald said. ''All the city has to do is to get out of the way.''
Kevin B. McGrath, a lawyer who represents developers and who proposed a similar idea to the City Council three years ago, said he was ''absolutely convinced'' that some companies would find the concept appealing.
But several developers, along with the State Housing and Community Renewal Commissioner, Richard L. Higgins, and Abraham Biderman, who resigned last month as the City Housing Preservation and Development Commissioner, said building S.R.O. hotels in New York would cost more than twice Mr. McDonald's estimate.
 
Why Costs Are Higher In New York City
The developers said companies could not make profits building and operating residential hotels without large subsidies. Mr. Biderman said the cost was so great that only the government, working with managers of nonprofit housing, could be expected to produce residential hotels.
''We found that the San Diego model is just not directly transferable here,'' Mr. Higgins said. New York building codes are more stringent, he said, and labor and construction materials are much more expensive.
Mr. Higgins said S.R.O. hotels could not be built in New York for anything approaching the costs in San Diego, which range from $21,000 to $31,000 a room, according to California housing and planning officials.
Mr. Biderman said the rebuilding of abandoned residential hotels in New York had cost an average of $40,000 a room. New construction would cost more, he said, and would likely face an additional problem, community opposition. ''I don't believe it will ever be financially attractive to the private sector,'' he said.
Borough President Ruth W. Messinger of Manhattan said she thought it was more appropriate for nonprofit agencies to manage the vulnerable people who live in residential hotels.
Mr. Biderman said the current strategy, which combines city resources in financing and development with nonprofit managers, should be expanded and refined, particularly through the purchase of more S.R.O. hotels and the rebuilding of abandoned ones.
''But there are not enough nonprofits, and there are not enough buildings, and there is not enough money to solve the problem in the foreseeable future,'' Mr. Biderman said.  Many advocates for the homeless said, however, that unless the city acts decisively, the homeless will continue to crowd the sidewalks and overwhelm the parks and subways.
''The political propulsion to create 20,000 new S.R.O. units is the abiding frustration of corpses on the streets,'' Mr. Hayes of the Coalition for the Homeless said. ''Many people think homelessness is ruining the city. I'm not sure there is a tremendous groundswell of humanitarian compassion for homeless adults on the streets, but I'm absolutely convinced that the only way to end the frustration, for whatever reason, is to house these people.'' 'You want people off the streets? Give them somewhere to go.'

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photos: George McDonald, President of the Doe Fund (The New York Times); Richard L. Higgins, State Housing Commissioner (The New York Times/Jim Estrin) (pg. B4)

Copyright 1990 The New York Times Company



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The New York Times

February 10, 1990, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

Drug-Shooting Casualty Inspires a City to Resist

BYLINE: By JANE GROSS, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section 1; Page 9, Column 1; National Desk

LENGTH: 1010 words

DATELINE: EAST PALO ALTO, Calif., Feb. 5

Last weekend, volunteers from a local drug rehabilitation program patched and painted the 35 bullet holes in a pink and white stucco bungalow on Westminister Avenue here, where 60-year-old C. W. Roddy was wounded slightly by gunfire on New Year's Eve.
While the painters worked at Mrs. Roddy's house, two deputies and a sergeant on loan from the county sheriff's department helped patrol this crime-ridden city, which cannot afford enough police officers to contain the spread of drugs on its streets.
Meanwhile, county and city officials set aside their jurisdictional squabbles and carried a $5.1 million grant proposal to Washington, seeking money for law enforcement, drug rehabilitation and educational programs for this largely black community of 18,500 residents, 40 miles south of San Francisco, where one in five are unemployed and one in 10 are in prison.
In these and other ways, things have changed in East Palo Alto since Mrs. Roddy's shooting, presumed by the police to be a result of her hectoring the drug dealers on her block. The attack on her home and her refusal to be bullied into silence have outraged and inspired the community as never before, and sparked new government action. 
 
Sense of Optimism Voiced
''I've seen so much negativism in this city,'' said Mrs. Roddy, a retired telephone company service representative. ''Maybe what happened to me has given people the strength to speak out. I know God spared me for some reason and maybe it's to bring unity to East Palo Alto.''
Only by the loosest definition is Mrs. Roddy a ''drug crusader,'' as she has been called in local news accounts of the shooting. Like many of the older people who have lived in East Palo Alto for decades, she has seen her community deteriorate. Angry and frustrated, she harangued the dealers, noted the license numbers of cars cruising the street to buy or sell drugs and begged city officials for more police protection.
''She wanted something simple and basic,'' said Sgt. Ron Sibley of the East Palo Alto police department, which handles more complaints per officer than any force in the Bay Area. ''She wanted to come in and out of her driveway without being harassed. She wanted to sleep at night without hearing gunfire.''
Perhaps it is Mrs. Roddy's very ordinariness that has prompted all the attention. ''Here's an average citizen, in her own home, within inches of being killed,'' said Tom Nolan of the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors. ''People have the sense that things are totally out of control if this can happen.''
 
City Drive for Outside Help
Mr. Nolan is a leader in the recent effort to bring outside assistance to this troubled city. The city voted to incorporate in 1983, despite warnings that the paltry tax base would not support services. That bitterly contested incorporation vote was upheld by the Supreme Court in 1987, but the long legal battle cost the city money it could ill afford.
Just as the city was going broke, crack exploded on its grimy streets, just a few blocks from the million-dollar mansions of Palo Alto and the lush campus of Stanford University. More than half the city's $5 million budget now goes for police services, but it is not nearly enough. In 1989, there were 17 homicides, for a rate of 101 per 100,000 people, more than 10 times the national rate.
Among the homicides in 1988 was the slaying of a 26-year-old police officer, just six weeks out of the academy. In the wake of that slaying, several nearby cities and the California Highway Patrol lent officers to East Palo Alto for a few months. The results were impressive, with police calls down 50 percent and no homicides or shootings. But the cities of Palo Alto, Menlo Park and Redwood City, whose residents come here to buy drugs, could not send their officers here indefinitely.
The county, on the other hand, had resources to spare, but was at loggerheads with the city of East Palo Alto, which was wary of outsiders who might challenge the newfound autonomy. ''When you're trying to become an independent entity, it's difficult to accept help because it feels like failure,'' said State Senator Rebecca Morgan, a Republican from nearby Los Altos Hills. $500,000 From the County Senator Morgan was instrumental in bringing the two governments together. As a result, San Mateo County will give the city $500,000, which must be used for five more officers in East Palo Alto over the next two years. While the new officers are being recruited and trained, the county has lent the city several deputy sheriffs and sergeants, three each shift, nearly doubling the uniformed presence.
There is also a new neighborhood organization on Mrs. Roddy's block, Citizens United Against Drugs. The group's president, Jody Lee, is the mother of two dealers, among those at odds with Mrs. Roddy. Mrs. Lee said she hopes her sons ''will see me doing this and try to get their lives together.''
Mrs. Roddy seems particularly moved by Mrs. Lee's militancy. ''The day she came over to our side was a joyous day for me,'' Mrs. Roddy said. ''It's the beginning of unity.'' The outside of Mrs. Roddy's house no longer bears the scars of the shooting, but other marks endure, like the gash in a wooden coffee table in the living room and a shattered quilting frame in the garage. Her 1970 Pontiac is still in the shop, rammed while parked on the driveway in a separate attack on Jan. 10. In a third attack on Jan. 11, two makeshift Molotov cocktails were hurled at the house, but did not explode.
Mrs. Roddy's 37-year-old son, Darnell, remains jumpy, rushing every few minutes to look out the picture window, with its new glass panes.
''Darnell, what is the matter?'' Mrs. Roddy asked, blandly.
''It's too noisy out there,'' he snapped.
Mrs. Roddy maintains she is not nervous. ''I've never really been frightened,'' she said. ''I've been angry, livid, upset with the apathy of the people of East Palo Alto. But, I'm not afraid to die. I try to live my life daily like it was my last. When it's time to go, it's time to go.''

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: C. W. Roddy, whose refusal to be bullied by drug dealers in East Palo Alto, Calif., has inspired the city and led to government action. (The New York Times/Terrence McCarthy)

Copyright 1990 The New York Times Company



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The New York Times

February 11, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Wine Maker Fails to Thwart Street Alcoholics

BYLINE: By FRANK J. PRIAL, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section 1; Part 1, Page 37, Column 1; National Desk

LENGTH: 623 words

DATELINE: SAN FRANCISCO

Cheap, fortified wine, street alcoholics' staple drink, is harder to find in some cities these days because of citizens' groups, government agencies and some companies that make it.
At the same time, there is little indication of any decrease in consumption of alcohol or in the number of street alcoholics.
Last June the E.&J. Gallo Winery voluntarily removed its Thunderbird and Night Train Express brands from retailers' shelves in the rundown Tenderloin district of San Francisco, in a test: Would it cut street drinking?
In September the company expanded the ban to all its markets. 
''You can't get it in one store, you get it in another,'' said Tommy Macauley, who calls himself a street person. ''Or you just drink something else.''
The Gallo company said, ''We believe, and the evidence tends to support, that if alcoholics are deprived of one source, be it beer, wine or cheap distilled spirits, they will find another regardless of difficulty or cost.''
Nancy Russell of the North of Market Planning Coalition, a grouping of Tenderloin social agencies, said: ''Gallo has done everything they said they would, but it's true that the ban hasn't done much to stop drinking.''
 
'This Stuff Is Bad for You'
Phillip Faight, owner of The Ram's Head, a Tenderloin tavern, said, ''The important thing is to get across the idea that this stuff is bad for you.'' He is also chairman of the Safe and Sober Streets Committee.
In Boedekker Park, a mecca for Tenderloin street drinkers and the only playground for 5,000 children in the area, drunks engage in noisy fights and sleep it off on benches. At the Downtown Grocery, a clerk said as he wrapped a pint of Thunderbird, ''We stocked up before the ban.''
Some Tenderloin groceries reportedly buy the wine from retailers outside the proscribed area.
Richard's Wild Irish Rose, made by the Canandaigua Wine Company in upstate New York, is a popular alternative. Last summer Canandaigua said it would pull Wild Irish Rose out of the Tenderloin, but it stayed on the shelves, and the company said it was up to the local distributors to sell or not sell it.
Tenderloin alcoholics turned to malt liquor, a high-alcohol beer - particularly Olde Englishe 800 - and cheap vodka. A pint of Thunderbird is about $1, a half-pint of vodka $1.50 and a quart of malt liquor $1.40.
A Gallo spokesman, Dan Solomon, said most Thunderbird is drunk not by street alcoholics but by older people scrimping on pensions.
The trade journal Market Watch estimates that in 1988, Thunderbird accounted for 4.5 million cases of Gallo's total volume of almost 60 million cases, and Night Train for 500,000 cases. The volume of Richard's Wild Irish Rose in 1988 was 6 million cases, or close to 62 percent of Canandaigua's annual sales.
 
Discount Stores Sell the Wines
An informal survey of a dozen wine and liquor shops in middle-class neighborhoods in New York City and New Jersey turned up only one that stocked either of the top two screwtop wines. Mr. Solomon said discount stores like K Mart were important suppliers of Thunderbird.
Most cities ban public drinking and selling liquor to people who appear drunk. Los Angeles, Seattle and San Diego have asked stores in the poorest neighborhoods to stop selling the cheap wines. In Salt Lake City, these wines were banned for a year in seven state liquor stores. Kenneth Wynn, the Utah Alcohol Beverage Control Director, said curbside drinking seemed down, but sales of substitutes were up.
The Oregon Liquor Control Commission made 10 stores in the Old Town district of Portland stop selling the wines. Steven Brinkerhoff, a commission supervisor, said: ''They still drink on the sidewalks. They're just drinking other products.''

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1990 The New York Times Company



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The New York Times

February 11, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Old Pro, Young Idol Team Up for 'Revenge'

BYLINE: By LARRY ROHTER

SECTION: Section 2; Page 20, Column 1; Arts and Leisure Desk

LENGTH: 1804 words

DATELINE: TOLUCA, Mexico

On a cool, damp and somewhat misty December afternoon, two men walk across a meadow, rifles in hand and hunting dogs baying as they advance toward a cluster of pine trees in pursuit of their prey. The age difference between them is such that they could be father and son, and the easy familiarity they display toward each other suggests just that. Kevin Costner and Anthony Quinn are busy at work, but as the cameras roll, it is difficult to tell where their roles end and reality begins, so comfortable do they seem in each other's company.
Mr. Costner and Mr. Quinn are the central figures of ''Revenge,'' a torrid and sometimes brutal tale of lust, betrayal and retribution played out against a Mexican backdrop. But perhaps even more intriguing than the story itself is the pairing of one of Hollywood's most bankable young stars, whose intense but understated performances in movies such as ''No Way Out'' and ''Field of Dreams'' have led some to call him ''the new Gary Cooper,'' with one of the foremost leading men of the last 40 years, an exuberant personality who exudes machismo from every pore. 
''Yeah, they certainly are different,'' said the director, Tony Scott. ''They are such opposites as actors. But there was a camaraderie between them from the first time I saw them sitting down together. You got a sense that whether they did this film or not, these two guys would always spend time together, and that's exactly what I was looking for.''
In ''Revenge,'' which opens in New York on Friday, Mr. Costner plays Cochran, an Indiana farm boy turned Navy pilot who finds himself at loose ends after retiring from the military. Mr. Quinn is cast as ''Tiburon'' (''Shark'') Mendez, a Mexican millionaire and political kingmaker who also dabbles in the drug trade. The men transform a casual friendship as tennis partners and fishing buddies into something deeper and more satisfying to both of them, try to kill each other after Cochran falls in love and into bed with Miryea, the young and alluring wife of the older man, but eventually reach a sort of reconciliation.
A triangle, in other words, but one in which the woman at the apex, played by Madeleine Stowe, matters less to the story than do the two men at the base. ''He doesn't know that my love for him is because he is my surrogate son,'' Mr. Quinn, sitting in a director's chair during a break in the filming, said of the relationship between the two male characters. ''Sometimes we older men love a young man and see in him qualities that we had or hoped to have. For my character, there's great pain in losing the wife, but that pain is not as great as losing the friend.''
''The truth is that he can trust me, except for that one moment,'' Mr. Costner added. ''The Cochran character resists the temptation three or four times, but then succumbs. The Tiburon character, being cuckolded, he wants to forgive, he wants to let it go by. But finally he can't hold the thing in, and it explodes; it takes over.''
''Revenge'' first surfaced a decade ago as a 99-page novella written by Jim Harrison, a practitioner of tough-guy prose in the Hemingway mold, and when Mr. Costner came upon it around 1985, he felt an instant attraction. One sentence in particular, he recalled, stayed with him: ''There is an impulse for vengeance among certain men south of the border that leaves even the sturdiest Sicilian gasping for fresh air.'' The 35-year-old actor's big commercial successes in ''The Untouchables'' and ''Bull Durham'' were at that point still to come, but he made an effort to acquire the rights to the work.
''It seemed to me something I wanted to do myself,'' Mr. Costner said. ''I contemplated directing it, because it seemed like a small movie. The story was manageable, but the themes were big and universal, and the writing was tough and it was honest and it was original. There was poignance in the story, but it read like a movie to me.''
In the end, the book ended up in the hands of the producer Ray Stark, but Mr. Costner's continuing interest in the story and what he called ''my history'' of box-office success helped get the project off the ground. ''To me, it's like picking a football team,'' Mr. Costner said. ''The story made sense, to play the game made sense, and it was obvious that I should play quarterback or end. I mean, Cochran is a role that I should play.''
Casting the role of Tiburon, also known as Tibey, was more of a challenge. ''This movie needed Anthony Quinn more than it needed me,'' Mr. Costner said. ''I mean, there are probably five or six guys who could play Cochran's role, but who else is there who could play the role of Tibey?''
''The Tiburon character has to be really charming, and Anthony has that in spades,'' Mr. Costner added. ''He has to have danger and he has to have presence. Anthony has that because he's been a leading man all his life. And he has to be that age. The age is the key, so it's a perfect role for him.''
Mr. Quinn, who will turn 75 in April, agreed, explaining that he found the role to be a close fit, uncomfortably so at times. ''I think the man is of another time and his values are of another time,'' he said. ''It's the old country mentality, which also happens to be mine. I think sexual liberation is a lot of garbage. I mean, there's no code, there's no honor. It was a question of morality that Tiburon takes the action he does. So that's why I did the picture, that and the fact it's a classic, old-fashioned story that could have been done by John Wayne or Gary Cooper.''
''I'm aware that a lot of American women will not understand my behavior, will find it as twisted as all hell,'' he continued. ''They'll say: 'Well, that terrible man, he slices up the girl's face and then almost kills his friend.' I'm saying that the man can't help it; he was born with that morality. I mean, a hunting dog can't help that he bites.''
But Mr. Scott, whose director credits include what was perhaps the ultimate buddy film of the 80's, ''Top Gun,'' as well as ''Beverly Hills Cop II'' and ''The Hunger,'' believes that ''Revenge'' is also ''very much a woman's film, especially in the first half.'' As ''a powerful, obsessive story about forbidden love, it's what every woman dreams of, of being swept off her feet by someone who comes along.'' And in the match-up of Mr. Costner and Ms. Stowe, who first came to notice in ''Stakeout,'' ''you can smell the energy; you can smell the vibrations between the two of them,'' he said.
Mr. Quinn said the dark sexual tension that percolates constantly throughout ''Revenge'' and is essential to the story made him wonder at first if he was right for the role of ''Shark'' Mendez. ''I had my doubts,'' he acknowledged. ''Obviously you know how old I am, and I didn't know if people would accept that I had such a young wife. I thought I should be 15 or 20 years younger. But I'm still a very physical man, even now. I play an hour or two of tennis every day. I go walking. I exercise in the morning. I swim an awful lot. And I do see young girls looking at me, so I thought, what the hell.
''I'm very happy to be in this picture,'' he said, guffawing, ''because it is probably the last picture I'll ever do where I get to have a young wife.''
Shooting ''Revenge'' on locations ranging from Durango and Puerto Vallarta to Mexico City also represented something of a homecoming for Mr. Quinn, who was born in Chihuahua at the height of the Mexican Revolution but moved to Los Angeles while still an infant.
 
''
Though, as Mr. Quinn noted, he has more often been cast more in roles as an Italian, Greek, Arab or Slav, he won an Oscar for best supporting actor in 1952 playing a Mexican in ''Viva Zapata,'' came back for another try in ''The Children of Sanchez'' and is glad to be getting another opportunity at a meaty Latino part. ''It's very natural to me,'' he said. ''I haven't done it in many years, but I'm playing someone I know quite well.''
Mr. Costner, in contrast, found himself assuming unfamiliar duty as executive producer of ''Revenge'' as well as its star. The title is a nebulous one, but Mr. Costner, who worked as a stagehand early in his career and has often said his ultimate goal is to ''involve myself in every aspect of the movies,'' made an effort to give it substance.
''I'm not directing the movie,'' he said emphatically. ''What I try to do is keep the movie on track, meaning that if the movie starts to slip away dramatically, there are certain things I can't control'' even as executive producer.Movies, he added ''always threaten to go somewhere else, not because someone is trying to do it on purpose, but because they are fragmented, that's the way they are shot. So you just become another eye looking out for the movie.''
One of the matters in which Mr. Costner took an intense interest was the script. Mr. Harrison did an initial draft, and John Huston and his son Tony were among the others who also took a crack at the story, but eventually, Mr. Scott said, ''Kevin became a great force in terms of the script and in terms of the character of the piece.''
''The fact is that it's such a rich story that every writer was able to derive things out of it,'' Mr. Costner said. ''As it was rewritten, it got farther away from what the book was. In the final analysis, what I tried to do was bring it back to what had attracted everyone to the book, which was that it's a story, a 99-page story.''
The final script, credited to Mr. Harrison and Jeffrey Fiskin, was, said Mr. Costner, very much in his style and to his liking. ''I'm a real lean, linear kind of actor. I try to have forward motion in everything, where basically you just stand there and do your lines, you know what I mean? The lines will decide what is important.''
Mr. Scott said he also favored that approach, which he acknowledged was something of a departure for him. ''I pushed them to give me this piece,'' Mr. Scott said. ''Because I think I have a reputation for being a visual director and glitzy and rock-and-roll, not everybody was convinced in terms of giving me this material. It's different from what I have done. I suppose I loved it because it has a whole range of emotional buttons to push. It has passion, violence, and it's set in the strange world of Mexico, with those overwhelming locations, those beautiful landscapes.''
''Revenge,'' Mr. Scott and the rest of the team agreed, will be judged a success only if it convinces moviegoers that the film's creators are artists who know how to tell a story. ''I know that guys in the audience are going to be going, 'Cochran, oh, Jeez, oh, no, man, don't do it,'
* '' Mr. Costner said. ''That's where you like people to be during a movie. So you stay and watch, but you're going, 'Oh, no.' Hey, it's the movies, and stuff happens.''

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Madeleine Stowe and Mr. Costner in the film opening on Friday.

TYPE: Review

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The New York Times

February 14, 1990, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Families Join in Deciding to Contribute to the Neediest

BYLINE: By NADINE BROZAN

SECTION: Section B; Page 4, Column 3; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 398 words

For many families, making a donation to The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund is a cooperative enterprise, with parents and children deciding together that they must help those less fortunate.
A typical letter, which came from Larchmont, N.Y., began, ''Enclosed please find a check from the Kirklin family - John, Judy, Christopher (8 years old) and Katherine (4 years old) - to be used to help needy persons.''
''Katherine wished that the money be used to help needy children, old persons and grown-ups,'' it continued. ''Chrstopher wished that elderly persons be helped. We all hope that this money will help to ease the suffering of some needy persons.'' Their gift was $50. 
A note signed the William Siegles said: ''There are five in the Siegle family. Each member from the 9-year-old baby sitter to Mom and Dad and college freshman - have given what we could. Wish it were more.'' The Siegles, who live in South Salem, N.Y., sent $26.
Elizabeth W. Kearns of Darien, Conn., sent $250 with a note explaining: ''There are five of us in the Kearns family and we live and work in New York. It's a wonderful but very hard city, and we'd like to share this with those for whom it is particularly hard.''
 
A 'Generous' Sister
Sometimes people who are related give because of one another - but at different times. Last month, Kenneth M. Obel, a junior at Yale University, wrote that he was contributing $20 as a gift for his sister, Karen Obel, a recent graduate of Cornell. He described her as ''the most loving, generous sister that a brother could have.''
''Our parents taught us to think of the well-being of others, not just our own,'' he wrote. ''Karen is acutely aware of the swelling number of hungry and homeless people living on our city streets. She sometimes brings sandwiches from home to give to these unfortunate individuals. I hope that members of our generation will always remember that the well-being of all the members of our society is a collective responsibility.''
This week a letter from Susan B. Obel of the Bronx arrived, which said: ''Enclosed is my check to help mothers with children in need, please. I am very proud that my child, Kenneth Obel, made this first gift to the fund this year in honor of his sister, Karen.'' She sent $100.
 
Previously recorded ... $4,162,196.20
Recorded yesterday ... 22,204.76
 
Total ... $4,184,400.96

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1990 The New York Times Company



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The New York Times

February 15, 1990, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

Susceptibility to Tuberculosis Found in Blacks

BYLINE: By WARREN E. LEARY, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section A; Page 29, Column 1; National Desk

LENGTH: 644 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Feb. 14

A statistical study indicates blacks may be more susceptible than whites to infection with tuberculosis.
The study of more than 25,000 residents of 165 racially integrated nursing homes in Arkansas found that blacks were twice as likely to be infected with the tuberculosis bacterium when living in the same exposure conditions as whites.
While the exact reason for this difference is unknown, the researchers theorize that it could stem from genetic differences that affect the ability of defensive cells in the lungs to knock out tuberculosis bacilli. But no difference between races was found in the percentage of the residents who became infected and later developed clinical tuberculosis symptoms. 
In a paper being published Thursday in The New England Journal of Medicine, researchers from the tuberculosis program of the Arkansas Department of Health said the higher rate of tuberculosis long seen in blacks had previously been attributed to environmental factors like poverty, overcrowding and poor nutrition.
''We happen to have stumbled on a new biological phenomenon no one has seen before,'' Dr. William W. Stead, the principal author of the study, said in a telephone interview. ''These data show that people are not equally infected when exposed to the same pathogen in the same way.
''Under the same living conditions, whites seem to be more able to fend off the tuberculosis organism before it can establish an infection than blacks,'' Dr. Stead continued.
The study reviewed the cases of 25,398 elderly people who were free of tuberculosis infection when they were admitted to integrated nursing homes in Arkansas. When they were retested several months later, 13.8 percent of the blacks and 7.2 percent of the whites showed evidence of infection.
 
Difficult to Separate Causes
Dr. Robert S. Baltimore, an expert on infectious disease at the School of Medicine of Yale University, said the question of an apparent predisposition to tuberculosis among blacks had intrigued scientists for years.
''This is a very interesting study by well-recognized researchers in the field, and the conclusions could be important if verified,'' Dr. Baltimore said. ''Epidemiology has suggested a higher susceptibility among blacks, but it's incredibly difficult to separate out environmental causes that could account for apparent racial differences.''
Dr. Stead, the principal author of the study, said that in nursing homes, all residents live under the same conditions, eat the same food, are exposed to the same air and have about the same amount of outside activity. But he said that the researchers could not control for things like prior nutritional status, vitamin D deficiency or smoking history, all of them factors suspected of affecting susceptibility to tuberculosis.
 
Little Change in Federal Policy
Dr. Richard O'Brien of the Tuberculosis Control Division of the Federal Centers for Disease Control said the new findings, if confirmed, would probably not have a major effect on Government efforts to control the disease.
For more than 30 years, Dr. O'Brien said, tuberculosis rates have plummeted in the United States because of intensive screening and intervention efforts for high-risk groups. Blacks, he said, already are a special focus of tuberculosis prevention because a high proportion are included in these groups, like those who live in poverty, are undernourished or reside in overcrowded conditions or institutions.
About 22,000 cases of active tuberculosis, which is treatable with antibiotics, are reported in the United States each year, resulting in 1,700 deaths. It is believed that 10 million Americans are infected with the tuberculosis bacterium but do not develop the disease.
A recent resurgence of the disease in some cities has been associated with people infected by the virus that causes AIDS.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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The New York Times

February 17, 1990, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

Your Money;
Advice for Elderly On Health Policies

BYLINE: By Jan M. Rosen

SECTION: Section 1; Page 36, Column 1; Financial Desk

LENGTH: 862 words

Older taxpayers may be taken aback when they start to fill out their 1989 income tax forms. Many thought they had won a major victory in December when Congress repealed the surtax for catastrophic medical care that could have run as high as $800 per person or $1,600 per couple. But there it is on the forms, line 54 of the Form 1040 and line 23 of the 1040A.
''Ignore it,'' said Hal M. Cohen of Deloitte & Touche. ''Don't use it. The forms had already been printed when the surtax was repealed.'' Those who included that liability when making estimated tax payments last year ''will get it back as a refund,'' he added. 
Mr. Cohen, who is based in Morristown, N.J., is a member of the accounting firm's executive financial planning group. So he has a suggestion for how to use the funds that would have paid the surtax: buy supplemental medical insurance.
''The emotional and financial expenses of a long-term illness can deplete the assets and income of two generations,'' he said, if a family must pay for the uninsured portion of doctor and hospital bills or for custodial or nursing-home care not covered under Medicare that can cost $20,000 a year or more.
Consequently, Mr. Cohen is advising all his older clients, as well as those who may be responsible for elderly parents, to be sure they have adequate health-care insurance ''in order to avoid financial disaster or substandard medical care.''
Once a person reaches age 65, he or she is eligible for Medicare. It becomes the primary carrier for those who are retired, and supplemental ''medigap'' insurance is available through private carriers. Medicare pays 80 percent of allowable charges, but medical costs often exceed Medicare's allowable limits.
Medicare and the medigap policies will pay for nursing-home stays in approved facilities with medical staffs after hospitalization. Unlike Medicaid, which is the medical-welfare program for the indigent, Medicare will not pay for long-term custodial care for people who have not been hospitalized, like those suffering from Alzheimer's disease. So middle-class people are likely to need private insurance for this.
''Shop around,'' Mr. Cohen said. ''There can be tremendous differences among policies,'' both in terms of the cost and of the coverage provided. He suggested starting with the American Association of Retired Persons, which markets a Prudential medigap plan, or by consulting an independent insurance agent.
Insurance is regulated by state insurance commissions, so what is available in one state may not be available in another.
Tamara G. Telesko, vice president of Chase U.S. Private Banking, part of the Chase Manhattan Bank, said that with the frequent need for custodial care among the elderly, more people are becoming aware of the need for private insurance to supplement Medicare. However, she cautioned, this is a relatively new product, and actuarial data are still being developed. With rising health-care costs, premiums may rise.
Deloitte & Touche has advised its clients to look for policies that provide a waiver of premium in the event of disability, a maximum benefit period for one nursing-home stay of at least four years and a daily nursing-home benefit of about $80, with inflation protection written into the policy. Inflation protection can increase the premium cost by as much as one-third.
It is also important to make sure that the company issuing the policy is financially sound. One way to do this is to check the rating issued by A.M. Best & Company. Ratings range from A+ (superior) to C (poor).
Among the features Deloitte & Touche recommends in considering policies are these:
* Guaranteed Renewability. The policy should be guaranteed renewable for life, except for nonpayment of premium, so that the insurer cannot cancel the policy when the individual is making use of its coverage.
* Deductible Period. This is the period, generally 21 to 365 days, that must pass before the insurer begins to pay benefits. Although the shorter period is preferable, the longer period may reduce the premium.
* Grace Period. This is the time, generally seven to 31 days, after the premium due date, before which the insurer may cancel the policy. It gives the policyholder some protection, should he or she forget to pay the premium on time.
* Care Coverage. The policy should say clearly whether it covers skilled, intermediate and custodial care without a pre-hospitalization requirement. Also, some policies provide long-term home care only as a rider for an extra charge.
Alzheimer's disease is generally described in policy language as ''organically based mental conditions,'' and if such coverage is not specifically mentioned, Alzheimer's is probably not included.
In deciding on coverage, people need to do a cash-flow analysis to help determine how long they are able and willing to pay for their own medical costs before they would need insurance. And they need to determine whether they have any retiree health-care benefits.
Two groups are more likely than most to have these benefits, Mr. Cohen said - executives whose compensation package included them and union members.

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GRAPHIC: Drawing

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The New York Times

February 18, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Managing the Care of Elderly Relatives

BYLINE: By PENNY SINGER

SECTION: Section 12WC; Page 14, Column 3; Westchester Weekly Desk

LENGTH: 1380 words

THERE were 1,500 miles separating Joan K. Pompadur in Hartsdale from her grandmother and aunt in Florida. For years the Florida household had operated fairly smoothly, said Ms. Pompadur, who made periodic trips to Florida to check on her family.
''But when age and illness began to take its toll, the time came when they needed more help than a cleaning woman and I was at a loss as to where to find that help,'' Ms. Pompadur recalled. ''My grandmother, who was in her 90's, and my aunt, a semi-invalid in her 60's, were becoming increasingly fragile, and yet I couldn't leave my own household and children for any length of time to oversee their well-being.''
Ms. Pompadur was put in touch with Dr. Lenise Dolen, a psychologist and gerontologist who heads Dolen Consulting Systems in Chappaqua. Dr. Dolen, ''a private-care manager,'' specializes in helping clients find health and social services for elderly relatives living at a distance. 
Dr. Dolen ''found us a geriatric-care consultant in Florida who took over the supervision of the care of my grandmother and aunt,'' Ms. Pompadur said. ''She was available to them at all times around the clock and saw them whenever it became necessary.''
 
A New Health Field
Consultants in private geriatric-care management are a new breed of health professional, said Dr. Dolen, who is vice president of the National Association of Private Geriatric-Care Managers. They provide for recruitment, screening, training and supervision of home-care personnel, and will also handle Medicare forms, assist with other financial-entitlement programs and help families find legal assistance.
The national association was formed in 1985 in Manhattan by a group of professionals who had private gerontological practices. ''Our members, who are in private practice, include certified and licensed registered nurses who have had geriatric training and other professionals, all holding graduate degrees in such fields as social work, psychology or gerontology,'' said Dr. Dolen, who earned her doctorate in developmental psychology from the City University of New York.
Geriatric or elder-care counseling has also become one of the fastest-growing employee benefits. It is estimated that one in four workers is now responsible for an elderly relative, one who often lives in a different state.
''Even the term 'elder care' didn't exist when I started my practice 20 years ago,'' Dr. Dolen said. ''There was no network of help available to the aging or their families. I became a pioneer in the field after my husband and I, who were still in our 30's, had to take most of the responsibility for overseeing the care of four sets of grandparents, all of them with various problems.''
 
Caught in the Middle
This experience led her to establish a counseling practice that focused on care of the elderly and related areas like retirement and life-planning counseling.
''Ms. Pompadur and I both belong to the 'sandwich generation,' adults in their 30's through 60's who are caught in the middle trying to balance the needs of their aging parents and their growing children - and wearing themselves out in the process,'' she said.
The sandwich generation comes under a great deal of stress, she emphasized. ''Guilt, anxiety, love, hate, fear. All the emotions come in to play when an adult child is trying to care for an aging parent,'' she said. ''On the other hand, adult children need emotional support and preparation for their own aging.''
Ms. Pompadur recalled how counseling helped her deal with this aspect of her responsibilities. ''Dr. Dolen helped me cope by showing me how to deal with my feelings and problems, especially when I became divorced and felt very much alone,'' she recalled. ''I was grateful for her support. And when the time came when it became too difficult for my grandmother and aunt to stay in their own home, Dr. Dolen went to Florida with me to evaluate the situation.''
 
Choosing the Home
When the decision was made to place Ms. Pompadur's relatives in a nursing home, it was Dr. Dolen who helped her make an assessment of available homes in Florida and New York.
''We decided that bringing them both back to be near me would be the easiest thing to do,'' Ms. Pompadur said. ''We finally chose a nursing home in nearby Greenwich. My grandmother is almost 100 years old now, although some family records show her to be even older. But she is still a major figure in my life. She brought me up, and she is very important to me.''
 
A Continuing Relationship
Even though her relatives are in a nursing home, Ms. Pompadur said she still uses Dr. Dolen's services.
''I work,'' she explained, ''so I can't always be at the nursing home at a moment's notice when a crisis develops. But Dr. Dolen is always on call and knowing that she is overseeing my grandmother's welfare is very important to me and worth everything.''
The fees for such service range from a low of $50 an hour in parts of the South to $125 an hour in the Northeast and on the West Coast, unless provided as an employee benefit. This limits potential clients to those families with sufficient personal income to afford such help, as insurance would not generally provide reimbursement for these services.
 
Rising Demand for Managers
As life spans lengthen, private geriatric-care managers are thought to be one of the fastest-growing groups of health-care professionals, Dr. Dolen said. Health-care experts predict that advances in medical technology will enable adults to live to the age of 115 by the 21st century. There are more than 25 million Americans older than 65 and 2.6 million older than 85.
''Private geriatric-care managers become family surrogates, especially for those families who live at a distance from one another,'' Dr. Dolen said, adding that as private practitioners, they are available to clients at all times.
''We're on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week,'' she said. ''We have to be. For instance, last Sunday I received a call at 11 o'clock in the morning from a distraught woman who had just spoken with her 82-year-old mother in Massachusetts and realized she was hallucinating. The daughter was afraid she might injure herself, and her mother lived four hours away so she didn't know what to do.''
 
A Nationwide Network
Dr. Dolen said that she got in touch with a neighbor of the mother and then a care manager in the Massachusetts city. ''The care manager and I and the neighbor were able to make an assessment over the phone and decided that the woman was not in immediate danger,'' she said. ''Had she been, the care manager would have seen that she received medical attention immediately, even if it meant taking her to the emergency room.''
Clients are matched up with care managers through a network of professionals operating in 35 states, Dr. Dolen said.
''Geographically, we are very mobile and flexible in the type of services we can offer,'' she said. ''But perhaps the most wanted service in all parts of the country is finding home-care workers. Care managers have more resources than the average person to draw upon. They know the better agencies, they know how to fill out the necessary forms; and things like where to find a beautician who makes house calls.''
The main purpose of a private health-care manager, she said, is to see that services older people need are supplied to them, to allow them to live as comfortably and pleasantly as possible.
 
Planning for Old Age
In acknowledging that not every family can afford to pay for the service, Ms. Dolen noted that part of her practice was devoted to helping clients plan ahead for old age.
''I show people how to prepare for the third and fourth quarters of their lives,'' she said. ''I hold retirement workshops for employees at major corporations. I tell them to start gathering information on estate planning, catastrophic insurance and geriatric case management; everything to make old age more agreeable. Quality elder care is like child care, it can't be haphazard, it has to be planned for.''
For those who wish to contact the National Association of Geriatric Care Managers, which makes referrals to all parts of the country, the number of the New York chapter is (212) 222-9163.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo of Dr. Lenise Dolan, psychologist and gerontologist, with Joan K. Pompadur of Hartsdale (NYT/Joyce Dopkeen)

Copyright 1990 The New York Times Company



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The New York Times

February 18, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

YOU'RE ONLY AS OLD AS WE SAY YOU ARE

BYLINE: By ROBERT H. BINSTOCK; Robert H. Binstock is the Henry R. Luce Professor of Aging, Health and Society at Case Western Reserve University.

SECTION: Section 7; Page 36, Column 1; Book Review Desk

LENGTH: 718 words


HOW OLD ARE YOU?
Age Consciousness in American Culture.
By Howard P. Chudacoff.
Illustrated. 232 pp. Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press. $19.95.
Throughout our lifetimes American society has been age conscious. But this has not always been the case. Until the mid-19th century, Americans showed little concern with age. The one-room schoolhouse was filled with students of varied ages, and children worked alongside adults. 
In ''How Old Are You?'' Howard P. Chudacoff, a professor of history at Brown University and the author of ''The Evolution of American Urban Society,'' suggests that age consciousness in the United States began in the late 19th century, when schools began to set age limits and pediatrics was established as a medical specialty. At the same time, old age began to be identified as a separate stage of life, marked by specific age boundaries. Older people were set apart from the rest of society, because it was assumed that they could not keep up with the demands of an increasingly scientific and economically rationalized world.
Mr. Chudacoff offers a lively picture of the development of age consciousness in urban middle-class culture. We learn that age norms were expressed in popular magazines and songs for the first time in the late 1800's, and that ''the rise of the birthday celebration as a commercial enterprise'' began around the turn of the century with the arrival of the first birthday cards. In the early decades of the 20th century age norms intensified, especially for the young, as child psychology, organized sports, age-peer organizations such as the Girl Scouts, street gangs and legislation regulating child labor and the age of sexual consent were established. Even though youth and old age were recognized as distinct life stages by the turn of the century, middle age was not ''discovered'' until after World War I. Mr. Chudacoff traces the evolution of age norms through the latter part of the 20th century briefly, but accurately. He focuses particularly on the changes that affected the elderly - the development of old-age peer groups and the enactment of Federal programs that use age as a criterion for regulating and distributing benefits. For instance, he notes that pensions for older people were instituted publicly through the Social Security Act of 1935, which designated age 65 as an eligibility requirement for retirement benefits.
Has the ascendance of age norms been good or bad? Mr. Chudacoff believes that there are certain advantages to living in an age-conscious society. Individuals can derive a sense of belonging and a sense of self from their age-based peer group. And policy makers are better able to identify ''problem groups'' - infants, teen-agers, middle-agers, the old and the ''old old'' - who need specific kinds of government help.
The major drawback of such a society is ageism - the attribution certain characteristics to all persons in an age category. Mr. Chudacoff notes the differences among age norms and the realities of age-group behavior, and he is sensitive to discrimination. ''Like gender and race,'' he writes, ''age cannot be changed. To disadvantage individuals merely because they possess a particular characteristic, one for which they cannot be held morally responsible, offends traditional American sensibilities of fairness.'' As a particularly apt example, Mr. Chudacoff points to the recent proposal, by the biomedical ethicist Daniel Callahan, that life-saving care be categorically and officially denied to old people, regardless of their clinical conditions.
Although Mr. Chudacoff notes that age consciousness may have already peaked, he does not analyze whether age norms have changed in recent years, or why Americans are beginning to ignore such norms in increasing numbers. As the social psychologist Bernice Neugarten has observed, we are now becoming an increasingly ''age irrelevant society.'' The ages at which we are marrying, giving birth, entering the labor force, holding political office and engaging in a variety of other activities and roles conform less and less with age norms. The implications of these changes for our culture and social structure may be profound. Perhaps we can look forward to Mr. Chudacoff's next book for an analysis of them.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Drawing

TYPE: Review

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The New York Times

February 19, 1990, Monday, Late Edition - Final

Metro Matters;
A Commissioner For Consumers Has High Hopes

BYLINE: By SAM ROBERTS

SECTION: Section B; Page 1, Column 1; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 755 words

Twenty years ago this month, New York City imposed its paradigmatic consumer protection law. Bess Myerson was consumer affairs commissioner then, followed briefly by Betty Furness. Those were the golden days of the consumer movement.
Tomorrow, though, may herald the resurgence of an agency with the rare ability to collect more money than it spends while also enhancing the reputations of its commissioner and the mayor. Mayor David N. Dinkins is to swear in Mark Green as the city's Consumer Affairs Commissioner. 
For Mr. Dinkins, the appointment of Mr. Green represents an opportunity to convey the image of an administration vigorously protecting the salaries of the middle class and the dwindling resources of even more vulnerable New Yorkers - the young, the elderly, the poor and the disabled - when budget constraints are forcing the Mayor to curtail city services.
For the glib but cerebral Mr. Green, who sometimes speaks in slogans, the position offers public exposure and an opportunity, after 20 years as an independent consumer advocate, to put the city's money and legal might where his mouth is.
''While the department has been a competent licenser, it has been a relatively quiet advocate,'' Mr. Green said. ''There's a lot of room to raise the agency's voice and revenue.''
The job marks a major adjustment for the 44-year-old Mr. Green, an energetic Ralph Nader protege who has spent the last decade - with a detour in 1986 to run unsuccessfully against Alfonse M. D'Amato, the Republican United States Senator - lobbying for a liberal agenda through his nonprofit Democracy Project.
''This is the first job in which I haven't had to help raise money for my own salary,'' Mr. Green said of the $97,000-a-year commissionership.
''In fact, I may be the only commissioner whose salary went up when he joined city government. My sacrifice is not financial, but mobility.''
In 1979, Mr. Green rejected the job of consumer adviser to President Jimmy Carter -largely, he said, because of philosophical disagreements about energy deregulation and other issues.
After Mr. Dinkins was elected last November, Mr. Green stepped aside as co-chairman of a panel searching for a consumer affairs commissioner once he was persuaded that he need only look in a mirror to find the perfect candidate.
Mr. Green hopes to transform the Consumer Affairs Department from a monitor of weights and measures and collector of license fees and fines (it took in $11.9 million last year and spent $10.4 million) into a more vocal advocate and law-enforcement office. The fact that his most recent predecessors (identify one if you can) are not household names is a reflection of their styles, if not their records.
''Let's ask why Bess Myerson succeeded 20 years ago,'' Mr. Green said. ''Because Bess exploited a prior prominence, hired a great staff and had a supportive mayor. I'm no Miss America, but several of those elements exist for my tenure, too.''
Mr. Green seeks to elevates concerns of consumers, and, therefore, their champion, to a higher plane than ''housewife issues.''
''Tell it to a family of four earning $20,000 that is overpaying $1,000 for an old refrigerator sold as new,'' he said, cautioning that cumulative abuses erode not only the economic health of families on the margin but also their faith in government.
Might not aggressive consumer advocacy sometimes clash with Mayor Dinkins's eagerness to cast his administration as receptive to business?
''I will be resolutely anti-business-abuse, which is pro-business,'' Mr. Green declared. ''The scale of consumer justice is tilted against consumers - business has the resources, lawyers, contacts. My assignment and history are to lend my weight and voice to the consumer side of the scale so there will be a better balance.''
Will public office still his partisan voice? Mr. Green said he is satisfied for now that he has persuaded the Senate to investigate conflict-of-interest allegations against Mr. D'Amato. ''My private opinion of Al D'Amato has not altered, but I won't spend time prosecuting the case,'' Mr. Green said.  Will he run again for the Senate in 1992? Less likely now than before his appointment, Mr. Green said. The only Sherman-like statement he would issue is a pledge to enforce the antitrust law of the same name.
''It is wrong to precondition appointive office on not seeking elective office,'' Mr. Green said, slyly recalling the appointed City Clerk who ran three times for Manhattan Borough President, David Dinkins.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Mark Green

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February 20, 1990, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

Many With Arthritis Do Not Seek Care

BYLINE: AP

SECTION: Section C; Page 7, Column 3; Science Desk

LENGTH: 373 words

DATELINE: ATLANTA, Feb. 19

Thirty-five million Americans report suffering from arthritis, but 6 million of them say they have not seen a doctor about it, Federal health officials say.
More than 3,000 people were asked in 1987 if they had experienced various arthritic conditions in the last year, if they had consulted a physician about the condition and if their arthritis was limiting their work or their household lives, the Federal Centers for Disease Control said last week.
Nationwide, the survey found, 14.6 percent of the population reported arthritis and 12.1 percent had consulted a doctor about it, leaving 2.5 percent, or about about 6 million people, who had not. 
''This confirms our suspicions that people are seeing ads on TV and treating their arthritis themselves, and very possibly doing damage to themselves,'' said Steve Erickson, spokesman for the Arthritis Foundation, based in Atlanta.
These findings indicate the need ''to determine why these persons have not sought medical care, and to identify approaches for overcoming barriers to care,'' the centers said.
 
High Rate in Florida
The highest incidence of arthritis was in Florida, at 18 percent, while the lowest was in Alaska, at 9 percent.
The high rate in Florida ''is due to its relatively large population of elderly persons,'' the C.D.C. said. Alaska's low rate can be attributed in part to its high populations of native Americans and Pacific Islanders, ''among whom the prevalence of arthritic conditions is low,'' the report said.
Women reported arthritis at a higher rate than men, 18 percent as against 11 percent. Women were also more likely to have seen a doctor about their arthritis, 15 percent as against 9 percent, and were more likely to report limits in their activity, 4 percent as against 2 percent.
Over all, 3 percent of those in the study said arthritis was limiting their activities.
There was little racial difference in reports of arthritis: 15 percent for whites and 14 percent for blacks.
Arthritis rates increased with age. Eleven percent of respondents 35 to 44 years old reported arthritis, compared with 23 percent of those 45 to 54; by the 75-and-over group, the rate was 53 percent, as against just 3 percent in the under-35 group.

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The New York Times

February 21, 1990, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

About New York;
To Stay Young: Walk, Feed Birds, Help Old People

BYLINE: By DOUGLAS MARTIN

SECTION: Section B; Page 1, Column 1; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 770 words

Margaret Grossman, more than 87 years into this odd adventure called living, knows many things. ''I will die with a smile on my face,'' is one of them.
At 10 A.M., right after the Joan Rivers television show, Margaret begins her walk of more than two miles to her volunteer position at the Parker Jewish Geriatric Institute in New Hyde Park, Queens. Walking briskly through a cold drizzle, she looks like a tiny bird inside her huge down coat. After spending the day helping elderly people - many of them rather sad cases, many younger than she - she will walk home. She does this four times a week. 
Margaret is a determined, ambitious and, yes, a stubborn woman. ''I tell everyone to move,'' she says in her Viennese accent. ''Move! It's so important. If I didn't walk, I'd be finished.''
In 1986, Congress gave Margaret an award for her voluntary service. Her daughter, Susan, with whom she lives in a house just across the Long Island line but in a separate apartment, had minutes earlier tried to show off this and other plaques.
Margaret's sweet response? ''You get on my nerves so much! You make me sick!''
Susan only laughed. She is used to this fiercely independent spirit. Used to the fact that her mother cooks for herself, saying she can't stand her daughter's cooking. So used to Margaret's turning down rides that she no longer even slows down, just waves as she drives past.
A few blocks from her home, the old woman's face brightens. ''See, they're waiting for me,'' she chirps, pointing to ducks, geese and gulls. She hurries to throw out pieces of the bread she collects from the geriatric home's dirty plates. A companion points out a sign saying not to feed the birds. Margaret peers at him as if he were crazy.
''Don't you see they are hungry?''
Step by step, the picture emerges of a hugely generous woman. She spends most of her spare time knitting shawls for the homeless. She also knits hats for Israeli soldiers. She gives most of her pension to a wide range of charities. She loathes the idea of spending a dime in a restaurant. ''People are hungry and I should stuff myself?'' Margaret demands. ''No!'' The details of her history are not easily forthcoming. ''Please, I don't want to remember the past,'' she says.
The past includes growing up in Vienna, then fleeing Hitler to France with her husband and two young children. Living there in a cellar with rats for two years. Eating grass because there was nothing else. A French woman, a Christian, who took her children for two years while she and her husband were in hiding.
''I ask myself if I would have done what this woman did for us? This woman and her whole family were in such danger.''
Other stops included Montreal, where she worked as business equipment supervisor for a paper company, and Israel, where she began to volunteer in hospitals. Dates and details seem to have long ago fallen by the roadside. ''I don't count any more years,'' Margaret says flatly.
Indeed, the time has come when past and present sometimes seem equally real. Each night, just before falling asleep, she conjures up the faces of 65 or 70 deceased loved ones, clear as life. It is a pleasant few moments. Perhaps consequently, the effects of the Alzheimer's disease she sees so much of aren't terrifying.
''You come to a point where perhaps it's better you don't know anymore what's going on,'' Margaret says. The volunteer arrives exactly an hour after she left home - not a second late despite stopping to pick up two bags of hard candy at a drugstore. She brings some residents water, gives others candy and fruit, spoons food into the mouths of still others.
''Sometimes I run out of steam,'' says Rosemarie Martin, a resident of the home who is 62. Her face sparkles when Margaret enters her room. ''She always seems to be in the right place at the right time to give me a push.''
Much of what she sees is very sad. Some residents stare at the walls for hours. Some sit and sob. Many lack a leg or two. Not a few complain bitterly, since life in its final meanness has given them little else to do. ''I pray to God not to end up here,'' she says quietly.
Then she smiles, holding up a candy. ''This goes to my boyfriend.''
''Hi sweetheart!'' Margaret says. Only too late does she remember that the man, a diabetic amputee, can't eat candy. He continues to stare out a window, mumbling. ''Such a nice person,'' Margaret says. ''My heart bleeds.''
But she refuses to slow down, though she took a bad fall walking to work in a December snowstorm. ''My whole life I've searched for peace,'' she says firmly. ''Now I have it.''

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February 25, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

An Alzheimer's Group for Minority Families

BYLINE: By MARVINE HOWE

SECTION: Section 1; Part 1, Page 35, Column 1; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 667 words

Every other Friday evening, Jeanette Payne meets with her ''extended family'' in the community room of Concourse Village in the Bronx to share experiences and talk over coping strategies.
It is a small group, only six regulars, though at times there are as many as 15 in the circle, brought together because of loved ones suffering from Alzheimer's disease.
''In the black community, most of us still think we can manage on our own and aren't geared to airing personal problems,'' Ms. Payne, the manager of professional programs at Baruch College, said the other day. She has put up notices in apartment buildings, passed out fliers in churches and synagogues and lectured at different organizations for the elderly but has gotten little response so far. 
 
Trying to Reach Out
Ms. Payne is the leader of the first support group for minority families of Alzheimer's in New York City. Fifty groups have been established in the city in the last five years. This network aims to get families of Alzheimer's patients to exchange information and provide emotional support for one another.
''We're trying to reach out to minorities because they are just as much victims as anybody else,'' says Jean Marks, associate director of the New York City Alzheimer's Chapter. She noted that in the New York region, some 200,000 men and women are afflicted with Alzheimer's and about 20 percent of them are members of minority groups.
Discussing the difficulties of communicating with minority groups about Alzheimer's, Ms. Marks said that part of their resistance to seeking help was ''the dismal track record our institutions have in being sensitive to minority and especially, immigrant needs.'' The disease, the most common form of dementia, was first identified in 1907 by Alois Alzheimer, a German psychiatrist. Although in recent years, scientists have stepped up investigations into the illness, its cause and cure are still not known.
 
A Period of Confusion
''When my mother began forgetting a lot of little things, I was at a loss and didn't know what to do,'' Ms. Payne recalled. That was 10 years ago, when most people knew nothing about Alzheimer's or thought it was just another kind of senility.
''What's so terrible is to see the disintegration of a beautiful mind,'' Mrs. Payne said, recalling the painful phases of the disease. At first, there were spells of forgetfulness; her mother could not remember a doctor's appointment or what day it was.
Then came a period of confusion, Mrs. Payne said, followed by months of agitation.
Later, when her mother had difficulties functioning, the family put up signs saying 'this is the bathroom,' and labels to show the contents of drawers. And when she could no longer read, they put up pictures.
''Now, I'm not sure she recognizes me,'' Mrs. Payne said. ''She is out of it, like a 2-year-old.''
Still, Mrs. Payne considers herself ''very fortunate,'' with an understanding husband, two grown children, a large apartment and a very good home attendant to help care for her mother.
She also found the right assistance when she needed it, first from a number of social workers who then introduced her to the Alzheimer's Association. She joined a support group in Yorkville and ''felt less isolated,'' and later, became a member of the Alzheimer's Education Group.
''But after while, I looked around and saw there wasn't any group in my community, where people could be comfortable talking over their concerns,'' Mrs. Payne said. And so, in 1987, the Bronx Support Group was born.
It has not been easy. One problem is the feeling that family problems are nobody else's business, Mrs. Payne noted. She told of a woman who was ''worn to a frazzle'' between caring for her sister with Alzheimer's and her retired husband. ''Yet she won't come out to the support group because she thinks it's a family matter,'' Mrs. Payne said.
''I will get to these people somehow,'' she said with determination. ''It just takes time and persistence.''

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The New York Times

February 25, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Social Events

BYLINE: By Robert E. Tomasson

SECTION: Section 1; Part 2, Page 54, Column 1; Society Desk

LENGTH: 962 words


Weekend Meals
Feb. 26 - Every weekday, the New York City Department for the Aging delivers hot meals to thousands of elderly people. As welcome as the assistance is, it still leaves a gap on weekends and holidays that the private, volunteer Citymeals-on-Wheels seeks to fill. The city's fashion industry is saluting the public-private charitable partnership with a benefit cocktail party and buffet from 5:30 to 8:30 P.M. at Restaurant Sofi, 102 Fifth Avenue (15th Street). Tickets, $125, from 212-577-1758.
 
A Guiding Hand
Feb. 26 - Big Brothers/Big Sisters of New York City has provided thousands of poor youngsters with a compassionate role model in the person of an adult who gives a few hours of companionship a week. A benefit for the organization at the Waldorf-Astoria will honor, among others, Gen. Colin L. Powell, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Reuben Mark, the president and chief executive of Colgate-Palmolive. Cocktails at 6:30 P.M. will be followed by dinner, the awards and entertainment by the Boys Choir of Harlem. Tickets, $350, from 212-580-5511. 
 
Briefly Noted:
Feb. 27 - To raise funds for the first venture outside their Savoyard tradition, a production of ''Of Thee I Sing'' by George and Ira Gershwin, the New York Gilbert and Sullivan Players are planning an 8 P.M. champagne dessert party and cabaret at the Park Avenue Christian Church, at Park and 85th Street. Tickets, $35, or $60 a couple, from 212-769-1000.
Feb. 27 - The Lar Lubovitch Dance Company will open its 22d season at the City Center with a black-tie benefit starting with the company's 7:30 P.M. performance, followed by a champagne buffet and dancing at the Goodwin Mansion, 9-11 West 54th Street. Tickets, $225, from 212-242-0633.
Feb. 27 - Mike Nichols will be lauded by a score of show-business people at a black-tie benefit at the Waldorf-Astoria for the American Museum of the Moving Image. Cocktails at 7 P.M. Tickets, $350, from 212-245-6570.
Feb. 28 - The concert series Great Performers at Lincoln Center will benefit from a concert by Luciano Pavarotti, with Harolyn Blackwell, Leona Mitchell, Carol Vaness and Leo Nucci. Cocktails at 6:30 P.M., dinner at 7:15, performance at 9 at Avery Fisher Hall. Black tie. Tickets, $1,000, from 212-371-0606.
Feb. 28 - An opening-night benefit for Feld Ballets NY at the Joyce Theater, with the premieres of three works, starts at 7. Champagne at intermission; after the show buses will take guests to dinner at Tavern on the Green. Tickets, $250, from 212-777-7710.
March 1 - The American premiere of ''The Handmaid's Tale,'' with Faye Dunaway, Elizabeth McGovern and Robert Duvall, will take place at the Plaza Theater, on 58th Street between Park and Madison Avenues, to benefit the Center for Constitutional Rights. The cast and film makers are expected at a reception at Regine's, Park Avenue at 59th Street, following the 7:30 P.M. screening. Tickets, $100, from 212-260-5000.
March 1 - A preview of that harbinger of spring the New York Flower Show will be held at Pier 92, on the Hudson River at 51st Street, from 5:30 to 9 P.M. The Garden Party preview of the show, which will run March 2 through 11, will include dancing and a light buffet. A dinner at Doubles follows. Tickets, $150 for preview party and $75 more for dinner, from 212-874-4098.
March 1 - The American Museum of Natural History is holding a Night in Rio supper and dance party to benefit the museum's Inner City Science Education Program. The festivities start at 9 P.M. Guests are directed to the museum's carriage entrance on Central Park West at 79th Street. Tickets, $115, from 212-769-5166.
March 2 - Hunter College Elementary School, a public school for gifted students, will benefit from a concert by the Broadway musical star Mandy Patinkin at the Hunter College Auditorium, 69th Street and Park Avenue. The 8 P.M. concert will be preceded by cocktails at 6 at Roosevelt House, 47-49 East 65th Street. Tickets, $100, or for the performance alone $25, $40 or $50, from 212-307-7171.
 
Take a Chance
March 2 - ''Chance, Dance and Romance'' is the theme of a party from 8 P.M. to 1 A.M. at the Manhattan Center Studios, 311 West 34th Street. The black-tie evening, benefiting the New York City chapter of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, is intended for the younger professional set. There will be an open bar and hors d'oeuvres along with games of chance offering a trip to London, New York dinners, gift baskets and other prizes. Tickets, $75, from 212-463-7787, or $90 at the door.
 
Tibetan Celebration
March 3 - The Tibetan New Year will be celebrated at St. Illuminator's Armenian Apostolic Cathedral, 221 East 27th Street. Sponsored by the Tibetan Association of New York and New Jersey, the evening starts at 6 with New Year's prayers chanted by Tibetan monks followed by tea and traditional delicacies including the decorated sweet rice served only at religious occasions. Dinner and Tibetan dances follow. There is no admission charge for the prayers and tea. Tickets for the dinner and dances, $15 at the door. Information: 201-652-6019 (evenings).
 
Ottoman Purim
March 5 - The fourth annual Purim ball benefiting the Jewish Museum will be a masked ball inspired by the atmosphere and foods of the Ottoman Empire. The ball at the Waldorf-Astoria, with black tie or costume, will set the tone for the museum's exhibition ''In the Court of the Sultan: Sephardi Jews of the Ottoman Empire,'' opening April 1. Cocktails at 6:30 P.M. will be followed by dinner, dancing, a raffle and entertainment with Tovah Feldshuh as the mistress of ceremonies. Tickets, $500, or $75 for those 35 and under for supper and dancing starting at 9 P.M., from 212-580-5511.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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The New York Times

February 25, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Pastimes;
Stamps

BYLINE: By Barth Healey

SECTION: Section 1; Part 2, Page 58, Column 1; Style Desk

LENGTH: 644 words

There is one mail fraud that seems to persist despite a year-long effort by the United States Postal Service to halt it.
The perpetrators of the fraud send solicitations in envelopes marked first class but bearing only 6 cents postage, not 25 cents. They typically offer a ''secret'' way to mail all first-class letters for just pennies, in return for a $10 or $20 check.
And as proof that their method works, the perpetrators ask the recipient to examine the envelope with the solicitation: It was received in good order, wasn't it? No postage due? 
What you get for your $10 is a copy of a 1960 postal circular setting the first-class letter rate at 6 cents. Ah, those were the days! The rate went to 8 cents in May 1971.
Mailing a letter today for 6 cents will almost always lead to its being returned for more postage. The important word is ''almost.'' With hundreds of millions of items passing through the mail system daily, some short-paid letters are bound to escape detection.
But when a short-paid letter bearing the fraudulent solicitation gets through, it reaches a potential victim. Anyone receiving such a letter should take it to the local postmaster.
 
'Fright Mail'
The Postal Service also asks recipients to report any mail that seems to come from a Government agency but in fact is a solicitation of some sort.
Typically, such mail comes in buff envelopes and bears a return address that is almost the name of a Government agency. Again, the important word is ''almost.'' Some key words: social security, revenue, pension.
The mail is frequently sent to the elderly, and often seeks payment for services that are free or much less costly when obtained directly from the Government.
Current Federal law prohibits such postal masquerades, which are known as fright mail. But the law is vague on how close mailers can come to appearing official without being prosecuted.
The Postal Service asks that any recipient of fright mail return it to the post office and file a complaint.
 
Revisiting Romania
The Jan. 7 Stamps column described several Romanian issues honoring the army that were banned by the Soviet-influenced Government after World War II. A collector in New York City, Victor Feigelman, has written a thoughtful and persuasive letter arguing that the ban was appropriate.
''The Romanian Government was firmly allied with Hitler's Germany from 1941 to 1944,'' he writes. ''Elements of the Iron Guard in the Romanian army enthusiastically helped the German SS and the Einsatzgruppen in murdering thousands of civilians - Jews and others.''
On the other hand, Mr. Feigelman adds, stamps ''are a valuable and enduring record of the strange vicissitudes of history and politics.''
''No government, even fascist or Communist,'' he concludes, ''can rewrite history, or really make stamps disappear.''
Two targets of the Soviet ban were Ion Antonescu, Romania's prime minister during the war, and King Michael, who became monarch when Antonescu forced the abdication of Michael's father, King Carol.
When Soviet armies penetrated deep into Romania in 1944, Michael arrested Antonescu, who was as rabidly anti-Russian as he was pro- Nazi. Antonescu was tried by the Russians for treason and executed in 1946.
Michael, who lives in exile in Switzerland, said in an interview last month with The New York Times that he was ready to return to Romania to help form a constitutional monarchy.
 
Literature Fair
The Cardinal Spellman Philatelic Museum plans a two-day exhibit of philatelic literature March 24-25. The museum is named for the late cardinal of the New York diocese, who was an enthusiastic collector. There will also be an auction of philatelic literature on March 24. Further information is available from the musuem, which is at 235 Wellesley Street, Weston, Mass. 02193, on the grounds of Regis College.

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The New York Times

February 25, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

For Some Studios, Oscar Is Golden

BYLINE: By ALJEAN HARMETZ

SECTION: Section 2; Page 21, Column 1; Arts and Leisure Desk

LENGTH: 726 words

DATELINE: HOLLYWOOD

When ''Driving Miss Daisy'' led the list of Academy Award nominations, executives at Warner Brothers got a double dose of pleasure. The movie's nine nominations mean money and ego satisfaction.
''Driving Miss Daisy'' is in a position to make more money from its nominations than any movie since ''Chariots of Fire'' in 1981. ''Daisy,'' which already has had a surprising box-office success for a movie about two elderly people, was in relatively few theaters until Feb. 9. Then Warners widened distribution of the film to 1,302 theaters in anticipation of major nominations. Two of ''Daisy's'' rivals for best picture - ''Field of Dreams'' and ''Dead Poets Society'' - were played out last summer. A third, ''Born on the Fourth of July,'' has been in 1,300 theaters for six weeks. 
''We're at $34 million in ticket sales,'' Barry Reardon, president of domestic distribution at Warner Brothers, said of ''Driving Miss Daisy.'' ''If we hadn't got nominated, the picture would have tailed off dramatically and ended up in the low- to mid-40's. With the nominations, the box-office will be in the high 60's. Those nominations will mean $20 million.''
By contrast, Tri-Star's ''Glory'' and 20th Century Fox's ''Enemies, a Love Story'' - two other dramas that were treading water while awaiting Academy confirmation - have been swept away by the tides. ''Glory,'' which expanded from 377 theaters to 801 the weekend after the nominations were announced, earned four minor nominations and a supporting-actor nomination for Denzel Washington. ''Enemies'' won supporting actress nominations for Anjelica Huston and Lena Olin. But it is a cluster of major nominations and, most particularly, best picture that mean something at the box office.
In addition to Warner Brothers, the winners among the studios were Universal and Disney. With ''Born on the Fourth of July'' and ''Field of Dreams,'' Universal, which led the studios with 17 nominations, was the only studio to get two nominations for best picture. In addition, Universal showed depth, with its nominations spread over six movies. Warner Brothers, in second place with 11 nominations, got almost all of those from ''Daisy.'' Twentieth Century Fox tied for second place, but its nominations were mostly in the technical craft categories.
Tri-Star had nine nominations; Paramount and Disney, eight. But Disney got all-important best picture, best director and best actor (Robin Williams) nominations for ''Dead Poets Society.'' The last time - and only time - Disney got nominations for picture and director was in 1964 with ''Mary Poppins.''
No matter how specialized the movie, Academy nominees are usually films that have been picked up for distribution by a major studio. This year - in a throwback to the peak of the independent film movement in 1985 and 1986 - the Irish movie ''My Left Foot,'' a nominee for best picture, best actor (Daniel Day-Lewis) best director and two other awards, was distributed by Miramax.
Miramax also captured an original screenplay nomination for ''Sex, Lies and Videotape.'' ''Henry V,'' which earned an actor and director nomination for Kenneth Branagh, was released by the Samuel Goldwyn Company. And the French film ''Camille Claudel,'' which brought Isabelle Adjani a nomination for best actress, was distributed by the Orion Classics division of Orion.
When the nominations were announced Feb. 14, ''My Left Foot'' was in only 50 theaters and had sold $2.6 million worth of tickets. ''Our goal now is to be on 400 or 500 screens in 200 cities by early March,'' said Russell Schwartz, executive vice president of Miramax. ''We were hoping the film would make $7 million. Now we think it will exceed $13 million.''
Mr. Schwartz, who had calculated that ''My Left Foot'' was probably eighth on the list of potential best-picture nominees, headed Island Films when Island won best actor (William Hurt in ''Kiss of the Spider Woman'') and best actress (Geraldine Page in ''A Trip to Bountiful'') awards in 1985.
''Independents are always in a buying battle with the studios,'' he said. ''It's worse now that the studios are accelerating their release schedules. But these nominations show that independents can survive. We just have to be swift enough to get involved with a movie early in the production phase. We have to be there at the first strike.''

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The New York Times

February 25, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Board Moving Swiftly On Westhelp Proposal

BYLINE: By TESSA MELVIN

SECTION: Section 12WC; Page 6, Column 5; Westchester Weekly Desk

LENGTH: 1039 words

DATELINE: WHITE PLAINS

THE proposal for housing homeless families in Greenburgh, which prompted major changes on the Board of Legislators after the last election, is now facing a leadership that seems determined to move swiftly on the issue.
The proposal by the nonprofit organization Westhelp received a speedy review last Tuesday by the Budget and Appropriations Committee. After appearances by County Executive Andrew P. O'Rourke and the county's director of intergovernmental relations, Philippe Gille, the committee sent the plan to the full Board. At its meeting tomorrow, the Board is expected to schedule a new public hearing on the issue. 
''Westhelp is going to happen,'' said the budget committee's new chairman, Katherine S. Carsky, a Yonkers Republican. ''For two and a half years, we have been at this thing, even though its approval has been requested both by the County Executive and by the Town Supervisor. A disproportionate share of homeless housing is being handled by our cities, and we'd like to see other communities do their share.''
 
Changes Since Last Vote
Westhelp's proposal to build 108 units of housing on 33 acres of county-owned land near Westchester Community College failed by one vote when it was presented to the Board of Legislators in December. The deciding vote was cast by an outgoing legislator, John W. DeMarco of White Plains. Mr. DeMarco, a Democrat, was considered an ally of Edward J. Brady, the Republican who has since lost the Board chairmanship and who opposed the housing plan.
The revised Westhelp proposal now envisions using only six acres of county land and would ''freeze'' the county's right to develop the adjoining acreage for 10 years. After that time, the entire property would be leased to the Town of Greenburgh for 30 years and the housing would be used for senior citizens or municipal employees. Town officials plan to reconfigure the housing units to create 54 permanent apartments.
The acreage was reduced to meet the objections of legislators who feared losing too much land from the county's tax rolls. Both Mr. O'Rourke and Supervisor Anthony F. Veteran of Greenburgh said the change would not affect the size or substance of the proposal. At least one former opponent, Legislator Timothy S. Carey, Republican of Montrose, said he would now support the project.
 
An Alternative Plan Is Pressed
Local opponents of the plan, who include residents of the Mayfair and Knollwood sections of Greenburgh, have proposed an alternative plan. It calls for smaller residential groups of apartments scattered over a wider area of the county. Their group, the Coalition of United Peoples, presented its plan to the Board's Committee on Housing and Community Affairs last Wednesday.
The group's petition to incorporate as a separate village was rejected by Mr. Veteran in l988, who said the proposed village boundries were drawn to exclude blacks. The Coalition of United Peoples has taken its case to court, and is awaiting a decision by Judge Gerard L. Goettel of Federal District Court The Westhelp proposal has received strong support from Mr. Veteran, who last week told the budget committee: ''We have been going through this hassle over and over again. It's time to make a decision.''
 
The Role Brady Played
Mr. Brady's vehement opposition to the project led to complaints about his treatment of legislators who disagreed with him, and eventually ended in his ouster as Board chairman. Children living in the Westhelp housing would attend school in Mr. Brady's district, and he argues that the Valhalla school district cannot absorb or afford the additional students.
In the November elections, the Republicans maintained their 10-to-7 majority on the Board. But continuing dissatisfaction among the Republican members led the County Republican Chairman, Anthony Colavita, to call a caucus. It named John E. Hand of Yorktown Heights as chairmen and Diane A. Keane of Rye as majority leader.
Mr. Brady's opposition to the Westhelp project has not diminished. At the Board's last meeting two weeks ago, he was able to delay consideration of the proposal by the budget committee until the Board's next meeting, tomorrow. But then the new chairman, Mr. Hand, called a special legislative meeting to adopt amendments to the l990 budget, setting an agenda that included consideration of the Westhelp proposal.
 
Testimony Before the Committee
Mr. O'Rourke and Mr. Gille appeared before the budget committee last Tuesday to answer questions submitted to the County Executive's office by the committee, questions that Mrs. Carsky said were composed by Mr. Brady but ''kind of summarized the views of the committee.''
Mr. O'Rourke told the legislators he considered the request for 108 units ''reasonable,'' if only a partial answer to the county's growing number of homeless families. ''We have been through hell's fire over the siting,'' Mr. O'Rourke said, ''and I wish the Board would approve it.''
If the number of units is reduced, as Mr. Brady and some other legislators have suggested, ''we will just have to find other places for more people,'' Mr. O'Rourke said. ''For every unit we lose there, we will have to pick up one somewhere else. And that is getting to be more and more an impossible task.''
The County Executive plans to meet soon with his new Housing Implementation Commission, made up of private builders, developers, union officers and elected officials. He has asked the commission to develop a plan for 1,000 units of family shelter by the end of the year, a goal that includes the Westhelp project in Greenburgh.
 
Other Westhelp Projects
The Greenburgh site is one of several Westhelp projects planned or under way in three Westchester municipalities. The nonprofit corporation is headed by Andrew Cuomo, the Governor's son.
A 46-unit complex in Mount Vernon was completed in December. Two others are in the final planning stages in White Plains: a 36-apartment complex on Mamaroneck Avenue and 120 units in a proposed renovation of the Coachman hotel. Westhelp's financial plan for the Coachman, which calls for the county to purchase the hotel through condemnation, is expected to be ready for the Board's consideration soon.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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The New York Times

February 25, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

More Than Counting Heads

BYLINE: By TESSA MELVIN

SECTION: Section 12WC; Page 16, Column 4; Westchester Weekly Desk

LENGTH: 1034 words

DATELINE: WHITE PLAINS

IT still asks homeowners if they have indoor plumbing, and there are 232 communities in Mississippi that currently do not. It asks if the kitchen has a sink, range and refrigerator, and there are thousands of illegal apartments, including hundreds in Westchester, that do not.
Next month, the 21st United States Census form will be mailed to 250,000 Westchester addresses in a $2.2 billion national effort - and a $3 million county effort - that will determine voter representation in Congress, redraw local political boundries and allocate Federal, regional and local financing into the next century.
This year's count is the largest and most complex survey yet undertaken by the Census Bureau, as it sets about describing the education, training and domestic life of 250 million people. Each of the nation's estimated 106 million housing units will receive a questionnaire, mostly by mail. Census staff members will personally visit residents of remote villages from Alaska to upstate New York, elderly residents of nursing homes, college students in dormitories and the homeless in shelters and on street corners. 
 
The Challenge in the County
Each region of the country offers its own set of challenges, but census officials covering Westchester are particularly concerned about recruiting the estimated 1,700 full- and part-time workers needed to complete the mammoth survey in a county where unemployment last month stood at 3.3 percent.
''Unemployment is so low, we are concentrating on full-time employees who may want to earn extra income in the evening,'' said Donald R. Byrnes, manager of the Census office in White Plains. High school and college students and the elderly are also being targeted for the survey work, which pays an average $7.50 per hour.
Counting Westchester households will provide a different kind of challenge because so many residences are ''hidden'' and want to remain that way, Mr. Byrnes said. Homeowners with illegal apartments may decide to omit mention of their tenants when filling out the census forms, Mr. Byrne said, fearing that the tenants will be evicted or that their property will be reassessed.
 
Confidential for 72 Years
The information is confidential, protected by Federal laws that prohibit any institution, including welfare agencies, immigration, military and tax authorities from gaining access to census material. Information from the 1990 Census will be kept confidential for 72 years, Mr. Byrnes said, until the year 2062.
Census Bureau officials estimate that each respondent represents $200 worth of services in a given community, funds that will be lost if the individual fails to respond.
''A lot of people think it is just a head count, but the census is far more than that,'' Mr. Byrnes said. ''A small shortfall can really afect a community. Just missing 10 people in a small town can equal $2,000 in one year, money that could help pay for an additional police cruiser, for example.''
 
The Effect in Yonkers
In Yonkers, where ''lots of people don't want to be counted,'' Mr. Byrnes said, ''the effect can be pretty harsh.'' Yonkers, like most urban centers in the county, has significant numbers of people living illegally in public housing, Mr. Byrne said, a population that depends on Federal help.
Census facts have helped communities address a number of specific problems, said the Department of Commerce, which administers the Census Bureau. The high number of working mothers the census identified in one community helped speed approval for a day-care center; the large number of older people in another helped that community gain approval for a community center.
Census officials are also concerned about the growing cynicism with which a society flooded with ''junk mail'' may greet another piece of mail addressed to ''occupant.''
The envelope is marked ''official business'' and has ''U.S. Census'' clearly marked on the outside. But ''lots of junk mail looks official these days,'' Mr. Byrnes said. ''Besides, the return address says Jefferson Valley, Ind.''
 
'A Law With No Teeth'
Responding to the census is required by Federal law, but Mr. Byrnes said: ''It's a law with no teeth. There are no penalties other than to yourself and to your community.''
Between March 23, when the long and short forms are mailed out in Westchester, and April 1, the deadline for mailing them back, one member of every household is expected to answer 14 basic questions about the race, ethnic origin, age and marital status of each member of the household.
One out of every six households will receive the ''long form,' which asks 45 additional questions about ancestry, employment, education, income, type of housing and utilities. From April 23 to June 6, hundreds of field workers will be deployed to follow up on those who don't respond.
Although census officials in the county expect close to a 75 percent response by the end of April, ''that still leaves 75,000 households to visit,'' Mr. Byrnes said.
 
Counting the Homeless
On March 20, a few days before the census forms are mailed, Westchester census workers will conduct a special 12-hour count of the county's homeless population. Beginning at 6 P.M., they will visit shelters and certain street locations that the police have identified as popular spots for the homeless to gather.
A number of other steps have been taken to assure an accurate census count in the county. Fliers with the slogan ''If you're not counted, you don't count'' have been mailed to schools, churches and community centers. In early January, a special municipal review was completed, identifying 17,700 of an estimated l9,000 housing units that local officials said census planners did not know existed.
A Westchester County 1990 Census Complete Count Committee has been formed to promote public awareness of the census and to encourage public cooperation with it. The committee's co-chairmen are Peter Q. Eschweiler, the county's Commissioner of Planning, and Mayor Richard E. Jackson Jr. of Peekskill.
Those interested in working for the Census Bureau must be 18 and pass a simple comprehension and math test. For more information, call 694-1932.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photos; Census forms will be mailed out in Westchester March 23., an Darren Allen loading census forms at White Plains office. (NYT/Suzanne DeChillo)

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The New York Times

February 27, 1990, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

Changsha Journal;
He's the Very Model of a Legendary Communist

BYLINE: By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section A; Page 4, Column 3; Foreign Desk

LENGTH: 876 words

DATELINE: CHANGSHA, China

Lei Feng was not just a regular nice guy, he was excruciatingly nice: the kind of fellow who secretly washed his comrades' laundry and dreamed not of beautiful women but of Mao.
While others frittered away their time enjoying themselves, Lei Feng devoted his leisure to laboring on construction projects and giving away his savings to destitute peasants. When he took train rides, he not only gave up his seat to others, but also spent the journey washing the windows and sweeping the floors.
Lei Feng died at the age of 21 in 1962, when a truck knocked a pole on his head, but since then he has achieved the ultimate honor for an atheist: sainthood. 
Mao Zedong himself started the Learn from Lei Feng movement in 1963, and since then there have been periodic campaigns to study the Communist hero. In the secular China of the last decade, Lei Feng was in eclipse, but since the rise of the hard-liners last year he has returned with a vengeance as the symbol of Communist righteousness.
 
Television Series Due
The newspapers are again full of articles about the need to learn the Lei Feng spirit. A television series on Lei Feng's life will be released soon. Half a million copies of his diary have been freshly published and distributed throughout the nation. A newly distributed videotape advises local ''work units'' how to arrange Lei Feng programs. And the Communist Youth League is planning Learn From Lei Feng Day.
Here in the southern Chinese city of Changsha, where Lei Feng was born and raised, Lei Mengxuan is almost beside himself with glee at the new turn of events.
Mr. Lei, a distant relative of the hero and the director of the Lei Feng Memorial Museum here, saw a 60 percent increase in the number of visitors to his museum last year, to 80,000. This year, he expects groups from schools, army units and companies to exceed 200,000 visitors, the highest total in more than a dozen years.
''In the past some people said that Lei Feng's spirit was outdated and even useless,'' Mr. Lei said, shaking his head at such heresy. ''When Lei Feng's spirit wasn't emphasized, people stopped doing good deeds. Even when someone was drowning in the river, no one would come to help unless they were offered money.''
 
The Rise of Rapacity
Many middle-aged and elderly Chinese share Mr. Lei's concern that the rapid change of the last dozen years tore at the nation's moral fabric, and substituted rapacity and materialism for traditional values. Thus the campaign aims to make people not only better Communists, but also more likely to give up their seat in the bus to the elderly.
There is another reason for the vigor of the latest Lei Feng campaign: power politics. Lei Feng was a soldier, and so acclaim for him tends to rub off on the People's Liberation Army. The present campaign is being orchestrated by the army - some say by the chief political commissar, Yang Baibing - and it may be intended to increase the military's prestige and influence in national affairs.
The Guangzhou Military Region has been the most energetic in pushing the campaign, and has backed an effort to manufacture and distribute 500,000 cassette tapes with 1960's songs like ''We Want to Be Lei Feng Kind of Kids'' and others hailing ''Uncle Lei Feng.'' The words from ''Lei Feng, Our Comrade in Arms,'' are typical:
In learning from Lei Feng, Our red hearts are the party's In learning from Lei Feng.
 
Raise the banner of Mao Zedong
March on! March on! Strive on for Communism!  In the United States, one suspects, naughty schoolchildren would promptly rewrite the lyrics to make fun of Lei Feng. In China, some regard him as a revolutionary relic, but few disparage him.
''I agree with the idea of trying to make people more courteous,'' said a Chinese woman in her late 30's, ''but I'm not sure if it's going to work to use Lei Feng. I doubt that the methods of the 60's will work in the 90's.''
 
A Chinese Tradition
The Lei Feng campaign may have the ring of Communist propaganda to it, but it also emerges from a Chinese tradition since ancient times of using individual models to teach ethics.
In Taiwan as well, teachers use heroic models to teach ethics in the classroom. But the heroes used in Taiwan are drawn from ancient China, while Lei Feng was a child of the Communist revolution. An impoverished 8-year-old orphan at the time of the 1949 revolution, he became fiercely loyal to the regime that gave him new opportunities for schooling and a career.
Some Western skeptics have doubted that Lei Feng ever existed, and in particular have wondered aloud how it is that there are so many photos of him performing good deeds. Mr. Lei, whose museum abounds with such photos, admits that many of the photos were posed. He says that Lei Feng was selected as a model soldier by the local military region even before he died, and that some of the photos were taken for an exhibition in 1962.
Mr. Lei acknowledges that his relative was flesh and blood, and occasionally was naughty as a boy.
''One day he dug a hole in the ground, and then covered it with leaves and twigs,'' Mr. Lei recalled, when pressed for an example of the hero's misconduct. ''As he had intended, someone walked along and -plunk - fell into the hole.''

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: The life of Lei Feng, a hero of Maoist China who died 28 years ago, is being hailed again as a symbol of Communist righteousness. The campaign is led by the army, which has made cassette tapes featuring songs like ''We Want to Be Lei Feng Kind of Kids.'' A museum dedicated to his memory displays many photos of Mr. Lei doing good deeds and teaching children about Communism.; map of china showing location of Changsha (The New York Times)

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The New York Times

February 27, 1990, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

Widespread Abuses Reported in Insurance for Nursing Home Care

BYLINE: By TAMAR LEWIN

SECTION: Section A; Page 20, Column 1; National Desk

LENGTH: 1210 words

Reka Hinderks, a widow hospitalized with osteoporosis at the age of 77 last year, was so concerned about her future care that she decided to buy a $2,400-a-year insurance policy to cover nursing home costs. The agent visited her in the hospital to collect the first premium.
Mrs. Hinderks, who lives in Renville, Minn., was discharged from the hospital after a month. Two months later she entered Ren-Villa Nursing Home, where the agent came to collect her second premium. But when she filed a claim, the insurance company denied it and canceled the policy, saying it did not cover patients who were hospitalized when they purchased coverage. 
Insurance to cover the high costs of nursing care has caught on rapidly in the last five years. But a report released yesterday by Families USA, a Washington advocacy group for the elderly, said that many elderly policyholders, like Mrs. Hinderks, have found their long-term-care insurance useless.
 
'Grotesque Abuses'
''There appears to be a pattern of widespread insurance industry abuse, in terms of deception about what is covered and the experience people have when they file claims,'' said Ronald Pollack, executive director of Families USA. ''It's not just a few fly-by-night companies. We have documented grotesque abuses by some of the most stable, A-plus-rated companies.''
He said that agents aggressively oversell the policies, that companies arbitrarily deny benefits and that policyholders often face long delays in collecting benefits or refunds.
''We need a thorough investigation by Congress and the Federal Trade Commission, and we probably need more regulation to protect frail elderly people,'' Mr. Pollack said.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee, which has the power to direct the trade commission to investigate the industry, plans hearings on the issue.
The industry defended its record yesterday and said it would welcome such an inquiry. ''I think the private market is trying to do a very good job of helping people,'' said Susan Van Gelder of the Health Insurance Association of America, a Washington group representing the leading long-term-care insurers.
''These are heart-wrenching stories,'' she went on, ''and if there are bad apples, let's get rid of them. But let's not discredit the whole private market, because this is a product people need.''
Earl Pomeroy, president of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, also took issue with the Families USA report, saying the group was predisposed to find fault with private long-term-care insurance. ''Some groups that want to see a Government long-term-care program believe the development of private long-term-care insurance will get in the way of that,'' said Mr. Pomeroy, whose group represents the state commissioners who regulate the industry.
 
Coverage Is Spotty
With people over 85 the fastest-growing segment of the population, the long-term-care problem has become an explosive public issue. Nursing home care costs an average of $30,000 a year, and in some places the cost can top $80,000 a year. The Government has estimated that the total cost of nursing home care will be $47.7 billion in 1990, with patients and their families paying about half the bill and the Federal and state governments most of the rest.
Medicare does not cover routine long-term care, and while the requirements vary substantially from state to state, Medicaid is intended to cover nursing care only for the poor, including those whose care has used up their assets. And though the Medigap policies available on the private market pay some costs not covered by Medicare, they do not cover most nursing home stays.
So elderly consumers have been eager to buy private long-term-care insurance. The Health Insurance Association of America estimates that as of mid-1989, 1.3 million policies had been sold nationwide. According to Families USA, the average policy covering two years of care, after a 100-day waiting period, costs $307 a month for a couple in which the husband is 72 and the wife 69.
''That's Chevrolet coverage, not Cadillac coverage,'' Mr. Pollack said, ''and still 84 percent of today's seniors cannot afford to buy it.''
What the policies actually cover varies enormously. Some exclude the first 20 days in the nursing home; others require a wait of 100 days. Some provide coverage for one year, others for longer. Because of all the limitations on coverage, some policyholders have found their claims denied, or their policies canceled, when they actually need care.
 
'I Think It Stinks'
Joseph and Beverly Wiley of Ossipee, N.H., paid $1,176 a year for a policy that would pay $70 a day, after a 100-day waiting period, for up to three years of nursing home care, if the stay began within 30 days of a hospital stay that lasted at least 3 days.
Last spring, Mrs. Wiley, a 70-year old with severe Parkinson's disease, went into the hospital, weighing 68 pounds and suffering from a lung infection. She was in the hospital for 10 weeks before being discharged to a nursing home.
But in August, when Mr. Wiley filed a claim, the Bankers Life and Casualty Insurance Company denied it, saying Mrs. Wiley had not been in the acute-care unit of the hospital, as the policy required. Although the hospital and the State Insurance Department have sent letters saying Mrs. Wiley was treated as an acute care patient, the company continues to deny the claim.
''She did not meet the terms of the policy,'' said Gerald Robinson, of the company's claim review department. ''We do offer policies without the three-day hospital requirement, but they cost more and that's not what she bought.''
So Mr. Wiley pays the $82-a-day charges. ''I think it stinks, to put it bluntly,'' he said. ''I knew nothing about one unit or another; I just knew she was in the hospital. Our insurance agent is the local minister, and I'm sure he didn't know either, or he would have told me to move her.''
 
New Guidelines Taking Effect
In 1988, the National Association of Insurance Commissioners recommended that states prohibit the sale of policies with restrictions based on prior hospitalization or level of care, and last year the group recommended that insurers be required to offer policies with inflation adjustments. At least 35 states have adopted those guidelines, but they cover only new policies, not those already in effect.
''Because it's a new and evolving product, our regulatory standards are changing,'' said Mr. Pomeroy, the president of the association. ''Long-term-care insurance is complex, expensive and sold primarily to the market most susceptible to abusive marketing practices, namely the elderly. So it requires very strict regulation.''
Later this week, the Bipartisan Commission on Comprehensive Health Care, established by Congress in 1988, is likely to issue recommendations on financing long-term care.
''Our mandate is to come up with a solution to the long-term care problem, and the health problem, and develop a blueprint for a national health care policy,'' said Philip Shandler, a spokesman for the commission. ''There has been a growing clamor about long-term care, and there is definitely a consensus that we have problems with long-term care insurance.''

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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The New York Times

February 28, 1990, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

About New York;
Old 'Contenders' Look for Help On Final Count

BYLINE: By DOUGLAS MARTIN

SECTION: Section B; Page 1, Column 1; Metropolitan Desk

Here is the heavyweight Doug Jones who fought Muhammad Ali, then Cassius Clay, in a 10-rounder at Madison Square Garden on March 10, 1963, and believes that judges robbed him of an earned victory.
There is Billy Graham, who lost a controversial call in a welterweight title bout in Havana to Kid Gavilan, a Cuban, in 1952. He said Ernest Hemingway told him that he had clearly won but that he was luckier to have lost since most spectators carried guns.
In one corner - by the coffee urn - was Allie Stolz, who lost a lightweight title shot against Sammy Angott, a fight that the septuagenarian growls he won. Toward center ring was Roger Donoghue, a promising middleweight in the 1950's, until he killed a man with his fists and never bounced back. 
The men are members of an organization called Veteran Boxers Ring No. 8. It is one of a number of similar ''rings'' around the country dedicated to the health needs of those who fought for a tiny fraction of what professionals make today. It gathers contributions to provide free dental care, eyeglasses and periodic medical exams. When a boxing brother is in trouble - say in an emergency room with no health insurance -members come to help.
They want to do far more. One idea is to persuade promoters to dedicate a tiny percentage of revenues to the care of retired boxers in the manner that the Screen Actors Guild takes care of elderly actors. Some favor Federal legislation to force this.
''What happens when a guy comes from the Dominican Republic and he's an old boxer and he gets hit by a truck?'' asked Charley Gellman, first vice president of the group. ''They don't give a damn about the old-timers.''
The special attraction the other night was a talk by Irving Rudd, a veteran boxing publicist. ''I feel strange and touched and funny at the same time,'' Mr. Rudd began.
In an accent reflecting New York City's streets, he told a little about his life. ''I didn't graduate from high school, by the way,'' he said. ''I was acquitted.''
In no time at all he was working for the old Rockland Palace in Harlem. He recalled working on an encounter between Jersey Joe Walcott and Tiger Joe Fox, as well as uncountable bouts with a combined purse of ''about $90.'' In more recent years, he has worked with the likes of Ali, Norton, Leonard and Tyson - and has the stories to prove it.
Mr. Rudd spoke of a changed pugilistic landscape. ''All the fight clubs have become parking lots,'' he said. ''The whole thing has shifted now. It isn't like you and I remember.''
He wasn't hopeful about the prospect of big-time promoters coughing up money to benefit old boxers. ''There's no authority,'' he explained. ''There's nobody to put the wood to any of them.''
Mr. Gellman then took the podium. He said he grew up so poor he had to steal to eat. He fought 66 light-heavyweight bouts, winning most. ''I fought a main bout in the Garden,'' he said. ''I fought one of the other contenders. I knocked him out.''
What separates Mr. Gellman from so many boxers is that he saved his small purses to use for an education. He went on from the fight game to administer two hospitals. His speech was long on the virtues of self-help.
''You're not going to get anything from anybody, because nobody's going to give you anything,'' he said. In a machine-gun delivery, he reported a growing health crisis among aging fighters - a crisis that nobody seems eager to address. ''I've found the biggest guys in the world, when a crisis comes, they run like thieves,'' he said.
''What about the guys from 50 years ago -60 years ago - who right now need help and need help badly?'' he asked. ''These guys weren't champs. They were club fighters, four-round fighters, six-round fighters.''
After the speeches - and after members approved a donation of $50 to the Friends of Sugar Ray Robinson - these tough guys grown old milled around. They appeared reluctant to let one another go.
''Fighters dish out punishment,'' Mr. Stolz said. ''But they have soft hearts.''
They hope they aren't alone.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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The New York Times

March 3, 1990, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

Panel Says Broad Health Care Would Cost $86 Billion a Year

BYLINE: By MARTIN TOLCHIN, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section 1; Page 1, Column 1; National Desk

LENGTH: 1175 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, March 2

A sharply divided bipartisan commission today recommended an $86.2-billion-a-year program to provide health insurance and long-term nursing care to every American who needs them. But the panel could not recommend specific ways to raise the money.
Some members of the panel, the Bipartisan Commission on Comprehensive Health Care, said the program stood little chance of being enacted without a way to finance it.
''We are not dealing with the world's easiest problem,'' said Senator John D. Rockefeller 4th, Democrat of West Virginia, who is chairman of the 15-member Bipartisan Commission on Comprehensive Health Care, created by Congress in 1988 to recommend legislation on health issues. ''We can't offer easy answers, but we can offer a challenge to this country.'' 
The Bush Administration had asked Republicans on the commission to hold out against any recommendations for tax increases. That, along with a general nervousness among Republicans about significant new health care initiatives, accounted for the narrow 8-to-7 vote by which the panel approved the ambitious plan unveiled today.
Representative Fortney H. Stark, a California Democrat who joined the Republicans in voting against the plan, took note of its bleak legislative outlook. Mr. Stark, chairman of the health subcommittee of the House Ways and Means Committee, said the split vote indicated ''that it's hopeless to get a comprehensive plan passed in the U.S., with politics being what it is.''
''Without a way to pay for it, it is a non-starter,'' Mr. Stark added. ''It is legislatively dead.'' In forming the panel, Congress had directed it to recommend ''the sources of those funds.''
Although the legislative prospects were described as ''nil'' by one member, the program does provide an accounting of how much major improvements in health care would cost the nation.
The commission put the total Federal share of the programs covering health insurance and nursing homes at $66.2 billion a year. Of this, $42.8 billion would pay for expanded nursing home care for elderly people with low and moderate incomes and for others with severe disabilities.
The remaining $23.4 billion in Federal money would provide health insurance for those who do not already have it. The total cost of the health insurance program would be $43.4 billion, with the remaining $20 billion paid through private employers. The employers would pay 80 percent of that cost and the employees 20 percent.
 
Broad Agreement on Nursing Care
The health insurance section of the plan was adopted by 8 to 7, with some members saying they opposed any additional charges for private employers. On the nursing care proposal, the vote was 11 to 4 in favor.
Under the plan, nursing home coverage would be greatly expanded. The ''severely disabled'' of all ages would receive three months of free care. And the Government would pay the nursing home costs of individuals with assets of $30,000 or less or couples with assets of $60,000 or less.
Under current law, only the elderly receive nursing home coverage, and only for the first 100 days after hospitalization for each spell of illness. To get more Government coverage, they must then divest their assets. They can qualify for Medicaid, the Federal-state program of health care for the poor, if their assets are an average of $2,000 or less.
The plan approved by the panel, named the Pepper Commission after its first chairman, the late Representative Claude Pepper of Florida, does not require such divestiture.
''This gets us out of povertizing people because they're disabled,'' said Senator Dave Durenberger, Republican of Minnesota, a commission member who voted for the nursing care program but joined the three other Republican members in opposing the health insurance program.
 
'No Consensus,' Sullivan Says
The panel was appointed in 1988 by President Ronald Reagan, the Senate and the House. It has eight Democrats, four Republicans and three members who were not appointed on the basis of party membership, including a past president of the American Medical Association.
Dr. Louis W. Sullivan, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, called the report ''a sincere and commendable effort.''
''However, it is important to note the wide divergence of views within the commission itself,'' Dr. Sullivan continued. ''This divergence reflects the simple fact that there is no consensus in this country today on how to achieve the kind of health care system we want, or how the cost of improvements in our system should be borne.''
Senator Rockefeller was more optimistic. He said there was growing recognition that ''the American health care system is in total crisis.''
''We're plunging ahead in this country toward a health care catastrophe,'' he added.
The commission proposal differs in many respects from the short-lived Medicare Catastrophic Coverage Act, repealed last year, which covered the costs of hospitals and doctors for the elderly, but not long-term nursing care, which many older Americans sought and indeed thought the act had provided.
The proposal also calls for ''reforms'' in the health insurance industry. It would require insurers to base their premiums on the health experience of a community, and prohibit insurers from refusing to sell policies to people with health problems.
''We would pre-empt state health insurance laws,'' Mr. Rockefeller said.
The commission report received mixed notices. The American Medical Association hailed it. ''The American people were the real winners,'' said Dr. James E. Davis, the former A.M.A. president who was a member of the panel.
Ron Pollack, president of Families United for Senior Action, an advocacy group for the elderly, said that the report ''calls to mind President John F. Kennedy's proposal of Medicare 30 years ago.''
 
'A Mixed Bag'
But the United States Chamber of Commerce called the recommendations ''a mixed bag,'' and said, ''We are disappointed by the emphasis on mandated benefits as a solution to the access problem.''
Similarly, the Health Insurance Association of America called the report ''a blueprint for economic disaster.'' The organization warned that the requirement that employers provide health insurance for their employees ''could result in increased unemployment and an additional burden on the publicly funded programs.''
Besides Senators Rockefeller and Durenberger, Mr. Stark and Dr. Davis, these are the members of the commission: James Balog, chairman of the Lambert Brussels Capital Corporation.
 
Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of
Montana. John Cogan, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. Representative Bill Gradison, Republican of Ohio.
 
Senator John Heinz, Republican of
Pennsylvania. Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachussets. Representative Mary Rose Oakar, Democrat of Ohio. Senator David Pryor, Democrat of Arkansas. Representative Louis Stokes, Democrat of Ohio. Representative Tom Tauke, Republican of Iowa. Representative Henry Waxman, Democrat of California.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Senator John D. Rockefeller 4th, who is chairman of the bipartisan health care commision that recommended an 86.2-billion-a-year health insurance plan. (Teresa Zabala)(pg9)

Copyright 1990 The New York Times Company



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The New York Times

March 3, 1990, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

California Accuses Lincoln Of Misleading Bond Buyers

BYLINE: By MICHAEL LEV, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section 1; Page 35, Column 5; Financial Desk

LENGTH: 487 words

DATELINE: LOS ANGELES, March 2

A California agency said today that it had filed a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against Charles H. Keating Jr. and the American Continental Corporation, contending that the company put pressure on unsophisticated investors to buy its ''junk bonds'' by saying they were insured by the Government and were free of risk.
The California Department of Corporations charged in the lawsuit, filed Thursday in Los Angeles County Superior Court, that American Continental and its top executives, including Mr. Keating, had lied to the state in disclosure forms and misled investors who bought the bonds from branches of Lincoln Savings and Loan, a subsidiary of the company.
The department said it had conducted an eight-month investigation and interviewed more than 100 holders of the now-worthless bonds and a dozen present and former employees. Many investors - a large number of them elderly people - lost their life savings. 
 
Vital Information
The suit contends that American Continental withheld vital information from investors and never disclosed that its bonds were uninsured.
Christine Bender, the Department of Corporations commissioner, said she had forwarded the charges to law enforcement officials for possible criminal prosecution. The Los Angeles County District Attorney's office said today that it had asked for a special grand jury for Lincoln.
While the department's lawsuit seeks the restitution of $200 million invested by California bondholders, and penalties that could add millions more, the agency conceded that it might be difficult to recover the money. American Continental sought bankruptcy court protection from creditors last year. The Government seized Lincoln Savings last spring.
 
Series of Lawsuits
The lawsuit is the latest in a series of actions against Mr. Keating and his companies. One of the suits by the holders also charges the state agency with failing to identify the problem. Ms. Bender is scheduled to give a deposition in that suit within two weeks.
Lawyers for both Mr. Keating and the bondholders said the lawsuit was politically motivated. Several officials involved in investigations of Mr. Keating and his companies are running for political office this year. A spokesman for American Continental, Brad Boland, said Mr. Keating was not available to comment. He said the company strongly denied that it had ever misled bond buyers.
''We have not seen the filing, but I find it very perplexing that the same agency that over the years gave us numerous approvals to sell bonds turns around and sues us,'' he said.
James Ham, an attorney for Mr. Keating, said: ''The bond salesmen were scrupulous in advising people that these were subordinated debentures and were not insured by the Federal Government. There always may be a small group who honestly felt they were misled, but as to the vast majority I think it's a case of conveniently selective memory.''

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March 4, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

House Moves to Restore Health Benefits for Elderly

BYLINE: By MARTIN TOLCHIN, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section 1; Part 1, Page 23, Column 1; National Desk

LENGTH: 653 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, March 3

A bipartisan group of four House leaders has moved to restore several health benefits for older Americans that were included in the Medicare Catastrophic Coverage Act that Congress repealed last year.
The benefits, which had been sought by health groups and the elderly, include breast cancer screening, respite care for those staying with the elderly and expanded hospice and home health care. They would be financed by an 80-cent increase in monthly Medicare premiums. ''While we are all aware of the controversy that led to the demise of the Medicare catastrophic coverage program, there was little controversy over the four benefits included in the proposed bill,'' said Representative Pete Stark, a California Democrat who is chairman of the Ways and Means subcommittee on health. 
The original legislation, intended to protect older Americans against the high cost of major illness, was repealed after the protests of thousands of better-off older American over a surtax they paid to help finance it.
The American Association of Retired Persons said it viewed the proposed increased premium in the new proposal as ''an extraordinary step that is acceptable only because the premium increase in this case is so small.''
Lovola Burgess, vice president of the A.A.R.P., applauded the bill. #99 Co-sponsors of Legislation Representative Stark was joined in sponsoring the measure by Representative Bill Gradison of Ohio, the ranking Republican on the subcommittee; Representative Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California, the chairman of the Energy and Commerce subcommittee on health, and Edward Madigan of Illinois, the ranking Republican on the subcommittee. The bill has 99 co-sponsors.
The proposed measure, the Medicare Benefit Improvements Act, would raise the Part B Medicare monthly premium to $29.40 from $28.60.
Although the bill has the broad support of health groups and groups representing the elderly, some members of Congress say they oppose a piecemeal restoration of the defunct major-care bill. They say they favor a more deliberative examination of the problems of health care for the elderly.
Representative Brian J. Donnelly, Democrat of Massachusetts, who led the effort to repeal the coverage for major illness, objected to the mandatory increase in the Part B premium for fear it would touch off protests.
Breast cancer screening is not currently provided under Medicare, which already benefits some disabled younger people. The proposed bill would cover a first screening for women 35 to 39 years old and screenings every two years for those 40 to 49, except for women determined to be at high risk, who would receive annual screenings. Annual screenings would also be covered for women 50 to 64.
 
Cost a Factor in Frequency
Although the incidence of breast cancer increases with a women's age, the bill would provide screenings only every two years for women 65 and older. An aide to Mr. Stark said the decision was based on cost.
The proposed law would remove the ceiling on hospice care for the terminally ill, permitting such care beyond the current limit of 210 days. It would also cover home health care seven days a week for up to 38 days, as against the current maximum of five days a week for up to three consecutive weeks.
The Medicare program does not currently provide coverage for respite care, in which homemakers, home health aides or others relieve those who care for sick patients in their own homes. The proposed measure would provide up to 80 hours of respite care a year to those dependent on a voluntary caregiver and who had annual out-of-pocket expenses exceeding $1,780.
Dr. Gerald D. Dodd, president-elect of the American Cancer Society, told a subcommittee hearing that while incidence rates of breast cancer are increasing early detection and improved treatment had kept mortality rates for the disease fairly stable over the past 50 years.

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The New York Times

March 4, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

YOUR TAXES;
Tax Books, a Winning Investment

BYLINE: By JAN M. ROSEN

SECTION: Section 3; Page 20, Column 1; Financial Planning Guide: Your Taxes

LENGTH: 711 words

Few investments offer the low-risk, high-reward potential of a good book on income taxes. Almost anyone who spends a few dollars for a book and takes some time to study it is sure to realize tax savings far greater than the cost of the book.
Some books can help people develop long-term financial strategies and the necessary understanding of tax laws, while other books can guide do-it-yourselfers through the maze of preparing a return.
Those who have their returns prepared professionally can also benefit, by learning which records they need and how to organize them. Paying an accountant to sift through records, after all, can be expensive. 
One of the best books is Julian Block's Year-Round Tax Strategies for the $40,000-Plus Household (234 pages, $10.95, Prima Publishing & Communications). Mr. Block, a Larchmont, N.Y., tax lawyer, has a clear, personable writing style devoid of legalese or I.R.S jargon. ''Is your withholding out of whack?'' he asks, rather than, ''Are you underwithheld or overwithheld?'' And he offers numerous short money-saving tips, as well as sophisticated strategies.
For return preparation it is hard to match the Arthur Young Tax Guide 1990 from Ernst & Young (687 pages, $11.95, Ballantine Books). The book has complete and up-to-date tax forms that the user can cut out or photocopy - unlike many other books, which use preliminary I.R.S. proofs. And it includes the I.R.S. Publication 17, Your Income Tax, as well as the accounting firm's own explanations, strategies, examples and money-saving tips.
The Arthur Young book is almost encyclopedic in scope and is well indexed. The table of contents appears twice, first by chapter, and second as tax guides for various groups - like homeowners, investors and senior citizens. And it is the most up-to-date of the current crop of tax books. For example, it records the death of the surtax for catastrophic care.
The granddaddy of tax books - and sharper than ever - is J.K. Lasser's Your 1990 Income Tax (499 pages, $11.95, Simon & Schuster). It has a handy tax organizer to help people figure out what records to get together and which forms they will need, as well as numerous worksheets for such purposes as interest income, capital gains and losses, medical and dental expenses and charitable contributions.
The tax forms are reduced-size versions of advance I.R.S. proofs. However, readers can send in a postcard for an update that includes later copies of forms. Lasser also has a telephone hotline. The book is a comprehensive reference and is well indexed.
This year Lasser also offers something for those who want speed and simplicity, not every detail of tax law. Your 60-Minute Tax Return 1990 (352 pages, $8.95, Simon & Schuster) begins with a questionnaire - similar to questions an accountant asks. Then, using symbols as easy-to-follow visual aids, it leads taxpayers through the forms.
The H & R Block 1990 Income Tax Guide (512 pages, $9.95, Collier Books, Macmillan) has a little coupon so those who go to Block for income-tax preparation can get the book price refunded. But taking advantqage of that offer may not be necessary, because the book is so clearly written and addresses so many family situations..
Guide to Income Tax Preparation (602 pages, $12.95, Consumer Reports Books), written by four tax lawyers, has a good section on estate planning and fairly thorough discussions of deductions, real estate, depreciation and retirement plans. It includes a coupon buyers may send in for late tax news and a postcard they can send to the I.R.S. to request forms.
Finally, since each of these books could make a briefcase bulge, here are two slender volumes for commuters.
The Ernst & Young Tax Digest and Planner 1990 (215 pages, $4.95, Random House) will fit in a vest pocket and will answer most of the questions people have about how to treat income and deductions. It also has sections on gift and estate taxes, Social Security and helpful tables.
The Price Waterhouse Personal Tax Adviser (364 pages, $5.50, Pocket Books) goes logically through the tax form with commentary, tips and cautions so people can handle this year's return and plan ahead. It has helpful sections on retirement plans and financing children's education.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

TYPE: Review

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The New York Times

March 4, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

WESTCHESTER GUIDE

BYLINE: By Roland Foster Miller

SECTION: Section 12WC; Page 24, Column 3; Westchester Weekly Desk

LENGTH: 843 words


 
A LOOK AT THE TITANIC
Two hours and 40 minutes out to sea on its maiden voyage in 1912, the Titanic struck an iceberg and sank to the icy depths of the North Atlantic. About 2,000 people drowned aboard the ship, whose wreck was discovered in 1985. Because of the tragedy at sea, more stringent safety standards were established for oceangoing vessels.
Todd J. Kurzbard, who has researched Titanic lore for 10 years and written several articles about the vessel, will present a talk and show a 30-minute videocassette on the subject at the Greenburgh Public Library at 7:30 P.M. Wednesday. 
In addition, there will be a display of Titanic memorabilia, including models of the ship Mr. Kurzbard built himself. For further information, call the library at 993-1602.
 
BOAT SHOW
Landlubbers, ahoy! Put on your blue blazer, white ducks and sea legs, because next Friday and extending through Sunday at the County Center in White Plains the third annual Westchester Boat Show is full steam ahead.
More than 100 boats from 40 different manufacturers will be featured. Twenty-five dealers are showing craft for fishing, cruising, skiing and powerboat racing. Also on exhibition will be jet-propulsion miniboats, inflatables, sailboards, day sailers and dinghies.
The hours are Friday from 4 to 10 P.M., Saturday from 11 A.M. to 10 P.M. and Sunday from 11 A.M. to 6 P.M. Admission is $6 for adults, $2 for children 6 through 12 and children younger than 6 are free.
 
JIM JENSEN ON ADDICTION
Jim Jensen of WCBS-TV will tell his personal story of drugs and depression today at 10 A.M. at St. Barnabas Church in Irvington-on-Hudson.
Mr. Jensen, who was an anchor for the television station, entered a drug clinic last summer to overcome an addiction to Valium and cocaine. Alcoholics Anonymous helped him kick both addictions but then he fell into a depression. He said he hoped to offer a high-profile example to other drug and alcohol abusers and their families by speaking at St. Barnabas.
The speech is free. For more information, call 591-8194.
 
FREE TAX AID FOR ELDERLY
Free tax assistance for those 60 and older is available this Saturday and each following Saturday through April 14 at the New Rochelle Public Library.
Trained volunteers from Tax Counseling for the Elderly of Iona College offer the service free to those who need help in preparing their income-tax returns.
 
IRISH MUSICAL EVENING
For a St. Patrick's Day warm-up, the Irish and those who simply like to wear the green can participate in authentic folk music, dance and song at a free ''Evening of Traditional Irish Music'' next Friday at 7:30 P.M. at the Grinton I. Will Library auditorium in Yonkers.
The Irish musical evening is presented by the Yonkers Department of Parks, Recreation and Conservation and the Westchester Arts Fund of the Council for the Arts in Westchester.
The concert of songs brought to America from Ireland features the button accordionist James Keane, the fiddler Brian Conway, the cittern and guitar player and singer Pat Kilbride and the uillean piper Jerry O'Sullivan.
The Irish evening is the first performance in the yearly Untermyer Ethnic Folk Music Series. The second performance, on March 30, will featuture i Giullari di Piazza, with Italian folk music. For additional information, call the Yonkers Parks Department at 964-3502.
 
ANCIENT JAPANESE ART
The Shosoin Storehouse, an eighth-century repository of art and other fragile cultural objects from the distant past, is the subject of a program tonight at 7:30 in the Scarsdale Public Library. The event is sponsored by the Westchester Society of the Archeological Institute of America.
Dr. Laura S. Kaufman, an art history professor and chairwoman of the Asian studies department at Manhattanville College in Purchase, will present a slide show and lecture on the historically important collection of rare objects that has been continuously cared for for more than 1,000 years.
The collection of luxury items - musical instruments, mirrors, game boards, rugs, paintings and pottery - are testimony to Asian trade routes of the seventh and eighth century that stretched all the way to India. Each November the public is allowed to glimpse a small part of the storehouse in Nara, Japan.
Dr. Kaufman, a specialist in Japnese art and literature, is a frequent lecturer at the Asia Society, the China Institute in America, the Neuberger Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Refreshments will be served after the lecture, which is free to members of the society and $3 for other adults.
 
IT'S IN THE CARDS
While the owners and players may still be striking out, baseball enthusiasts can turn today at 2 o'clock to a lecture, ''The Art of the Baseball Card,'' at the Museum of Cartoon Art in Rye Brook.
Murray Tinkelman, an illustrator and art professor at Syracuse University and a lifelong baseball fan, will discuss the subject. More than 50 artists nationwide have contributed to this project. For further information, call 939-0234.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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The New York Times

March 4, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

WESTCHESTER OPINION;
Recognizing Old Age When It Rounds the Corner

BYLINE: By Maria H. O'Connell; Maria H. O'Connell, a resident of the Andrus Memorial Home in Hastings-on-Hudson, is a retired social worker and former faculty member of the Columbia University Graduate School of Social Work.

SECTION: Section 12WC; Page 30, Column 1; Westchester Weekly Desk

LENGTH: 887 words

AT the age of 79, I was facing the fact that the lease on my Scarsdale home was about to expire. To renew would mean a big rent increase, since the apartment was not covered under the Emergency Tenants Protection Act.
I was also facing the fact that climbing three flights of stairs with bags of groceries was becoming an increasingly difficult task.
Clearly, it was time to put on a new thinking cap. As the oldest and only survivor of a family of four, I knew that decisions regarding my life had to be mine alone. 
I thought about moving into an apartment on the first floor or into a building with an elevator. But neither idea appeared to be a logical long-term solution. Because as I see it, the aging process does not go away. It comes on in different ways and at different times, and the rate of acceleration is often unpredictable. But the inevitable thing is: It comes.
So I thought to myself, ''Get going while you can, while your health is good, and while you can do it, rather than having it done to you!'' I had just made Decision No. 1. My internal conversation continued. I said to myself, ''It's important to stay near the family roots, so relatives and friends can come to see you once in a while - and maybe you can go to see them on occasion.'' Decision No. 2: I would stay in Westchester. But where? From my years as a young social worker back in the 1930's, I knew of the Julia Dyckman Andrus Memorial for Children in Yonkers, founded by the philanthropist John E. Andrus. I recalled it was considered a superior child-care institution, and while its service program has changed, it still helps children in need of service.
I knew, too, that Mr. Andrus's youngest daughter, Helen Benedict, established the nonprofit John E. Andrus Memorial Home to serve ''genteel'' older men and women. I never quite understood what that meant.
Through the years, I occasionally touched base with the home, attending bazaars and bridge parties. In my then ''listening position,'' I heard Andrus described in superlatives by residents and through the community grapevine. More recently, I heard it referred to as the Andrus Retirement Community, which appealed to me.
Decision No. 3 was to submit an application and request an interview at Andrus. At the same time, I resolved not to tell a soul about my plans until everything was final. Although I told myself that was because I was afraid friends would try to talk me out of it, I'm sure it was really because I wanted to spare myself embarrassment if I was not accepted.
I was accepted at Andrus. I was also right about my friends. They did try to talk me out of it, suggesting options I had already rejected away in other states that they had only heard about. Listening to them, the social worker in me came out. I suspect these friends were denying that they too should make some decisions for change.
I was happy to be moving to Andrus, and yet as I prepared for the move, I felt so angry! I think I was angry at myself for growing old and because moving to Andrus seemed a kind of surrender to the aging process. Was I giving up without a fight? No, I'd waited long enough! But some of the hardest parts were still to come. Although I was permitted - indeed, encouraged - to bring to Andrus some of my own furniture, my first inclination was to get rid of everything and move into a furnished room. I now attribute that to my confusion at having to dispose of so many possessions that held fond memories for me.
But sound logic helped me again. Possessions are only things. Time permitted me to give them away tenderly, in a happy way, to friends and relatives. And I did bring my favorite pieces with me, along with pictures and momentos collected on my travels abroad in younger days.
I moved to Andrus on April 14, 1988. With mixed feelings? No, I knew it was right for me. While my adjustment to a new way of life has not always been easy, I have discovered that relieved of the stresses of life on my own, I have truly found myself. And I have found my way in a new setting.
Residents at Andrus, like residents of other places where I have lived, come from different backgrounds, have different life experiences. Those with common interests find each other and form new friendships. We choose from a wide variety of activities and programs offered here. But we are not cut off from the world. Many of us pursue activities and entertainment ''outside the house,'' and volunteer in the community, where we are needed and welcomed.
When I look out of my window in the morning, I see the Hudson River and the rock-cliffed Palisades. I enjoy the glory of the Tappan Zee Bridge to the north and the double-decked George Washington Bridge to the south. In preparation for nightfall, they are both jeweled with chains of light, sometimes against the background of a sunset and its sparkling afterglow.
As I witness these familiar sights, I am convinced that all of the decisions I made were right for me at this time of my life. Here, surrounded by caring, dedicated people who understand the joys and frustrations of aging, I have found both independence and security. This is my home. One does not have to fight old age. But one does have to recognize when it is around the corner - and to face it with strength, courage and with planfulness.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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The New York Times

March 4, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

More Students in County Choosing Social Work as a Career

BYLINE: By ROBERTA HERSHENSON

SECTION: Section 12WC; Page 31, Column 1; Westchester Weekly Desk

LENGTH: 1114 words

DATELINE: HARTSDALE

SOCIAL WORK has become the career of choice for a growing number of students in the county. The deans of two graduate schools recent undergraduates but also by adults changing fields.
Besides its on-campus site in Manhattan, the Columbia University School of Social Work operates a division serving 250 students on the campus of the State University of New York at Purchase. The Graduate School of Social Service of Fordham University has divisions both at the university's main campus at Lincoln Center in Manhattan and in Tarrytown, where 400 students attend classes on the campus of Marymount College. The faculties of both schools divide their time between the Manhattan and Westchester sites. 
 
A Varied Student Body
Naomi Gitterman, assistant dean of the Columbia branch at Purchase, and Marc Miringoff, dean of Fordham's division in Tarrytown, say that students engaged in full-time master's degree programs in social work include former lawyers, teachers, dance therapists, nurses, firemen and police detectives. Many students also attend the schools part time.
Women still predominate in this traditionally female field - including those beginning careers after raising children - but there is a growing number of men, according to the deans. Many men and women having left business fields say they no longer identify with corporate values, said Amy Miller, a certified social worker and the assistant to Dr. Miringoff.
The students are preparing for the wide range of jobs that social work is known for: providing services to the elderly, the mentally and physically ill, the emotionally troubled and the disadvantaged. In addition, graduates may find work in policy-making positions on community or organizational levels.
 
Learning While Earning
Roni Bernstein, a Columbia student in Purchase who had pursued a doctoral degree in psychology, said she was ''much happier'' studying social work. Because of the opportunity to work in the field while studying, she said, she is picking up valuable ''practical hints'' - while earning money.
''The best experience is being out there doing it and working with the supervisor,'' said the North White Plains resident, who said she would focus on psychotherapy when she graduated.
Social-work programs generally require extensive fieldwork experience as well as academic course work. One private agency popular with students for fieldwork placement is Westchester Jewish Community Services, a nonsectarian organization based here that offers a wide range of services at 23 locations in the county.
 
How an Internship Works
Interns are placed with the agency for the school year. The students then work under personal supervision two to three days a week, providing psychotherapy to children, adults and families or aiding geriatric or disabled clients in a variety of settings.
Besides meeting weekly with their own supervisors, interns attend weekly staff meetings at the agency with psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers and participate in the staff training sessions that are held four times a year. The students also are invited to take field courses offered by the agency.
Mrs. Bernstein is serving as an intern at the community services agency, as is Ginny Einhorn, also a Columbia student, who travels to the county each day from her home in New Haven. Mrs. Einhorn said that she had always wanted to work with the elderly and that now that two of her three children were teen-agers, she was pursuing the ''chance to be helpful and feel good about it.''
One thing social-work students learn, however, is that wanting to help does not automatically make someone helpful. Marilyn Krantz, a clinical social worker with Westchester Jewish Community Services and the agency's coordinator of student social workers, said ''You empower people,'' as a social worker, said Marjorie Miller, also a clinical social worker with the agency, who supervises a group of student interns. Because social workers provide many kinds of services to clients, from getting the heat turned on to psychological counseling, Mrs. Miller called them ''project directors.''
Mrs. Miller also runs a support group for recently separated and divorced women at the agency's Hartsdale headquarters. She previously worked in special education and ran a nursery school, switching to social work in the mid-1980's when she realized that her students' families ''always needed to be worked with, needed more skills.''
 
A Weekly Exchange
A group of interns meets with Mrs. Miller once a week to discuss their concerns. Because she supervises none of them personally, the meetings enable the students to vent their feelings in a nonjudgmental atmosphere.
Her current group - six Fordham and Columbia students (another group meets with a different supervisor) - is made up of women spanning several decades in age. Issues at a recent meeting ranged from handling conflicts with the parents of children in therapy to getting group discussions going among reluctant clients.
Mrs. Einhorn, who works at the agency's Renee Pollack Home Care and Geriatric Center in White Plains, said that the group of elderly women she met with regularly didn't want to talk about ''any heavy topics.''
At the same time, Mrs. Einhorn said, the women wanted to cooperate with her since they knew she was a student. How could she respect their wishes yet help these elderly people - who were living apart from their families - deal with the painful issues confronting them?
With Mrs. Miller's guidance, the students explored the nature of the elderly group's resistance and the dynamics of group interaction. The supervisor noted that by listening carefully and making use of clients' questions a therapist could lead a group beneficially into deeper waters.
 
Relying on Colleagues
The give-and-take continued for an hour and a half, as the interns gave each other practical suggestions as well as moral support. One of the purposes of these meetings, Mrs. Miller explained afterward, was to teach the students ''how to rely on their colleagues when they are out of school.''
Dr. Miringoff said social-work graduates had no trouble finding work in the field. ''I have not heard of one person out of about 100 who graduated from Fordham at Tarrytown last year who did not find a professional job in social work,'' the dean noted. He added that about half those jobs were in Westchester.
The entry-level salary for a social worker with a master's degree is Miringoff said. ''The private agencies offering clinical services here are probably more developed than in any place'' in the New York, Connecticut and New Jersey area.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo; Marjorie Miller, a clinical social worker with the Westchester Jewish Community Services, supervising a meeting of graduate social work students who are interns at the agency and, left, with Lisa Seethaler, one of the graduate students who is working as an intern there (Roberta Hershenson)

Copyright 1990 The New York Times Company



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The New York Times

March 5, 1990, Monday, Late Edition - Final

Corrections

SECTION: Section A; Page 3, Column 2; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 96 words

An article on Feb. 19 about regulation of doctors in Massachusetts misstated two provisions of state law. 
One limits the fees that Massachusetts doctors can charge elderly patients to the amount permitted under the Medicare program, but the doctors are indeed permitted to bill patients - for 20 percent of the total.
Other provisions require that physicians who treat one Medicare patient must thereafter accept all Medicare patients and Medicare's fee schedule.
But the law does let doctors refuse to participate in Medicare entirely, by not seeing elderly patients.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

TYPE: Correction

Copyright 1990 The New York Times Company



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The New York Times

March 6, 1990, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

Review/Television;
Where Men Faced Death, With Fear and Bravery

BYLINE: By WALTER GOODMAN

SECTION: Section C; Page 22, Column 3; Cultural Desk

LENGTH: 588 words

They look pretty much like the sort of American tourists who are often kidded by more elegant travelers: a big busload of elderly people, snapping pictures, buying postcards. Their red, white and blue Victory Tours bus seems like a parody. But their itinerary is offbeat: the roads through France and Germany that became the final European battleground of World War II. And they are accompanied by Bill Moyers. 
''From D-Day to the Rhine,'' tonight at 9 on Channel 13 and at 8 on Channel 49, accompanies a group of veterans and a few family members back to 1944 and 1945, when these men fought their way across Europe. Newsreels remind viewers of the hardship and cost of the months that began with the Allied landing in June 1944 on Normandy beaches where youngsters are now seen splashing. For tens of thousands of Americans, the war ended in a German prison camp, a hospital or, if enough of their bodies could be found to bury, a grave.
This time out, gratifyingly, Mr. Moyers is not in search of profundities. In chats along the way, he extracts accounts of heroic acts, related without any pretensions to Ramboism. Jose Lopez tells of using his machine gun to hold off a German attack and enable his company to regroup. The citation for his Congressional Medal of Honor says he killed more than 100 enemy soldiers.
For viewers whose memories of World War II are dim or subject to revisionist influences, that accomplishment may seem dubious, but this program recalls how things seemed at the time. The scenes of rejoicing as the American soldiers entered Paris remain stirring testimony to the feelings of people who had endured Nazi occupation. And the welcome to the elderly Americans from elderly Frenchmen, apparently members of the Resistance, who embrace them with the words ''Thank you for coming home,'' confirms that some remember.
Most of the 10 men on the tour were officers. One received a Bronze Star for risking death to rescue another soldier. One tells of leading his patrol across a snow-covered field on a mine-hunting expedition, without mine detectors; their testing technique was to trample down the snow with their boots. A former lieutenant, who fought on after being wounded by mortar fire, almost had to have his foot amputated. Others recall shivering with cold and fear under German artillery barrages during the Battle of the Bulge. Two ended their military careers as prisoners of war.
Several of these tourists, now around 70 years old, remember their ''good buddies'' who never made it out of their 20's, and lie under the crosses and stars in the American cemeteries in France where the group pauses to pay homage.
It is an unusually patriotic program for public television, but David Grubin's production carries no hint of jingoism. Even the scene of the old fellows saluting the flag doesn't seem like flag waving. The most affecting aspect of these 90 minutes lies less in the recollections of bravery or fear than in the 45-year-old photographs of smiling young soldiers who faced death without quite believing in it, juxtaposed to the sight of elderly men returning, probably for the last time, to experiences that transformed their youthful years and those of a generation.
 
VISITING THE PAST - FROM D-DAY TO THE RHINE, a documentary produced and directed by David Grubin; Bill Moyers, correspondent; produced by Public Television Inc. in association with David Grubin Productions Inc.; Judith Davidson Moyers and Mr. Moyers, executive producers. At 8 and 9 P.M. on PBS.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: photo: American soldiers in France during World War II. A group of veterans returns to the scenes of battle in ''From D-Day to the Rhine.'' (The National Archives)

TYPE: Review

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The New York Times

March 7, 1990, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Upheaval in the East;
Where Nazis Took Fierce Revenge, French Hatred for Germans Recedes

BYLINE: By ALAN RIDING, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section A; Page 12, Column 1; Foreign Desk

LENGTH: 1235 words

DATELINE: TULLE, France, March 1

Anyone native to this southwestern French town can identify the lampposts and metal terraces near the railroad station where 99 local men were hanged by Nazi stormtroopers on June 9, 1944, in reprisal for the killings of 40 Germans by Resistance fighters.
Outside the station, a small plaque also names the 18 men ''shot savagely by the Germans'' two days earlier. Nearby, there is a memorial to the 101 local citizens who ''never returned'' after they were deported to Dachau concentration camp as further punishment for the Resistance attack.
Yet, perhaps surprisingly, with talk of German reunification now stirring bitter memories of World War II throughout Europe, the story of Tulle is not that of a town where the wounds of the Nazi occupation remain open, where anti-German feelings have festered on for almost half a century.
Rather, Tulle illustrates how time and a concerted effort to build a new relationship have transformed the way many French men and women view Germany. Today, even in a community of 20,000 inhabitants with ample reason for resentment, past animosity has largely given way to good will, particularly among young people. 
 
'No Hate for the Germans'
This town 310 miles south of Paris also helps explain the paradox that, while government, intellectual and newspaper circles in the capital publicly support and privately fret over the idea of a united Germany, opinion polls indicate that two of three French citizens favor it. Not for the first time, Paris and the provinces see things differently.
To be sure, Tulle has not abandoned its postwar pledge never to forget the atrocities of 1944. Each June 9, a procession leads hundreds of people from the station, past flower-covered terraces, to the monument built at the site a mile away where the 99 hanging victims were first buried and the 101 deportees are remembered.
''But I think that by now we can handle things emotionally,'' said Jean Combasteil, the 54-year-old Mayor of Tulle. ''We're now capable of talking to Germans about the events of June 1944 calmly, not from the point of view of hate or revenge.''
Understandably, older people - the families of victims as well as war veterans - are most anxious not to forget. ''We have nothing against the people of Germany,'' said Louis Vaux, a 67-year-old former Resistance fighter. ''We have no hate for the Germans. We just want to remind people of what happened to make sure it never happens again.''
 
New Attitude Among the Young
Yet while distrust for Germany lingers on among those who remember the war, even many middle-aged local people, like Pierre Diederichs, whose father died at Dachau, prefer to look forward. ''For my mother, it is still very painful,'' the 50-year-old schoolteacher said. ''But for my generation, I don't think there is much hostility towards the idea of German reunification.''
A new attitude toward Germany is still clearer among younger people here. ''We should not forget what happened,'' an 18-year-old girl at the Edmond Perrier Lycee here said. ''But we have no reason to fear Germany. The war was provoked by the Nazis and the people of Germany have no responsibility.''
In a class of 40, of which only two students had ever joined the annual procession June 9, her colleagues agreed. ''I feel close to German young people,'' another girl said. ''They're the same as we are. We wear the same clothes, we like the same music, we have the same sense of humor.''
At the Victor Hugo College, a history teacher, Gilbert Beaubatie, asked two classes of teen-agers to answer a brief questionnaire about attitudes toward Germany. Of 50 students who replied, only two expressed concern about German reunification. A typical response was that of the 16-year-old girl who wrote: ''Many Germans must be happy to be reunited. I am happy for them.''
 
A Useful Education
Here, as in many French communities, the healing process began in earnest in the mid-1960's, when Tulle was twinned with a West German town, in this case, Schorndorf near Stuttgart. Since then, not only local authorities, but also students and war veterans from the two towns have frequently visited each other.
''I must have visited Schorndorf a dozen times since I became Mayor in 1977,'' Mr. Combasteil said. ''People don't pretend things didn't happen here, but our motto is, 'we neither hate nor forget.' We have a Schorndorf Square and they have a Tulle Square, and every June 9 they place flowers there in memory of the past.''
Mr. Diederichs, who went to West Germany as an exchange student in 1954, recalled that at first many Tulle residents rejected the idea of association with Schorndorf. ''But by now hundreds of our youths have been there and hundreds of German youths have lodged in homes here,'' he said. ''And that has made a big difference.''
Many local residents even think visits by German youths here have provided them with useful education. ''They're anxious to deal with the past,'' one student at the Edmond Perrier Lycee said. ''They ask questions and we tell them. I remember one who asked to attend the June 9 procession. But it's very different with their parents. They don't like to talk about the war.''
 
Veterans' Political Prism
In Tulle, a generational gap in attitudes is also often apparent. Madeleine Vergne, a 52-year-old librarian whose brothers fought in the Resistance, admitted that she still felt strongly anti-German. ''When I see a car with German license plates, my stomach tightens,'' she said. ''But my daughter doesn't see things as I do. We're very divided on this subject.''
The response of many war veterans to the prospect of German reunification, on the other hand, is less emotional. During the war, the Department of Correze around Tulle was a stronghold of the Communist Resistance movement. Today, the old combatants still view events through a political prism.
At the small Museum of the Resistance, where wartime flags, weapons and documents are on display, several veterans insisted that they were delighted that the division of Europe was ending. ''If these countries adopt the same democracy as France, we have nothing to worry about,'' said Jean Mazaleyrat, 69, who flew as a navigator in the Royal Air Force.
But he and his friends did not hide their concerns. ''We can only hope that the lessons of history have been learned,'' said Charles Montagnac, a 71-year-old veteran, noting that he was troubled by the problem of Germany's borders with Poland, by the prospect of Germany re-emerging as a military power and by the dangers of a resurgence of German nationalism.
 
Fear of German Nationalism
The Rev. Jean Espinasse, an 84-year-old Catholic priest who witnessed the hangings here in 1944 and persuaded a German officer to reduce the number of victims from 120 to 99, said he too was worried about German nationalism.
But, recalling the Resistance's attack on a Gestapo garrison here that provoked the reprisals of June 9, he said the past was not a simple fight between good and evil. ''I think we should remember that not only the Germans were responsible,'' he said. ''The French also did things they should not have done.''
He paused and, looking out of his apartment window toward the spire of the 14th-century cathedral and the slate rooftops of this medieval town, he said softly, ''But I'm perhaps the only person here who holds that view.''

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Frenchmen who fought in World War II visiting the Museum of the Resistance in Tulle, France. From the left were Jean Mazaleyrat, who flew as a navigator in the Royal Air Force, Charles Montagnac and Jean Roche. On the subject of political changes in Eastern Europe, Mr. Mazaleyrat said, ''If these countries adopt the same democracy as France, we have nothing to worry about.'' (Agence France-Press); map of France showing location of Tulle (The New York Times)

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March 7, 1990, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Conservative Wins Senate Confirmation As an Appeals Judge

BYLINE: AP

SECTION: Section A; Page 19, Column 1; National Desk

LENGTH: 242 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, March 6

The Senate today confirmed Clarence Thomas, a conservative civil rights official, to be a Federal appeals judge, brushing aside complaints about his record from some groups representing liberals and the elderly.
The Senate had planned a roll call on the nomination but changed course at the last minute and on a voice vote confirmed Mr. Thomas as a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. 
As chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for eight years, Mr. Thomas has been one of the most visible black officials in the administrations of both Ronald Reagan and President Bush.
Mr. Thomas, 41 years old, has been critical of quotas and affirmative action plans as methods to fight discrimination in hiring and has been praised by conservatives for those views.
Among his opponents was Senator David Pryor, the Arkansas Democrat who is chairman of the Special Committee on Aging. He complained that while Mr. Thomas was in charge of the commission the statute of limitations expired on 15,000 age-discrimination cases without action being taken. ''It's too much to overlook,'' Mr. Pryor said.
Senator Alan Simpson, Republican of Wyoming, dismissed complaints that Mr. Thomas had failed to cooperate with an investigation by the Aging Committee several years ago and charged that the panel's inquiry was flawed to begin with. ''They wasted a lot of time trying to nail Clarence Thomas,'' he said.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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March 9, 1990, Friday, Late Edition - Final

Events in Celebration of Women's History Month

SECTION: Section C; Page 25, Column 3; Weekend Desk

LENGTH: 739 words


WINIFRED BORG, Gallery Art 54, 54 Greene Street (226-1605). Paintings and assemblage. Tuesdays through Sundays, 11 A.M. to 6 P.M., through March 18. Free.
FEMMES VITALES, New York Marxist School, 79 Leonard Street (941-0332). Paintings and sculpture by women. Mondays through Fridays, noon to 5 P.M., through March 23. Free. 
MARY KELLY'S INTERIM, New Museum of Contemporary Art, 583 Broadway, near Houston Street (219-1355). A large-scale work that explores the representation of women and aging. Fridays and Saturdays, noon to 8 P.M.; Wednesdays, Thursdays and Sundays, noon to 6 P.M.; through April 8. Suggested donation: $3.50. All-day symposium on major developments in feminist art and critical practice since the 1970's. Tomorrow, 10 A.M. to 4 P.M. Tickets: $15; $10 for members and students.
SANDRA LERNER, June Kelly Gallery, 591 Broadway, near Houston Street (226-1660). Paintings. Tuesdays through Saturdays, 11 A.M. to 6 P.M., through April 7. Free.
''MEMORY/REALITY,'' Ceres Gallery, 91 Franklin Street (226-4725; 219-9590). Paintings and sculpture by contemporary artists who immigrated to the United States from Asia and Eastern Europe; curated by Kit-Yin Snyder. Tuesdays through Saturdays, noon to 6 P.M., through March 24. Free.
DEBORAH HAY, Warren Street Performance Loft, 46 Warren Street (732-3149). Dance by a noted female choreographer, with music by Ellen Fullman. Tonight, tomorrow and next Thursday through Saturday, 8 P.M. Tickets: $8; Theater Development Fund vouchers accepted.
ELIZABETH STREB RINGSIDE, Streb Studio, 309 Canal Street (924-0077). A program of athletic dance, called ''Airwork, Groundwork, Wallwork.'' Today through Sunday and next Wednesday through Monday, 8 P.M. Tickets: $12; Theater Development Fund vouchers accepted.
 
TOMORROW
 
''ANTONIA: PORTRAIT OF A WOMAN,'' College of Staten Island, 715 Ocean Terrace, Building A, Room 207, Sunnyside (718-390-7951). Judy Collins's documentary about Antonia Brico, the orchestra conductor. Tomorrow, 10 A.M. Free.
WORKSHOP IN PRINTMAKING, New York Feminist Art Institute, 91 Franklin Street (219-9590). Led by Deborah Pearlman, workshop includes slide presentations and critiques. Tomorrow, 1 to 4 P.M. Admission: $15, including materials.
''QUILTS IN WOMEN'S LIVES,'' Metropolitan Museum, Uris Center Auditorium (570-3930). Film. Tomorrow, 3 P.M. Free with museum admission, which is $5; $2.50 for students and the elderly; free for children under 12.
THE WASHINGTON SQUARES, Snug Harbor Cultural Center, Veterans Memorial Hall, Snug Harbor, 1000 Richmond Terrace, Livingston (718-448-2500). Rock-folk music. Tomorrow, 7 and 9:30 P.M. Tickets: $12; $10 for museum members.
 
SUNDAY
 
FIRST ANNIVERSARY PARTY, Judith's Room, 681 Washington Street, between 10th and Charles Streets (727-7330). A reception honoring New York City's only women's bookstore. Sunday, 2 to 6 P.M. Free.
PATCHWORK: VOICES OF 19TH-CENTURY WOMEN, Fraunces Tavern Museum, 54 Pearl Street (425-1778). A dramatic presentation by Linda Russell, actor and ballad singer, of diaries, letters and songs written by rural North American women. Sunday, 2 P.M. Free with admission to the museum, which is $2.50; $1, children, students and the elderly.
''THE FEMINIST 'I,' '' Brooklyn Museum, Education Division, 200 Eastern Parkway, at Washington Avenue, Crown Heights section (925-0606; 718-638-5000, extension 234). A series of videos by women, presented by the museum and by Women Make Movies, through April 1. This week's program features work by Joan Braderman, Pratibha Parmar, Margie Strosser and Cecelia Condit. Sunday, 2:30 P.M. Screenings are free with museum admission, which is $3; $1.50 for students; $1 for the elderly; free to children and museum members.
AN EVENING WITH FRAN LEIBOWITZ, 92d Street Y, 1395 Lexington Avenue (996-1100). Sunday, 7:30 P.M. Tickets: $13.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

TYPE: Schedule

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March 10, 1990, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

Quotation of the Day

SECTION: Section 1; Page 2, Column 6; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 39 words

''There are risks involved in engaging two vulnerable populations and no certainty of success. But they are nice risks.''    - Arnold Hiatt, chairman of Stride Rite, on workplace day care for children and the elderly. [8:4.]

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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March 10, 1990, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

About New York;
How to Preserve A Strong Mind: Flex It Regularly

BYLINE: By DOUGLAS MARTIN

SECTION: Section 1; Page 27, Column 1; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 752 words

John Hough thinks it's high time to study computers. ''Youngsters are learning how to use them, but us oldsters know nothing,'' he says.
Inez Robbins again pushes for a French course. Dr. Milton Bonart speaks passionately for a seminar on repealing the Federal income tax. Murray Zackin, a tall gentleman in a Stetson, says he wants to know more about the experience of newly freed slaves during the Reconstruction Era. Marion Kuhn suggests a course in government corruption beginning with the Harding Administration. 
Welcome to this semester's debate over which courses will be offered to residents of the Jewish Home and Hospital for the Aged at 120 West 106th Street. The 33 people in attendance sit in a semicircle. More than half are in wheelchairs. Some have hugely swollen feet, some pencil-thin legs. The average age is over 86.
Not a few embody amazing stories. One takes singing lessons. Another is writing a first novel. Another's paintings are being exhibited away from the home. A woman who fled czarist Russia has begun studying the Jewish religion and is excitedly planning the bat mitzvah she never had.
These are people trying to walk quietly into the sunset with earned dignity. They have begun and finished careers, raised families, nurtured grandchildren and for some inexplicable reason are pressing on at a time so many are gone. None can imagine growing too old to learn.
''They keep us thinking, and they keep themselves thinking,'' says Helene Meyers, administrator of the home.
''I was very unhappy to come into a nursing home, and the thing that has kept me here is the college courses,'' Beatrice Danziger says. ''It kept my brain alive.'' The courses are taught by instructors from the City University of New York's Institute of Study for Older Adults, which offers the same service in other homes. No college credits are given, just attendance certificates. For some, particularly those with scant formal education, the certificates are as treasured as Phi Beta Kappa keys.
What makes the Jewish home unusual is that residents choose topics, rather than selecting courses from a catalogue. ''Our people will simply not be pressed into molds,'' declares Dr. Paula Gray, director of therapeutic recreation.
The process begins with residents tossing around ideas. Sophia Solomon, whose views are a bit to the right of this pack of generally liberal Democrats, suggests examining immigration law. ''Our population is increasing by the millions and we can't take care of the ones we have,'' she says. ''I know the Statue of Liberty says give us your hungry and poor, but it doesn't say give us your criminals.''
Margot Furber completely changes the subject. She suggests a course on bringing up children. ''How strict should you be?'' she asks. ''What's better for the future?'' Dr. Gray applauds this idea, as it might allow students to discuss their own experiences.
Elizabeth Henderson then lets out one enigmatic word: obscenity. Everyone but Bertha Reider seems at a loss as to how to respond. ''With illustrations?'' she asks drolly. Dr. Gray picks up the cue. ''That would be the most popular course of the season,'' she says.
The suggestions continue. Mythology, though its sponsor seems torn between Greek and Scandinavian. The biographies of New York Mayors. The part railroads played in American history. Who's who in the world of art.
A proposed bridge-playing seminar is thrown out as unworthy of college. Two topics in the news - homelessness and changes in Eastern Europe - spark vigorous discussion.
Dr. Gray calls for order. The time has come to vote. ''Now, everybody wake up!'' she barks. ''Those of you who are sleeping, get ready to put your hands up.''
Some suggestions receive no support, not even from their sponsors. ''Mrs. Schapiro,'' Dr. Gray says with cheerfully exaggerated exasperation, ''you better put your hand up, since you suggested it.''
The first round ends with six course possibilities still in the running. The final selection of two courses is to be made by secret ballot. Staff members canvass each resident to insure everyone votes.
They aren't completely successful. ''I'm not interested in anything on that list,'' one woman growls, pushing the piece of paper away.
The envelope, please. One winner is Eastern European politics, hardly surprising given most residents' heritage. The other is homelessness.
''It reflects your concern for humanity,'' Dr. Gray proclaims. ''This is the kind of course you always choose.''

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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March 10, 1990, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

POLICE MOURN DEATH OF ONE OF THEIR OWN

BYLINE: By ROBERT HANLEY, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section 1; Page 29, Column 6; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 618 words

DATELINE: PORT JERVIS, N.Y., March 9

State Police Sgt. Joseph Aversa, killed on Monday in an undercover drug operation gone awry on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, was honored and mourned here today in a Mass of police brotherhood.
About 6,000 uniformed officers came to St. Mary's Church, far from the turbulent scene of Sergeant Aversa's death, for a 75-minute Mass and then a half-mile funeral procession that transfixed this old railroading town.
Hundreds of residents gathered on the curbs and front porches of Ball Street and watched the procession in silence, reflecting the solemnity of the passing state troopers and detectives.
There were high school football players in red team jackets and elderly women huddled under blankets. There were middle-aged men, some smoking cigars; young mothers with infants in carriages, and toddlers holding little American flags. 
 
'She's Too Young to Understand'
Pat Gessner, of Franklin Street, was on one knee, talking gently to her 2-year-old daughter, Kate, as the troopers marched toward Sergeant Aversa's grave site in St. Mary's Cemetery.
''She wanted to know why they were all so sad,'' Mrs. Gessner said. ''She wanted to know why it wasn't happy, like a parade. I said they lost a very good friend trying to protect us and our families from drugs. But she's too young to understand.''
Gov. Mario M. Cuomo and Mayor David N. Dinkins attended the Mass and appeared shaken as they left it.
''It's a terrible tragedy,'' the Governor said. ''He represented the ultimate in public service.''
Mayor Dinkins said, ''All of our police officers are special, and he was more so.''
 
A Piper Played 'Amazing Grace'
Sergeant Aversa, 31, had been promoted to the Bureau of Criminal Investigation in New York City last October. He was an undercover narcotics investigator with a unit of Federal, state and New York City agents.
His mourners came from throughout the eastern United States. In some places their ranks were 6 deep, in others, 8 or 10. All were at attention, saluting as his hearse drove by.
As a lone bagpiper played ''Amazing Grace,'' Sergeant Aversa's coffin was carried into the church by eight troopers. Ahead of them walked one trooper with a crucifix and two others with lighted candles. Behind were Sergeant Aversa's widow, Eileen, clutching his trooper's Stetson, and his parents, Doris and Vincent.
Flanking them was a police honor guard in dress uniform colors as varied as their origins. There was the green and gray of New Hampshire; the cardinal of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police; the grays of Connecticut, Alabama and Pennsylvania, and the blues of New Jersey, Massachusetts, Michigan and Indiana.
The Rev. Samuel Taylor, chaplain of State Police Troop F in Middletown, delivered the eulogy. He noted the 25 commendations Sergeant Aversa had received since joining the State Police in 1984.
''Joey touched all our lives,'' Father Taylor said. ''The Book of Wisdom tells us a just man, though he dies early, shall be at peace. Jesus said blessed is the man who lays down his life for a friend. Joey laid down his life so each of us would have a better neighborhood, a better place to live.''
Sergeant Aversa's widow left the church still holding her husband's hat against her chest. Through sobs, she said: ''He was so proud. He was so proud.''
The New York Police Department's Emerald Society pipe-and-drum band led the procession to the cemetery. Then came the hearse and the long lines of marching state troopers and plainclothes detectives, their gold shields covered by bands of black.
Along the entire route, Sergeant Aversa's father, a retired New York City mounted police officer, walked beside the hearse, his hand resting against it.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Sgt. Joseph Aversa's widow, Eileen, clutching her husband's hat, at his grave site yesterday in Port Jervis, N.Y. (The New York Times/William E. Sauro)

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March 11, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

CONNECTICUT GUIDE

SECTION: Section 12CN; Page 13, Column 1; Connecticut Weekly Desk

LENGTH: 1064 words


 
EQUINE SCIENCE
Horse enthusiasts may sign up for a Horse Science Symposium running Friday morning to Sunday evening at the University of Connecticut in Storrs for $110 (including lunch and dinner but not overnight accommodations). Or they may opt for single-day admissions with lunch and dinner for $65. The event, held mostly at the Bishop Center for Continuing Education, is sponsored by UConn's department of animal sciences and the Connecticut Horse Council, an organization of professional horse breeders, trainers and riding instructors.
From 9 A.M. to 5 P.M. Friday and Saturday there will be lectures by veterinarians, faculty members from schools of veterinary medicine, and specialists in such related fields as insurance for horses. Among the lecture subjects are the Connecticut horse industry, animal welfare issues, the effect of riders and other load weights on horses' anatomies, how horses learn, Lyme disease in horses, nutritional requirements for performance horses, and getting your money's worth from barn employees. 
Sunday admission is $5, with no meals. Events will be held at the Ratcliffe Hicks Arena on campus, and they include demonstrations of Arabian horsemanship by the Arabian Club of Connecticut, a UConn drill team equitation display, a hitch of Percheron draft horses, a Connecticut Reining Horse Association demonstration of single and multiple reining, and a polo match between the UConn faculty team and members of the Connecticut Horse Council. For more information call 486-2636.
 
ANTIQUE PAPER
The Ephemera Society of America, holding its 10th annual fair in Greenwich from 11 A.M. to 5 P.M. today, attests by its mere existence the zooming popularity of antique and historic paper. Named for the ephemerid, or mayfly, which lives for only a day, the society may be a misnomer, considering the longevity of the aged broadsides, sheet music, playing cards, valentines, pamphlets, tickets, political campaign material, manuscripts, trade cards, invitations, photographs, letterheads and other items it has collected for sale.
The Hyatt Regency, at 1800 East Putnam Avenue (Boston Post Road) near the Stamford border, will accommodate 75 dealers and their fragile wares. Admission is $5 and visitors may expect to spend from $10 to $100 for most items. A special exhibition of paper toys includes early paper dolls, optical toys, games and movable books.
 
JOHN RUTTER
John Rutter, the eminent British composer and conductor, begins his first American tour this week, accompanied by the Cambridge Singers, a mixed choir of 28 voices, many of them from Clare College, Cambridge, where Mr. Rutter was director of music in the 1970's.
Their program at 8 P.M. Friday in the Central Baptist Church, 457 Main Street, Hartford, includes works by Bach, Benjamin Britten and Rutter as well as a selection of English church and folk music. Tickets are $10, or $8 for students and the elderly.
Since the concert is expected to be sold out, Mr. Rutter will hold an open rehearsal at 7:30 P.M. Thursday in the South Congregational-First Baptist Church, 90 Main Street, New Britain, previewing the Hartford performance and including some American works by Aaron Copland. Substituting for the Cambridge Singers will be Concora, Connecticut Choral Artists. Admission is $5. Call 223-3691 for reservations.
Mr. Rutter and the Cambridge Singers will appear in Princeton, N.J., Washington, several Midwestern and Western cities, and wind up the tour at Carnegie Hall in Manhattan.
 
TRACKING THE STORM
The Peabody Museum at Yale and scientists in the department of geology are seeking help from the public in their efforts to track the storm that hit western Connecticut last July 10. Some 4,000 measurements have been made so far by plotting tree-fall patterns, but eyewitness accounts are still needed to identify the nature of the storm. Anyone who saw a triangular, vertical or funnel-shaped cloud, or has barograph records, may call 432-3178 day or night, leaving their name, address and phone number, or mail the information to Copeland MacClintock, Peabody Museum, Yale University, Post. Office Box 6666, New Haven, Conn. 06511.
 
THE NEXT CENTURY
How Connecticut, New England and the United States will face the next century's environmental problems will be discussed by scholars, scientists and public administrators during a symposium at Trinity College in Hartford. Titled ''Environmental Policy in the 90's and Beyond: Science, Human Values and Political Choices,'' the event is scheduled from 9 A.M. to 5 P.M. Friday in Mather Hall.
Steven Kelman of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard will open the session with a talk on the state of environmental policy in terms of methods, values and priorities. Two panel discussions will follow focused on environmental risk and Federal regulatory policies, and environmental risk as a state and local problem.
Participants include R. Talbot Page, Environmental Studies Program, Brown University, Glen Cross, senior counsel to the Connecticut Resources Recovery Authority, Barry Rabe, School of Public Health at the University of Michigan, and Douglas MacLean, Department of Philosophy at the University of Maryland. All speakers will join in a roundtable discussion beginning at 3 P.M., focusing on Connecticut as a case study for environmental risk and recycling. Free reservations and more information may be obtained by calling 297-2472.
 
CLASSICAL GUITAR
Sharon Isbin will give the final concert in a Connecticut Classical Guitar Society series at 8 P.M. Saturday in the headquarters of the Connecticut Historical Society, 1 Elizabeth Street, Hartford.
In addition to winning guitar competitions in Toronto and Madrid, and being the first guitarist to win the Munich International Competition, she has recorded Bach's complete lute suites for Virgin Classics, as well as several other recordings on other labels. She was the director of Carnegie Hall's Guitarstream International Festival and American Public Radio's Guitarjam series last year, and she currently heads the Juilliard School's first guitar department, founded in 1989.
Her program will consist of works by Bach, Gershwin, Britten, Savio, Brower, Lauro and Barrios. Tickets are $10 and include a post-performance reception. Call 249-7041 for reservations. $90ELEANOR CHARLES

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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March 12, 1990, Monday, Late Edition - Final

Lockout Could Make or Break Carter

BYLINE: By JOSEPH DURSO, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section C; Page 3, Column 3; Sports Desk

LENGTH: 787 words

DATELINE: PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla., March 11

Except for the fan who waited all winter, who is the biggest loser in baseball's short spring?
Many people think it's the rookie straining to win a job in the big leagues. To him, the short spring may be a lost spring. He has almost no time left to show his stuff, and he may have to get on line again until the next round of auditions in 1991. 
But the biggest loser may turn out to be a man who was a rookie 15 years ago: one of the game's distinguished senior citizens, Gary Carter. Dropped by the Mets, signed by the San Francisco Giants, he turns 36 next month with battered knees and tender hopes.
He knows this spring training may be his final audition, and he has to make the team. If he doesn't, his career ends and he loses the chance to earn nearly $1 million in performance bonuses.
 
'A New Challenge'
''I need to prove myself,'' Carter said. ''I'm waiting. It's a new challenge, a new team, a new everything.''
Carter needs to prove himself because the short spring finds him in the autumn of a long career with time running out. The numbers are classic: 304 home runs, 11 times an All-Star, more than 1,800 games as one of the premier catchers of his generation. The numbers on his contract were classic, too, $2 million a year. They were more classic than the numbers on his record last season: only 50 games played, only two home runs hit, only .183 at bat. So, the Mets decided not to keep him on their exploding list of $2 million-a-year younger stars.
They made the same decision about Keith Hernandez, their All-Star first baseman. So, in one touching ceremony last October, they gave honorable discharges to both of their wounded old heroes and co-captains. Hernandez signed in December with the Cleveland Indians for $3.5 million for two years, guaranteed. Carter signed in January with the Giants for $250,000, and there's the rub: nothing else is guaranteed. $250,000 to $1.2 Million ''The contract says I get a base of 250,'' Carter said by telephone from his home in West Palm Beach. ''If I make the ball club, I get another 250 and that becomes the base. Then I get more for every 10 games I play over 50 games. It goes up in stages. If I play in 110 games, I could make $1.2 million.''
''But,'' he added, ''first, I've got to make the team.''
His chances are pretty good even though the Giants won the National League pennant without him. Terry Kennedy, a left-handed hitter, was the regular catcher. Kurt Manwaring, a right-handed hitter, was the reserve. Manwaring can throw but he can't hit yet (.210 with no home runs). So, Carter has a shot at the job, if he makes the team in baseball's short spring.
 
Neighborly Workouts
''It could be in my favor, actually,'' he said. ''They may not have time to check out Manwaring, either, and then they may go with the person who has proven himself. It could go either way.''
To position himself for the audition, Carter has been working out every day with two neighbors, Tim Burke of the Montreal Expos and Robby Thompson of the Giants. Notice that he has a pitcher and a second baseman, just the people a catcher needs for practicing the long throw to the bag. They also take turns pitching and hitting, and waiting for the call to head for camp in Arizona.
''I've been working hard,'' Carter said. ''I'll be able to show them I can run and hit and throw. We work out at a local park. Nobody's around, and I get 120 cuts a day. Thompson throws to me, I throw to him.
''The union has suggested that we don't do anything during the labor dispute. But I have to go. I can't afford to walk away. I need to prove myself.''
 
'No Ill Feelings'
Is he bitter because the Mets put him into this sticky situation?
''No ill feelings,'' he said. ''I am disappointed. I wanted to finish my career in New York. And I wasn't happy with Davey Johnson when I came back from two and a half months on the disabled list and got only 74 at-bats in the last 66 games. Even when I got into the lineup and got seven hits in a row, I was back on the bench the next day.
''I can understand it from the Mets' point of view. Economics. They have six starting pitchers all making $1.3 million a year and above. You throw in John Franco at $2 million in the bullpen, and Howard Johnson and Kevin McReynolds in the lineup. And they need to lock Darryl Strawberry into a multiyear contract or he'll walk. It's economics.''
The Kid considered his long career and his short spring and said: ''Al Rosen said Manwaring needed another year at Triple A. But if they don't have time to get a good look at guys in spring training, will the Giants go with the guys they have, in the time they have? I don't know. But I do know I've got to prove myself again.''

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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The New York Times

March 13, 1990, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

Fighting the Deficit Too Bravely

SECTION: Section A; Page 28, Column 1; Editorial Desk

LENGTH: 514 words

''I've participated in the binge of irresponsibility,'' says Representative Dan Rostenkowski. ''But, no more,'' vows the blunt chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. Writing in The Washington Post, Mr. Rostenkowski outlines a bold plan to attack the Federal budget deficit with a combination of new taxes and spending cuts. 
The plan, which includes unpopular measures like suspending next year's Social Security raise, deserves high marks for honesty and courage. He has even prompted a glimmer of interest from the White House. The chairman is right to offer a responsible attack on the deficit, especially with two irresponsible tax cut plans hurtling down the Congressional railroad track.
But in execution, the Rostenkowski plan risks causing more pain than it would relieve. It contains good ideas, but also bad and unnecessary ones.
Huge Federal deficits siphon money out of private capital markets. The threat is a long-term erosion of the nation's capital stock. The solution is for Congress to stop spending more than it collects in taxes. Resolving this imbalance requires permanent changes, not merely one-shot tax hikes and spending cuts. Mr. Rostenkowski's plan turns on some of both:
The Good: The proposed permanent tax hikes on gasoline, alcohol and tobacco are sound. These would raise tens of billions each year while helping to clean up the environment and lower health-care costs. These changes should be part of any long-term budget plan. The Bad: The core of the Rostenkowski plan is a package of one-year fixes. He proposes, for instance, to freeze spending that is not targeted on the poor and to suspend indexation of the tax code. These changes will cause pain, despite his commendable proposal to expand the earned income tax credit that benefits the working poor. The elderly would lose some Social Security benefits; low-income families would pay more tax.
And Mr. Rostenkowski's plan would renege on commitments made during reform of the tax code and Social Security. Breaking commitments could be justified in times of severe crisis. But the deficit presents no such short-term threat.
Mr. Rostenkowski recommends repeal of the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings deficit targets because, he argues, they would be superfluous under his plan. Not true. Without those targets, Congress would be free to offset his measures with a new round of tax cuts and spending hikes. Gramm-Rudman remains a regrettable but useful straitjacket.
The Unnecessary: Deficit reduction is one, but only one, way to promote economic growth. Investment in the nation's disadvantaged children and dilapidated infrastructure is at least as important. The deficit needs to be reduced substantially, but how much should depend on case-by-case evaluation of public investments.
Mr. Rostenkowski challenges his colleagues to adopt his plan or improve on it. It's a welcome challenge to those attracted by reckless reductions in the Social Security tax or in the capital gains tax rate. The test now is whether Washington can turn his one-shot fixes into permanent remedies.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

TYPE: EDITORIAL

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The New York Times

March 13, 1990, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

Heart Tests To Focus On Women

BYLINE: AP

SECTION: Section C; Page 7, Column 3; Science Desk

LENGTH: 394 words

DATELINE: BALTIMORE, March 12

The first large study of women and heart disease is being undertaken by the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions and six other medical centers after decades of research devoted solely to heart disease in men.
The $10 million, four-year study is designed to determine whether three different hormones can help reduce heart disease in post-menopausal women.
In the study, 840 women will be assigned at random to receive one of the three medications - estrogen and two types of progesterone - or a placebo. Estrogen and progesterone are female sex hormones. Cholesterol levels, blood pressure and levels of a blood-clotting factor will be studied. 
The new study, called Post-Menopausal Estrogen and Progestin Intervention, reflects a belief that women have been denied equal time in health studies, as well as a growing emphasis on the health of older people.
 
Menopause and Heart Attack
 Estrogen, a hormone needed for normal female sexual development, is believed to protect younger women against heart disease. Researchers also suspect that the threat of a heart attack increases during menopause, when estrogen production drops off.
The study will try to determine whether hormone drugs take the place of natural estrogen in protecting the hearts of older women.
The study will answer the question of whether estrogen protects against heart disease only indirectly because it will not continue long enough to look for differences in heart attacksand heart disease deaths in those taking hormones compared with those who do not.
But the results could prompt doctors to prescribe hormone therapy for post-menopausal women, said Dr. Trudy Bush, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health.
''In my opinion, there is good evidence at this time that women who use estrogens probably have about half the risk of heart disease compared to women who don't,'' she said. Estrogen hormones will be part of the study. Dr. Bush is leading the study at Hopkins along with Dr. David Foster and Dr. Howard Zacur.
Heart disease kills more Americans than any other disease. In the past, major studies of heart disease in the United States have involved men because the ailment tends to strike men at a younger age than women, and younger people are less likely to suffer from additional health problems that could complicate a study.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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The New York Times

March 13, 1990, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

Business and Health;
Research Outlays To Aid the Aging

BYLINE: By Milt Freudenheim

SECTION: Section D; Page 2, Column 1; Financial Desk

LENGTH: 789 words

MEDICAL experts and their supporters in the business community are putting pressure on Congress to spend more for basic research on a number of illnesses that make life miserable and expensive for millions of elderly Americans.
They argue that in the long run the best way to slow spiraling health-care costs is by devising better treatments for Alzheimer's disease, osteoporosis, incontinence and other conditions that force millions of the elderly into nursing homes.
Advancing their case, the Pepper Commission, a bipartisan Congressional advisory group named for the late Representative Claude Pepper, Democrat of Florida, recently recommended that annual Congressional appropriations for research into diseases of the elderly be gradually raised to $1 billion from the $380 million appropriated last year.
The $380 million includes spending by the National Institute on Aging and the other institutes studying heart, cancer and neurological diseases, said Daniel Perry, executive director of the Alliance for Aging Research, an advocacy group supported by foundations and businesses. In all, basic health research got $7.6 billion. 
The research outlay is minor compared with the cost of care for people aged 65 and over, which absorbed $180 billion of the nation's health-care spending last year. The amount is expected to grow rapidly as the population ages. The number of Amerians over 85, those most likely to enter nursing homes, may quadruple by the year 2030.
''If we don't make the investment in research, we will pay dearly later on,'' said Dr. Robert N. Butler, chairman of geriatrics at the Mount Sinai Medical Center's School of Medicine in New York. He said promising studies already under way could save enormous amounts in medical costs. For example, studies of hormonal treatments for enlarged prostates in older men may produce a far less costly alternative to the 400,000 prostate operations done each year.
Dr. T. Franklin Williams, director of the National Institute on Aging, said a simple skin biopsy to diagnose Alzheimer's, the memory-loss disease, might ''save $1 billion right up front in diagnostic tests,'' which are largely paid for by Medicare.
Dr. Alan M. Garber, an economist and assistant professor of medicine at Stanford University, said such medical advances would mean longer and better lives - ''80 good years instead of 70'' for many people. But he questioned whether overall health care costs would be reduced. ''More people will survive longer, which may even increase their costs,'' a Congressional aide said.
The major drug companies are spending $3.6 billion this year to find new treatments for the elderly. Merck & Company, for example, said it is spending ''a very substantial part'' of the $855 million it has allotted to research and development on illnesses that are common in older people. A growing share of industry research budgets is going to basic research in laboratories. ''But the National Institute on Aging helps to set priorities and to publicize those priorities,'' said Dr. John F. Beary 3d, a senior vice president with the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association, an industry group.
Some financial service companies are also supporting Federal research to help the aging. The nation will have to try to reduce the number of elderly who lose their independence ''or the 11 percent of gross national product going to health care will inevitably go up,'' said F. Peter Libassi, a senior vice president with the Travelers Corporation, which manages health benefits and sells long-term-care insurance.
John L. Steffens, president of Merrill Lynch Consumer Markets and chairman of the Alliance for Aging Research, said business people had several concerns. They include paying the health costs of their retirees, the level of Government spending, and the financial implications for individuals who will face ''25 to 30 percent of their lives in retirement'' as life expectancy lengthens. ''If we begin to plan for some of these eventualities of changing demographics now, we can solve these problems,'' he said. ''I don't think we're going to ration health care.''
The Bush Administration's budget calls for a 4.7 percent increase in the budget for the National Institutes of Health, to $7.9 billion, next year. Congress usually adds a few percentage points to Administration requests for health research, Congressional aides said. Alzheimer's research, which has been gaining national support, is likely to get some added money, they said.
Representative Mary Rose Oakar, Democrat of Ohio, said she would urge the House Appropriations Committee to increase spending for research to help the aging. ''We are very pennywise and pound foolish,'' she said.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Drawing

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The New York Times

March 14, 1990, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

London Journal;
In Highgate Cemetery, Marx Is Safe on a Pedestal

BYLINE: By TOM KUNTZ, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section A; Page 4, Column 3; Foreign Desk

LENGTH: 1047 words

DATELINE: LONDON, March 8

At the grave of Karl Marx, they come not to mourn Marxism but to ponder the flawed realities that sprang from its ideals, or to keep the faith, or perhaps even to bask in its new and somewhat paradoxical vogue.
Even as Communist statues are being removed across Eastern Europe, tourists and pilgrims of the left are flocking in greater numbers to the Marx gravesite in Highgate Cemetery here to view perhaps the best-known socialist icon in the West - the large bust of the German-born social philosopher atop a large block of Cornish granite bearing the inscription, ''Workers of all lands unite.''
''If anything, it's stirred up more interest in Marx,'' said Ronald Cavaye, a volunteer at the cemetery, referring to the upheaval in Eastern Europe. ''There's more interest in Marx because Marx is in the news.'' 
Alan Gemmil, who said he and his group of Scottish companions came to the gravesite ''because we're Communists,'' asserted that faith in Marx endures ''because the basics of his economic argument were right.''
''You could ask a Christian why he still likes Christ after the Spanish Inquisition,'' he said.
 
Where 'Kapital' Was Written
Marx spent most of his life in London, coming here from Paris in 1849 at the age of 31 as a conservative tide swept the Continent. He spent the last 34 years of his life in the city, studying England's growing industrial economy to perfect his theories, and writing his monumental work, ''Das Kapital.'' The London years also left Marx embittered by poverty, ill health and the death of several of his children.
Noting a modest increase in the number of visitors to the Marx grave in recent months, Jean Pateman, the chairman of the Friends of Highgate Cemetery, the charity that operates London's most famous burial ground, said the site had always been popular with delegations from Communist lands.
Presumably there will be fewer official visitors from Eastern Europe for this year's March 14 anniversary of Marx's death in 1883, but Mrs. Pateman said ''vast numbers'' of Chinese continue to pay homage.
Even before the upheaval in Eastern Europe, she said, on one Sunday she counted 18 nationalities among visitors to the cemetery, where noteworthies like the novelist George Eliot, the inventor Michael Faraday and the actor Sir Ralph Richardson are also buried.
But Marx is by far the cemetery's biggest draw among its estimated 100,000 visitors annually, a fact that stirs decidedly mixed emotions among the hardly revolutionary Friends of Highgate Cemetery.
 
A Question of Decorum
The charity, founded in the mid-1970's and described forthrightly by Mrs. Pateman as ''three elderly women and a group of volunteers,'' would prefer to focus attention on its considerable efforts to reclaim an exemplary Victorian necropolis from years of decay, overgrowth and neglect. While the Marx grave helps to keep interest in the cemetery high, its popularity prompts continuing concern about decorum.
''It's a difficult line to walk between being a burial ground and a place for tourists,'' said a member of the Friends, who noted that Highgate was still a working cemetery, holding on average a funeral a week.
''I hope most people who come come with a sense of reverence,'' Mrs. Pateman said. By and large it appears that they do, although Mrs. Pateman declined to comment on whether there had been any untoward incidents regarding the Marx grave.
 
An Assortment of Visitors
Typically, unlikely groupings of camera-toting tourists, unconventionally coiffed punkers, professorial types and ordinary strollers from the hilltop community of Highgate gather in groups in front of the grave at a bend in a well-beaten path in the eastern section of the cemetery, which unlike the western side is open to unescorted visits.
There is a brief pause of respect, even awe, at the gravesite before some visitors move on, perhaps to the graves of leftists buried nearby in the years since Marxists in the 1950's commissioned the building of the monument and had the Marx remains moved from a far corner of the cemetery to their present, more prominent location.
Occasionally the mood at the Marx grave is broken as someone attempts jocularity (''Gee, wonder if he's any relation to Groucho''). Not uncommonly, people place flowers on the gravesite or step onto it to be photgraphed next to the monument, although Mrs. Patemen said this needs special permission.
Still, as fascination with the Communist world rages in the West, even the Friends have been unable to resist the demand for Marxiana completely. They recently allowed fashion photographs at the grave for a new line of Cyrillic-lettered sportswear made in Italy. (Mrs. Pateman said the permission resulted in a sizable donation to the charity.) And at the cemetery chapel sales of Karl Marx coffee mugs, postcards and paperbacks - along with slower-moving mementos of the cemetery's lesser lights - help in a small way to meet a budget estimated by Mrs. Pateman at £275,000, or $443,000, this year.
 
A Cat Called Engels
Such is the cemetery's identification with Marx that the graveyard pet is a cat of greater-than-proletarian girth named Engels, after the German-born Manchester industrialist who was Marx's collaborator and benefactor.
Volunteers at the cemetery speculate that the rise in visits to the Marx grave may be a passing trend, reflecting no more depth of interest in Marx's ideas than the demand for chunks of the Berlin wall. But others detect more profound currents, particularly in Britain.
''There is definitely a left left in this country,'' said Julie Healer, one of the visitors from Scotland.
She said that the British left was in the ascendancy and that its disparate elements were finally coalescing against Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher because of the ''poll tax,'' a new head tax for local services that replaces property assessments and will burden many poor people who don't own homes. The introduction of the tax has led to violent protests across the country in recent days.
''We come here for hope,'' Miss Healer said. ''We come here for inspiration.''
''It's right there in gold letters,'' she added, gesturing to the monument's inscription, a clarion call that has echoed fatefully throughout modern times.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Events in Eastern Europe over the last few months have focused attention on Marx's gravesite, at Highgate Cemetery in London. The gravesite recently served as a backdrop for photographs of a new line of Cyrillic-lettered sportswear made in Italy. (The Sunday Times/Denzil McNeelance)

Copyright 1990 The New York Times Company



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The New York Times

March 15, 1990, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

Hope For the Working Parent

BYLINE: By CAROL LAWSON

SECTION: Section C; Page 1, Column 1; Home Desk

LENGTH: 984 words

FOR the nation's working parents, the news is mixed.
The good news is that a growing number of American corporations are offering child care assistance, flexible work schedules, extended leaves of absence and other innovative programs to help employees cope with pressing family demands.
The bad news is that this change is seeping through corporate America at a glacial pace, leaving most workers on their own to piece together solutions that are often emotionally and financially exhausting.
''The corporate culture takes a long time to change - longer than you would think - and you have to keep hammering away at this issue,'' said Reuben Mark, chairman and president of the Colgate-Palmolive Company. Mr. Mark, whose company is a leader in family policies for employees, was among the speakers earlier this week at a conference on work and family policies in New York City. 
In the 1990's, Mr. Mark predicted, the combination of a growing number of women in the work force and a labor shortage resulting from the declining birth rate will make family policies ''a matter of great importance'' for American businesses.
The meeting, sponsored by the Conference Board, a nonprofit, business-sponsored research organization, attracted a capacity audience of 400 people, primarily human resources officials from about 250 corporations, to the Grand Hyatt Hotel. Some came from companies with well-established family policies. Others were from concerns that are just beginning to look into the matter. For two days they listened to discussions of why and how some of the country's most progressive companies, like International Business Machines Corporation, Time-Warner Inc., Levi Strauss & Company, American Express Company, Du Pont and Honeywell Inc., are assisting families. Dr. Dana E. Friedman, co-president of the Families and Work Institute in New York, recalled that at the Conference Board's previous meeting on the subject in 1986, two-thirds of those present were women.
This year two-thirds of those attending were again women, Dr. Friedman observed, ''but on a more senior level.''
Dr. Friedman reported that the number of companies offering some form of child care assistance has grown to 5,400 now from 2,500 in 1986. She also said that care programs for elderly people, to help workers who are responsible for the care of aging relatives, were ''a footnote'' at the previous conference, but that such programs number more than 300 today.
Mr. Mark said Colgate-Palmolive created family policies as a result of a plan that began eight years ago ''to revitalize the company.''
''It is the job of the chief executive officer to set the vision, get the people and motivate them,'' Mr. Mark said. ''If employees are motivated, productivity will increase. This is one mechanism to motivate.''
Mr. Mark said social consciousness also played a part in his decision to put in place policies like an emergency child care program and a three-month unpaid leave of absence to care for a sick relative.
''It is the right thing to do,'' he said. ''It must be done from a social and moral point of view.''
William S. Lee, chairman and president of the Duke Power Company of Charlotte, N.C., disagreed. Mr. Lee, who shared the stage with Mr. Mark at the opening session, said that while he supported family policies, he did so strictly from a business point of view.
''My concern is motivated by the bottom line,'' said Mr. Lee, whose company's policies include job sharing and a two-year unpaid parental leave. ''It is the role of management to make employees excited about their contribution to the workplace. But if you are worried about a sick child at home, you can't be excited about your work.''
Mr. Lee said his company is trying to administer family policies with ''a new flexibility.'' He said employees have ''more and more freedom'' to work out their own solutions to family problems with their supervisors. ''In the last year we have thown away half of our employee manual,'' he said.
Noting that ''the baby bust is upon us,'' Mr. Lee said he agreed with Mr. Mark that changing demographics would impel companies ''to do more for families in the workplace.''
The audience heard from employees as well as their bosses. At a panel discussion moderated by Judy Woodruff of the ''MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour,'' a diverse group of workers described their experiences trying to juggle jobs and family responsibilities, both with and without help from their employers.
Ms. Woodruff, the mother of three young children, began with an observation of her own. She and her husband, Albert Hunt, Washington bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal, employ two nannies.
''We are not the typical American family,'' Ms. Woodruff said. ''We have the resources to afford good child care. At the 'MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour,' some young women have had such a tough time finding affordable child care that they have had to leave the job.''
David S. Machlowitz, associate general counsel for the General Instrument Corporation in New York, said he gave up private law practice for the less hectic corporate world because he wanted to be home at night with his wife, who also works, and his 2-year-old daughter. He described his supervisor as a man who ''understands if I want to leave work early to go to the pediatrician, trusting that I will make up the time.''
Still, it is not easy. ''It takes an extraordinary amount of after-tax income to pay the baby sitter,'' Mr. Machlowitz said.
But for most blue-collar and low-level clerical workers, the necessary finances, to say nothing of the freedom to be flexible, is nonexistent, said Claire Lifshitz, office manager for Local 8149 of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union.
''When you punch a time clock,'' she said, ''your children don't count. If you want to get paid, you can't say, 'I have to go home. My child broke his hand.' ''

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Reuben Mark, left, chairman and president of Colgate-Palmolive, and William Lee, chairman and president of Duke Power, spoke at the Work and Family Policies Conference. (The New York Times/John Sotomayor)

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The New York Times

March 18, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

New York Area's Population Growing, but Graying Faster

BYLINE: By RICHARD LEVINE

SECTION: Section 1; Part 1, Page 1, Column 1; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 1436 words

The population of the New York region will increase only moderately but grow significantly older during the next three decades, according to new projections.
These long-term demographic trends could constrain economic growth in a metropolitan area already confronting labor shortages in some suburbs, push wages up and increase crowding on highways.
The trends also seem likely to lead to an increase in the number of elderly people dependent on health care and other expensive services and a decrease in the number of younger workers, who would bear much of the costs. Unexpected Tax Revenues?  But Rosemary Scanlon, chief economist of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which conducted one of the studies, said that a surge of people - the aging baby boomers - moving through middle age in the 1990's might also generate unexpected tax revenues at a time when governments are facing huge budget deficits and perplexing problems like drug abuse and AIDS. 
Ms. Scanlon said she believed that the demographic outlook for the region was essentially optimistic, since it pointed to stronger pressures to increase the number of people in the labor force. Even after the prosperity of the 1980's, perhaps half a million people in New York City are still not in the work force. But Ms. Scanlon said in an interview last week that the demographic forces in the coming decades suggest ''a better use of all people, of everybody being more important, especially the disadvantaged.''
In a region of about 16 million people, the Port Authority projects that between 1990 and 2005 the number of people in their 20's will decline by about 900,000. After 2000, the agency believes, the 65-and-older group will increase by almost 700,000.
The labor force will continue to grow, but at a slower rate because of a decline in the number of young workers entering the labor pool. Tight labor markets could develop and deepen, with potentially diverse and sometimes surprising consequences. Wages in the region, already high, could go still higher as employers compete for labor. This could attract more workers from outside the region, compounding traffic and transit problems. Attitudes about retirement could also change.
''Where you saw young people working in fast-food places, now increasingly you see old people,'' said Richard T. Anderson, president of the Regional Plan Association, a Manhattan-based research group.
 
A Dip in the Median Age
Mr. Anderson's organization also believes that the area's population will age. In its forecast, it projects that in 2015 there may be 4.25 million more people over 35 years of age and 1.5 million fewer people under 35 than there were in 1985. The number of people over 85 could increase by nearly 400,000.
A particularly intriguing aspect of the Port Authority study is its projection for the region's median age. At 33.5, it is now estimated to be a half year higher than that of the nation as a whole. But in 10 years it would drop below the national figure, the study predicts. Ms. Scanlon attributes that to the expectation of a continuing surge of immigrants, who are mostly young.
The aging of the region and the nation can be traced to a sequence in which the baby boom, that surge of births from the late 1940's to the early 1960's, was followed by a baby bust in the late 1960's and 1970's, and then by an echo of the baby boom in the 1980's.
 
Middle Aged and Affluent
While the national fertility rate declined to about 1.8 births per woman in the 1970's and 1980's, the rate in the New York region dropped to 1.6, a figure Ms. Scanlon expects to remain fairly stable in the coming decades.
The Port Authority projects that in the next 15 years the number of people in the region entering the peak earning years of 40 to 64 will increase by about 1.5 million. That could result in more tax revenue for local governments now struggling to fill budget gaps.
This new wealth, Ms. Scanlon said, might also help revive New York City's financial services industry, which has lost about 25,000 jobs since the October 1987 stock market collapse.
But as these people move through their 60's, they will leave behind a smaller group of middle-aged people. That could lead to what Ms. Scanlon called a ''real dependency problem.''
 
An Older Suburbia
The aging will be more pronounced in suburbs, Ms. Scanlon and others believe, in part because most foreign immigrants, most of whom are young, settle in New York City. The city attracted more than 100,000 immigrants a year during the 1980's, and they helped it grow faster than its suburbs for the first time since the 1920's.
Immigrants will continue to help the city attract and fill jobs, Ms. Scanlon believes, giving it an edge over the suburbs in the coming decades.
George Sternlieb, University Professor of Urban Studies at Rutgers University, termed the coming decades a ''marvelous demographic window of opportunity,'' but he was pessimistic about the prospects for those who have so far been left out of the work force, including vast numbers of high school dropouts and single parents in urban areas.
''We've had unique job growth,'' he said. ''It certainly has been helpful, but it has not hit the hard core.''
The Port Authority analysis, which updates a 10-year demographic projection released in 1986, is to be published in April or May. Stephen Berger, the agency's executive director, said the new projections would guide the authority on a host of issues, from making the Path system more accessible to an increasingly elderly population to redesigning airports to suit changing passenger and freight needs.
 
Values of Studies Questioned
Some economists, however, cautioned against concluding too much from such projections, especially over the long term. They noted that the forecasts were in essence assumptions about the future based on forces and behavior of the present and past, some of which were likely to change.
For example, Samuel M. Ehrenhalt, regional commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, said he believed that workers who will be reaching retirement age in the coming decades are better educated and generally have more interesting jobs, and that they were likely to have a different attitude about leaving them. ''Can we assume that they are going to behave as the present oldsters do and get out as early as possible?'' he said.
Thirty years is also an unusually long period for a demographic projection, some economists said. Ms. Scanlon agreed. She said the Port Authority study was subject to several uncertainties, including whether those born in the baby boom will move from the city to the suburbs as many of their parents did.
 
Assuming There's No War
In arriving at its projections, the Port Authority assumed there will be at least two recessions in the 1990's but no wars involving the United States. While one team analyzed mortality and fertility rates and migration patterns, Ms. Scanlon said, another focused on employment growth and general economic conditions.
''You go back and forth,'' she said. ''The economists learn from the demographers, and vice versa.''
A comparision of population estimates by the Port Authority and the Regional Plan Association, however, demonstrates the uncertainty of such projections.
The Port Authority expects the combined population of New York City and 12 suburban counties to grow by 5 percent in 30 years, from an estimated 15.7 million in 1990 to 16.5 million. That would be a significant shift from the 1970's, when the region's population declined, but a slower rate of growth than in the 1980's, when the region experienced its greatest economic boom since World War II.
The Regional Plan Association, which focused on the city and 26 surrounding counties, believes the region will grow by 12.5 percent by 2015, from 19.9 million in 1988 to 22.4 million.
For New York City alone, the association projects a gain of 650,000 people by 2015, from 7.4 million to 8 million. But the Port Authority believes the city population will increase by only 150,000 by 2020.
The disparity seems in part a consequence of the association's projection that the region's economy will generate more jobs and that, as its president, Mr. Anderson, said, ''people follow jobs.''
''The city has already picked up close to 300,000 people since the 1980 census,'' added Regina Armstrong, an economic consultant to the association, referring to the surge of immigrants. Given their high fertility rate and continuing flow into the region, she went on, ''you end up with 8 million people.''

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Graphs: median age of the population for U.S. and for New York and New Jersey metropolitan area, 1980-2020 (Source: Port Authority of New York and New Jersey); actual and projected percent of the population over age 65 in New York and New Jersey metropolitan area, 1980-2020, (Source: Port Authority of New York and New Jersey) (pg. 30)

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The New York Times

March 18, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Miss Salzhauer To Wed in June

SECTION: Section 1; Part 2, Page 54, Column 5; Society Desk

LENGTH: 224 words

Mr. and Mrs. Henry Salzhauer of Sands Point, L.I., have announced the engagement of their daughter Elisabeth Anne Salzhauer to Blair Axel, the son of Mr. and Mrs. Kermit Axel of New York. A June wedding is planned. 
Miss Salzhauer, 24 years old, graduated from the Friends Academy in Locust Valley, L.I., and cum laude from Tufts University, and she studied art history at Harvard University. She is the founder and executive director of Art Education for the Blind, a nonprofit research and teaching organization in New York, and a lecturer at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Her father is a principal of Benjamin Electrical Engineering and a director of the American Savings Bank of New York.
Mr. Axel, 35, graduated from the Fieldston School and magna cum laude from Harvard. He received a law degree from Columbia University, where he was the administrative editor of The Journal of Law and Social Problems. He is counsel to the New York law firm of Patterson, Belknap, Webb & Tyler and a director of Dorot, a social-service agency for the elderly in Manhattan.
The prospective bridegroom's father retired as a principal of 21 Brands, a wine and spirits importer in New York, and is a vice president of the National Executive Service Corps, a nonprofit management consultant to cultural, charitable and health-care institutions.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Elisabeth Salzhauer (Sarah Merians Photography)

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The New York Times

March 18, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

TALKING: Rent Rules;
Tenant Rights In Flux

BYLINE: By ANDREE BROOKS

SECTION: Section 10; Page 7, Column 1; Real Estate Desk

LENGTH: 897 words

TENANT rights, especially in a highly regulated environment like New York City's, are in a constant state of flux. Court decisions, administrative rulings and legislative amendments make it hard for tenants and landlords to keep up with their rights and responsibilities. This is particularly true for the narrowly focused changes that do not make headlines when they are announced.
Several such modifications were made in rent-regulation rules during the last year that may have escaped notice, these among them:
*  Landlords have won the right to permanent increases in rent after they complete major capital improvements. 
*  A new fraud task force has been established in the state's Division of Housing and Community Renewal to investigate the filing of fraudulent information by landlords with the division's Office of Rent Administration.
*  The right of an elderly person to break a lease to enter a nursing home has been established in law.
There also has been a decision affirming the right of a tenant to make certain improvements in an apartment.
The decision concerning major capital improvements came in November in Ansonia Residents Association v. New York State Division of Housing and Community Renewal.
The State Court of Appeals turned down a challenge from the tenants in the 500-unit building at 2109 Broadway, near 74th Street, who had maintained that any rent increase for large-scale improvements - in this case new storm windows - had to be limited to the recoupment period rather than go on indefinitely.
The tenants had argued that once an owner had recovered his costs, the rent increases should be nullified.
A lower court had agreed with the tenants. But the housing agency and the landlord appealed, resulting in a reversal by the state's highest court.
Nevertheless, if tenants have reason to believe that their rent was raised without the capital improvement's having been made, or that a new and higher rent has been established through other fraudulent means, they may write to the new fraud task force created by the state housing agency (Office of Deputy Commissioner, Office of Rent Administration, D.H.C.R., 9231 Union Hall Street, Jamaica, N.Y. 11433).
Further, as a result of a decision in Versailles Realty Corp. v. D.H.C.R., upheld in the Appellate Division, Second Department, several months ago, regulated tenants in co-op buildings can no longer be charged a higher rent for a major capital improvement if it was paid for by the co-op corporation's reserve fund.
Under two laws that became effective late last year, the elderly all over New York State now have the right to break a lease without incurring penalties. Both are designed to protect an elderly tenant who wants to move into housing for the elderly or a nursing home during the term of a lease.
If the tenant is entering a publicly funded nursing home or nonprofit housing unit, the minimum age for qualification is 62 years; if the new accommodations are in the private sector - say, an age-restricted condominium - the minimum eligibility age rises to 65.
Thirty to 60 days' notice, depending on circumstances, must be given in both instances. Some leases signed before 1989, or in the early part of the year, may not qualify.
Lawyers note that such legislation is likely to become increasingly important to older tenants in expensive apartments now that the market for high-rent accommodations is soft. With fewer tenants seeking such apartments, landlords are less likely to be forgiving when an elderly tenant wants to break a lease.
Without the new protection, the accumulated sum due over the remainder of the lease could cost a tenant thousands of dollars.
LAST October, a decision was handed down that could deter landlords from initiating capricious eviction actions. Garay v. Devine involved a tenant in a Manhattan apartment who had installed new kitchen appliances without the landlord's consent. Reversing a lower-court decision, the Appellate Term, First Department, ruled that the landlord could not evict the tenant because the change did not materially damage the unit or its value.
According to Deborah Davis, a New York City lawyer who handles many landlord-tenant cases, this decision should deter landlords from starting eviction actions based on paltry violations of lease terms.
''But it still means that you cannot go ahead and make structural changes without permission,'' she warned.
Warren Estes, a New York City lawyer with expertise in landlord-tenant matters, warns tenants that owners are becoming more aggressive in seeking the rents due them.
''In today's economy, and with higher amounts outstanding,'' Mr. Estes said, ''most landlords are watching their delinquencies more closely.''
He has noticed that landlords are demanding the full rent due on a lease while tenant complaints are being adjudicated, and the courts are supporting their demands.
In part, many lawyers say, owners are reacting to the long delays, sometimes as long as two years, in getting decisions from the state rent agency on tenant allegations of rent overcharges. In such cases, tenants had been withholding rents. Now owners are seeking evictions for the rent delinquencies.
In many of these cases, the courts are now directing tenants to pay the disputed amount into escrow accounts until their complaints are resolved.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Drawing

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March 18, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

CONNECTICUT GUIDE

SECTION: Section 12CN; Page 13, Column 1; Connecticut Weekly Desk

LENGTH: 1108 words


 
9TH-CENTURY MASTERS
Works of two 19th-century New England masters may be seen in a dual exhibition opening today at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford. ''John Twachtman: Connecticut Landcapes'' contains 25 paintings made by the American Impressionist between 1889 and 1901 at his 17-acre farm in Greenwich and in nearby Cos Cob. ''Winslow Homer in the 1870's: Selections from the Valentine-Pulsifer Collection'' features 11 watercolors and oils including the well-known ''Berry Pickers.'' Acquired directly from the artist in the 19th century, they have remained in the private collection of one family.
The Twachtman show was organized by the National Gallery of Art in Washington. It covers a period in Twachtman's career when he had departed from his earlier Barbizon-inspired work and had not yet begun his more broadly executed later paintings. 
An admission of $2, $1 for students and the elderly, will be charged for the pair of exhibitions. They are accompanied by four lectures, scheduled Tuesday evenings to April 10, and three film screenings, at noon Thursday, 2 P.M. Saturday and next Sunday. Admission to the lectures is $7, or $25 for the series. The first, ''Winslow Homer and Houghton Farm,'' begins at 5:30 P.M. Tuesday, with Linda Ayres, the museum's associate director for exhibitions. The films are free with an exhibition ticket. Hours are 11 A.M. to 5 P.M. Tuesday to Sunday. For a recorded weekly listing of events, call 247-9111.
Residents of Fairfield County may want to take advantage of a trip to the Wadsworth Atheneum on Tuesday; it is being organized by the Westport Arts Center and covers the Twachtman and Homer shows as well as a third exhibition, ''Master Drawings'' by Tiepolo, Daumier, Courbet, Degas, Dali, Picasso, Delacroix, Moore, Miro and others from the museum's permanent collection.
The group will depart by bus from the parking lot at Jogues Hall, Fairfield University, at 9 A.M.; an additional pickup will be made at the Westport Arts Center, 17 Morningside Drive South at 9:30 A.M. The group is expected to return in late afternoon. A fee of $38 includes transportation, museum entrance and refreshments. Call 254-4110 to register.
 
BRIEF EXPEDITIONS
The brief expeditions into the outside world taken by a woman and her Alzheimer's disease-afflicted mother and grandmother provide the title for Jo Carson's play ''Day Trips,'' winner of the $10,000 Joseph Kesselring Award following its premiere last fall at the Los Angeles Theater Center. The prize is given annually to promising playwrights who have not yet had national attention. Ms. Carson wrote the work from personal experience.
A series of previews begins Saturday to March 29, with a formal opening on March 30. The play runs to April 28 at the Hartford Stage Company, 50 Church Street, Hartford. The director is Michael Engler, who directed ''Eastern Standard'' for Seattle Rep and the Manhattan Theater Club and Larry Gelbart's ''Mastergate'' for the American Repertory Theater and a subsequent run on Broadway.
Performances are at 7:30 P.M. Tuesday to Thursday, 8 P.M. Friday and Saturday, 2:30 and 7:30 P.M. Sunday and 2 P.M. Wednesday. Tickets at $20 and $25, and preview tickets at $13 may be reserved by calling 527-5151.
 
ALICE WASHBURN
In 1919, a year before American women had the right to vote, 50-year-old Alice Trythall Washburn filed her first building permit. She was the architect for 80 houses built during the next 10 years in Hamden, Cheshire and New Haven.
''A Washburn Celebration'' at the Eli Whitney Museum in Hamden, composed of photographs and artifacts detailing her work, is the result of an investigation by a student of art history, Martha Yellig, who had heard that several houses in the area had been designed by a woman architect. The homes, for which Mrs. Washburn provided garages, were precursors of the suburban explosion of the 1930's and 40's.
The stock market crash of 1929 destroyed Mrs. Washburn's career and she retired; her death certificate listed her occupation as housewife.
The exhibition was mounted in cooperation with the museum by the Hamden Historical Society, the Connecticut Trust for Historic Preservation, the New Haven Preservation Trust and several civic and cultural organizations. A series of related lectures, demonstrations and tours of the homes is scheduled through the month of May. The museum, at 915 Whitney Avenue, is open from 10 A.M. to 5 P.M. Wednesday, 10 A.M. to 3 P.M. Thursday to Saturday and noon to 5 P.M. Sunday. Admission is free. Call 777-1833 for more information.
 
THE USES OF LAND
The agenda of a Fairfield 2000 seminar called ''Land Use Management for Southwestern Connecticut - Ideas for the 90's'' includes placement of the area in context with other parts of the country, understanding the relationship between economic growth and open-space conservation, attracting business and industry to appropriate sites, an overview of transportation on the Route 7 corridor, affordable housing and a lack of consistency in state, regional and local planning.
The seminar, scheduled from 8:30 A.M. to 4 P.M. Thursday at Western Connecticut State University in Danbury, is sponsored by the Regional Plan Association and the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.
Speakers include Robert Yaro, senior vice president of the Regional Plan Association; John Mullin, head of the department of landscape architecture and regional planning at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst; Alan Altshuler, director of the Taubman Center for State and Local Government at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard; Susan Podsibeh, specialist in affordable-housing dispute mediation at the University of Massachusetts, Boston; Ben Chinitz, former senior researcher for the New York Metropolitan Region Study; and Michael Cacace, Stamford lawyer and executive committee member of the planning and zoning section of the Connecticut Bar Association.
A fee of $50 covers the seminar, materials and lunch. Call 356-0390 to register or obtain more information.
 
W.P.A. MURALS
Norwalk is believed to have one of the largest collection of Works Progress Administration murals in the country, documenting the effects of the Great Depression on local life. Two of the paintings by Alexander Rummler - ''Oyster Shuckers'' (1937) and ''Days End'' (1940) - were recently donated to the Norwalk Maritime Center by the city, and they will be the subject of a talk by Ralph Bloom, a city historian, at 7 P.M. Wednesday in the Maritime Center on Water Street. Admission is $7. Call 852-0700, extension 206 for reservations. $90ELEANOR CHARLES

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March 19, 1990, Monday, Late Edition - Final

Thousands Gather In Taiwan to Press Democratic Cause

BYLINE: AP

SECTION: Section A; Page 8, Column 1; Foreign Desk

LENGTH: 269 words

DATELINE: TAIPEI, Taiwan, March 18

Thousands of protesters rallied in a downtown park today to demand swifter democratic change and to denounce elderly members of the electoral college that will choose Taiwan's President this week.
The protest was the largest in Taiwan since martial law was lifted in 1987. The police said there were about 10,000 protesters, but reporters estimated the crowd at more than 20,000. Many were onlookers. Leaders of the opposition Democratic Progressive Party, which organized the demonstration, urged President Lee Teng-hui to dissolve the electoral college, known as the National Assembly, and allow general presidential elections.
The National Assembly will elect the President on Wednesday, and Mr. Lee is the only candidate.
About 500 college students also continued a sit-in they began on Friday in front of the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Park to protest the elderly assemblymen. Members of the Democratic Progressive Party urged the crowd to support the protest by staying in the park overnight and delaying the filing of income tax.
The rallies highlighted growing anger with a political system dominated by elderly members of the Nationalist Party, which was born in mainland China.
There are 668 deputies in the 752-seat National Assembly who were elected on the Chinese mainland before 1949. In 1949, they fled to Taiwan with the rest of the Nationalist government after losing a civil war to Communist forces.
Mr. Lee, 67 years old, is a native of Taiwan. Many elderly assemblymen distrust him because they say he is not committed to their dream of returning victoriously to the Chinese mainland.

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March 21, 1990, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Taiwan Seeks Talks With Protesters

BYLINE: By SHERYL WuDUNN, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section A; Page 3, Column 1; Foreign Desk

LENGTH: 594 words

DATELINE: TAIPEI, Taiwan, March 20

More than 6,000 students and thousands of onlookers gathered in a city park today to demand greater democracy, and there were reports that the President would convene a national conference to discuss the pace of political change on the island.
The rally was the first large-scale political demonstration begun by university students in 40 years of Nationalist rule on the island, and it was a direct challenge to President Lee Teng-hui, who is to be re-elected on Wednesday.
Mr. Lee, the only candidate, needs only a majority of the 752-member National Assembly, Taiwan's electoral college. The Assembly is dominated by 668 elderly delegates, members of the ruling Kuomintang who have retained office since they fled the mainland with Chiang Kai-shek, Taiwan's longtime leader, in 1949. 
Drawing a $4,000 monthly salary, plus $8,000 more when the Assembly is in session once every six years, these delegates are widely resented, especially among the university students who have gathered in the park around the Chiang Kai-shek memorial since Sunday.
''They are just greedy old men who don't represent the people,'' said Yu Bo-hong, a student at Taiwan Theological Institute in Taipei. ''Each person should have the right to choose, the right to vote.''
 
Moves Toward Negotiations
In the last few years, the authorities have taken major steps toward democracy, including holding multi-party elections for legislators in December. But the President is still selected by the Assembly.
The student demonstrators have strewn banners expressing their demands across the grand steps of the main building in the park. The students want the National Assembly dissolved and the Government's special emergency powers abolished. They are also demanding a timetable from the President for the island's political restructuring and a national conference to discuss these and other issues.
Taiwan's English-language daily, The China News, reported today that Mr. Lee invited membes of the opposition Democratic Progressive Party members on Monday night to take part in a national convention to discuss major issues facing the island. The Government spokesman, Chou Yu-ming, said the offer was not yet official, but said it would probably become so.
''The demands made by the students still gathering in Chiang Kai-shek Memorial summarize the demands of many people,'' Mr. Chou said. ''All in all, people are asking for greater reform at a faster pace. They want more democracy, more decision-making power in affairs of state.''
 
No Opposition Coalition
The local China Times Evening News reported that younger, recently elected members of the National Assembly have proposed that the elderly representatives retire by the end of 1992. The report said that the Kuomintang had already planned to have the aged members retire in three years.
It was not clear whether the proposal or Mr. Lee's invitation was a direct response to the student demands. The Democratic Progressives have also pressed for multi-party elections in the National Assembly, and some opposition members plan to demonstrate on Wednesday in front of the National Assembly building where delegates will cast their votes.
Today, the Democratic Progressives occupied the front steps of a building across from where the students had organized, but the students have declined to ally themselves with the opposition party. It is the students who seem to have captured the support of many workers and professionals here.
''These students are endorsed by the middle class,'' a businessman said.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: More than 6,000 students held a sit-in yesterday at Chiang Kai-shek Memorial park in Taipei to demand greater democracy. It was the first large-scale political demonstration begun by university students in 40 years of Nationalist rule in Taiwan, and was a direct challenge to President Lee Teng-hui, who will be the only Presidential candidate when he runs for re-election today. (Agence France-Presse)

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March 21, 1990, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

The Shape of Cabs to Come

BYLINE: By DORON P. LEVIN, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section D; Page 1, Column 3; Financial Desk

LENGTH: 674 words

DATELINE: WILLOW RUN, Mich., March 20

The Chevrolet Caprice, the boxy foot soldier for the New York City taxicab fleet and the nation's police departments, is getting a makeover. The 1991 model, which is now on sale and will roll into fleet service this fall, is styled with aerodynamic curves more in keeping with the latest automotive fashion.
But in other ways the General Motors Corporation car will retain the character that makes it an increasingly unusual relic of Detroit's glory days, when large cars were the order and fuel efficiency was not a primary concern. It also recalls a manufacturing process that is growing more rare each year. 
G.M. said yesterday that it had begun to accelerate production of the restyled Caprice at a newly renovated assembly plant here, about 30 miles west of Detroit. The current Caprice model is built at a G.M. assembly plant in Lakewood, Ga., that is to be shut down and at an assembly plant in Arlington, Tex., that will build a new model.
 
Seeking Younger Buyers
The Caprice is among the last rear-wheel-drive, V-8-powered, six-passenger models produced by the American automobile industry. Its design, little changed since 1977, has been favored by older people with traditional tastes as well as law-enforcement agencies and taxicab companies.
In an effort to attract younger buyers, G.M. decided to switch to the rounder, more aerodynamic styling made popular in the mid-1980's by the Ford Motor Company's Taurus and Sable models. The Ford model most comparable to the Caprice, the Crown Victoria, is also undergoing a face lift.
The new Caprice could be a tough sell. Stephen McAvoy, marketing manager for G.M.'s Chevrolet division, said the median age of a Caprice buyer is over 60, ''but we'd like to get that down to the late 40's and 50's.'' The problem will be that younger buyers have increasingly been choosing smaller, more fuel-efficient and more contemporary automotive designs with a driving feel closer to that of a sports car.
The Caprice weighs just less than 4,000 pounds. By contrast, the Taurus, which is classified as a midsize car, weighs 2,956 pounds.
''We're giving Caprice owners what they enjoy the most: the softer ride and handling, the additional room, the trunk space for four golf bags,'' Mr. McAvoy said.
The car, which will sell for $16,000 and up, includes anti-lock brakes, which can inhibit skidding on slippery roads. G.M. was able to improve the 1991 Caprice's gas mileage rating to 17 miles per gallon in city driving, and 26 on the highway, from 16 and 25, respectively, for the 1990 model.
 
A Manufacturing Throwback
The manufacturing technique G.M. uses at its Willow Run plant is as much a holdover from the past as the large, heavy sedan itself. In most cars today, the chassis and body are constructed as a single unit. But the Caprice has a chassis and frame that are built separately from the passenger compartment; the ''mating'' occurs during the assembly process.
James Perkins, a G.M. vice president and general manager of the Chevrolet division, says he expects 6,000 or more Caprices to be sold to New York taxi companies this year. G.M. also forecast sales of 35,000 to 40,000 cars to police departments.
But the key to success for the nation's largest auto maker will still be the retail customer, a G.M. spokesman said. Production could reach 160,000 cars in 1990, G.M. said, and 200,000 the following year.
 
Little Japanese Competition
''I think G.M. will find enough volume to warrant the investment, because the large-family-sedan market is one the Japanese have not yet entered,'' said Christopher Cedergren, an analyst with J. D. Power & Associates, an automotive marketing consulting firm in Agoura Hills, Calif.
A G.M. spokesman said the cost of retooling and renovating the Willow Run plant for Caprice production was about $100 million.
The automotive trade press is rife with rumors that next year G.M's Buick division will revive its Roadmaster model designation - not used since 1958 - on a car based on the Caprice's body and chassis.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: The Chevrolet Caprice, top, long the workhorse of the New York City taxicab fleet, is getting a makeover. The 1991 Caprice Classic, bottom, remains large and heavy, but features fashionably aerodynamic styling (The New York Times/Neal Boenzi; General Motors Corporation)

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March 22, 1990, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

Doubt Raised on Bone Disease Treatment

SECTION: Section B; Page 15, Column 1; National Desk

LENGTH: 711 words

A widely used treatment for osteoporosis, a debilitating bone disease that afflicts millions of people, does not prevent the tiny fractures that cause the spine to collapse, a new study has found.
The treatment, sodium fluoride, increases bone mass, but a four-year clinical study found that the new bone was too weak to prevent the fractures that occur in the vertebrae and cause the back to curve.
The study, conducted by Dr. B. Lawrence Riggs and colleagues at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., is being published today in The New England Journal of Medicine. The findings appear to contradict the results of an earlier study, using different dosages and methods, that found that treatment with sodium fluoride appeared to reduce the fractures. 
About 24 million Americans, primarily elderly women, suffer from all forms of osteoporosis, which commonly causes fractures in the spine, hip and wrist. Spinal osteoporosis afflicts about 5 million Americans, and 500,000 suffer spinal fracturing each year. The condition mainly affects women after menopause when their estrogen levels decline.
 
Three Approved Therapies
Wrist and hip fractures can often be treated by orthopedic surgery, but no surgical procedures can correct the tiny spinal fractures. Doctors have considered fluoride a promising preventive treatment for spinal fractures. Calcium, estrogen and calcitonin are approved therapies that can slow the disease's progress but do not significantly build bone mass.
''This is the most comprehensive and most carefully controlled study of fluoride treatment carried out to my knowledge,'' said William A. Peck, president of the National Osteoporosis Foundation.
''The results are disappointing, but they do not preclude the possibility that some other fluoride preparation or a lower dose that is more slowly absorbed could be effective,'' said Dr. Peck, vice chancellor and dean at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. ''But there are no data that prove this to be the case. At present time we can't recommend sodium fluoride at any dose or any preparation for treatment of osteoporosis.''
Dr. Riggs said sodium fluoride was the most commonly used drug in the world for treating spinal osteoporosis. The Food and Drug Administration has not approved fluoride for the treatment of the disease, but Dr. Riggs said 100,000 to 200,000 Americans were being treated with fluoride preparations marketed as nutritional supplements or formulated by pharmacies. Regulatory agencies in eight European countries have approved the use of fluoride. #202 Women in Study The Mayo Clinic study involved 202 women with osteoporosis who were 50 to 75 years old. Half received sodium fluoride and the other half, used for comparison purposes, received an inactive dummy medication. All received a calcium supplement.
The researchers found that the fluoride treatment did not decrease the occurence of vertebral fractures and actually resulted in an increase in hip fractures. The trial also found a high incidence of side effects, including nausea and back pain.
Dr. Riggs said in a telephone interview: ''The ideal therapy for osteoporosis should increase bone mass substantially, thereby decreasing the occurrence of new fractures. We found a 35 percent increase in bone density in the vertebrae, but no significant decrease in fractures. This suggests that newly formed bone did not have normal strength.'' He said that based on the results, fluoride should not be used to treat osteoporosis.
For years doctors have placed a great deal of hope in fluoride's bone generating effects, and last year researchers at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas reported results suggesting that fluoride treatment could halt the progress of the spinal disease and that it appeared to inhibit further spinal fractures. But other experts noted that the Texas study did not include a comparison group.
The Texas study used lower doses of fluoride in slower release capsules than those used at the Mayo Clinic. Dr. Charles Y. C. Pak, the principal researcher in the Dallas study, said: ''The main drawback is that our randomized controlled trials are not complete. We don't yet know if the treatment reduces fracture rates.''

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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March 23, 1990, Friday, Late Edition - Final

Washington Talk;
Reagan Tape: The Star Flickers, but Just Dimly

BYLINE: By R. W. APPLE Jr., Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section A; Page 12, Column 5; National Desk

LENGTH: 743 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, March 22

Ronald Reagan always seemed like a regular guy, on the silver screen or in the White House. It was one of his strengths.
But in the videotaped testimony that was played Wednesday and today in the Washington courtroom where John M. Poindexter is on trial, he seemed ordinary. Stripped of his 3-by-5 note cards and his corps of advisers, far from the Marine Band and Air Force One, the former President looked smaller, older, less sure of himself. His energy level seemed lower than ever. 
The old charm flickered from the television screen from time to time, and he was his old amiable self when asked to spell out his name. (His almost too amiable gesture to Mr. Poindexter upon entering the courtroom, an exaggerated stage wink that seemed to suggest that his testimony would be less than impartial, was not shown to the jury.) His winsome trademark habit of tucking his chin into his chest as he answered served him well, as always. But his smile, that boyish look that seemed to take everyone into his confidence, wasn't much in evidence.
In the flat illumination of the courtroom, instead of the special lighting that was provided for Presidential broadcasts, leaning forward in his chair instead of sitting bolt upright as he always did in the Oval Office, the 79-year-old Mr. Reagan seemed more like a retired real estate salesman or a small-town druggist than a retired President.
What he really lacked most of all was the star quality that had so seldom failed him in his long career.
His brow furrowed, his eyes moving from side to side, he seemed puzzled and sometimes more than a little lost. At one point he protested poignantly, ''There were so many meetings.'' At another, he told one of the lawyers, ''You tempt me beyond my strength.''
The lawyers were polite enough, addressing him most of the time as ''Mr. President,'' but there was something indecorous, all the same, about such pushy, pressing, probing questions asked of this elderly man by mere lawyers: the youthful-looking Dan K. Webb for the independent prosecutor's office, and the stern, baldish Richard W. Beckler, defending Mr. Poindexter.
''Listen to my question, Mr. President,'' one of them said. The words carried the undertone of ''pay attention,'' or ''try to concentrate.''
That seemed to exasperate him, but he uttered not a syllable of complaint.
Mr. Reagan's inability to recall major points of policy, which he sometimes referred to as ''details,'' had been thoroughly documented in the transcript of the testimony, released shortly after the former President's courtroom appearances on Feb. 16 and 17.
But actually seeing him and hearing him in 150 variations on a single theme - ''I can't remember'' -made a much stronger impression. He couldn't remember who the senior military officer in his Administration was, he couldn't recognize one of the main contra leaders, he somehow didn't recall that Robert C. McFarlane, one of his closest advisers, a man he saw every day for months on end, pleaded guilty in 1988 to withholding information from Congress.
Almost unbelievably, Mr. Reagan said wonderingly about the main conclusion of the Tower Commission report, the politically explosive report on the most damaging episode of his eight years in the White House, ''This is the first time I have ever seen that.''
Did he really mean that he had never read the report? Not even highlights? A report that had the capacity, at least, to undo his whole Presidency?
There was an occasional sign that Mr. Reagan might know more than he was letting on in the courtroom.
Questioned about an arms delivery, he replied, ''As I say, I heard of France being connected with such a thing.'' His questioner said, ''Mr. President, I think you mentioned France.'' And Mr. Reagan answered: ''If I did, that was a slip of the tongue. I don't know how that sneaked in.'' Although no one can be absolutely sure yet how Mr. Reagan's testimony will affect the trial of Mr. Poindexter, his former national security adviser, Mr. Reagan never even hinted that he had ordered Mr. Poindexter to deceive Congress. That cannot help the defense much in rebutting charges of obstructing a Congressional investigation and making false statements to Congress.
And except for its implications for the trial, the former President's rambling, inconsistent account lacked all drama. It seemed a mere footnote, an afterthought too old for today's politics, too new for tomorrow's history.

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March 25, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

THE GUIDE

SECTION: Section 12WC; Page 22, Column 6; Westchester Weekly Desk

LENGTH: 1113 words


 
VINTAGE QUILTS
Thirty quilts of various vintages will be displayed next weekend at the White Plains Historical Society, assembled from private collections by the Textile Study Group, made up of a dozen or so friends with a common interest in the subject.
Some of the more unusual examples include a quilt from Andy Warhol's collection; a Lone Star pattern executed in pastel colors in the 1930's; a stylized tulip pattern from the 1840's, stipple-quilted with alternate blocks of trapunto; and a full-size Flying Geese pattern with matching crib quilt.
A quilt called the New York Beauty was made during a two-year period beginning in 1986 by 19 women who donated it to the restored Jacob Purdy House, home of the Historical Society. The quilt commemorates the 200th birthday of the Statue of Liberty with its name; its red, white and blue color scheme, and a representation of the statue's crown incorporated into the design. 
The White Plains Historical Society at 60 Park Avenue will be open to visitors from 10 A.M. to 4 P.M. Saturday and from 1 to 4 P.M. next Sunday, free of charge. Members of the Textile Study Group will demonstrate piecing and quilting. Call 328-1776 for more information.
 
MOTHERLY VIGNETTES
Mothers, as interpreted by Euripides, Bertolt Brecht, Tennessee Williams and other dramatists, are the theme of seven vignettes to be performed Thursday by Elaine Sulka in the Romita Auditorium of the College of New Rochelle. Ms. Sulka is the artistic director and co-founder of the National Shakespeare Company in Manhattan.
Running the gamut from comedy to tragedy, the pieces explore the roles mothers play in relation to their children and their society. They include excerpts from Williams's ''The Glass Menagerie,'' Thornton Wilder's ''Our Town,'' ''The Freak Mother'' by Franca Rame and Dario Fo, ''In County Kerry'' by Ruth Draper,'' Brecht's ''The Caucasian Chalk Circle'' and Ms. Sulka's ''As It Was in the Beginning.''
The performance begins at 7:30 P.M. Thursday. There is no admission charge but reservations are required. Call 654-5307.
 
OPPORTUNITIES KNOCK
Business opportunities for older people will be examined in a seminar Saturday morning at Manhattanville College's Entrepreneurial Center in Purchase. ''The Age of Aging: Business Trends/Opportunities in the Senior Marketplace'' focuses on a growing number of older people who want to start and manage a small business.
Dr. Denise Dolen - president of Dolen Consulting Systems in Chappaqua, specialists in providing management techniques to the elderly and their families - will identify business areas available to the elderly. She will be followed by members of Westchester 2000, a nonprofit private planning organization, who will provide statistics on demographics and trends through this decade.
The seminar will run from 8:30 A.M. to 12:30 P.M. and costs $45. Call 694-4947 to register or obtain more information.
 
A BENEFIT AUCTION
A black tie benefit will be held Saturday for the Pelham Art Center's gallery and educational programs. The 7 P.M. event includes dinner, dancing and a wide variety of goods and services to be auctioned off. It takes place at the Pelham Country Club and costs $200 a couple.
Among the auction items are box seats at Shea Statium for a Mets game; a limousine trip to a Metropolitan Museum members' lecture followed by lunch at the Metropolitan Club; vintage wines; furs; jewelry; dinners for four at local restaurants; a week at a Key West condominium; a day of yachting on Long Island Sound with drinks and lunch for 8 couples; consultation with a noted interior designer; and a monotype by Alexander Rutsch.
Call 738-2525 for reservations or more information.
 
TIPS FOR BUYERS
The Home Buyer's Class presented periodically by the nonprofit housing organization, Westchester Residential Opportunities, takes on added significance in this buyer's market. A free session will be held from 10 A.M. to 2:30 P.M. Saturday at the White Plains Public Library, 100 Martine Avenue.
Elizabeth Schatz, a realtor, will speak about the role of the broker and the current debate over whom the broker represents. Legal questions in buying a home will be addressed by Vincent D'Andrea, a Westchester lawyer. Other specialists will explain the ins and outs of inspecting property, energy conservation, financing the purchase of a home, how to take advantage of a soft market, and the affordable housing program offered by the State of New York's Mortgage Agency.
The discussions will include single family homes, cooperatives and condominiums.
The class is sponsored by the library, the Westchester County Urban Program and the Westchster Office for the Aging. Those attending are invited to bring lunch; coffee and tea will be provided. For more information call 428-4507.
 
LIBRARY RALLY
New York's 22 library systems have not had an increase in state financing since 1986, say the organizers of the first Westchester Library Rally. The rally is scheduledfrom 12:30 to 2 P.M. on Saturday, at the Little Theater of the County Center in White Plains.
Westchester's 38 libraries have been mobilizing their patrons to attend the rally, warning that a 19 percent increase in costs threatens to reduce services unless more state funds are appropriated.
Speaking at the rally will be Maurice J. Freedman, director of the Westchester Library System in Elmsford. Expected to attend as supportive county residents are the actress Mary Beth Hurt; the sports writers Maury Allen and Roger Kahn; John Berry 3d, editor-in-chief of the Library Journal, a prominent trade publication; and Aranka Siegel, author of ''Upon the Head of a Goat,'' a Newbery Prize-winner.
Call 592-8214 for more information.
 
DANCEWORKS DECADE
DanceWorks, the resident dance company of Westchester Community College in Valhalla, is celebrating its 10th anniversary with concerts in the Academic Arts Theater at 3 P.M. today and next Sunday, and at 8:30 P.M. Friday and Saturday.
All the works to be performed are from the repertoire choreographed by Mollyann Franzbau, the company's director. They include ''Wild Things'' with music by Jean Michelle Jarre; ''Just Keep Going'' to music by Dave Brubeck; and ''Out of the Running'' to the music of Tangerine Dream. Additional works are set to the music of Ory's Sunshine Band, Kraftwerk, Hector Villa-Lobos and Albert Ginastera.
The company, composed of undergraduates and alumni, performs in libraries, theaters, schools, museums and hospitals in the county. Admission to each concert is $5, or $3 for students and the elderly. For more information call 285-6000. $90ELEANOR CHARLES

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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110 of 468 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times

March 27, 1990, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

An Aging Nation Grapples With Care for Old and Ill

BYLINE: By ERIK ECKHOLM

SECTION: Section A; Page 1, Column 4; National Desk

LENGTH: 2833 words

Care of the frail and chronically ill elderly, long a private burden of families, is fast becoming a public obsession and a volatile political issue as the older population increases and members of the baby boom generation face the aging of their own parents.
The nation's current system of long-term care leaves many elderly people in fear and some destitute and demoralized, in the view of many experts and families who have struggled with the problem.
A shortage of affordable community programs - a visiting aide to watch a wandering Alzheimer's patient or a day center to provide meals and society to the frail and isolated - forces some people into nursing homes unnecessarily. It also means there is too little relief for the millions of relatives, usually wives or daughters, who care for the disabled at home, often at the expense of their own lives.
And haunting most of the elderly is the specter of financial ruin. Accounts abound of people who watched in despair as nursing home bills consumed the savings of a lifetime. Many who need chronic care must spend their assets until they qualify for Medicaid, the Federal-state welfare program for the poor - a process of ''spending down'' that people describe as terrifying and humiliating. 
 
The Spending 'Kills People'
''Spending down is horrendous,'' said Nancy Lombardo, a director of the Alzheimer's Association, who has talked with hundreds of families with a member affected by the irreversible brain disease. ''It kills people.''
The political passions surrounding the health concerns of the aged became abundantly clear last year, as Congress was forced to repeal a major program to cover the medical costs of catastrophic illnesses after adopting it with fanfare the year before. An unexpected outcry about the way of paying for the program incited the opposition that led to the reversal. But the debate also threw a spotlight on what many older people said was their greater worry, long-term care.
So far, there is no agreement on where private responsibility ends and public responsibility begins, on how much money Government should, or could, spend to ease the burdens.
In Washington and in state capitals, well-organized groups are demanding more government support. ''We have insurance for retirement, and we have insurance for acute medical care,'' said John Rother, the chief lobbyist for the American Association of Retired Persons, referring to the Social Security and Medicare programs. ''It doesn't seem logical to leave out the thing that can wipe families out, long-term care.''
Politicians are taking up the cry, but even the most sympathetic shudder at the thought of a major new Government obligation, one for which the cost is certain to rise dramatically in the decades ahead. Officials are only too aware of the strains that programs like Medicare are already placing on the Federal budget.
The numbers are daunting. Those 85 and older, who are most apt to need assistance, are increasing more than three times as fast as the population as a whole. A 1987 Federal study projected that the total number of elderly Americans needing some type of help, then about six and a half million, would climb to 19 million by 2040.
Yet the number of family members able to aid the disabled at home - still the mainstay of the nation's care system - is expected to decline, not only because of the changing demographic structure but also because more women, who have traditionally handled such care, hold jobs and more families are smaller or scattered. Both are especially true of the baby boom generation, whose parents are now reaching old age.
 
Facing Poverty
Surviving Spouses Left With Little
Only a minority of the elderly ever face huge bills for chronic care. People 65 years old have a 44 percent chance of entering a nursing home at some point in their remaining years. Only 13 percent, or about one in seven, can expect to spend a year or more in a nursing home, according to a study by LifePlans, a private consulting group on long-term care in Waltham, Mass.
But a prolonged stay in a nursing home or extensive paid assistance at home often means financial disaster. Nursing homes cost an average of close to $30,000 a year, and the cost is more in some regions like New York. A 1987 study by the House Select Committee on Aging found that two-thirds of single elderly people would have their incomes and assets depleted to the Federal poverty level if they paid for one year in a nursing home. Half of elderly couples would be similarly impoverished in a year.
One who knows what nursing home bills can do is Mabel Crim, a 92-year-old widow in Margate, Fla. She and her husband, Russell, a former plant manager for Standard Oil, had felt secure on their retirement in Florida, given his pension, Social Security benefits and the $35,000 they had saved ''to take care of us when we got old,'' as she put it in a recent interview.
Then, at age 88, Mr. Crim had a heart attack and a series of strokes that left him seriously incapacitated, and he spent his last two years in a nursing home.
''The nursing home took all my savings,'' Mrs. Crim said. ''I was glad I had it and could pay it, but it left me high and dry.'' Once her funds were exhausted, the state's Medicaid program took over.
Now, her husband gone, she maintains herself and her one-bedroom apartment with Social Security benefits and financial help from her daughters. ''I get along,'' she says without bitterness.
But one daughter, Iona Gilbert, is angrier. ''My mother is turning 92 this month, and they left her without a cent,'' she said.
''She had daughters to help her, or she'd be out in the street,'' said Mrs. Gilbert. ''I don't know what happens to those little old ladies down there with nobody.''
 
Facing Distress
Using Welfare Torments Many
While Medicare and private health insurance will usually pay for medical treatment, neither covers custodial care of the type needed by those with chronic physical or mental disorders. Increasingly, private insurance is offered for long-term care, but only a small number of people have bought it so far, and policies, usually costing $100 a month or more, are beyond the financial reach of most elderly people, experts say.
Instead, except for the poor, chronic-care bills must be paid out of pocket. Middle-income people often pay until their assets are so depleted they can qualify for Medicaid.
The Medicaid spend-down has achieved a fearful notoriety among the elderly; spouses of the disabled have sometimes even resorted to divorce so they could preserve their standard of living. For a widowed or single person too, the quick loss of a lifetime's savings and of any chance of passing assets on to children is a wrenching blow.
Recent changes in the law have increased the amount that spouses, like Mabel Crim, can keep before getting Medicaid help. The rules differ by state, but Federal guidelines allow spouses to keep the couple's house and, this year, at least $856 a month in income and at least $12,516 in assets. States may allow as much as $1,565 in income and $62,580 in assets, though most have chosen the lower limits.
While advocates of the elderly cheer these changes, they say the limits still force a real decline in living standards and security on some surviving spouses. And single people are still left with virtually nothing: they can usually keep a small spending allowance and little more than $2,000 in assets. Those who are able to return home after spending time in an institution are often left with little.
The critics also argue that reliance on a welfare program, Medicaid, to meet a basic, predictable need of millions of middle-class Americans is a distortion of that program and a source of humiliation.
''Here's a man who always paid his taxes, who raised four daughters, a World War I veteran, and he ends up on charity,'' Mrs. Gilbert said of her father. ''That's the part that really hurt.''
''Knowing that the only way to get help is to give up your funds and go on welfare only adds to the distress,'' said Mrs. Lombardo of the Alzheimer's Association. ''People are tormented by this.''
Protecting assets has become a fixation for many older people who figure that if they should be incapacitated, they will need to rely on Medicaid but want to preserve their spouse's standard of living or their children's inheritance. The recent improvement in the law should reduce the number of divorces, but still, more than a few widowed older people are avoiding remarriage to avoid putting their assets in jeopardy, said Fernando Torres-Gil, an associate professor of gerontology at the University of Southern California.
Although the Government says it violates the spirit of the law, many people find legal ways to transfer assets to relatives or to use trusts or other devices to shelter funds.
''Financially sophisticated people who are accustomed to dealing with attorneys, accountants, and financial planners can find ways to protect their assets and still qualify for Medicaid,'' writes Stephen A. Moses, a former official the Department of Health and Human Services, in the February issue of The Gerontologist. ''Others, with less financial savvy, often lose what little they have before they learn how the system works.''
This means that fewer families of nursing home patients are bankrupted than would be suggested by income data alone. But it also means that the burdens of care and the benefits of public aid are being apportioned inequitably.
 
Seeking Help
Providing Care Fills the Day
At least Medicaid pays for nursing homes once people have used most of their own money or if they were poor to start. But for everyone, nursing homes are the answer of last resort. A much larger problem is the lack of home services and aid for the family and friends who care for the disabled elderly.
The stereotype of callous children notwithstanding, most of the country's disabled are cared for in their own homes or those of their children.
With the aging of the population, ''increasingly the caregivers are old too,'' notes Stephen McConnell, the director of public affairs with the Alzheimer's Association. ''More and more, it's the 65-year-old woman taking care of 85-year-old parents.''
Relatives often go to extraordinary lengths before they send a loved one to an institution. Social workers say they know of too many daughters working themselves to exhaustion trying to attend to an infirm parent while raising families of their own and too many devoted wives and husbands, frail themselves, struggling for years to provide grueling 24-hour aid to a chronically ill spouse.
Uldene Ditter, 72, of Ferndale, Mich., considers herself among the more fortunate of those caring for a disabled spouse, but her daily strains and especially her financial insecurity have led her to become an outspoken advocate of change.
Her husband of half a century has been in bed for the last five years with advancing Alzheimer's disease. She is determined to keep him out of a nursing home. ''He doesn't have a bedsore,'' she said proudly in an interview. ''I feel like I'm doing the right thing.''
Mrs. Ditter's job is an unpaid one almost without end. She gets away for 4 hours on Tuesdays when a volunteer comes, and another 4 hours on Wednesdays when a hired women comes, but apart from that, she said, ''I'm here, 24 hours a day.'' These brief hours of respite are crucial. ''It just lifts me up to get out,'' she said. ''Sometimes I get real down.'' She also gets help from a nurse who comes three times a week to bathe her husband.
But money, and thus her own future, are constant concerns. ''Just bed pads and diapers cost me $135 a month,'' she said. ''I'm getting into my savings.''
''You think you're doing well, then something falls apart in the house,'' she said. ''And of course, with him here I have to keep the furnace up a little higher.''
Of $15 billion in Federal Medicaid funds to be devoted to long-term care in the 1990 fiscal year, less than 3 percent will pay for home services. Many states and localities are now experimenting with a host of promising programs designed to help disabled people stay in the community. But overall, ''there are very few services available to people caring for older relatives and friends,'' said Bette Mullen, the director of the women's initiative program of the A.A.R.P. ''And there's a lack of knowledge of the services that do exist.''
 
Daunting Prospects
More Will Need Extensive Care
Demographic and social change portend an enormous rise in the need for expensive care. The problem is not just the aging of the population, but also ''the aging of the elderly population,'' observes Kenneth G. Manton, a demographer at Duke University. Those over 85 are rapidly increasing in number.
At the same time, Dr. Manton said, there will be relatively fewer relatives available to provide care at home. And this, he warns, almost inevitably means ''a shift from voluntary, family sources of care to paid care'' like professional home services and nursing homes.
Now, on any given day, about 5 percent of the elderly are in a nursing home, or a total of 1.4 million in 1987, according to Federal data.
Three-fourths of the nursing home residents are women, mostly widows, reflecting the tendency for women to outlive men and the related consequence that they are less likely to have a surviving spouse to care for them at home.
But these numbers mask the enormous differences in the conditions of the younger and older ones among the elderly. Of those age 65 to 74, only about 2 percent are in nursing homes and of those 75 to 84, 6 percent.
But in the 85-plus age group, 23 percent, or more than one in five, are in nursing homes, according to Federal surveys.
Simply because so many more of them suffer severe dementia or physical infirmities, the rapid growth of the group over 85 means that a rising share of the elderly will require nursing homes or other close, expensive care. It also means there will be relatively more infirm elderly people relative to healthy elderly people who could assist them, Dr. Manton said.
At the same time, the tendency of more women to hold jobs and other changes in the family mean that relatively fewer children are likely be available to help. Without a corresponding increase in professional home-care services, there could be ''a deterioration in the ability of the disabled to stay in the community,'' Dr. Manton warned.
For a variety of economic and cultural reasons, blacks, Hispanic people and other minority groups are dramatically under-represented in nursing homes relative to the proportion of the population they make up. Many Hispanic people and Asians, for example, still see nursing homes as ''a strange and unnatural system,'' said Dr. Torres-Gil, and a tradition of extended family ties and care in the home, as well as financial concerns, has meant that the disabled from minority groups were especially likely to be kept in the community.
But now the elderly from minority groups, too, are increasing rapidly, and traditional family ties are often breaking down. This, he asserted, only underscores the desperate need for home-care services and other alternatives tailored especially to minority communities.
 
Planning Ahead
Future Poses A Social Choice
One reason nursing home costs come as such a shock to so many people is simply that they have not planned for them. Saving for retirement is part of the American way, but Americans have not traditionally thought of saving or buying insurance to cover the expenses of long-term care. Yet Government policy explicitly requires people to devote nearly all available resources on such care before receiving aid. Given these clashing assumptions it is not surprising that those who encounter the large expenses of such care feel bitter and betrayed.
''We do not expect people to exhaust their resources or sell their homes when they suffer a heart attack, but we do so for long-term care,'' said the report issued this month by a bipartisan commission on health care known as the Pepper Commission, after the late Representative Claude Pepper. ''There is no intrinsic reason why this is so; it is a matter of social choice.''
Broader government support of long-term care costs could take the form of universal coverage without considering recipients' resources, like Medicare, or remain linked to recipients' ability to pay. Any new program is apt to encourage wider use of private insurance by the more affluent among the elderly. Even the most sympathetic politicians warn, though, that any new Federal aid is unlikely to be generous, given concerns over the budget deficit and competing social needs.
More and more, experts say, planning ahead for the possible expense of chronic care will have to be a customary rite of aging.
Tomorrow: The increasing choices for care in the community.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

SERIES: Care of the Elderly; Private Burdens, Public Choices - First of four articles.

GRAPHIC: Graph showing the projection for the population 65 and older in nursing homes, disabled and still at home, no serious disability (source: Kenneth G. Manton, Duke University) (pg. A1); photo: most of the disabled are cared for at home, and relatives often go to extraordinary lengths to keep a loved one from an institution. Uldene Ditter of Ferndale, Mich., cares for her husband, John, who has been in bed for the last five years with Alzheimer's disease. (The New York Times/Peter Yates); graphs showing the various problems the elderly face; the age, closest living relative and mental disorders of nursing home patients; who pays for nursing home care; the private health expenditures of the elderly in '87 (sources: Agency for Health Care Policy and Research; Health Care Financing Administ

TYPE: Series

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111 of 468 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times

March 27, 1990, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

Studies Offer Fresh Clues To Memory

BYLINE: By DANIEL GOLEMAN

SECTION: Section C; Page 1, Column 1; Science Desk

LENGTH: 1347 words

FORGET the old maxim that memory deteriorates with age. The new wisdom, emerging from recent studies, is that there are several kinds of memory, only one of which worsens in old age.
Though psychologists still dispute precisely how many kinds of memory there are, most agree that there are at least three major kinds: ''episodic,'' for specific events; ''semantic,'' for knowledge and facts; and ''implicit,'' for skills one exercises automatically, like speaking grammatically or hitting a golf ball. Semantic and implicit memory do not decline with age, the new studies show. And declines in episodic memory may be due to factors like retirement rather than aging itself and may be reversible, psychologists say.
These encouraging findings, and the framework they support, are gaining wide acceptance among memory researchers. For scientists trying to understand the workings of memory, the findings offer important clues to fresh avenues of research and to new models of how the mind stores and retrieves information. 
For example, it has long been known that elderly people who forget recent events can still recall memories from the distant past. But the new findings suggest that even this memory loss is not inevitable except in those with an illness that affects the brain.
''The idea that memory inevitably deteriorates as you age came from studies that only tested one kind of memory,'' said David Mitchell, a psychologist at Southern Methodist University. ''Now we see that there are multiple memory systems, and they each hold up differently as you age.''
The type of memory that declines substantially in old age is ''episodic'' memory, which deals with specific events like what happened at yesterday's meeting, the name of someone you have just met or where the keys to the car were left.
Peter Graf, a psychologist at the University of British Columbia, said: ''The scientific literature shows that episodic memory is stable through the mid-60's, with a slight drop but no real problems for most people. But there is a pronounced drop in the 70's for most people. The drop may be largely due to retirement, and the way that changes how you use your memory; people usually don't exercise their mental faculties as much after work demands stop.''
Memory researchers point out that many people develop strategies that compensate for the decline, like writing notes to themselves. Mulling events over or talking or thinking about them later also seems to help store the memory in the ''semantic memory,'' the overall store of information and experience people accumulate over a lifetime.
''Semantic memory does not decline with age,'' Dr. Mitchell said. ''It grows.'' Data suggesting that people continue to accumulate information comes from older studies reported by Dr. Robert Katzman, chairman of the department of neurosciences at the University of California Medical School at San Diego. A group of men and women in their 60's were tested on the same vocabulary list that Dr. Mitchell used, and then tested again 10 years later.
 
In Some Cases, Memory Improved
During the intervening decade of life, the men and women improved their scores by an average of six or seven words, which Dr. Mitchell called a substantial increase. The studies, done at the National Institute of Mental Health in 1956 and 1967, were first published in the 1970's but were largely overlooked by memory researchers. Only when they were republished in 1983 in a book on the neurology of aging did they catch the attention of researchers, Dr. Mitchell said.
The data were particularly important, he said, because almost all research on memory and aging involves comparing a younger group with an older group. Longitudinal data, in which the same people are tested years later, are able to establish more strongly that any differences seen are a result of aging itself.
The findings make sense of the long-observed fact that the elderly seem better able to retrieve memories from the distant past than from last week or the last hour. It is only within the past five years that data on memory in the elderly showed clearly ''that it was semantic memory that the elderly rely on for distant memories, while it is a failing episodic memory that interferes with remembering recent events,'' said Dr. Mitchell.
''The memories from long ago are for stories or emotional moments that people have thought about over and over, storing them in semantic memory. Recent memory lapses that plague the elderly are for more everyday events, such as where you put your glasses. Those are part of episodic memory.''
 
Robust Forms of Memory
The findings about other kinds of memory are also positive. In a paper to be published this spring in The Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society, Dr. Graf shows that although most people experience a strong drop in episodic memory in their 70's, other kinds of memory remain robust.
For example, researchers say that among healthy adults there is generally minimal decline with age in ''implicit memory,'' which deals with the large variety of mental activities that occur spontaneously, without having to make an intentional effort, like driving a car.
The recognition that implicit memory is distinct from other kinds of remembering came in large part from observations of people with amnesia. In a paper published in 1983, Dr. Daniel Schacter, a psychologist at the University of Arizona, described a golf game with an amnesiac patient who had been an avid golfer before suffering a brain lesion that led to his memory problem. During the game, the patient forgot having played each hole or making each stroke within minutes of having done so.
Even so, he played the game as though he knew exactly what had just happened; for example, he reached for the right club for his next stroke. And over a series of days, his game improved steadily from practice, even though he did not recall having played the day before.
 
Facts and Amnesiacs
In later studies Dr. Schacter found that if he taught amnesiac patients made-up facts, such as that ''Jane Fonda's favorite food is oatmeal,'' they would later answer the question ''what food does Jane Fonda love?'' about as well as people with intact memory. But if he asked where they had learned that fact, the amnesia patients would have no idea, a phenomenon called source amnesia.
Dr. Schacter observed the same split in memory in studies with the elderly. Like the amnesiacs, people in their 60's and 70's were able to answer the questions as well as young people, but they were worse at remembering exactly when and where the new knowledge came from.
One implication is that the elderly can learn from experience just as younger people can, but may not remember exactly when and where the new knowledge or skill came from.
Problems in the Frontal Lobes Brain studies of memory suggest that the decline in episodic memory, such as for the list of words, is related to a degeneration of the frontal lobes. Using a blood flow measure, Endel Tulvig, a psychologist at the University of Toronto, found that while people were engaged in episodic memory tasks like remembering words they had just memorized, the frontal lobes were more active.
Other data also point to the frontal lobes as the source of memory problems in the elderly. Larry Squire, a neuropsychologist at the University of California Medical School at San Diego, found that the greater the damage to the frontal lobes in amnesia patients, the greater was the loss of episodic memory.
''The frontal lobes decay more quickly in aging than do other parts of the brain,'' Dr. Craik said.
But Dr. Schacter has recent evidence that there are strategies older people can use to compensate for their memory deterioration in some situations.
''Part of the problem in the elderly may be in switching attention,'' he said. ''If things come too quickly or in a confusing fashion, it may not register as well. But if older people are able to focus on what is happening without distractions, their memory may be just as good as ever.''

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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The New York Times

March 28, 1990, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Strategies to Let Elderly Keep Some Control

BYLINE: By TAMAR LEWIN

SECTION: Section A; Page 1, Column 2; National Desk

LENGTH: 2682 words

Home care services, adult day care and a host of other programs to aid the disabled elderly are proliferating as more people search for alternatives to traditional nursing homes.
Over the last decade, public and private agencies have begun to respond to the near-universal desire of frail or chronically ill people to remain in familiar surroundings, with control over their lives, whenever possible.
Innovative programs are providing help with daily activities to frail or chronically ill people who do not want, or need to live in a nursing home. The new approaches include home-repair services, day centers, foster homes for the elderly and apartment buildings where residents can get more care as they need it.
 
Need for New Services
Nonetheless, experts say, the need for new services is far from met. Most of the disabled elderly are still cared for by relatives at home. But many elderly people are placed in nursing homes simply because they lack help with dressing and bathing. And many wives, husbands and children still strain to care for the disabled at home without any assistance or relief. 
''There's no question that the experiments and alternatives are out there, but they're serving only a small proportion of those who need them,'' said Dr. Carroll Estes, director of the Institute for Health and Aging at the University of California at San Francisco.
For elderly people who want to stay in the community, she said, the biggest need is in-home help with bathing, dressing and homemaking.
 
States Try New Strategies
''While there are a lot more of those programs than there were 10 years ago, very few deal with large numbers of people,'' she said.
To be sure, nursing homes may be the best alternative for the frailest people, the most disabled, the severely demented or violent, those with complex medical needs and those with no family or friends to lend a hand.
But states are trying out many new strategies as they face ever-higher nursing home costs, and growing concern about the sense of confinement and lack of personal control that so many nursing home residents feel.
''Wisconsin, Oregon, Washington State and Illinois have been among the leaders,'' said Diane Justice, deputy director of the National Association of State Units on Aging. ''And where programs aren't being developed, it's usually due to a lack of state dollars, not a lack of interest.''
In Wisconsin, the $35 million annual Community Options Program assists 7,700 people needing long-term care, half of them elderly and half younger disabled people. The program will arrange almost any service needed to keep a resident at home, whether it is paying the next-door neighbor to cook dinner twice a week or finding a nurse to come every day. The services are provided free to the poor and on a sliding scale to others.
Oregon is trying a different approach, creating a network of foster homes for the elderly. The state is also encouraging developers to build ''assisted living'' apartments, where residents can get the same level of nursing care available in a nursing home, along with housekeeping services and meals in a group dining room, without forfeiting the chance to live in a private apartment with their own furnishings, carpeted floors and a door that can lock. New Approaches Sorting Out What Works Many community programs, some public, some private, have developed across the country. There are now about 2,200 day centers for the elderly, compared with a dozen 20 years ago. Hundreds of new respite programs provide a companion or nurse to look after an elderly person while the person who usually provides the care takes a break.
There are also telephone reassurance programs, in which frail people get daily calls to make sure they are well. Technology can also play a part. Some elderly people get a sense of security by wearing an electronic alarm they can set off if they fall or need help.
Many cities also have housekeeping, gardening or home repair programs for the elderly, to help prevent people from retreating to a nursing home simply because they cannot manage the chores of daily life.
 
New Role: Care Manager
The proliferation of programs has spawned a new profession: the private care manager, who coordinates and monitors an elderly person's care, signing up for the meal programs, checking the performance of the home health aide, scheduling doctor's visits and arranging transportation.
Such services are appealing to the growing population of adult children whose aging parents live far away. Rather than making weekly trips to check on a parent, many choose to hire a local care manager, at $50 to $120 an hour. Some care managers work with their own nurses and aides, while others contract out the work. And while one client may need only a monthly check-in call, another may require daily visits. The National Association of Private Geriatric Care Managers, in Dayton, Ohio, is creating a national referral network.
Many public and nonprofit agencies use case managers to screen clients and help them find their way to the most appropriate programs available locally.
Some nursing homes have created their own services for elderly people in the community.
 
An Array of Services
Since 1980, for example, the Jewish Home and Hospital for Aged in New York City has started a ''nursing home without walls'' home care program; two day centers, one of them for the blind and visually impaired; an in-home Alzheimer's emergency respite program; outpatient rehabilitation that offers therapy, nursing and counseling, and an at-home recovery program, which cares for patients newly released from the hospital and helps train the family to take over. The Jewish Home has also started a telephone Guideline, (212) 663-4663, to help clients decide which services they need and qualify for.
''Most of the things that are likely to help solve the long-term care problem are being tried in some pilot project somewhere, but we're really still at the very beginning,'' said Dr. Burton Reifler of the Bowman Gray School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, N.C., who directs a pilot program that finances several day centers. ''It's going to take 15 or 20 years to sort out what works, what people want, what they will pay for, what the government will pay for, and then to see that the services we need are widely available.'' Home Living Someone to Take Care of Things Most health policy experts agree that too many people live in nursing homes not because they need much medical attention but because that is the most widely available option. Also, for those who have used up their resources, it is the one that Medicaid, the joint Federal-state health program for the poor, is most likely to pay for.
The National Center for Health Statistics reports that 5 percent of Americans over 65 now live in nursing homes, more than double the percentage of the early 1960's. Most of the increase came shortly after the 1965 creation of Medicare and Medicaid, which helped nudge long-term care into a medical model, with the disabled and elderly seen as patients, rather than a social model, with programs designed around daily living needs, and medical services added as needed.
''The field of long-term care has been too medicalized, because programs are driven so much by the funding mechanisms available to pay for them,'' said Jeffrey Mitchell of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which supports many experimental long-term care programs. ''We did some research to find out what the elderly want, and we found that services like home repair, shopping and housecleaning may contribute more to the elderly's being able to stay in the community than traditional medical services.''
 
Help With Home Repairs
One such program is the home repair service that the New York Foundation for Senior Citizens operates for elderly people with limited incomes. It has helped Rose and Michael Katz stay in the Brooklyn home they have owned since the 1950's.
''We thought about leaving because we weren't sure we would be able to manage the upkeep,'' said Mrs. Katz, 76 years old. ''They've probably come 30 times and fixed the locks on our doors, the washers on the faucets, taken care of the washing machine and cleared the drains. The house would have fallen apart without them.''
In Dallas, the Visiting Nurse Association offers a program called Independence Plus, which arranges $10-an-hour housekeeping, and yard maintenance for the elderly.
''We get a lot of widows who can't take care of the yard, or need help with shopping, and a lot of men who don't know how to take care of the house and need heavy cleaning, shopping and meal preparation,'' said Sue Seifert, the director of the program.
 
Nine Visits a Week
With more than 10,000 public and private home health agencies nationwide, even people who need a great deal of nursing care can often remain in their homes.
Margaret Pawley, 78, of Brookside, Del., has had several disabling strokes and a colostomy. She is bedridden, diabetic and catheterized, with a bedsore and a surgical incision that still need dressing. She gets three visits a week from a nurse who checks her blood and her dressings, three visits from a physical therapist who helps her with upper-arm exercises and three visits from an aide, who changes her bed and bathes her.
''It's hard and I did think about a nursing home,'' said Mrs. Pawley's daughter, Mary Lucille Walstrum. ''But when Mom was in the hospital, she only said two things to me: ''I love you' and 'When am I going home?' So I thought I would try it,'' Mrs. Walstrum has moved her family into her mother's house and hired her husband's sister to care for her mother while Mrs. Walstrum is at work. Assisted Living Varied Strategies Succeed in Oregon Richard Ladd, the administrator of Oregon's Senior and Disabled Services Division, estimates that only about 5 percent of the state's 20,000 Medicaid recipients receiving long-term care have complex medical needs.
''Most of them just can't do what they need to do, whether it's getting dressed or taking their medicine,'' he said. ''Long-term care is not a medical problem, but too often we put them in nursing homes where they have less control over their lives and less freedom than the average prison inmate.''
One of Mr. Ladd's alternatives to nursing homes is a network of foster homes, each caring for up to five elderly people.
''I've got a lady who's 95, three in their 80's and a 67-year-old Alzheimer's patient, and they're all confused in their minds,'' said Geraldine Maurig, 62, who runs a foster home near Portland. ''It's no different than having five children at home to look after. You become their mother, the one they turn to. I cook and do their hair, and take care of their whiskers, and even when I have incontinent people you don't smell anything when you walk in my door.''
Mrs. Maurig, who trained her granddaughter to open a foster home of her own, charges $1,000 to $1,400 a month, depending on the level of care. The state pays an average of $1,700 a month for nursing home care.
Oregon also emphasises assisted-living apartments, in which the elderly and disabled live in a building where meals and housekeeping are provided, with other services, like nursing, added as needed. Mr. Ladd estimates that half the state's nursing home residents could be cared for in such apartments.
 
A Couple Stays Together
Gladys and John Chaffin moved from California to the Regency Park assisted-living complex in Portland two years ago, when Mr. Chaffin began needing care for Alzheimer's disease.
''We had looked at a lot of nursing homes,'' said Mrs. Chaffin, who is 81, ''but to tell the truth, I wouldn't have moved into a nursing home with him, and when you've been married 60 years, it seems sad to be separated.'' She said the assisted-living arrangement ''is wonderful for us because I can go and play bridge twice a week and there's someone to take care of him.'' In the future, she added, ''when he starts needing more care, they'll be able to handle that, too.''
Assisted-living often becomes sensible when home care proves too difficult, and many profit-making companies, including hotel chains like the Marriott Corporation and the Hyatt Corporation, are entering the field, expecting that, as the population ages, there will be a large market for care.
''It's not always practical to keep people at home,'' said Keren Brown Wilson, a consultant who helped develop Regency Park.''It's very expensive and very tough to manage home care for someone who needs care round the clock, or needslike someone to help whenever they have to use the bathroom. If you design it carefully, assisted living gives you the economies of scale and a lot of the feeling of a home.''
Regency Park, with costs starting at $1,500 a month for a studio apartment, has about 20 residents receiving state assistance, but most of the residents pay privately.
 
Expected Savings Not Realized
Rosalie A. Kane, an expert on long-term care at the University of Minnesota, is optimistic about assisted living. ''I think the most promising model for people with heavy long-term care needs is housing where lots of different services can be added on,'' she said. ''If you can separate the idea of housing from the idea of care, you can break through the rigidity of nursing home life.''
Dr. Kane and others said that most of the alternatives to nursing homes were started with idea of saving money. But often, the cost savings are illusory: indeed, round-the-clock home care is apt to be more expensive than care in a nursing home, because it requires a caretaker for each patient.
''For the most part, the initial glowing reports about how much money these programs save, and how long they delay nursing home admission, have not panned out,'' she said. ''Cost aside, most people do not want to enter a nursing home. Quality of life can be just as important a factor as cost.'' Helping the Helpers Day Centers Give Needed Relief Much of America's long-term care is still provided informally, most often by wives, daughters, daughters-in-law and neighbors. And increasingly, policy makers are trying to find ways to support them.
Day centers and respite programs, which can help those caring for disabled people as much as the disabled, are mushrooming, and becoming increasingly specialized, with programs especially for Alzheimer's patients, the visually impaired, AIDS patients and other groups.
''It's a godsend to be able to take my husband to the day center every morning,'' said Gloria Lowe, whose husband, Martin, 80, has had Alzheimer's disease for 17 years and now attends an Alzheimer's center in Delaware. ''When he's home, he needs constant attention, so this is my only chance to catch up on shopping and cleaning. I would have run out of money if he had been in a nursing home all this time and this is better for him.''
Alzheimer's patients, who make up about half the population of nursing homes nationally, pose the most troubling long-term care problems as their dementia progresses.
 
Benefits of Music
Some programs are finding new ways to engage them and lessen their distress. The Sunshine Terrace day center in Logan, Utah, uses extensive music therapy, having found that it helps to soothe demented older people.
''We have patients who can no longer say five words, but who can still sing the lyrics to 20 or 30 songs from their childhood,'' said Bonnie Smith, the program director. ''We sing a lot of 'Let Me Call You Sweetheart' and 'Springtime in the Rockies.' ''
The center even has a choral group, whose conductor, Viola Israelsen, an 84-year-old Alzheimer's patient who lives with her son, has a wandering problem and can no longer quite remember her age or how many children she has. But singing is second nature to her, and she sound utterly lucid at rehearsal.
''I was trained by mother and dad to like and originate music, to make it sing in my heart,'' she said.
NEXT: The politics of long-term care, and the policy choices.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

SERIES: CARE OF THE ELDERLY; PRIVATE BURDENS, PUBLIC CHOICES - SECOND OF FOUR ARTICLES.

GRAPHIC: photos: At the Sunshine Terrace Day Center in Logan, Utah, extensive music therapy is used to help patients, especially those with Alzheimer's disease. Lisa Almond, a therapist, led patients in a song. (The New York Times/Don Grayston) (pg. A1); In response to a desire to keep frail or chronically ill people in familiar locations and away from traditional nursing homes, innovative programs have been developed, like adult day centers. At a center in Logan, Utah, patients played a hockey game. (The New York Times/Don Grayston); Gladys and John Chaffin moved to an assisted-living complex in Portland when Mr. Chaffin began needing care.; Adele Heller in her apartment next to the Jewish Home and Hospital for Aged in New York City where her husband is a patient. She is in a program that hel

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The New York Times

March 29, 1990, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

Paying for Long-Term Care: The Struggle for Lawmakers

BYLINE: By MARTIN TOLCHIN, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section A; Page 1, Column 2; National Desk

LENGTH: 2613 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, March 28

Senator Max Baucus fed Gladys Foote, a 97-year-old stroke victim in Helena, Mont., who was his kindergarten teacher. Senator John D. Rockefeller 4th assisted an 82-year-old Alzheimer's victim in South Charleston, W.Va., while Representative Charles E. Bennett held a 4-year-old mentally disabled child on his lap at a center in Jacksonville, Fla.
They were among 75 lawmakers who spent a day feeding, dressing and caring for the severely disabled last year in a program sponsored by the Long Term Care Campaign, a coalition of 138 organizations including groups of the elderly, the A.F.L.-C.I.O. and the United Way. The coalition is pressing for more Government assistance for long-term care of the frail and the disabled, whether they are in nursing homes or being cared for at home. And increasingly, the nation's lawmakers are listening.
After a decade in the legislative shadows, the national debate over long-term care is moving toward center stage, propelled by the rising costs faced by growing numbers of disabled elderly Americans. 
It is an emotional debate involving morality and politics, fueled by different visions of what is right and what is feasible. It is a debate about government responsibility and family obligations, the roles of the public and private sectors, and whether the disabled elderly have as strong a claim on limited Federal resources as other groups like children and the poor.
''Sometime in the not-too-distant future we will get a major national program protecting families against the cost of long-term care,'' Robert M. Ball predicted in a recent interview. Mr. Ball was Commissioner of Social Security in the Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon Administrations and is now chairman of the National Academy of Social Insurance, a nonprofit research organization in Washington. He went on: ''I expect it to come, not primarily because of the political power of the elderly - although this is important - but because of pressure from those of middle age, the sons and daughters of the elderly. They are the ones most at risk.''
But few expect such legislation in the next two or three years. ''The public isn't willing to pay more taxes,'' said Representative Pete Stark, the California Democrat who is chairman of the Subcommittee on Health of the Ways and Means Committee. ''Unless the President is willing to spend some of his popularity, we'll never have it.''
 
The Issues
Who Benefits? Who Will Pay?
The debate over a new national policy turns on basic issues of philosophy and practicality:
* To what extent should middle-class people be expected to save funds for possible long-term care, or buy private insurance?
* Should Government programs be universal, like Social Security, with everyone paying and everyone getting a benefit? Or should they be aimed only at the needy, as programs like Medicaid are now?
* If eligibility for benefits is based on need, how poor should people be before getting aid? Should spouses of the disabled be able to maintain their former standard of living? Do people have a right to keep assets to pass on to their children?
* How much support should the Government give to care in the home, which many say is the greatest need but others fear could be an endless drain on the Treasury?
* How should any new program be financed? Through payroll taxes, personal or corporate income taxes, estate taxes or others?
Some people cast the debate as an intergenerational conflict, contending that the major beneficiaries will be the elderly, who are already benefiting from immenseGovernment programs like Social Security and Medicare. But others, like Mr. Ball, say aid to the elderly helps an entire family, especially the middle-aged, who he said face ''the poignant choice of spending time and money on their parents at the sacrifice of their own children.''
 
The Politics
Nightmare, Now or Later?
The debate is complicated by a national ambivalence. Public opinion polls show overwhelming support for Government protection against the financial nightmare so many families fear. But many politicians doubt that the public would support the new taxes needed to pay for these benefits.
Still, with the elderly growing in number and more families confronting the problems of the soaring costs of long-term care, there is a widespread feeling that something needs to be done. ''This could be a campaign issue in 1990 and 1992,'' said Representative Henry A. Waxman, a California Democrat who is chairman of the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health and the Environment. He added that ''there is very strong public support'' for more Government aid for long-term care.
The Democrats, who championed Social Security and Medicare, have sought to portray themselves as protectors of the aged, and are the strongest supporters of such coverage. Republicans have taken the major role in questioning whether the middle-class elderly and their families, who would be the major beneficiaries of a new Federal benefit program, should receive more Federal money from tight budgets at a time when more than 31 million people lack health insurance and poor pregnant women and children need better health care. Republicans also tend to give more stress to the potential for private insurance to meet the care needs of many.
 
The Budget Squeeze
Representative Bill Gradison of Ohio, ranking Republican on the Ways and Means Subcommittee on Health, said, ''If we assume that there's some limit on how much taxes people are willing to pay, a major new middle-class program means that other parts of the budget are going to get squeezed.''
Nor is long-term-care legislation expected to become law without the support of the Bush Administration, which has resisted major new social programs, especially those that provide benefits to the middle class.
The poor already receive coverage for nursing homes, and occasionally home care, under Medicaid, the Federal-state health program for the poor. Many middle-class people rely on Medicaid to cover their expenses in nursing homes, but can do so only after spending most of their assets, a process many call humiliating and unfair. Others find legal ways to shelter assets and obtain Medicaid.
Medicare, the Federal health program for the elderly and the disabled, covers acute rather than chronic illness, so it provides relatively little support for nursing homes or home care.
The policy debate accelerated earlier this month because of the recommendations of the United States Bipartisan Commission on Comprehensive Health Care, called the Pepper commission for the late Representative Claude Pepper, a Florida Democrat who championed long-term coverage. The commission, created by Congress, is composed of 12 members of Congress and three private experts appointed by President Ronald Reagan. By a vote of 11 to 4, it called for a $42.8-billion-a-year plan for long-term care, with a majority of the money going to home health care, despite objections by the Bush Administration.
''The White House message was, 'Don't let the Democrats have an issue,' '' said Senator Rockefeller, who is chairman of the commission. ''The White House said, 'Don't do anything until after the November elections.' ''
But Republicans have insisted that their opposition was based on substance, not politics, including the commission's failure to fulfill one task assigned by Congress: proposing a way to finance the program. The $42.8 billion would be in addition to the $19.4 billion projected in the fiscal year 1990 for long-term care under Medicare and Medicaid, of which only $424 million is projected for home health care and the remainder for nursing homes.
''Before the Pepper commission, long-term care was a concept,'' said Ronald F. Pollack, executive director of the Families USA Foundation, which promotes the concerns of the elderly poor. ''Now, it's a concrete package.''
 
Wary of Another Debacle
But Deborah Steelman, who was George Bush's health policy expert in the 1988 Presidential campaign and now heads an independent Government commission studying health and social policy, balked at the Pepper commission's price tag. ''Why do we stick to ideas that are bigger than we have any reasonable expectation of paying for?'' she asked.
The Pepper commission sought to defuse the intergenerational debate by recommending long-term care for the severely disabled of all ages. About 40 percent of the severely disabled are under the age of 65. Of this younger group, a vast majority are cared for at home.
Under the Pepper plan, the Government would pay for the first three months of care in both skilled nursing homes and intermediate care centers. Thereafter, additional coverage would be provided to individuals with assets of $30,000 or less (not counting a home and some other essentials), and to couples with assets of $60,000 or less. The commission estimated that such institutional care would cost $18.8 billion, in addition to the $15 billion that Medicaid now pays for nursing homes.
Under the Pepper plan, the Government would also pay 80 percent of the costs of home and community-based care for up to 400 hours a year. The commission projected that this and other home health care benefits would cost $24 billion.
But members of Congress appear reluctant to endorse any new benefits package since last year's demise of the year-old Medicare Catastrophic Coverage Act, which was repealed after vociferous objections to a new surtax paid by elderly people with higher incomes. Lawmakers appear to have learned several painful lessons from the episode: People do not like to be singled out for special taxes; health legislation is complicated and costly, and complicated legislation is hard to explain and justify to angry taxpayers. ''There are some real hangover feelings from the catastrophic coverage experience,'' Senator Rockefeller said. Instead of recommending specific financing measures, the Pepper commission offered a list of possible ways to meet the $42.8 billion cost. For instance, this amount could be raised by making all wages subject to the Social Security tax, rather than just the first $51,300, or it could be raised by increasing income tax rates 1 or 2 percent and taxing the highest incomes at a rate of 33 percent.
 
The Outlook
Responsibility And Coverage
A major issue in the debate involves whether the middle class as well as the poor should receive Government coverage for long-term care.
''I think we need some form of social insurance approach,'' said Alice Rivlin, the former director of the Congressional Budget Office, who is now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. ''You get better programs if everybody pays and everybody benefits, as they do in Social Security and Medicare, instead of programs financed out of general revenues and specifically targeted at the poor, as in Medicaid.''
But others ask why the Government should provide coverage for the David Rockefellers and Donald Trumps.
''The question is, Can we afford to expand Government coverage on an entitlement basis, with benefits regardless of income?'' asked Gail Wilensky, administrator of the Health Care Financing Administration, which administers Medicare and Medicaid.
Another issue involves the role of private insurance. Mr. Ball, the former Social Security Commissioner, says only 20 percent of elderly couples could afford private insurance, those with incomes of $40,000 a year or more. ''Private insurance is for people who are relatively well off, and have some assets to protect,'' Mr. Ball said.
But Carl J. Schramm, president of the Health Insurance Association of America, says 40 percent of the elderly have enough income or assets to pay an average premium of $1,100 to $1,400 a year, at the age of 65, for private long-term-care insurance, or to pay directly for their care needs. Is Insurance the Answer?  Representative Gradison said that although only about one and a half million million people have private long-term-care insurance, these policies were first offered only five years ago.
''It's way too early to throw up our hands and say the insurance industry can't do the job,'' Mr. Gradison said. ''They're just getting started.'' Thirty-two million Americans are 65 or older.
Health experts disagree on whether a Government program should pay at the outset of long-term care, or after a period of months or years. The two approaches help different groups.
The Pepper commission would have the Government pay for the first three months, and then provide coverage for those whose assets fall below $30,000 ($60,000 for couples). But Paul Willging, executive vice president of the American Health Care Association, which represents 10,000 nursing homes, said that when it comes to his own elderly parents, ''I can handle the first three months, at an average cost of $2,000 a month, but not the five to seven years of late-stage Alzheimer's.''
George J. Mitchell, Democrat of Maine, the Senate majority leader, has proposed providing Government coverage only after two years in a nursing home, as well as home health services and respite care. His program would cost $25 billion a year.
But critics say the Mitchell approach favors the more affluent, those who still have assets after two years.
Mr. Ball said people who return to the community after nursing home stays ''will need their resources.''
Judith Feder, a health economist and the Pepper commission's staff director, said, ''The fundamental premise of our plan is that the program should focus on those at home and those likely to return home.'' Half of those in nursing homes for three months return home, Dr. Feder said, and two-thirds of all those who ultimately return home do so in three months.
 
'Flexibility Is the Key'
Another plan, developed by the staff of Ms. Steelman's commission, would give Medicare beneficiaries the option of paying a substantial deductible, ranging perhaps from $20,000 to $40,000, and then having the Government pay all the costs for long-term care, as well as all the costs of prescription drugs, hospitals and doctors. The commission is expected to make its recommendations early next year.
''Flexibility is the key,'' Ms. Steelman said. ''The question is whether we can modify Medicare to provide long-term care benefits.''
Home health care poses a policy problem. It is both more prevalent and usually less expensive than nursing home care. But some question whether the Government should pay for services that are now often provided without charge by relatives and friends. In addition, they say, home care coverage could easily be overused.
Dr. Warren Greenberg, professor of health services administration at George Washington University, said: ''Most elderly people can use such care as assistance in dressing, eating, shopping and other aspects of daily living. Once you pay this up, and say that we will pay for this as a nation, many people would qualify, and there would be no end to it.''
But others emphasize that many families badly need outside aid to keep providing the care they want to give and that home services can sometimes keep people out of nursing homes.
Whatever the form, Government aid for long-term care will be a major issue in this year's Congressional elections and in the 1992 Presidential election, if its supporters have their way.
''The '92 election is our friend,'' Senator Rockefeller said. ''The political pressure for long-term care is very substantial. The problem is mobilizing the will that exists out there, and getting the President to take the lead.''
NEXT: How to plan for long-term care needs.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

SERIES: Care of the Elderly; Private Burdens, Public Choices - Third of four articles.

GRAPHIC: Photos: Robert M. Ball: Commissioner of Social Security in the Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon Administrations. ''Sometime in the not-too-distant future we will get a major national program protecting families against the cost of long-term care.''; Senator John D. Rockefeller: Chairman of the Bipartisan Commission on Comprehensive Health Care. ''The White House message was, 'Don't let the Democrats have an issue.' The White House said, 'Don't do anything until after the November elections.' ''; Representative Pete Stark: Chairman of the Ways and Means Subcommittee on Health. ''Unless the President is willing to spend some of his popularity, we'll never have it.''; Representative Bill Gradison: Ranking Republican on the Ways and Means Subcommittee on Health. ''If we assume that there's some

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114 of 468 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times

March 29, 1990, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

Study Finds High Risk to Overweight Women

BYLINE: By GINA KOLATA

SECTION: Section A; Page 17, Column 1; National Desk

LENGTH: 686 words

A large study of middle-aged and younger women has shown that being overweight by virtually any degree increases the risk of heart disease.
By following nearly 116,000 nurses, ages 30 to 55, for eight years, investigators determined that all but the thinnest women were at an increased risk of heart attacks and chest pains. The risk for the mild to moderately obese women was 80 percent higher than the risk for the thinnest women. And 70 percent of the heart disease in obese women and 40 percent in women over all was directly attributable to excess weight, the researchers concluded. 
Previous studies of men have indicated that being moderately overweight increased the risk of heart disease. But this is the first time that the risks of being even mildly overweight have been documented in middle-aged women, said Dr. Charles H. Hennekens, an epidemiologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston and an author of the study.
The results show ''obesity is right up there with cigarette smoking and heavy alcohol consumption as a major cause of excess morbidity and mortality in the United States,'' he said.
The study is being published today in The New England Journal of Medicine. The findings are ''a bit of a shocker,'' said Dr. Theodore B. VanItallie, an obesity researcher at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center in New York, who wrote an accompanying editorial.
The overall risk of heart disease in women of this age is low; only 605 in the study had heart attacks or chest pains from heart disease. But the women were all working and at ages ''when the most potential life is lost in heart attacks,'' said Dr. JoAnn E. Manson, an author of the study who is an endocrinologist at the Boston hospital.
Dr. VanItallie added that the risk of obesity would almost certainly be much greater in older women who had been obese for longer periods. He said that other studies, in men and women, have shown that ''there is a long latent period before effects of obesity on health become evident,'' adding, ''What that means to me is that once you identify these women as being overweight, the ones who haven't had a heart attack yet are more likely to do so as time goes by.''
 
A Leading Cause of Death
By the age of 60, heart attacks become the leading cause of death in women. They are the leading cause of death in men starting at the age of 40.
Dr. Claude Lenfant, director of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute in Bethesda, Md., said he could not comment directly on the new study because he has not seen it. But he said the institute ''views obesity as a risk factor'' for heart disease in men and women. He said obesity could increase the risk by causing high blood pressure, diabetes and high cholesterol levels. Weight loss tends to decrease or eliminate these factors.
Two studies have linked obesity to heart disease, but no one had established the ill effects of being even mildly overweight for women, Dr. Hennekens said.
Dr. Manson said, ''It was surprising to us that there's an increased risk of heart disease even at recommended weights according to the tables'' of average heights and weights issued by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. Women who were of average weight according to these tables, for example, a woman who is 5 feet 4 1/2 inches and weighs 137 to 148 pounds, had a 30 percent increased risk compared with a woman the same height weighing less than 125 pounds. In those weighing less than 125 pounds, the thinnest group, the rate of heart attacks was 0.32 out of 1,000 women per year, after adjustment for smoking and age; for those weighing 137 to 148 pounds, the rate was 0.416 per thousand.
The risk for the moderately overweight - for example, a woman who is 5 feet 4 1/2 inches and weighs 149 to 171 pounds - was 80 percent higher than for the thinnest. And women of that height weighing 193 pounds had three times the risk of the thinnest, or 1.06 heart attacks per 1,000 women per year.
Smoking raises the risk, the study found. Obese women who smoke are five times as likely to have heart disease as obese women who do not, it said.

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The New York Times

March 29, 1990, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

Other Countries Do Much More for Disabled

BYLINE: By MARTIN TOLCHIN, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section A; Page 20, Column 1; National Desk

LENGTH: 540 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, March 28

Several industrialized nations, including Canada, Britain and the Scandinavian countries, do much more than the United States to support long-term care for the severely disabled.
''All of these countries have in common a very different role for the government than we have in this country,'' said Dr. Robert Kane, dean of the School of Public Health at the University of Minnesota.
He noted that the American tradition of individualism contrasts with that of nations that stress cooperation and tranquillity. ''Our Declaration of Independence promises life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,'' Dr. Kane said. ''Canada, for example, promises peace, order and good government. That tells you a lot about contrasting philosophies.'' 
 
Not a Welfare System
In Canada, 8 of the 10 provinces now provide some form of long-term care coverage for all citizens. ''This is not a welfare system,'' Dr. Kane said. ''The whole basis of the Canadian health care system is universal entitlement.''
The programs are run and paid for by the provinces. The benefits are available to people of all ages, on the basis of the services they need, whether they require home care or a nursing home. The exceptions are the provinces of New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island, in which aid is given only to the poor.
 
In Scandinavia, No Private Agencies
The Scandinavian nations also provide universal services for the disabled. Norway, Sweden and Denmark provide long-term care primarily through government units called communes, which are a cross between a county and a city. The funds are provided jointly by the national and local governments, and the services are offered by public or nonprofit agencies. There are no private agencies. Recipients of long-term care make small payments and pay deductibles.
In Britain, homes for the elderly are operated by social agencies and overseen by local governments.
The accommodations are similar to American homes for the aged and may provide nursing services, but Dr. Kane said, ''Basically, it's what we would think of as sheltered living.'' Individuals pay nothing.
The homes are used mainly by the poor, Dr. Kane said. The more affluent may enter private centers, and both rich and poor have access to medical care through universal health services.
The West German system is more like the American, primarily a welfare system, with the Government paying for the poor and most of the remainder privately paid.
The Netherlands provides long-term nursing home care for the entire population. But Dr. Warren Greenberg, a professor of health services administration at George Washington University, said the Dutch provide little coverage for home health care, out of fear of the potential costs.
 
In Japan, Two Kinds of Care
Japan offers two kinds of long-term care. There are geriatric hospitals that resemble American nursing homes, for those who need skilled medical care, and for which the Government pays the entire bill for those 70 years old and above.
In addition, there are a few homes for elderly people who are well or partly debilitated, sponsored by unions and churches. The family is expected to provide some of the funds. Residents who get sick go to geriatric hospitals.

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The New York Times

March 30, 1990, Friday, Late Edition - Final

For a Comfortable Old Age, Plan for Care, Experts Advise

BYLINE: By LISA W. FODERARO

SECTION: Section A; Page 1, Column 2; National Desk

LENGTH: 2807 words

As the average cost of a nursing-home stay climbs to nearly $30,000 a year, experts agree on one main piece of advice for those concerned about preparing for their old age: plan early for long-term care.
The experts say people should not rely solely on their physicians for advice because doctors are often not familiar with the alternatives to nursing homes that are springing up and with the sometimes complicated financial planning that is necessary for a comfortable old age.
In general, the experts say, even people now middle-aged should begin to familiarize themselves with Government and private programs, like those providing at-home care for the elderly, and begin reading the consumer guides on long-term care that are increasingly available.
 
'Make Decisions Early'
''Often, people don't have access to enough information to make intelligent decisions about long-term care,'' said Monika White, associate director of the Senior Care Network of Huntington Memorial Hospital in Pasadena, Calif. The key, she said, ''is to make decisions early, before a crisis hits.'' 
Specialists in the field of long-term care say advice and guidance are widely available on the major points, from purchasing private long-term care insurance and determining Medicaid eligibility to coordinating care in the home. The problem is where to obtain the information.
More than a fifth of all elderly people require some form of long-term care at any given time, whether it is skilled attention in a nursing home or help at home with bathing and meals. Many receive assistance from their family members or friends but many need to rely on volunteers, community programs or paid help.
 
Savings Can Be Jeopardized
Only about one in seven 65-year-olds will ever spend a year or more in a nursing home, but lifetime savings can quickly disappear with the rising cost of those stays as well as the cost of professional care at home.
Typically, the elderly individual is forced to turn to Medicaid, the Federal-state health program for the poor and the only Government program covering long-term care. ''The common expression is that you almost have to go broke to get long-term care in this country,'' said Michio Suzuki, the Acting Deputy Commissioner of the Federal Administration on Aging.
Being caught by the Medicaid safety net is usually a last resort, but gaining an understanding of the complex eligibility requirements can help impart a sense of control, social workers say. And that knowledge could aid in important decisions, like whether to buy private long-term care insurance or whether to pay off a mortgage early.
''There's a lot of planning a person can do, rich or poor,'' Dr. White said. ''There are programs and people you can turn to in most communities to help you make decisions for the future.''
That is not to say the choices are simple or easy. ''My friends always ask me what they should be doing,'' Mr. Suzuki said, ''and, frankly, it's a very hard question to answer.'' The Search Tenacity Pays Off In many parts of the country, support for the struggling elderly person living at home is just beyond the front door. Tenacity is the key to tracking it down.
''There's more to long-term care than stowing away money,'' said Jane A. Tilly, a senior analyst with the American Association of Retired Persons' Public Policy Institute in Washington. ''Are there volunteers out there? Are there public programs?''
This year, more than $1 billion allotted by Congress under the Older Americans Act will trickle down through state governments to the nation's 660 Area Agencies on Aging and, finally, to more than 10,000 centers for the elderly. Both the agencies, financed primarily by Federal funds, and the centers can be vital sources of information and aid.
Established in the early 1970's, the Area Agencies on Aging are charged with administering an array of non-medical services: home-delivered meals, health programs, adult day care, free transportation to doctors' offices, weekly trips to the supermarket and social activities.
The agencies use the ubiquitous senior center to reach the elderly in many towns and cities. Most services are free, but not necessarily widely offered because of constraints on staffing and local financing. ''Our primary goal is keeping the older person in the home and in the community for as long as possible,'' said Jonathan D. Linkous, the executive director of the National Association of Area Agencies on Aging.
 
Specific Individual Plans
To coordinate the range of available health and support services, as well as helping individuals devise a way to pay for them, many agencies and organizations dealing with the elderly offer what they call case management, or service coordination. More than a third of the Area Agencies on Aging offer this service, as do many private home-care agencies, hospitals, insurance companies, senior centers and state and county offices, either free of charge or for a fee.
The Area Agencies on Aging can also steer an elderly person to companies that provide professional home care, with the cost usually ranging from $20 to $50 a day, depending on the number of hours the help is needed and the nature of the help.
One new source of money is available in some areas for the elderly who have significant equity in their homes. Some lenders are marketing what is known in the business as ''reverse mortgages'' in which the lender pays the homeowner. Under the terms of these mortgages, the homeowner is guaranteed monthly payments based on the equity they have in their homes until the day they die or move. When the house is sold, the lender is repaid through the proceeds. Government Help Sorting Out The Benefits Confusion abounds over the two major Government health care programs, Medicaid and Medicare, the Federal health insurance for the elderly, and their provisions for nursing home care.
Medicare pays for very limited long-term care. The plan pays for up to 100 days of skilled care in a nursing home after discharge from a hospital where the stay was at least three days, and in some cases it pays for skilled nursing care in the home for up to 38 days.
Medicaid covers long-term care, but only for those with relatively low assets or income. In many states it provides little support for home care. New York, a notable exception, will spend about $1.6 billion in state, Federal and local Medicaid funds this year to support about 80,000 people in their own homes. In addition, the state will spend $3.3 billion in Medicaid money to support an equal amount of patients in nursing homes.
By the Government's own admission, the system of requirements for Medicaid eligibility is bewildering. An outline of the requirements prepared by the Federal Health Care Financing Administration, the agency overseeing Medicaid, called it ''among the most complicated of any program administered by the Federal Government.''
One problem is that eligibility requirements vary greatly from state to state. Essentially, Medicaid requires that assets not exceed a certain level, usually about $2,000, for an individual, and that income be low or squeezed by medical bills. For elderly people with savings who are facing long-term care in an institution, this means they must spend nearly all of it on that care before they can qualify for Medicaid.
Once on Medicaid, the person must use all income on the nursing home costs, except for a monthly personal allowance, ranging from $30 to $50. Medicaid covers the remaining costs of care. The nursing home must be willing to accept Medicaid's relatively low rates, a requirement that serves to exclude the more expensive institutions.
 
Welcome Asset Change
A widely welcomed change in Medicaid came in 1988 with the passage of the Medicare Catastrophic Coverage Act. Although Congress repealed most parts of that act last December, provisions protecting the spouse of a Medicaid patient in a nursing home from impoverishment were kept.
Before passage of the new provisions, the spouse at home in some states could keep no more than $2,250 in assets and monthly income of only a few hundred dollars a month. In other states, the spouse living outside the nursing home could keep whatever assets and income were in their names, a situation that was usually a boon to the husband but a burden to the wife.
Now, the wife or husband whose spouse enters a nursing home on Medicaid is allowed to keep at least $12,516 in assets or half of their combined assets, whichever is greater, as long as her half does not exceed $62,580. Some states have simply allowed the elderly to keep up to $62,580, eliminating the formula. In addition, states must allow the wife to retain a minimum monthly income of $856; states can raise that limit to $1,565.
 
Home and Auto Exempt
Because a home is often a person's largest investment, its fate is of particular interest to Medicaid recipients. The home is considered an exempt asset, along with automobile, furnishings and personal belongings, and the elderly person does not have to sell it and ''spend down'' the proceeds to qualify for Medicaid.
If the house was owned jointly and it is clear that the nursing home patient will never return home, most states will end the nursing home patient's Medicaid benefits once the spouse in the community dies. The patient would then have to sell the house and spend the proceeds on nursing home care until the assets were again below the eligibility ceiling.
But if the nursing home patient dies first or if the spouse in the community dies first, and the house had been tranferred to that spouse's name, the house is off-limits for calculating Medicaid benefits.
Out of pride or civic responsibility, some people would prefer to spend all of their own money on their care before going on Medicaid. Others want to protect as much of their assets and savings as possible and try to gain eligibility at the earliest moment.
 
Finding Loopholes in Law
That approach is a subject of controversy. The concern is that the middle-class are finding loopholes in the law, often with the help of lawyers specializing in laws affecting the elderly, and are able to get on Medicaid while retaining their money.
''In the extreme,'' said Nancy M. Coleman, the director of the American Bar Association's Commission on Legal Problems of the Elderly, the question is, ''Why should people who have millions of dollars be able to give it away, go on the public dole, and have you and I pay for it?''
Lawyers specializing in the field maintain that their counsel is aboveboard. 'It's no different than a tax attorney suggesting to invest in tax-free municipal bonds,'' said Daniel G. Fish, a partner in the Manhattan law firm of Freedman & Fish. ''What's unfair is that Medicare doesn't cover custodial care.''
The law was toughened in response to the practice of giving assets to heirs before applying for Medicaid. All states are now required to look at a Medicaid applicant's financial transactions over the past 30 months, and if money was given away or assets were tranferred at less than fair-market value, then eligibility is delayed until the individual has paid the nursing home roughly the same amount that had been given away. It is still legal, though, to pay off a home mortgage any time before applying for Medicaid. Also, a house may be transferred to the spouse and in some cases to a child or sibling any time before applying for Medicaid.
Many experts in long-term care caution that it is usually preferable to be a nursing home resident who pays privately than a resident on Medicaid.
''There is a grand illusion that if you get poor, you don't have to worry, that the Government will take care of you,'' said Lynn Goldis, the assistant director of the Senior Care Network in Pasadena. ''But what being on Medicaid means is that you have virtually no choices. You can't shop around, and Medicaid patients are placed in semiprivate rooms.'' Private Insurance Tips for Buying Protection In the mid-1980's, the insurance industry began offering policies to protect people from the potentially devastating financial impact of long-term care. These have been controversial, both because they are expensive and because many of them have provided very incomplete coverage.
Considering whether to buy a private policy ought to begin in people are in their 50's, the experts said. The younger the person, the less costly the premiums, and many companies will reject an applicant in ill health.
Consumer advocates have written reams about the practice in which an insurance agent fails to explore an applicant's medical history thoroughly, only to deny a later claim for nursing home coverage because of a ''newly discovered'' condition that existed at the time the policy was purchased, like heart disease or diabetes.
 
'Very Much Buyer Beware'
But the policies have improved, and some people who work with the elderly say that as long as there is no public insurance, private insurance is the best shield for assets for those who enter long-term care. ''It's very much buyer beware,'' said Mr. Linkous of the National Association of Area Agencies on Aging, ''but it's the only option until this country gets its act together.''
Other experts are opposed to private insurance for long-term care. Robert M. Ball, 75 years old, who was Social Security Commissioner under Presidents John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon, said he would rather rely on his own resources. ''The risk is slight enough and the premiums are high,'' he said. ''If anything happened, I could sell my house.''
The policies are recommended primarily for those people who have a lot to protect. ''It's more for the person with some significant assets and an income of at least $20,000 a year,'' said Gary Claxton, a senior analyst with the American Association of Retired Persons.
 
'A Very Personal Choice'
Even the industry's representatives agree. ''It's a very personal choice,'' said Susan Van Gelder, the associate director for policy development and research at the Health Insurance Association of America, a trade organization.
''Married couples may feel they don't need it now that the spouse in the community can retain a much higher asset level,'' she said. ''Likewise, if Medicaid is within someone's reach, we wouldn't want that person wasting money on private insurance.''
To date, 1.5 million policies for long-term care have been sold, a vast majority of them to people over 65. About 120 companies now offer the policies. While institutional care is stressed, coverage of home care is increasingly available as well. In addition, a few companies are making long-term care insurance available to employees, usually through payroll deductions.
 
Insurers Want an Investigation
But only about 4 percent of elderly Americans now carry private insurance for long-term care. Insurance industry officials believe that far more elderly people would buy it if it were not for the bad publicity. In fact, the Health Insurance Association of America has joined consumer watchdog groups that have documented abuses of policy sellers in calling for a Federal investigation. ''We don't want this market ruined by a few bad apples,'' Ms. Van Gelder said.
The Health Insurance Association of America said a policy offering four years of coverage with a daily benefit of $80 for nursing home care, a 20-day deductible and no protection against inflation, has an average annual premium of $483, if purchased at the age of 50; $1,135 at 65 and $3,800 at 79.
The association said the same policy, but with inflation protection, has an average annual premium of $658 if purchased at 50; $1,400 at 65 and $4,200 at 79. ''Generally, the rate you come in on is the rate you pay for the rest of your life,'' Ms. Van Gelder said.
 
What Policies Should Include
Consumer experts say the best policies do not require prior hospitalization before covering nursing home care; cover both skilled and non-skilled nursing care; provide at least three to five years of coverage; pay for home care; guarantee protection against inflation, and include patients with Alzheimer's disease and other degenerative or dementing illnesses.
The answers on the application should be as detailed as possible to guard against later charges that a debilitating condition predated the signing of the policy.
''It's not for everyone,'' said Alan D. Bogutz, a partner in the law firm of Bogutz & Gordon in Tucson, Ariz., and the founder of the 650-member National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys. ''The very poor are going to qualify for Medicaid and the very rich will foot their own long-term care bills. It's the people in the nebulous middle who need to protect what they have who should consider it.''

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

SERIES: CARE OF THE ELDERLY: PRIVATE BURDENS, PUBLIC CHOICES - LAST OF FOUR ARTICLES.

GRAPHIC: photos: One in five elderly people may need some long-term care and experts say this requires early planning. Denise Levine of the Eastchester (N.Y.) Office for the Aging counseled Dolores Malahan, 80 years old. (The New York Times/William E. Sauro) (pg. A1); Advice for those planning for old age is available, but not always readily. Lynn Goldis of the Senior Care Network of Huntington Memorial Hospital in Pasadena, Calif., counseled Olga Polovina on long-term-care options. (The New York Times/Michael Tweed) (pg. A16)

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March 30, 1990, Friday, Late Edition - Final

Getting the Facts on Long-Term Care

SECTION: Section A; Page 16, Column 1; National Desk

LENGTH: 405 words

Here is a list of organizations, books and consumer guides that provide information on long-term care:
''Thinking About a Nursing Home: A Consumer's Guide to Long-Term Care,'' a free pamphlet published by the American Health Care Association. Send a self-addressed, stamped envelope to the association, 1201 L Street N.W., Washington, D.C. 20005.
''Guide to Housing Alternatives for Older Citizens,'' by Margaret Gold, published by Consumer Reports Books, a 170-page paperback outlining numerous living arrangements and financing options. Send check for $12.95 ($9.95 for the book and $3 for postage and handling), listing ordering code 2263P, to Consumer Reports Books, 9180 LeSaint Drive, Fairfield, Ohio 54014. 
''Who Can Afford a Nursing Home?'' and ''Communities for the Elderly, '' reprints from the May 1988 and February 1990 Consumer Reports magazine. Send $3 for each reprint to C/U Reader Service, 256 Washington Street, Mount Vernon, N.Y. 10553. ''Update: Paying for a Nursing Home,'' published last October, can be obtained by sending $5 for the entire October issue to the same address. Back issues are also usually available at public libraries.
''A Financial Guide to Reverse Mortgages,'' a list of the lenders nationwide offering mortgages that guarantee the elderly monthly payments for equity in their homes, published by the National Center for Home Equity Conversion. The guide is free. Also available, for $35, is an 83-page analysis. To obtain either, send a self-addressed, stamped envelope to N.C.H.E.C., Suite 300, 1210 East Collage, Marshall, Minn. 56258.
''A Consumer's Guide to Long-Term Care Insurance,'' a free pamphlet published by the Health Insurance Association of America, with a list of companies that sell the insurance. Write to H.I.A.A., P.O. Box 41455, Washington, D.C. 20018.  The American Association of Retired Persons. The group offers free guides, including ''Making Wise Decisions for Long-term Care'' (stock number: D12435); ''A Path for Caregivers'' (D12957); ''Nursing Home Life: A Guide for Residents and Families (D13063); ''Before You Buy: A Guide to Long-Term Care Insurance'' (D12893). Send a written request, noting the stock number, to A.A.R.P. Fulfillment, 1909 K Street, NW, Washington D.C. 20049.
Area Agency on Aging. To learn agency sites, write to the National Association of Area Agencies on Aging, 600 Maryland Avenue SW, Suite 208W, Washington, D.C. 20024.

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The New York Times

March 30, 1990, Friday, Late Edition - Final

Right Questions About Long-Term Care

SECTION: Section A; Page 30, Column 1; Editorial Desk

LENGTH: 438 words

''Most of the things that are likely to help solve the long-term care problem are being tried in some pilot project somewhere, but we're really still at the very beginning.'' So said Dr. Burton Reifler of Winston-Salem, N.C., the operator of a pilot project, in the four-part New York Times series on long-term care that concludes today.
Dr. Reifler is half right. Much is being tried. But the nation is not really at the beginning. For better or worse, America already possesses a publicly funded system of long-term care called Medicaid. But it is a deeply flawed system. The challenge is to replace it with something more efficient and humane. 
The long-term care problem, already daunting, will become more so as the elderly population increases. The number of elderly Americans needing some type of help is projected to grow from 6.5 million in 1987 to 19 million in 2040.
By far the preferred type of help is home care. Most elderly people want to stay in their own homes and communities, among family and friends. There is a growing need for publicly funded assistance to provide, for instance, home-care attendants and respite care to give family care-givers time off. Yet Medicaid tilts heavily toward skilled nursing care. Less than 3 percent of the $15 billion in Federal Medicaid expenditures this year will go to home care. The reason is that long-term care has been mistakenly conceived as a medical, rather than a social problem.
At the same time, Medicaid, the health insurance program administered jointly by Washington and the states, is available only to the poor. Middle-class patients must first ''spend down'' most of their assets. This forced poverty is the source of wide, understandable anguish.
A Federal commission named for the late Representative Claude Pepper recently offered proposals for reform. These carry a daunting $43 billion price tag and neglect the crucial issue of cost controls. But they would right the balance in favor of home care. In addition, the Pepper commission called for a social insurance guarantee to cover the first three months of nursing home care and fully protect income and assets. Those who recover -and at least half do so - could easily return home.
A third proposal covers long-term nursing home care. Those who use this benefit would have to begin spending down, but the allowances would be far more generous than Medicaid now sets.
As the Times series made clear, the long-term care debate will engage difficult issues of fairness, equity and political feasibility. While answers remain to be found, at least the questions are starting to reverberate.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

TYPE: Editorial

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The New York Times

March 31, 1990, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

YOUR MONEY;
Who Must Pay Taxes Quarterly

BYLINE: By Barnaby J. Feder

SECTION: Section 1; Page 32, Column 1; Financial Desk

LENGTH: 844 words

For most taxpayers, the moment for settling accounts with the Internal Revenue Service comes just once a year. But for the 10 percent required to estimate and pay taxes during the current year, April 16 is merely one of four deadlines - the others are the 15th of June, September and January. And with changes in the tax code brought about by the Tax Reform Act of 1986, and a growing elderly population, the number of people who pay quarterly is likely to grow.
Who are they? The Internal Revenue Service says it has no reliable profile, but tax experts agree that three groups account for the vast majority of quarterly returns: elderly people living largely on pensions; the self-employed, whose income is not subject to withholding, and people whose income comes primarily from investments. 
The I.R.S. requires anyone who ends the year owing the Government $500 or more to estimate his or her total liability and make quarterly payments, unless a ''safe harbor'' requirement is met. The first safe harbor is that total tax payments have exceeded 90 percent of the final liability or have been equivalent to what was due the previous year. The agency assesses a quarterly underpayment penalty for those who fail to meet these requirements.
Thus, taxpayers who find they are liable for underpayment penalties with their 1989 returns, should consider making estimated payments in 1990 to avoid future trouble. Individuals estimating their Federal income taxes for the first time this year and who believe their taxes will come to $10,000 must pay at least $2,250 by each of the deadlines, for a total of $9,000, if the previous year's tax exceeded $10,000. If it was $8,000, the taxpayer could pay just $2,000 per quarter without penalty.
''It's normally pretty simple for individuals because you don't have to pay more than your total tax from the year before,'' said Bob Brown, a partner at KPMG Peat Marwick in Washington. ''Even if you win the lottery, you don't have to increase the quarterly payment beyond one-fourth of the previous year.''
Many taxpayers must also pay state and local income taxes this way, although not necessarily on the same dates set by the I.R.S. for Federal returns, or by the same rules.
''You have to look at each state differently to see if there is liability for quarterly payments and what it is,'' said Steven Woolf, tax manager in the Washington office of Coopers & Lybrand. ''The taxpayer might have income from bonds that are exempt from the Federal calculations and not the state, or vice versa.''
For one reason or another, many taxpayers get it wrong: For the 1988 tax year, 4.2 million were assessed $667.9 million in penalties, the I.R.S. said. About 151,000 taxpayers who appealed won a rollback of a total of $70 million in penalties. The penalty rates vary for each quarter and are pegged to the rates the Federal Government has to pay to borrow money during those quarters.
Retirees paying quarterly taxes tend to have the least trouble because most of their income typically comes from pensions and is fairly steady, tax experts say. Once a taxpayer has made quarterly payments, state and Federal tax authorities routinely include four addressed envelopes and vouchers with names attached in their annual mailings.
''All you have to do is attach the check,'' said Wilmer K. Benson of Gaithersburg, Md., a trainer in a program sponsored by the American Association of Retired Persons that offers free tax filing assistance to members. ''The biggest problem is getting people to mail them on time.'' One twist that may trip up the inattentive is that the April-to-June ''quarter'' covers just two months while the September-to-January ''quarter'' is four months.
Those who pay quarterly because of investment income now include some children younger than 14 years who, since 1987, have been required to pay the ''kiddie tax,'' which in essence requires that children's unearned income above $1,000 be taxed at their parents' tax rate.
The rules governing when such children's income can be included on their parents' return are complicated, but tax advisers warn that inclusion is barred when quarterly payments have been made on a child's behalf.
The principle behind the rules requiring quarterly payments is a simple one: the Government has a right to taxes as soon as income is earned. It exercises that right in most cases by requiring employers to withhold taxes from paychecks. In practice, many wage earners have more money withheld than they will owe from salary and other income as well, which allows them to claim a refund when they file their return.
Quarterly payments become necessary when there is no withholding, or where withholding is insufficient. Payments must be made in the quarter in which the income was made; taxpayers cannot make up for early low estimates with a big fourth-quarter payment. The amounts are reported on Form 2210. But taxpayers can arrange for extra withholding late in the year, for the I.R.S. treats withholding as though it had occurred evenly all year.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Drawing

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The New York Times

April 3, 1990, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

Seltz Journal;
Alsace: Its French-German Nerves Are Showing

BYLINE: By ALAN RIDING, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section A; Page 4, Column 3; Foreign Desk

LENGTH: 912 words

DATELINE: SELTZ, France

The villages along this side of the Rhine all have German names, the architecture is pure Hansel-and-Gretel and, to the uninitiated at least, the local language sounds little different from that spoken in Berlin. Today, though, the population is as proudly French as it is Alsatian.
But from the time of Charlemagne 1,200 years ago, whenever central Europe has stirred, Alsace and neighboring Lorraine have had reason to worry. In wars, they were invariably caught in the crossfire. And in peace negotiations, they were always being annexed or bargained away. 
Now, with sudden change sweeping Germany toward reunification, nerves are once again on edge here. Not that the region fears a new hostile takeover by a neighbor that last claimed this territory in World War II. It is simply that, as in the past, any convulsion in Germany is bound to shake Alsace and Lorraine.
Older people, not least men pressed into the German Army in 1940, are openly apprehensive about a resurgence of German power. ''I fear that in 20 or 30 years another crazy Hitler will appear and march again,'' said Charles Spangenberger, a 67-year-old retiree who fought in German uniform and then, after capture, was allowed to join the allied forces.
 
Concern Over Money
More typically, in this medieval village of just 2,700 inhabitants economic uncertainty is of greater concern. Seltz is barely one mile from the Rhine, which marks much of the French-German border, and many of its adults work in German-owned factories on both sides of the river, while its shops and restaurants prosper thanks to German customers. This is no less true for dozens of other border towns and villages stretching northward from Strasbourg, the Alsatian capital. In the 14 communes that make up the canton of Seltz, for instance, 42 percent of the 19,500-member labor force work in Germany.
''If East Germans begin taking the jobs of Frenchmen, if the Deutsche mark weakens, if investment starts going to East Germany, all this could hurt us,'' said Hugo Kraemer, a schoolteacher and Deputy Mayor of Seltz.
This economic dependence on Germany has spawned conflicting attitudes toward Germans. ''We want their money, but we don't them to come over and buy up everything,'' said Laurent Timmel, 29 years old, who is involved in development projects in Seltz. ''We want to be French, but we secretly fear they are superior to us.''
Having long been ruled by a succession of German princes, Alsace and part of Lorraine were acquired by France under the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648. In 1870, it was absorbed anew by Germany.
The memory of what followed -the region was recovered by France after World War I, seized again by German troops in 1940 and liberated in 1945 - is still very much alive here. Many middle-aged Alsatians, for example, have or remember parents who were born and educated as Germans and never learned French.
''My mother, who is 89 years old, was a subject of the Kaiser,'' recalled Hubert Deiss, who was forced to join the German Army at the age of 14 and now owns a pharmacy in Seltz. ''She tells me, 'We have to watch the Germans carefully.' She does so in Alsatian, of course. She doesn't speak much French.''
 
Language Banned Again
During World War II, when Alsace was annexed rather than simply occupied like the rest of France, the French language was again banned here. Mr. Kraemer, who was born in 1941, said his parents were forced to register him as Hugo, rather than Hugues, because French names were forbidden.
But after the war, things were not much easier because the French authorities for many years banned not only German but also Alsatian, which is a German dialect and was viewed as a threat to Alsace's French identity. Today, German is taught from primary school and Alsatian is the lingua franca throughout the region.
More significantly, the area around Seltz, some 40 miles north of Strasbourg, is isolated between a forest and the Rhine and it attracted little French investment. Only after the German economy began to boom in the 1960's did affluence began to spill over into Alsace. ''About half our customers are Germans,'' said Rene Werlen, whose family owns the Auberge de la Foret restaurant here. ''For the same quality food, they'd have to pay twice as much in Germany. But this isn't all good. They also come over and buy up homes here and that pushes up prices for us.''
 
Some Are in Awe
Suzanne Knobloch, the 59-year-old owner of a gas station here, said, ''Many Germans now have a European point of view, but some Germans are still Germans. They are always proclaiming in a loud voice that they're the best.''
But other local residents are clearly in awe of their neighbors. ''It's not that they work harder than us,'' Guy Callegher, the Mayor of Kesseldorf, said. ''It's just that they're more organized and determined.''
As the European Community prepares to eliminate all borders after 1992, the asymmetry of economic power in this region will become more apparent.
''In a sense, we're like a developing country, providing raw materials, labor and entertainment to Germany,'' Mr. Timmel said of Alsace.
But if Alsatians have learned to live with this, recent political developments in Germany have also served to remind them of their geographical vulnerability. And lest anyone should forget, the crumbling concrete bunkers of the Maginot Line still stand nearby as mute testimony to the last time that Alsace changed hands.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: photo: History has shown that any convulsion in Germany is bound to affect Alsace. Near Seltz, a World War II tank sits on a bunker of the Maginot Line as a reminder of the last time Alsace changed hands. (The New York Times/Alan Riding); map of Seltz, France

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The New York Times

April 4, 1990, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Twin Sisters Accused of Bilking Elderly Blind Man

BYLINE: By NADINE BROZAN

SECTION: Section B; Page 3, Column 2; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 556 words

Identical 25-year-old twin sisters endeared themselves to an elderly blind Brooklyn man and then bilked him out of his life savings, the police have charged.
In what they termed ''a classic example of the con games used against the elderly,'' the police said the twins, Martha and Mirna Villanueva of the Bronx, won the trust of the man by caring for him for three months, cooking and cleaning for him.
The Villanuevas were arrested Monday on charges of grand larceny and forgery and were arraigned yesterday in Criminal Court in Brooklyn. If convicted of the most serious charge, second-degree grand larceny, they could be sentenced to 5 to 15 years in prison. 
They won the trust of the 84-year-old man, Rudolph Martin of the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, after a chance encounter on the street last December, the police said. The women ended up defrauding the man, who is legally blind, of $30,000 in savings and Social Security checks, and they stole his stamp and coin collections, which are said to be worth $20,000, the police said.
 
A Ballroom Dancer
Mr. Martin said at a news conference yesterday at the 83d Precinct station house that he had been a professional dancer and had won many Harvest Moon ballroom dancing contests around the country, Asked about the women's duplicity, he said: ''What if you had guys taking very, very, very good care of you? They always had explainable answers for everything.''
But neighbors and acquaintances became suspicious of the women and brought the situation to the attention of Detectives Robert A. Hopes and Dan O'Hagan of the precinct's Crimes Against Senior Citizens Squad.
When the detectives first approached Mr. Martin, he refused to concede that anything had gone wrong, even though he knew his bank accounts had been depleted, police officials said. The detectives persisted, and ''finally he blurted it all out and cried,'' Deputy Inspector Thomas Coyne said. ''Quite simply, they bled him dry,'' he said.
 
'Spent All His Money'
The inspector said that the women persuaded Mr. Martin to give them some checks and that they stole and forged others. ''He gave them money to go to Florida to check on some real-estate deal he had there,'' he said. ''They never went but spent all his money on clothes and a car.''
Although there have been reports that the women used crack and heroin, Inspector Coyne said yesterday that those reports could not be verified.
Mirna Villanueva lives at 1205 Southern Boulevard, while her sister Martha lives at 1147 Avenue St. John in the South Bronx.
Mr. Martin, a feisty man with a gift for cracking jokes, described how he had met the women. ''They saw me on the street, poking around with my stick,'' he said. ''A girl came up to me, helped me and said, 'Can you loan me $5 for car fare?' I said, 'If you're hungry, come to my apartment for bread and peanut butter.' Then they saw my 200 dance trophies, my books, my stamp albums, and they began to wonder who I was. We became friendly. I was going to marry one of them and take her to Europe.''
One bank account still has $8,000 that cannot be drawn on until December, but everything else is gone.
Asked whether he was embittered, Mr. Martin shrugged. ''I feel very bad because now I'm all alone once again,'' he said. ''The walls don't answer back when I talk.''

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: photo: Rudolph Martin, left, arriving yesterday for a news conference at the 83d Precinct station house in Brooklyn with Detective Robert A. Hopes. Identical 25-year-old twin sisters endeared themselves to the 84-year-old man, who is legally blind, then bilked him out of his life savings, the police charged. (The New York Times/Steve Hart)

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The New York Times

April 6, 1990, Friday, Late Edition - Final

Books of The Times;
Suffocating in Society And Unable to Escape

BYLINE: By Michiko Kakutani

SECTION: Section C; Page 36, Column 1; Weekend Desk

LENGTH: 1005 words


The Stories of Edith Wharton
Selected and Introduced by Anita Brookner
310 pages. Carroll & Graf. $18.95.
''What do you suppose such words as you've been using - 'society,' 'tradition,' and the rest - mean to all the life out there?'' a prospective suitor asks one of Edith Wharton's heroines. 
She goes and stands by him at the window, and replies: ''Less than nothing, of course. But you and I are not out there. We're shut up in a little tight round of habit and association, just as we're shut up in this room. Remember, I thought I'd got out of it once; but what really happened was that the other people went out, and left me in the same little room. The only difference was that I was there alone. Oh, I've made it habitable now, I'm used to it; but I've lost any illusions I may have had as to an angel's opening the door.''
This exchange from the devastating little tale ''Autres Temps'' succinctly sums up the theme that would preoccupy Edith Wharton throughout her life, namely, the idea of society, and its power to shape (and destroy) individual lives. As the survivor of a stifling, upper-class childhood, and a socially correct but emotionally and sexually barren marriage, Wharton was familiar firsthand with the suffocating wages of convention. And in the course of an exceptionally long and productive career, she would succeed in turning this painfully acquired knowledge into enduring fiction.
Like her two masterworks, ''The Age of Innocence'' and ''The House of Mirth,'' the strongest stories in this new collection deal directly - and often quite bluntly - with societal rules and their effect on the relationships between men and women. In ''Autres Temps,'' an aging woman named Mrs. Lidcote, whose divorce has made her the object of scandal, returns to America after some 20 years abroad. She discovers that changing times and mores have made it possible for her own daughter to survive a divorce and remarriage without the slightest social embarrassment; her own case, however, does not benefit from this revision in the rules.
''They only remembered that I'd done something which, at the time I did it, was condemned by society,'' she observes. ''My case had been passed on and classified: I'm the woman who has been cut for nearly 20 years. The older people have half-forgotten why, and the younger ones have never really known: it's simply become a tradition to cut me. And traditions that have lost their meaning are the hardest of all to destroy.'' Because she knows she is still a social pariah, Mrs. Lidcote renounces the possibility of beginning a new life with a man she's always liked, and instead makes plans to return to Europe alone.
Domestic or romantic happiness similarly eludes the other heroines in this volume. All too often, Wharton's women find themselves locked in loveless marriages that deprive them of emotional sustenance, or stuck in obsessive relationships with men who scorn their affection. In ''The Reckoning,'' a woman named Julia walks out on her suffocating first marriage, announcing that she believes in a ''religion of personal independence''; years later, she is shocked to hear her beloved second husband utter similar words, when he leaves her for a younger woman.
In ''Atrophy,'' an unhappily married matron named Nora hears that her onetime lover, Christopher, is severely ill; she risks her reputation by going to visit him, but is turned away by his sanctimonious sister. And in ''The Letters,'' a woman named Lizzie learns that her husband married her for her inheritance, but decides not to leave him: ''He was not the hero of her dreams, but he was the man she loved, and who had loved her. For she saw now, in this last wide flash of pity and initiation, that, as a comely marble may be made out of worthless scraps of mortar, glass and pebbles, so out of mean mixed substances may be fashioned a love that will bear the stress of life.''
As usual, Wharton writes with knowing sympathy about women in turn-of-the-century America, who, like herself, were judged by their family standing, their marriages, their ability to oversee several households of servants. Her stories are flecked with telling details that reveal the snobberies and tastes of her characters (the Sevres candelabra, the Rose Dubarry porcelain, the orchids sent from High Lawn every morning), and bits of dialogue that instantly conjure up the vanished splendor of their lives. ''You won't know Leila,'' says one character with typical aplomb. ''She's had her pearls reset. Sargent's to paint her. Oh, and I was to tell you that she hopes you won't mind being the least bit squeezed over Sunday. The house was built by Wilbour's father, you know, and it's rather old fashioned - only 10 spare bedrooms.''
Yet if Wharton's stories are minutely grounded in social observation, they owe their enduring power to her ability to portray the emotional consequences of life in this rarefied world: the difficulties of penetrating past the superficialities of dinner-party chit-chat, the difficulties of balancing passion and responsibility, freedom and decorum, independence and feminine solicitude.
When Wharton turns away from these themes and tries to write highly plotted entertainments, the results are more disappointing. ''All Souls''' - a ghost story about a woman who finds herself alone in an abandoned house with a broken ankle - is a heavy-handed and pointless exercise in suspense. And ''After Holbein'' - a ponderous portrait of two aging people whose senile fantasies coincide -seems peculiarly dated, like a second-rate O. Henry story; its ironic ending is both predictable and pat.
All in all, though, the British novelist Anita Brookner has done an admirable job of giving the contemporary reader a representative collection of Wharton's best short fiction. Though none of the tales have the subtlety and cumulative power of her great novels, the finest ones remain a tribute to her powers of psychological observation, her authority as a social witness.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: photo: Edith Wharton

TYPE: Review

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April 7, 1990, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

3 Elderly People Die And 21 Are Injured In Miami Beach Fire

BYLINE: AP

SECTION: Section 1; Page 8, Column 4; National Desk

LENGTH: 349 words

DATELINE: MIAMI BEACH, April 6

At least 3 people were killed and 21 injured early today as a fire destroyed a residential hotel filled largely with elderly retired people.
Nine residents of the building, the Fontana Hotel on Collins Avenue north of Miami Beach's Art Deco district, were still unaccounted for late this afternoon.
The authorities said that they had no evidence the nine were trapped inside and that they might simply have taken up lodging elsewhere after fleeing. 
But Assistant Fire Chief John Reed said ''there's reason to believe the number of dead may grow,'' since many of the missing lived in the most heavily damaged section of the hotel.
 
Evidence of Arson Sought
Fire Chief Branaird Dorris said his crews had entered the building six or eight times by this afternoon but that about 30 percent of the building had collapsed and those areas had not yet been searched.
Mayor Alex Daoud said the intensity of the fire, which broke out at 3 A.M., led investigators to suspect arson. Detective Jim Hyde said later that no evidence of arson had been found in the early stages of the inquiry, and Chief Dorris said residents had reported a water leak, raising the possibility of an electrical short-circuit.
The three-story, 102-room white stucco hotel had smoke alarms but no sprinklers, which will not be required under state law until October 1991. Fontana residents said the fire started near an elevator shaft at the front of the building. The authorities said two of the bodies were found in the lobby.
 
Some Trouble With Alarms
The Fontana was built in 1951. The only major violation in its most recent city fire inspection, last September, involved the battery-powered alarms, which were replaced, officials said.
After the fire broke out, members of a Romanian immigrant family that has owned the hotel since May knocked on doors to give the alarm.
''I felt I was choking,'' said Rose Waller, who made her way out with three neighbors, but lost her daily medication. ''I couldn't see because already the smoke came into my room. I really couldn't see anything. It was blurred.''

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: At least three people were killed as fire swept the Fontana Hotel yesterday in Miami Beach. The intensity of the fire caused investigators to suspect arson. Twenty-one people were injured in the pre-dawn blaze. (Associated Press)

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April 7, 1990, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

Creaky I.R.S. Is at a Crossroads

BYLINE: By ROBERT D. HERSHEY Jr., Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section 1; Page 33, Column 3; Financial Desk

LENGTH: 1144 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, April 6

The Internal Revenue Service is enjoying what it calls a ''highly successful'' filing season, with taxpayers filing earlier and their returns containing fewer mistakes than in the past.
But the improvement looks puny against a backdrop of longer-range fundamental problems. Indeed, the problems put the nation's tax system at considerable risk of breakdown.
''Our income-tax system as we know it is at the crossroads,'' Fred T. Goldberg Jr., the agency's Commissioner, told Congress in late March. ''Our laws, regulations and administrative procedures, coupled with our aging information systems, are placing an intolerable burden on the American public. 
 
Biggest Challenge Ahead
 ''Without question, the greatest challenge of the coming decade is to make the system more workable for the tens of millions of taxpayers who are willing to pay what they owe, but cannot abide the complexity, uncertainty and administrative hassles they face in complying with the law and in dealing with the I.R.S.''
The season is proceeding smoothly this year in part because taxpayers are filing earlier than they did in 1989. The I.R.S. is processing returns 7.3 percent faster, and the agency says it has raised its rate of accurate responses to telephone queries to 76 percent from 61 percent.
Moreover, the error rate involving taxpayers' math and I.R.S. transcription mistakes on paper returns has fallen to 14.6 percent this year, Mr. Goldberg said. He called that a significant improvement from recent years. Also, 3.8 million people as of March 30 have filed through the less error-prone electronic system.
The only setback seems to be that taxpayers seeking telephone assistance are increasingly hearing a busy signal. Mr. Goldberg said it was a conscious decision not to tackle that problem this year because of a budget shortfall.
Despite the telephone problem, officials are optimistic at the I.R.S., a 120,000-person bureaucracy that is responsible for collecting more than 90 percent of the revenues in the Government's trillion-dollar budget.
The big reason for this year's improvement may simply be good luck, said Mr. Goldberg, 42 years old, who took office last summer. Except for the repeal of the surtax on the elderly for catastrophic health care, there was no last-minute legislative tinkering with the tax code, he said.
But Mr. Goldberg said the future of the tax-processing system hinged on modernizing the agency's antiquated technology, an effort that has already suffered repeated false starts. Failure to do so would mean facing very serious shortages in computer capacity as early as the mid-1990's, he said.
According to Howard G. Rhile, a specialist at the General Accounting Office, ''I.R.S. still processes tax returns using design concepts from the 1950's, such as batch processing and magnetic tape storage on reels,'' a system relying heavily on labor-intensive paper processes and the use of planes and trucks to move information around the country, rather than a modern telecommunications system.
Former Commissioner Lawrence B. Gibbs has described I.R.S. technology as ''Ice Age.'' The agency has already spent $120 million toward modernization, but needs to spend several billion more. The agency's total budget this fiscal year is $5.5 billion.
The extent of taxpayer disenchantment cannot be measured precisely, but compliance with the law has clearly eroded. The I.R.S. estimates the so-called tax gap - the difference between what it should receive each year and what it actually receives -at $80 billion to $100 billion. The tax gap includes revenue lost from those who do not file returns and those who underreport their income and overstate their deductions. It does not include tax evasion from profits on selling drugs and from other illegal activity.
A contributing factor is the persistent decline in audits, which have now slipped below 1 percent for individual returns, a level so low that there is some talk in Congress of imposing a statutory minimum. But the I.R.S. contends that new methods used to determine who should be audited have made it more effective and worthwhile to go after a smaller percentage of taxpayers.
 
Uncollected Funds Climbing
 The I.R.S. also has an $87 billion inventory of receivables, money taxpayers admit they owe, but which remains unpaid. About $25 billion of this has for all practical purposes been written off. Representative J. J. Pickle, the Texas Democrat who heads the Ways and Means subcommittee that oversees the I.R.S., complained at a hearing last month that this backlog was up from about $5 billion in 1973 and only $18 billion as recently as 1981.
At the same time, the I.R.S. is collecting substantial amounts that the Government is not entitled to because many of its letters demanding additional taxes are erroneous. Money magazine, in its current issue, estimated that about half the 36 million notices mailed last year had such errors, but produced at least $7 billion of extra revenue from taxpayers who were too uninformed, intimidated or otherwise unwilling to mount a challenge.
An I.R.S. spokesman admitted such errors existed, but said some of them were in the taxpayers' favor and that the magazine's estimate was far too high.
It is widely agreed, however, that the I.R.S. makes many mistakes. Some are introduced into a taxpayer's return by clerical employees who transcribe data from returns filed on paper into the I.R.S. computer system. The agency's lower-echelon employees are poorly paid and often ill trained, and for the last 15 months, the I.R.S. has limited or frozen hiring in most activities.
The agency has had an $825 million shortfall over the last two years, meaning it has less money for enforcement programs. Jennie S. Stathis of the General Accounting Office observed that new enforcement money in 1991 will do no more than fill slots that have remained empty because of the hiring freeze.
 
Piecemeal Modernization
 And a General Accounting Office report in February on modernization of the tax system offers only modest encouragement that the I.R.S. is finally addressing its No. 1 challenge.
''Although the program has made significant progress since 1986, the extent of this progress is difficult to measure because the nature and scope of the program has not been clearly articulated,'' wrote Ralph V. Carlone, Assistant Comptroller General.
''At present, the program is a collection of independent modernization projects, most of which are intended to upgrade existing systems or provide additional computer capacity to meet near-term requirements. While many of these projects should yield badly needed improvement to I.R.S.'s tax-processing capability, the service needs to clarify how they will fit together into an integrated system that will meet the agency's needs into the next century.''

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photos: The I.R.S. is processing tax returns faster this year than in 1989. At the agency's processing center in Holtsville, L.I., clerical workers are handling incoming tax return forms (The New York Times/Michael Shavel) (pg. 33); Fred T. Goldberg Jr., the Commissioner of the I.R.S. (The New York Times/Michael Geissinger); Graph: individual tax returns examined each year by the IRS as a percentage of individual returns filed in that period, 1980-1989 (Source: Internal Revenue Service) (pg. 34)

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The New York Times

April 7, 1990, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

CONSUMER'S WORLD: Guidepost;
Banks and the Elderly

SECTION: Section 1; Page 32, Column 5; Style Desk

LENGTH: 215 words


Many banks are trying to lure older Americans' deposits by offering a variety of benefits that are not available to the other customers. Such depositors are viewed as a source of stable funds and a ready market for estate planning services. Some banks require fairly large balances for these accounts; others set no minimum, but depositors have to pay monthly fees. And some banks may require depositors to sign up for direct deposit of Social Security, payroll or pension checks. There is no national listing of banks that offer these special accounts; the American Association of Retired Perosns generally recommends using banks that are close to home and suggests phoning them for information. Here are some of the requirements, charges and services to consider in deciding on one of these accounts:
 
Minimun Age: Most banks have lowered it to 50 years, from 65.
 
Benefits and Serivces: Free checking; bonus rates on certificates of deposits, sometimes as much as a quarter of a percentage point higher; free credit cards and discounts on retail purchases and travel.
 
Minimum Balances or Fees: Some banks require account balances ranging from $2,000 to $5,000. Others charge monthly fees of $7 to $10.
 
 
 
Source: Bank Rate Monitor, North Palm Beach, Fla.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Drawing

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The New York Times

April 8, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Marilyn Sternlieb Weds J. A. Stern

SECTION: Section 1; Part 2, Page 54, Column 4; Society Desk

LENGTH: 183 words

Temple Israel in Great Neck, L.I., was the setting last evening for the marriage of Marilyn Susan Sternlieb, a daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Alan M. Sternlieb of Lake Success, L.I., to Jeffrey Alan Stern, a son of Mrs. Alfred Stern of Los Angeles and the late Mr. Stern. Rabbi Mordecai Waxman, Rabbi Hillel Silverman and Cantor Benjamin Siegel officiated. 
Mrs. Stern, 29 years old, graduated summa cum laude from Connecticut College, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and received an M.B.A. from New York University. Until recently, she was an accountant at Ernst & Young in New York. Her father, who recently retired as a managing director of Shearson Lehman Hutton in New York, is now a consultant to the firm. Her mother, Beverly Sternlieb, is an artist.
The bridegroom, 34, is a graduate of Immaculate Heart College in Los Angeles. He is the president of the Stern Investment Company, a developer of industrial real estate and housing for the elderly in Los Angeles. His father was the chairman of the Alwin Management Company, also a developer of industrial real estate in Los Angeles.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Marilyn Stern (Fred Marcus)

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The New York Times

April 8, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

POSTING: Rising in Southampton;
Medical Offices

BYLINE: By RICHARD D. LYONS

SECTION: Section 10; Page 1, Column 2; Real Estate Desk

LENGTH: 200 words

Construction has started on a $4 million medical office building next to the Southampton Hospital in Suffolk County, L.I. The 21,000-square-foot structure will be the fifth component in the Old Town Medical Village complex at the corner of Old Town Road and Meeting House Lane in Southampton.
The two-story building on a six-acre site was designed by Bob Cane of Buck/Cane Architects of Manhattan. The building under construction and the existing buildings in the complex are projects of Southampton Medical Properties in association with the DM Development Group, both of Huntington, L.I., which is headed by Mark Mashburn and Daniel P. Barbiero.
Offices in the new building range in size from 1,000 to 7,000 square feet and will rent for about $22 to $25 a square foot. Suites are also for sale at prices to be negotiated. The building is to be finished in August.
Later this spring the development group will begin construction of an $8 million apartment complex for elderly people who need some degree of assistance, such as having meals prepared for them.
This so-called congregate-care center will complement the existing Southampton Nursing Home. The center will have 46 apartments.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Rendering of the medical office building on six acres in Southampton, L.I.

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The New York Times

April 8, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

THE SPRING REPORT;
Charity Begins At Home

BYLINE: By Matthew L. Wald

SECTION: Section 4A; Page 42, Column 2; Education Life

LENGTH: 1655 words

''PLANNED GIVING'' used to be a euphemism used by college fund-raisers when they asked elderly alumni to name the beloved alma mater in their wills. Then endowment managers waited a few years for nature to take its course.
No more. In the last few years planned giving has expanded into something much more sophisticated: a cluster of strategies that can increase the cash income of an elderly person, help finance the college education of children or grandchildren, and even take the place of an Individual Retirement Account for a middle-age person of high income, all while building the endowment of a college or other tax-exempt charity.
Planned giving, sometimes called ''deferred giving,'' does not compete with other forms of donation: ordinary cash donations still predominate both in number of donors and in total amounts given, followed by bequests in wills, experts say. But ''planned giving has taken off,'' according to Nathan Webber of the American Association of Fund-Raising Counsel, the trade association of professional fund-raisers. With the Tax Reform Act of 1986, fund-raisers say, planned giving is one of the few shelters remaining. In addition, because it gives the donor continued use of the money, it allows people with ordinary incomes to donate tens of thousands of dollars relatively easily. 
The strategy can work many ways. Here's a typical example:
A member of the class of 1928 would like to help his college, preferably while he is still around to see his money at work. But he needs his savings to generate income in his later years. He faces another problem: much of his money is tied up in stock that has shown huge appreciation over the years, and on which a punitive capital-gains tax would be due if he sold. He can avoid the tax by living off the stock dividends, but dividend payments are typically 4 percent or less, while money funds or other investments pay 8 percent or more.
How to make a donation, and free the investment without paying the capital-gains tax? Enter the college development officer with a planned giving program. Rather than sell the stock, the alumnus is encouraged to donate the stock to the college, which in turn promises to pay him a regular dividend of, say, 8 percent on the market value of the stock. The college sells the stock and avoids the capital-gains tax, because the college is tax-exempt, and its professional money managers invest the money for profit. The alumnus takes a tax deduction based largely on the value of the donation, thus cutting his tax bill and freeing more cash.
''It's the only way I know of to double-dip the Government,'' said Jeffrey E. Reichel, director of development at Carleton College, referring to the avoidance of capital-gains taxes, the use of a tax deduction and, if the money is paid to someone in a younger generation, the avoidance of inheritance and gift taxes.
 
Dozens of Variations
Colleges have devised dozens of variations. The return can be for the donor's lifetime or, as with a pension, can be structured to flow to a spouse or sibling after the donor dies. The money can be paid to a child or grandchild of college age to help with tuition, and will be taxed at the child's rate, which is low if the child is 14 or older.
The planned giving can also take a form similar to an I.R.A. The donor may be middle-aged and not need the income, and can specify instead that the money should be allowed to grow until the donor is ready to retire, when he or she will begin taking a return.
Like I.R.A.'s before the 1986 tax reform act, the donation is tax-deductible regardless of the donor's income. And like an I.R.A., the principal grows without taxes on the annual interest. Better than an I.R.A., there is no limit on the size of the annual contribution. In nearly all such cases, the principal eventually goes to the college.
''For a lot of these things you could go to an insurance company and buy an annuity,'' said John G. Lewis, the director of planned giving at Brown University. ''But you wouldn't be getting the tax deduction, and it wouldn't make you feel warm and fuzzy.''
Insurance companies, however, would probably offer a better deal, say fund-raisers. Richard T. Jenkins, who developed the planned-giving program at Grinnell College in Iowa, a leader in the field, said that although there are benefits to the donor, using planned giving is a charitable act and therefore not the way to make the largest possible profit on an investment.
''One of my cardinal points,'' he said, ''is that when you're giving to a charitable cause, you don't come out whole.'' No matter what the return, he said, it is lower than what a commercial investment would offer.
Grinnell, like most colleges, logs gifts as the donors die. It takes in between $1 million and $1.5 million a year that way, roughly one-quarter of its total gift income. Often donations are in the form of farmland, which alumni without heirs have already stopped working. Giving it to Grinnell relieves them of management problems.
Brown University does not get offers of farms, but owns houses everywhere from Scottsdale, Ariz., to Vermont. The deeds are signed over in an arrangement that gives the alumnus the use of the house and a charitable deduction.
Brown takes in about $2 million a year, comprising 50 to 70 gifts, said Mr. Lewis; when he arrived at the campus 13 years ago, the annual take was about $200,000 from 10 or 15 gifts. If Brown undertakes a major fund-raising campaign in the next few years, he said, 30 percent of the money could come from planned giving.
Colleges still like unrestricted cash gifts, of course, but according to John B. Cummings, a consultant on fund-raising, ''if we have a prospect with a $100,000 capability, sometimes when we bring to the table the alternative of making a deferred gift, we start talking about the possibility of $500,000 or $1 million.'' This is because the donation does not cut income; indeed, it often increases it, because the college uses professional money managers, and because the donor gets a tax deduction, which effectively shelters other income.
The size of the deduction is based on the anticipated rate of return and the donor's life expectancy, as determined by the Internal Revenue Service; college development officers use computer programs to calculate the deduction allowed. Almost all colleges have specialists in-house or quickly available to work with potential donors, but most also stress that donors should review their plans with their own lawyer, accountant or other adviser.
 
Unusual Benefits
''We want to make sure people understand the situation,'' said Thomas K. Marshall, vice president for development at Grinnell. ''We will not write it if we think there are better financial arrangements for them.''
Occasionally, fund-raisers say, elderly alumni may pledge every last penny, and while traditional bequests can be rescinded at any time before death, most planned-giving programs are irrevocable. But they can also offer unusual benefits. Dr. M. Boris Rotman, for example, invented a test for cancer patients that determines which chemotherapy would be most effective, and wound up with a quarter of the stock of a company that is seeking to commercialize the process. But Dr. Rotman, a faculty immunologist at Brown for the last 25 years, was displeased.
Other scientists, he reasoned, would doubt his objectivity in the laboratory, now that he had $500,000 worth of stock whose value depended on how well his test was accepted. He was also being pressed by the company to make a variety of financial decisions. Because the company was a start-up, its shares are not publicly traded and cannot be sold until 1992, and even if he could sell, since his cost basis was zero, the entire sale proceeds would be subject to tax as a capital gain.
''I have never done anything except buy Treasury bills,'' said Dr. Rotman, 65 years old, who complained that the financial affairs were keeping him out of the lab. So he gave it all to Brown. Dr. Rotman received an immediate tax deduction. When Brown sells the stock, he will receive a regular dividend check. The university hopes the idea will appeal to other faculty members.
 
EXTRA CREDIT
 
An Advanced Example of Planned Giving
Problem:  Kevin and Shelly Sweeney, with one daughter entering Carleton College and the other beginning her senior year of high school, faced $105,000 in tuition bills in the next five years. Mr. Sweeney, who works in the Hennepin County, Minn., recycling plant, and Mrs. Sweeney, who teaches Spanish, had acquired a two-story building in St. Paul several years earlier with two apartments in it, which they planned to sell to pay for their daughters' education. They also owned 100 shares of stock in the International Business Machines Corporation, as a ''rainy day fund.'' The combined value was nearly $89,000. But selling those assets would lose them $16,000 in capital gains tax. They could have held onto the stock and real estate, but the annual return was only $3,600.
Solution:  A charitable remainder term unitrust, a form of planned giving. A unitrust pays each year a fixed percentage of the trust's fair market value. ''Term'' means for a specified period. ''Charitable remainder'' means that in the end, Carleton keeps the principal.
*  The Sweeneys gave the assets to Carleton, which paid the children (whose tax bracket was lower than their parents') $74,000 over five years. The donation gave the parents a tax deduction of $28,700, which saved them $11,500 in cash. Avoiding the capital gains tax saved them $6,500 in cash. Investing the cash that was saved in a 7 percent tax-free municipal bond will raise an additional $17,300 over 10 years.
The total benefit, a combination of cash savings and income, was $109,600, according to Carleton, enough to send the junior Sweeneys through school.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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The New York Times

April 9, 1990, Monday, Late Edition - Final

Money Isn't Everything in Greyhound Strike

BYLINE: By PETER T. KILBORN, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section A; Page 1, Column 2; National Desk

LENGTH: 1610 words

DATELINE: CHICAGO, April 8

With almost daily episodes of sniper fire, windshield smashing or threats to the substitute drivers, the Greyhound strike is about as nasty as strikes get these days, and it does not seem that it should be.
The 6,300 striking drivers want more money. But those at Greyhound's Midwestern hub here, as in many other cities, readily find temporary and part-time work driving trucks and other companies' buses, so complaints of mortgages going unpaid and children unfed are rare.
Nor do many strikers complain about Greyhound's health benefits or pensions, concerns that have led other workers to join picket lines.
 
A Threatened Way of Life
Something else is at work here: pride and a way of life. Greyhound was the king of the highway, assuring low-budget travelers a safe trip home for funerals and holidays. Drivers counted themselves among the aristocrats of organized labor - captains of aluminum-sheathed behemoths who kept peace on board, mastered the secrets of urban and rural streets and gave old people a hand. 
''You're the boss,'' said John Noha, a 44-year-old driver who has been with Greyhound for nine years, resting in the Chicago strike headquarters from picketing.
''Passengers recognize that uniform as a person they can trust,'' said Bill Coker, 44, a driver for three years. ''They don't go to management. They don't go to the supervisor in the terminal. They come to us. It gets in your blood.''
So Greyhound's effort to hold down the drivers' wages strikes not only at their paychecks, but also at their pride, a pride that is further wounded by the company's paying top rates to substitute drivers with just a few weeks' training. Furthermore, management has promised the substitutes that their jobs are permanent, threatening the strikers with not just lower pay, but no pay at all.
Over the weekend, rumors circulated that the drivers were mounting an effort to save their jobs through an employee takeover of the company. ''We've been informed that there's a buyout going on and that there might be an announcement on Tuesday,'' said a labor leader here who asked not to be named.
Jeff Nelson, a spokesman for the Amalgamated Transit Union in Washington, said, ''We may be having an announcement Tuesday.'' But he said he did not know the subject of it.
Fred G. Currey, the chairman of Greyhound, said he had not heard the reports but added, ''This business is not for sale.''
The company's goal in the labor dispute is to keep down its costs, especially wages. It faces acute competition for passengers from railroads and airlines, and very thin profits.
But pay is a complex concern in this industry. A decade ago, veteran drivers' incomes exceeded $30,000 a year, putting them comfortably in the middle class, and the pay made the jobs something that other drivers aspired to. Now for the first time drivers realize they may never see that kind of pay again.
Moreover, management has humiliated the men and women on the picket line in showing that it can readily find substitute drivers who, after three or four weeks' training, have shown that they can deliver their passengers, less expertly, but deliver them nevertheless. And management is paying the top wages to substitute drivers, rather than requiring that they spend a decade working up to it, and it has unequivocally assured them that their jobs are permanent. The more drivers Greyhound hires as the strike, now in its fifth week, persists, the fewer union drivers will be able to rejoin Greyhound.
The company is telling the strikers, ''You're nothing but a bunch of dumb bus drivers,'' said Lenase Brown, 45, a driver for 10 years. ''I'm more hurt than mad.''
Ronald J. Peters, a professor of labor and industrial relations at the University of Illinois, said, ''There's a feeling of a loss of status, a loss of input, among people who have given the best years of their lives to the company.''
 
Powerful Forces at Work
Drivers for Greyhound, like airline pilots and skilled industrial workers, and their employers as well, have become victims of forces much larger than they. They have been caught in the maw of economic transitions, from a more benign time when unions would win higher wages and benefits, and employers would raise prices and fares to pay for them. In transportation, Federal deregulation broke the process by creating greater competition in fares, and in industry foreign competition had much the same effect.
The Greyhound strike is also a reminder, if one is needed, of something else: that labor unions have lost much of their membership and power in recent years, that crossing a picket line to fill a striker's job is not automatically regarded as an unspeakable act.
The changes in business and industry have been especially harsh on Greyhound. Passengers rode Greyhound 10 million miles a year a decade ago, but with deregulation-provoked cuts in airline fares, traffic had dropped to nine million pasenger miles in 1983. To help arrest the decline, the drivers accepted a 25 percent cut in their basic wage, from 40 cents per mile they drove to 30 cents. But the decline persisted, to six million passenger miles in 1986.
Three years ago, Mr. Currey, the current chairman, and other investors bought the ailing line, and the drivers agreed to live with the 30-cent wage another three years in return for bonuses for safe driving, gains in passenger traffic and Mr. Currey's assurances that they would eventually regain their status of the nation's best-paid drivers as the company grew. But the bonuses and gains in ridership have been small. Passenger miles had climbed to 7.5 million last year, and after two years of huge losses, the company recorded a minuscule $730,000 profit last year.
When contract talks that are now on hold began late last year, the drivers expected the 40-cent wage to be restored. Instead the company offered more performance-related incentives and later, in an effort to avert the strike, it offered a three-cent raise. The drivers now contend that they were deceived by the man they call ''Drop Dead Fred'' on their picket line buttons and signs.
''He made promises,'' said Mr. Coker. ''He said, 'If you help me bring this company back to where it's making money, I'm going to pass on the money to you.' It was a boldfaced lie.''
Edward M. Strait, president of the Amalgamated Council of Greyhound Local Unions in Phoenix, said: ''He promised these people he would take care of them come the contract. Boy, he sure did.''
Mr. Currey answers that what is happening to the drivers' wages in today's economy ''is a shame.'' But he said, ''The union has formally stated time and time again that what the company can afford to pay is irrelevant, that the fact that Greyhound wages are higher than all but a handful of over-the-road operators is irrelevant.''
 
Shots Fired at Buses
The tensions of the strike are being played out across the company's route system, with at least 20 shootings, four involving buses based in Chicago; shots at terminals, including one in Chicago, and numerous other incidents, many of which never appear on a police department log.
Here as in many other cities, the courts have enjoined strikers from harassing the substitute drivers, and their passengers. But intimidation is constant. The other day here, a picketer stood outside the terminal with a video camera on his shoulder filming drivers coming and going.
''I left here headed for Indianapolis,'' said a replacement driver. ''I heard a noise,'' she said. ''I thought the toilet lid in the back had dropped. I got to Indianapolis, and they discovered that the bus had been shot in the bathroom window.''
One replacement, a tall, muscular former truck driver, said he was getting ready to retaliate. ''I'm not going to run,'' he said. ''I'm tired of those clowns.''
Union people, who insist that they do not condone the violence, say they are skeptical that their members have anything to do with such incidents. ''It could be the company hiring goons,'' said Bill Pearsall, a driver and Chicago business agent for the Amalgamated Transit Union. He said the replacement drivers could be doing it, too.
But the only person arrested and charged so far in a shooting incident, a man in Connecticut, is a striking driver, and Mr. Pearsall acknowledged that some drivers are angry enough to retaliate.
In one of the latest incidents, a replacement driver was charged yesterday in Washington with carrying a dangerous weapon. Officials said the suspect, Charles E. King, 45, brandished a rifle Saturday during a confrontation with strikers at the Greyhound terminal after discovering that his car had been vandalized.
The recruits say they intend to stay with Greyhound. ''I was driving a truck for a steel outfit,'' said Bob K., 58. ''I was making about $500 gross every two weeks. This is about $1,200 gross. This is the best paying job I've ever had.''
They also say they believe their jobs are secure. In 1983, the previous owners of Greyhound hired replacement drivers during a strike and assured them they could stay, but after the strike ended they were let go.
Edward A. said that he left a machinist job for Greyhound and that he had ordered from Greyhound $301 worth of uniforms. Other drivers interviewed said they had ordered uniforms, too.
Greyhound now makes about half as many trips as usual from Chicago. Passengers interviewed said they did not often encounter more than jeering as they pulled in and out of terminals. The bus is still the cheapest way to go, so they put up with the jeering, Greyhound's truncated schedule and with the new drivers' inexperience.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: photos: A striking driver picketing outside a Greyhound station in Chicago. (pg. A1); Greyhound drivers say they have lost more than their salaries in the strike; they have lost the pride they took in their jobs. In Chicago, strikers set up an office in a school bus outside the Greyhound terminal. (The New York Times/Jonathan Kirn) (pg. A14)

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April 11, 1990, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Study Finds the Will to Live Can Work

BYLINE: Reuters

SECTION: Section A; Page 19, Column 1; National Desk

LENGTH: 337 words

DATELINE: CHICAGO, April 10

Willpower can delay death briefly when people want to go on living to celebrate major events in their lives, researchers say.
A study of elderly Chinese women in California found abnormally low death rates in the week before a major family festival, followed by an equally abnormal rise in natural deaths once the event had passed.
Researchers at the University of California at San Diego said the finding appeared to verify an earlier study, which found that some Jews were able to delay their deaths until after Passover observances were finished. 
 
Why Chinese Were Chosen
''Indeed, there is some preliminary evidence indicating that there is also a dip/peak around the observance of an individual's birthday or other personally meaningful occasion,'' the researchers said in a report being published Wednesday in The Journal of the American Medical Association.
The California study, by Dr. David P. Phillips and Daniel G. Smith, involved the deaths of Chinese women 75 and older during the time of the Harvest Moon Festival, an important celebration in which the oldest woman in the family directs younger women and serves as the focal point for a holiday meal.
The Chinese festival was chosen, the researchers said, because it occurs on different dates each year, runs for a set time and provides an easy comparison with deaths among non-Chinese in the period.
The study found that in the week before the festival there were 35.1 percent fewer deaths among the Chinese women than among non-Chinese in the same age group. In the week after the festival ended, they said, the death rate among the Chinese women was 34.6 perent higher than would normally be expected.
While it is possible that something relating to the event itself, like overeating or stress, contributed to the post-holiday deaths, the dip in fatalities before the event cannot be so explained, they said.
''The current study suggests that positive psychological processes have beneficial effects on mortality,'' the researchers said.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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April 11, 1990, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

A New Generation Begins Computing

BYLINE: By ANDREW POLLACK

SECTION: Section C; Page 1, Column 1; Living Desk

LENGTH: 1356 words

DATELINE: SAN FRANCISCO, April 10

Hugh Bell decided he was behind the times when he saw his great-grandson, who is in elementary school, using a computer. ''I watched that little guy last Christmas and he was making Christmas cards,'' said Mr. Bell, an 83-year-old retired marine engineer. ''I looked and I thought to myself, 'You should learn this too.' ''
So Mr. Bell enrolled in a computer class. He is one of thousands of older Americans learning to use a machine that is usually associated with teen-age whiz kids.
Leading the effort to train older adults is Seniornet, a nonprofit organization at the University of San Francisco that runs 28 computer centers around the nation and in Canada for people 55 and older. Seniornet also runs a telecommunications network; participants anywhere in the nation can send messages to one another using personal computers hooked to the telephone system. 
Since it was founded in 1986, Seniornet has trained 4,000 elderly people to use computers and 700 people have signed up for the telecommunications network, also called Seniornet.
The John and Mary R. Markle Foundation in New York, which is devoted to the use of communications technology to promote democracy, is the chief financial supporter of Seniornet.
Lloyd N. Morrisett, president of the foundation, said: ''It's important to keep senior citizens in touch with the rest of society, and to do that they need modern forms of communication. Computers allow them the chance to communicate broadly and do it at their own pace.''
Mary S. Furlong, executive director of Seniornet, said old people ''have kind of been left out of the computer revolution,'' and added, ''They have a lot to say, and the tool is a powerful way for them to communicate.''
Ms. Furlong, an associate professor of education at the University of San Francisco, said older adults are ideal candidates to be computer users because they often have lots of time, and minds that are more active than their bodies can be. She started Seniornet after writing, with Greg Kearsley, a book called ''Computers for Kids Over 60.''
Few elderly people use computers now. A survey commissioned by the Markle Foundation found that only 9 percent of adults 60 to 69 years old own computers, and only 3 percent of those over 70. By contrast, about 20 percent of all American households have computers.
There is a $25 membership fee for Seniornet, but classes are free to members. The computer centers, which are usually paid for by local sponsors, are in community centers, nursing homes, schools and eye-care centers. In the New York metropolitan area, the only site is at Stahl Eye Associates in Garden City, L.I.
Seniornet officials say the classes are very popular. When a Seniornet center opened at Honolulu Community College in Hawaii, ''They thought they would have maybe 30 people, and about 400 showed up,'' said Mabel McConnell, president of the Kokua Council of Senior Citizens Education Fund, which helped organize the center.
Those who learn to use computers say they write letters, keep their household records, catalogue collections and track investment portfolios on them. A retired nurse in Honolulu got an office job based on her ability to use the computer. Another Seniornet graduate there is publishing a newsletter about beekeeping.
In Syracuse, Seniornet members are volunteering at an elementary school, teaching second and third graders to use computers. Another man in Syracuse used his computer to make inspirational greeting cards. Until his death recently he sent the cards to people in hospital. ''They'd all be different,'' said Howard Hamm, 82, a retired engineer who is active in the Seniornet center at Syracuse University.
For some people, mastering the machine is more important than what they do with it. ''The easiest way to keep a young mind is to keep the darn thing active,'' said E. B. (Jiggs) Clark, 72, a semiretired investment adviser in Seattle.
Like Mr. Bell in San Francisco, Mr. Clark also took up the challenge when he saw a child operating a computer and asked him how it worked. ''He looked up at me, only 6 or 7 years old, and asked me, 'What are you, some kind of a dummy?' '' Mr. Clark recalled.
Provoked, Mr. Clark, who had read an article about it, wrote to Seniornet. A few weeks later a box containing a computer that had been donated to Seniornet arrived at his door. Seniornet gave him the computer as part of an experiment sponsored by Apple Computer Inc. With almost no information to go on, Mr. Clark set up the machine and became so enthusiastic that he helped organize a center in Seattle. ''Now I'm even teaching computering,'' he said. He advises new students, ''Jump in the water and just start to swim.''
Others use the Seniornet network, which allows them to send and receive electronic mail. There are also public forums, in which members write comments on public issues or personal experiences to be read by everyone else on the network. Recent discussions have ranged from computer software to health-care legislation. The network was once even used for grief counseling, with the electronic equivalent of Dear Abby helping others cope with the loss of a loved one. Now the network is starting a personal counseling service.
When Seniornet began, Ms. Furlong said, there was some fear that use of computers would increase the isolation of the elderly. The image that came to mind was of the teen-ager locked in his room with a computer, shunning human contact. But for the elderly, who often cannot leave home easily, computers can increase contact, she and others said.
''By the time you get to be my age, there isn't much family left and friends begin to drop by the way,'' said Joan Elswit, 66, of Oakton, Va., a Seniornet user. ''There are all the contacts you want on the network.''
Computer use can be the ''basis for forging a lot of friendship ties,'' said Tora K. Bikson, a researcher at the Rand Corporation who did a yearlong study of two groups of employees of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power were asked to devise a company retirement plan. One group used computers and the other held meetings or telephone discussions. The group that could exchange messages on a computer network worked together more closely and became better friends than the group that could only meet in person or talk on the phone, Dr. Bikson said.
Still, not all old people find computers enticing or unintimidating. On the Seniornet telecommunications hookup the discussions are dominated by a handful of active users. Ms. Furlong attributes this to shyness, saying many people are afraid to type comments that can be seen by everyone.
Others say cost is a problem for old people on limited budgets. It costs $15 to join the network, plus telephone charges of $6.90 an hour evenings and weekends, or $16.70 on weekdays. Even more significant is the cost of a computer, which many people might not be able to justify.
''It's not necessarily that they're afraid,''said Robert Harootyan, an executive at the American Association of Retired Persons. ''It's just that a lot of people don't see any reason to have one.'' Many people have home computers for their jobs or for their children's school work. For most elderly people those reasons do not exist.
Mr. Morrisett of the Markle Foundation said there is a lack of software tailored to the elderly, like tax preparation programs that deal specifically with pensions. Another important use could be to provide health-care information by letting older people communicate electronically with their doctors, said Dr. Gari Lesnoff-Caravaglia, executive director of the University Center on Aging at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center in Worcester.
Back at the San Francisco computer class, Hugh Bell and a classmate sat in front of an Apple computer, struggling to put Mr. Bell's resume into the computer. ''Between the two of us, we're finally getting something on the board,'' said Mr. Bell. ''By the end of six weeks, I'll be able to punch out something.''
Seniornet headquarters are at 399 Arguello Boulevard, San Francisco, Calif. 94118; 415-750-5030.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: photo: Rosemary Brandon, left, conducting a computer class for the elderly at the University of San Francisco (The New York Times/Terrence McCarthy) (pg. C4)

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April 13, 1990, Friday, Late Edition - Final

SPORTS OF THE TIMES;
For Polonia, A New Leaf And Season

BYLINE: By George Vecsey

SECTION: Section A; Page 23, Column 1; Sports Desk

LENGTH: 776 words

The Milwaukee County House of Corrections wasn't that bad, Luis Polonia said: ''Never a jail, never behind bars. It was like a medical center.''
But his 27 days of community service and 27 nights of supervision last fall were enough to convince him that he could handle anything that came up around a baseball stadium.
Pinch-hitting? That would be all right, too. Waiting around a dugout was preferable to the private hell when he wondered if the Yankees or anybody else would want him. 
''I went through a lot of bad things; I don't think anything can hurt me,'' Polonia said yesterday, after he came off the bench in the eighth inning to stroke a single to put the Yankees ahead in their 6-4 opening-day victory over Cleveland.
He never expected the public to have a great deal of sympathy for him, after his conviction on a morals charge involving a 15-year-old girl, following evidence that he was warned the girl was under age.
He used to say he was set up, but yesterday he merely said: ''I know who can cause you trouble. I get ready to go to the ball park. I get ready for the street. I know what can happen to you at the bars and at the ball park. I try to stay out of trouble.''
He is 25, and a ball player, and at one point he hadn't known if he would ever get back in uniform, on anybody's bench.
''Just happy to be here,'' he said, making the cliche sound fresh.
The fans and the sports pages and the air waves all love a comeback story. Polonia didn't expect he would get a cereal endorsement or the lucrative speaking engagements, but then again, he had never gotten them before.
He was Luis Polonia, and he had always hit wherever he played, including Oakland and the Yankees. But then he was painting and fumigating the homes of elderly people as part of his sentence, and wondering if George M. Steinbrenner 3d would want him back.
There are all kinds of double and triple standards with the Yankees. There was a tribute to Billy Martin yesterday, with a hushed crowd of 50,114, solemn music, both teams lined up on the baselines, hats in hand, and on the scoreboard, film highlights of the late manager, including clips of Martin kicking dirt at the umpires.
With all the mixed messages, what would be the future of a somewhat marginal player who had been convicted of a crime, who had been publicly criticized as an athlete who should have known better?
''I didn't expect anything after the season,'' Polonia said yesterday. ''I know how it goes.'' He sounded almost surprised that in the sequence of his serving his sentence, of his early release to the Dominican Republic when his visa ran out, of his arthroscopic surgery in New York, the Yankees never called him in.
''Nobody ever said nothing,'' he said. ''My thinking was, I was gonna be out of here. I wanted to stay here so bad. It was a hard time.''
The Yankees never scuttled him, and then he was back in spring training, where not even the sight of Dave Winfield, back from his year's absence with back surgery, could ruin Polonia's joy at being back with the Yankees.
''I know I can be starting,'' the outfielder said. ''But I understand. It is a long season. I have to prepare myself.''
He heard a lot of things from the stands late last season, after being charged with the offense. Somehow he had batted .326 in the last month of the season, and may have discovered a reservoir of toughness he never knew was there.
The fans were fine in the abbreviated spring training. If he heard anything unpleasant yesterday, he did not share it with the media. He is too young, with a .293 batting average, to be satisfied with the bench. But yesterday the bench looked fine.
''Since they said, 'Play ball,' I had my bat in my hand,'' Polonia said. ''It's the best way to stay ready. Once in a while, I come inside and stretch and swing a bat, just to stay ready.''
When the Yankees batted in the eighth, Polonia twisted and turned on the bench. With runners on first and third, Bucky Dent sent him up to pinch-hit against the new relief pitcher, Doug Jones.
''I know this guy,'' Polonia said. ''His best pitch is the changeup. I try to stay back and swing at the first pitch. I said to myself, 'You cannot fail. You don't want to let Bucky down.' '' The first pitch was the change-up, and Polonia stroked it sharply into center field for a run, and when he hit the base, he turned 90 degrees and permitted himself just the slightest bit of a pump with his right hand.
He wouldn't call himself the hero yesterday, or a hero in general. He was just a hitter who had been ready to come up hacking. And on opening day for Luis Polonia, that was quite enough.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: photo: Luis Polonia (The New York Times)

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April 13, 1990, Friday, Late Edition - Final

Review/Theater;
50's 'Fanny' Is Revived With All Due Sentiment

BYLINE: By STEPHEN HOLDEN

SECTION: Section C; Page 3, Column 5; Weekend Desk

LENGTH: 716 words

''Fanny,'' Harold Rome's musical adaptation of Marcel Pagnol's dramatic trilogy, ''Marius,'' ''Fanny,'' and ''Cesar,'' is a quintessential 1950's musical of the more solemnly romantic sort.
Set in the old port of Marseilles, it tells a sentimental story of star-crossed young lovers, Marius and Fanny, their illegitimate child, and the crusty old men who guard their secret and remain their benefactors during the years Marius is off at sea. The show's pace is leisurely, its plot thick, its moral climate of delayed erotic gratification and self-sacrifice very much of its time.
When the show opened on Broadway in 1954, the roles of Panisse, the rich, elderly sailmaker who marries Fanny to give her unborn child a father after Marius has left, and his best friend, Cesar, who is also Marius's father, were portrayed by Walter Slezak and Ezio Pinza. In the Paper Mill Playhouse's revival of the show, they are played with charm and gusto by two distinguished theater veterans, George S. Irving and Jose Ferrer. 
With its large cast, exotic French setting and semi-operatic score, ''Fanny'' is a show that requires a fair amount of grandeur. The Paper Mill Playhouse revival, directed by Robert Johanson, is unstintingly luxurious. Elaborate sets designed by Michael Anania evoke the architecture and narrow streets and courtyards of the French port city. The interior settings also offer a richly atmospheric sense of life in different strata of French society.
In the second-act birthday party scene, a colorful circus of jugglers, tumblers and clowns surges onto the stage, and acrobats descend from the stage into the aisles to twirl on ropes unfurled above the heads of the audience. In its pomp and pageantry, the show's physical production is of old-time Broadway quality.
The visual opulence is matched in scale by the expansive, open-hearted performance of Mr. Irving as Panisse, the wealthy sailmaker who so yearns for a son that he is happy to bring up the boy, Cesario, so long as no one finds out the truth of his paternity. The portly actor gives a full and moving portrait of a man whose misplaced vanity doesn't preclude an enormous generosity of spirit. And the show's dramatic high point is his enthusiastic and touching rendition of ''Panisse and Son,'' in which he celebrates the realization of his dream of having a male heir.
Mr. Ferrer's portrayal of Cesar, though likable, doesn't quite capture the bonhomie of a character whose signature song, ''Welcome Home,'' extols the comforting familiarity of household furniture. And his small, craggy bass-baritone is not on a level with the rest of the voices in the cast.
Mr. Rome's sweepingly romantic score for the show includes four big ballads - ''Fanny,'' ''I Have to Tell You,'' ''Restless Heart'' and ''Welcome Home'' - that nearly match in eloquence Rodgers and Hammerstein songs from the same era. Although John Leone and Teri Bibb, the attractive young singers portraying Marius and Fanny, sing the love songs competently, their performances lack the extra fillip of ardor that might have heated up the love story to a sizzle.
Ultimately, however, the flaws of this revival are minor. Under Mr. Johanson's sure-handed direction, the production maintains an energetic flow that is enlivened by a strong ensemble, choral singing and smooth choreography by Sharon Halley. One senses the tug of the sea and the slow passing of time in a city that is deeply set in its ways.
 
Love Quadrangle
 
FANNY, by S. N. Behrman and Joshua Logan, based on the trilogy of Marcel Pagnol; music and lyrics by Harold Rome; directed by Robert Johanson; scenic design, Michael Anania; costumes, Gregg Barnes; lighting, Mark Stanley; sound, David R. Paterson; hair, Paul Germano; assistant to the director, Larry Grey; production stage manager, Peggy Imbrie; musical director, Jim Coleman; choreographer, Sharon Halley. Presented by the Paper Mill Playhouse, Angelo Del Rossi, executive producer; Mr. Johanson, artistic director. At Millburn, N.J.
 
Cesar . . . Jose Ferrer
Panisse . . . George S. Irving
Fanny . . . Teri Bibb
Marius . . . John Leone
Honorine . . . Karen Shallo
Cesario . . . Jonathan Gold
M. Brun . . . Mitchell Greenberg
The Admiral . . . Paul Kandel
Escartifique . . . K. C. Wilson

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

TYPE: Review

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April 14, 1990, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

Medicaid Tail, Hospital Dog

SECTION: Section 1; Page 22, Column 1; Editorial Desk

LENGTH: 382 words

New York City hospitals have good reason to complain about Albany's efforts to limit payments under Medicaid, the Federal-state health insurance for the poor. Medicaid payments are part of a broader hospital reimbursement policy best considered apart from the artificial forces of pressing budget deadlines.
Washington sets guidelines for Medicaid eligibility but the states, which share in the cost, have much discretion over reimbursement schedules. With New York's share of Medicaid hospital costs now exceeding $1 billion annually, state budget cutters proposed new limits that would save about $45 million. 
Hospital administrators are particularly upset about $17 million in reductions for debt service on capital projects. State officials respond that hospitals need to share in the budget pain, and that the proposed limits are more than fair.
The merits of that argument are less important than its timing. Sizable as they are, Medicaid payments account for only 17 percent of all hospital bills statewide. About 43 percent are paid by private health insurance plans or workers' compensation. Medicare, the totally Federal health insurance for the elderly, supplies the remaining 40 percent.
Albany wields enormous power over the 43 percent paid by non-Medicare insurers, along with the 17 percent paid by Medicaid. For years the State Health Department has engaged in a running dispute with New York City hospitals about the adequacy of rates. A new debate on the issue is set to begin once the budget is approved.
That background adds to the hospitals' concern: to enact the new limits on Medicaid now would strengthen the claim of the other insurers to the same relief when the new reimbursement bill comes up. That would magnify a hospital loss of $17 million into one of more than $200 million, the hospitals say, and with no further effect on the state budget.
As it creates or destroys incentives, hospital reimbursement determines the shape and quality of medicine as well as its cost. Such policy ought not to be enacted piecemeal - and especially not in the panicked context of a budget crisis. The bulk of hospital reimbursements have nothing to do with the state budget. Acting prematurely on Medicaid would make a small tail wag a difficult and formidable dog.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

TYPE: Editorial

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April 14, 1990, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

About New York;
Together Again, These Sly Foes Of Nazi Resolve

BYLINE: By DOUGLAS MARTIN

SECTION: Section 1; Page 25, Column 1; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 773 words

They came as old men, shoulders stooped, smiling through wrinkles. They exchanged hugs, sipped drinks and recalled that ancient and glorious time when they were brash young comrades-in-arms.
Their arms were a perfect fluency in German, a devilish knack for dirty tricks and a fervent hatred of Hitler. They were veterans of the United States Army's psychological warfare unit, specifically those who landed at Normandy and fought right on through to the Elbe. 
In leaflets and over loudspeakers, the propagandists' job was to proclaim that the Germans were ''eingekesselt'' (surrounded). If they knew what was good for them, the message went, they would surrender.
The fact, one of the self-described ''psych boys'' confessed at their reunion last Saturday, was this: ''Very often, we were 'eingekesselt' instead.''
That this was no ordinary gathering was apparent from the moment guests arrived at Harvey's Chelsea Restaurant at 108 West 18th Street, burst through the front door and demanded in German accents to know where the party was. In a seemly conspiratorial tone, a bartender answered: ''Go outside. Go to the first door on the left. Press the button. Someone will come down on the elevator to get you.''
On reaching the disappointingly unmysterious banquet room, these masters of manipulation - most of them Jews born in Germany -encountered a cash bar and two enormous photographs.
One showed their revered leader, the late Hans Habe. The immaculately attired Mr. Habe had flaming red hair, which everyone assumed was dyed, and a red-hot temper when it came to wandering prose. ''I want to see the red thread!'' he would scream in English or German if a propaganda script lacked organization.
The other was of the late Benno Frank, who as an enlisted man never called an officer by anything but his first name.
This patron saint of psych warriors was shown sprawled on an overstuffed couch, perchance dreaming in one of five languages - all said to sound remarkably the same when he spoke them.
''He's on duty, but not in the conventional Army way,'' said Peter Wyden, an author who organized the reunion partly in whimsical elegy to his own youth. Pointing to a young man in a photo, he said, ''I was 19 going on 16.''
This was a most peculiar outfit, so obscure that many thought its members were medics. Its 800 or so members were officially known as Mobile Radio Broadcasting Companies, and members brought communication skills honed in academia, entertainment and the media. Mr. Habe, for instance, had broken the story that Hitler's original name was Schicklgruber.
''Ours wasn't the right way, the wrong way and certainly not the Army way,'' Mr. Wyler said. ''Ours was the psychological warfare way.''
''Our motto was be unprepared,'' declared Arthur Jaffe, commander of the Second Mobile Radio Broadcasting Company, the unit of most of the 35 veterans in attendance.
The group included Eugene Fodor, the travel expert; David Berger, famed for his ''Music from Germany'' show on radio, and Glenn Birnbaum, owner of Mortimer's restaurant. Another member was William S. Paley, the retired CBS chairman. He sent regrets.
Grand stories were told. How Mr. Frank in a memorably mellow broadcast persuaded all 30,000 Germans in a submarine base to come over. How one of the first psych boys to land after D-Day interrogated a German prisoner he had known as a school boy. How another arrived on Omaha Beach laden with leaflets written in German only to discover that the forces threatening his beachhead spoke Polish.
There were tales of taking loudspeakers behind enemy lines, so-called ''hog-calling missions.'' Scenes were shown from a documentary being prepared by German television -including a delicious segment in which a bigwig testifies that F.D.R. had no idea what psychological warfare was and cared less.
One aging Bronxite sought to unload his copy of a very rare edition of Mein Kampf. A man told of carrying the news to a Hollywood starlet that her beloved Otto had found greener pastures, only to find she was delighted.
A sense of mortality hung in the air. In recent years, many have died. ''We all see the end of the road,'' said Mr. Wyden, who fears this reunion, the group's third, will be its last.
A toast came from Stefan Heym, remembered by all for his daring propaganda schemes and derided by a few for returning his medals to President Truman before defecting to East Germany in the early 1950's. Mr. Heym, who came back from Berlin for the reunion, spoke of soldiers fading away.
He raised his glass high. ''To the memory of those who have done their fading already,'' he said.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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The New York Times

April 16, 1990, Monday, Late Edition - Final

Health Insurers Increase Rates For the Elderly

BYLINE: By MILT FREUDENHEIM

SECTION: Section A; Page 1, Column 5; Financial Desk

LENGTH: 1444 words

The cost of private health insurance for the elderly is rising sharply, straining the budgets of millions of people who live on Social Security checks and fueling demands in Congress and the states for tighter regulation of this insurance.
The monthly cost rose at least 20 percent this year for many types of insurance intended to cover the gap between what the Federal Medicare program pays for medical services and what doctors and hospitals actually charge. Some premiums for such ''medigap'' insurance increased more than 50 percent, according to industry surveys and the General Accounting Office.
Critics of the insurance industry in Congress and spokesmen for consumer advocacy groups say many of the increases in medigap rates were exorbitant. But private insurers say they had to raise the rates, in part to pay for catastrophic illnesses that would have been covered under a 1988 law that was repealed in December. 
 
Surge in Spending
The increased costs are also a result of the continuing surge in spending on health care, and in some cases, the failure of insurers to raise rates enough in 1989 to cover higher medical costs, industry spokesmen say.
But many of the elderly, a majority of whom depend primarily on Social Security, say they are hard pressed to pay the extra costs.
''It's outrageous,'' said Mary Enos, a 79-year-old widow in New Bedford, Mass., who lives on ''a little over $500 a month.'' Her Blue Cross premium increased 84 percent to $71.30 a month, from $38.83. The $32.47 medigap increase buried the $18 cost-of-living increase in her Social Security check.
Medigap insurance is currently purchased by about 22 million of the 29 million Americans aged 65 or older.
Among the costs that medigap covers and Medicare does not are the first day in a hospital and all or part of the ''deductible'' that patients pay to doctors before Medicare insurance begins paying. Some medigap policies also cover prescription drugs, added charges by doctors and the cost of a hospital stay that extends beyond the Medicare limit.
 
People Without Coverage
Of the seven million elderly people who do not have medigap insurance, about 3.2 million of them with low incomes are eligible for state Medicaid benefits, but nearly four million rely on Medicare alone.
Because the 1988 law covering catastrophic illnesses was repealed, at least 17 million elderly ''will be doing worse,'' said Thomas Rice, a health economist at the University of North Carolina. They will have to pay higher premiums for medigap insurance, if they can afford it, or go without coverage for catastrophic illnesses and prescription drugs.
On the other hand, about 1.7 million elderly Americans with incomes of $37,000 or more, who would have had to pay an extra $800 each with their Federal taxes under the catastrophic-care law, are faring better now that the law has been repealed. Many of them are fully covered for such illnesses by former employers and do not need such coverage; others among them were reluctant to drop their own insurance when the law took effect, and were essentially paying twice for the same benefits.
 
Increasing Costs
But even people with medigap policies must often pay part of their doctor, hospital and prescription-drug charges, which have been increasing faster than the overall inflation rate.
The Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, a group of 70 mainly nonprofit plans with 8.5 million medigap policyholders, said premiums were up 24 percent on average for 1990 after increasing 8 percent in 1989. The Prudential Insurance Company of America, which sells medigap insurance to three million members of the American Association of Retired Persons, raised its medigap rates by 40 percent on average in 1989 and plans a 17 percent increase in July. Blue Cross-Blue Shield and Prudential are by far the largest medigap insurers.
The General Accounting Office, a research arm of Congress, said the average monthly cost to elderly policyholders is now $69.96, or about $840 a year, compared with $58.52, or $702, in 1989, an increase of 20 percent.
One of the steepest increases was in Massachusetts, where Blue Cross-Blue Shield raised monthly premiums 67 percent to $85.87 for its most widely purchased medigap policy. (Mrs. Enos's $71.30 policy provides fewer benefits.) 'I Was Very Shocked'
In Wisconsin, Frances Hels, 74, a retired executive secretary in Waterford, is also struggling with a medigap increase. ''I was very shocked at the first of the year to get a raise of about $20 a month to $90.33,'' she said. Mrs. Hels, a widow, lives on ''a very small pension and mainly Social Security.''
The G.A.O. said about half the added medigap charges could be attributed to the repeal of the catastrophic-care law.
In Massachusetts, Blue Cross attributed 38 to 41 percent of its increases to the Medicare pullback. Thirty-two percent was for higher health-care costs, especially for prescription drugs, and increased use of health services, said Susan M. Leahy, a Blue Cross spokeswoman. The insurer said it also had to make up for medigap losses in 1989.
In New York, Empire Blue Cross and Blue Shield has just raised monthly medigap rates 29 percent, to $45.15, after two years at $35. John Kelly, a spokesman for Empire Blue Cross, said two-thirds of the increase was to replace benefits in the repealed law.
 
Increases Criticized
Advocates for the elderly and consumers and their supporters in Congress criticized the increases.
''In many instances the increases are far in excess of what can be justified,'' said Representive Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon.
Gail Shearer, manager of policy analysis for Consumers Union, a group that advocates more Federal regulation, said: ''Medigap prices seem to go up whether Medicare benefits expand or contract. Consumers are confused.''
Most states are already revising laws and procedures regulating medigap insurance. Congress is expected to take up several bills this session that would increase Federal supervision of medigap insurance, a $16 billion business. Most states require that insurers must pay out 60 percent of medical-insurance premiums for individual medigap policyholders and 75 percent of the premiums for group medigap policyholders. The remainder may go to marketing and administrative costs, profits and to make up for past losses, commercial insurers say.
Among the bills being prepared or already introduced in Congress are ones that would require public hearings and a review before states approve medigap increases. The bills would also raise the percentages of revenues that must be paid out in benefits and standardize descriptions of competing medigap policies so purchasers can better compare them.
 
Insurance Counseling
A bill sponsored by Senator David Pryor, Democrat of Arkansas, would help states to establish insurance counseling for the elderly in programs like those operating in California and North Carolina. Other proposals would prohibit selling medigap policies that duplicate each other or overlap. Insurers could be punished if their agents did not check on the existing coverage of elderly consumers and sold them unneeded policies.
''Our feeling is that Congress is going to do something this year,'' said Alan K. Richards, a Washington lawyer with the Health Insurance Association of America, an insurer group, which wants the states to remain in control of insurance regulation.
A stronger Federal regulatory role is supported by both the American Association of Retired Persons, which fought unsuccessfully to preserve the catastrophic-care law last year, and the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, which helped defeat it.
 
State Requirements
Only a handful of states review requests for medigap rate increases; most rely on the standard requirements governing how much of the premiums must be eventually paid out for medical care. Representative Pete Stark, Democrat of California, said the payout minimums should be raised to 70 percent and 85 percent.
But Alan P. Spielman, a government-relations director with Blue Cross, said many plans were already paying out 90 percent of medigap premiums.
Earl R. Pomeroy, president of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, said his group would meet Tuesday to consider changes to make it easier to compare competing medigap policies. Massachusetts, Wisconsin and Minnesota already require standard language and formats.
Seven states have adopted other consumer protection recommendations approved last year by the state commissioners group. Similar rules are under consideration in 30 states.

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April 16, 1990, Monday, Late Edition - Final

NEWS SUMMARY

SECTION: Section A; Page 2, Column 5; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 1361 words


International    A2-9

 
Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney has rebuffed a suggestion by the Soviet Union that the Bush Administration's new strategic arms proposal be broadened to include constraints on sea-based missiles.    Page A1

 
The Army is proposing increased cuts in troops
     A14

 
The K.G.B. headquarters in Yerevan, the capital of the Armenian republic, was attacked by about 1,000 protesters late Saturday, the official Soviet press agency said. One man was killed in the violence.    A8

 
Poles celebrated their first Easter under democracy after 45 years of Communist rule, and the mood seemed more a celebration than a protest.    A1 
 
 
Pope John Paul says a prayer for Lithuania's success
     A8

 
In Old Jerusalem, Christians and Muslims protest    A3

 
The plan to remove internal borders in the European Community after 1992, long viewed as the most important symbol of new European unity, is being threatened by disagreements over how to deal with migration, asylum, drugs and terrorism.    A9

 
Economic discontent in China is serving as a subtle, subversive political force. Diplomats and economic analysts doubt this will propel the Chinese masses onto the streets soon, but the authorities seem nervous.    A1
 
Beijing has been excluded by the U.S. from an international conference on air pollution and climatic change, even though the Chinese burn more industrial coal than any other country, officials said.    B7

 
A U.N. panel of scientists sees substantial warming of Earth
     B7

 
The Nepal Parliament was dissolved by King Birendra after a weekend of increasingly angry protests over the pace of democratic change.    A1

 
Bomb near Hindu temple kills 5 in Northern India
     A6

 
Peru's novelist turned politician, Maria Vargas Llosa, will announce today whether he will stay in the presidential race. His candidacy has been crippled by a lack of support from millions of slumdwellers.    A3

 
Physician from Mexico arrested in drug agent slaying
     A2

 
National    A10-15, B7-8

 
Many senators seeking re-election this year are financing their campaigns largely with donations from outside their home states. That is a profound change from the traditional practice of relying on contributions from constituents.    A1

 
The cost of private health insurance for the elderly is rising sharply, straining the budgets of millions of people who live on Social Security checks and fueling demands for tighter regulation of this insurance.
     A1

 
U.S. to study ways to combat frailty among the elderly
     A15

 
A major extension of antitrust laws is being considered by the Administration. The extension would strike at American subsidiaries of foreign companies that are found to engage in price-fixing and other anticompetitive practices in their home markets.    D1

 
The poverty rate for young children is rising in the United States, an analysis of Federal population figures shows. Nearly one of every four children under 6 in the nation is poor, the study found.    A10

 
The plentiful and cheap water that made the American West and Southwest rich, powerful and populous has now turned scarce and costly to find. A fourth straight year of drought has now descended on the region.    B8
 
Veteran of Earth Day 1970 looks to a new world
     B8

 
Fuel leak at shelters is reported
     B7

 
The sexually oriented businesses that are banned in Cincinnati can be found across the river in Newport, Ky., and other towns in a region of Kentucky that once was known as ''Cincinnati's playground.''    A12

 
Profits for Mapplethorpe estate
     C13

 
A tiny newspaper in North Carolina, The Washington Daily News, owes its Pulitzer Prize for distinguished public service to its editor's curiosity, combined with relentless digging by two of his reporters.    A10

 
Aliens who want to stay in the U.S. but do not have the appropriate papers are trying to take advantage of openings in the legalization program that resulted from court rulings. The issue has led to allegations of fraud.    A13

 
Women who undergo bypass surgery for heart disease are much sicker and slightly older than men who do, a study says. The finding might explain why those women were more likely to die as a result.    A15

 
Kidney peril found in the pain reliever Ibuprofen
     A11

 
Special schools for teaching are proposed
     A12

 
Indiana journal: In a court for youth, judgment by peers
     A10

 
Regional    B1-6

 
The busiest precinct for homicide in New York is the 34th, at Broadway and 183d Street, which last year had 99 of the record total of 1,905 killings in the city. This year the Police Department's statistics for the precinct are running well ahead of that.    B1

 
A livery cab driver was shot to death Saturday night in the Fordham section of the Bronx. Investigators said the killing, the fifth of a livery cab driver in five weeks, was not connected to the previous incidents.    B1

 
Livery car companies grew where there were few cabs
     B4

 
The Bensonhurst murder trial begins today. Difficulties with witnesses and other frustrations have left the prosecution with a weakened case and a broad swath of unanswered questions that are certain to be exploited by the defense.    B1

 
Religious leaders in Teaneck, N.J., grappled with how to reconcile the celebration and ritual surrounding Easter and Passover with the anguish and confusion their parishioners have experienced in the aftermath of the fatal shooting there.    B1

 
Renovators running out of abandoned buildings
     B5

 
Falling revenues force counties to trim services
     B2

 
Weather Service runs into opposition to L.I. radar plan
     B3

 
Business Digest    D1

 
SportsMonday

 
Baseball: Yankee bullpen does it all    C3

 
Expos top Mets    C4

 
Reds go to 5-0    C4

 
Column: Berkow on baseball
     C4

 
Basketball: Celtics defeat Knicks    C11

 
Boxing: Unshowy style carries Nunn    C2

 
Football: How free are free agents?    C1

 
Golf: Player wins PGA Seniors Championship    C5

 
Hockey: Capitals eliminate Devils    C1

 
Patrick fills Leetch's skates    C11

 
Features: SportsWorld Specials
     C2

 
Question Box    C4

 
Marathon: Olympic champion taking on Boston    C8

 
Racing: Closing in on D-Day    C7

 
Tennis: Graf captures title    C5

 
Arts/Entertainment

 
Running the other endowment    C13

 
A Soviet play in America    C13

 
Theater: ''Day Trips''    C15

 
Music: ''Siegfried'' at the Met    C14

 
Joe Arroyo at the Palladium    C15

 
Word and Image
 
The Westies' rise and fall
     C17

 
TV and the world's strife
     C16

 
''Shannon's Deal,'' NBC    C18

 
Obituaries    D10-11

 
Greta Garbo died in New York City. The enigmatic and elusive star of some of Hollywood's most memorable romantic movies of the 1930's and a 50-year focus of curiosity and myth, Miss Garbo was 84 years old.    A1

 
Spark M. Matsunaga, Senator of Hawaii
     D10

 
Sabicas, guitarist
     D10

 
Harold T. Fuerst, led preventable disease bureau
     D10

 
Editorials/Letters/Op-Ed

 
Editorials    A18

 
Europe's new home
 
The New York debt, unrolled
 
Killing the messenger
 
Topics: Truth in budgeting
 
Letters    A18

 
Tom Wicker: Bush and the blacks    A19

 
William Safire: Earth Day's ''planetism''    A19

 
Howard Husock: Housing the poor - without subsidies    A19

 
Alan Tonelson: Foreign policy by referendum    A19

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

TYPE: Summary

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April 16, 1990, Monday, Late Edition - Final

U.S. to Study Ways To Combat Frailty Among the Elderly

BYLINE: AP

SECTION: Section A; Page 15, Column 1; National Desk

LENGTH: 247 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, April 15

The Government will sponsor a three-year, $2.9 million research project intended to reduce or prevent frailty in the elderly, two Federal agencies announced today.
The agencies, the National Institute on Aging and the National Center for Nursing Research, said sites in eight states would be used for the project. 
More than 1,500 volunteers will participate in the program, which will include exercises ranging from the Oriental practice of tai chi to aerobic dance, education to make older people aware of accident risks and rehabilitation to improve physical conditioning.
''The new trials highlight the fact that frailty and injuries are not the inevitable outcome of aging,'' said Dr. T. Franklin Williams of the aging institute. ''Instead they are problems for which we have now found some very viable solutions.''
Among people over age 75, more than 32 percent are unable to climb stairs, 40 percent are unable to walk two blocks, 7 percent cannot walk across a small room and 22 percent cannot lift 10 pounds, the institute said. Forty-two percent of nursing home residents cannot get out of a chair without help, it said.
Dr. Ada Sue Hinshaw, director of the National Center for Nursing Research, said the project may help identify frail people who have treatable or preventable disabilities.
The project's research teams are based in universities or hospitals in Atlanta, Boston, New Haven, San Antonio, Seattle, Portland, Ore., Iowa City, and Farmington, Conn.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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The New York Times

April 16, 1990, Monday, Late Edition - Final

Review/Theater;
Bearing the Tragedies of Old Age

BYLINE: By MEL GUSSOW, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section C; Page 15, Column 1; Cultural Desk

LENGTH: 773 words

DATELINE: HARTFORD, April 12

Jo Carson's ''Day Trips'' is personal rather than issue oriented, but it raises troubling questions about family responsibility and about the prolongation of life by artificial means. Ms. Carson, a Texan storyteller and author, approaches her sensitive subject without sentimentality or its opposite, cynicism.
The play, which is having its East Coast premiere at the Hartford Stage, is evidently heartfelt, but it does have certain limitations. Small in scale if not in resonance, ''Day Trips'' is a mosaic of failing memory rather than a full-fledged dramatization. It lacks the poetic intensity of a play like Arthur Kopit's ''Wings,'' and it has an indefinite destination. After the last word, the audience waits for a conclusion or a coda, which, it is suggested, can only come in life. 
By not reaching for a statement, ''Day Trips'' distinguishes itself from case history or docudrama. The play should speak to many families, in particular to people who are forced to assume parental control of their aging parents when serious infirmity strikes and death seems to be a hovering but distant presence.
Detailing a woman's concern for her mother who has Alzheimer's disease and for her grandmother who suffers from her own delusions, the play moves from present to past, from reality to recurrent dreams. In performance, a potentially fragmented play achieves fluidity.
Michael Engler, the director, and four talented actresses help to clarify the sometimes confusing time span. The scenery by Loy Arcenas removes the play from rigid domestic confines, creating an impressionistic indoor-outdoor setting in which a bedroom door leads directly to a pastoral landscape.
The granddaughter is portrayed by two actresses, Susan Pellegrino as the character in the play, Suzanna Hay as storyteller. In Ms. Carson's hands this method is made to seem organic, as two voices for a single character alternate in acting out a tale of prolonged devotion.
The mother (Isa Thomas) shows all signs of advancing Alzheimer's. Her memory is devastated and her reactions range from the most withdrawn to sudden, willful outbursts of anger. To add to the granddaughter's predicament, the grandmother (Helen Stenborg) combines stubbornness with a selective forgetfulness.
She insists on living alone, barricading herself behind a wall of suspicion (with three locks on every door) while making excessive demands on her relatives. Her granddaughter is forced to become, in the author's words, a double ''care keeper.'' Shuttling (on day trips) from one matriarch to the other, Ms. Pellegrino scarcely has time to assert her own identity. Neither older woman is remotely helpful. While they are severely lacking in compassion, the granddaughter is unable to be less than dutiful.
If anything, the grandmother, who still has areas of lucidity, is more of a hindrance than her more disabled daughter. In the play's most moving performance Ms. Stenborg enhances her character by finding a humor beneath the feistiness, as in her grudging acceptance of a favorite cake. ''I guess we have to eat some of it,'' she says tersely while conveying that the cake is one of the rare delights of her declining years.
In one of the play's amusing though anxious interludes, Ms. Pellegrino chauffeurs Ms. Stenborg from drugstore to drugstore, searching for the pharmacist who last filled her prescription. Though the younger woman is increasingly frustrated by the experience, she realizes that the repetition of remembered ways is what keeps her grandmother sane.
The need to maintain the status quo, which is, of course, an impossible status to bear, reaches a crisis when the grandmother is hospitalized and the doctors refuse to consider her as a terminal patient. The old woman wants to die; they insist on preserving her life. Agonizingly, the granddaughter wonders, ''Can death be a gift?''
One mark of the play's acuity is that such a question seems selfless. It is not the granddaughter who wants to free herself from a burden, but a parent who, in Samuel Beckett's phrase, simply wants to embrace ''the close of a long day.''
 
AT JOURNEY'S END - DAY TRIPS, by Jo Carson; directed by Michael Engler; set design, Loy Arcenas; costume design, Catherine Zuber; lighting design, Pat Collins; sound design, David Budries; dramaturge, Greg Leaming; production stage manager, Barbara Reo; assistant stage manager, Ruth E. Sternberg. Presented by Hartford Stage, Mark Lamos, artistic director; David Hawkanson, managing director. At Hartford.
 
Pat...Susan Pellegrino
Storyteller...Suzanna Hay
Ree and Irene...Isa Thomas
Rose...Helen Stenborg

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: photo: Susan Pellegrino in ''Day Trips.'' (T. Charles Erickson)

TYPE: Review

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April 16, 1990, Monday, Late Edition - Final

BUSINESS DIGEST

SECTION: Section D; Page 1, Column 1; Financial Desk

LENGTH: 642 words


THE ECONOMY
 
The cost of health insurance for the elderly is rising sharply, straining the budgets of millions of people who live on Social Security checks and fueling demands for tighter regulation of this insurance. The monthly cost of many types of ''medigap'' insurance, which helps the elderly and disabled to pay medical bills not covered by Medicare, rose at least 20 percent this year. Some medigap premiums increased more than 50 percent. [Page A1.] 
 
The Administration may extend antitrust laws to strike at American subsidiaries of foreign companies that are found to engage in price-fixing, the carving up of markets and other anti-competitive practices in their home markets. Under the plan, the Government could file antitrust lawsuits against the foreign-owned companies for damage their collusion might cause to American concerns operating abroad. [D1.]
 
The bond market has been ignoring the decline in oil prices. Analysts say the market's caution is justified, with prices unlikely to remain low over the long term. Consequently, any drop in inflation resulting from the weakness in oil is likely to be short-lived and is unlikely to have much effect on interest rates. [D1.]
 
INTERNATIONAL
 
The trade agreement between Canada and the United States, intended to eliminate virtually all tariffs and duties by 1999, is already having some unexpected grass-roots side effects, promoting a wide array of bilateral business and civic partnerships. Provincial and state governments are pursuing several new joint economic-development programs. [D1.]
 
Communism has experienced a success in rural Czechoslovakia. Over the last 20 years, the yield of Czechoslovak farms has doubled to reach Western levels. [D4.]
 
The war against apartheid is proving to be good business for manufacturers of the politically relevant T-shirt. [D4.]
 
COMPANIES
 
There were a number of factors behind H. J. Heinz's decision not to buy tuna trapped in nets that could kill dolphins. The company was extensively lobbied by environmental groups. In addition, there was an internal corporate debate that was ''almost theological in tone,'' the company's chairman said. [D1.]
 
THE MEDIA BUSINESS
 
The decision to cancel the publication of a book that addresses subjects of acute sensitivity to Time Warner has set off a bitter dispute about who killed the book and why. [D1.]
 
A French advertising conglomerate has made a striking move to establish itself as an international marketer. The BDDP Group of Paris is buying a 40 percent stake in Wells, Rich, Greene for an undisclosed sum. Randall Rothenberg: Advertising. [D1.]
 
There is a newspaper explosion in Poland. More than 500 daily, weekly and monthly newspapers have been started since the Solidarity movement came to power last year. The papers are trying to defy the conventional wisdom that most new publications are unlikely to survive. [D8.]
 
The Deutsch ad agency has taken on the toughest client it has ever had - itself. Deutsch is beginning an unusual campaign to sell its brain power to prospective clients. Ad Scene. [D8.]
 
ABC has made a serious move toward prime-time leadership next fall with the unexpected success of ''Twin Peaks.'' [D8.]
 
TODAY'S COLUMNS
 
Senator Joseph R. Biden is involved in a bitter confrontation with the nation's leading Federal judges over his plan to make the judiciary more accountable for keeping the court system efficient. Stephen Labaton: Business and the Law. [D2.]
 
Why does UAL stock continue to trade around $160 a share, even though the company and its unions value their latest buyout agreement at $201 a share? Traders say ''too many people got burned'' when the previous deal for the airline company collapsed. Market Place. [D6.]

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

TYPE: Summary

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The New York Times

April 19, 1990, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

San Francisco Journal;
And Yet Again, the Earth Trembles For a Tiny Band of 1906 Survivors

BYLINE: By JANE GROSS, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section A; Page 14, Column 4; National Desk

LENGTH: 967 words

DATELINE: SAN FRANCISCO, April 18

In the gloom before dawn, while most of the city slept on, undisturbed by memory or geology, a dwindling band of survivors of the 1906 earthquake assembled today to commemorate the day the earth shook and the sky burned.
Their 5:12 A.M. sojourn at Lotta's Fountain, a turn-of-the-century gathering spot in downtown San Francisco, is an annual event here, the first in a daylong series of festivities. But this year it was celebrated with particular fervor.
It followed by 12 hours the six-month anniversary of October's temblor, a mere 7.1 on the Richter scale of ground motion, as compared with the ruinous 8.3 shudder 84 years ago. 
And it came on a day when the Bay Area was rocked by a swarm of moderate earthquakes on the San Andreas Fault. The series of dozens of quakes, the strongest of them a 5.4 on the Richter scale, began at 6:37 this morning and rattled cupboard doors and nerves throughout the day.
Today's earthquakes, like October's jolt, centered near Watsonville, caused rockslides, scattered power interruptions and cracked chimneys in Santa Cruz and Santa Clara Counties. In San Francisco and Alameda Counties, the ground shuddered, the skyscrapers swayed and the mental-health telephone lines reported a surge of callers.
But for the elderly survivors, today's quakes barely deserved notice. When the hardest of them hit, at 6:54 A.M., the old-timers were at 20th and Church Streets in the Mission District here, spraying a ceremonial coat of gold paint on a fire hydrant that is said to have gushed water in 1906 when most of the city's hydrants gave nothing but a muddy trickle.
None of the survivors batted an eyelash, continuing to sip Bloody Marys and reminisce about the '06 blaze that leveled 490 blocks, destroyed 250,000 homes and blackened the sky at noon while making it bright as day at midnight.
''Had a quake, did we?'' said Jim Downey, 88 years old, when he was told that Mother Nature had joined the party, unbeknownst to him. ''What time was it? How big?'' Mr. Downey and his 84-year-old brother, Jack, were the spring chickens at today's events, which included survivors as old as 104, many of them straining against hearing aids or leaning on canes. Some were accompanied by children, grandchilden and great-grandchildren, all reared on stories of The Big One.
The survivors came dressed with the formality of another age, the men in black bowlers and stiff suits, the women in white cotton gloves and coats with fur collars. They laid a wreath to honor the dead and sang a tremulous version of ''San Francisco, Open Your Golden Gate,'' none of them needing the lyric sheets that were passed out to the Candlestick Park crowd last fall when the World Series resumed after the earthquake.
Most of the survivors were small children in 1906 and remember the day more as a carnival of exciting and unexpected events than as a tragedy. But Cora Luchetti, who is 90, mourns anew each April 18 for her father, who was crushed to death beneath a falling telephone pole while driving his horse and wagon to market to stock the family's fruit store.
Sidney P. Amber, spry at 104, lives with his 95-year-old wife, Ruth, in the Broadmoor retirement home here, where the Pretty Big One, as October's quake is known, rocked the dining room at supper time. Mr. Amber found himself stupefied, as he had been in 1906 and as many Bay Area residents were today when the swarm of mild quakes stirred old anxieties.
''You're absolutely numb, petrified,'' Mr. Amber said, describing the feelings that immediately follow a temblor. ''For those seconds, you can't move. They say on TV what you should do - go under a door frame or a table. But you can't stand. You can't think. You can't talk. You're helpless.''
Because of the events of 1906, April is Earthquake Awareness Month in California. As a rule, the duck-and-cover drills and other programs are sparsely attended, but this year has been different because of those 15 terrifying seconds in October.
At noontime on Tuesday, for instance, workers in the financial district flocked to a preparedness rally in the shadow of the quake-damaged Embarcadero Freeway, scooping up survival guides offered by local utilities and telephone companies, the police and fire departments and various relief agencies. The most popular booth at the rally belonged to the United States Geological Survey, the nation's largest earth science agency, which has tallied about 6,000 shocks and aftershocks in the Bay Area since the Oct. 17 quake, with the highest concentration of seismic activity in the last few weeks.
Lines of people at the survey's booth watched a computerized animation of all that jiggling, examined a block-by-block map of the Hayward Fault in the East Bay, which is said to be overdue for a Big One, and asked the geologist on duty lots of questions. After today's shudders, the strongest since October, the survey expects longer lines and more nervous queries at its booth at Sunday's Earth Day celebration here.
As time passes, there are fewer and fewer '06 survivors at the ceremonies here, a dozen this year at the predawn events, with about 100 more accepting invitations for a midday ferry ride on the San Francisco Bay.
Among those who died this year was John James McDonald, 90, who was left an orphan by the 1906 earthquake. In last fall's temblor, Mr. McDonald fell in the bathroom and suffered head injuries, forcing him to quit his bachelor apartment for a convalescent home in Monterey.
The oldtimers bring to the jolts and jiggles of recent months a welcome equanimity, a balm for Bay Area residents who have less historical perspective and more frazzled nerves.
''You'll have quakes here, you can expect 'em,'' Mr. Amber said. ''But I won't be around much longer to see 'em or feel 'em.''

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: photo: ''Had a quake, did we?'' said Jim Downey, right, 88 years old, when he was told that the Bay Area had moderate earthquakes yesterday. Mr. Downey and his 84-year-old brother, Jack, center, survivors of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, took part in a ceremony commemorating the event.

Copyright 1990 The New York Times Company



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The New York Times

April 19, 1990, Thursday, Late Edition - Final
Correction Appended

HEALTH;
Hurdle for Preventive Medicine: Insurance

BYLINE: By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL

SECTION: Section B; Page 10, Column 3; National Desk

LENGTH: 1441 words

At a time when physicians are increasingly likely to recommend preventive health measures from mammograms to cholesterol checks, patients are often faced with the discovery that insurers will not pay the bills.
Although the effectiveness of screening and counseling has now been proved in many areas, the insurance industry is still taking its first tentative steps in the field.
''One of the major dilemmas of a doctor trying to incorporate preventive services into practice is the payment issue,'' said Dr. Robert Lawrence, chairman of the Division of Primary Care at the Harvard Medical School. ''It costs nothing for a physician to order a mammogram, but if the patient is stuck with a large out-of-pocket expense, she won't come back for the next one.''
Private health insurers generally do not cover preventive medical services: immunizations, counseling about smoking and weight loss, and screening tests like mammography to detect silent disease. The chief reasons private insurance companies give are the difficulty of pricing services like counseling; the fact that insurers see their role as covering costs of disease, not routine health care, and the rising cost of insurance to consumers as more patients seek screening tests. 
 
'A Ludicrous Conspiracy'
Medicare, the Government insurance program for the elderly and disabled, is prohibited by law from paying for preventive measures other than those specifically mentioned in the Medicare Act. The only one currently covered for all elderly is the vaccine against pneumococcal pneumonia; PAP smears to screen for cervical and uterine cancer will be added on July 1.
With such erratic coverage, experts say most preventive care in this country is financed by what one called ''a ludicrous conspiracy'' between doctors and patients. ''On the requisition the physician puts down 'breast lump' or 'rule out cancer,' and then the onus is on the third-party payer,'' Dr. Lawrence said. ''You have to perjure your record routinely to do right for your patient.''
Insurers defend their circumspection, saying that reimbursing a patient for a mammogram is akin to paying a car owner for an oil check. ''The traditional nature of insurance - car insurance, homeowner's insurance - is to pay for unpredicted events,'' said Stan Carson, director of the Center for Corporate Public Involvement, a branch of the Health Insurance Association of America and the American Council of Life Insurance. ''Prevention is not that. Traditionalists still say we shouldn't cover it.''
But now, driven by consumer pressures and legislative arm-twisting, many insurers are rethinking that position.
 
Uncertainty Over Economics
To attract health-conscious customers, a very few insurance companies now offer modified plans that will cover screening tests for a slightly higher premium. ''Any time we provide new services, that raises the cost,'' said Mr. Carson, who thinks insurers should move into the prevention field. ''We're still trying to figure out the economics.''
In the last two years more than half the states have enacted legislation requiring insurers to reimburse patients for routine mammograms, which generally cost more than $100, as part of new or renewed policies. Several bills pending in Congress would add the test to Medicare as well.
One in 10 American women will get breast cancer, and early detection through mammography and physician examinations dramatically enhances the chance of a cure.
The current pressure on insurers springs in large part from a new legitimacy enjoyed by preventive medicine. In 1984 the Federal Government recruited dozens of health experts to form the United States Preventive Services Task Force and charged it with surveying the rapidly accumulating literature on hundreds of preventive measures.
The panel's final report, issued last summer, endorsed a complex schedule of periodic PAP smears and mammograms, regular blood pressure and cholesterol checks, vaccinations for the elderly and counseling.
''The task force report was a significant milestone for preventive medicine,'' said Dr. Gordon De Friese, director of the Health Services Research Center at the University of North Carolina, a member of the panel.
But traditional health insurance provides little for outwardly healthy adults and critics say this focus allows avoidable conditions to flourish and kill.
 
'A Terrible Shame'
''It's a terrible shame that the two big guns of cancer screening, mammography and sigmoidoscopy, are often not covered,'' said Dr. Daniel Miller, director of the Strang Clinic in New York, who has tried to interest insurers in early cancer detection for a decade. For example, sigmoidoscopy, inspection of the lower colon with a lighted tube, can find precancerous lesions or early cancer when no symptoms are apparent.
Representative Mary Rose Oakar, an Ohio Democrat who has championed the cause of mammography, complains that insurance pays for strokes caused by high blood pressure but not for routine blood pressure checks; for cocaine addicted babies, but not drug treatment for pregnant women. ''Our national strategy is painfully remiss,'' she said. ''We do it all backwards.''
Experts say health maintenance organizations (H.M.O.'s), which market full service care under one roof for a set fee, are the only places where patients regularly obtain preventive services as part of normal coverage. A growing number of preferred provider organizations, in which patients obtain discounted care by visiting only the group's pool of doctors, are also marketing prevention. But many consumers avoid these ''pre-paid'' plans because of the restrictions they impose.
For traditional insurers, who reimburse by ascribing a dollar value to each service, prevention poses thorny problems. ''Insurers have a hard time figuring out how to pay for the fuzzy things we feel are so important, like counseling,'' Dr. De Friese said. ''They're much more enthusiastic about immunizations, which have a beginning and an end.'' The Preventive Services Task Force report recommends that doctors periodically advise patients on numerous subjects, from seat belts to exercise to smoking cessation.
 
Using Business Judgment
Another source of reluctance is cost. ''Insurance companies have to be actuarially responsible and when they do estimates, it is not always clear that this is a good business proposition,'' Dr. De Friese said.
Although preventive efforts avert serious diseases and their costly consequences, the saving is often offset by dramatic rises in use of those services. More patients visit the doctor and, thanks to a heightened level of awareness, there is more diligent following up on problems that are unearthed. ''Prevention may still be a sensible investment, but what it offers is lives, not a solution to the medical cost problem,'' said Dr. Louise Russell, an economist at Rutgers University and an expert in the field.
Both private and governmental insurers are making fledgling efforts to pay, but coverage is often patchy. Since state legislatures moved in to force the issue two years ago, many insurers now cover mammograms.
In 1988, the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association of America issued guidelines for covering preventive services to its 74 member organizations. To date, less than a quarter of the plans are known to offer preventive coverage, almost always by hooking clients into affiliated prepaid plans.
 
Mammograms for Under $50
In the public sector, the short-lived Medicare Catastrophic Health Care Act, which was repealed last year, included coverage of periodic mammograms for up to $50. Congress is now scrutinizing several bills to allow some payment for the test. A small number of radiologists offer screening mammograms for under $50, since they are simpler than those done to evaluate suspected cancers.
For the poor, the biggest share of prevention dollars disbursed through Medicaid are reserved for children. Even cholesterol and blood pressure testing are not covered for healthy adults.
Both government and private insurers have pilot projects under way to determine the effectiveness and costs of covering prevention.
Insurance professionals seem startled by the push to take on the new preventive role. And if there is blame to be laid for their initially sluggish response, they say it must be shared with the companies that buy insurance for employees. ''It's not as if the insurance industry is standing with its arms folded saying 'no!' '' Mr. Carson said. ''We respond to the market and if employers tell us they want preventive coverage, it'll be there.''

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

CORRECTION-DATE: April 20, 1990, Friday, Late Edition - Final

 CORRECTION:
A chart on the Health page yesterday about preventive health procedures misstated the recommended frequency of mammograms to detect breast cancer for women over 50. It is one to two years, not every two years.

GRAPHIC: Table showing who covers preventive procedures

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April 20, 1990, Friday, Late Edition - Final

WEEKENDER GUIDE

BYLINE: By Andrew L. Yarrow

SECTION: Section C; Page 1, Column 4; Weekend Desk

LENGTH: 692 words


FRIDAY
 
FILMS FROM HUNGARY
A cinematic look at Communist and pre-Communist Hungary will be offered in a film series opening tonight at the Hungarian House, 213 East 82d Street. It will begin with ''Sinbad'' (1970), Zoltan Huszaruk's portrait of love and life in turn-of-the-century Budapest, and continue on April 27 with ''My Way Home'' (1964), Miklos Jancso's film about a schoolboy captured shortly after the Soviets occupied the country in 1945. The last two films will be ''Confidence'' (1979), Istvan Szabo's tale of assumed identity, love and mistrust during World War I, on May 4, and Peter Gothar's ''Time Stands Still'' (1982), a story of two boys who idealize America in post-1956 Budapest, on May 11. Screenings are at 7:30 P.M. Tickets are $6; $5 for students and the elderly. Information: 861-7362 or 879-8893. 
 
RHYTHMIC VARIETY
During a half-century of tap dancing, James (Buster) Brown has played the vaudeville circuit, appeared on stage and screen, and performed with the likes of Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, Count Basie and Dizzy Gillespie. Now a member of the Copasetics, Mr. Brown will join the Peggy Spina Tap Company, a nine-year-old ensemble noted for its rhythmic variety, for three performances this weekend at the Dance S. Studio, 115 Prince Street in SoHo. The program, ''Foot Fetishes II,'' will include four solos by Mr. Brown. Ms. Spina's company will present eight other works, including three premieres that she described as a ''duet for African Talking Drum and dancer'' choreographed by Theresa McCleary, and two compositions by Joel Forrester, a ''Baroque jazz fantasy'' and a ''funk groove piece.'' Performances are tonight and tomorrow at 8 and Sunday at 7 P.M. Tickets are $10. Reservations: 674-8885.
 
THE FACES OF POVERTY
The faces and circumstances of poverty in the United States are all too many and varied; one in seven Americans and one in four children live below the officially defined poverty line. This vast swath of America -including urban youths, homeless veterans, Midwestern farmers, unemployed Appala-chian coal miners and Mexican-Americans living in Texas border towns - is the subject of a photographic exhibition that opened yesterday at the New-York Historical Society, 170 Central Park West, near 77th Street. The show, ''Below the Line: Living Poor in America,'' includes about 60 black-and-white images by Eugene Richards, a photographer who was commissioned in 1986 by Consumers Union to capture the experiences of the country's poorest citizens for a book. The exhibition will be on view Tuesdays through Sundays from 10 A.M. to 5 P.M., through June 29. Admission is $3; $2 for the elderly, and $1 for children. Information: 873-3400.
 
SATURDAY
 
RUNNING IN TANDEM
For couples who run together, the Trevira Twosome in Central Park is the ideal event. The 10-mile race for male-female partners will begin at 10:30 A.M. at Tavern on the Green, near West 67th Street, and the front-runners are expected to reach the finish line - also at the restaurant - between 11:15 and 11:30 A.M. The event, which is expected to attract 4,000 runners, was the first couples' race when it was started in 1979. A Trevira two-mile race will begin at 10:32 A.M. Registration is closed, but spectators may watch the race at locations throughout the park. Information: 860-4455.
 
SUNDAY
 
SONTAG ON CULTURE
''Culture watching'' is what the Neuberger Museum at the State University College at Purchase is calling its three-part lecture series that begins on Sunday with the writer and critic Susan Sontag. Ms. Sontag's talk, ''Traditions of the New,'' examines ''modern'' ways of looking at the world. The series of Yaseen Lectures on Culture Watching, now in its eighth year, will continue on April 29 with the painter Eric Fischl and on May 6 with the novelist and poet Maya Angelou. Each talk will be at 4 P.M. in the university's Performing Arts Center and will be followed by a reception at the museum. Tickets are $14, or $36 for the series. The university is near Exit 28 (Lincoln Avenue) of the Hutchinson River Parkway. Information: (914) 251-6200.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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April 22, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

When or Whether to Retire: New Ways to Handle Strain

BYLINE: By TAMAR LEWIN

SECTION: Section 1; Part 1, Page 1, Column 1; National Desk

LENGTH: 1763 words

It has been three years since Steven August, now 61 years old, lost his job as associate creative director at a New York advertising agency, and although he has patched together some freelance work and teaches two continuing education courses, a terrible sense of displacement is still with him.
''I love what I used to do and I hate being tossed on the scrapheap,'' Mr. August said recently. ''There are times when I feel like I'm not worth anything anymore, when I'll be walking down the street and I'll pick somebody out and think, How can that guy have a job when I don't.''
 
Golden Picture Is Blurred
Statistics showing the average age of retirement dropping every decade suggest a golden picture: people leaving jobs in favor of leisure, a welcome reward after years of labor. But as Mr. August and thousands of others have discovered, the reality can be quite different. A recent study by a philanthropy concerned with the elderly found a surprisingly large number of older people who say they would like to be back at work. 
''Of the older people who are out of the work force, half are satisfied, a quarter can't work because of their health or family situations, and the other quarter are very unhappy about the situation they're in,'' said Thomas W. Moloney, senior vice president of the philanthropy, the Commonwealth Fund. ''That quarter represents about two million people, so it's worth worrying about, especially since we are about to face widespread labor shortages and business will need the contribution these people could be making.''
 
A Boon to Some Employers
The leisure that troubles many older people may become a boon to employers facing an ever-shrinking number of qualified workers as the children born in the baby boom after World War II grow old.
Around the country, a number of companies have started programs to hire retirees for part-time work, to delay retirement by making it possible to move to less demanding jobs, or t allow employees a brief period to try out retirement with the option of returning to work if they do not like it. Others are experimenting with transition programs that help prepare workers for retirement or that train them for volunteer work or second careers. The efforts include these:
* Xerox, in Rochester, has a program that allows older production workers to move into less strenuous jobs. Under a union contract there, people who are 55 or over and have been with the company at least 15 years can move to less demanding jobs that do not involve rotating shifts. About 100 people are in the program, earning an hourly rate between their old pay and the company's normal rate for the less-arduous job.
* Polaroid, in Cambridge, Mass., offers what it calls ''rehearsal retirement'' - one man lasted only three days before returning to work - as well as an unusual program that pays a year's salary and tuition at either Harvard or Lesley College for workers who have been with the company at least 10 years and want to take up new careers teaching elementary or secondary school.
* The Travelers, in Hartford, started what it called a job bank for its retirees in 1981, from which it hires people for temporary jobs. By 1985, the insurance concern's demand for the retirees was so great that the Travelers began recruiting retirees from other companies. But several other local insurance companies have also started hiring retirees, so on a typical day the Travelers has about 120 of its own retirees working but only about 60 from other companies.
Most American men now leave the work force before they turn 63, and with life expectancy increasing, retirement is becoming a longer phase of life for almost everyone.
In 1930, two of every three men 60 and over were in the work force. In 1950, half worked, and by 1980 the figure had dropped to one in three. Even though the average retirement age has stabilized recently, the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that by the year 2000 only one in four men 60 and over will be working. And although there has been a surge of women into the work force, most women still leave the work force before they turn 60.
 
Misleading Retirement Answers
To be sure, many early retirees are happier not working, and in several polls and surveys most say they retired voluntarily. But those who study retirement say that may be misleading.
''It's a mistake to talk about voluntary versus involuntary retirement,'' said Joseph F. Quinn, an economics professor at Boston College. ''What do you call it when circumstances change, the pension plan doesn't reward further work and there's a general feeling that you're not valued, so you leave. That would be considered voluntary, but it's not what the person really wanted.''
Surveys by the American Association of Retired Persons have found that from a quarter to a half of older workers and retirees would delay retirement if they could work fewer hours.
''It's clear that it doesn't make sense to set up a system where people go from working all the time to working not at all,'' said Professor Quinn. ''And yet that's how the workplace has been structured. One week you're working 40 hours and the next week you retire and you have no work.''
Part-time jobs are attractive to older workers not just because of waning energies but because, by keeping their earnings low, they can still collect full Social Security benefits. Retirees under 65 receive reduced benefits if they earn more than $6,840 a year. From 65 to 69 the threshold for reduced benefits is $9,360 a year. After 70 there is no earnings test.
Mr. Moloney of the Commonwealth Fund said about 10 million people in manufacturing companies lost their jobs in the 1980's and many never found new work. And he said older workers at large companies were still being offered inducements to leave early because so many younger workers were trying to make their way up the ladder.
''The average male retirement age at firms with over 1,000 employees, places like I.B.M., is down to 59,'' Mr. Moloney said. ''What I tell older workers is to look at the smaller companies.''
 
Potential in Older Workers
Even some large employers see new potential in older workers, given the severe labor shortages in some parts of the country, particularly in the Boston-Washington corridor. There is also increasing concern that with the baby boom generation in the work force, the baby bust generation that followed will not meet the nation's labor demands.
''At our 'Ability Is Ageless' job fair last fall we had 130 employers, up from 100 the year before,''' said Sharon Perkins, director of the New York City Department for the Aging's senior employment division. ''And we would have had more, but there wasn't room. With the traditional labor market shrinking, employers are becoming much more receptive to older people, who often have just the kind of problem-solving skills that are needed in a service economy.''
 
Different Positions Attract
Many older workers take jobs quite different from their career work. Through Travelers' job bank, Dayson DeCourcy, who spent 30 years at the company, first as an insurance agent and later as a public affairs executive, now works 28 hours a week in its litigation department. He reads files and puts stick-on notes on those items he thinks will be important to the case to flag the lawyer's attention.
''I have a purple passion for it,'' said Mr. DeCourcy, 69. ''I like the people, the job is magnificently exciting, I deal with multimillion dollar cases and I'm learning where the bodies are buried.''
While Mr. DeCourcy would not say how much he is paid, he said he earned more an hour than he did just before he retired.
But it is not only money that attracts retirees back to Travelers. Anna Martino, 74, who retired from her job as an accounting supervisor in 1978, came back part time to the personnel department in 1986 after finding that her hobbies, crafts and travel did not keep her busy enough.
''When you're working, you get up, you get dressed, you meet new people,'' she said. ''I have friends who are just home all the time and it seems they're they've gotten into a rut and don't know how to get out.''
 
Jobs With Less Prestige
Many retirees are willing to take jobs with far less prestige than their career work.
''I used to be a purchasing manager for a bank, and then I retired and in six months I'd done everything I'd been planning for the last 30 years, so I wanted to work again,'' said Bill Kramlinger, 67, a courier at the Minnesota Title Company in Minneapolis, where the courier department is staffed entirely with retirees working in pairs. ''I work half the month and I look forward to a few weeks off while my partner works. Then when I'm getting bored, it's time to come back.''
Still, many older workers share a deep certainty that no one is interested in hiring them. Mr. August, the former advertising executive, said there were many subtle ways in which older workers were discouraged from applying for a job.
''You know what they're telling you when someone says the creative director at a certain agency is only 40, and they don't know how he'll feel about talking to you,'' he said. ''Or they'll say it must have been great to be in advertising back when it was fun.''
When Michael A. Leven, the president of Days Inn, began trying to hire retirees as reservation agents, he got no response to newspaper advertisements aimed at older citizens. The reason: Many had been rejected so often that they did not believe the ad.
 
Cutting the Absentee Rate
Mr. Leven was desperate, since his reservation agents at the time had a 30 percent absentee rate and a 180 percent turnover rate. ''I knew they were out there, so we sat down and thought about where seniors gathered and sent people out to put up notices at senior centers,'' Mr. Leven said. ''Then they began to believe that we wanted them.''
About 130 of Days Inn's 600 reservations agents are over 60, absenteeism is down to 3 percent and the average time on the job is up to three years. But some older people remain skeptical.
Mr. Leven said he recently had a call from a woman who had seen an ad but had not believed the company hired older citizens. She said she had called the toll-free reservations number and asked to talk to an older worker. The woman who took the call said she was 78. Still unconvinced, the caller then asked to talk to the supervisor, who told her he was 73.
''She was calling my office,'' Mr. Leven said, ''to say she finally believed us.''

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photos: ''I love what I used to do and I hate being tossed on the scrapheap,'' said Steven August, a 61-year-old who lost his job as associate creative director at a New York advertising agency three years ago (The New York Times/Michelle V. Agins); Bill Kramlinger, 67, who retired as a purchasing manager for a bank, works as a messenger at the Minnesota Title Company in Minneapolis, where the courier department is staffed entirely with retirees. (The New York Times/Steve Woit); graph: percentage of men in each agegroup in the work force, 1964-1989 (Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics) (pg. 26)

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April 22, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

New York Is Ordered to Pay for Acupuncture

BYLINE: By RONALD SULLIVAN

SECTION: Section 1; Part 1, Page 38, Column 1; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 526 words

New York Medicaid authorities were ordered by a New York State judge last week to pay the cost of acupuncture treatment for poor people, even when it is not performed by a physician.
The judge, Acting Justice Phyllis Gangel-Jacob of State Supreme Court in Manhattan, ruled that since medical authorities have found acupuncture to be a valid therapeutic treatment, Federal Medicaid regulations required that state Medicaid programs pay for it under appropriate circumstances.
To deny payment would be irrational and inhumane, she said. 
Under the current policy, Medicaid pays the cost of acupuncture only if it is performed by a physician who is certified by the Department of Education to perform acupuncture and if the treatment is part of an overall medical or hospital treatment plan.
 
Treatments for Arthritis
The ruling was a victory for Michael Gabai, a poor Soviet emigre from the Flatbush section of Brooklyn who was advised by his physician to seek acupuncture treatments for a painful arthritic condition that had confined him to a wheelchair.
While the treatments were successful and enabled Mr. Gabai, 62 years old, to walk again with much less pain, he was forced to discontinue them because he could not afford them and because Medicaid refused to pay on the ground that they were performed by an acupuncturist who was not a physician.
All payment was denied even though the acupuncturist was licensed by the State Department of Education.
Under its current policy, Medicaid, a state program that pays the cost of health care for the poor, has reimbused New York City hospitals and doctors for the acupuncture treatment of more than 3,000 drug addicts. Acupuncture has been found to reduce the addicts' craving for drugs. The treatment is also receiving growing medical acceptance as a way to alleviate chronic pain. In China, where the first textbook on acupuncture was written more than 2,000 years ago, the therapy, which involves inserting needles into specific areas of the body, is widely accepted for treating a variety of ailments and diseases.
 
Private Insurer's Policy
Empire Blue Cross and Blue Shield, the state's largest private health insurer, follows the same State Health Department policy and pays for acupuncture only when it is performed by a physician certified to practice it.
Medicare, the Federal health program for the elderly, does not pay for acupuncture treatment.
In the decision, Justice Gangel-Jacob said arguments by the state and New York City social services officials that Mr. Gabai did not qualify for Medicaid payments were neither ''rational'' nor ''humane.''
''Social legislation must be interpreted and enforced in a reasonable and humane manner,'' she said.
Roberta Certner, a licensed acupuncturist and head of the New York State Association for Practicing Acupuncturists, said she was pleased with the ruling.
She said there were 163 licensed practitioners in the state who are required to have at least 10 years of experience before being eligible for a Department of Education license. Physicians are required to have only 300 hours of instruction before being certified.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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April 22, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

EDUCATORS CHEER ENROLLMENT GAINS

BYLINE: By DENNIS HEVESI

SECTION: Section 1; Part 1, Page 31, Column 1; National Desk

LENGTH: 932 words

Education experts say they are heartened by Census Bureau statistics indicating that the percentage of high school graduates who go on to college jumped almost 10 points in the past decade.
While some experts said the data collected in a survey late last year show that recent education reform efforts are taking hold, several raised questions about precisely what the numbers mean and what segment of the population they represent. To a large extent, the increase may be attributable to students over the usual college age.
''I do think it's an encouraging figure,'' said Nan Keohane, president of Wellesley College. ''It must mean that some of these people are turned on to education, are excited about what it's doing for them and that they don't want to stop.'' 
''That, of course, is the best news in the world for us,'' Dr. Keohane added.
 
Goals Identified
The Secretary of Education, Lauro F. Cavazos, said he was encouraged by the Census Bureau numbers. ''Our own Department of Education figures confirm that many more high school graduates have identified career goals that can only be realized through college studies,'' he said.
Paul Siegel, chief of the education branch of the United States Census Bureau, said 58.9 percent of 16- to 34-year-olds who said they obtained a high school diploma in 1988 reported that they enrolled in a two-year or a four-year college. In 1978, the figure was 49.6 percent. ''There's this undeniable trend,'' Mr. Siegel said.
While the number of high school graduates has dropped in the last 10 years, a higher percentage are going on to college. Mr. Siegel noted that 58.9 percent represented about 1,575,000 of the 2,673,000 students who received a diploma in 1988, the latest year for which statistics have been tabulated. In 1978, 1.6 million of the nation's 3.2 million graduates enrolled in college.
The jump in enrollment is part of a trend in which comparatively untapped segments of the population -divorced women, veterans, older people and members of minority groups -are returning to school. That return has countered the effects on enrollment of the end of the baby boom.
 
Large Group of Dropouts
''There is a very large group of students who drop out and then, through one means or another, have opportunities to return,'' said John I. Goodlad, director of the Center for Education Renewal at the University of Washington. Of the students now entering college, 10 to 12 percent are beyond the usual age of high school graduates, he said. Total enrollment in American colleges increased to 13 million in 1988, from 12 million in 1980.
Craig Sautter of Evanston, Ill., who publishes College Bound, a newsletter for admissions officers and guidance counselors, said the new statistics indicated that ''the school reform movement of the last decade is making an impact on kids' minds.'' He added, ''They realize that the real economic world now requires something after high school.''
Dr. Keohane concurred. ''It is becoming clearer that our educational system is predicated on people having some training past high school to be able to take up the complicated jobs which are increasingly central to our economy,'' she said. Who Are These People?  While conceding that the numbers ''probably make sense,'' Robin Etter Zuniga, senior staff associate at the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education, said: ''Some of those census figures are so aggregated that it's hard to understand what they mean. The number intrigues me because I don't know who these people are.''
Ms. Zuniga questioned how many were traditional high school graduates and how many hold graduate equivalency diplomas. ''I'd want to know how many of them are going to two-year junior colleges and how many are at four-year institutions,'' she said. The census survey did not give such breakdowns.
Frank Burtnett, director of the National Association of College Admissions Officers, said he was not surprised by the increase because it relates in part to a rise in the percentage of students earning high school diplomas. In 1979, 71.4 percent of people aged 17 in the country graduated from high school - a national low. Since then, Mr. Burtnett said, the figure has risen to about 74 percent.
Mr. Burtnett raised another question about the census figures, pointing out that the respondents were merely asked whether they had enrolled in college. ''That could mean that they've signed up for just one class,'' he said.
Even so, Mr. Burtnett added, ''any experience that the individual has on a college campus is like a magnet.''
 
Most Applications Ever
The record levels of college applications in recent years, despite the end of the baby boom, has surprised college admissions officers, Mr. Sautter said.
Besides the increase in college-bound graduates, he said, intense marketing by the nation's universities and colleges - with some institutions spending as much as $2,000 on recruiting for every enrolled student - prompted the rise of what he called ''multiple applications.''
''Students knew it was a buyer's market and were out there with 10, 15 applications,'' Mr. Sautter said. ''You get a letter from DePaul inviting you to apply. Why not apply? In the past, a person would apply to five or six schools.''
The multiple-application phenomenon seems to be abating, Mr. Sautter said. Many colleges complained that they could no longer forecast how many of the applicants accepted would enroll, he said, and high school guidance counselors, sensitive to those complaints, began advising students against the practice.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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April 23, 1990, Monday, Late Edition - Final

After Struggle, Musical on Dr. King Is Opening

BYLINE: By SUZANNE CASSIDY, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section C; Page 11, Column 1; Cultural Desk

LENGTH: 1083 words

DATELINE: LONDON, April 22

Last Thursday, just four nights before the opening here of ''King,'' a new musical about the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the show's producers were trying to put a bright face on all the adversity they had experienced in bringing their musical to the London stage.
''In a crazy way, I'm happy we've had all of these problems,'' said one of the producers, Peter Hargitay, head of a Zurich-based public relations concern that specializes in crisis management. ''Without suffering, this musical would not be what it is.''
His co-producer, Hans Flury, a Swiss entertainment executive, shook his head ruefully. ''There could have sometimes been, perhaps, a little less suffering,'' he said. 
Mr. Flury could be forgiven for yearning for an easier ride. The incubation of the $5.4 million musical, which stars the American opera singer Simon Estes, a bass-baritone, has been exceptionally troubled. Now, after three postponements, ''King'' is to open Monday at the Piccadilly Theater in the West End despite a daunting series of setbacks that at one point included opposition from the King family.
 
A Series of Writers
The musical's troubles started early in the game. John Briley, an American screenwriter living in London, whose credits include ''Gandhi,'' was the original writer of ''King'' and one of its original producers. Mr. Briley left the project in February 1989 because, Mr. Hargitay said, ''contract negotiations broke down.'' He was replaced in June 1989 by another American writer, Ron Milner, whose book was discarded because, Mr. Hargitay said, it was ''too much like a documentary.'' Mr. Milner's successor last January was the American playwright Richard Nelson, author of the acclaimed ''Some Americans Abroad.''
Gotz Friedrich, head of the Deutsche Oper Berlin, was supposed to direct the show but had to withdraw last December, even before rehearsals began, for health reasons. The English director Graham Vick took over.
In March, the poet Maya Angelou, the show's lyricist, disassociated herself from the production because of the dearth of black Americans on its creative team. Then the King family withdrew its support because, family members said in a statement, it believed that ''the musical falls short of historical authenticity and that it trivializes Dr. King's legacy.''
The actions by Ms. Angelou and the King family prompted Mr. Vick and Mr. Nelson to resign. Ms. Angelou was replaced by the Scottish lyricist Alistair Beaton. Clarke Peters, an American member of the cast, was appointed to replace Mr. Vick. Lonne Elder 3d, another American writer (''Ceremonies in Dark Old Men''), was brought in to work on the book. The show's English composer, Richard Blackford, said Mr. Elder had been asked to inject ''a degree of authenticity that perhaps had not been there before.''
The numerous personnel changes may have bred some confusion among the cast members, but the objections of Ms. Angelou and the King family bred real doubt, Mr. Blackford said the other day. Cast members began to wonder, he said, if ''perhaps there was something wrong with the way in which we were going about the musical.''
 
'Everything Went Wrong'
Losing the support of Dr. King's widow, Coretta Scott King, whom he had drawn into the project nearly seven years ago, was an especially hard blow, Mr. Blackford said. The composer said he had been under the impression that negotiations for the support of the King estate were on track.
But, in March ''everything went wrong,'' he said. Shortly after the Kings' initial statement, in which the family said it would not endorse the musical, Archer D. Smith 3d, a lawyer for the King estate, also announced that the Kings were considering pursuing an injunction or some other form of legal action against the musical.
Meanwhile, Mr. Briley was seeking an injunction of his own in Federal District Court in Manhattan, alleging, according to The New York Law Journal, that while he was a producer associated with Mr. Blackford, he had paid the King estate more than $200,000 for the rights to produce a musical about Dr. King. A Federal judge said it was ''unlikely'' that Mr. Briley could prove his allegation and denied his request for a preliminary injunction.
Attempts to reach Mr. Briley through his London literary agent and his New York lawyer were unsuccessful.
While legal troubles were at full boil, Mr. Hargitay and Mr. Flury also fell out with Albert L. Nellum, a Washington businessman who had joined ''King'' as a co-producer in June 1989. Mr. Hargitay said Mr. Nellum had been responsible for generating financing for the show from black Americans and for serving as liaison with the King estate. But Mr. Hargitay said Mr. Nellum did not deliver on either account and left the production in March. Reached by telephone, Mr. Nellum said he had ''no comment at this time.''
 
Making Peace at Last
In early April, in an attempt to make peace with the Kings, Mr. Hargitay wrote a letter to Mrs. King asking for a meeting, and his request was granted, he said, ''within 24 hours.'' On April 6, in a turnaround, Mrs. King said in a statement that ''the estate has reconciled its differences with the producers of the musical, 'King,' in a meeting in Atlanta and telephone conference calls between Atlanta and London.''
''Given the present spirit surrounding the musical,'' the statement continued, ''I anticipate that 'King' will appropriately address the legacy of my husband.''
Though her schedule precludes her attendance at Monday's opening, Mrs. King said in the statement, her daughter, Yolanda King, is expected to represent the family there. Mrs. King and other family members plan to attend a benefit performance on May 23.
And what of the show itself? Mr. Hargitay said ''King'' has ''massively changed'' over the past two weeks. John Caird, who won a Tony Award for directing the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of ''Les Miserables,'' has been working full time as an adviser on ''King'' and, Mr. Blackford said, has wrought ''radical change.''
Although the 37 cast members have been subjected to upheavals that, in Mr. Hargitay's words, ''would have killed several armies,'' the cast remains largely intact. At least two of them, Mr. Estes and Cynthia Haymon, an American soprano, who is playing Mrs. King, have options in their contracts to transfer to Broadway should ''King'' succeed, Mr. Hargitay said.
''I will know Tuesday,'' he said, ''if Broadway is in our near future.''

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Simon Estes and Cynthia Haymon in a scene from ''King.'' (The New York Times/Catherine Ashmore)

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April 24, 1990, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

Evolution in Europe;
Polish Free-Market Planner Comes Under Solidarity Fire

BYLINE: By STEPHEN ENGELBERG, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section A; Page 15, Column 1; Foreign Desk

LENGTH: 691 words

DATELINE: GDANSK, Poland, April 23

The chief architect of Poland's transition to a free-market economy was questioned sharply today by a skeptical audience of Solidarity members, and he emphatically rejected calls for Government intervention to ease the hardships caused by his plan.
The official, Finance Minister Leszek Balcerowicz, stood firm as delegates at the Solidarity convention pelted him with questions and qualms for more than an hour about the Government's program of ''shock therapy'' for the economy.
''After 45 years of Communism, it was very difficult to find a program for the short term that would not lower living standards,'' Mr. Balcerowicz said. ''I know people are suffering a lot, sometimes approaching the limit of patience.'' 
But Mr. Balcerowicz appealed to the delegates for more time, and said he could not take any steps that would risk a return of high inflation.
 
In a Crucial Phase
He preached the Government's new gospel, saying the program had entered a crucial new phase in which the nation's economic rebirth would depend on the efforts of individual entrepreneurs.
The delegates - workers, doctors, lawyers and union activists from every region of Poland - said they saw scant evidence that capitalism was taking root to lessen the disruptions prompted by the first few months of the economic plan. They said factories remain largely state-owned and banks are still virtually nonexistent and they questioned whether more than a few Poles had enough money to become investors.
''How can you be sure the program will not end in social upheaval?'' one delegate asked. ''Do you realize that you are being criticized by old-age pensioners, farmers, single mothers, jobless? You speak of change. Can you tell me when people will feel things are getting better?''
The questioning of the Finance Minister came a day after Jacek Kuron, the Labor Minister, acknowledged to the delegates that Poland had not yet developed a social safety net for those dislocated by the economic changes.
 
A Calculated Risk
Mr. Balcerowicz has the reputation of being a financial technocrat without political ambitions. He gives few speeches and his appearance today at the convention was a calculated risk, an effort to quiet a rising chorus of dissatisfaction over economic issues within the ranks of Solidarity. Polls show that the Solidarity-led Government enjoys significant, but declining, support for the economic plan.
After Mr. Balcerowicz left the convention rostrum, the delegates applauded politely. Some said in later interviews that they found his defense of the program persuasive, while others criticized him for failing to offer more concrete proposals.
Since Jan. 1, Poland has been in the midst of the most ambitious restructuring ever of a centrally planned, formerly Communist economy. While other nations in Eastern Europe have chosen less drastic measures, Poland has tried to wipe out almost overnight the system of subsidies and central control that characterized 45 years of Communist rule.
The initial results of the program's imposition on Jan. 1 was a sharp rise in prices and what the somewhat unreliable Government statistics indicated was a 30 percent drop in industrial output. Unemployment has also risen from zero to more than 2 percent, representing more than 250,000 workers.
Mr. Balcerowicz did not sugar-coat his message today. He said unemployment would continue to rise this year, although he predicted it would be below the 8 to 10 percent rate in most of the nations of Western Europe.
 
Learning to Adapt
He predicted that there would be modest stirrings in the economy in the second half of 1990, but set no specific date for when the transformation of the economy would be complete.
''The change has caused a shock to the culture and business,'' he said. ''Everybody is learning to adapt to new conditions.''
''We are now at a very critical point as regards the activities of the entrepreneurs themselves,'' Mr. Balcerowicz said. He rejected any idea of injecting large sums of new capital into the economy, saying, ''The Government cannot substitute for the activities of the entrepreneurs.''

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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April 24, 1990, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

PATTERNS;
It's Denim, not Cute

BYLINE: By Woody Hochswender

SECTION: Section B; Page 7, Column 1; Style Desk

LENGTH: 932 words

DATELINE: TOKYO, April 20

Like the luminous paper fans sold everywhere here, the streets unfold a shifting panorama of fashion.
Beautiful silk kimonos on elderly men and women recall a more graceful past. Military dress jackets on schoolboys hark back to the 19th-century emperors and their admiration for the British Navy. And contemporary fashions indicate a people growing sophisticated about style and willing to pay for it. 
Much of this, retail executives here said, can be attributed to a new generation of affluent young people who live at home after college and have larger disposable incomes than their counterparts in most other countries. For them, the trend of the moment is Shibuya casual, a name coined by the Japanese fashion magazine Popeye, after the Shibuya shopping area of Tokyo. Shibu-cash, to use the slang, means denim: skirts, jeans and jackets, worn with fitness shoes.
And it reflects a step up in fashion maturity from what is known as kawai-i, the Japanese word for cute, which is said to make up about 50 percent of the vocabulary of Tokyo high school girls. The fashion points of kawai-i: soft pastels, long skirts, fuzzy sweaters and pearls.
''Shibu-cash has spread all over Tokyo,'' said Chiharu Nakasu, who works in the international department of Taka-Q, the Japanese retailer that opened a Charivari store in Tokyo. She was wearing a Chanel-type suit made of blue denim.
 
Don't Look Down
On the Tokyo subway at rush hour, there is a sea of blue and gray suits, in nice worsted wool blends, conservatively cut. These suggest the continuing existence of decent department-store suits, as well as the prevalence of companies like Brooks Brothers and J. Press (now owned by a Japanese company, Kashiyama). But beneath it all is an anomaly: the shoes.
The prevailing style is the soft leather loafer, and mostly these are scuffed and badly worn. More often than not, the soles are of rubber.
The fashion mystery ends, of course, at the doorstep, where the shoes are left. Shoes, a fetish for some in America, are in Japan just something to take off.
 
David, Goliath and Trade
Fashion is one of the few categories of trade in which the container ships arriving in Yokohama bring more merchandise in than they carry out.
One long-term obstacle, however, has been what is known here as the large retail store law. Under it, small groups of retailers in a given region can block the invasion of Japan's huge store chains like Seibu, Mitsukoshi and Isetan. The big chains, with their licensed designer boutiques, have been a means for American apparel companies to crack the Japanese market.
When American trade negotiators demanded relaxation of the law in the recent ''structural impediment'' talks, Japanese politicians and editorialists accused the United States of interfering in Japan's domestic affairs. In an article in the English-language newspaper The Japan Times, Toru Yano, a professor at Kyoto University, declared, ''When you travel to a small town somewhere in Japan, it would be nice to see a quaint Japanese candy or noodle shop or two dotting the landscape.''
In the round of talks that ended this month, the negotiators reached a compromise on the store-law issue, Japanese executives said last week. Details have yet to be disclosed. Ideally, it will include both noodle shops and Calvin Klein. Shogun Armani? Giorgio Armani's retail shogunate was increased today with the opening of the 27th Emporio Armani shop in Japan. Sales of Emporio Armani clothing and accessories in Japan totaled $14 million in the fiscal year that ended in July 1989, said a Tokyo-based executive of his company. Sales for the year ending this July are expected to top $40 million.
 
Slumps but No Sales
While many large American stores have become a hodge-podge of styles, promotions and confusing sales, big Japanense retailers are islands of calm and efficiency. Uniformed sales clerks bow to customers as they enter. They do not spray anybody with perfume.
As a rule, these stores don't hold many sales, either, cutting prices twice a year, at the end of their spring and fall seasons.
Japanese retailers have experienced a recent slowdown. The Japan Department Stores Association said last week that sales for 26 Tokyo department stores in March were about $1.7 billion, down 9.9 percent from March 1989. It was the largest year-to-year decline since the association began making its monthly survey in 1959, although it was somewhat skewed: in March 1989, Tokyo retailers enjoyed a 41.4 percent increase, as consumers rushed to buy goods before the introduction of a 3 percent consumption tax.
To dispose of excess merchandise at times like these, Japanese department stores hold folksy bazaars, discreetly carting their goods away to the banquet rooms and corridors of large Tokyo hotels.
Last week Mitsukoshi, a prestigious Japanese retail chain, held a Deluxe Bazaar at the Imperial Hotel in the Ginza district of Tokyo. Shoppers packed the makeshift aisles, picking and comparing with all the frenzied energy of Filene's basement. There were Oscar de la Renta handbags, regularly about $250, for about $160; racks and racks of uninspiring dresses and tops with no regular prices marked; piles of fresh produce and tons of electronic gadgets and toys.
''It's not really a fashionable place to shop,'' said a woman who was receiving an electric foot massage at a demonstration counter. ''It's so hard to tell what the good bargains are.'' Big fat Sunkist oranges were going for 1,000 yen - or about $7 each. Better not to know what the full price was.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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April 24, 1990, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

Business and Health;
Pressure Builds To Curb Medigap

BYLINE: By Milt Freudenheim

SECTION: Section D; Page 2, Column 1; Financial Desk

LENGTH: 791 words

PRODDED by advocates for consumers and the elderly, state regulators are scrambling to tighten controls on private ''medigap'' insurance. They hope to stave off proposals in Congress that would increase Federal supervision of $16 billion in annual medigap premiums.
At least 22 million of the 29 million Americans over age 65 buy medigap insurance, which pays hospital and doctor bills not covered by the Federal Medicare program.
Many state officials and insurers fear that growing anger over sharply rising health insurance rates will bring on Federal laws that could pre-empt state regulation of the industry and lead to centralized Federal control of the entire $183 billion health insurance industry. 
State insurance commissioners from around the country discussed potential changes in state laws and regulations last week in Minneapolis with insurers and consumer groups.
For one thing, the states hope to head off a proposal by Representative Fortney (Pete) Stark, a California Democrat who is chairman of the health subcommittee of the House Ways and Means Committee. Mr. Stark wants insurers to increase, to 70 percent, the portion of the revenues from individual policies that they actually pay out to cover individuals' medical costs. Many states rely on such percentages, known as loss-ratios, to see that medigap policyholders get their money's worth. Most states require that 60 percent of the revenues be paid out.
Because expenses are usually lower for group policies, like those sold to 3.5 million members of the American Association of Retired Persons by the Prudential Insurance Company, Mr. Stark wants insurers to pay out at least 85 percent of their group-policy revenue.
''The Federal Government has never regulated insurance companies,'' Mr. Stark said. ''The insurance companies are afraid of this.''
But state officials said steep increases in loss-ratios would hurt competition by driving smaller companies out of business. The smaller companies compete with the dominant providers, mainly Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans and Prudential, largely by offering extra services like help in filling out claims.
''We are opposing further Federal involvement,'' said Earl R. Pomeroy, the North Dakota insurance commissioner who heads the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, a group of state regulatory officials.
Mr. Pomeroy said his association would probably call on state legislators and regulators to raise medigap loss-ratios on individual policies to 65 percent, the level already in effect in New York, Minnesota, Washington and Florida.
The group may also recommend standardizing medigap policies ''to eliminate the clutter from the market,'' he said. Minimum standards are already in effect but there are ''an infinite number of variations, which result in a very confusing situation for the senior citizens,'' he added.
The Bush Administration says insurance regulation should remain primarily a state responsibility. ''Medigap is just a very small piece of the insurance market,'' said Gail Wilensky, the head Federal administrator for Medicare. ''To try to move medigap out of the states, when the states will continue to be responsible for other insurance regulation, is not appropriate.''
But Robert Hunter, president of the National Insurance Consumer Organization, a group that favors national health insurance, said Mr. Pomeroy's group of state officials ''is essentially not effective.'' He argues that the commissioners' group can only recommend model bills and model rules, which not all states adopt.
''Insurers usually can water down the recommendations,'' he added. ''They are pretty effective in controlling the small rural states.''
But most insurers, state officials and some consumer advocates insist that the states can regulate insurance more effectively than a Federal agency because states already have expertise and enforcement machinery.
Both Blue Cross and the American Association of Retired Persons say they would accept Federal supervision of state enforcement. But both oppose proposals for a standard Federal benefit package, arguing that innovation and consumers' choices would be restricted.
Medigap has become an increasingly disputed issue in the last two years as most insurers sharply raised their rates. Many older Americans became concerned about medigap during the political furor last year that led to the repeal of Federal coverage for catastrophic illnesses.
''It all seems to be coming together,'' said Gail Shearer, manager of policy analysis for Consumers Union, an advocacy group. ''There is a lot of interest in Congress and among the leadership of the state commissioners in simplifying this market and toughening up enforcement.''

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: drawing

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April 24, 1990, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

Careers;
Veterinary Technicians In Demand

BYLINE: By Elizabeth M. Fowler

SECTION: Section D; Page 22, Column 3; Financial Desk

LENGTH: 735 words

''VET TECHS'' - trained assistants for veterinarians - are in short supply. Dr. Franklin M. Loew, dean of the Tufts University School of Veterinary Medicine, thinks older people living on retirement income, especially those with a science background, may help to fill the gap.
''I think it is a great idea for older people,'' he said last week.
Dr. Roger L. Lukens, director of the veterinary technology program at Purdue University's School of Veterinary Medicine, agrees that this can be a fine second career for older people. He urges those who are interested to spend a short time volunteering for a local veterinarian before signing up for training. ''This is a group that we need to seek out,'' he said. 
Dr. Loew said that physical strength was not particularly important in handling dogs, cats and other small animals, making the field one that might appeal to both men and women.
Admittedly, the pay is low, which is the main reason for the extreme shortage of technicians. Those who work in metropolitan areas and have college training receive a starting pay of $16,000 or so, but the national average is closer to $12,500. Such salaries lag behind the pay of other health technicians like dental hygienists, but Dr. Loew thinks that the need for veterinary technicians will result in higher salaries.
''We have been seeing frequent turnovers of young people in the field,'' he said. ''They only stay as technicians four or five years because of the income ceiling.''
Some of these technicians do complete college and go to veterinary school, but many become discouraged and move into other fields. He likens the situation to that of dentistry 20 and more years ago, when dentists were beginning to hire hygienists for their practices.
''Today we talk of four-handed dentistry, meaning the dentist and his assistant working together,'' Dr. Loew said. ''I think we will see the equivalent in the veterinary field.''
The shortage of technicians is growing worse, experts say. Dr. Lukens reported that about 2,300 people graduate each year as doctors of veterinary medicine from 27 veterinary schools, but only 1,200 students complete training at the 66 accredited technology programs, which takes about two years of training beyond high school. Applicants for veterinary technician programs decreased each year between 1984 and 1989 at a rate of about 7.5 percent a year, Dr. Lukens said.
''There should be one veterinary technician for each veterinarian,'' he added. ''But at this rate we will never catch up.''
Despite the low salaries, it is a field that appeals to animal lovers. But the work is not necessarily easy.
Technicians do laboratory testing and handle X-ray equipment; they administer anesthesia and assist in surgery. They tend sick animals, which sometimes means spending a night on a couch in the animal hospital, nursing an animal in intensive care. They may also handle record-keeping and billing.
Veterinary technicians work for the 40,000 or so veterinarians in private practice, as well as for the Federal Government, diagnostic laboratories, pharmaceutical companies, pet-food makers, pet-equipment suppliers, pet stores and animal shelters, race tracks, zoos and aquariums.
Dr. Lukens deplores the lack of public awareness of the field among high school students and their counselors as well as among older people. ''It can be a very satisfying career,'' he said.
In most states training is available at community colleges and universities.
Unlike Purdue, in West Lafayette, Ind., which trains veterinary doctors and technicians, Tufts, in North Grafton, Mass., trains doctors but not technicians. But Tufts does have a joint technician program with Mount Ida College, in Newton Center, Mass.
Dr. Loew said more and more older people had signed up for the Tufts veterinary school. ''In my classes I have some aged 40 and over,'' he added. ''Some held animal-related jobs previously, but I even have ex-stockbrokers.'' He said he hoped the trend would expand into technician training programs.
Dr. Lukens has already spotted the trend in his technician classes. ''I had a student recently with a Ph.D in English who raised dogs and horses as a hobby,'' he said. ''She took early retirement from a company, did volunteer work with a vet and then went through our program.'' This summer she is to return as a member of Purdue's veterinary technician staff.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: drawing

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April 27, 1990, Friday, Late Edition - Final

A Talk on Design

SECTION: Section C; Page 26, Column 6; Weekend Desk

LENGTH: 69 words

Maya Ying Lin, the sculptor who designed the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington and the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Ala., will give a slide lecture, ''Design Processes: Recent Work,'' on Sunday at 3 P.M. in the Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The talk is free with museum admission of $5; $2.50 for students and the elderly. Information: 879-5500, extension 3792.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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April 28, 1990, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

Mohawks Ask Cuomo to Join A Peace Effort

BYLINE: By SAM HOWE VERHOVEK, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section 1; Page 27, Column 5; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 915 words

DATELINE: ALBANY, April 27

Gov. Mario M. Cuomo faced growing calls from Mohawk leaders today to intervene at the troubled St. Regis Indian Reservation, where heavily armed rival Mohawk factions are fighting over the issue of allowing casino gambling.
No one has been reported killed in this week's feuding at the 14,000-acre reservation, which straddles the Canadian border near Massena. But one man was seriously injured in a grenade explosion, and an Indian observer called in to monitor the situation is missing, according to leaders at the reservation and reports from the local and state police.
Hundreds of rounds of ammunition have been discharged, and the burned shells of at least 20 cars line the main road of the reservation, these officials said. Most of the reservation was sealed off today to non-Indians. 
Many women, children and elderly people living on the reservation were evacuated this morning to a civic complex in nearby Cornwall, Ontario. The Associated Press quoted the chief of the council for the Canadian side of the reservation, Lloyd Benedict, saying ''it has become a very tense situation and we can no longer guarantee safety for our people.''
 
Roadblocks by Troopers
Pro-gambling Mohawks armed with assault rifles took control of the reservation earlier this week after overrunning a series of roadblocks that other Mohawks had set up in an effort to close six casinos on the reservation. The casinos, which draw thousands of non-Indian visitors from as far as Montreal and Syracuse and make millions of dollars in profits, have been declared illegal by the Federal Government. All of them are on the United States side of the reservation.
''It's been horrendous, just horrendous,'' said Lois Terrence, a Mohawk who is program director of a drug- and alcohol-treatment program at the reservation. ''The fact that no one has been shot to death is a miracle beyond belief,'' she said.
Mr. Cuomo said the situation was being constantly monitored by the state police at the scene, who have set up their own roadblocks to deter all but residents from entering the reservation. But at a news conference today the Governor appeared to dismiss suggestions that the state take a stronger role in the matter right now.
The outbreak presents a vexing challenge to Mr. Cuomo because many Indians on the reservation insist on sovereignty over their own affairs and say intervention by the state or Federal governments would be an unwarranted intrusion into the internal affairs of the reservation.
But several Indian tribal leaders, including the head chief of the tribal council, Harold Tarbell, have asked the Governor to send in the National Guard to separate the battling factions, and he also received an unusual plea for greater assistance this week from United States Senator Daniel K. Inouye, the Hawaii Democrat who is chairman of the Senate's Select Committee on Indian Affairs.
 
Reports of Gunfire
Mr. Inouye wrote in a letter to the Governor that many Indian leaders believed that residents of the community were living with ''clear threats of deadly violence'' and that this presented a situation ''that would not be tolerated by the state or Federal government in any other community or under any other circumstances.''
In addition, the Senator said, his staff had received reports from anti-gambling Mohawks that their homes had been surrounded by pro-gambling forces who had been ''observed drinking heavily'' and had been firing in the direction of their homes.
''Obviously if these reports are accurate it is only a matter of time until members of the community are injured and perhaps killed by gunfire attacks,'' Mr. Inouye said.
 
'I Want This Resolved'
But confusion lingered today over just what role the state was being asked to take. ''Nobody has said, 'Here's what you should do: paratroop in point men,' '' the Governor said at a news conference in the Capitol today. ''Everyone is saying the same thing: 'We want this situation resolved.' That's true. People want the Middle East resolved. And I want this resolved, and we're working very hard to figure out how to do it.''
Dozens of state police troopers remained massed on Route 37 at the fringes of the reservation. But Maj. Robert B. Leu, commander of Troop B of the state police, said they would make no attempt to move on the armed factions.
''It's simply because of the amount of firepower they have,'' Major Leu said in a telephone interview. ''We're not a military operation.''
Major Leu also said that despite the hailstorms of gunfire on the reservation, he did not believe the Indians were likely to kill each other. But if outside forces entered, he said, there could be bloodshed.
''I'll give you an analogy,'' Major Leu said. ''It's like a great big family wedding. It's a hot August night. Fifty from the groom side, 50 from the bride. They get into a fight. But they're really all still family. And if all the cops came in, they would all turn against the cops.''
The gambling issue has divided the Mohawk reservation for years. On one side are Mohawks who advocate the gambling parlors as a way to generate large amounts of revenue, and on the other are forces who say the gambling is a corrupting influence that is out of place with traditional Indian values.
The casinos, with names like Tony's Vegas International and the Golden Nugget, are illegal under New York statutes. But their owners maintain that they are under no obligation to heed the New York law.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Fighting between Mohawk factions on the St. Regis Indian Reservation on the Canadian border near Massena, N.Y., has led to calls for the state government to intervene. A guard stood watch yesterday outside the Akwesasne Mohawk Police headquarters on the Canadian side of the reservation (The New York Times/Michael J. Okoniewski); map: Albany indicating St. Regis Indian Reservation (The New York Times/April 28, 1990) (pg. 28)

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April 29, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Is America Abandoning Sick Patients?

BYLINE: By Susan Gilbert; Susan Gilbert is a freelance journalist and an editor of The Good Health Magazine.

SECTION: Section 6; Part 2, Page 22, Column 1; The Good Health Magazine

LENGTH: 3224 words

WHEN 79-YEAR-OLD Ernesta Springer entered Doctors Hospital in New York for surgery on her right leg, she was in excruciating pain but she was able to walk. A month later, she was still in great pain. And now she could not get out of bed on her own. But because the treatment was completed for the particular ailments for which she had been admitted - a blocked artery as well as gangrene, both associated with diabetes - the hospital sent her home.
A week later she was back for more surgery on the gangrenous wound. Again she was discharged, still in pain and unable to walk. This time the hospital arranged for a nurse to visit her daily to change the dressing on the wound and monitor her condition. The nurse, Madalyn Benjamin, felt that Ernesta Springer should not have been at home: ''The wound was huge. The pain was huge. She was given no medication except Tylenol. The wound wasn't going to heal.'' Benjamin telephoned the patient's doctors, and she was admitted to the hospital yet a third time for surgery. 
Cases like this one, in which a patient is released from a hospital in unstable condition only to return days or weeks later for further treatment, are becoming more and more common, according to many medical professionals. And there is evidence that such cases are directly related to a cost-cutting measure instituted by the Federal Government known as diagnostic-related groups, or DRG's.
Virtually everyone involved in health care - physicians, hospital administrators, Government officials and insurers - agrees that DRG's have brought about profound change in the practice of medicine in the United States. Instead of allowing hospitals to set their own fees for in-patient care for Medicare recipients, the DRG system sets them. In doing so, it has given hospitals a powerful incentive to look for ways to save money, whether this means ordering fewer diagnostic tests or denying patients certain treatments. But the crucial question is this: has the incentive to save money led to more efficient medical care, or has it caused a general decline in the quality of medicine?
Today this question primarily involves care for the elderly, but it is becoming increasingly relevant to the medical treatment everyone receives. DRG's initially applied only to Medicare patients, most of whom are over the age of 65. But several states have adopted DRG's for administering Medicaid, the joint Federal and state health care program for poor people. And such private health insurance companies as The Travelers and Aetna Life & Casualty have recently begun using a reimbursement system similar to DRG's.
Some health professionals express strong convictions that the system is diminishing the quality of medical attention elderly patients receive. Doctors, nurses and social workers recount stories of patients being denied admission to hospitals, being told they cannot get certain kinds of treatment when they are admitted and being released while they are still sick. ''The fallout is that patients don't get as good care,'' says Dr. Thomas H. Dailey, a surgeon who is also president of the medical board at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center in New York.
Many doctors, whether speaking on the record or not, say that DRG's have caused hospitals to cut back on costly services, such as intensive care and the use of state-of-the-art technology. Therefore, these services may go only to the sickest patients or to those who have private insurance or are wealthy enough to pay for treatment out of their own pockets. ''Most people don't realize there's rationing taking place,'' says Dr. Roger C. Bone, chief of pulmonary and critical-care medicine at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center in Chicago. ''I see a trend developing in which some patients receive less and less medical care.''
MEDICARE WAS INSTITUTED IN 1965 AFTER Congress passed a law mandating that the Federal Government provide health insurance to all Americans age 65 and over, as well as younger people who are disabled. Approximately 33 million people are now enrolled in Medicare, all but three million of whom are elderly. (This figure includes people who are still employed and covered by private health insurance.) By the early 1980's, when medical costs were rising faster than the rate of inflation, the Reagan Administration had come to look upon Medicare as a gravy train for hospitals, because they could bill for an unlimited number of tests, surgical procedures and days a patient occupied a bed. The Congressional Budget Office projected that Medicare would run out of money by 1988, leaving millions of the sickest Americans without any medical insurance. In response, Congress passed legislation in 1982 requiring the Department of Health and Human Services to find a way to curb reimbursements.
The department turned to a novel system designed by two Yale professors that placed thousands of illnesses in about 500 categories called diagnostic-related groups. Each category was then assigned a fixed fee. There were regional variations in the fees for each DRG, and hospitals in large cities were paid more than rural hospitals, because their costs were presumably higher. In 1983 the department began implementing the system for all in-hospital services provided to Medicare recipients. Outpatient care and doctor visits, which cost less than hospitalization, are still paid for on the conventional fee-for-service basis. But the department is considering extending DRG's to them, too.
The DRG system has achieved its goal. The rate of increase of Medicare reimbursements for in-patient care declined dramatically, from nearly 19 percent from 1981 to 1982 to just 4 percent from 1987 to 1988. The incentive to cut costs has in some instances forced hospitals to operate more efficiently. Before DRG's, for example, it was not uncommon for patients to sit around the hospital for a day or so before receiving any treatment. Now, hospitals do not admit patients until the day medical procedures begin. There is also less superfluous testing. ''In the old days,'' Dr. Bone says, ''expensive tests were repeated, like putting catheters into the heart to test for heart failure.'' Not only is there less repetition of such tests today, but hospitals think twice before doing them at all.
THE DRG SYSTEM HAS ALSO had some troubling side effects, in addition to encouraging the premature discharge of patients like Ernesta Springer. For one thing, it's hard for patients to get admitted to a hospital unless their symptoms fit squarely into a DRG. ''If you have an old woman with swelling in her legs and shortness of breath who's too sick to get out of bed, you used to be able to bring her into the hospital for a cardiogram,'' says Dr. Dailey. ''Now, she has to sit at home until she has pulmonary edema and then be admitted through the emergency room.'' The first sign of pulmonary edema, or fluid in the lungs, is sometimes swelling of the legs, and early detection can help prevent respiratory failure - and save lives.
Some Medicare patients are denied services for which the Government reimbursement is so low that hospitals lose money. For example, a report in The New England Journal of Medicine last fall found that many hospitals won't give Medicare recipients a relatively new operation for deafness - the cochlear implant, widely regarded as the only treatment for severe deafness - because of the financial loss involved. The average cost for such an implant is $14,000, whereas the average Medicare payment for ear surgery is $10,000.
The reason hospitals are discharging patients earlier than they did before DRG's went into effect is that they can no longer bill Medicare for each day a patient stays. Under the old system, even after patients no longer needed daily care, they could spend a few extra days in the hospital just to rest. No more. Now, they are sometimes released even if they are still weak and in considerable pain from surgery.
''There might be someone who has just had a heart attack and is still paralyzed, and I'd have to talk to the family about discharge,'' says Elizabeth B. Dakin, a social worker who until recently helped coordinate discharge planning for St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center in New York. ''I'd get pleas from families that weren't ready to take an invalid home. I'd explain to them that hospitals operate differently today.''
According to a report to be published this year by the Rand Corporation - the largest to date on the effects of DRG's - greater numbers of elderly people are being released from hospitals in unstable condition, with such medical problems as chest pain, rapid heartbeat and confusion. The researchers studied the records of 16,762 Medicare patients age 65 and over who had been admitted to 297 hospitals across the country. They found that the death rate for patients discharged in unstable condition was significantly higher than for those who had remained in the hospital until they had recovered. For example, 17 percent of the patients admitted with congestive heart failure who were discharged with three or more instabilities died within a month of the day they had entered the hospital, compared with just 5 percent of those released with no medical complications.
There is also evidence that recovery takes longer when patients are released from the hospital too early. A 1988 study in The New England Journal of Medicine looked at the records of 586 elderly patients treated for hip fractures at an unnamed Midwestern hospital before and after DRG's went into effect. Under the DRG system, patients were released about nine days earlier than before, and the percentage of those still recuperating in nursing homes a year after leaving the hospital had nearly quadrupled, from 9 to 33 percent.
IN THEIR DEFENSE, HOSPITALS contend that they have been forced to change their policies because they are losing money under the DRG system. Hospitals across the country are losing, on average, 8 cents on every dollar they spend caring for Medicare patients, according to the American Hospital Association. This adds up, because Medicare patients typically make up about 40 percent of a hospital's admissions. The financial burden is so great that since DRG's went into effect, record numbers of hospitals have shut their doors. Many have managed to stay in business only by eliminating or cutting back on certain costly services. These cutbacks are felt not only by the elderly, but by everyone.
In no area of medicine have cutbacks been more drastic than in intensive care. Although there are few figures available, doctors and hospital administrators say that some hospitals have either eliminated their intensive-care units or reduced their intensive-care services, because the financial loss can run into tens of thousands of dollars for each Medicare patient. In Chicago, for example, there is now just one respirator for every 50 chronically ill patients who need it, according to Dr. Bone. ''The patient who can benefit the most from it -and who can pay for it - gets it, and the rest have to wait,'' he says. ''They're sitting and waiting in emergency rooms, sometimes for days.'' Not everyone in the health care field agrees that the overall quality of medical treatment in America has suffered - yet. ''Appropriate high-quality health care is still in place,'' says Larry D. Krupala, chief executive officer of Cuero Community Hospital in rural Texas. ''But we're all fighting against a system that is dislodging that quality.'' Unless Medicare makes more money available to hospitals, he warns, ''quality will slip or access to medical care will slip. There will be a two-tiered system in which Medicare patients are denied intensive care and patients with money will get it.''
The Government maintains that health care has not deteriorated as a result of DRG's, and discounts the fear that this will happen in the future. ''Our responsibility is to assure access to quality medical care and to pay our fair share, and we're doing a perfectly adequate job,'' says Louis B. Hays, an administrator for the Health Care Financing Administration, the office within the Department of Health and Human Services that oversees Medicare. Hays also believes that hospitals overstate the financial strain that DRG's have placed on them. ''Medicare is not designed to assure the financial viability of hospitals,'' he says coolly. ''It is supposed to pay for the cost of treating patients and, on average, it does that. That doesn't mean that every case admitted does well under the system and that all hospitals do well.''
CRITICS OF DRG'S ARGUE that they have not really saved any money at all, but merely redistributed costs from the Government to individuals - closer to the way things were before Medicare. Elderly people who can afford it can buy extra hospital time or treatment either by paying for it themselves or by taking out supplemental insurance. The premiums for these so-called Medigap policies, like all private insurance, have risen dramatically in recent years, in part because increasing numbers of elderly people are filing claims to cover what Medicare doesn't. Those who can't afford to pay for hospital services beyond what Medicare provides may end up paying in other ways. If they leave the hospital in unstable condition, they will certainly need further care, either in a nursing home or from a visiting nurse or home-health aide in their own home. Indeed, many will require 24-hour monitoring. But Medicare pays for only 100 days in a nursing home and eight hours a day of home-nursing care for three weeks, and it does not cover the cost of a visiting home-health aide.
Whether or not patients who need 24-hour monitoring actually get it depends, again, on how much money they have. Those with enough money can pay for extra care, either through a Medigap policy or on their own. In some parts of the country, round-the-clock home-health care for a year can easily run $40,000. Patients with low incomes, and the figure varies from state to state - $459 per month for a single person in New York, for example, and $600 in California - can rely on Medicaid to pay for home-health care. But the vast numbers of elderly people in the middle class get stuck.
They have two options, neither of them appealing. One is to do without professional health care and rely on relatives and friends. ''Sometimes we must teach a significant other what to do,'' says Judith H. Levy, director of patient services at Home Health Services of Westchester Jewish Community Services, in White Plains. Even such complex procedures as using a suctioning device to draw excess fluid from the lungs may fall to a relative or friend. The patient's other option is to spend so much of his income and savings on home care that he becomes poor enough to qualify for Medicaid. This is what people in the home-care industry refer to as ''spending down.'' To avoid having to spend down, and to be eligible for Medicaid from the start of their illness, some elderly people have become adept at seeming poorer than they really are - for example, by transferring their assets to their children or other relatives.
The Government's savings under DRG's have also forced younger, privately insured patients to pay more. Hospitals acknowledge that they count on insurance companies to pay more for treatment than the Government. ''That's a fact of life,'' says Larry Krupala, of Cuero Community Hospital. By way of example, he says, if Medicare pays $3,500 for a particular operation, a hospital might charge a privately insured person $5,000 for the same procedure in an effort to recoup its loss.
''There always was a differential between Medicare reimbursement and private reimbursement,'' says Elliot Wicks, an associate director at the Health Insurance Association of America, in Washington. ''But our tentative research shows that private insurance companies have been paying even higher prices as a result of DRG's.'' This is one reason why premiums for some individual and group health insurance policies have jumped by 100 percent or more in the last year. It is also one reason why some private health insurers are attempting to trim their reimbursements by turning to systems modeled on DRG's. As more insurance companies follow suit, hospitals will have a more difficult time shifting their costs, and many more will probably have to close their doors.
IT WOULD SEEM THAT THE solution is largely a matter of money. But the United States already spends a greater portion of its gross national product on health care than any other country in the world - and 20 percent flows to administrative costs alone. So, rather than spend even more, the solution is likely to be to spend money more intelligently.
Many doctors and policy makers have come to the opinion that the only way to insure quality care at an affordable price is to revamp the entire system of health care delivery. Dr. Louis W. Sullivan, Secretary of Health and Human Services, has identified reform of the health care system as a major national issue, and proposals for several alternatives are being hammered out in the Government as well as by private researchers. A group of doctors based in Cambridge, Mass., have formally proposed the unthinkable: national health insurance. Under this proposal all hospital and medical care for every citizen would be paid for by the Federal Government; there would be no private insurance, no insurance premiums and no deductibles. The doctors allow that some sort of tax increase would be needed to finance their plan, but they estimate that the increased taxes would be no greater than what individuals now pay in premiums, deductibles and out-of-pocket medical expenses.
There's no guarantee that a new health insurance system would be any more successful than the present one at delivering high-quality medical care to all unless health experts come to an agreement on just what high-quality care is. Few people would argue that when a person dies because he or she has been discharged from a hospital too soon, the quality of care is less than it should be. But beyond that there is considerable debate. The Rand Corporation and other research institutions are studying a wide range of medical procedures in an effort to determine which ones work for particular patients and which ones do not. Only when this is clearly understood will insurers be able to make their cuts with surgical precision and will patients no longer have to settle for second best.
 
THE PRICE TAG ON BODY PARTS
 
HIP REPLACEMENT
  Hospital Cost:  $8,100*
  Medicare Payment:  $7,900*
 
TOTAL MASTECTOMY
  Hospital Cost:  $3,300
  Medicare Payment:  $3,100
 
HEART VALVE SURGERY
  Hospital Cost:  $27,600
  Medicare Payment:  $31,200
 
ORTHOPEDIC SURGERY
  Hospital Cost:  $14,091**
  Medicare Payment:  $11,521**
 
REHABILITATION-SUBSTANCE ABUSE
  Hospital Cost:  $4,500
  Medicare Payment:  $3,200
 
MAJOR EAR SURGERY
  Hospital Cost:  $14,000***
  Medicare Payment:  $10,000
 
(Source: Prospective Payment Assessment Commission, 1988 Figures.
* 1987 Figures; **1986 Figures; ***State-of-the-art surgical implant for deafness)

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Graphic: The Price Tag on Body Parts (attached)

Copyright 1990 The New York Times Company



155 of 468 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times

April 29, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

The Trick Of Growing Older

BYLINE: By William Stockton; William Stockton, editor of the Sunday Business section of The Times, frequently writes about fitness.

SECTION: Section 6; Part 2, Page 55, Column 1; The Good Health Magazine

LENGTH: 2157 words

NOT LONG AGO, A MIDDLE-AGED friend with a bit of a bohemian streak stopped sleeping on a mattress on the floor and bought a regular bed. The reason: when he woke up in the morning his stiff and creaky joints had begun to make it difficult for him to get up off the floor. Now sleeping in a normal bed gave him a 20-inch head start. Another friend is fond of quoting a middle-aged priest with an interest in fitness who puts the matter in perspective this way: ''If you are over 40 and you don't hurt when you get up in the morning, you should get back into bed because it probably means you are dead.'' 
John B. Reardon Jr., a Darien, Conn., lawyer who plays in the fiercely competitive Lawyers Basketball League in New York, has watched the condition of his knees steadily worsen over the years. At age 47 he is one of the league's old men. Too often after a game now his knees are puffy with fluid and they hurt. ''I probably need to say it is over, over competitively,'' he said last winter as the season was moving into high gear. His wistful tone quickly shifted to one of determination. ''But I will still go to the gym and work out with a basketball. I can control that, and take care of my knees there. I'm not giving up basketball.'' O.K., it's true. The baby boomers are growing older. Many spent the last decade getting into shape. They drank less, stopped smoking, lost weight, switched to low-fat, sensible diets and became dinner party bores about health clubs, tennis games, waistline battles and workout routines. Now they will spend the next decade coming to terms with the steady and inevitable deterioration of their physical abilities. Some will drop by the wayside when the first infirmities appear, and then watch their waistlines expand and muscle tone disappear. They will simply accept gasping for breath after climbing a flight of stairs. Others will resist fiercely, and injure themselves, perhaps severely, before finally giving in to the advancing years and learning moderation. The third group - which we should all aspire to join with grace and humor - will acknowledge brittle cartilage, diminished reflexes, lessened visual acuity and even the possibility of arthritis and heart attack, and reach an accommodation that permits the pleasure and benefits of continued activity without the danger of permanent disability. ''You shouldn't worry a hell of a lot about the fact that the body is deteriorating, that this is an inexorable process,'' Reardon says. ''You try to do what you can with what you have.''
Of course, not everyone spent the last decade striving for his or her personal best. If you're in middle age or fast approaching it, and you haven't been physically active for years, you may be able to improve your condition considerably before reaching the limits imposed by aging. It may be too late for slam dunking or six-minute miles, but perhaps not for friendly games of hoops or loops around the park. In fact, improvement is possible at any age.
Consider the case histories cited by Dr. Lenore R. Zohman, a professor of cardiology and rehabilitation medicine at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx: a woman who started jogging in her early 80's and saw her angina disappear, after suffering from the symptoms for more than 10 years; a man, now 90, who runs in the 26.2-mile New York City marathon. When he was in his 50's, doctors told him to limit his activity because of a heart problem. But after watching his wife wither and die from cancer, he began walking, then running, and finally built up to marathons. His running has kept him more vital than he would otherwise be. ''We studied him and found that his maximum oxygen-intake ability'' - a measure of aerobic fitness - ''hasn't decreased as much as in people far younger than he is,'' Dr. Zohman says.
And then there is Claire Willi. Even Dr. Zohman, who has seen her share of elderly athletes, might be impressed. Willi took up dancing at age 70. Now, more than a quarter of a century later, she is still at it.
''I do think that to some extent people can forestall physiological aging by maintaining a high level of fitness,'' says Dr. Zohman. ''And it's never too late to begin, even at 70 or 75.''
IN AN EARLIER ERA, WHEN Americans were less health conscious and there was less pressure on the aging person to continue physical activity, the rocking chair was all right. Exercise was often discouraged, particularly if there was some underlying medical problem. But the benefits of exercise are now firmly established. Many studies have shown that women should put mild tension on their bones and muscles with regular exercise before the age of 30 in order to avoid the wasting away of bone caused by osteoporosis. Exercise is now routinely prescribed for arthritis sufferers, asthmatics and people with high blood pressure. Even heart attack victims are encouraged, indeed ordered, to work out. For many doctors, physiologists and physical therapists, the orthodoxy for quality of life in the advancing years is: use it or lose it.
Some of the truest believers are the medical experts themselves. Ethan R. Nadel, a physiologist at the John B. Pierce Foundation Laboratory at Yale University, has long been a dedicated runner. ''I don't care about living longer - and I'm not certain about the research showing you will live longer - as much as I care about maintaining the quality of life as long as possible,'' he says. ''I want to be able to run up the stairs if I choose to rather than having to stop and huff and puff.''
Nadel, who is now 48, once ran about 70 miles a week, and he has participated in 25 marathons. Last December he underwent surgery for torn cartilage in his knee. As a result, he has had to map out a new fitness routine. He now runs three miles or so a day, three or four times a week, at a leisurely pace, as opposed to his earlier 10-mile run at maximum speed. ''You don't have to do as much as I was doing to be in really good physical condition,'' he says. ''Now my goals are different: trying to maintain a modest level of activity to keep my pulmonary, cardiovascular and musculoskeletal systems at their peak.''
Dr. Paul D. Thompson, a cardiologist at the Miriam Hospital in Providence, R. I., is a veteran of 16 Boston marathons, his best performance a 16th place in 1976 with a time of 2 hours 28 minutes 5 seconds. But a few years ago, when he was in his mid-30's, he began to confront a painful truth: his body was starting to age, to slow down. He developed a painful heel spur and other foot problems. Eventually, he decided to end competitive running. Although this decision left him feeling a significant loss, it was also liberating. He has much more time to spend with his family, and he says that being an aging athlete has dramatized for him that success in life depends on learning to cope with limitations. Dr. Thompson illustrated this belief last year when he ran in the Boston marathon again, this time at an unaccustomed spot in the back of the pack, just for the fun of it. His time was a leisurely 3:11. ''I had as much fun, in fact more fun, with that 3:11 than when I did my 2:28,'' he says.
As a cardiologist, Dr. Thompson often finds himself using his personal perspective on physical limitations to help patients who have had a heart attack. Like most cardiologists, he encourages physical activity, after a period of recovery. ''I want them to do as much as they can do,'' he says. ''A lot of patients live under a cloud of fear, and you want them to come out from under that cloud.'' His patients take exercise classes, play tennis, swim and cycle. Some take up walking, and may even progress to running. Patients who have never been physically active are motivated by the knowledge that exercise will help them get better and perhaps prevent another heart attack. Those who previously worked out may have to learn to cope with limitations on the intensity they can bring to exercise. But Dr. Thompson can tell them from his own experience that lower intensity doesn't necessarily mean less pleasure and fewer rewards.
This altered attitude about rehabilitating heart attack victims is one of the most dramatic changes in medical thinking about age and exercise. A friend tells the story of his father, an avid tennis player, who suffered a heart attack 30 years ago and was told he must stop playing tennis. Though he lived to 92, the man never played again. Today, a man in his 50's who suffered a heart attack would likely be back on the court within months. True, his pace would be subdued, at least at first. He might play doubles instead of singles, and he might forego drop shots and racing to save particularly difficult shots. But a life that included tennis would almost certainly be possible.
THE SIGNS OF PHYSICAL DETERIORATION at middle age are familiar, and as old as man himself: diminished eyesight, brittle bones, slowed reflexes, tendons that lack resilience. To a large extent, the pace of this deterioration is dictated by traits inherited from our ancestors. But these changes can also be related to childhood injuries or those suffered in high school and college athletics. It is tempting to try to cheat nature's inevitable wearing away of our bodies. But the reality of doing this is a brutal one: pain, and then more pain. Moving from a mattress on the floor to a regular bed is one thing. Exercising in the face of the grinding pain of arthritis, for example, requires real determination. Even when there is no arthritis, no heart disease, no significant health problem, there will still be the pain of joints that are wearing down, of the ankle that acts up in cold, damp weather, of debilitating muscle spasms.
And as we exercise and endure the pain, medicine has no magic bullets, only palliatives. There are drugs, particularly nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory medicines, that can bring relief and have no serious side effects. There are also steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, which must be used only sparingly and under a doctor's supervision. And then there is that miracle drug, aspirin.
There are also steps that aging athletes can take to lessen the chance that they will be injured. Older ligaments are more brittle, so warm-ups and stretching routines are essential, not optional. ''If you have a set amount of time in your busy schedule to jog or play basketball or racquetball, your inclination is not to waste any of it warming up,'' says Paul D. Ribera, a physical therapist at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in New York. ''But as you age, you have to be more disciplined.'' Thus, to climb out of bed and take to the streets at a fast pace without jogging slowly to warm up is a young person's game that courts disaster for those in a different age bracket. An orthopedic brace, like a knee brace, is likely to become standard apparel. ''We've gotten really sophisticated with braces,'' Ribera says. ''You can do almost any activity today with a brace.'' If we aging baby boomers who are determined to stay active want a role model, we need look no farther than William Tully, a tennis player in Pelham, N.Y., who turned 64 last December. Tully has played tennis all his life and in his youth was ranked 35th nationally. While most people beyond a certain age harbor a studied distaste for birthdays, Tully couldn't wait to hit 64. It meant that under the rules of amateur tennis, after the new year he would be able to compete in the 65-to-70-year-old age bracket. So for most of 1990 he will be among the youngest players in his age group. And this will give him an edge, an opportunity to dominate, perhaps even achieve a No. 1 ranking - until some other youngster, turning 64 late in 1990, will most likely displace him. He did the same thing five years ago when he hit 59. As the youngest in the 60-65 group, he worked his way to No. 1 in the first year, before falling to fourth and then sixth. But none of this was achieved without pain. ''As you become an older senior, you don't play unless you play when you hurt,'' he says. He wears elastic support bands for the arthritis in his knees. He has orthotics in his tennis shoes. ''I know how to combat injuries now,'' he says. ''If I hurt my calf, I put an elastic support around it. Then I can play on.''
But he admits that his thoughts have turned to how long he can keep this up. ''I have a sense that I am nearing the end of the road. I hope I can last another 10 years,'' he says. As he slows down further, how will he cope? His answer will be to play weaker players. If his arthritis gets worse, he won't retrieve so many balls. He won't go for the drop shots. There will come a day when he plays doubles instead of singles.
But that's down the road. Cleaning up in the 65-70 age group is his first priority right now. ''I'm counting on whipping those old guys, with a little luck,'' he says. He makes no attempt to disguise his glee.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photos: William Tully, 64, who was once ranked 35th in the nation in men's tennis, was more recently number one in the 60-to-65 age group. He still relishes every win (Susan Greenwood); Claire Willi, 98, takes center stage at the Milton Feher School of Dance and Relaxation in New York, showing that growing older can be done with energy and grace (Theo Westenberger)

Copyright 1990 The New York Times Company



156 of 468 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times

April 29, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

LONG ISLAND OPINION;
Freedom From Welfare: The Best Hope Yet

BYLINE: By Dr. Ruth Brandwein; Dr. Ruth A. Brandwein is commissioner of the Suffolk County Department of Social Services.

SECTION: Section 12LI; Page 20, Column 4; Long Island Weekly Desk

LENGTH: 1369 words

WHEN the Social Security Act passed Congress in 1935, one section provided for public assistance for the blind, the disabled, the elderly and dependent children. Public assistance was seen as a temporary measure, until those groups would become covered under Social Security. As we now know, Aid to Dependent Children, or welfare, as it became known, did not wither away but instead expanded more than anyone had anticipated.
Over the years the program has been criticized by both conservatives and liberals. Calls for an overhaul of the system escalated in the mid-80's, culminating with passage of the Family Support Act of 1988.
The Family Support Act, or welfare reform, is a complex bill with many components. Most important is the jobs program. Unlike current requirements that mothers with school-age children must seek employment or enroll for training, this bill would extend the requirements to mothers with children as young as 3. 
The problem is that most of the mothers on public assistance are unable to work at jobs capable of supporting their families. Both nationally and in Suffolk County, about half of the women on this program do not even have high school diplomas. Those who are functionally illiterate is estimated at 30 to 60 percent. Many are teen-age mothers who have never held a job. Others have been on public assistance for many years and have lost whatever motivation they may have had.
Through the jobs program, public assistance recipients are being offered an array of services, including basic education, English as a second language, job clubs (which help in writing resumes, interviewing skills and preparing the inexperienced in appropriate workplace behaviors), skills training, on-the-job training and job search. It mandates that training be provided in areas where there is a demand for workers.
For those women who may be job-ready, lack of child care is frequently an obstacle to getting and keeping a job. Under the act, the government is responsible for assuring the availability of child care. If child care is not available, the mother cannot be compelled to work or attend mandatory educational or job training programs.
For many women, child care is so expensive that it is more economical for them to remain on welfare. Under the new bill the cost of child care can be reimbursed, on a sliding scale, for up to one year after the family is no longer eligible for public assistance.
The lack of health care presents similar obstacles. Many mothers are afraid to leave public assistance because their children will have no health insurance. Most of the jobs they might get do not provide health insurance, and leaving welfare makes them ineligible for Medicaid. Under the jobs program, these families can retain their Medicaid benefits for up to one year.
Most important is the philosophy behind this new law. It assumes a contractual responsibility between parents and the government. Parents are assumed to have primary responsibility for providing for their own children. But the government, too, has its responsibilities. It can only require people to work instead of remaining on public assistance if it provides for child care, health care, transportation and the education and training programs that will enable parents to gain meaningful employment.
In Suffolk County alone, more than 9,400 families receive Aid to Families with Dependent Children and almost 20,000 families live below the poverty level. In 1989, the poverty level was just over $12,000 for a family of four. In a high-income area like Long Island, where the median family income is above $40,000, and the average rental for a two-bedroom apartment is almost $800 per month, it is difficult to imagine the hardship of living in poverty, and welfare families receive only about two-thirds of the poverty level income.
Poverty on Long Island is hidden. It is considered shameful, and it is even more painful than in a poorer community because of the constant reminders of an affluent society. While there are minimum-wage jobs available, such jobs are inadequate to put both a roof over a family's head and food on the table.
There is a difference between getting families off public assistance and getting them out of poverty. Yet the two are entwined. If mothers cannot earn enough to support their families, getting them into a job simply won't work. They will return to public assistance sooner or later.
After remaining at $3.35 for eight years, the Federal minimum wage will soon be increased to $3.80. At that wage, working full time, a full year, a woman would earn only $7,600 per year. Even at $5 per hour she would earn only $10,000. With child care and Medicaid provided for the first year, that would be a start, but after a year, unless her earnings increased substantially, it would be difficult for her to make it.
Welfare reform is the first step but it alone is not enough. That is why Representative Thomas J. Downey has proposed companion legislation this year to aid the working poor by enhancing earned income tax credits for the working poor, as well as tax credits for child care expenses.
The Child Care Councils in Suffolk and Nassau Counties are working diligently to expand day care. But even if it were adequate, transportation poses an obstacle for Long Islanders, and particularly for Suffolk County residents. Public transportation is inadequate, and it is questionable whether mass transit can be the solution for a county covering almost 1,000 square miles.
More than half of public assistance clients do not own cars. In fact, public assistance is not available to anyone owning a car with a net worth of more than $1,500. Where public transportation is available, up to four hours per day can be spent traveling back and forth between home, baby-sitter and work!
Now there is an even more compelling problem. At the same time this new act is about to be implemented, all levels of government - federal, state and county - are experiencing budget crises. Passing a bill like the Family Support Act is but the first step. Implementing it by providing sufficient funding so that it will work is the real challenge. The key to the success of the Jobs Program is case management. Only by individualizing the program - working with each mother to determine what her training and education needs are, how her child care and transportation problems will be resolved, guiding her with successful employment situations, and being there to support her through the rough times and to help her build her self-esteem - will welfare reform work. Yet the Federal law does not provide any additional funds for case management. The state this year capped its contribution for staff costs at last year's levels. The county is currently estimating a budget deficit of many millions of dollars this year, and may be laying off employees.
We have evidence that case management, properly staffed, can work. The county is involved in two experimental programs: CEOSC (Comprehensive Employment Opportunity Support Center) and CAP (Child Assistance Program). CEOSC is a prototype for the Jobs Program and has already proven itself successful in meeting its training and job placement goals. But it is operating with a caseload of 100 clients per case manager and, with the most motivated, voluntary clients. In contrast the current ratio of public assistance cases to workers in Suffolk County is 265 to 1.
The new experimental Children's Assistance Program (CAP) provides an alternative to welfare for mothers with a court order for child support and a job. However, it too has a small caseload, and adequate time was provided for training caseworkers who volunteered for the assignment and were carefully selected. The enthusiasm of both clients and workers for these programs bodes well for their success. The jobs program needs similar small caseloads, and that means more workers.
The Family Support Act provides the best hope in 50 years that many mothers with small children can become self-sufficient. If it can succeed anywhere, it should be able to succeed on affluent Long Island. However, without adequate support, the act will be a hollow victory.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1990 The New York Times Company



157 of 468 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times

May 2, 1990, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Suicides of Four Teen-Agers Stun School in Small Arkansas Town

BYLINE: AP

SECTION: Section A; Page 22, Column 1; National Desk

LENGTH: 474 words

DATELINE: SHERIDAN, Ark., May 1

A 17-year-old boy died of a gunshot wound to the head today, becoming the third student at the high school here to commit suicide in the last two days and the fourth in the last month.
The youth, Jerry Paul McCool, a sophomore at Sheridan High School, killed himself at his home in the nearby community of East End, a day after two of his classmates had taken their own lives. His body was discovered by his father, who found no suicide note or any other clue as to why he would have shot himself, the police said. 
One of the suicides Monday occurred in front of a history class. Thomas Smith, a 17-year-old junior, asked for permission to address the class, then walked to the front of the room, told a girl seated in front of him, ''I love you,'' and shot himself with a small-caliber revolver that had been hidden under his shirt.
Rhonda Damron, 17, said she was the girl Mr. Smith was talking about.
She said they had been classmates since the sixth grade and became ''very, very close friends'' last year.
''We would tell each other everything,'' she said. ''That was all it was.''
 
'I Can't Go On'
Monday night, Thomas M. Chidester, a 19-year-old senior, shot himself to death at the home of his grandmother, Annie Mae Funderburg, with whom he lived. He left a note saying, ''I can't go on any longer,'' said the Grant County Sheriff, Cary Clark.
The police said Mr. Chidester might have been overcome by grief at the death of Mr. Smith. Steve Brown, an assistant school superintendent, said the two teen-agers had been friends.
Sheriff Clark said Mrs. Funderburg told him she awoke early in the morning and noticed that the lights were still on. She said she got up and found her grandson sprawled across his bed at an odd angle. She said she tried to wake him and noticed blood around his head.
Sheriff Clark said Coroner Mike Angelo determined that Mr. Chidester died between 10 and 11 P.M. Monday.  Junior R.O.T.C. Members Mr. Chidester and Mr. Smith were members of the school's junior Reserve Officers Trainer Corps, the sheriff said. Mr. Chidester had left school ''for a while'' to attend National Guard training, he said, but returned to school in September and planned to enter the military after graduation.
In addition to the three deaths this week, another 17-year-old student at Sheridan High, Dale Wilkerson, committed suicide a month ago. Three older people have committed suicide in Grant County in the last six weeks.
Professional counselors were at the school in Sheridan, a town of about 3,000 people 25 miles south of Little Rock, to offer help to students trying to cope with the effects of Monday's suicides when word came this afternoon that Jerry McCool had killed himself.
Superintendent David Robinson said classes would go on because routine was important ''when things begin to crumble.''

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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May 2, 1990, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Maybe the Key To Long-Term Care

BYLINE: By William A. O'Neill; William A. O'Neill is Governor of Connecticut.

SECTION: Section A; Page 27, Column 4; Editorial Desk

LENGTH: 694 words

DATELINE: HARTFORD

Solving the problem of financing long-term health care for the elderly is a pressing national priority. Connecticut has taken steps to address that problem, and is awaiting action by Congress that would help put its plan into action.
In 1986, I appointed a special commission to examine private and public responsibilities for financing long-term health care for the elderly.
In 1987, the commission reported that Connecticut was spending $274 million for that purpose. But, it said, with the growth in the elderly population and the projected rate of inflation of health care costs, that sum would grow to $1.4 billion by the year 2000 unless the state did something different. What could be done?  There was substantial evidence that the private sector alone could not pay for long-term care. We realized that a publicly financed social-insurance program was equally unlikely, given America's national budget deficit and competing demands for Federal dollars. 
At this point, Connecticut realized that a public-and-private partnership offered the most promising alternative. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation then gave the state a two-year $350,000 grant to develop such a partnership.
The projected plan, called the Connecticut Partnership for Long-Term Care, was worked out in 1988 and 1980 by the state's executive branch, legislators, insurers, consumers, health-care providers and employers.
It would provide individuals with a way to plan ahead to meet long-term needs for care while also constraining the growth of Federal and state Medicaid expenditures.
The state's primary goal is to enable individuals to receive necessary care without having to impoverish themselves. Under the plan, individuals are offered an incentive of guaranteed protection of assets to purchase private insurance for long-term care in amounts they can afford.
If individuals need such care in a nursing home or at home, they will first receive benefits under their private insurance policy. When that coverage runs out, they can apply for Medicaid and protect one dollar of their assets for every dollar their private policy has paid out in state-approved benefits.
These protected assets can spell the difference between dependence and independence. No longer will people need to go broke to get Medicaid.
Simply put, the partnership would do the following things:
First, it would allow individuals to protect assets equal to the sum their insurance has paid out in approved benefits. Second, it would establish stringent standards for private insurance policies that can offer such protection. Third, it would create a public consumer-information service to help individuals choose appropriate coverage.
Fourth, it would lead to much more affordable policies by encouraging insurers to develop a variety of policies for a wide market, including the poor as well as the affluent. Fifth, it would save state and Federal dollars by delaying enrollment in Medicaid.
By testing this approach, we can demonstrate how far private insurance can go in financing long-term care. It will then be possible to design public benefits that are feasible and cost-effective.
In June 1989, the General Assembly unanimously authorized the demonstration. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation awarded the state $1.8 million to finance the first three years of a six-year demonstration.
However, since Medicaid is a joint Federal-state program, Federal legislation is needed for the demonstration to go forward. This legislation would waive the requirement that individuals can retain only a bare minimum of their assets before qualifying for Medicaid assistance. Such a measure unanimously passed the Senate last November but still awaits action in the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
We hope that the committee appreciates that the Connecticut partnership is a socially conscious, fiscally sound response to one of the most critical issues facing every state and the nation as a whole.
It offers a middle ground that is feasible, that will provide incentives to individuals to plan ahead and that will provide valuable information to guide a reasoned national solution.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

TYPE: Op-Ed

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May 3, 1990, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

NEWS SUMMARY

SECTION: Section A; Page 2, Column 5; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 1318 words


International    A3-17

 
The Government of South Africa opended its first formal talks with the African National Congress, which has been struggling since 1912 to rid the country of white minority domination.    Page A1

 
A new solution to the Afghan conflict is being explored by the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Moscow would accept elections for a new government and Washington would let the current leader, Najibullah, run for President if he first surrendered power.    A1

 
A relaxation of export restrictions on advanced technological products for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, including computers, precision machine tools and telecommunications equipment, was proposed by the Bush Administration.    A1 
 
 
Soviet Jews have been anxious for months about rumors of a pogrom, but the Jews of Odessa are debating a different fear: just how thorough and heartbreaking their exodus from the city will prove to be.    A16

 
Lithuania asks Paris and Bonn to mediate with the Soviets
     A16

 
Top Hungarian parties agree to elect dissident to Presidency
     A17

 
East and West Germany agreed on the main points of monetary union, settling on a compromise formula giving East Germans aged 60 and older more favorable financial terms when the Deutsche mark becomes legal tender in both countries.    A16

 
The 12 European Community nations have set themselves the task of achieving still greater economic and political unity by Jan. 1, 1993, now that plans to create a single trading market are well advanced.    A16
 
Legislators call for environmental ''Marshall Plan''    A9

 
Allies to get Bush arms proposal    A17

 
The freed hostage, Frank Reed, said he was held for months at a time with four other Westerners, including two Americans, and that he is angry that they have not been let go.    A3

 
Mexico says it will continue anti-drug efforts with U.S.    A3

 
Brazil blows up miners' airstrip to save Indians    A12

 
Jamaica's prime minister will see President Bush today    A13

 
New security plan in New Delhi    A10

 
Burmese rights abuses are said to continue    A5

 
Guilin journal: China welcomes tourists from Taiwan    A4

 
National    A18-24, B10-12

 
Oregon officials announced a plan that would limit medical services for people whose health care is paid for by the government. They said they can no longer afford the costly miracles of modern medicine.    A1

 
States are criticized over insurance for the elderly    A23

 
A former Federal housing official testified that staff aides to Vice President George Bush used political influence with the Department of Housing and Urban Development to win a $500,000 grant for a Kansas City developer in 1985.    A1

 
Republicans are in a good position in Senate races around the country, officials in both parties say. Republicans could gain several seats this fall and narrow the gap with Democrats, who hold a 55-to-45 advantage.    A1

 
The House ethics committee abruptly adjourned after its members apparently were unable to break an impasse over action in the case of Representative Barney Frank.    A18
 
Senate panel asks deeper Pentagon cuts than Bush sought    A21

 
Washington Talk: Bailout chief's future stirs debate    A18

 
The Mormon Church is changing. It recently altered some of its most sacred rituals, eliminating part of the largely secret ceremonies that have been viewed as offensive to women and to members of other faiths.    A1

 
A form of therapy using bright lights can reset the body rhythms of people who work at night, researchers have demonstrated. The therapy offers hope for millions of Americans.    A18

 
Scientist who shocked the world on atomic workers' health    A20

 
Two urban AIDS troublespots found    B10

 
Protein from AIDS virus promotes cancer growth
     B10

 
F.D.A. approves test to screen blood supply for hepatitis
     B12

 
Survival theory linked to fossils
     B12

 
New treatment is found to reduce bone fractures
     B12

 
Los Angeles mayor calls for water rationing
     A19

 
Regional    B1-8

 
The New York Schools Chancellor, Joseph A. Fernandez, announced that the policy of automatically holding back lagging students after the fourth and seventh grades will end.    A1

 
Albany budget talks mired in school aid battle
     B2

 
Hartford shifts revenue in move to adopt budget
     B2

 
Thefts from the Transit Authority now exceed $2 million a year, with power tools, bus engines and even a new tractor-trailer cab disappearing from warehouses, New York City transit authorities said.    B1

 
The president of Baruch College has acknowledged that not enough has been done to hire members of minorities for teaching and administrative jobs or to provide enough support to minority students.    B1

 
St. John's head defends handling of sex case
     B3

 
A sophomore is suing her university for requiring her to watch the dissection of a frog. Several students across the country have successfully sued high schools to avoid participating in dissection, but this may be the first time a university has been sued.    B1

 
Violence at the Mohawk reservation in upstate New York prompted hundreds of New York and Canadian police officers to seal off the area. Two Mohawks were killed and thousands of others barricaded themselves in their homes or fled.    B1

 
Man charged with killing gypsy-cab driver in the Bronx
     B3

 
Wild car in Manhattan hits five people, killing girl    B3

 
Auction is a singular sensation    B4

 
Proposal to raze Audubon Ballroom is debated
     B4

 
Dentist draws prison in burglaries
     B8

 
Business Digest    D1

 
The Home Section

 
The dawning of the age of ''astrodecor''    C1

 
Fourth-grade lament: ''Everyone's dating''    C1

 
Gardening    C1

 
Close to Home    C2

 
Currents    C3

 
Furniture designed by and for children
     C5

 
Parent & Child    C8

 
Arts/Entertainment

 
James Brown, social worker    C17

 
Gerald Arpino resigns from the Joffrey Ballet    C17

 
Theater: ''Some Americans Abroad''    C17

 
''Rain. Some Fish. No Elephants.''    C20

 
Dance: Paul Taylor troupe    C16

 
''Coppelia''    C20

 
Word and Image: ''Eichmann in My Hands''    C21

 
''Encyclopedia of the Holocaust''    C21
 
Television: ''Wings''    C22

 
Sports

 
Baseball: Mets beat Reds, 5-0    D23

 
Athletics sweep Yankees    D25

 
Basketball: Knicks win    D23

 
Column: Anderson on Bianchi    D23

 
Cycling: Soviet racer favored    D23

 
Horse Racing: Summer Squall    D24

 
Olympics: Joint German team nearing    D27

 
Health    B14

 
Personal Health: Taking proper action when bursitis strikes
 
Obituaries    B13

 
Lewis Leary, a specialist in American literature
 
Sergio Franchi, a singer
 
Editorials/Letters/Op-Ed

 
Editorials    A26
 
Who will rescue runaways?
 
Timid, destructive in Albany
 
''Twin Peaks'' freaks
 
Topics: Locker room lock
 
Letters    A26

 
A. M. Rosenthal: Elzbieta and Auschwitz    A27

 
Tom Wicker: Six, the magic number    A27

 
Holly Burkhalter: A way to pressure Beijing    A27

 
Leonard Kriegel: Academic freedom and racial theories    A27

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

TYPE: Summary

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May 3, 1990, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

Evolution in Europe;
For Odessa's Jews, a Time of Anxiety

BYLINE: By FRANCIS X. CLINES, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section A; Page 16, Column 1; Foreign Desk

LENGTH: 1454 words

DATELINE: ODESSA, U.S.S.R., May 2

Soviet Jews have been anxious for months about rumors of a pogrom, but the Jews of Odessa are debating another fear: just how thorough and heartbreaking their exodus from this effervescent crossroads city will prove to be.
''The critical mass of Jews has already left the city,'' concedes Boris G. Khersovsky, a Jew who is staying because he is an Odessite, a special breed of individualist who cherishes the mix of urban strength and seaside charm as elements of a spiritual place apart, even from the varied anxieties of Communism.
But many of his kith and kin no longer agree with him and feel threatened as much by the Soviet economic failure as by chronic anti-Semitism. Mr. Khersovsky, a physician, is understanding as he sees these people unable to resist a lifetime chance to get permission for emigration to Israel from this depressed nation.
 
An Accelerated Passage
Jews are thronging to take advantage of an accelerated passage that makes them the envy of their fellow sufferers, their non-Jewish neighbors. As Soviet Jews, they can get permanent exit visas. And so they are leaving the historic Ukrainian ghetto of the czars, the Pale of Settlement and its rich courtyard culture, which Sholom Aleichem mined in his stories of proud, mundanely hobbled Jews surviving by wit and hope until tomorrow. 
Tomorrow now beckons like Sholom Aleichem's Fiddler, and many young families are taking one of the few boons ever to come of having ''Jew'' stamped in their Soviet identity papers. Lately there are even tales of non-Jews seeking fake Jewish I.D. papers in this city's cornucopia of a black market.
Estimates vary, but at the present rate of exodus as many as two-thirds of the city 70,000 Jews could be gone in the next five years, say some of those engaged daily in fighting the Soviet bureaucracy that handles the outflow.
 
Families Are Divided
In this rush to migrate, families are often riven, with the elderly choosing to stay fearfully by their roots while the younger generations make their melancholy exits.
''This is very difficult for the soul,'' said Boris Dobrivker, a 35-year-old photographer, watching his friend, Pyotr Bovar, get on a train bound for Budapest to catch a plane to Israel.
''I am going to the homeland: where I was born no longer matters,'' Mr. Bovar said slowly at the center of a bittersweet crowd of family and friends bidding him farewell, a tableau to be seen daily in this city.
''I can't get used to things like this,'' said the watching Mr. Dobrivker, who would also like to leave but must stay because he cannot abandon his grandparents. In staying, he is a leader of a Jewish group known as the informals who track cases of neighborhood anti-Semitism and map the maze of the Soviet emigration bureaucracy.
 
Odessa Jews Nonreligious
''Many of them only remember they are Jewish when the question of emigration arises,'' he said, referring to the fact that Odessite Jews are nonreligious and scattered across a busy port city that has no Jewish quarter. This assimilation factor makes Odessa one of the less-threatening places for Jews to reside in the Soviet Union, residents say, even if they are more anxious lately about the pogrom rumors heard as well in Leningrad and Moscow.
Jews differ about the level of anti-Semitism, a subject of anxiety rooted in such historic events here as the pogrom of 1905 and the Nazi genocide. Many Soviet Jews are concerned that the nation's budding nationalist movements might easily veer into anti-Semitism, although they stress that, so far, Rukh, the Ukrainian nationalist movement, has firmly denounced anti-Semitism and encouraged better relations.
Jews agree that mass official antiSemitism has ended. But they disagree over whether recent Communist Party denunciations of anti-Semitism mute bigotry or feed it. Some Jews even accuse other Jews of feeding the current pogrom rumors to justify the exodus.
''They understand they'll only receive Western help this way as long as they are part of the underground,'' says Feliks I. Millshtein, director of the Society of Jewish culture, a year-old educational and social program that other Jews like Mr. Dobrivker contend is too beholden to the Communist Party apparatus to deserve credibility.
 
Reviving the Traditions
Mr. Millshtein denies this, stressing that the center is trying to revive the city's Jewish traditions that last blossomed eight decades ago, before the Communist revolution, when there were 52 synagogues and prayer houses in the city, compared with the one that is now active.
''I do not expect a pogrom on May 5 and I do not think anything like that will happen anywhere in the country,'' Mr. Millshtein says. Yet he contends that ''fear,'' not the failed economy, is mainly driving the exodus.
Mr. Dobrivker also tends to doubt the rumors of a pogrom. But he says individual incidents of anti-Semitic threats and suspicious crimes occur often enough to hint at the depth of latent bigotry that, he fears, the Communist apparatus tries at times to exploit.
For some Jews, the emigration process is one of self-discovery as much as finding a new land.
 
Plans for New Jersey
Waving goodbye on the train platform to Mr. Bovar, the latest emigre, Alla Klazova told of her own plans to move to relatives already living in Fair Lawn, N.J.
''We visited,'' she said. ''And I remember my daughter there asking my nephew, 'Why are you wearing a Star of David?'' and he replied calmly: 'I'm a Jew.' ''
Mrs. Klazova smiled at the memory. ''I'm emigrating because my daughter is afraid to say that,'' she said. ''I want my children to live in a free country where they can calmly say, 'I'm a Jew.' ''
''They are choosing another fate,'' says Mr. Khersovsky of the hundreds of families applying to leave each week. He is almost casual about the difficulty he experienced in becoming a doctor despite the nation's web of official and social anti-Semitism. ''It is in the air we breathe.''
 
'Not an Easy Fate
''We will stay here, even though it is not an easy fate,'' he says. ''I can't advise my friends not to go. All my life I've been fighting, always knowing I could not do this or that because I was a Jew.''
The poignancy for Odessa Jews is that just as the exodus booms, some of their own, like the doctor, are finally able to take advantage of liberalized Soviet life. He has just been elected to the City Council. And, with his friend, Leopold N. Mendelson, another Jewish physician, he has revived nondenominational charity health care for the needy, a proud Jewish tradition of this city that was snuffed out with the Communist revolution.
''We saw in the past two years how we could begin to make a difference,'' said Mr. Mendelson, who also has been elected to the City Council. The two doctors' charity, the Haas Society Fund, has been designed to take advantage of a new law that lets the city's business cooperative entrepreneurs make charity donations in lieu of local taxes. They talk of their duty to a city they love, and they project a hope ever qualifed by concern about the stability of this nation.
The talk of pogrom is never an easy subject to fathom in the Soviet Union, particularly in light of the history of violent, destructive rampages against Jews in Imperial Russia. While in English ''pogrom'' generally refers to those attacks, the word in modern Russian has broader use, referring as well to any kind of destructive rampage against any ethnic group.
 
Anxieties and Rumors
The current high level of anxieties and rumors only feeds the talk of such rampages against the Jews. ''I absolutely know there will be a pogrom within the next two years,'' said one Odessa Jew actively involved in community organizations who, it turns out, has decided himself to emigrate.
Asked how he is so sure of a pogrom, he replies that an outsider can never understand this topic. He cites various anecdotal stories of bigotry - of Jewish victims in a robbery and a killing that the authorities assert were not motivated primarily by anti-Semitism.
The man adds cryptically that calmness itself is further cause for suspicion. Jews, he notes, have been entirely spared in recent ethnic violence in Azerbaijan and Armenia. ''Very interesting riddle,'' he says.
After some more conversation, the man finally reveals his strongest motive, shared in common with so many others: the fear that their children are doomed to despair under the Soviet system, despite the exhortations of President Mikail S. Gorbachev.
''I would sell my soul for the future of my child,'' the man says, finally putting the pogrom talk aside and telling of his need to finally join all the Odessa Jews who are leaving.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Soviet Jews in Odessa are thronging to take advantage of the availability of permanent exit visas. ''I am going to the homeland,'' said Pyotr Bovar, center, as he prepared to board a train to begin his journey to Israel. (Francis X. Clines/The New York Times); map of the Soviet Union showing location of Odessa (The New York Times)

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May 3, 1990, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

States Are Criticized Over Insurance for the Elderly

BYLINE: By MARTIN TOLCHIN, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section A; Page 23, Column 1; National Desk

LENGTH: 555 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, May 2

In a dispute over what he called ''outrageous practices'' involving the sale of long-term-care insurance to the elderly, a Congressional chairman contended today that most state insurance commissioners were ineffective because they were ''understaffed and under-informed.''
''The majority appear to know little about what is going on in their states,'' said Representative John D. Dingell, chairman of the Committee on Energy and Commerce.
His comments were disputed by Earl R. Pomeroy, who is Insurance Commissioner of North Dakota and president of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners. ''Over all, I believe that state regulators have responded thoughtfully and aggressively to the actual and potential problems that have been identified in this market,'' Mr. Pomeroy said. 
''No regulatory system can foresee every problem or foreclose all avenues for fraudulent behavior, and unfortunately, there have been instances of consumer abuse in this market,'' Mr. Pomeroy said. ''In most instances, I believe that a consumer considering the purchase of a long-term-care insurance product today can be assured that it will provide substantial benefits.''
The dispute erupted at a hearing by Mr. Dingell's committee on the relatively new type of insurance for older Americans who require long-term care in nursing homes or at home. There are 1.5 million policyholders among more than 32 million older Americans.
The committee heard witnesses describe deceptive sales practices, restrictive policies that disguised the limitations in legal language and insurance companies that failed to provide the protection that was purchased. State commissioners usually relayed the complaints to the offending companies, sometimes with a notification that the companies may be guilty of minor violations of the state laws and regulations, the witnesses said.
Examples of abuses have been cited at hearings held by several Congressional committees, but Mr. Dingell, a Michigan Democrat, today linked them to what he described as lax local enforcement. He said most state insurance departments were unable to provide information on complaints received from dissatisfied policyholders. Case of Limited Abilities?  ''Though they rely heavily on complaints, few have organized complaint-gathering systems,'' Mr. Dingell said. ''Regulators lack clear actuarial standards and centralized data on bad companies and agents. They are understaffed and under-informed. And their ability to resolve problems and willingness to reach out-of-state offenders is limited.''
But Mr. Pomeroy insisted, ''We don't believe that the product is abused as a norm.''
Representative Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, said most states had failed to adopt a recommendation by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners that would bar the widespread practice requiring that elderly persons be hospitalized before qualifying for benefits on long-term care. This qualification would bar the benefits of more than 50 percent of those in long-term-care centers.
Mr. Wyden asked Mr. Pomeroy if he would agree with the notion that many of the states with the most complaints had the most modest consumer protection programs.
Mr. Pomeroy said regulation was ''primarily reactive'' and noted that long-term-care insurance was ''a brand new product.''

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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May 3, 1990, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

New Treatment Found to Reduce Bone Fractures From Osteoporosis

BYLINE: By GINA KOLATA

SECTION: Section B; Page 12, Column 5; National Desk

LENGTH: 432 words

A new treatment regimen for the bone disease osteoporosis can significantly reduce the incidence of bone fractures, researchers have found.
In a paper being published today in The New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Tommy Storm, of Sundby Hospital in Copenhagen, and his colleagues reported that women who were treated with etidronate disodium and calcium for three years had far fewer fractures of the spine than women who took a dummy drug and calcium for comparison.
''I think it is an important study,'' said Dr. B. Lawrence Riggs, an osteoporosis researcher at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. 
Although two other treatments, estrogen and the bone-modeling hormone calcitonin, also significantly decrease the fracture rate, the new study ''gives another option,'' Dr. Riggs said.
 
F.D.A. Approval to Be Sought
Etidronate, made by Norwich Eaton Pharmaceuticals, a division of Procter & Gamble, prevents calcium from being lost from bone.
Susan Dietrich, a spokeswoman for Norwich Eaton, said the company would soon apply to the Food and Drug Administration for approval to market the drug to treat osteoporosis.
Its effectiveness is being examined in a study involving more than 400 patients at a number of medical centers in the United States.
Osteoporosis, the most common bone disease, strikes many elderly men and women. In women, bone loss accelerates after menopause, often leading to a severe decline in bone mass. Weakened bones in the spine may collapse, causing back pain and a loss of height. Brittle bones in the hip may fracture, often requiring nursing home care.
The new study involved 66 women 56 to 75 years of age who were randomly assigned to receive etidronate or a dummy pill. When etidronate was used previously, it prevented new bone from being formed to the same degree as it had stopped bone from being lost, leading to no net effect. #13-Week Rest Periods To avoid this difficulty, the Danish researchers instructed the women to take the medication in two-week cycles, followed each time by 13-week periods when they took no drugs. The rest period was intended to allow bone to build up again.
The researchers report that the women who used etidronate had an average of six fractures per 100 patient years, while those taking the dummy pills had 54 fractures per 100 patient years. But neither group gained enough bone to make their bone mass normal.
None of the three treatments for osteoporosis restores bone mass to normal, Dr. Riggs said. And the only way to know which is most effective would be to compare them in a clinical trial.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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The New York Times

May 5, 1990, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

CONSUMER'S WORLD;
The Slow but Steady Progress In Stopping Tap-Water Burns

BYLINE: By BARRY MEIER

SECTION: Section 1; Page 50, Column 4; Style Desk

LENGTH: 1103 words

Every day, safety experts say, about 300 young children are taken to emergency rooms around the country suffering from burns caused by household water that is too hot. And annually, about 3,000 children are injured seriously enough in such accidents to require hospitalization.
Over the past decade, a scattered band of children's advocates have been prodding the plumbing and appliance industries, utility companies and even the Federal Government to take action to reduce such injuries. Now, the maker of a new device that automatically shuts off the flow of hot tap water says it can prevent such accidents. 
On May 14, the Children's Hospital National Medical Center in Washington will open its third annual Safe Kids campaign to reduce accidents of all kinds, the leading cause of childhood deaths. This year, the weeklong program, sponsored by the National Safety Council and Johnson & Johnson, will focus on burns from household tap water.
 
Dangers for the Elderly
 The dangers posed by extremely hot water are not limited to children. The elderly and those who suffer from diabetes and other diseases that reduce the ability to sense temperature changes are also prone to being burned. And many apartment dwellers are particulary vulnerable because they cannot easily control water-heater temperatures.
But young children, largely those under the age of 2, account for many of those badly burned by tap water, said Dr. Murray L. Katcher, the director of the maternal and child-health program of the Wisconsin Department of Health and Social Services. About half of those incidents occur when parents put children into water that is too hot. Among the other causes: children who accidentially turn on water faucets, fall into tubs or are abused by parents.
Water heaters have long been viewed as a major culprit in water-caused burns. In the late 1970's, for example, electric water heaters left the factory set at 150 degrees, while gas heaters were set at 140 degrees, said Dr. Kenneth Feldman, the medical director of the Odessa Brown Children's Clinic in Seattle.
 
Burns in Seconds
 At those temperatures, water can cause third-degree burns in about 2 seconds at 150 degrees and in about 5 seconds at 140 degrees. ''Children can be burned twice as quickly,'' Dr. Feldman said, because their skin is more tender.
In 1978, Dr. Feldman and other concerned physicians petitioned the Federal Consumer Product Safety Commission, asking it to limit factory settings on water heaters to 130 degrees. But in 1981, the commission rejected the request, contending that a mandatory standard was not necessary because the industry was starting to reduce heater settings.
Others believed the industry needed to be prodded further. In 1980, the Florida adopted a law restricting factory heater settings to 125 degrees. Heartened by that development, Dr. Feldman and others succeeded in 1982 in getting Washington State to adopt a similar law despite opposition from, among others, utilities, which saw the move as a threat to sales. In 1988, Wisconsin also passed a law limiting factory settings on heaters.
The Washington law required warning labels on water heaters as well utility-supported public-awareness campaigns. ''It was designed to give people a safe heater and knowledge of the risks and benefits,'' Dr. Feldman said.
Devices aimed at preventing scalding have existed for several decades. They use either pressure- or temperature-sensitive controls, but they can be improperly installed and may have a slow response time, said Matthew Maley, the director of risk management at the Shriner's Burns Institute in Cincinnati.
 
Cut-Off Devices
 Meanwhile, attention was also being increasingly focused on another aspect of the scalding-water problem: devices to cut off extremely hot water right at the faucet.
 In the mid-1980's, a scalding accident and a new technology crossed paths. The accident involved an elderly relative of an engineer at the Memry Corporation in Norwalk, Conn. And by coincidence, the company was working with a metallurgical technology called ''shape memory,'' in which alloys can be made to change shape based on temperature.
As a result of the scalding episode, Memry developed an easily installed anti-scalding device that automatically shuts off the water flow in a faucet or shower head before the temperature reaches 120 degrees. Stephen Fisher, Memry's president, said a 1986 investigation by the Federal Securities and Exchange Commission into Memry's public statements about its technology and business plans derailed the new company, then called Memory Metals Inc., and delayed production of the device.
The S.E.C. problem was resolved in 1988, and the company, operating under new management, began producing the anti-scalding device. Mr. Maley said it has been used successfully at the Shriner's Institute in showers at a home for parents of children being treated at the hospital. One drawback, Mr. Maley said, is that it can take several seconds for the device to reset itself so water flow can resume.
Memry now markets anti-scalding devices for the shower, tub and sink. They not yet widely sold, but information about where to buy them is available from the company at 83 Keeler Avenue, Norwalk, Conn. 06854; 800-782-7840 (except in Connecticut, 203-853-9777). Prices range from about $14 to $40.
Along with lobbying for plumbing-code changes to require anti-scalding devices, Safe Kids is putting Memry units in low-income dwellings in several areas, including Washington and Louisville, Ky. The group received a $15,000 pledge from Memry to develop a slide show dealing with tap-water scalds. Though literature from the Safe Kids program promotes the Memry valve, the group is not yet formally endorsing it.
 
Voluntary Guidelines
 Facing the prospect of further state action, the heater industry is developing voluntary guidelines, mandating a 120-degree setting for both electric and gas heaters, said Frank Stanonik, the assistant director of technical services for the Gas Appliance Manufacturers' Association in Arlington, Va. ''In many cases, companies have already instituted the change,'' Mr. Stanonik said.
Where laws have forced change, there have been appreciable results. The number of children brought to Seattle area clinics with tap-water burns fell by half in the past decade, Dr. Feldman said. While there is no scientific proof that the state law was responsible, the feeling is that it played a significant role, he said.
''We are really encouraged to see the data drop,'' he said. ''It is very hopeful.''

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Diagram: Two of the Memry Corporation's products, one for a bathtub, the other for a shower. Both use the company's anti-scalding device based on a ''shape memory'' alloy that expands when it gets hot. (Memry Corporation)

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May 5, 1990, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

Dr. Morris Stroud, 76, Specialist in Geriatrics

BYLINE: AP

SECTION: Section 1; Page 30, Column 6; National Desk

LENGTH: 164 words

DATELINE: WEST CHESTER, Pa., May 4

Dr. Morris Wistar Stroud 3d, a physician who developed new ways to help elderly patients recover from illness, died of cancer on Monday at his home. He was 76 years old. In the 1940's Dr. Stroud was among the first physicians to form teams of professionals, including counselors, to work with the family to improve a patient's life.
Last year, he, Dr. Sidney Katz and Dr. Barry Gurland established the Morris W. Stroud 3d Center for Scientific Approaches to the Quality of Life in Health Care and Aging at Columbia University.
He was co-author in 1985, with Dr. Katz and Sister Barbara Ann Gooding, of ''Rehabilitation of the Elderly: A Tale of Two Hospitals.''
Dr. Stroud was a graduate of Yale University and the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. He served in the South Pacific in World War II.
Dr. Stroud's first wife, Marion S. Rosengarten, died in 1988. He is survived by his wife, Patricia; a daughter, Marion Boulton Stroud, a brother and three sisters.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

TYPE: OBITUARY

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The New York Times

May 6, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

In South Africa, Foes Are Humanized

BYLINE: By CHRISTOPHER S. WREN, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section 1; Part 1, Page 3, Column 1; Foreign Desk

LENGTH: 913 words

DATELINE: CAPE TOWN, May 5

An elderly black woman stood outside the airport terminal this morning, awaiting the arrival of Albie Sachs, a veteran of the African National Congress who was returning home after 24 years in exile.
''This is really a funny day,'' the woman said with a smile. ''Communists and terrorists have turned into people.''
Her comment was prompted not just by the homecoming of Mr. Sachs, a white lawyer who lost his right arm when his car was bombed in Maputo, Mozambique, several years ago, but also by euphoria over the successful talks between the Government and the African National Congress, which announced jointly on Friday that they had made real progress toward eliminating obstacles to more formal negotiations. 
The surprise was not that the two delegations got along but that they got along so well, raising hopes that the sudden trust and cordiality between old enemies could hasten an orderly demise of apartheid.
 
'To See the Common Ground'
''The important thing is that both delegations went into these talks with a spirit of letting bygones be bygones,'' Nelson Mandela, who headed the African National Congress delegation, told reporters after the talks.
''We were therefore able to conduct these discussions without any bitterness. We were able to see the common ground between us, and it is on this that we concentrated,'' Mr. Mandela said.
President F. W. de Klerk, appearing with Mr. Mandela, said that ''the interaction and the talks had the additional advantage of allowing people sitting around the table to get to know each other, to really form an impression as to the sincerity of people, as to what make their minds tick, as to what motivates them.''
The negotiators had little in common beyond being South Africans. The Government side consisted of Government ministers and officials who were all white, male, Afrikaner and mostly in their 50's and 60's. For them, the African National Congress had long been synonymous with subversion and terrorism.
 
A Lack of Bitterness
The team sent by the African National Congress was more diverse, with whites and women as well as black men. But its members arrived with strong views about members of a party that devised apartheid and inflicted repression to enforce it. Several delegates of the African National Congress, like Mr. Mandela and Walter Sisulu, had served long prison terms. Others had been driven into exile.
During the discussions, Mr. Sisulu recalled today, a Government minister remarked that he found it amazing that those sitting across from him were not bitter.
''Both sides were quite frank about their perceptions and that frankness helped,'' said Mr. Sisulu.
He said he and his colleagues had reservations about the participation of the Minister of Law and Order Adriaan Vlok, whose police force waged an often ruthless war against the African National Congress and its supporters until Mr. de Klerk legalized the organization on Feb. 2.
 
'Very Nice People'
''When I thought of him, I was worried,'' Mr. Sisulu said today. But Mr. Vlok turned out to be pleasant man, he said. Mr. Vlok seemed to draw the same conclusion about the visitors from the African National Congress.
''They were very nice people,'' Mr. Vlok was overheard to say after Friday's news conference.
The African National Congress's delegation included Joe Slovo, whose leadership of the South African Communist Party made him the man his fellow whites in South Africa love to hate. Mr. Mandela disclosed last Sunday that a Government minister wanted Mr. Slovo omitted from the team.
But Mr. Slovo has a jovial charm and before long, Mr. Sisulu recalled, Government ministers was exchanging jokes with South Africa's paramount Communist.
Thabo Mbeki, the Congress's secretary for foreign affairs, told reporters that he jokingly referred to South Africa's Foreign Minister, Roelof F. Botha, as ''my deputy.'' Mr. Mbeki was not sure that Mr. Botha was pleased about the remark. Who's Coming to Dinner?  Mr. Sisulu, who is unfailingly courteous, was asked by a reporter today if any Government representatives had invited him home to dinner.
''There was no specific invitation of that kind,'' he said.
And was he inviting any of them home?''No, too early,'' Mr. Sisulu said with the trace of a smile.
Strini Moodley, the spokesman for the Azanian People's Organization, a militant black-consciousness movement, was quoted today by the South African Press Association as accusing the African National Congress of forging an alliance with the governing National Party. The white right-wing Conservative Party, in turn, has attacked the Government for talking to the African National Congress.
When Mr. Sachs arrived today, he insisted upon pushing his own luggage cart with his one arm, fending off repeated efforts by black admirers to do it for him. He said he and the other exiles had been convinced that eventually they would return, but when it happened, he said, ''it came as a surprise.''
Mr. Sachs, who watched Mr. de Klerk and Mr. Mandela appear together on television, said he was not surprised to learn of the atmosphere at the talks. ''There's never been any problem from our side. The problem has always been from the other side,'' he said.
But Mr. Sachs cautioned against getting swept up in euphoria when so much more had to be done to eliminate apartheid.
''I think we have to be careful,'' he said. ''We have to make it a solid optimism and not a fantasy optimism.''

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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The New York Times

May 6, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

SERVICE HELPS SOLVE INSURANCE PUZZLES

BYLINE: By PENNY SINGER

SECTION: Section 12WC; Page 16, Column 5; Westchester Weekly Desk

LENGTH: 1328 words

''We're getting more inquiries than ever before from patients who don't understand their bills,'' said Maureen Nemeth, the coordinator of credit and collection for inpatient accounts at Northern Westchester Hospital Center in Mount Kisco. ''Filing medical insurance claims has become very confusing for the public, especially as benefits keep changing.''
Dr. George Vogel, a 72-year-old retired physician who lives at Heritage Hills in Somers, said that one of the greatest sources of stress among older people in his community was health insurance. ''It's getting very difficult to know how to buy the right policy,'' he said, ''and it's also hard to deal with all the medical and insurance forms required today.''
Dr. Vogel, who practiced medicine for 50 years, commented that his patients never had to fill out insurance forms. ''I had an assistant who did it for them because I believed it was part of an ethical medical practice to do so,'' he said. 
''However, at this point, with the repeal of the law providing benefits for catastrophic illness, I find that the new regulations concerning medical insurance are so confusing and the information you get from the insurance companies so unreadable, that I just got fed up and hired a consultant to review all my policies and give me advice. But I shouldn't have to pay for assistance. Enough money is being made by insurance companies to give the public a fair shake and not rip them off.''
Dr. Vogel went to David A. Testone, who runs a medical-insurance benefit-recovery service, Testone Associates of Brewster.
 
Overlapping Policies
''Dr. Vogel had five different insurance policies, and when I reviewed his benefits I found he had overlapping policies,'' Mr. Testone said. ''For instance, his hospital benefits were duplicated, and he didn't need three of the policies.''
The point is, Mr. Testone pointed out, that even Dr. Vogel, a professional who is more familiar with medical coverage and forms than the average consumer, found buying supplemental health insurance confusing.
''The repeal of the catastrophic law has opened the doors for a lot of insurance salesmen, who are making a killing selling duplicate Medigap policies,'' Mr. Testone said, referring to the private policies that cover what Medicare doesn't pay. ''There are a lot of abuses out there. Many older people are insurance-poor because they're paying for policies they don't need.''
Mr. Testone, a former teacher who spent 10 years as chairman of the foreign language department at a boarding school in Ohio, said he was looking for a change of pace when he went into the insurance business as a district claims representative for one of the nation's largest health-insurance companies six years ago.
 
On Settling Claims
''But it turned out what I really was was a hatchet man,'' he said. ''My job required me to travel from coast to coast, settling claims and rescinding insurance policies, working in the company's best interests. Keeping an eye on corporate profit was my first responsibility, the policyholder ran a poor second.''
When anyone had a claim in excess of $10,000, Mr. Testone said, ''all hell broke loose.''
''One automobile accident victim, for instance, had a soft-tissue injury - which doesn't show up on X-rays - certified by his doctor,'' Mr. Testone continued. ''In such cases, our insurance company had the patient examined by 'an outside impartial medical examiner,' whose fees were paid by the insurance company.
''His findings differed from those of the victim's own doctor, and then the policyholder was advised to settle for a compromise sum or else we would rescind his policy. In essence, that meant it would be almost impossible for him to get other insurance, so people would take a compromise sum. In one memorable week, I saved the company more money than I was paid in five years.''
What triggered Mr. Testone's final disenchantment with his job was a case concerning an elderly woman in Tampa, Fla.
''She was an 85-year-old widow who had paid a claims consultant $1,000 to handle her bills for her. But because he didn't file the paperwork in her Medigap policy properly, the insurance company didn't have all the information. We found a loophole and were able to take advantage of her and didn't pay her what she deserved.''
 
New Business Grew
After four years of settling claims in ''the shortest time at the least expense to the company,'' Mr. Testone said, ''I had more than enough.''
Turning his knowledge of the inner workings of insurance companies into a service business, Mr. Testone started his company 18 months ago, acting as intermediary between insurance company and client.
''Business was slow at first, but gradually, spurred largely by word-of-mouth referrals, my client list has grown,'' he said. He estimated that more than 25 percent of medical claims his older clients submit were returned for errors and omissions, and many claims were never resubmitted.
Annual fees for Mr. Testone's service - which includes accounting of all medical expenses, filing all medical-insurance forms and claims and analysis of a client's present medical policies - are $150 for those older than 55 and $99 for those younger than 55, plus 10 percent of all money recovered and claimed yearly. Members of Northern Westchester Hospital's health-access program pay $35 and 5 percent recovery.
 
Shopping Bags of Bills
''Clients literally bring in shopping bags containing bills,'' he said. ''One couple, who were both struck by major illnesses last year -the husband had a heart attack, the wife a stroke - were overwhelmed by the bills coming in from doctors, hospitals and collection agencies.'' The first step, he said, was to put the bills in working order. ''They had a group policy through the husband's employer and in an individual policy as well. Working with the legal department of both insurance agencies, we found that the hospital had been paid twice. Eventually the clients got the benefits they were entitled to through both major policies.''
Alan J. Benet, who has been an independent insurance broker in Mamaroneck for 25 years, observed that a service such as Mr. Testone's was a ''reasonable one.'' He added: ''People who are hospitalized have a lot to deal with. Very few people are accustomed to keeping the concise records that are needed today.''
As for buying insurance policies, Mr. Benet said, too many elderly people buy three or four policies. ''They don't realize that each policy will only pay a share of benefits. For example, if the total benefits amount to 80 percent of the claim, coordinating benefits means that each policy will only pay 40 percent while the policyholder is paying two sets of premiums, he only gets the benefit of one.''
 
Companies and Consultants
However, insurance companies, Mr. Benet stressed, are not all alike. ''Some are better than others. When the profit motive is taken out of the picture, the policyholder is usually better off. In other words, if he buys a contract from a consultant or independent broker, he gets a more impartial view than he would from an insurance company representative.''
''If someone is 65 years old or older, one Medicare supplement product is advisable,'' said John F. Kelly, manager of public relations for Empire Blue Cross and Blue Shield, the state's largest health insurer. ''People should read their policies and know their benefits. No one should purchase multiple Medigap insurance policies.'' But, Mr. Kelly stressed, ''There is no need for any one of our policyholders to have to pay an outside service to collect their benefits for them. Our offices are accessible by phone and with customer representatives who will help all our clients.
''We have a customer-service office in White Plains and one in Manhattan for anyone with problems. Our claim forms are simple one-page affairs that shouldn't take anyone more than 15 or 20 minutes to complete.''

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: David A. Testone, left, of Testone Associates of Brewster, a medical-insurance benefit-recovery service, reviewing insurance policies with Dr. George Vogel, a retired physician. (Alan Zale for The New York Times)

Copyright 1990 The New York Times Company



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The New York Times

May 7, 1990, Monday, Late Edition - Final

METRO DATELINES;
State Urged to Help Elderly Pedestrians

SECTION: Section B; Page 8, Column 5; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 188 words

DATELINE: ALBANY

More than a third of all pedestrian deaths in New York State in 1988 involved people who were 65 years old or older, the Legislature's Commission on Critical Transportation Choices reported yesterday.
Calling the state's 575 pedestrian deaths in 1988 a ''hidden killer,'' the commission recommended that a survey be made to determine where elderly people live, where they walk and where they are being killed as pedestrians. Based on the results, the commission said, the state should consider building safety-island medians that would allow the elderly more time to cross busy streets. Traffic signals should also be set to give such pedestrians longer crossing times in high-use areas, the commission said.
State Senator Norman Levy, the chairman of the commission, said he would seek a change in state law that would require motorists to yield the right of way to pedestrians as soon as they enter any portion of a crosswalk. At present motorists must yield only when the pedestrian is in their traffic lane of the crosswalk.
The commission said that of the 575 deaths in 1988, 197 involved people 65 or older. (AP)

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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The New York Times

May 10, 1990, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

Change in Social Security for Women Is Urged

BYLINE: By TAMAR LEWIN

SECTION: Section A; Page 27, Column 1; National Desk

LENGTH: 656 words

The Older Women's League called on Congress yesterday to give some form of Social Security credit to women who stay home to care for children or disabled family members.
The advocacy group, based in Washington, said in a report that the retirement system unfairly penalizes women, who are far more likely than men to spend time outside the work force caring for family members.
It said biases in Social Security and private pensions would leave young working women no better off in their old age than their mothers who never earned wages.
''Our retirement programs continue to reward male work patterns while penalizing two-earner families, care giving, divorce, early retirement and long life,'' said Lou Glasse, the president of the league. ''Unless we enact reforms now, these biases will perpetuate poverty among older women well into the next century.'' 
Although more and more women are in the work force, working women's retirement benefits, like their wages, still lag far behind those of working men.
In some areas, the gap is increasing. The average private pension received by women in 1974 was 73 percent of the average man's, the report said, but by 1987 it had dropped to 58 percent.
Representative William J. Hughes, the New Jersey Democrat who is chairman of the Subcommittee on Retirement Income and Employment of the House Select Committee on Aging, announced he would hold hearings on May 22 to consider how Congress might remedy the situation outlined in the league report.
''One of the easily correctable components of this problem,'' Mr. Hughes said, ''is that while women assume the majority of care-giving responsibilities, the Social Security program does not recognize these care-giving years. We must develop proposals that do not penalize women for their care-giving years.''
Social Security benefits for today's workers will be computed on the basis of average earnings over 35 years. Those who work fewer than 35 years have zeroes averaged into their earnings, a policy that cuts deeply into benefits for the vast majority of women, who take years out of their career to care for children or aging parents.
Women average 11.5 years out of the work force, as against 1.3 years for men, the report said, adding that even by 2030 most women aged 62 to 69 will not have spent at least 35 years in the work force.
''Since society depends on family care giving, and that means women,'' Ms. Glasse said, ''we propose that those years taken out for care giving not be counted.''
The other approach, she said, would be to provide a Social Security credit for the care-giving years.
 
Two Methods of Payment
The league report said a woman's wages drop an average of $3,000 the year she has a child and $5,000 to $6,000 each of the next two years.
Social Security benefits for women are based either on their own work records or their husbands', whichever pays more. If a woman gets Social Security through her husband, the amount is equal to 50 percent of his.
From 1960 to 1988, the report said, the number of American women entitled to Social Security on both their own work records and their spouses' more than quadrupled, to 22 percent from 5 percent. But at the same time the percentage of women drawing benefits through their husbands remained constant, because for millions of employed women a monthly Social Security payment that is half of their husband's is still more than they would receive based on their own employment record. These women get no benefit for their years of contributing to Social Security.
The report said private pensions are also biased against women. Because of family obligations, it said, many women do not spend enough years working full-time for one employer to become entitled to that employer's pension. The league proposed that private pensions be made portable, so people who change jobs can take retirement contributions with them to their new jobs.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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The New York Times

May 11, 1990, Friday, Late Edition - Final

LAW;
Grandparent Visitation Rights at a New Level

BYLINE: By LAWRENCE I. SHULRUFF, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section B; Page 7, Column 3; National Desk

LENGTH: 765 words

DATELINE: CHICAGO, May 10

When parents divorce, laws in all 50 states allow the grandparents to petition the courts to keep seeing their grandchildren. But Illinois has gone one step further: It allows that same right to grandparents when the child's parents are still married.
Legal experts say the Illinois law spells out grandparent visitation rights more explicitly than any statute in the country. And while some organizations representing older Americans say they are pleased, other lawyers in family practice say there are often good reasons that married couples might want to keep their parents away from their children. 
Both sides agree that the Illinois law, enacted last September, raises important issues, including how a family is defined and who should make decisions regarding a child's upbringing.
''It is an amazing bill,'' said James L. Rubens, a Chicago lawyer involved in one of the few cases that have arisen so far. ''It puts grandparents right in the middle of the lives of parents who are living happily together.'' Does Statute Go Too Far?  He added, ''I do believe that grandparents have rights, but I have to ask if this statute goes too far.''
Mr. Rubens was appointed by the court to represent 6-year-old Christopher Brooks, who lives with his parents in Milwaukee. The child's grandmother, who lives outside Chicago, has gone to Circuit Court of Cook County to seek visitation rights.
The grandmother, Dorothy Dillon, said she took the action because her daughter, from whom she is estranged, allowed her to visit her grandson only three or four times a year and restricted telephone conversations. The grandmother wants to visit the child once a month.
''This is no way to treat a mother, no way to treat a grandmother,'' said Ms. Dillon, who is a secretary. ''All I want is to see my grandson.'' She has already spent about $5,750 on legal fees, she said.
Christopher's mother, Karyn Brooks, said she had never denied her mother a chance to visit the boy. ''But we want to make the decision when she will see our son,'' Mrs. Brooks said. ''The court doesn't belong here. This is a family matter.'' Defense of New Statute Groups that represent the interests of grandparents disagree. Ruth Etheridge, who founded Grandchildren's Rights to Grandparents, an organization based in LaGrange, a Chicago suburb, argues that the new law does not restrict parents' rights. While the law allows grandparents to petition a court for visitation rights, it does not guarantee such a right. After a petition is filed, the court determines if it is in the best interest of the child to allow the grandparents to visit.
Ms. Etheridge said the law helped grandparents detect and report child abuse. ''The only reason I can see why a grandparent should be refused visitation is that the grandparent is abusive,'' said Ms. Etheridge, whose own daughter has refused her visitation rights. ''That is very rare.''
Most state laws allow grandparents to seek to visit their grandchildren in cases in which the parents have divorced or separated or if the parent to whom the grandparents are related has died, said Jeff Atkinson, a professor of family law at Loyola University in Chicago and co-chairman of the American Bar Association's Child Custody committee.
Professor Atkinson noted that 21 states have so-called general-visitation statutes. These laws do not specifically limit visitation to cases of parental divorce or death, although courts in some of those states, like California, have done so. In some states, visits may be sought by more distant relatives and, in rare cases, even nonrelatives who have a significant interest in the child.
 
How Illinois Law Works
The Illinois law does not specify how many visits a grandparent may expect, or the length of each visit.
The sponsor of the new Illinois law, State Representative James R. Stange, a Republican from the Chicago suburb of Oak Brook, acknowledged that the statute placed some parental authority in the hands of the court. He said, however, that the provision had been drafted to deal with ''extreme circumstances,'' such as when a couple refuses to let a grandparent visit at all.
Mr. Stange said he did not expect the law to come into play often. He said he knew of two other Illinois cases in which grandparents had filed petitions to visit grandchildren whose parents are married.
''The threat of court is going to force parents and grandparents to confront their problems and resolve their differences,'' he said. ''If they can't resolve them, the only option is going to court. Then the judge will decide.''

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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The New York Times

May 13, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

THE SHEER NECESSITY FOR POETRY

BYLINE: By JOHN BAYLEY; John Bayley is the Thomas Warton Professor of English at the University of Oxford. His books include ''Tolstoy and the Novel.''

SECTION: Section 7; Page 9, Column 1; Book Review Desk

LENGTH: 2050 words


THE COMPLETE POEMS OF ANNA AKHMATOVA
Edited by Roberta Reeder.
Translated by Judith Hemschemeyer.
Illustrated. Volume One, 650 pp. Volume Two, 871 pp.
Somerville, Mass.: Zephyr Press. $85.
It will be interesting to see how the coming of glasnost affects Russian poets and their poetry. Already so brilliant and talented a poet as Joseph Brodsky has become as much a cosmopolitan as a Russian poet, often writing in English, and acclimated to the indifference of an open society where poetry is the preserve of academics and a few other enthusiasts. Nothing feels more separated from this than the poetry and personality of Anna Akhmatova, who in her old age was kind to Mr. Brodsky when he was young and befriended him before he had to leave the Soviet Union. 
For most Soviet poets she preserved a steady if good-natured contempt. She was the high priestess of a Russian poetry that was almost an extension of the Russian Church - hieratic, gravely melodious, attracting a vast audience of devotees who knew much of the nation's poetry by heart in the same sense that they knew the Orthodox ritual. Her friend, the poet Osip Mandelstam, who died during the Stalinist purges in a distant eastern gulag, once remarked that poetry was taken so seriously in Russia that a poet could be killed for writing it. Pushkin would have understood that, and Mandelstam's satirical verse about Stalin signed his own death warrant. Akhmatova too was persecuted by the Soviet state: her former husband, the poet Nikolai Gumilyov, was shot in 1921, and their son was twice imprisoned for long periods for the crime of bearing his father's name.
But Russian poets, like martyrs of the church, have thrived on such treatment and on the holy status it gave their work. Akhmatova herself was very conscious of this status. In 1962, four years before Akhmatova died at the age of 76, Robert Frost visited the Soviet Union and paid a call on her at the dacha lent her for the occasion at the writers' colony near Leningrad. The two distinguished old poets sat side by side in wicker chairs and talked quietly. ''And I kept thinking,'' Akhmatova wrote afterward, ''here are you, my dear, a national poet. Every year your books are published. . . . They praise you in all the newspapers and journals, they teach you in the schools, the President receives you as an honored guest. And all they've done is slander me! . . . I've had everything - poverty, prison lines, fear, poems remembered only by heart, and burnt poems. And humiliation and grief. And you don't know anything about this and wouldn't be able to understand it if I told you. . . . But now let's sit together, two old people, in wicker chairs. A single end awaits us. And perhaps the real difference is not actually so great?''
But she knew it was. Great not so much in terms of suffering - bitter and prolonged as that had been - but in terms of the sheer necessity for poetry in such times, for the Russian poet and for his audience. In a happier country it is one of the amenities, not the needs. The culture that is optional and varied in a civilized society was for many in Stalin's country the only way to stay living and sane.
For this reason the poet must never forget, or allow the new barbarism to blot out the past. Akhmatova saw her poetic role as one of remembering and bearing witness. As Roberta Reeder points out in her admirable introduction to ''The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova,''
''for Akhmatova, to forget was to commit a mortal sin. Memory had become a moral category: one remembers one's misdeeds, atones, and achieves redemption.'' And in those miserable years in which Soviet culture sought to impose a Communist stereotype on every aspect of society, the poet's personal memories were as communally precious as statements bearing witness to public events and universal suffering. Akhmatova'a two great poems, ''Requiem'' and ''Poem Without a Hero,'' record, respectively, the time of terror and the purges and a more timeless vision of the past in which the dead and the living meet and change roles, and key events in the poet's own life become part of a public nightmare.
The central event of ''Poem Without a Hero'' is the suicide of a young friend, a cadet officer who had fallen in love with Olga Sudeikina, an actress who was a close friend of Akhmatova's. (There are excellent photographs in this collection of Akhmatova herself and of people in her life.) Sudeikina took parts in the decadent dramas put on in the group theaters and by St. Petersburg cabarets like the Stray Dog. She was also for a time the lover of the poet Aleksandr Blok, another close friend of Akhmatova's, and it was jealousy for this rival that caused the young soldier-poet Vsevolod Knyazev to shoot himself. Although this suicide occurred a year before World War I, it was for Akhmatova a symbol and foretaste of all the horrors to come. The figure of Knyazev mutates in the poem into that of the poet Mandelstam himself, who had said to Akhmatova shortly before his arrest: ''I am ready to die.'' And in the carnival of the threatening 20th century (''The real - not the calendar - / Twentieth Century''), both merge with a ''guest from the future,'' the Oxford professor Isaiah Berlin, who came to call on Akhmatova in 1945, when he was working in Moscow for the British Foreign Office.
Delighted as she was to see this admirer from the West, with whom she conversed for a whole night in her cramped garret near the Moika Canal, Akhmatova was always convinced that she owed to that visit her subsequent persecution by Andrei Zhdanov, Stalin's minister for culture, a pursuit that lasted till the tyrant's death and recalled some of her worst times during the purges before the war. In those days she had planned and begun to write ''Requiem,'' a great poem like a dirge or chant in Orthodox ritual, which was inspired by a woman who spoke to her as they waited in line outside the prison where their sons were held, saying, ''Can you put this into your poetry?'' Akhmatova replied that she could. ''Requiem'' wonderfully commemorates the horror of the time and without a trace of self-consciousness asks that if a statue of herself, the poet, is ever erected by her fellow countrymen it should stand here outside the prison wall by the Neva River, with the melted snow running from its bronze face like tears.
That section of the poem shows with what reverence, solemnity even, Akhmatova regarded her poetic calling, a dignity that makes the public posturing of such a poet in the West as W. B. Yeats seem tawdry by contrast. One of Akhmatova's most moving as well as most stately poems commemorates the death of Lot's wife, turned into a pillar of salt for the last glance she could not resist taking of her native town:
 
 
 
 And the righteous man followed the envoy of God,
 Huge and bright, over the black mountain.
 But anguish spoke loudly to his wife:
 It is not too late, you can still gaze
 
 At the red towers of your native Sodom,
 At the square where you sang, at the courtyard where you spun,
 At the empty windows of the tall house
 Where you bore children to your beloved husband. . . .
 
 Who will weep for this woman?
 Isn't her death the least significant?
 But my heart will never forget the one
 Who gave her life for a single glance.
 
 
 
Sonorous, calm, deliberate in movement, the Russian words can be transformed into no English equivalent; but in this admirably restrained and accurate translation by Judith Hemschemeyer, the sense and the message strike with all the weight of the original. To have rendered the whole corpus of such a poet into plain, proportioned, forceful English is a remarkable achievement; and Amanda Haight, the doyenne of Akhmatova studies, who died a year ago and to whom the volumes are dedicated, must have been proud of the project - the first complete collection of Akhmatova and, since it is printed here in both languages, also the first complete Russian edition - and she must have given it her blessing.
Just as one of Pushkin's finest long poems, ''The Bronze Horseman,'' may have been conceived as a reply to his Polish friend Adam Mickiewicz, who had produced an anti-Petersburg poem in ''Forefathers' Eve,'' so ''Poem Without a Hero'' may have been intended in one sense as Akhmatova's reproach to the poet Mikhail Kuzmin, who had been the lover of Knyazev and alluded to his suicide in his own poem published in 1929 called ''The Trout Breaks the Ice.'' Ms. Reeder suggests that Kuzmin's malice and frivolity, and his wish to obliterate Knyazev's suicide from memory, seemed irresponsible to Akhmatova, and a symptom of the decline that had led to the Revolution. Certainly there is an air of almost religious expiation about Akhmatova's great poem, some of whose rhythms echo those of Kuzmin's much slighter work. There is also a very definite relationship with T. S. Eliot's ''Four Quartets,'' with their blending of public and private images and their meditation on time future in time past. Like Eliot, Akhmatova used as a source of inspiration the motto of Mary, Queen of Scots: ''In my end is my beginning.''
Conscience, repentance, suffering, bearing witness - all these spiritual attributes have an effortless place in Akhmatova's poetry, and testify to the kinds of purgation the poet underwent in her work. Some of her gravest and most emphatic poems repeat her claim to have stood fast, accepted persecution, remained with her people, not sheltered ''under a foreign wing.'' The philistine Zhdanov, and even Trotsky himself, sneered at her work as that of a hysterical female immersed in frivolous love affairs, who regarded God as a sort of benevolent gynecologist. Akhmatova was not in any modern sense a feminist, but she was proud to be a woman, and a woman speaking with authority in a world of men. One of her epigrams observes sardonically that she has given a voice to women and their feelings, and they have followed her lead all too well: ''God grant that I could make them silent again.''
Certainly she was herself fully and unapologetically open to the emotions and impulses of love. As well as poet and priestess it was natural for her to be wife, mother and lover. In more than one charming poem she expressed her amusement at her husband Gumilyov's lack of domestic instinct, his desire for escape to Africa or into some foreign romance. Their relationship was far from easy, and neither was faithful, but he was her spouse although in the end she had to leave and to divorce him. After he was shot by the Bolsheviks she was married to or lived with two other men, Petersburg intellectuals, from whom she was parted not only by personal problems but by the hazards of the Great Terror and the convulsions of World War II, during which she was evacuated to Tashkent in central Asia. Vladimir Garshin, a medical professor and nephew of a celebrated 19th-century writer, had proposed marriage, but when she returned from exile after the war he abandoned her, his wits probably deranged by what had been gone through. In old age she remained a dignified and benevolent presence, her aquiline features molded into a more placid cast, but her powers were undiminished, and her poems as strong, shapely and well made as ever.
 
 
 
'Who Is Wandering?'
 
 My treasures of last year
 Will, unfortunately, last a long time.
 You know yourself, malicious memory
 Cannot spend half of them:
 The crooked, ramshackle cupola,
 The caw of the crows and the steam engine's wail,
 And the birch tree limping across the field
 As if it were serving time,
 And the secret, midnight gathering
 Of gigantic, Biblical oaks,
 And floating from somebody's dream,
 The almost sunken boat . . .
 There the beginning of winter meandered,
 Just grazing the fields with white,
 Inadvertently turning the distance
 Into impenetrable haze.
 And it seemed that after the end
 Nothing ever happens anymore . . .
 Who is wandering near the porch again
 And calling us by name?
 Who is pressed against the icy windowpane,
 Waving with a branch-like hand? . . .
 And in answer a sunbeam dances from the mirror
 To the cobweb in the corner.
 
''March Elegy.''

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Anna Akhmatova in a 1924 portrait by Moses Nappelbaum. (Form ''The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova'')

TYPE: Review

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The New York Times

May 16, 1990, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

About New York;
Two Who Look For the Elderly Few Others See

BYLINE: By DOUGLAS MARTIN

SECTION: Section B; Page 1, Column 1; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 767 words

There are unlikely jobs in New York City. This column is about one of them. It is about two mental-health workers who troll high-rise apartments, cheap hotels and park benches to find sick old people and get them to a doctor at the Bellevue Hospital Center.
There are unlikely ways to perform unlikely jobs. On any weekday you might see Loretta R. Singleton, 63 years old, and Ronald V. Costello, 54, roaring down a Manhattan street on a seriously large motorcycle, Ron gunning the engine and Loretta's gray hair blowing wildly. ''People call us the vaudeville team,'' she said. People also call them dedicated, persistent, courageous and professionals of a very high order - almost always on the first-name basis they prefer. 
These wizards of human retrieval have helped people who had been eating out of garbage cans; a deranged actress living on Park Avenue; an octogenarian supporting a heroin habit by selling her body, and a rich woman subsisting on cornflakes and Sucrets.
''They are our front line of intake,'' said Dr. Michael L. Freedman, director of the Ambulatory Care Program run by Bellevue and New York University. ''They reach people no one else could.''
Under the program, more than 5,000 people make over 20,000 outpatient visits to Bellevue annually. Most are not charged.
Both Ron, who lives in New Jersey, and Loretta, who lives in Harlem, began at Bellevue 36 years ago. They were psychiatric nurse's aides in the time of straitjackets and shock treatments. ''The job was muscles and guts,'' Ron said. In 1974, Bellevue and N.Y.U. teamed up to find and help those termed ''the invisible elderly'' -waves of old people dismissed from institutions in the late 1960's. The shock troops were Ron and Loretta, both of whom had used their free time to earn degrees in behavioral science from Hunter College. ''The job was so new we had to write the job description,'' he said.
So they passed out countless cigarettes and coffees to win over hotel managers. They camped out in centers for the elderly, housing projects and church basements. They curried informers, from chambermaids to storeowners to mail carriers. They provided flu vaccinations, performed blood-pressure tests and threw huge Christmas dinners. People on benches were given cards, some eliciting responses a decade later.
''We will go anywhere there's a captive audience of old people,'' Loretta said.
Their ''catchment area'' includes all of Manhattan below 42d Street and that part of it east of Fifth Avenue from 42d to 64th Streets. In this area, these two blacks found that they served mainly whites. ''We not only had to sell ourselves but sell black,'' Ron said.
That is still a tough sell sometimes. A cleaning woman recently called the police when she saw the two knocking on a door. She assumed they were breaking in.
The other day, Loretta and Ron began their visit to the Kenmore Hall Hotel at 145 East 23d Street by chatting with the loquacious manager. She introduced herself as ''Velma Judith Caroline 3 O'Clock in the Morning Lucchi'' and presented a list of some 100 old people for the pair to visit.
Too many for one day, but they promised to see everyone eventually. They first went to Mr. Williams's room, into which a wiry man had just scurried. No one came to the door. ''We will visit you very soon,'' said their note. Next, Mrs. McKenzie refused to talk. A woman known as Fanny wasn't home.
George A. Ainsworth, born on Sept. 21, 1909, was definitely in. After profusely introducing his parakeet, Blue, he was eager to discourse on pretty much anything, including his seven or eight rectal operations. His interest was piqued by a Bellevue program using computers to improve memory.
''I stop in the middle of a sentence and I can't think of the word I want to get to,'' Mr. Ainsworth said. ''An ordinary word.''
Max in Room 402 was next. The 77-year-old's room reeked of incontinence. He had a bloody growth on his bald head. He said he was hungry but couldn't eat until his Social Security check came.
Ron and Loretta referred Max to a soup kitchen and promised to make a doctor's appointment. ''He's a cutie,'' she said afterward. ''He looked like a genteel man,'' he observed. These warriors of mercy have many stories. There's one about a 106-year-old Russian with wooden teeth. Another about a woman whose black toenails poked through her sneakers like daggers. Every tale is different. To Ron and Loretta, each old person remains as special as the revered elders of the upper Manhattan neighborhoods of their youths.
''We never hardened; we just got smarter,'' Ron said.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: photo: Ronald Costello and Loretta Singleton.

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The New York Times

May 16, 1990, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Reviews/Theater;
3 Widows With Unseemly Behavior

BYLINE: By FRANK RICH

SECTION: Section C; Page 14, Column 4; Cultural Desk

LENGTH: 753 words

If you believe that one good reason for going to the theater is to escape television sitcoms, you may not be tickled to end up at ''The Cemetery Club,'' the new attraction at the Brooks Atkinson. From its peppy canned theme music to its final-scene sermonizing, this comedy about three Jewish widows in Forest Hills, Queens, is ''Golden Girls'' at four times the length but with at most one-fourth the star wattage. Moving at the leisurely pace of a contentious canasta hand, ''The Cemetery Club'' could be one of the best arguments yet advanced for cremation.
The author, Ivan Menchell, follows the time-honored rules of his chosen genre: he gives his middle-class senior citizens as many toilet, sexual and anatomical one-liners as he can. Lucille (Eileen Heckart), the randiest of the ladies, sets the evening's tone with her early declaration that ''You don't buy a mink because you need it; you buy support hose because you need it.'' Doris (Doris Belack), the pill of the group, issues loud periodic bulletins like ''I'm going to the bathroom!'' and ''Oy, am I going to have gas!'' The good-hearted Ida (Elizabeth Franz), suffering from a hangover, opens one scene by rushing offstage to vomit. 
To stitch these merry episodes together, Mr. Menchell has concocted a story in which the women's so-called cemetery club, a chatty monthly reunion at their beloved husbands' graves, is disrupted by the intrusion of Sam (Lee Wallace), a widower with an eye for Ida. A few misunderstandings, jealous spats, drunken confessions and yahrzeit candles later, order is restored. By then, Ida has delivered the inevitable bit of sentimental boilerplate, ''For the first time since Murray died, I felt alive!'' and everyone has gotten to dance the cha-cha and eat a little chopped liver.
What's objectionable, as opposed to merely tedious, about Mr. Menchell's writing is the sanctimony in which it cloaks its vulgarity. Not unlike Robert Harling's ''Steel Magnolias'' -with which it shares its director, Pamela Berlin - ''The Cemetery Club'' purports to be championing its women's independence even as it alternately patronizes and humiliates them. The play's climax involves the removal of a wig (a stunt also used in the much higher camp of ''Lettice and Lovage'') and a drink-tossing cat fight. When Mr. Menchell, again echoing ''Steel Magnolias,'' tries to retrieve his seriousness of purpose in Act II by sending a fresh corpse to the grave, the tear-jerking announcement of this untimely passing rings so false that it draws nearly as many titters as the wisecracks about unveilings, perpetual gravesite care and going into remission.
The staging is sluggish, with Ms. Belack's yenta, Ms. Franz's sugary born-again coquette and Mr. Wallace's blandly affable suitor doing nothing to erase one's fond memories of such archetypes as Molly Picon, Gertrude Berg and Sam Levene. The sterling Ms. Heckart has been given especially unflattering (and, for some reason, Day-Glo-hued) costumes by the designer Lindsay W. Davis and must at one point wear a blond wig and florid makeup befitting a Carol Channing impersonator. But such handicaps, let alone the stalled zingers in the script, cannot derail this comedienne's withering sarcasm and impeccable timing. She also is free to smoke in every scene - Ms. Heckart's gravelly voice is no put-on -and at one point she gets to stub out a butt on a tomb.
Such other laughs as there are come from the truly hideous scenery provided by the gifted John Lee Beatty, who seems to be having a giggle at the production's expense. Not only has he given Ida a vast living room of surpassingly realistic drabness, from the ersatz Chagall lithographs on the wall to a towering breakfront crammed with china, but he has also provided a cemetery whose backdrop pictures the cheerless ruins of the Flushing World's Fair as seen through a smoggy haze. During the set changes, the tombstones make such a commotion marching on and off stage that not even the audience is permitted to rest in peace.
 
The Cemetery Club
 
By Ivan Menchell; directed by Pamela Berlin; scenery by John Lee Beatty; costumes by Lindsay W. Davis; lighting by Natasha Katz; sound design by Scott T. Anderson; music by Robert Dennis. Presented by Howard Hurst, Philip Rose, David Brown and Sophie Hurst. At the Brooks Atkinson Theater, 256 West 47th Street.
 
Ida . . . Elizabeth Franz
Lucille . . . Eileen Heckart
Doris . . . Doris Belack
Sam . . . Lee Wallace
Mildred . . . Judith Granite

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Eileen Heckart in a scene from ''The Cemetery Club.'' (Lisa Berg for The New York Times)

TYPE: Review

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The New York Times

May 17, 1990, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

CURRENTS;
U.S.-Soviet Comparison

BYLINE: By Patricia Leigh Brown

SECTION: Section C; Page 3, Column 5; Home Desk

LENGTH: 208 words

THE first exhibition comparing American and Soviet architectural approaches to housing, the workplace and public spaces has opened at the Knoll Design Center in SoHo.
The drawings and photographs were chosen by a joint jury. The exhibition was the brainchild of an American group, Architects Designers Planners for Social Reponsibility, and the Union of Architects in the Soviet Union. ''We were surprised by the similarities,'' the architect Tician Papachristou said.
The jury, which included Kenneth Frampton, Mildred Schmertz and Michael Rotundi, met in New York and Moscow, choosing 31 examples from the 1980's in each country. Among the most interesting are glasnost-inspired projects, as yet unbuilt, that point to new Soviet architectural trends.
''The style is freer,'' Mr. Papachristou said. ''They're bringing back materials that were important for centuries and that were abandoned - including brick and wood.''
Shown above is a Soviet housing complex; at right, the Roosevelt Senior Citizens Housing on Long Island, designed by Kalbaugh and Lee.
The exhibition is open 9 A.M. to 5 P.M. Monday to Friday, 10 A.M. to 6 P.M. Saturday and Sunday at the Knoll Design Center, 105 Wooster Street (near Prince Street), through May 25.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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The New York Times

May 18, 1990, Friday, Late Edition - Final

Evolution in Europe;
RUSSIAN COUNTRY TOURED BY BAKER

BYLINE: By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section A; Page 6, Column 1; Foreign Desk

LENGTH: 631 words

DATELINE: MOSCOW, May 17

Secretary of State James A. Baker 3d and Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze of the Soviet Union took time out from their talks today for a drive in the countryside north of Moscow.
Mr. Baker, who rarely stops to do any touring on his trips, has made a point on this visit to see something of the Soviet Union beside his hotel room and the meeting hall. Tuesday night he took a stroll in central Moscow, visiting a pharmacy, a men's clothing store, a butcher shop and the McDonald's restaurant in Pushkin Square.
Today, after talks with Mr. Shevardnadze on conventional arms, strategic nuclear arms and chemical arms, Mr. Baker toured the Trinity Monastery of St. Sergius in Zagorsk, about 80 miles north of Moscow, a tourist site the Soviets often use to demonstrate that they tolerate religious freedom. Then Mr. Baker asked Mr. Shevardnadze to show him a Soviet village. His motorcade of Zil limousines and security cars pulled off the main road about halfway between Zagorsk and Moscow and screeched to a halt in the village of Radonezh. 
 
A Hamlet of 20 Houses
Home to about 50 pensioners, Radonezh is a tiny hamlet of 20 or so houses built from logs and shingles in the old Russian style, with small garden plots attached. From the main street, Mr. Baker could see a large cluster of more modern houses and dachas for the Moscow elite resting atop a hillside just across a meadow. Although a lone Soviet militia car was parked in the village when the motorcade drove in, the visit did not appear to be choreographed.
After the motorcade came to a halt at the head of the only paved street, Mr. Baker and Mr. Shevardnadze walked down to a cemetery adjacent to an onion-domed Russian Orthodox Church that dominates the village. As Mr. Baker and Mr. Shevardnadze were being shown the church cemetery, Mr. Baker called out to Robert M. Gates, the deputy national security adviser who was accompanying him, ''Bob, do you know who is buried in that cemetery?''
A confused look crossed the face of Mr. Gates, a Soviet expert and former deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency. ''Dead people,'' Mr. Baker said. Complaints About Closed Church Outside the church the visiting entourage encountered an elderly Soviet woman wearing a brown shawl. She began complaining bitterly about the fact that the church was not open for worship. Mr. Baker asked through a translator how long it had been closed, and she answered, ''Since the war.'' The church, she complained, was now a museum rather than a house of worship.
''Over there,'' she said, pointing beyond the village, ''they opened the church, but ours is still closed.''
Seeing an opportunity to get everything off her chest, the woman went on to tell Mr. Baker that the pension that she and her husband, a retired railroad worker, have to live on ''is not enough.''
Someone then asked if Mr. Baker could see her house, and she immediately led the entourage down the main street.
''I didn't know you were coming or I would have brought a samovar out to the front yard,'' she told the Secretary of State. Her green-shingled house had a pile of lumber in the front yard, alongside a garden plot with blooming tulips and several yelping dogs in a pen.
 
Promise of a Raise
During the visit to the house Mr. Shevardnadze promised that the woman's pension would ''be increased'' soon. As they were leaving, another elderly woman approached Mr. Baker to say, ''We have no place to pray.'' The villagers had repeatedly petitioned the authorities to reopen the church, she said, but were rebuffed.
Mr. Shevardnadze seem unfazed by the impromptu protests and declared in a loud voice, ''Let's agree that the Governments of the Soviet Union and the United States promise and pledge that the church will reopen.''

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Secretary of State James A. Baker 3d, right, discussed new proposals on stalled arms negotiations with Eduard A. Shevardnadze, the Soviet Foreign Minister. During a break in their talks yesterday, they spoke with a woman on a tour of the village of Radonezh, about 40 miles from Moscow. (Associated Press)

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The New York Times

May 18, 1990, Friday, Late Edition - Final

Louisiana Man Is Put to Death In 1977 Killing of a State Trooper

BYLINE: AP

SECTION: Section A; Page 17, Column 1; National Desk

LENGTH: 503 words

DATELINE: ANGOLA, La., May 18

A two-time killer who shot a Louisiana state trooper to death was executed early this morning despite international outcries that he was almost mentally retarded.
Dalton Prejean, who had won 10 previous delays of scheduled executions, was pronounced dead in the electric chair at the state prison here at 1:21 A.M. Eastern daylight time.
The United States Supreme Court had voted 7 to 2 just a few hours earlier to deny a stay of execution for Mr. Prejean. 
Warden John Whitley said he did not know how Mr. Prejean had reacted to the news that the High Court had refused to stop the execution. But he said Mr. Prejean had been ''relatively calm'' throughout the day. #3d Execution in 24 Hours Prejean's execution was the nation's third in 24 hours. Texas and Missouri each executed killers early Thursday. His death was the 128th in the nation, and the 19th in Louisiana, since capital punishment resumed in 1977.
Earlier, Gov. Buddy Roemer said he would not stop the execution. Twice in the past year Mr. Roemer rejected recommendations by the Pardon Board that he commute the sentence to life in prison.
''I'm never happy with these things but I do not, as a representative of the people, have a choice,'' said Roemer.
Mr. Prejean, 30, acknowledged he shot the trooper but said it would not serve justice to execute him.
 
Missouri and Texas Execute 2
The execution in Louisiana came 24 hours after a man convicted of killing four people was executed in Missouri and a Texas inmate was put to death for murdering his brother-in-law.
Both men died by injection shortly after 1 A.M. Thursday.
In Missouri, Leonard Laws, who was 40 years old, was executed for the robbery and shotgun slayings of an elderly couple. He had also been convicted in the killings of two other elderly people, crimes for which he had received a life sentence.
In Texas, Johnny Ray Anderson, 30, was executed for a 1981 slaying that was part of a scheme to collect $67,000 in insurance money. On Wednesday, the United States Supreme Court denied a stay of his execution.
The last time there were two executions on the same day was March 15, 1988, in Louisiana and Florida.
In the Texas case, Mr. Anderson, a sixth-grade dropout who attributed his I.Q. of 70 to sniffing gasoline and glue from the age of 5, was executed for fatally shooting Ronald Gene Goode, a 22-year-old soft-drink salesman, in the insurance scheme.
Also convicted in the murder were Mr. Goode's wife, Laura Anderson Goode, who is also Mr. Anderson's sister, as well as Delvin Johnson. They were sentenced to life in prison and paroled last year. Mr. Anderson's mother, Rowena, was acquitted of capital murder in the case.
The condemned man issued a final statement insisting that he was not responsible for the killing. In the statement, which was typed by a fellow death row inmate and had many misspellings, Mr. Anderson criticized the justice system as unfair and inconsiderate of ''the victum's family.'' He called himself ''the excape goat.''

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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The New York Times

May 19, 1990, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

Liberian Urges Citizens to Battle Rebels

BYLINE: By KENNETH B. NOBLE, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section 1; Page 6, Column 3; Foreign Desk

LENGTH: 635 words

DATELINE: ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast, May 18

Gen. Samuel K. Doe of Liberia called on the entire population today to take up arms and join the fight against rebels who are trying to overthrow his Government.
In a speech monitored here, General Doe said that all retired officers and enlisted men should rejoin the army, and that students and the elderly should ''get their cutlasses and single-barrel guns and get in the bush'' against the rebels.
''If you are a loyal citizen then go out and defend your country,'' he told a meeting of tribal and political leaders at the executive mansion in Monrovia, the capital of the West African nation.
His plea contrasts with earlier assertions by General Doe dismissing the revolt as a series of remote and minor skirmishes exaggerated by foreign news accounts. The appeal was a response to the series of military successes the rebel group, the National Patriotic Front of Liberia, has scored since the fighting began five months ago. 
 
Assertions of Qaddafi Role
The warfare started when some 150 guerrillas invaded a half-dozen hamlets in northeastern Liberia. The Liberian Government then sent troops and provincial policemen to oust them.
Since then, the rebels, their numbers increased to at least a thousand, have pushed the army out of virtually all of Nimba County, Liberia's primary agricultural, mining and logging region. They now assert that they have surrounded Buchanan, the port about 45 miles east of Monrovia, the capital.
General Doe also repeated accusations today that the Libyan leader, Muammar el-Qaddafi, had trained and financed the rebels. In recent briefings with reporters, State Department officials have also said there was evidence that Libya had helped finance the rebels.
In an interview at his headquarters in Northern Liberia earlier this week, Charles Taylor, the rebel leader, strenuously denied that he received assistance from Libya or other sympathetic African or Arab nations, saying that if he had done so, ''by now this war would be over.''
He said his forces were whollly armed with weapons confiscated from Government soldiers who were either killed or dropped them and fled. The rebel soldiers could be seen carrying weapons of Western and Eastern-bloc origin, which by itself proves very little since the Liberian Government had acquired arms from the United States and Romania.
 
'I Will Make Them Surrender'
Rebel leaders also said they were starting to finance their effort by selling timber and would in the future do so with captured mining operations.
On Thursday, the rebels reportedly launched a new offensive near the town of Gbarnga.the third-largest town in Liberia and the most important Government-held town in the northern part of the country. The atmosphere in Gbarnga was described by a Western diplomat as ''extremely tense.''
Nonetheless, General Doe vowed today that he would soon crush the guerrillas. ''If the rebels will not surrender, I will make them surrender,'' he said.
Earlier this week Mr. Taylor, a former minister dismissed by General Doe, urged civilians in Monrovia, which has a population of about 500,000, to evacuate before the fighting intensifies. He said his forces were in striking distance of the capital.
''If we have to attack the city, Doe is going to try to predict our position and as usual he has always used heavy shells,'' Mr. Taylor said. ''So we have to respond with materials that we have. And we have 106-millimeter howitzers captured from Doe.''
Late last month, the United States suspended the Peace Corps program in Liberia and told American diplomats that they and their families could chose to leave the country. So far, virtually all of the 700 Americans estimated to have once lived in Nimba County have fled, as well as about 500 of the 650 Americans affiliated with the embassy.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Rebels who are trying to overthrow the Government of President Samuel K. Doe of Liberia marching toward the capital this week. (Agence France-Presse); Map of Liberia showing location of Gbarng.

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The New York Times

May 22, 1990, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

Site of Officer's Slaying Will Be a Center of Hope

BYLINE: By JOSEPH P. FRIED

SECTION: Section B; Page 3, Column 1; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 418 words

A house in Queens that became a symbol of the murderous world of drug dealers will soon become a center of hope and help for its troubled community.
The house, in South Jamaica, was being guarded by a rookie police officer, Edward Byrne, when he was shot to death in February 1988 by drug dealers who were seeking revenge for the arrest of their leader.
Officer Byrne was guarding the house because it had been firebombed after its owner had complained about drug dealers on his block in the crack-ravaged area of poor and working-class families. 
The two-story house has been vacant and under police guard since the owner fled with his family to a Government witness-protection program. Now the city, which bought the house from the family, is working with a group on plans to transform it into an after-school tutoring center and a Sunday gathering center for the elderly.
 
'Positive for the Community'
Yesterday, under a light drizzle at the house at 107-05 Inwood Street, officers from the 103d Precinct gave the key to Winnie McCarthy, co-director of Star of the Sea, the group that the city has asked to run the project. The precinct, from whose ranks the 22-year-old Officer Byrne had come, had been guarding the house.
''Everybody in the precinct is ecstatic that something will be done that's positive for the community,'' the delegate of the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association, Officer George Reynolds, said. Two other precinct officers, Lieut. Joseph McGrann and Officer Charles Davis, accompanied him.
''We are trying to give the house back to a community that's already suffered because of the drugs,'' said Ms. McCarthy, a Roman Catholic lay missionary whose 11-year-old organization operates a shelter for homeless women. Star of the Sea has also transformed three abandoned houses into permanent housing for formerly homeless people.
The group operates a program for children that provides tutoring and recreational activities. The house on Inwood Street is to be staffed and secured by three homeless veterans, now living in a veterans' shelter in Long Island City, Queens, who will live on the second floor, said Russell T. Hicks, executive director of the Veterans Service Corps.
The former owner of the house, a Guyanese immigrant who uses the single name Arjune, is at an undisclosed location. Four drug dealers were convicted of murdering Officer Byrne. The leader of the ring, Howard (Pappy) Mason, has been convicted of Federal charges of having ordered the killing.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: photo: A South Jamaica, Queens, house once firebombed by drug dealers will become a center for children and the elderly. Winnie McCarthy, co-director of the group that will run the project, received the keys from police officers, from left, Charles Davis, George Reynolds and Lieut. Joseph McGrann. With Ms. McCarthy was Russell T. Hicks, the executive director of the Veterans Service Corps. (Vic DeLucia/The New York Times)

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The New York Times

May 27, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Lifestyle: Sunday Outing;
In Flushing Meadows-Corona Park

SECTION: Section 1; Part 2, Page 46, Column 1; Style Desk

LENGTH: 992 words

The traffic-ridden expressways may be a few hundred yards away, but within the green expanse of Flushing Meadows-Corona Park you'd never know it.
Though Shea Stadium anchors the park's northern tip, a crumbling Taystee Bread sign overlooking the volleyball and soccer fields heightens the impression that time may have skipped a few decades. The concessionaires sell snow cones and chocolate bombs rather than Dove Bars. The local attractions hark back to a time when the modern age meant your kitchen had a blender. 
New Yorkers eager to escape the tumult of the city can find respite in this flat, tree-lined, 1,255-acre urban park, the second largest in the city after Brooklyn's Prospect Park and the site of the 1939 and 1964 World's Fairs. The park breathes its own culture, evoking the aura of the two fairs. Though the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation has plans to renovate the park, improvements are intended to make it more accessible to visitors without changing its personality.
 
Large, Open Fields
''The park's old world nature is part of its history,'' said Joan Firestone, executive director of the Flushing Meadows-Corona Park Corporation, a not-for-profit entity that works to improve the park.
''A lot of people who came to work at the World Fairs stayed in Queens, and we're trying to build on that history,'' she said.
The park's large, open fields are ideal for children. Its sports attractions and museums cater to athletes and cultural explorers alike.
The Queens Museum, with its original 1939 Art Deco facade, houses memorabilia from both fairs. Its grand attraction is the Panorama of the City of New York, a scale model of the city that fits into one city block. Built for the 1964 World's Fair at the urging of Robert Moses, the former Parks Commissioner, the model has more than 865,000 plastic and wooden buildings. The Empire State Building is a mere 15 inches tall.
The museum's current exhibit on the 1964 World's Fair showcases trinkets like ticket stubs, buttons and T-shirts. One of the fair's most popular exhibits was a recreation of a modern kitchen, circa 1964; it still attracts many visitors. The museum is open Tuesday through Friday from 10 A.M. to 5 P.M. and weekends from noon to 5:30 P.M. Admission is $2, $1 for students and senior citizens.  Long Walks The New York Hall of Science, termed a hands-on museum, has exhibits designed to trick the eye and vex the mind. Visiters can discover a crowded, microscopic world living in a single drop of water, view a three-dimensional model of a hydrogen atom and visit the Great Hall, an exhibit room composed of cement blocks embedded in cobalt blue stained glass. The Hall is open Wednesday through Sunday from 10 A.M to 5 P.M. Admission is $3.50 for adults and $2.50 for children under 17 and for senior citizens.
Navigating the park can be both tiring and frustrating since there is no central information booth open on weekends. Come prepared for long walks between attractions. Flushing Meadows-Corona Park is the place to be if building calf muscles is part of your agenda.
Be sure to ask for directions to your next destination before leaving the previous one since signs do not exist unless you're behind the wheel of a car (Parking is available at each attraction). Instead of hiking to various destinations, visitors might consider renting a bicycle at one of the concession stands sprinkled throughout the park.
The one stucture that anchors the park by its sheer size is the 140-foot Unisphere, a steel globe built for the 1964 fair that has come to symbolize the park. A short walk away (by the park's standards) is a renovated 1910 carousel, a bargain at 50 cents a ride.
Though the 1939 and 1964 events envisioned a better future, the park that laid their foundation is sprinkled with dilapidated buildings that are left over from the fairs such as the 226-feet-high New York State Pavilion Towers and the 10,000-seat Gertrude Ederle Amphitheater and pool.
But the 8 million visitors a year don't seem to give these buildings a second glance. They barbecue, roller-skate and wander around the Queens Botanical Garden, 30 acres of flowers and shrubs, with the largest rose garden in the Northeast, as jets take off from nearby LaGuardia Airport.
Most people come to play tennis or golf, enjoying the park's first-rate offerings. The United States Tennis Association National Tennis Center, which hosts the U.S. Open annually - this year from Aug. 27 through Sept. 9 - is open to the public. The center has nine indoor and 23 outdoor courts. For information on rentals call (718-592-8000). Weekend rates are $16.50 (outdoor) or $24 (indoor) an hour from 8 A.M. to 4 P.M. and $11 (outdoor) or $18 (indoor) from 4 P.M. to 11 P.M.
Nearby is the park's 18-hole Pitch and Putt Golf Course, which is open every day. Green fees cost $4.50 on weekdays and $5 Saturday and Sunday. The cost for senior citizens is $3.50. Golf club rentals are available.
Ice skating is also possible at the park's enclosed rink, which is open from Nov. 1 to April 31.
A sturdy bicycle slightly beyond rust's grasp can be had for $5 an hour. Bicycle rentals are available from 11 A.M. to 6 P.M.
Rowboats and paddleboats can also be rented at the Boathouse shed on Meadow Lake, about a mile from the Shea Stadium entrance, for $6 an hour plus a $20 deposit. Sailing lessons are also available. (516-333-0851.) There are plans to build a boat launching site and a boat-house restaurant, Ms. Firestone said.
Two of the park's attractions are closed for renovation and are scheduled to be re-opened next year: the Queens Zoo and Children's Farm and the Queens Theatre in the Park. Getting There To reach Flushing Meadows-Corona Park by subway from Manhattan, take the No. 7 Flushing line to the Willets Point-Shea Stadium station. By car, follow the routes to Shea Stadium on the Grand Central Parkway, then follow the signs into the park.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photos: The renovated 1910 carousel in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park offers rides for 50 cents; Unisphere, built for 1964 World's Fair, has come to symbolize the park. (Vic DeLucia/The New York Times); Map of Queens showing location of Flushing Meadows-Corona Park

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The New York Times

May 27, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Community Hospitals Adapt to Changes

BYLINE: By JUDY GLASS

SECTION: Section 12LI; Page 1, Column 1; Long Island Weekly Desk

LENGTH: 2358 words

ON a stroll through the corridors of any one of Long Island's community hospitals 30 years ago, a visitor might have seen heart attack victims in their third week of recuperation, a new mother taking her first halting steps days after her baby's birth and a few affluent members of the community on a kind of rest and rehabilitation program, compliments of good insurance coverage.
As for the most advanced technology, it might well have been the X-ray equipment.
Not so today. Heart-attack victims usually spend 8 to 10 days in a hospital, mothers and babies about three days, hospital beds have few ''exhausted'' patients and community hospitals own or have ready access to CAT scanners and nuclear-magnetic imaging machines and other advanced equipment.
The changes in Long Island's community hospitals reflect not only the growth and changes in the population, but also the demand for expensive technology and a shift to shorter stays, mandated by state regulations, medical advances and reimbursement policies. 
 
Two Major Impacts
Ambulatory care - one-day outpatient treatment - is often completed in less time than it takes to visit the local beauty salon. It is faster and easier for a wide variety of simple surgeries and outpatient procedures. Pre-admission workups, once done as part of the entire overnight admission, are now done on an outpatient basis as well.
However, hospitals lose the revenue from the ''hotel'' portion of the cost, the room and ancillary services that these patients would have needed in the past, and this puts a strain on the community hospital budgets.
Community hospitals, which years ago cared for almost everyone in the neighborhood, now compete for patients with free-standing clinics, clinics in doctors' offices and teaching hospitals with the most sophisticated care.
Emergency rooms, which are seeing far more gunshot wounds, drug overdoses and traumatic injuries from accidents and violence than a generation ago, often admit patients to beds that were scheduled for elective surgery.
Patients who do not have a physician of their own also use the emergency room for ailments like a virus, a stomach ache or a minor injury. And rather than put off a long-awaited elective procedure, doctors often have their insured patients admitted through the emergency room, one hospital administrator said.
Two other factors - an increase in the number of elderly people and the AIDS epidemic - have also had a major impact on how community hospitals provide care and handle priorities.
 
New Services Introduced
Long Island has the fastest-growing number of aged people in New York State and more people with AIDS than any other suburban area in the country, according to the Nassau-Suffolk Hospital Council, an advocacy and purchasing group for the island's 22 nonprofit hospitals.
On the other hand, to be economically viable and provide modern care, community hospitals have introduced a variety of new services. South Side Hospital now offers an out-patient procedure called Easy Street, a physical rehabilitation center; diet centers, pre-natal clinics and psychological counseling care.
Easy Street is a physical rehabilitation center that trains people to lift and carry properly, and helps people learn how to readjust to the physical demands of everyday living following surgery.
It contains simulated settings of a Waldbaum's supermarket, one of the sponsors, and a bank, as well as an automobile and a separate room of exercise equipment.
''A community hospital is a not-for-profit, voluntary hospital governed by a volunteer board of directors,'' said Ann Marie Brown, vice president of the Hospital Council.
Collectively, she said, Long Island's community hospitals serve 2.7 million people with 6,500 beds.
Community hospitals come in many sizes and architectural designs, and some operate nursing homes as part of their complexes. They include Good Samaritan Hospital in West Islip, Central Suffolk Hospital in Riverhead, Franklin Hospital Medical Center in Valley Stream, Long Beach Memorial in Long Beach and North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset.
''Demographics make a big difference in a hospital's ability to operate successfully,'' said Theodore A. Jospe, president of South Side Hospital in Bay Shore, which serves Bay Shore, Brentwood, Central Islip, Brightwaters, Sayville and Oakdale.
This is a catchment area of about 10 miles with some of the ''toughest problems facing hospitals,'' said Ms. Brown. These include an overburdened emergency room, a high number of uninsured patients, and competition from other institutions.
 
Payer Determines Price
''We're expected to operate a hospital like a business,'' Mr. Jospe said, ''but in no other business does the payer determine the price rather than the provider. Prices should reflect cost, just as they do in the automobile business.
''The difference is that if you can't afford increased prices, you can buy a used car, but you can't buy used health care. The cost of doing business in hospitals these days far outstrips revenues.''
He indicated that the hospital stays of the seriously ill, the comatose and premature babies can be prolonged with the use of new but often expensive technology. Hospitals have little control over the use of high-priced drugs and devices, if their doctors want them, he noted.
 
Nursing Home Beds Needed
The elderly often occupy hospital beds when the care they require is custodial, which can be provided in nursing homes. Long Island currently has a shortage of 3,000 nursing home beds, according to the Nassau-Suffolk Health Systems Agency Inc., which approves plans for the Island's hospitals, nursing homes, substance-abuse centers and other health-care facilities.
In years past, patients with insurance subsidized patients with no insurance, Ms. Brown said. Virtually all treatment was delivered to inpatients, and the length of the patient's stay was determined solely by the doctor in charge.
In 1986, largely to combat rising medical costs, the state began using the Diagnostic Related Group method to pay hospitals.
Payment is based on a complicated formula that takes into account the type of procedure, the expected time for recovery, the region in which the care is delivered and a hospital's past financial record.
 
Intent of the System
The system was designed to save money, but there are many costs other than patient care - like malpractice insurance - that community hospitals must meet whether beds are empty or full, Mr. Jospe said.
Eastern Long Island Hospital on the North Fork and Southampton Hospital on the South Fork, for example, may fill up in the summer months. But they accommodate far fewer patients in the winter, and remain costly to run, Ms. Brown said.
In general, Long Island hospitals are more in demand than hospitals in other parts of the state, running about 85 to 90 percent occupancy, with some units unable to handle the demand, said Marvin H. Burton, executive director of the Health Systems Agency.
Occupied beds, however, do not always produce revenue. More than 250,000 Long Islanders have no insurance or are under-insured and too poor to pay medical bills, Mr. Burton said.
There is a medical consensus that people lacking adequate medical insurance do not go to the doctor as frequently as they should; when they are first admitted to the hospital, usually through the emergency room, they are often sicker than they would have been had they received earlier care, Mr. Jospe said.
Paradoxically, the cost of services that a hospital bills an uninsured patient is higher than what it receives for the same service from third-party payers like Blue Cross, which pays according to the Diagnostic Related Group method, Mr. Jospe said.
It takes more employees to run a hospital today, said J. Ronald Gaudreault, president of Huntington Hospital, who has hired 189 people in the last two years. He is not filling positions that are vacated because his budget, which showed a surplus of close to $1 million in 1988, is $2.5 million in the red this year. He cited too many regulations and not enough reimbursements as the cause of the deficit.
As a community hospital, Huntington Hospital has been in the same residential neighborhood since it was established in 1914. It has deep ties to its community and its activities are watched closely by neighbors, some of whom have opposed the hospital's expansion in the past.
 
Volunteers' Group Has Decreased
The hospital relies on Auxilians, a volunteers' group and candy-stripers for assistance but the number of Auxilians has declined from more than 1,000 members a few years ago to 450, as women have opted for paid jobs. However, the Auxilians continue to provide thousands of hours of service and have donated $170,000 from its annual geranium sale and other fund-raisers.
Similar volunteer organizations exist in a number of community hospitals.
In recent years, however, larger, more-sophisticated public relations and fund-raising campaigns have become part of the agendas and budgets of most community hospitals.
For example, donations of $1 million to Huntington's capital campaign last year enabled the hospital to establish not only a 12-bed intensive-care unit but also a separate oncology unit so that cancer patients will not be scattered throughout the hospital.
The hospital, which had 300 beds and 1,000 employees when Mr. Gaudreault joined its administrative staff 25 years ago, now has 398 beds and 1,700 full-time employees.
In 1963, the hospital treated 32,000 patients, compared with 113,000, many of them ambulatory patients, out-patients or emergency room walk-ins, last year. ''But remember,'' Mr. Gaudreault said, ''the population of Huntington has increased from 160,000 to 210,000.''
To save money, hospitals like St. Charles and Mather Memorial, which are a mile apart in Port Jefferson, are sharing some services and keeping only one emergency room open, the one at Mather. Other hospitals have closed their pediatric units, which were once filled with children suffering from communicable diseases now controlled by antibiotics and immunization.
 
AIDS CASES INCREASING
''ALL of Long Island's community hospitals are going to have to become more involved with the AIDS epidemic if projections are correct,'' says Patricia Campagna, social services and housing coordinator for the Long Island Association for AIDS Care, which operates a hot line (516-AIDS) and offers the most-comprehensive agenda of services on the Island.
All of the Island's hospitals are currently handling some AIDS patients, but often with great reluctance, studies show. Whenever possible, some of the hospitals refer the patients to the three designated AIDS centers at Nassau County Medical Center in East Meadow, North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset and University Hospital in Stony Brook.
These centers have special sections for the care of AIDS patients, particularly those in the latter stages of the disease. So far, however, these centers have not been overwhelmed, Ms. Campagna said.
At present, there are believed to be 1,300 cases of fully identified AIDS cases on Long Island and at least 20,000 to 25,000 Long Islanders infected with the virus. It is projected that there will be at least 2,700 AIDS cases on the Island by next year.
According to the Federal Centers for Disease Control, Long Island not only has the largest number of AIDS patients of any suburban area in the country, but also the most people with the HIV infection. Nassau County is fifth in the nation in intravenous drug use, ''a prime way for people to get AIDS,'' Ms. Campagna said.
According to Carol Lindquist, a spokeswoman for the AIDS Care Association, ''Shooting steroids and sharing needles, a good-buddy, jock activity among body builders all over Long Island, can lead to AIDS among affluent young men and their female sex partners.''
Many AIDS cases may be unreported, specialists say, sometimes with the cooperation of a family physician, because of the stigma attached to the disease.
In some cases, patients who go to the hospital with AIDS-related illnesses are not aware that they are carrying the virus. In others, a doctor may treat the same patient a number of times without suspecting AIDS, and the patient is finally diagnosed elsewhere.
According to the AIDS Care Association, 70 percent of AIDS patients nationally are gay. On Long Island, it is 35 percent. Of the other 65 percent, 40 percent in each county are intravenous drug users and 2 percent in Nassau County and 4 percent in Suffolk County are children. Heterosexuals constitute 8 percent of the AIDS population in Nassau and 4 percent in Suffolk.
''The designated AIDS centers at present are better prepared to handle AIDS patients,'' Ms. Campagna said.
With extra reimbursement from the state, she said, they have been better able to train their staffs and equip their units.
With better medication and health management, Ms. Campagna said, AIDS patients are living longer and do not require as much hospitalization as they did in the early stages of the epidemic. However, the Nassau-Suffolk Health Systems Agency Inc. estimates that the average AIDS patient will spend 76 days in a hospital and will be admitted 3.4 times.
''Until our attitudes toward the disease become less prejudicial, community hospitals will probably set up separate units, as one has already done,'' Ms. Campagna said. ''But not every community hospital has enough AIDS patients to warrant a unit.''
The results of a study by the State Department of Health are expected to give Long Island hospitals and planners up-to-date information on how many AIDS patients are now in community hospitals.
''Community hospitals don't need special physicians or staffs, but there's a tremendous need to educate,'' said Renee Pekmezaris, Ph.D., Director of Health Care Research and Information Systems for the Nassau-Suffolk Health Systems Agency.
''Staff at the AIDS-designated centers were afraid until they were educated, but there's been a significant change.''

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photos; At Huntington Hospital's intensive care unit, Dr. Charles Hennings, chief of staff, conferred with Dr. Ezri Sokol, chief of surgery. At South Side Hospital, John O'Sullivan, physical therapist, worked with Barbara Kjeldsen in simulated market (NYT/Michael Shavel)

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The New York Times

May 28, 1990, Monday, Late Edition - Final

SOCCER;
Tiny Village Welcomes U.S.

BYLINE: By MICHAEL JANOFSKY, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section 1; Page 34, Column 4; Sports Desk

LENGTH: 861 words

DATELINE: BAD RAGAZ, Switzerland, May 27

To say that it is quiet around here almost disturbs the calm. Church bells ring at the appropriate times. Horses pulling wagons of tourists neigh now and again. Somewhere off in the distance, a dog barks and a rooster crows.
But that's about it. A village of 4,500 doesn't make much noise, or anything else, for that matter. While the principal industry here is tourism, the majority of visitors, as many as 6,000 during the peak summer months, barely add to whatever commotion there is. 
The tourists come to Bad Ragaz for one reason only: to soak in thermal baths, reputed to work wonders for rheumatism, arthritis and other ailments common to older people.
Indeed, the average age of a tourist is around 60, according to Robert Staub, the 45-year-old Mayor. Younger faces are so rare they provoke staring. ''Sometimes I think I'm working in an old-age home,'' said a woman behind the reception desk of a local hotel. ''When I see a couple in their 50's, I think, 'Oh, young people.' ''
The demographics hardly bother the Mayor, inasmuch as the 105-degree waters, piped down from springs in the nearby central Alps, have been warming villagers and visitors for almost 150 years.
 
Well-Known Soakers
 In his office, the Mayor keeps a book that lists some of the well-known people who have soaked there. They include Victor Hugo, Hans Christian Andersen, James Fenimore Cooper, Freidrich Nietzche, Thomas Mann, Hermann Hesse and Johanna Spyri, whose story, Heidi, was written here and based on the life of a girl who lived in the next village, Maienfeld.
For all the visitors to Bad Ragaz over the years, famous and otherwise, none would seem so unlikely as the group of Americans who arrived today. For one thing, the members of the United States national soccer team have an average age of 23. For another, they may have little time for therapeutic baths, however badly they might need them.
Bound for the World Cup finals next month in Italy, the team has arranged to stay here for a week to take advantage of the quiet setting and first-rate training facilities offered free by the Bad Ragaz Football Club, which has, among its 300 members, a handful of players good enough to hold down third place in a third division league.
The Americans will train daily and play two games, one Wednesday night in Eschen, Liechtenstein, against Liechtenstein's national team; the other Saturday in St. Gallen, against the Swiss national team.
 
To the Mayor's Delight
 Then, the United States team plans to leave by bus for Tirrenia, a small town on Italy's west coast, which will serve as its base for the three games of the first round of the World Cup finals. It would be somewhat redundant to say that Staub is delighted to have the Americans in his midst, even if he had nothing to do with getting them here.
Before he was first elected in 1981, he served as the director of tourism for the canton, or state, in which Bad Ragaz is situated. Before that, he was a banker in London. With the village immersed for some time in a campaign to attract more younger people, he recognizes the public relations value of the team training here.
''We are now trying to make people know that we have more than the baths,'' he said in an interview. ''This is why it is very good to have the soccer team here. We can say that we are not just for old people.''
The idea to bring a World Cup team, any World Cup team, to Bad Ragaz originated with neither the Mayor nor any of the village leaders. In fact, they credit the chef at the Quenellehof Hotel, a five-star establishment adjacent to the famous baths. He had suggested to a friend at the Swiss national soccer federation that the tranquillity of the area and its proximity to Italy would make it ideally suited for a team bound for the World Cup.
Several other Swiss cities had the same idea, including Lausanne, Lugano and Locarno, so the Swiss soccer federation let it be known to World Cup participants that training sites were available. In February, American team officials toured some of them and chose Bad Ragaz over Locarno for its facilities and convenience. The training center is little more than a walk from the four-star Bristol Hotel, which agreed to exclude all other guests during the team's stay.
 
Five Police Officers
 Staub admitted he had no idea what economic benefits, if any, his village might derive from the American team. Little seems to matter but the baths, which cost 11 francs, about $8, for 20 minutes, the recommended soaking time. In the last 10 years, the village population has grown by just 500; three municipal buses and a police department of five is more than adequate.
Yet some villages wonder if more could not be done to improve business. Manfred Bereiter, the manager of the Bristol, used Heidi as the perfect example. While the book brought some attention to the area after it was published in the 19th century, as have several film versions of the novel, nothing has been done since.
''No one has taken advantage of it,'' he said, sitting with the Mayor at an outdoor table at the hotel. ''If this were America, there would already be a Heidiland.''

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Map: Switzerland indicatin Bad Ragaz (The New York Times)

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The New York Times

May 28, 1990, Monday, Late Edition - Final
Correction Appended

Jails Face New Crises As Inmates Grow Old By ANTHONY DePALMA

BYLINE: Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section 1; Page 23, Column 2; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 1266 words

DATELINE: TRENTON, May 24

When he passed through the dark walls of the New Jersey state prison here recently, John E. List joined the swelling ranks of inmates who are growing old behind bars and need medical care and compassion from those charged with punishing and rehabilitating them.
Serving five consecutive life terms for murdering his mother, wife and three children, the 62-year-old Mr. List is almost guaranteed to spend the rest of his life in prison. He entered the state's toughest maximum-security jail on May 18 and was placed in protective custody at his own request, away from most other prisoners.
The authorities said Mr. List, who is frail and diabetic, would have specially prepared meals in his cell but otherwise would receive the same treatment as any other elderly convict.
 
Increases Across Country
Aging inmates are among the fastest growing segments of the prison population across the country, having increased almost 20 percent in the last three years to 16,000, according to the American Correctional Association, a national organization of correction officials. 
''It's an explosion,'' said C. Eamon Walsh, an assistant professor of law and justice at Trenton State College and a former official of the Department of Corrections.
Most of the increase does not stem from any rise in crimes by elderly people. Rather it is because many states, frustrated by rising rates of crime, are imposing longer sentences with mandatory minimums that keep prisoners behind bars until they are old.
 
Longer Waits for Parole
About 400 of the more than 14,000 inmates in New Jersey prisons are older than 55, with the oldest 95. But almost 700 others are serving long sentences and will not be eligible for parole until they are over 55.
According to a recent study by Mr. Walsh, the number of older New Jersey inmates could double by the year 2000, and more than 1,300 prisoners will be over 55 by the time they are eligible for parole.
In New York, the number of inmates who are older than 55 has doubled since 1980 and now totals 792. Connecticut's population of older prisoners is about 115, and 210 will be 55 when they become eligible for release. While 55 may not seem old, correction officials tend to view that age as elderly, compared with the average age of inmates, which is in the 20's.
Research by Mr. Walsh and others indicates that prison systems are ill-prepared to handle older convicts. Most prisons were designed for the young who, statistics show, commit most crimes. Everything from the multi-floor layout of cell blocks to the range of recreation programs, like weight lifting and basketball, can be unsuitable for aging inmates.
Increasingly the older convicts need more expensive medical care, special diets and physical and social therapies more suited to their age. But taxpayers have resisted such expenditures, experts say, as they have the construction of most new prisons.
The prison in Trenton is the state's largest. It also has the highest percentage of older inmates, 5.9 percent, including a 95-year-old Russian emigre convicted of killing his landlady.
The prison's superintendent, Howard L. Beyer, said the increase in aging convicts had made the job of control and care harder in the prison. Several trailers have been set up in the yard as air-conditioned cells for the older men, and Mr. Beyer said he had tried to set up a special recreation yard for them. But the recreation idea did not work because the men objected to being stereotyped as old.
 
Room for Wheelchairs
A newer section of the prison, completed in 1982, is equipped with elevators and hallways wide enough for wheelchairs. An infirmary with 17 beds is on the ground floor.
A number of older inmates have been meeting regularly with Mr. Walsh to discuss getting old in prison. At one recent session, 11 convicts met in a glass-walled classroom with orange, blue and green seats. Mr. Walsh talked to them about Social Security and disability payments that they could be eligible for if, and when, they leave prison.
''While you're in here, there are no benefits,'' Mr. Walsh said. ''But when you get out, you can earn credits from before, when you were on the street.''
For some inmates, such talk is only academic, because they have no expectation of being released. Nicola DiPrima, 61, said he knew in his heart that he would die in prison. He is serving three life terms for the murder of his family in Bayonne 13 years ago.
A tall man with thick glasses and arms full of tattoos, Mr. DiPrima said his only concerns now were making sure he got the insulin and low-fat foods he needed to keep his diabetes under control. ''Whatever is going to happen to me will happen,'' he said.
But other inmates doing ''big time'' hold onto the hope that they will be free again, either through escape, a change in the law or parole. They often complain about the lack of proper medical care or other prison conditions.
They tell of inmates being refused medical attention or suffering heart attacks and dying while climbing two and three flights of stairs. Elijah Traymon, 73, walks with a cane and said he had lost the sight of his right eye because it had taken six months to get to see an eye doctor after he first complained about problems.
''If you lock a man up and put him in jail, you owe him medical care,'' said Mr. Traymon, who has served 11 years on a murder conviction.
Mr. Beyer said he was obliged by law to provide adequate medical care for inmates. But as prisons swell with new convicts and costs rise, it becomes more difficult to determine exactly what level of care is necessary and how to pay for it, experts said. Heart bypass operations, CAT scans, dental surgery and other expensive medical procedures all become sticking points. How much does society owe the inmates?
 
Grade A Care Doubted
''As a citizen and a taxpayer,'' said Mr. Walsh, ''I think they're due the basic care that keeps them out of harm's way. But I don't think they deserve Grade A medical care or care that many people on the outside can't get.''
Julia G. Hall, a social psychologist at Drexel University who runs a weekly advisory session for elderly inmates at Graterford Prison in Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia, said society might have to consider building special prisons to handle the growing number of elderly prisoners. Special hospitals may be needed, she said, for prisoners with chronic diseases, and perhaps settings that would be more like retirement communities, in which older convicts could get the health and social programs they need.
Another issue: Should older prisoners, well beyond the age at which statistics show they are most likely to commit crimes, be released to make room for younger, more dangerous criminals? Dr. Hall said releasing older inmates was a good idea as long as it was done in a systematic, planned way. ''You don't just say everyone over 65 is being let out,'' she said.
For convicts, the dream of life outside, no matter how old they will be when they get there, is the spiritual touchstone that keeps them going. ''I'm going to go and get a place, maybe with a kitchenette,'' said Mr. Traymon. He figures he will not be paroled for four more years. By then he will be 77, having spent the last 15 years in prison.
He knows that an efficiency apartment could cost $400 a month and that getting about with a cane will be hard. But there are so many other unfamiliar aspects of life outside prison that freedom sometimes seems bewildering.
''I don't know what it will be like,'' he said, shaking his head. ''I don't know.''

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

CORRECTION-DATE: May 30, 1990, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

 CORRECTION:
An article on Monday about the growing number of old inmates in prisons referred incompletely in some copies to Dr. Julia G. Hall, who counsels elderly inmates at Graterford Prison in Pennsylvania. She is an associate professor of sociology at Drexel University.

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May 29, 1990, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

As Wars Grow Distant, Holiday Turns Gray

BYLINE: By WILLIAM ROBBINS, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section A; Page 1, Column 2; National Desk

LENGTH: 816 words

DATELINE: PLATTSBURG, Mo., May 28

The sentiments here were as strong as ever, and Delmas E. Green voiced them in words that were surely echoed 10,000 times as Americans paid tribute to fallen heroes of all the nation's wars on this Memorial Day.
Under flags bright in a strong sun and rippling in a soft breeze, two Boy Scouts, Bryan Davidson and Charles Martin, bugled taps in tones as clear and poignant as ever.
But too many legs had weakened. Today, Plattsburg's veterans and their friends and families, who in years past had marched briskly, allowed themselves to be driven to Green Lawn Cemetery for a ceremony that some social historians say is losing its immediacy for many Americans.
''Not everything in our country is perfect, but it is still the best place on the face of this earth,'' said Mr. Green. ''And now let us live so that those who made the supreme sacrifice will not have made it in vain.'' 
When Memorial Day is thought of as ''increasingly the property of older Americans,'' as Gerald F. Linderman, a social historian at the University of Michigan, put it the other day, the support for such assertions consists as much of impressions as of documentation.
''As we move further and further from our last war, we have smaller and smaller percentages of Americans who actually fought,'' Mr. Linderman said. ''Memories recede, and fewer and fewer of us now have relatives who died in wars.''
This was demonstrably the case at the ceremony today in this town of 2,100 people about 50 miles north of Kansas City. At 82, Mr. Green was the oldest of the 100 or so participants. Others, predominantly World War II veterans and their wives but also veterans of the Korean and Vietnam wars, ranged downward in age to the Boy Scouts who played taps, Bryan, 12, and Charles, 13.
This was the 45th Memorial Day ceremony in a series that began in Plattsburg after World War II, said Charles Hoskins, the 76-year-old master of ceremonies. In the early years, said Skip Tinnen, publisher of the weekly Plattsburg Leader, the veterans, friends and families marched a mile and a half down an avenue of flags to the cemetery.
Later, they shortened the route to the half-mile between the American Legion Post and Green Lawn. Only recently, they began simply to drive or be driven. Advancing ages are one reason, said Mr. Hoskins. Then, too, the marchers had failed in recent years to get the accompaniment of a high school band.
The principal speaker, Mr. Green, is clearly one of this town's favorite people. A black man in a town that is 80 percent white, he is a former chief deputy sheriff here in Clinton County, a former police chief of Plattsburg and surely one of the few black people ever to hold those posts in a predominantly white town in Missouri.
 
Memories of Normandy
He survived ''158 days of hell,'' as he puts it, as a member of a port battalion that unloaded supplies from freighters and landing craft after the Normandy invasion, often under fire and aerial bombardments. It was that distinction that gave him his role in the spotlight today.
His speech was bracketed by the words of the Rev. Ed McCurley of the First Christian Church, who gave both the invocation and the benediction, including this thought: ''May we also remember the suffering at war of those who returned to us.''
Another Scout, Scott Peery, 14, saluted as the strains of taps wafted through the clear air. In freshly pressed uniforms, E. W. Dixon, a 63-year-old veteran of World War II; Wayne Ford, a Vietnam veteran who is 40, and other members of a seven-man rifle team from American Legion Post 97 raised their weapons and fired three times for a 21-gun salute.
Mary Fern Davis, widow of another World War II veteran, placed a wreath on a brick memorial wall beneath an American flag that flew at half-staff and the banners of the American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars. Standing at attention were the rifle team; Mr. Hoskins, and Mark Goosey, a 75-year-old veteran of 22 bombing raids over Japan who was a member of the color guard.
 
Flowers on the Graves
Memorial Day, originally named Decoration Day, grew out of a practice among Confederate women of decorating the graves of fallen soldiers. May 30 was first designated as a day for putting flowers on those graves in the North in 1868, but other days - April 26, May 10, and June 3 -are celebrated in various Southern states.
''The forces that keep the observance viable are veterans' interests,'' said Mr. Linderman. ''And we can thank God that we may have no new wars to feed that interest.''
Robert L. Daniel, a historian at Ohio University, noted that most students in college today have no memories of any war, including Vietnam.
And he says observances of the holiday have been weakened even more by the practice of moving Memorial Day from May 30 to the closest Monday in the last May weekend. ''It's secularizing the day,'' he said.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: photo: Although social historians are describing Memorial Day as increasingly becoming the property of older Americans, a Boy Scout, Charles Martin, played taps while a fellow Scout, Scott Peery, saluted during the closing of the service yesterday at Green Lawn Cemetery in Plattsburg, Mo. (Lauren Chapin for The New York Times); map of Plattsburg, Mo. (pg. A14)

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June 3, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

China's Future on Hold With a 'Gang of Elders'

BYLINE: By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section 1; Part 1, Page 20, Column 5; Foreign Desk

LENGTH: 1337 words

DATELINE: BEIJING, June 2

In the middle of the crackdown against the democracy movement a year ago, Deng Xiaoping summoned the Government's leaders for a lecture that has turned out to be prophetic.
''We cannot allow factions to exist,'' Mr. Deng told his visitors, according to a confidential transcript that was circulated later to Communist Party officials. He added, ''Please don't look down on each other and waste energy fighting among yourselves.''
But despite Mr. Deng's unusual appeal for cooperation and unity, the Chinese political system is widely regarded today as in a deadlock. It is now a year since a small group of octogenarians emerged from retirement to order the suppression on June 4 of the democracy movement, but there is still no clear sign of China's directions. Each day brings a new fireworks show of mixed signals, but so far the rival factions have only succeeded in blocking each other instead of implementing new policies. 
 
Decisions Not Made
What is most striking about China today, many Chinese officials and foreign diplomats say, is not the decisions that are made but those that are postponed or avoided. Vacancies on the Politburo, for example, have not been filled in more than a year, and there still has been no decision on the fundamental question of what to do with the ousted Communist Party leader, Zhao Ziyang.
From afar, it may seem that the hard-liners have scored a clear victory and are completely in charge, but many experts doubt this. It is true that hard-liners have wrested control of the news organizations, so that People's Daily and other major publications now resonate with Maoist themes, including the cult of Lei Feng, a soldier who after his death in 1962 was declared the model for China's youth. The conservatives also have dramatically tightened political repression, curtailed who can study abroad, required college graduates to work at the ''grass roots'' before taking certain white-collar jobs, and beefed up ''political study'' classes in the workplace.
 
Passive Resistance
Yet Chinese officials and foreign diplomats say that beneath the blizzard of propaganda, the hard-liners have not been able to force their will on the country, at least to the degree that had been expected. Passive resistance from a sullen population has obstructed some policies, while the conservatives have been unable to force a major purge of those Central Committee members or provincial leaders who were loyal to Mr. Zhao. And advocates of change are again calling openly, if delicately, for price liberalization, stock markets, housing privatization, property auctions and other measures to restructure the economy.
''I think people overstate control by the conservatives now, just as they overstated control by the reformers last year,'' said a Western diplomat with long experience in China.
''In terms of politics, the economy and social policy, not all that much has changed,'' the diplomat said. ''This is a quagmire. The political mechanisms are blocked so that there is no decision and no way to make a decision.'' Who's in Charge? Anyone?  While the hard-liners clearly still are in control of the airwaves, many of their initiatives appear to be running out of steam. The scheme to assign college graduates to ''grass roots'' jobs is widely ignored and evaded, the crackdown on private and collective enterprises has foundered and the effort to expel dissident party members has been subverted so that the vast majority of party members are being ''re-registered'' even if they were involved in the democracy movement.
The result of this mixed picture is that many people here, Chinese and foreigners, today are asking not so much who is in control, but whether anyone is in firm control.
''I think China is operating by remote control,'' said another Western diplomat.
Ultimate decision-making power is in the hands of about a dozen octogenarians led by Mr. Deng, but they are divided and distracted by their own infirmities. Most hold no formal post, are seen in public only very rarely, and can barely walk.
''We're waiting for the 'gang of elders' to die,'' explained an intellectual in Beijing. The term ''gang of elders,'' a play on the Gang of Four in power at the end of the Cultural Revolution, is now commonly used to refer to the group of retired leaders who hold ultimate power.
 
Deng vs. Chen
The leadership itself is widely believed to be more divided than at any time in a dozen years. Mr. Deng is still the standard bearer for those who favor continued economic liberalization, while his principal antagonist is Chen Yun, the architect of central planning and the chairman of the Central Advisory Commission. Mr. Chen, who celebrates his 85th birthday on Sunday, is ailing and has not been seen in public in eight months, but he remains the rallying point for those who worry about the consequences of too rapid change.
To be sure, those assessments are based more on hints and deductions than on provable fact, and there is considerable confusion and disagreement among diplomats about Chinese politics. Some believe that the conservatives are daily gaining new power and that Mr. Deng is already in partial eclipse; others believe that the hard-liners are in retreat and that China is already returning to the path of liberalization from which it was diverted a year ago.
''Confusion is the key word here,'' said a Western diplomat who admits to little idea of who is in charge.
Still, there is fairly wide agreement about some of the factors that will shape China's course. One of these is simply the order in which leaders die. Many diplomats say that if Mr. Deng were to die first, the hard-liners would be able to go further with their purges and with their return to greater central planning. On the other hand, if Mr. Chen were to die first, economic liberalization might get a boost.
 
Wild Card: President Yang
The wild card, most analysts say, is President Yang Shangkun. Mr. Yang is said by well-connected Chinese to be backing Mr. Deng, but to have ambitions to become paramount leader after Mr. Deng dies. Mr. Yang is 83 years old but radiates good health, and he has engineered a rapid rise for his younger half-brother, Yang Baibing, to senior posts in the army and the Communist Party.
A generation below Mr. Deng and Mr. Chen, China's titular leaders are also competing to inherit the mantle of senior leader. In the conservatives' corner is Prime Minister Li Peng, 61. The Prime Minister's chief rival is thought to be Li Ruihuan, a 55-year-old former carpenter who is now the Politburo member in charge of propaganda.
Early this year, reports wafted through Zhongnanhai, the compound where China's leaders live and work, that a wave of personnel changes were in the works, possibly including the sidelining of Prime Minister Li. Mr. Deng and Mr. Chen were said to be jousting over the changes, but in the end the Central Committee and the National People's Congress both met in an atmosphere of abnormal quiet in which there were virtually no personnel changes at all.
 
Postponing Changes
All changes were postponed, apparently partly because the leaders feared that any shuffles might suggest that the Government was unstable. But the postponement was also taken as a sign of the standoff in the leadership and the elders' inability to agree on almost anything.
One of the clearest signs of this impasse is that the hard-liners have so been unable to mount a successful purge of their rivals. Even the ousted party leader, Mr. Zhao, remains a party member and continues to draw his salary even though he is confined to a large and comfortable house in the center of the capital. Virtually everyone at the level of Government minister, or at the Central Committee level in the Communist Party, has been retained, even though many of them were obviously loyal to the policies of liberalization that prevailed until a year ago. The faces in the chorus are unchanged, even though the oratory is different.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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June 3, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Elderly Pair Arrested in Harlem Crack Case

SECTION: Section 1; Part 1, Page 34, Column 1; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 178 words

A 73-year-old woman and a 68-year-old man were arrested yesterday after narcotics officers found crack, money and guns in their apartment in Harlem, the police said.
The woman, Marguerite Baily, and the man, Abraham Wilson, were among five people arrested in their first-floor apartment at 2017 Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard, Sgt. Mary Wrensen, a police spokeswoman said.
Officers from the Manhattan North Precinct narcotics squad, executing a search warrant, found 103 crack vials and $2,000 in cash hidden in the apartment, Sergeant Wrensen said. They also found two loaded handguns in a laundry basket near the door, she said.
Also arrested were Salomon Moore, 48, who also lived in the apartment, and two Bronx men, Philip Lavis, 30, and Edwin Simmons, 31. All five people were charged with possession of a controlled substance with intent to sell and with possession of a deadly weapon.
Neighbors in the dingy, four-story apartment building said they knew the elderly woman but would not comment yesterday, saying they did not want to get involved.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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June 3, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

LIFE STYLE: Sunday Outing;
In Kingston, the Waterfront Lives On

BYLINE: By HAROLD FABER, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section 1; Part 2, Page 52, Column 4; Style Desk

LENGTH: 909 words

DATELINE: KINGSTON, N.Y.

The Rondout Creek waterfront is a gateway to the Hudson River, just as it was back in the early 1800's, when Kingston was the home port of a thriving barge industry transporting coal, cement and bricks to New York City. A few old buildings remain as reminders of Kingston's industrial past, but today the waterfront area, at the confluence of the Rondout and the Hudson, reflects its attraction today for tourists, with marinas, river cruises, antique shops, galleries and restaurants.
In the center of a small waterfront park stands the Mathilda, a steam tugboat some 72 feet long and a symbol of Kingston's heritage.
Around the tug, which was retired in 1969, are reminders of the city's glory days as a river port: winches, bells and a tall buoy. 
''The rivermen pronounce that boy, not boo-ey,'' said Katherine Gray, director of the nearby Hudson River Maritime Museum.
Housed in a two-story red-brick building directly on the Rondout, the museum displays photographs, paintings and models of riverboats, including the Mary Powell, the queen of the Hudson River steamers in her day. The museum is open weekdays, except Tuesday, from 11 A.M. to 5 P.M., and on Saturday and Sunday from 10 A.M. to 5 P.M. Admission: $2.50, $2 for the elderly and $1 for children between ages 6 and 12.
 
Cruises to West Point
On the creek front behind the museum are a number of boats offering river cruises on weekends in June and daily in the summer. Among them are: The Rip Van Winkle, with a two-hour narrated cruise, leaving at 11:30 A.M. on Saturday and Sunday; no reservations. Fare: $12, $11 for the elderly, $5 for children under 12. There will be an all-day cruise to West Point on June 10, leaving at 9:30 A.M., and some rock-and-roll and lunch cruises. Call 914-255-6515.
The Rondout Belle has a two-hour cruise leaving at 12:30 P.M. and 2:30 P.M. on Saturday and 2:30 P.M. on Sunday with a stop at the Rondout II Lighthouse, where the creek enters the Hudson River. Fare: $12, $10 for the elderly and $6 for children between 6 and 12. There are also clambake and brunch cruises. Call 914-338-6280.
A new cruise boat, the Sea Explorer, offers a three-hour cruise north on the Hudson with a stop at the Saugerties Lighthouse, leaving at 11 A.M. on weekends. Fare: $12, $8 for children. Sea Explorer also goes out on sunset cruises at 7 P.M. Call 914-679-8205.
Another new boat, the Packett 2, is based at the Eddyville Marina, about 2.5 miles west of the museum on Abeel Street. On Saturday and Sunday there are two-hour cruises leaving at 10 A.M., 1 and 4 P.M. Fare: $12. Call 914-339-5383.
 
Learning to Sail
The Eddyville Marina, which has a restaurant on the premises, is also the home of the Driftwood Floating Showboat, which opens its season with performances of ''The Wondrous Adventures of the Mississippi Mademoiselle'' on June 15 and 16 at 8 P.M. There is a Sunday matinee on June 17 at 2:30 P.M. All seats $5. Call 914-331-0400.
Two other cruise operations based along the Rondout offer sailboat rides as well as instruction in sailing: the Great Hudson Sailing Center (914-338-7313) and Sails Only (914-331-3722).
For those who just want to sit and watch the boats go by, there are two routes to the Hudson River, one by auto and the other by trolley car. By auto, starting at the Maritime Museum, follow East Strand Avenue for 1.1 miles, turning right at the traffic light on Delaware Avenue for 0.2 miles to Kingston Point Park, which has a children's playground, a beach, a picnic area and beautiful views of the river.
 
Traveling by Trolley
A more nostalgic way is to visit the Trolley Car Museum, directly across the street from the Maritime Museum, and board a gasoline-propelled car for a 1.5-mile ride to the old Hudson River Day Line dock. In the old days of the Day Line, boats would come up from New York City to Kingston Point, where trains picked up vacationers bound for Catskill Mountain resorts. The trolley leaves every 30 minutes between noon and 5 P.M. on weekends, with a fare of $1.50, $1 for children.
Kingston's history dates further back than the Day Liners, of course. Only seven years after Henry Hudson sailed up the river in 1609, the first Dutch settlers set up a trading post on the Rondout Creek, seeking beaver and other furs from the Indians.
During the American Revolution, Kingston became the capital of New York State when the new state government fled there as the British advanced up the Hudson. In 1777, the state's first constitution was adopted in Kingston and the State Senate held its first meeting in Abraham Van Gasbeek's home there.
Today that stone home, called the Senate House, and an adjacent museum are a state historic site, open to the public from 10 A.M. to 5 P.M. Wednesday through Saturday and from 1 to 5 P.M. on Sunday, with guided tours every half-hour.
 
Getting There
From Manhattan, a drive to Kingston takes about two hours. Take the Gov. Thomas E. Dewey Thruway north to Exit 19 in Kingston, go around the traffic circle and take Interstate 587 for 1.2 miles, turning left on Broadway. Follow Broadway through the center of Kingston for 1.5 miles to a traffic light, turning right and downhill 0.4 miles to the waterfront.
To get to the Senate House from the Rondout Creek, go back on Broadway 1.8 miles, turning left at a light on Albany Avenue for 0.3 miles to Clinton Avenue, turning right there. Follow the brown signs to the Senate House.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: The tugboat Mathilda, now a landlubber, is a reminder of the past (Mark Antman for The New York Times)

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June 3, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

J. T. Phillips Wed To Ms. Southgate

SECTION: Section 1; Part 2, Page 61, Column 1; Society Desk

LENGTH: 139 words

Martha E. Southgate, a daughter of Joan E. Southgate of Cleveland and the late Robert L. Southgate, was married yesterday to Jeffrey T. Phillips, a son of Mr. and Mrs. George W. Phillips of Gloucester, Mass. The Rev. John F. Keane, a Roman Catholic priest, officiated at St. Joseph's Chapel in Magnolia, Mass. 
The bride, 29 years old, will keep her name. A Smith College alumna, she is an entertainment reporter for The Daily News in New York. Her father was a librarian in the Cleveland public school system. Her mother retired as the director of the Senior Citizens Coalition in Cleveland.The bridegroom, 27, a graduate of University of Notre Dame, is a product manager for Penguin Books in New York. His father recently retired as the chairman and chief executive of the Boston Company, a financial-services concern in Boston.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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June 4, 1990, Monday, Late Edition - Final

In Florio's Old Stumping Grounds

BYLINE: By WAYNE KING, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section B; Page 4, Column 4; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 903 words

DATELINE: CAMDEN, N.J., June 2

Until an intense young New Jersey Assemblyman named Jim Florio won New Jersey's First District Congressional seat in 1974, no Democrat had held it since before the turn of the century.
Mr. Florio held the seat for 16 years before he resigned to become Governor in January, and in that time the district became increasingly Democratic -even though Democratic Presidential candidates fared little better here than nationally.
So entrenched did the Democrats become at the Congressional level that four candidates are seeking the Democratic nomination this year while the lone Republican, Daniel J. Mangini, agreed to run only if he were unopposed in the primary.
Robert Andrews, a 32-year-old lawyer and director of the Camden County Board of Chosen Freeholders, is the Democratic organization's candidate and the acknowledged front-runner. 
 
Aggressive Challengers
But he is being aggressively challenged by two other Democrats. Linda Bowker, 41, New Jersey president of the National Organization for Women, is basing her campaign in part on her support for abortion rights and family planning. But she is also calling for strong controls on pollution, universal health insurance, more money for low- and moderate-income housing and greater workplace protections.
John A. Dramesi, 57, a retired Air Force colonel who was a prisoner of war in Hanoi for seven years and who wrote a well-received book titled ''Code of Honor'' on his torture, escape, recapture and ultimate release, is basing his campaign largely on the rights of veterans and the elderly. He is also appealing to opponents of gun control and calling for strong measures against crime and drugs.
A fourth Democratic candidate, Joel Farley, 35, a New York lawyer who established residence in Collingswood last year, has curtailed campaigning because of a family illness and is not considered a significant contender.
The district itself is a pastiche of 526,000 residents stretching from the gritty depressed inner city of Camden, the district's largest city, to the semirural areas of Winslow Township 20-odd miles to the east, where orchards and tomato fields are being fast transformed into green-lawned suburbs.
Candidates are thus compelled to deal with issues as disparate as a welfare mother's quest for a job to an outdoorsman's demand for access to guns.
As the Democratic organization candidate, Mr. Andrews claims Governor Florio's support. Mr. Florio has declared neutrality in the primary, but even so, he is himself an issue, standing as he does as something of a symbol of higher taxes and tighter gun control.
As Governor, he has proposed new and increased taxes and sharp cuts in services in the face of a critical budget deficit. He has also forced though the Legislature a ban on the sale of military-style assault weapons.
It can make for tough campaigning. When retired Colonel Dramesi, dressed in military-style khakis and bearing his book, walked into the Little Sportsman's Shop, an outdoorsman's supply in Glassboro last Friday, to talk about his opposition to gun control, he walked past a bulletin board dominated by a sticker urging, ''Impeach Florio.''
And before he could present his views, he was embroiled in a shouting match with the store owner, Bob Viden, 48, who, flanked by a half dozen men in baseball hats and hunting garb, promptly told him Democrats were not to be trusted on gun issues.
''Democrats have stuck it to the sportsmen in this state forever,'' Mr. Viden said.
Mr. Dramesi shot back: ''You're insulting me and questioning my integrity! I put my life on the line for what I believe!''
''Don't give us a speech,'' said one man. ''Tell us what you think about the ban on assault rifles.''
''I'm opposed to it,'' Mr. Dramesi said.
The meeting ended amicably, although it was unclear what support, if any, Mr. Dramesi had picked up.
 
'You Can't Believe Them, Liars'
A few miles away, campaigning door to door in the sprawling subdivision of Elmtown in Winslow Township, Mr. Andrews also encountered skepticism.
''I'm not much of a believer in politicians,'' Walter Simon, a retired meat cutter, said after a visit from Mr. Andrews. ''You can't believe them, liars, you might say.'' He laughed.
Mr. Andrews got a warmer reception in Camden, helping to open a drop-in child-care center, which, as Freehold Director, he was instrumental in creating. The center provides day care for children of welfare mothers while they seek jobs or get job counseling.
Job training is the top priority in Camden, one of the poorest cities in the country. ''People here don't want to hear about school prayer and abortion,'' Mr. Andrews said. ''They worry about whether they're going to have a job or not.''
 
'I'm for Freedom of Choice'
In Winston Township, Ms. Bowker was campaigning at a shopping center when she encountered a woman with silver hair pushing a shopping cart.
''How do you stand on abortion?'' the woman asked politely.
''I'm for freedom of choice,'' replied the candidate.
''Well, I'm definitely against it,'' said the woman, who smiled but took herself and her cart firmly away.
But Frank Falance, 48, a Gloucester County Highway Department employee accompanying Ms. Bowker, said abortion was not the primary issue.
''She's not a one-issue candidate,'' he said. ''I've got a 13-year-old daughter and I want her to have a Representative in Congress like Linda Bowker.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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June 6, 1990, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Gains Seen in Diagnostic Test for Alzheimer's

BYLINE: By NATALIE ANGIER

SECTION: Section A; Page 24, Column 4; National Desk

LENGTH: 684 words

Scientists have devised an experimental test for diagnosing Alzheimer's disease that seems to be significantly more reliable than any other diagnostic method now available.
The test, which has so far been studied solely in tissues from autopsies, detects a still-puzzling protein that appears to be confined almost exclusively to the brains of Alzheimer's patients. In Alzheimer's disease, the steady death of brain cells leads to extreme forgetfulness, personality changes and a loss of control over body functions.
Other proteins and neural defects that have been identified as hallmarks of the degenerative illness are also found, to a much lesser degree, in the brains of elderly people who do not have Alzheimer's, and in patients with other neurological diseases. But scientists say this protein shows up only in the brains of those who have been determined through a complex combination of existing methods as almost surely suffering from Alzheimer's. 
The researchers, who are reporting the new results today in The Journal of the American Medical Association, say the test for the protein, called Alzheimer's disease-associated protein, could be used soon to distinguish unequivocally between patients who have Alzheimer's and the 20 to 30 percent of those in whom the disorder is mistakenly diagnosed.
 
Much Research Remains
''These people have other kinds of dementia that often are treatable,'' said Dr. Hossein A. Ghanbari, a biochemist with Abbott Laboratories in Illinois, the company that developed the test. ''If you can find out that they don't have Alzheimer's, you can help them get the right treatment.''
Although there is no cure yet for Alzheimer's, doctors hope they may eventually be able to treat the disease by interfering with the activity of the protein itself. But they say much research remains to be done to determine how the protein works.
In one theory, the protein helps kill brain cells prematurely, leading to a chain reaction that includes the aggregation of tough, abnormal protein pieces called beta-amyloid fragments into damaging plaques throughout the brain.
''Studying protein function is one of the most difficult challenges of all,'' said Dr. Peter Davies, Resnick Professor of Alzheimer's disease research at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, who discovered the protein. ''We've really just begun to understand the role of this protein in the pathology of Alzheimer's.''
 
Specific Protein Isolated
Dr. Davies and his colleagues found the protein by injecting pulverized tissue samples from the brains of both normal people and those with Alzheimer's into mice. The researchers then sought evidence of antibodies in the rodents' blood that would attack proteins in the Alzheimer's sample but that would find no corresponding targets in the normal tissue. Through that method, they isolated only one protein specific to Alzheimer's tissue.
Since then, Dr. Davies and his co-workers have fashioned a probe to detect the protein and have applied the probe to the autopsied brains of 111 people. About half the people had suffered from Alzheimer's and the other half either had no disease or a brain disorder like Parkinson's. The probe reacted with about 86 percent of the Alzheimer's samples, but not with any of the control brains.
The researchers are now trying to perfect the test to detect the protein in the cerebrospinal fluid, which would allow the method to be used on living patients.
''It's a worthy goal for them to get a better diagnostic test for Alzheimer's,'' said Dr. Kenneth S. Kosik, an associate professor of neurology at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. ''Nothing else that we know of is absolutely specific to the disease.''
In new studies that have yet to be published, the researchers have tracked the distribution of the mysterious protein throughout the brains of people with Alzheimer's. They have learned that the protein is most highly concentrated in the cortex covering the front and side sections of the brain and all these regions, the scientists said, are involved in memory.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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June 7, 1990, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

Easier Living for the Aged or Disabled

BYLINE: By PATRICIA LEIGH BROWN

SECTION: Section C; Page 10, Column 3; Home Desk

LENGTH: 1179 words

DATELINE: BOWIE, Md.

THE two-story, three-bedroom house in this Prince Georges County suburb of Washington is notable for not being conspicuous. It seems inspired by ''Ozzie and Harriet,'' but it is perhaps the best mainstream example of ''adaptable housing,'' designed to meet the needs not only of the general population but also of the disabled and the elderly.
''The premise is that persons with disabilities ought to be able to live anywhere,'' said Liza Bowles, a vice president of the National Association of Home Builders National Research Center, the not-for-profit organization that built the house in the N.A.H.B. Research Park in Bowie, Md., 15 miles northeast of Washington. ''Builders need to become sensitive to a variety of needs and choices,'' Ms. Bowles said. 
The house, a demonstration model, is open to visitors by appointment. Its purpose is to show builders, who tend to be conservative, what can be done to provide comfortable living throughout a life span, which is one goal of adaptable housing.
''Builders need to see more of it,'' said Ron Mace, president of Barrier Free Environments in Raleigh, N.C. ''Adaptable housing will be driven by market demand.'' He is a director of the Center for Accessible Housing at North Carolina State University, also in Raleigh.
Over the last decade, more and more attention has been paid to making physical appurtenances accessible to anyone, and some laws have been enacted as a result. The Fair Housing Amendments Act of 1988 which became law last year,requires builders of multi-family apartment dwellings to adhere to certain design guidelines, like placing light switches and electrical outlets where they can be reached easily from wheelchairs. But in single-family houses, the addition of adaptable features is far from a standard practice.
The house in Bowie offers 2,300 square feet of floor space and has a ground-floor suite that can be converted into an apartment for a disabled or elderly person, perhaps an elderly parent.
The house, which is factory built, can be constructed for about $150,000, minus its specially designed elevator and other electronic gadgets. It has been endorsed by the United States Fire Administration, the Architectural and Transportation Barriers Compliance Board and the Home Builders Association. The builder is Nanticoke Homes, a modular home manufacturer in Greenwood, Del., near Dover.
Ms. Bowles said the choice of a factory-built house that can be mass-produced had been intentional. ''We thought if we could design adaptable features in the most rigid situation, it could certainly be done in houses that are built on site,'' she said.
The architectural virtues of the house are subtle, and that is part of the general idea. The garage door is two feet higher than the usual height, so it possible to admit a specialized van. The carpeting is low pile, making it comfortable to move around with a walker or wheelchair.
A sidewalk ramp, not noticeable from the street, is tucked behind the railing of the quaint front porch.
One of the three bedrooms is on the first floor, the others on the second. The house, three years in the making, was deliberately held to two stories. ''It had to have curbside appeal,'' Ms. Bowles said. ''We didn't want it to stand out in a housing development.''
Jane Willeboordse, the architect, said most of the ideas demonstrated in the Bowie house are ''very simple,'' but require forethought. What usually makes an adaptable house expensive, she said, is having to do new construction - widening doorways for wheelchairs, for example. But if adaptable features are planned from the start, they they should not add significantly to the cost, she said.
Ms. Willeboordse planned the interiors around a series of first- and second-floor closets, in line, and the space could be put to a different use later. ''The design allows for the possibility of an elevator in the future,'' she said. ''That's a very simple thing you can plan for early on.''
The interiors are full of tiny details - though, as Ms. Willeboordse said, ''we didn't want an institutional look.'' Light switches and other controls are four inches lower than the norm. Bathroom walls have been reinforced, should the occupant want to install grab bars in the future. Casement windows throughout the house are placed about six inches lower than standard and are opened with a crank mechanism - rather than a heave.
The entrance hall is spacious (to make room for wheelchairs). Doors come with either lever handles or push-button locksets rather than doorknobs, which can pose problems for people with arthritis.
In the living room there is a soapstone wood stove made by the Alberene Stone Company of Schuyler, Va. In contrast to a regular fireplace, this stand-up hearth, which costs roughly $7,000, is easy to operate from a wheelchair. The heating box is raised, and, unlike typical metal fireplace surroundings, the soapstone doesn't get hot.
Ms. Willeboordse graded the house's site to accommodate an outdoor deck accessible through sliding dining room doors with a low threshold.
David R. Williamson, senior program adviser of the Housing and Urban Development Department, uses a wheelchair and was an adviser on the project. Recently, in Bowie, he explained some of the house's advantages to a visitor. One of the things he particularly likes, he said, is that the place is designed for ''family living'' - often, just one person in the family who has a disabiliity.
The deck, for example, might incorporate raised flower boxes as an adaptable feature for someone in a wheelchair. The deck's planking's happy result is ''no mud tracks from wheelchair wheels.'' But mostly it is a place for family activities, for ''watching the kids play, and barbecues,'' he said.
Bathrooms have accessible tubs and roll-in showers that are carried by leading manufacturers, as well as sinks that have porcelain cladding on pipes to prevent burns. But the house's biggest strength may be the kitchen. In an offering that would be appreciated by short cooks as well as people in wheelchairs and those with mobility problems, cabinets come with notches on the backs and their height is adjustable.
The design also incorporates state-of-the-art fire safety features, in an acknowledgement that the elderly and the disabled are often at greater risk. The smoke-detection system is hooked up to specialized devices including high-intensity strobe lights, fans or vibrating bed mechanisms that can be smoke alarms for people with impaired hearing or vision. There is also a potentially revolutionary contribution to home design: a series of good-looking sprinkler heads that are flush with the ceiling.
The downstairs bedroom and family room can be used as a private ground-floor apartment, perhaps by elderly parents, or by aging homeowners who might not want to cope with the stairs.
Mr. Williamson seemed ambivalent about at least one of the houses' features - a built-in ironing board at wheelchair height.
''I don't want one. I don't want to have to do ironing,'' he said.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photos: David R. Williamson was a consultant during the building of an adaptable house for elderly and disabled people. It has an elevator, adjustable kitchen cabinets, easy-to-reach stove controls and a built-in ironing board at wheelchair height.; The architect of the two-story, factory-built house, Jane Willeboordse, right, wanted accessibility and ''curbside appeal.''; The bathroom has grab bars and an accessible whirlpool tub with a door. Roll-in showers are also available.; A wood stove with a raised heating box and soapstone surfaces that remain cool.; A crank mechanism to open windows and a push-button lock for doors. (Photographs by Marty Katz for The New York Times)

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June 9, 1990, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

Patents;
Lasers Used In Reversing Gum Disease

BYLINE: By Edmund L. Andrews

SECTION: Section 1; Page 32, Column 5; Financial Desk

LENGTH: 302 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON

An ophthalmic surgeon in New York City who is a leading authority on the use of lasers in eye surgery, obtained a patent this week on a method for using low-powered lasers to reverse gum disease.
The surgeon, Francis A. L'Esperance, said that in preliminary tests on dental patients the lasers appeared to stimulate the growth of fresh gum tissue. If the method proves to be safe and effective, it could fight receding gums, one of the most common dental problems among middle-aged and elderly people. The surgeon, a professor of clinical ophthalmology at Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons, said the method might also help speed certain kinds of wound healing.
In tests, about a dozen patients were treated three times a day for two weeks. One-half of each patient's mouth was exposed to beams of laser pulses from a pair of low-powered diodes, similar to those used in compact disk players. Photographs taken before and after the tests indicated that the gums exposed to the beams grew fresh tissue, while those not exposed did not.
Dr. L'Esperance said the effect appeared to result from a photochemical reaction stimulated by the inherent properties of laser light. ''We're not sure what the exact property is,'' he added, ''but it seems to be real.'' Previous researchers, he said, had frequently noted that lasers appeared to stimulate fiber cells and some European doctors used them to fight conjunctivitis, or pinkeye.
The new patent describes a method of exposing tissue to two beams, each powered by only a few millionths of a watt. The surgeon said tissue growth appeared to result from the interaction between pulses from the two beams, which are transmitted at either different angles or with different timing from each other.
Dr. L'Esperance received patent 4,931,053.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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June 9, 1990, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

Florio's Puzzling 'Vision' for New Jersey

BYLINE: By Chuck Hardwick; Chuck Hardwick, Republican of Union County, is a member of the New Jersey State Assembly.

SECTION: Section 1; Page 23, Column 1; Editorial Desk

LENGTH: 687 words

DATELINE: TRENTON

When you put together a puzzle, no one piece gives you the whole picture. But piece by piece the puzzle becomes clearer, until the picture is complete.
Gov. Jim Florio says he has a vision for New Jersey; piece by piece he is assembling it, and the picture of his vision for the state is becoming clearer. As a state legislator for 13 years and former Assembly speaker, I can see a distinct pattern - and I believe that the future of New Jersey's middle class is in jeopardy. 
The first piece of the puzzle is the so-called auto insurance reform bill. The Governor calls the bill ''The Fair Automobile Insurance Reform Act.'' But the act isn't reform and it certainly isn't fair.
It only shifts costs and adopts a new criterion for rating the risks of drivers. But that criterion will result in low-risk drivers (senior citizens, married couples, women, suburbanites) subsidizing high-risk drivers (young, single males, particularly those in the inner cities).
The Florio administration already admits that insurance companies, after onerous state surcharges are eliminated, may raise rates to make up any losses. So the $212 per car surcharge will be gone, but the companies will raise basic rates the same amount to make up the difference.
The second piece of the puzzle, the Governor's tax package, hits the middle class especially hard. It will make New Jersey's income tax the second-highest in the country and bring a 17 percent hike in the sales tax to consumers.
It will also eliminate homestead rebates and property tax reductions. These will add substantially to the total tax burden of all New Jerseyans, but especially working families and singles.
The Governor says with pride that his is a progressive tax proposal, that the bulk of the added taxes will be paid by the ''wealthy.'' The trouble is that he is having a tough time defining what he means by ''wealthy.''
First he told us that families with an income over $55,000 were among New Jersey's richest. But the 300,000 New Jerseyans who work in New York, pay taxes there and will pay the new, higher New Jersey Transit fares proposed by the Governor know that $55,000 in family income does not make them rich by any means.
Then Governor Florio defined ''wealthy'' as a single person earning $35,000 or more - with no regard for whether the person was a parent.
The final piece of the puzzle came last week: the distribution formula for aid to education. The Governor plans to cut aid to suburban communities - so-called high-income communities. Bergen County, for example, will lose more than $100 million in school aid. The Governor's goal is to direct more aid to cities such as Camden, which would receive an additional $45 million in school aid. The plan is partly based on the belief that all residents in ''high-income'' communities have high incomes.
Unfortunately, that's simply not true. The selective aid cut will result in an increase in taxes and a reduction in municipal services for property owners regardless of income. The Governor's plan will have exactly the opposite impact that he desires: Lower-and middle-income families will no longer be able to afford to live in suburban communities.
The cumulative effect of higher transportation costs and taxes and reduced aid will result in a massive redistribution of wealth. That's a philosophy that failed and was discredited in Massachusetts and New York a decade ago and has been discarded by the Eastern Bloc countries.
Wealth-redistribution schemes stifle economic growth. The plan proposed by Governor Florio will hurt the people of New Jersey in the decade ahead. Why would a start-up business want to locate in a non-competitive environment? It wouldn't.
What New Jersey needs are policies that attract economic activity and build a bigger economic pie so that all can benefit. Our state urgently needs policies that encourage growth through low taxes and a favorable climate for new jobs.
Of course, the missing piece of the puzzle is the voice of the taxpayers. In the weeks ahead, they could very well overturn the Governor's puzzling vision for New Jersey.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Drawing

TYPE: Op-ed

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June 10, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

In AIDS-Stricken Uganda Area, The Orphans Struggle to Survive

BYLINE: By JANE PERLEZ, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section 1; Part 1, Page 1, Column 3; Foreign Desk

LENGTH: 2088 words

DATELINE: MUTIKULA SOUTH, Uganda

Josephine Senyonga, a diminutive woman with decades of hard farm labor etched into her face, sat on the floor of her one-room house, surrounded by 12 grandchildren.
What in normal circumstances should have been a tableau of warmth was one of tragedy, repeated in thousands of houses and huts in a 30-mile swath from this village in Rakai County to Lake Victoria.
Mrs. Senyonga's three sons and three daughters-in-law died of AIDS last year and left her, a struggling 69-year-old widow, to care for their children.
In a grove of banana trees in her backyard, heaps of red pebbles, dappled with sunlight, mark the graves.
In another village closer to the lake, 70-year-old Salongo Mawawu looks after his 12 orphaned grandchildren. Six graves, five of them freshly dug, are at the side of his house, reminders to his grandchildren that their parents - teachers and traders - had died of AIDS. His last daughter, who is also a mother, is expected to die soon. 
 
A Disease Crueler Than War
The AIDS epidemic here is perhaps more haunting, more depressing than Africa's hard-case wars and famines. In war, the women and children are often spared. In famine, only segments of the population, the very young and the elderly, seem vulnerable.
In Rakai, a county of about 300,000, AIDS kills the breadwinners and leaves behind the most helpless: children.
From all the thousands of AIDS deaths of mothers and fathers, up to 40,000 children in the county have been are orphaned by a disease they understand to mean continual and uncurable sickness, uninterrupted mourning, daily funerals and impoverishment.
In many villages of Rakai, rows of houses stand silent, shuttered and abandoned, the parents dead and the children taken to usually less prosperous and aging grandparents.
''We are losing everyone,'' Mr. Mawawu said., after showing a visitor the graves in his garden.
Doctors here say that the transmission rate of AIDS from infected mother to baby - during pregnancy or while giving birth - is 30 to 50 percent, about the same as in the United States.
But since they have no measure of when mothers died or how old their children were when they died they cannot estimate, they say, how many of the surviving children in Rakai are infected with the virus.
The people of Rakai have always thought that AIDS, commonly known as ''Slims Disease,'' was different from malaria. For a long time they believed that AIDS afflicted those who stole or were ''bewitched'' by relatives.
 
Now They Know the Cause
Many now say they know it is caused by heterosexual transmission but seem unprepared to accept it. Elizabeth Nakabago, whose 52-year-old husband died of AIDS last year, appeared very thin. She felt well, she insisted. But a visitor from Kampala, the capital, said he had watched her deteriorate.
Scientists are studying why heterosexual transmission of the virus is such an important factor in Africa but have not yet reached any conclusions.
AIDS testing is virtually impossible for men and women deep in the villages. And as one man argued: ''Why should we have tests if you have no medicines to cure us.''
A member of Parliament from Rakai, Manuel Pinto, who organized a house-to-house survey recently, says there are about 40,000 children in Rakai who have lost one or both parents through AIDS.
An American statistician with the United Nations Children's Fund, Susan Hunter, reports 25,000 such children as of last fall but cautions that her figure was conservative even at the time.
In Uganda, an orphan is defined as a child who has lost one or both parents. In families where one parent has died, the grandparents commonly take charge of the children, particularly when the remaining parent moves away to try to remarry.
It is the question of how to lift the morale of these orphans in a country bereft of social services that Mr. Pinto and others are trying to grapple with.
 
The Background
 
War's Ravages And Now Disease's
 The Rakai district, an area of greenery and red soil, ravaged in the 1970's and early 1980's during the civil war, was the first place in Uganda to report cases of AIDS. Once a flourishing region of the Baganda Kingdom, railroads used to run to the lake shore. Crumbled milestones poking out of papyrus reeds attest to a road, now a potholed track barely suitable for bicycles, that once was alive with buses.
The area was neglected after independence from Britain. But during the 20-year civil war, the traders of Rakai prospered, buying soap, tires and beer from across the water in Tanzania and selling them to the capital, Kampala.
It was those who profited and led a high life who became the AIDS carriers and casualties, says Juvenalis W. Kibira, the deputy chairman of the orphans' organization of Rakai, which was founded last year by Mr. Pinto.
 
AIDS Spread From Area
After the first AIDS cases were reported in 1982 around Kasensero - the first known concentration of AIDS in Africa - the disease moved through Rakai county and then spread north to the entire country.
In Uganda as a whole, the figures are dramatic. Last December, the Minister of Health, Zak Kaheru, reported that 790,522 Ugandans had tested positive for the HIV virus and of these, at least 10,000 had developed the disease. The figures compiled for 1988 showed that, discounting children, about 1 in 8 Ugandans was infected.
In Kampala, the Health Ministry reported that 1 in 4 was infected. And in Rakai, new figures from a survey by the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta show that half the women at the trading posts are HIV positive.
The infection rate compares to a rate of 1 in 200 in the United States and 1 in 500 to a thousand in Britain, said Martin Foreman, director of the AIDS unit of the Panos Institute, a London-based group specializing in development issues.
Rakai remains the region in Uganda most affected by AIDS, with the death toll steadily rising after 1986. While the total number of deaths apparently leveled off last year, deaths among women are inexplicably increasing, according to Miss Hunter's figures. There are no precise figures on the total number of AIDS deaths.
 
The Despair
 
Parentless Children Survive on Own
 The despair in Rakai is evident in the almost universally sullen expressions of children almost uniformly dressed in ragged clothing. In some cases there are no guardians and they must fend for themselves. In one case, Mr. Pinto's group found five sisters and brothers cared for by the eldest, a 17-year-old. They cooked in an old paint can.  Even in Rakai households where one parent has survived, there is no escape from the disease. In Kimote, a village along the road that rises from Lake Victoria, the chief, Leo Muddu, died of AIDS just before Easter.
On a recent Saturday afternoon, a visitor found one of the chief's sons, Munyumya, a vigorous boy of 14, at home. A 26-year-old sister died of AIDS two years ago. His mother and four brothers were away at an AIDS burial.
In a side room of the house lay his dying 26-year-old brother. When a European face appeared in the doorway, the young man, Tofa, pleaded in a scratchy voice for medicine. His left leg had a large sore, he was suffering from diarrhea and he had been unable to walk for a month. ''We are all dying. We are all dying,'' he whispered.  ''I bring him water and juice,'' explained Munyumya.
 
Widow Cares for 9 Children
Up the track, Elizabeth Nakabago, a 49-year-old widow, was walking home from the burial rites of a girl of 17 who had died in childbirth, probably of complications arising from AIDS.Mrs. Nakabago's 52-year-old husband, part-owner of a bus in Kampala, came home to die last year, leaving her seven children aged 5 to 17. She also cares for two grandchildren left her by three of four grown sons and daughters who died of AIDS.
As in many homes, the inside of Mrs. Nakabago's one room showed remnants of a better past. A faded photograph of a fancy wedding, probably in the 1940's, hung on one wall. But now Mrs. Nakabago can only afford the $3 yearly school fees for two of the seven children. The rest stay home.
 
Medical Help
 
Basic Dispensary Almost Inaccessible
 Rakai County's medical services consist of a derelict dispensary and an overworked medical center on the most northern edge and thus inaccessible to most. The only two doctors in the county are posted there.
During an inspection of the dispensary one night, Mr. Pinto found the place in darkness because there were not even candles. Patients, women with young babies, sat on the veranda and three unattended babies slept inside. The senior officer, known as a medical assistant, who is trained in hygiene and no more, had left for home three days earlier.
The dispensary is supposed to receive four cartons of essential drugs a month from a Danish medical program but receives two - the contents of which are usually sold for profit by the staff, Mr. Pinto said.
 
Burdens of Debt and War
AIDS has hit Rakai and the rest of Uganda at a time when the Government of President Yoweri Museveni, trying to recover from 20 years of war, is strapped for cash. About 50 percent of the national budget is spent to fight rebels in the north. Most of the meager revenues that come from coffee are spent on repaying debts.
A tight economic reform program from the World Bank allows no room for social services: $1 a year per person is a generous estimate of the amount spent on medical services, some economists say.
Inadequate medical services and traditional inclinations not to trust them anyway, makes many AIDS sufferers in Rakai seek other means of treatment. Last year, thousands of AIDS patients flocked to a woman in neighboring Masaka County after she asserted that soil from a certain place, drunk with water, would cure AIDS. The government put an end to her practices but not before vast quantities of soil had been consumed.
More enduring is Brother Anatoli Wasswa, a Roman Catholic priest of Kyotera in Rakai who dispenses herbal medicine - bark, roots and leaves - to AIDS patients. On a recent day, a 24-year-old woman who had been diagnosed as being HIV positive a year ago, arrived for her first treatment.
''We treat each symptom differently, so you can give a person up to five different herbs,'' he said. He doesn't promise cure. ''But a person can live longer, to six months longer,'' he said.
 
The Future
 
Surveys Conducted But Not Much Else
 The future of the children in Rakai has caught the attention of various international aid groups. But so far, little other than surveys of the numbers of orphans has been accomplished.
This irritates the energetic Mr. Pinto who, like his wife, Marie, was born in Baloole, a village not far from the lake. A former manager of the Esso Oil Company, before he fled from Idi Amin into exile in Kenya for 10 years, he has founded the association to help the orphans, as well as the Rakai Development Association. The main challenge, says Mr. Pinto, is to show people hope.
''We have to persuade people to do something for themselves,'' he says. He believes it is paramount that the children stay in the area with relatives and not be transplanted to orphanages, as has been proposed by some groups.
In Ugandan culture, all adult members of a clan are responsible for the clan's children. ''Everyone in your clan is a mother or father,'' said Mr. Kibira. ''That's why we believe the orphans can be looked after in our homes. If you don't take an orphan then the spirit of a dead mother or dead father will come and curse. This strong force will make sure orphans are taken in.''
Already Mr. Pinto's association is paying the school fees - compulsory for Government schools in Uganda -of orphans who are doing well in school but whose guardians cannot afford the outlay. New classrooms have been added to Lugonza Primary School in the district; one day-care center for 30 children has been started.
Mr. Pinto plans to turn an overgrown plantation into plots for the unemployed young men who remain idle and set a depressing tone for the children. A clay brick-making factory to be run by women is also in the works.
And he is going to ask the multinational corportions that have remained in Uganda to pitch in. It would cost about $125,000 for 40,000 orphans to go to school for a year, he said.
''We need help now because a child of 8 will be 12 in four years time and a real social outcast if he hasn't been to school,'' Mr. Pinto said.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photos: In Mutikula South, Uganda, Josephine Senyonga cares for her 12 grandchildren orphaned by AIDS (Jane Perlez/The New York Times); Kasensero, a trading post on the shore of Lake Victoria where the first AIDS cases in Uganda were reported during the civil war in 1982 (Jane Perlez/The New York Times); map: Uganda indicating Rakai (The New York Times) (pg. 14)

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June 10, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

THE MERRY SOUL AT 82

BYLINE: By BETH LEVINE; Beth Levine is a New York City editor who frequently reviews books for various publications.

SECTION: Section 7; Page 46, Column 2; Book Review Desk

LENGTH: 267 words


THE PLEASURES OF AGE
By Robert Morley.
Illustrated. 159 pp.
San Francisco:
Mercury House. $15.95.
As a delightful comic actor of film, stage and television, Robert Morley rarely fails to engage us with his wonderfully British sense of the absurd. He has also carved out a successful career for himself in the literary world as playwright and author.
In his latest opus, ''The Pleasures of Age,'' Mr. Morley, who is 82 years old, has written a paean to the joys of growing older. Unfortunately, this slim book fails to deliver the acerbic insights one expects from the author. Far from a serious study, it is an excuse for Mr. Morley to randomly string together insubstantial anecdotes that illustrate his current enjoyments, quotations on aging and examples of people who achieved greatness in their later years.
Although his message - that we should eat, drink (if you can) and be merry - is hardly original, it could have been inspiring if Mr. Morley did not flit from one subject to another so abruptly that even when a story captures the reader's interest, it ends much too soon. Mr. Morley is admirable in his zest to live life to its fullest, but most of his stories and suggestions read like the offhand observations, comments or asides one would expect to hear in superficial conversation: how he hates baths but loves the races, how the elderly should travel more, how he enjoys sleeping.
This slight volume is not without its own pleasures - there are some amusing moments, and Mr. Morley does have a breezy, light style - but the total effect is of an overlong talk show.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Robert Morley in a scene from the 1978 movie ''Who is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe?'' (Warner Brothers)

TYPE: Review

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June 10, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

WestHELP Wins Approval For Sites in White Plains

BYLINE: By JAMES FERON

SECTION: Section 12WC; Page 1, Column 1; Westchester Weekly Desk

LENGTH: 1919 words

DATELINE: WHITE PLAINS

THE Board of Legislators reached a milestone last week as it approved the last of the three Westhelp housing projects that County Executive Andrew P. O'Rourke had hoped would serve as a catalyst for community assistance to the homeless.
Only three municipalities - Mount Vernon, White Plains and the town of Greenburgh - participated in the program, which was conceived by Andrew M. Cuomo to help homeless families rejoin society while providing shelter for them. But neither proponent saw the Westhelp effort as anything but an unqualified success.
''What we sought to do with Westhelp was establish a model and to dispel the myth that local communities wouldn't cooperate,'' said Mr. Cuomo, the son of Gov. Mario M. Cuomo. ''We challenged the conventional wisdom that no government would come forward because nobody wanted housing in their communities. We found there are local officials who will accept the homeless if they are presented with an intelligent and workable plan.'' 
 
Long-Term Benefits Praised
Mr. O'Rourke said that as the Westhelp units ''come on line, they will be seen by local officials as replacing other types of housing that used to be available'' through Federal programs. He added that these new apartments ''will help improve long-term housing stock because the Westhelp units revert to the communities.''
One of Westhelp's selling points is that the host community pays nothing for construction of the U-shaped complex of two-story garden apartments, although the land may be municipally owned. Then after 15 years, the complexes are turned over to the municipality for use by elderly residents or city employees, who often cannot afford typical rents in Westchester.
Even as the spotlight began to shift from Westhelp's two-year struggle to provide interim relief for the county's homeless, the stage began to fill with other proposed solutions, moving from the transitional housing model to the more persistent problem of permanent affordable housing.
 
New Ideas Are Proposed
The new ideas are diverse, from an experimental program that places the homeless in permanent housing under closely monitored circumstances, to the county's filing a lawsuit against the state for failing to establish reasonable allowances for shelter.
Perhaps the most ambitious plan to help solve the homeless problem will be unveiled this week, when Mr. O'Rourke announces the makeup of a Housing Implementation Commission, a 15-member group of experts with experience in building. Mr. O'Rourke will also outline the tasks he wants them to fulfill, including the consturuction of 1,000 transitional units and 5,000 additional units of permanent affordable housing, not necessarily limited to the homeless.
''The new thrust is action, implementing what the Homeless Commission came up with in its studies,'' Mr. O'Rourke said. The disbanded commission cited faults in county government, including an unwillingness at several levels to deal with homelessness. ''There will be some rehab, some new construction, and we will be designating county land for some of the housing. The fact that Westchester is producing 300 units under the Westhelp program is a remarkable accomplishment.''
Westhelp's first completed venture, a 46-apartment complex on a quiet street in Mount Vernon, opened last December and has placed 16 families in permanent housing so far. The second complex, for 108 apartments in a wooded area of Greenburgh, has been approved by the Board of Legislators and construction is under way.
The final project, approved last Monday, is the most elaborate in the program, consisting of two structures. One is the purchase and renovation of the Coachman Hotel in downtown White Plains to accommodate 110 homeless families, according to Mr. O'Rourke.
 
36 Families on Mamaroneck Avenue
The other is the construction of a more typical Westhelp complex, this one for 36 families, on busy Mamaroneck Avenue, also in White Plains. The Coachman, a once-stylish hotel on the Post Road, one block from Mamaroneck Avenue, already serves as a homeless shelter.
The debate that led to final passage of the White Plains proposals extended over a period of weeks and underlined the frustration that both supporters and opponents of housing plans for the homeless have come to express in dealing with the problem.
 
4,500 Homeless in County
Westchester's homeless population is estimated to be 900 families, including 1,800 children, or a total of 4,500 individuals, many of them simply unable to pay prevailing rents, according to social service officials. The opposition of Legislator Edward J. Brady, the Thornwood Republican, to the Greenburgh Westhelp project led to an internal struggle that ended in his ouster as chairman of the Board. In the debate over the Coachman proposal, he said he had voted for the White Plains project last year ''when Mr. Cuomo said we could buy it for $4 million or $5 million.''
''Now we're told it will cost $24 million,'' Mr. Brady said. ''England had its Great Train Robbery, the Federal Government has its savings and loan scandal and Westchester has its Coachman affair. Are we going to buy a hotel that an entrepreneur bought not many years ago for $800,000, and put only $80,000 down?''
''And what are we going to do with this choice piece of real estate?'' Mr. Brady asked. ''We're going to give it to the city of White Plains in 15 years. At the same time we're looking for space for this expanding government.'' Why not use the Coachman as a county government building? he asked.
 
How the Money Breaks Down
Payments to Universal Hotels, owner of the Coachman, begin with $1.1 million the first year and increase by 5 percent each year for 15 years, making a total of $23.9 million, according to a chart provided by the staff of the Board of Legislators.
''The total purchase price for the hotel, in present dollars, is about $10 million,'' Mr. Cuomo said. ''You have to do the valuation in terms of the present value of the money, taking into account the cost of inflation and the value of money in the 15th year.
''If somebody offered you a contract giving you $50,000 this year and $50,000 in year 15, you'd say, 'Hold it; $50,000 in year 15 won't be worth what it's worth today. You'd have to pay me, say, $250,000 in year 15 to make it worth what it's worth today.'''
''So you do what's called the present value of the money,'' Mr. Cuomo said. ''The present value of the lease of the Coachman is $10 million, and the county currently spends $5 million a year to rent it; they've done so for five or six years.''
 
Renovations and Services
Westhelp will make $1.9 million worth of renovations, including the installation of a kitchen in each apartment, and the county will pay Westhelp $1.7 million a year for such services as job training, day care and assistance in finding permanent housing, none of which is available now to the homeless families staying at the hotel.
Mr. Cuomo said the yearly cost of operating the Coachman ''would be about $30,000 a year,'' per family ''compared to $39,000 for welfare hotels.''
The hotel, Mr. Cuomo said, is the ''worst illustration of homeless care in Westchester County.''
''It's unsafe, unsanitary, debilitating and absurdly expensive,'' he continued. Those sentiments and worse were expressed by some legislators before they approved the proposal by a wide margin.
Herman Keith, a Yonkers Democrat, saw some unsettling images in the security arrangements for Westhelp projects, which bar visits by outsiders to apartments and permit socialization only in common rooms. ''Are we building units where people can live, or are we building concentration camps?'' Mr. Keith asked.
 
Comparison With South Africa
''Four years ago, Ernie Davis and I held a press conference,'' he said, referring to a fellow legislator, Ernest D. Davis, a Mount Vernon Democrat. ''We know the majority of homeless came from Mount Vernon and Yonkers; we also know the majority are people of color.''
''We're asking the homeless to submit quietly to what I consider to be a South African type Bantustan - a homeless homeland. It's better than what they have, yes, but it's not the best we can do. We need housing for people who can't afford housing,'' he said. ''The Coachman is a project of dubious distinction.''
Mr. Davis, who joined Mr. Keith and Mr. Brady in opposing the White Plains plan, said that ''transitional housing is not transitional at all.''
''It presumes there is permanent affordable housing,'' he said, ''but if there is, why is it necessary for us to have transitional housing?''
He saw an irony in the county filling the Coachman with the homeless, and thereby creating its value: ''The Coachman has very little value if you use it as a hotel. That's why it's been used for the homeless. The county should pull the homeless out, then see how much it would cost.''
 
'No Other Option'
Timothy S. Carey, a Republican from Montrose, described the Coachman purchase as ''stupid'' and ''insane,'' and laid the blame for Westchester's homeless at Governor Cuomo's door in Albany.
''His son is helping to solve the problem his father helped to create,'' Mr. Carey said, noting that the present state government ''has not built one unit of housing in Westchester County in eight years.
Nevertheless, he said, ''Right now this Board can do but one thing: vote for this project, because as Mr. Delfino said, we've got no other legitimate option.'' Joseph M. Delfino, a Republican Legislator, is a former White Plains Common Council member.
The effort by Westchester to force the state to increase shelter allowances is based on a recent Court of Appeals opinion that a suit can be brought against the state if the cost of housing bears ''no reasonable relation'' to the shelter amount set by the State Commissioner of Social Services, Cesar Perales.
Michael D. Hampden, executive director of Westchester Legal Services, which brought a class-action suit on behalf of two homeless Westchester residents, said ''60 percent of Westchester's 4,500 homeless residents became homeless because of evictions.''
 
Working With the Landlord
Meanwhile, Westchester Residential Opportunities Inc., a nonprofit organization dedicated to finding housing for members of minority groups and people with low incomes, reported last week that it had completed the first year of a Housing Demonstration Program in which permanent housing is financed for homeless families.
Stanley Schear said he ''solicits landlords'' to participate in the program. ''We've placed 145 homeless persons in 35 units of permanent housing,'' he said, ''and have commitments from 22 other landlords for 75 homeless persons.''
He suggested that his group's success was based on ''our close monitoring'' of the tenants and ''bonuses of $1,500 to $7,000 to landlords to help fix the place up.''
''We tell the landlord that the client,'' or homeless family, ''is our total responsibility,'' Mr. Schear said. ''We pay the rent, make sure the property is in good repair and that the tenant is acting appropriately. After six months, if everyone is satisfied, we sign a Section 8 lease'' - the Federal subsidy program for low-income tenants.
The demonstration program costs $12,640 a year per family to operate, according to its sponsors, who estimate the costs of comparable options to be $18,250 for an emergency apartment, $30,000 for a Westhelp unit and $36,000 for motels and hotels.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photos; The Coachman Hotel in downtown White Plains would be purchased and renovated to accomodate 110 homeless families as part of a WestHELP housing program approved last week by the Board of Legislators (NYT/Joyce Dopkeen)

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June 13, 1990, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Stray Bullet Leaves a Harlem Oasis Feeling Vulnerable, and Angry

BYLINE: By DONATELLA LORCH

SECTION: Section B; Page 1, Column 2; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 1171 words

The doormen dress in spiffy blue uniforms and work around the clock. The private parking lot has trees and benches and glistening cars. And the long tenant list includes a roster of leading New York politicians, executives, lawyers and doctors.
But residents of Lenox Terrace - a high-rise luxury oasis in the heart of Harlem -say the outward appearance of the six-building complex is little more than a mirage. Drug dealers have moved into apartments and transformed them into crack dens. Few people can boast of an unvandalized car in the parking lot, where crack addicts hide and rob passers-by. Even the doormen have been mugged. 
 
Lawyers, Doctors, Drug Dealers
''This used to be a luxury building,'' said Catherine Gorham, whose car has been broken into twice. ''Now we have just as many undesirables as politicians.''
The complex of 17-story buildings, built in the late 1950's, is home to people as well-known as Basil Paterson and his son, State Senator David A. Paterson, Representative Charles Rangel, Deputy Mayor Bill Lynch, Assemblywoman Geraldine L. Daniels and Percy Sutton. In the rent-stabilized apartments are lawyers, doctors and actors who earn high salaries and senior citizens who have lived there for 30 years on little. And now, the police say, there are also drug dealers.
Although it is a middle-class complex, Lenox Terrace is surrounded by impoverished housing projects, ghostly abandoned buildings and street-corner drug markets, and has found itself beseiged by the crack epidemic. Tenants have long complained that there is too little security and too much management indifference.
But when a 60-year-old doctor was shot and killed 10 days ago by a stray bullet that tore through his kitchen window and hit him in the chest as he walked out of his bathroom, the tenants took to the streets.
Every morning last week, protesters blocked traffic on Fifth Avenue and 135th Street for several hours. They held evening meetings, called on the police to help and brought their better-known tenants into the fray.
''This is the first time I have seen a luxury development finally getting involved and saying 'Enough is enough,' '' Allison Lewis-Smith, a lawyer who lives in one of the buildings, told about 200 tenants sandwiched into a lobby. ''This is monumental.''
On Monday, in a meeting with the owners of the complex, the tenants won their first victory: promises of security guards and better lighting. But, organizers said, until the promises are fulfilled, the tenants will continue their early-morning protests.
The catalyst to the uprising was the shooting of the doctor, Jolaolu Mojola, a Nigerian-born gynecologist who had lived for more than 20 years in 2186 Fifth Avenue - one of six buildings in the complex bounded by Lenox and Fifth Avenues between 132d and 135th Streets. Dr. Mojola was killed by a random spray of automatic gunfire from the parking lot about 1 A.M. on June 1. Bullets entered two other apartments in the building.
The next day, residents organized Citizens for Direct Action and began their own battle.
Though shocked by the death, the residents said they were not surprised. The dry pop of gunfire is a nightly occurrence. Teen-agers often use the parking lot for target practice at squirrels and pigeons or to shoot for the fun of it. Nor were the residents amazed when the police arrested another resident of 2186, 20-year-old Anton Abdala, who lives on the 17th floor, and charged him and a friend, Andre Crump, 20, of 410 St. Nicholas Avenue, with second-degree murder.
The buildings, across the street from the Lincoln Houses project and a block from Harlem Hospital, were built as luxury apartments with curving driveways where caped doormen once rushed to open car doors and ring elevators. Because the complex is rent-stabilized, what renters pay varies widely, the management said, but rents probably average about $500 for a one-bedroom apartment.
 
Crunching Crack Vials
But what was once a quiet and chic haven from the chaos of the streets has become a prison, especially for the many senior citizens and children there.
At a recent tenants meeting in the lobby of 2186, police officers showed photographs of apartments used by crack addicts and said some doormen and porters allowed dealers in and out. Anonymous voices told of crunching crack vials underfoot in hallways, of being terrified of going to the laundry room after 7 P.M., of young men intimidating elderly women into giving them money.
''The attitude 15 years ago was that things like this didn't happen to people who lived in the Terrace,'' said Senator Paterson, who has lived in the complex since 1974. ''It was an oasis from crime. It was a substitute for moving to the suburbs.''
At the meeting, the mood was far from subdued. On lawn chairs, leaning on canes, sitting on the cold marble floor, the residents listed their demands: better lighting, security, management responsibility. They talked of holding a rent strike, candlelight vigils and picketing. The attacks were all against the managers, who they say have been unresponsive and disrespectful to the tenants' complaints. The building is owned by the Lenox Terrace Development Association of Manhattan, a partnership, of which most is held by the Robert S. Olnick family. #8-Year-Old Stays Inside In an interview on Monday, Herbert Turner, vice president of the Olnick Organization, would say only that the meeting that day had gone well and that management would respond to the demands of the tenants.
The residents of Lenox Terrace say they are stubbornly hanging on to their community and to their neighborhood. Even though, for some, it is like a prison, they stay for financial reasons and because of pride in their homes.
Nadine Johnson said she lived there because she could not find as nice an apartment at the price. Like many other mothers there, she will not allow her 8-year-old son to play on the street or to go alone to the grocery store. When he wants to play, Ms. Johnson said, she takes him to Central Park or to a friend's house. Her son - like many other children in the Terrace -goes to a private school. At the Dalton School she hopes he will receive a good education. But few of his friends come to visit because their parents are afraid of the neighborhood, Ms. Johnson said.
''We live here because I want him to grow up with a sense of himself,'' Ms. Johnson said. ''Here he sees black lawyers and black doctors and black professionals. He's not going to get that downtown.''
Mrs. Lewis-Smith, a lawyer and a mother, refuses to move because she grew up in the neighborhood. But she says she will not even let her 8-year-old son ride alone in the elevators. ''There is no place for my son to play,'' she said. ''It gives an unhealthy fear to the children.''
As one of the most active tenant association members, she says she will not be cowed by management or by the area. ''Saying we won't take it anymore is just the beginning of turning the neighborhood around.''

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Residents of Lenox Terrace, a complex of six luxury high-rise buildings in Harlem, have taken their security problems to the police and their protest to the streets. They claim the complex has been infiltrated by drug dealers and has fallen prey to crime. (Bill Swersey for The New York Times)

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June 13, 1990, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Edna McRae, 88, A Teacher of Ballet And Choreographer

SECTION: Section B; Page 20, Column 1; Cultural Desk

LENGTH: 212 words

Edna McRae, a Chicago ballet teacher who received national recognition as a trainer of young dancers, died Thursday in a residence for the elderly in Evanston, Ill. She was 88 years old. 
Miss McRae was one of several teachers and choreographers who, from the 1920's to the early 1960's, helped make Chicago a major ballet center, one that, in the 20's and 30's, occasionally rivaled New York City in importance.
Miss McRae was much admired as a teacher by Robert Joffrey, who placed her in charge of his company's West Coast scholarship courses and invited her to be guest teacher at his New York school.
 
Was Trained in Many Forms
She was born in Chicago and attended the Chicago Normal School of Physical Education. She studied ballet with, and danced in the companies of, such prominent Chicago teachers as Andreas Pavley, Serge Oukrainsky and Adolph Bolm.
She also studied ballet in New York, Paris and London and, like many dancers and teachers of her time, was trained in such varied forms as Spanish and tap dance. She opened her own Chicago school in 1925. Until Miss McRae retired from regular teaching in 1964, her school was one of the places where touring dancers would take class when they were appearing in Chicago.
She is survived by a niece.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

TYPE: Obituary

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June 14, 1990, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

HEALTH;
Personal Health

BYLINE: By Jane E. Brody

SECTION: Section B; Page 12, Column 1; National Desk

LENGTH: 1135 words

A young man was given medication to relieve depression that was causing debilitating fatigue. After three days he developed hallucinations and delusions, complaining, among other things, that his energy was being sapped by radioactive rays from his neighbor's house.
When his medication was changed, the hallucinations disappeared and his depression lifted.
An elderly woman who wore a hearing aid became confused and restless at night. She was given a tranquilizer to help her sleep. Instead, the drug made her even more agitated and frightened. She hid under her bed all night and tried to bite anyone who sought to help to her. 
Luckily, her doctor soon realized what was wrong: the woman could no longer change the batteries on her hearing aid and had been suffering from a paranoia that results from isolation. She had largely suppressed her paranoid delusions, but the tranquilizer so undermined her cerebral control and inhibitions that she began to act out the delusions in her mind. New hearing-aid batteries and a different medication relieved her paranoia and nighttime restlessness.
But not every ending is so happy. The relationship between a prescribed drug and behavior abnormalities, memory loss or intellectual deterioration often goes undetected, and the problem is diagnosed as mental illness or senility. More medications may be prescribed, often making matters worse.
The problem is especially common in the elderly, who may metabolize and eliminate drugs more slowly and can suffer toxic reactions to doses that are harmless to younger people. And since older people are often expected to show signs of emotional or intellectual impairment, such symptoms may not be linked to the medication. But it is common in younger people as well, even infants.
Dr. S. Clifford Rogers, a British physician, has noted that the young can suffer devastating psychiatric reactions that may not be recognized by either patient or physician. For example, when Valium and related drugs are given to mothers suffering from postpartum depression and delusions, they can lose control of their aggressive feelings; a result can be battered babies. Similarly, aggressive reactions can occur when these drugs are prescribed for people with schizophrenia or epilepsy.
Previous studies showed that even a single dose of these drugs, called benzodiazepines, could impair learning and psychomotor function.
 
Many Drugs Involved
Psychoactive drugs are hardly the only problem. Psychiatric symptoms may result from scores of medications, from antibiotics and antihistamines to heart stimulants and painkillers. In some cases, toxic brain effects are incidental to the drug's primary purpose.
For example, a host of cognitive side effects have been linked to methyldopa (Aldomet) and the beta-blocker propranolol hydrochloride (Inderal), medications that are commonly used to treat high blood pressure and that work, in part, through the brain. Among the reported effects are fatigue, sedation, nightmares, insomnia, visual or auditory hallucinations, depression, psychoses and a decline in mental acuity.
Psychiatrists from the Long Island Jewish-Hillside Medical Center in New Hyde Park showed in a study that these antihypertensive drugs could significantly impair verbal memory in some patients. Many of the patients studied were unaware of their memory impairment, but others often noticed. One woman said that after her husband started taking propranolol and methyldopa for high blood pressure, he began making extensive lists to help remind himself of his daily tasks.
In other cases, the patients knew they were having memory problems but had no idea they were related to drugs. These patients ''experienced a great sense of emotional relief when told that their problem was linked to the medication,'' the physicians reported.
Other cardiovascular drugs can also cause toxic effects on the brain. The heart stimulant digitalis can produce disorientation, irritability, agitation, delusions and hallucinations. Lidocaine, commonly used to regulate erratic heart rhythms, can result in excitement, agitation, restlessness, apprehension and depression.
Recognition of a drug-induced emotional disorder can be confused or delayed because similar symptoms may be associated with the disease being treated. For example, systemic lupus erythematosus, an autoimmune disorder can cause emotional problems; but so can the corticosteroids usually prescribed to control it.
When steroids are used to tame an aberrant immune system for months or years, they can bring on depression or mania, even in people with no previous history of emotional disorders. Aggression, mania, depression and psychosis have occurred in otherwise normal body-builders who use anabolic steroids for muscle development.
Two revolutionary medications, the anti-tuberculosis drug isoniazid and L-dopa, for Parkinson's disease, are often associated with disturbing psychiatric symptoms. Several very useful preventives, including cimetidine (Tagamet), used to prevent flare-ups of peptic ulcer, and chloroquine (Aralen), used to prevent malaria, can set off psychiatric reactions in some people.
Another common problem involves combinations of drugs. One drug used alone may be no problem, but adding another may set off the toxicity of the first. Dr. Rogers cited the case of a man with Parkinson's disease who had functioned well on Artane (trihexyphenidyl) until a severe depression after his wife's sudden death prompted a physician to prescribe Tofranil (imipramine). The combination of these chemically related drugs resulted in an acute toxic psychosis marked by hallucinations, terror and restless agitation.
 
Prevention and Detection
To reduce the risk or speed recognition of psychiatric reactions to prescribed medications, three measures are critical. First, you must provide every physician who gives you medication with a complete list of all drugs you are now taking, both prescription and over-the-counter. If you do not know their names, bring the vials so the doctor can look them up.
Second, if you or your family notices any emotional or behavioral symptoms - from irritability and memory lapses to depression and hostility - they should be reported to the prescribing physician at once.
Finally, do not assume that the symptom is unrelated to the medication because you once took the drug with no adverse effects or you have been taking the drug for weeks or months before the symptom showed up. Toxicities can build with long-term use, and sensitivities to medication can change with age and medical condition.
Even if the doctor is doubtful that the medication is the cause of your symptoms, suggest a trial of a different drug or a temporary drug-free period to see if the problem clears up.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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June 16, 1990, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

Law Firm for Lincoln To Pay to Settle Suits

BYLINE: By STEPHEN LABATON, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section 1; Page 31, Column 5; Financial Desk

LENGTH: 426 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, June 15

The main law firm representing the Lincoln Savings and Loan Association agreed today to pay $20 million to settle two securities-fraud and racketeering lawsuits brought by investors.
The suits were filed against the New York law firm of Kaye, Scholer, Fierman, Handler & Hayes and a senior partner, Peter Fishbein. The firm acted as the main adviser throughout the 1980's to Charles H. Keating Jr., former owner of Lincoln. 
A growing number of lawyers and accountants for failed institutions are facing suits from Federal regulators and from investors who bought the securities of those institutions.
 
Bonds Are Now Worthless
The Kaye, Scholer lawsuits were brought by holders of bonds issued by Lincoln's parent company, the American Continental Corporation. The bonds are now worthless. Many of the bonds were bought by elderly people who were depositors at Lincoln.
Lincoln Savings was taken over by the Government last year and could become the most costly of the hundreds of savings and loan failures. The cost of rescuing Lincoln has been estimated at more than $2.5 billion.
Mr. Keating, who is under investigation by the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission, has sued the Government, asserting that it acted improperly in seizing Lincoln.
''The firm is glad this entire matter is behind us,'' said Kenneth R. Feinberg, a Kaye, Scholer partner. ''We continue to believe we did nothing wrong. But the uncertainty of going forward and the fact of a protracted trial meant that a settlement was a better course of action.'' He said that under the agreement, all of the $20 million would be paid by the firm's insurance companies.
 
Other Defendants
Defendants who have not settled in the case include Mr. Keating; Michael R. Milken, the former executive at Drexel Burnham Lambert who sold junk bonds to Lincoln Savings; the Chicago law firm of Sidley & Austin, and the accounting firms of Ernst & Young, Arthur Andersen and Deloitte & Touche.
The lawsuits contended that Kaye, Scholer played a crucial role in keeping regulators at bay for more than 18 months while Mr. Keating continued to run the institution and was under investigation. The suits accused the lawyers of knowingly assisting Lincoln in filing false information with bank regulators.
The settlement is one of the largest in such actions, but is considerably less than the $50 million that a Philadelphia firm, Blank, Rome, Comisky & McCauley, agreed to pay to end litigation involving its role as adviser to Centrust Savings of Florida.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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June 16, 1990, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

CONSUMER'S WORLD: Coping;
With Selecting a Nursing Home

BYLINE: By LEONARD SLOANE

SECTION: Section 1; Page 46, Column 2; Style Desk

LENGTH: 781 words

If you are seeking a nursing home for yourself or a family member, or anticipating such a decision, a new Government publication can be another helpful tool. It answers a good many questions about the population and performance of homes throughout the country.
The report, second in an annual series called ''Medicare/Medicaid Nursing Home Information,'' is published in 93 volumes, with at least one volume for each state. In addition to general information about choosing a nursing home and addresses and telephone numbers of Federal and state agencies, it includes a four-page profile on each one of the approximately 16,000 nursing homes that participate in Medicare, Federal health-care aid for the elderly, or Medicaid, the Federal-state medical program for the poor. Thirty-two performance factors are examined. 
You can learn whether a home met Federal requirements when it was inspected, which may have been more than a year ago, and get information about medical supervision, nursing care, cleanliness and residents' rights. Also listed for every nursing home are descriptions of deficiencies that affect care, ranging from mental and physical abuse to the lack of emergency service.
This is a publication generally not intended for purchase by the public - it has 74,378 pages and weighs 343 pounds. But if people want to buy individual volumes they can do so from the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C. 20402 (202-783-3238) for $4.75 to $34, depending on the state. In most cases, it makes more sense to consult the report at state health departments and Medicaid offices, local Social Security offices or the 10 regional offices of the American Association of Retired Persons.
Gail R. Wilensky, administrator of the Health Care Financing Administration, the unit of the Department of Health and Human Services that compiled the data, said, ''We try to indicate the kinds of people available in each of the states for individuals to speak to, like agencies for the aging and ombudsmen.''
The report, issued last month, gauges each home's record on the performance factors against the percentage of homes that were in compliance with the requirements in its state and in the entire United States.
For example, only about 64 percent of the homes nationally had food stored and served in sanitary conditions, while all of the homes in New York State were in compliance. On the other hand, there were just a handful of homes in the nation and none in the state that did not allow residents to communicate and associate with anyone they desired.
The report ''shows a snapshot of a nursing home on one day of the year,'' said Dorothy K. Howe of the American Association of Retired Persons. ''One of several things we encourage people to do is visiting the nursing home and talking to the administration.''
Dr. Mary Jane Koren, director of the Bureau of Long Term Care Services of the New York State Department of Health, said the report ''may show somebody the strengths or weaknesses of a given facility.'' She said it ''lets families know what things to look at, what things to ask about, what things to notice; it can be an educative device above and beyond what the actual numbers show.''
But the report has its detractors. Some consumer and industry groups have criticized it sharply. The National Citizens' Coalition for Nursing Home Reform cited what it viewed as serious shortcomings.
''The first year's report was misleading to the consumer,'' said Janet Wells, the coalition's director of publications, ''This year's report is also an extremely incomplete picture.''
Sheldon L. Goldberg, president of the American Association of Homes for the Aging, which represents nonprofit nursing homes, also criticized what he said were flaws in the report. ''Don't make a decision to go to a nursing home based on the report,'' he said. ''Two nursing homes can look very similar on paper, yet actually be quite different in their quality of care.''
Consumers, therefore, should use the new Federal report as just one element in the nursing home selection process. The steps long suggested by experts for evaluating a home still ought to be followed: obtain recommendations from relatives or friends, request guidance from physicians and carefully inspect a few local homes. In addition, make sure that both the institution and the administrator are licensed by the state.
''Then ask the administrator of the home to show you the most recent survey,'' said Paul Willging, executive vice president of the American Home Care Association, another nursing home group. ''That should be the last step, not the first step.''

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Drawing

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June 19, 1990, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

Jaunty Cuomo Hits the (Campaign?) Trail

BYLINE: By SAM HOWE VERHOVEK, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section B; Page 4, Column 3; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 373 words

DATELINE: NIAGARA FALLS, N.Y., June 18

Items today from the official schedule of Gov. Mario M. Cuomo:
* Planted a tree at a center for the elderly here, where he told one beaming resident: ''Oh, you're not 68. You're lying about your age to collect Social Security.''
* Visited a plastics products company, also in Niagara Falls, where he announced a $5 million low-interest loan program for businesses in Niagara County. 
* Put a down payment on a major league season ticket at Buffalo's Pilot Field, the downtown baseball stadium, which city officials hope will become the home of an expansion team in the National League. Buffalo is ''a sure-fire winner,'' the Governor said as he mingled with residents in line at the stadium's ticket window.
Relying on the rewards of incumbency but insisting that ''I am doing nothing different today than I have done during all the noncampaign years of my life,'' the Governor barnstormed western New York today in what appeared to be a model for mixing state business with a veiled pitch for votes this fall.
Mr. Cuomo, who will be on the ballot for a third term as Governor, had an almost perpetual grin throughout and had only good news for local residents, but seemed to suggest that it might not be possible for him to separate his responsibilities as chief executive from his role as a campaigner.
''I believe that the best politics is good government,'' he told reporters who accompanied him aboard a state plane from Albany.
But his Republican opponents wasted no time in condemning the strategy.
''Anything an elected official does in an election year can be construed as political,'' said Assemblyman John J. Faso, campaign manager for the Republican gubernatorial candidate, Pierre A. Rinfret.
While Mr. Cuomo made no formal appeal for votes on his trip today, he could not have been more solicitous, whether he was asking a plant manager here about the process for making battery covers out of recycled plastics or pledging to come back sometime and actually watch a baseball game.
Perhaps to demonstrate solidarity with the daily aggravations of local people, the Governor even endured a 45-minute traffic jam to get over the construction-plagued Grand Island Bridge, which links Niagara Falls and Buffalo.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Gov. Mario M. Cuomo, who is seeking election to a third term, playing an Italian numbers-guessing game with Lawrence Gasbarre on a visit to a center for the elderly in Niagara Falls, N.Y. (Joe Traver for The New York Times)

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June 20, 1990, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Fed Up, L.I.'s Young Are Thinking Florida

BYLINE: By SARAH LYALL

SECTION: Section B; Page 1, Column 2; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 1395 words

DATELINE: MERRICK, L.I.

Like many young couples on Long Island, Kenneth and Sharon Jaeger both work, he during the day and she at night. Whoever is home looks after the baby.
''As I'm walking in the door, she's walking out,'' Mr. Jaeger said. ''We have to do it to make ends meet.''
The Jaegers are sick of it. They are tired of scraping by to pay taxes and the mortgage when together they earn more than $42,000. They are tired of the traffic and tired of the house they bought three years ago as a fixer-upper and are still trying to fix up. 
Like many young couples on Long Island, the Jaegers want to move. And that is why Mr. Jaeger spent a recent afternoon at the Florida Development Corporation here listening to a talk on life in Florida.
Florida real-estate promoters, pursuing their decades-old quest for Northerners tired of the cold and familiar, are finding a growing market in people like the Jaegers. Increasingly, through seminars and real-estate showcases, they are introducing the young families of Long Island to the opportunities of Florida.
In the past, most of the Long Island immigrants to Florida were older people hoping to cash in their Long Island dream and retire. But people moving there today are almost as likely to be young families who never found the dream in the first place.
''In the past two years, we have found a real change in the market,'' said Ann Levitt, the associate director of marketing for Florida Development, which acts as a broker for various Florida developers. ''Fifty percent or so of the families are young working people. They say they can't afford to buy a home or are getting taxed out of their houses.''
 
Search for the Good Life
Long Island used to be a land of opportunity for the young, with good jobs, clean air and a way of life that was easier and friendlier than New York City's. But many Long Islanders say the good life is no longer within reach here, and they are looking elsewhere. Florida, they believe, is what Long Island once was, only with better weather.
Among the most popular forums that bring together people who want to move out have been the Florida Real Estate Showcases. When the first was held as an annual event eight years in the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Uniondale, 3,500 people attended, said John Erisman, vice president of United Show Management Inc., which sponsors the get-togethers.
The company has added two shows, one in the spring, most recently on June 9, and the other in November. The show in January, Mr. Erisman said, drew almost 30,000 people.
''I see the crowd getting gradually younger,'' he said. ''There's still the retiree, the empty nester who's alone and the second-home buyer. But you do see more young people. They want to cash in and get out of Long Island.'' Jim Bogen could not agree more. ''It's a sick place; I'm burning myself out,'' said Mr. Bogen, 24 years old, a construction worker attending the Florida Development Corporation's seminar here. Mr. Bogen, who is married, lives in an apartment on the top floor of someone else's house. Even though he works overtime to bring in $30,000 a year, he said, he cannot afford to buy a home on Long Island. ''For what I could afford, it would have to be a garage in Wyandanch,'' he said.
 
Moving to Areas of Growth
''It breaks my heart,'' he said. ''I've got my family and my friends here. But now I have my own family to look after.''
Another concern is jobs. After a long period of expansion, job growth has slowed considerably in the metropolitan region in the last two years, and important industries on Long Island, including defense and construction, are suffering.
''My husband's in the building business, and you can't build here,'' said Helen Folkers, who lives in Ridge and who was at the most recent Real Estate Showcase, held at the Radisson Plaza Hotel in Melville.
''Young people move for economic advantage,'' said Samuel M. Ehrenhalt, regional director of the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. In the last two years, he said, job growth has slowed considerably on Long Island and in New York City as it has been increasing in Florida. He said: ''People are looking around, and saying, 'Where are the prospects brighter?' And they're moving into areas of growth.''
 
Study by University
Mr. Ehrenhalt said the number of jobs in New York State grew in 1988 and 1989 by 1.9 percent, the sixth-worst record of any state. In that period, Florida added 400,000 jobs, for 8.4 percent growth, the seventh-highest in the country.
It is hard to say just how many Florida residents once lived on Long Island. But Florida consistently gains more people from New York than from any other state.
A study last year showed that 13.9 percent of all people settling in Florida in the last five years were from New York, said Stan Smith, director of the population program in the bureau of economic and social research at the University of Florida in Gainesville.
Florida is not the only place that Long Islanders move to, of course. Virginia and the Carolinas are popular, too. But Florida has gained a sort of mythical reputation here as a land of opportunity, with cheaper housing, a balmier climate and a calmer style of living.
 
'Love the Warm Weather'
''It's clean, it's affordable, there's no rat race, the people are nicer, and I love the warm weather,'' said Joseph Pagliaro, 34, a computer programmer who joined hundreds of people, young and old, at the show in Melville.
With his two friends, Mr. Pagliaro cruised through the rows of booths, where developers distributed brochures, displayed videotapes of palm-tree laden landscapes and spacious houses, and offered deals like special fly-and-buy trips, where potential customers are flown to developments in Florida free of charge, no purchase necessary.
With glossy pamphlets that advertised three-bedroom houses starting at $81,000, far lower than a comparable Long Island house, the booth for Artistic Homes, a builder in Spring Hills, Fla., on the Gulf of Mexico west of Orlando, drew a brisk crowd. ''Seventy percent of the people who come to our homes come from the Northeast, and Long Island is our main pool of people,'' said Harry Paul, a sales manager.
Many visitors to the showcase said that if the real-estate market on Long Island were not so sluggish, more people would move right away. They spoke of houses on their streets that had been on the market for months and even years, and they said they worried about what would happen when they put their houses up for sale.
 
Fear of Popularity
''Nobody can afford to leave until they sell their own house,'' said Jean Dunn, 38, whose house in Holtsville has been on the market for six months.
According to the Long Island Board of Realtors, 23,502 houses were listed for sale on Long Island in April; 799 were sold that month.
As much as people want to leave, some said they worried that the popularity of Florida would make the areas they want to move to no better than Long Island in a few years.
Houses in Florida cost $50,000 to $100,000 less than comparable houses up north. Developers say prices are rising as much as $10,000 a year.
Jobs are plentiful in some expanding parts of the state, particularly around Orlando in the center, Melbourne on the Atlantic coast and Fort Myers on the Gulf. Representatives of the Florida developers said salaries are about half what they are on Long Island. Prices of most commodities are similar to those in Long Island, the developers added, but there is no state income tax in Florida.
Florida is growing, though the rate has tapered off and counties are beginning to adopt plans to manage growth, said Ken Dalecki, editor of the Kiplinger Florida Newsletter, which tracks trends in the state. Where 1,000 people a day used to move to Florida, he said, now 800 do. By the year 2000, Mr. Dalecki said, two million to three million people will move to Florida, putting the population at 16 million.
Worries about Florida's growing out of control or becoming a Long Island away from Long Island are not stopping Chris Cerullo, 35. He wants out, and he wants out now. He has put down money on a $95,000 house in Kissimmee, near Orlando. A house he was looking at here, in Far Rockaway, was selling for $165,000.
''I grew up here and I'm going to miss it,'' Mr. Cerullo said. ''But I have no choice.''

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Florida real-estate promoters are finding a growing market on Long Island. Ann Levitt, the associate director of marketing for Florida Development, which acts as a broker for Florida developers, selling the benefits of the state to a group in Long Island. (Vic DeLucia/The New York Times)

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The New York Times

June 21, 1990, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

Sarah Wiener, 80, Advocate for Elderly

SECTION: Section B; Page 7, Column 2; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 171 words

Sarah Wiener, a retired teacher who became an advocate for retired people, died on Monday at her daughter's home in Teaneck, N.J. She was 80 years old and lived in Brooklyn. Mrs. Wiener died of lung cancer, her husband, Abraham, said.  Mrs. Wiener taught in New York high schools for more than 30 years. After retiring in the late 1960's she became active in a retired teachers' group, working on a supplementary self-insured health program for retirees. That led Albert Shanker to ask her to form a similar organization for the national union, the American Federation of Teachers.
She was appointed by Gov. Hugh L. Carey and again by Gov. Mario M. Cuomo to the state's legislative advisory committee on the Older Americans Act of 1964. She was on the executive board of the National Council of Senior Citizens.
Mrs. Wiener was born in the Bronx. She graduated from New York University and received a master's from Columbia University.
Also surviving are her daughter, Norma Goetz of Teaneck, and two granddaughters.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

TYPE: Obituary

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The New York Times

June 22, 1990, Friday, Late Edition - Final

Bombing at London Air Base

BYLINE: AP

SECTION: Section A; Page 10, Column 4; Foreign Desk

LENGTH: 78 words

DATELINE: LONDON, June 21

A bomb exploded at the Royal Air Force's administrative base at Stanmore Park northwest of London today, but a guard had spotted a suspicious-looking rucksack and the base and a nearby senior citizens' home were evacuated before the blast, the police said. No casualties were reported. The police said the Irish Republican Army was the main suspect. Two men were questioned about the blast, a Scotland Yard spokesman said. They were later released without charge.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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The New York Times

June 24, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final
Correction Appended

LONG ISLAND GUIDE

SECTION: Section 12LI; Page 11, Column 1; Long Island Weekly Desk

LENGTH: 1235 words


 
'BACHANALIA'
After holding forth for two weeks at the State University at Stony Brook, the Bach Aria Festival is taking everything it has been doing over that span and, compressing it all into one day's musical marathon, travels to Chelsea Center in Muttontown today.
The proceedings begin at 11:30 A.M. with a pre-concert lecture on ''Bach Feasts'' and then, moving right along, include a chamber music concert at 1 P.M. and orchesteral music and concertos at 2:15.
Featuring a fully staged version of ''The Appeasement of Aeolus,'' the cantata with a new English libretto by Sheldon Harnick, music for large ensembles begins at 3:30 P.M. Finally, to celebrate the festival's 10th anniversary there's a buffet supper at 5:15.
Reservations: 632-7239.
 
CHILDREN'S THEATER
Parks are not just for playing or swimming. For example, those affiliated with the Long Island State Park Region branch out a bit when it comes to family togetherness. 
At Sunken Meadow State Park in Kings Park today, the Children's Summer Theater begins its annual hop, skip and jump through the area's state parks.
Always on Sundays somewhere - and also sprinkled during the week - the series gets under way at 3 P.M. with a magic show featuring the illusionist Mark Schussman. Throughout the summer, he will also perform at other parks, sharing the spotlight with, among others, the Arena Players Children 's Theater, the Kaleidoscope Dancers and Puppet Projects. The performances are free, but there are park admission charges. Information: 669-1000, Ext. 247.
 
SUMMER ARTS FESTIVAL
Can it be that the Huntington Arts Council's Summer Arts Festival is 25 years old? It is, and this granddaddy of all free Long Island outdoor concert series begins its silver anniversary year, ''Summerscape '90,'' tomorrow at the Chapin Rainbow Stage in Heckscher Park.
Opening-night honors go to the Clem De Rosa Orchestra in a concert paying homage to ''Big Band Jazz.''
Before the week is out, the Community Band appears Wednesday, the Huntington Men's Chorus Thursday and the Senior Citizens Pops Orchestra of Long Island on Friday.
On Saturday, in the first of the festival's ''Star'' sessions - Nikolais & Louis Dance, an acclaimed modern-dance company - offers ''Mechanical Organ,'' ''Liturgies'' and ''Hoopla.'' Next Sunday, the attraxction is Paul Zaloom, the political satirist.
All the programs begin at 8:30 P.M., and one should bring his own seating.
Information and schedule: 271-8442.
 
DO-SI-DO
There is nothing square about square dancing, and this hot weather tradition is in full swing this week.
For example, Primo Fiore begins his Monday series tomorrow at Phelps Lane Park in North Babylon. It will continue through Aug. 27.
Mr. Fiore will also be at Jones Beach State Park on Tuesdays and Thursdays through Aug. 30, Heckscher State Park in East Islip on Wednesdays through Aug. 29 and Wildwood State Park in Wading River on Fridays through Aug. 31.
Meanwhile, at Hither Hills State Park in Montauk, Frank DeYong will keep things moving on Mondays and Thursdays through Aug. 23.
All the sessions are at 8 P.M. and are free.
 
NASHVILLE IN WESTBURY
The suburban interest in country music has reached the ears of the promoters of TNN, The Nashville Network. And so on Wednesday, TNN begins sponsoring a series of country music concerts at the Westbury Music Fair.
Tanya Tucker, joined by Exile and Travis Tritt, head the first program. Eventually, the series will present Willie Nelson, July 13-14; Conway Twitty, July 25; Loretta Lynn, Aug. 9; Reba McEntire, Sept. 9, and Ronnie Milsap, Oct. 4.
Tickets: 334-0800.
 
BALD HILL POP
Big-time pop music - the kind that usually keeps Nassau Coliseum, the Jones Beach State Theater and the Westbury Music Fair hopping - comes to Suffolk County Thursday. That is when a concert series makes its debut at the newly completed amphitheater at Bald Hill Cultural Park in Farmingville.
The site accommodates 18,000 music lovers (half on provided chairs and half on a bring-your-own seating lawn).
The opening night attraction is Wayne Newton, who has not performed in the New York area for six years, but is leaving Las Vegas for one night (Thursday) in Farmingville.
So far, the acts booked for this inaugural season include Spyro Gyra (and Grucci fireworks), July 4; Waylon Jennings, July 14; Bad Company and Damn Yankees, July 21, and Blood, Sweat and Tears, Gary Lewis and the Playboys and Paul Revere and the Raiders, Aug. 5.
Tickets: 888-9000.
 
HAS WOLF, DOES TRAVEL
Although Keith Nyitray now lives in Alaska, he was reared in Smithtown, and this year, when he came home to visit family, he had a tale to tell that goes beyond the norm.
Mr. Nyitray recently returned from a 10-month trek through the Canadian Northwest territory: a 1,460-mile journey across the entire length of the Brooks Range, from Fort McPherson in Canada to Alaska's Bering Sea coast.
And except for his wolf-hybrid Smoke, he made the precedent-setting trip alone.
On Thursday, with the help of slides - and Smoke, of course - Mr. Nyitray will be at the South Country Library, 22 Station Road, Bellport, to tell of his adventure. The program is at 7 P.M. and is free.
 
U.F.O.'s?
According to Tom Affatigato, an astronomer-producer at the Vanderbilt Planetarium, interest in Unidentified Flying Objects seems to be cyclical. With the cycle having reached these shores, the planetarium thought it would be a good idea to take on the subject, but, Mr. Affatigato said, ''In a fair way, exploring the pros and cons.''
And so on Friday, the Vanderbilt introduces ''UFO!,'' a sky show that will include all sides of the controversial subject. Verbal theories will be illustrated by pictorial effects flashed across the planetarium's Sky Dome.
The show will run through the fall and be accompanied by a series of lectures. The first is ''U.F.O.'s - Do They Exist?'' on July 11.
Information: 262-7800.
 
VINTAGE BOATS
Like most hobbyists, the 130 members of the Long Island chapter of the Antique and Classic Boat Society like to show and tell. But to do this, they need a place to rendezvous, a place to anchor their prides and joys.
Come Saturday, when the society will hold its ninth annual Vintage Boat Show, that place will be the Suffolk Marine Museum in West Sayville.
From 10 A.M. to 4 P.M., more than 35 vessels - from 19th-century sailing ships and electric- and gas-operated boats to spiffy mahogany runabouts and sparkling cruisers - will be on display. Some will come all the way from Canada, brought down the Hudson River by Canadian enthusiasts. On land will be a display of classic cars and nautical exhibits. The museum is off Montauk Highway, and admission, including the show and the museum, is $2.
 
RIVERHEAD JAZZ
From 3 to 9:30 P.M. Saturday, the banks of the Peconic River will be alive with the sound of jazz. That is when the East End Arts Council holds its first ''Riverhead Jazz Festival.''
The nonstop concert includes performances by the Duke Ellington Orchestra, directed by Mercer Ellington; the Mose Allison Trio; the Armstrong Legacy, featuring Arvell Shaw, and Steppin' Out, with Mark Gatz.
To punctuate it all, there will be concluding fireworks: a ''world-class, top-shelf'' 25-minute display by Grucci choreograped to musc broadcast on WALK-FM.
Tickets: 727-0900. < $90BARBARA DELATINER

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

CORRECTION-DATE: June 26, 1990, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

 CORRECTION:
An article in the Long Island Weekly on Sunday misstated the date of a concert Wayne Newton is giving at the Bald Hill Cultural Park in Farmingville, L.I. It will be tonight at 8 P.M.

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The New York Times

June 27, 1990, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Senior Open Is for Shot-Makers and Par-Breakers

BYLINE: By JAIME DIAZ, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section A; Page 19, Column 2; Sports Desk

LENGTH: 1050 words

DATELINE: PARAMUS, N.J., June 26

Now that Hale Irwin has proved that a 45-year-old can win the United States Open, then turn around and beat most of the same youngsters again the very next week, perhaps the feats of those 50 and older should be better appreciated.
When Jack Nicklaus can shoot 27 under par and Lee Trevino can win 5 out of 10 tournaments, and when Gary Player can beat both of them at the age of 54, it makes a strong case that golf's elders are getting more youthful all the time.
Regardless of your view of golf gerontology, the 11th United States Senior Open at the Ridgewood Country Club here promises to produce the finest shot-making in the history of the event. The presence of Nicklaus and Trevino alone makes the field the championship's strongest ever. 
But along with the top two, several other players have come to Ridgewood with an edge. Player is looking for an unprecedented third championship and always carries extra motivation in tournaments he considers majors. Chi Chi Rodriguez has been revitalized, with a victory and four other top-five finishes in his last eight events. Bob Charles, last week's winner at Boston, seems to have his legendary putting stroke back. And the defending champion, Orville Moody, although only 18th on the money list, doesn't want to give up the Francis D. Ouimet Memorial Trophy.
 
Low Scores Expected
''I think there will be a lot of guys who can play this golf course well,'' said Moody, who won last year at Laurel Valley Golf Club in Ligonier, Pa. ''It's a course that requires a lot of finesse. You have to feel your way around, cut it a little here, draw it a little there. You can't overpower it.''
Moody thinks the winning score over Ridgewood's 6,697-yard par-72 course may go as low as 14 under, with the accessibility to birdies bringing more potential winners into the picture.
''This is a lot easier course than the other Senior Opens I've played in,'' said Moody, who has played in the championship since 1984. ''If the greens don't get hard and crusty, I think somebody will shoot low.''
Of course, Moody admits that no matter what the conditions, the favorites, and the main attractions, are Nicklaus and Trevino.
 
Nicklaus Rolling Along
So far, Nicklaus has gotten the better of the reborn rivalry. In his senior debut at the Tradition in April, he won easily while Trevino finished in the middle of the pack. At the P.G.A. Seniors Championship two weeks later, he and Trevino tied for third after Player and Rodriguez outplayed them both.
At the Mazda Senior T.P.C. three weeks ago, Trevino shot 21 under, his best four-round total on the Senior Tour. But he was blown away by Nicklaus's astonishing 27-under total of 261, which broke Moody's 72-hole Senior Tour record of 25 under and tied the 72-hole record for most under par in a PGA Tour event.
With Nicklaus not committed to playing any more senior events after Ridgewood, the Senior Open could be the last time this year the two men clash on the over-50 circuit. And by winning the seniors' most prestigious title, Trevino could come close to evening the score with his good friend.
 
Trevino May Have Edge
Moody, for one, thinks Ridgewood's doglegs, small greens and long, mostly unreachable par 5's - the shortest is 522 yards - give Trevino an edge over Nicklaus.
''I think Lee might have an advantage because this is not a power hitter's golf course,'' Moody said. ''On most of the holes, you have to place the ball in an area about 260 yards out, and that takes about 30 yards away from Jack.
''I know I can't reach any of the par 5's, and it helps us all if Jack can't reach them in two. Even if he's close to the green in two, as long as he's not putting for an eagle, it evens up the game a lot more.''
Indeed, it is the equanimity of Ridgewood that has drawn praise from the seniors who have played it in practice rounds.
It was designed and built in 1929 by the brilliant, flamboyant A. W. Tillinghast, the creator of among others Winged Foot, Baltusrol, San Francisco Golf Club. It is ranked 76th among Golf Digest's best 100 courses. Contoured Greens Tillinghast's genius was in the contouring of greens to make holes difficult without abundant length, narrow fairways, or hazards. He had a special fondness for Ridgewood, perhaps because he lived in nearby Harrington Park. He pronounced it his greatest work.
''Anything other than a truly great course would have been impossible under the conditions for I have loved it from the beginning and will ever love it to the end,'' Tillinghast wrote in a letter to the Ridgewood membership.
But Ridgewood never enjoyed the high profile of Winged Foot or Baltusrol, primarily because it doesn't have the space to host a United States Open and is slightly shorter in length than those courses.
Ridgewood was also where Byron Nelson built the game that would make him one of golf's greatest players. Nelson, a native of Fort Worth, Tex., was hired in 1935 as a 23-year-old assistant to head professional George Jacobus at a salary of $80 a month. For the better part of the next two years, he played in only a few competitions, concentrating instead on building the upright swing with powerful lower body action that would become the model for the modern golf professional.
 
Moment to Remember
''That period of time I spent working with George Jacobus was the most important of my career,'' said Nelson, who is the honorary chairman of this year's event. ''It wasn't long before I became more steady, more confident that I really knew what I was doing, and after I came out of there in 1936, I really never had a problem.''
Shortly after leaving Ridgewood to play in tournaments full time, Nelson won the 1936 Metropolitan Open, the first of his 54 official tour victories.
Nelson's most remembered moment at Ridgewood came the day a group of members goaded him into showing his prowess with his 1-iron. They motioned to a flagpole in the distance and dared Nelson to try to hit it.
''I dropped a ball, took out the 1-iron and hit the flagpole dead solid,'' Nelson remembered. ''I just put the club away and walked off. No way I was going to try another. I still get letters on that, even in the last few years.''
The golf that will be produced this week at Ridgewood should also be memorable.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Map of Paramus showing location of the Ridgewood Country Club. (pg. A20)

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June 27, 1990, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Economic Scene;
Broader Medicaid: Who Would Pay?

BYLINE: By Milt Freudenheim

SECTION: Section D; Page 2, Column 1; Financial Desk

LENGTH: 872 words

A RECENT Supreme Court decision is expected to add to growing pressure for changes in Medicaid. The Court ruled on June 14 that hospitals and nursing homes can file lawsuits to demand ''reasonable and adequate reimbursement'' for their services to Medicaid patients.
Medicaid, the Federal-state program for low-income people, is already straining budgets in most states, and the financially pressed programs have not kept pace with sharp increases in hospital and other medical costs.
Any increases in Medicaid spending would inevitably collide with Federal and state budget limitations, and the Bush Administration seems far from ready for such increases, at least this year. Indeed, in budget talks last week with Congressional leaders, Administration officials proposed $800 million in Medicaid cuts in 1991. Medicaid spends about $60 billion a year, of which about $26 billion comes from states and localities and $34 billion is Federal money. 
But a White House working group is looking hard at Medicaid as part of a review of the quality, accessibility and cost of the health-care system. President Bush announced the review in his State of the Union address in January.
''Everyone believes that we need to look at the design of Medicaid, who it covers and does not cover, and how it is paid for,'' said Constance J. Horner, the Under Secretary of Health and Human Services, who heads the group. ''Medicaid does not cover everyone who is poor.'' The group will make recommendations to the President's Domestic Policy Council at the end of the year.
Most experts say that expanding Medicaid would be the quickest way to assure medical care for many of the 35 million Americans who do not have health insurance. But before adding to the costs of such a big-ticket program, the President and Congress would obviously have to make important decisions about spending priorities and taxes.
Indeed, a recent study by the Urban Institute, a private research group in Washington, estimated that about $10 billion more would be needed each year to cover the poor fully, including those who work but are not insured.
This would be the case, the study found, even under Medicaid ceilings that would restrict eligibility to those earning less than 75 percent of the $10,560 for a family of three that the Federal Government considers the poverty threshhold. To go further and bring in everyone below the poverty line would cost about $14 billion, John F. Holahan and Sheila R. Zedlewski estimated in the study.
Congress recently relaxed the income restrictions to make it easier for pregnant mothers, children up to 6, and the elderly and disabled to get Medicaid. But the extra costs of allowing still more people to become eligible could more than absorb the hoped-for peace dividends from cutbacks in military spending. And the added costs would be even higher if Medicaid payments to doctors and hospitals were raised to the higher levels of the Federal Medicare program for the elderly and disabled, as is also being discussed.
Connecticut has gone somewhat further in easing Medicaid requirements by adopting a package that would also make private insurance more affordable to small businesses with 25 or fewer employees. The many insurance companies based in Hartford hope that the Connecticut plan will be a precedent. They are fighting proposals in California and other states that would turn much of their business over to a government-controlled system like that of Canada.
But Connecticut is hardly typical. ''Connecticut is essentially a very wealthy state with a reasonably good Medicaid program, fewer unemployed, more large employers who provide health coverage, and very responsible insurance leaders,'' said Lawrence S. Lewin, president of Lewin/ICF, a Washington consulting firm.
He likes a proposal by Paul H. O'Neill, chairman of the Aluminum Company of America, which would eliminate employer-paid health benefits and raise wages instead. Under the plan, which Mr. O'Neill recently sketched to the Federal Advisory Council on Social Security and Health Care, employees would have to buy their own health insurance with help, initially, from a tax break.
Ann Labelle, executive director of the advisory council, said Mr. O'Neill's ideas, which are still being developed, would be studied along with a number of other proposals, such as ''nationalizing'' the Connecticut approach, making Medicare a universal benefit, and establishing a Federal reinsurance pool for catastrophic illnesses so private insurance rates could be lowered.
The council is also reviewing a proposal by the Pepper Commission, a bipartisan group headed by Senator John D. Rockefeller 4th, Democrat of West Virginia, to replace Medicaid with a new Federal program. Under the Pepper plan, employers would be required to provide health benefits for their workers or pay into state and regional pools to cover the uninsured.
The Pepper proposals would cost $23.4 billion in added Government spending, plus $20 billion from employers. But expanding Medicaid without a plan to make employers pay would cost ''about 50 percent more and cover only about half of the uninsured,'' said Judith Feder, staff director of the Pepper group.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Drawing

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The New York Times

June 28, 1990, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

Health;
Court Rejects Disability Pay Policy

BYLINE: By THOMAS MORGAN

SECTION: Section B; Page 11, Column 1; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 1053 words

A Federal appeals court in Manhattan ruled yesterday that the Government should not have denied disability payments to hundreds of thousands of people in New York State who are suffering from a form of heart disease called ischemia.
The case is the first class-action lawsuit to successfully challenge and invalidate the Social Security Administration's policy to determine disablity based on ischemic heart disease, or narrowing of the arteries. While the ruling pertains only to disability claims filed in New York, it has implications nationwide.
''This would be a big leg up for other states to challenge the department,'' said Evelyn M. Tenenbaum, the assistant New York State attorney general who argued the plantiffs' case with David S. Udell of Legal Services for the Elderly in New York. 
The ruling, in the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, affirmed a lower court decision in 1989 by Judge Robert L. Carter of Federal District Court in Manhattan. If the Federal Government does not appeal the case or loses it before the United States Supreme Court, New York State stands to gain about $8.5 million a year for 10 years in payments it made to those denied disability by the Social Security Administration.
 
No Decision Yet on Appeal
An assistant United States Attorney, Diogenes P. Kekatos, who argued the case before the appeals court, said the Government has not decided whether to appeal.
State agencies, under an agreement with the Department of Health and Human Services, which is responsible for the Social Security Administration, determine eligibility for Federal disability claims based on policies decided by the Federal Government.
Until 1980, a number of different tests were used to determine eligibility for disability benefits, state and Federal officials said. But in 1980, the Federal Government, as part of a general Reagan Administration policy to tighten welfare and disability benefit regulations, changed its policy to weigh treadmill stress tests more heavily than other diagnostic tests for heart ailments.
In treadmill tests, electrocardiogram responses show oxygen intake while people walk.
According to medical testimony in court documents, other widely used tests are more reliable than the treadmill test in measuring the severity of ischemic heart disease.
The suit was filed as a class action by the New York State Attorney General's Office, New York City and Suffolk County. In addition, four legal- services agencies joined as plaintiffs.
The governments and legal-services agencies began litigation in 1985, saying that a variety of tests were needed to determine disability. In addition, court documents said that treadmill tests fail to adequately diagnose ischemia in as many as 38 percent of the cases examined.
The opinion yesterday, written by Judge Irving R. Kaufman and concurred with by Judges Amalya L. Kearse and Roger J. Miner, requires the Federal Government to re-examine disability claims for ischemic heart disease as far back as June 1, 1980, Federal officials said. #150,000 Denied Benefits A spokesman for the State Attorney General's office said yesterday that as many as 150,000 New Yorkers may have been denied benefits or assessments since since the state started keeping track of people denied disability benefits for ischemia. They will have to be notified that they are eligible for re-evaluation.
''This court decision will not only correct an injustice, but will save New York State millions of dollars in retroactive and future benefits that will instead be paid by the Federal Government,'' said Robert Abrams, the State Attorney General.
''The Federal Government will no longer be able to cruelly deny justly deserved benefits to thousands of vulnerable people. This Federal policy was just another example of the Reagan Administration's efforts to balance the budget on the backs of the weakest in our society,'' he said.
According to court documents, ischemic heart disease is an affliction usually due to coronary atherosclerosis, a process in which deposits of cholesterol in the blood narrow or obstruct the artery walls of the heart.
 
Chest Pains During Exercise
People who suffer from the disease typically have chest pains when they are involved in physical activity, like walking on a treadmill.
In his opinion, Judge Kaufman wrote that heart disease cannot be diagnosed by simple meaures ''nor cured by panacea.'' He also criticized the failure of the Secretary of Health and Human Services to adequately publicize changes in the department's cardiac impairment disability policy.
''The Secretary does not serve Congressional intent or the public by closing out light in diagnosing or treating this illness,'' Judge Kaufman wrote.
''While we recognize that our decision today adds to the Secretary's already heavy burden of complying with the act, Congress, by requiring individualized disability assessments, has dictated the result: The Secretary should consider all available relevant evidence when evaluating claims of ischemic heart disease.''
Dr. Richard Stein, chief of cardiology at the State University Health Science Center in Brooklyn, who filed an affidavit in support of the class-action suit, said, ''There is nothing wrong per se with using the treadmill test as one of the factors that go into determining whether or not a patient is able to do work sufficient to be gainfully employed.'' .
 
'Only One Part of the Picture'
''A treadmill test is but one way of determing how much exercise a person can perform,'' he said. ''The problem is, it's only one part of the picture, and to a large extent, a very motivated patient can perform a fair amount of activity but still do it with a fair amount of ischemia or discomfort.
Other tests for ischemia include the exercise-thallium test, the equilibrium radionuclide angiogram and angiography.
The exercise-thallium test produces an image of the heart muscle after a small amount of a radioactive substance is injected into the blood. The equilibrium radionuclide angiogram creates a computer-synthesized image of the heart when a radioisotope is injected into the body. Angiography tests are X-ray pictures that are taken after a catheter is inserted into a coronary artery and a dye is injected into the heart.

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June 28, 1990, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

BASEBALL;
Anniversary With Little to Celebrate

BYLINE: By PETER APPLEBOME, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section D; Page 24, Column 3; Sports Desk

LENGTH: 1034 words

DATELINE: ATLANTA, June 27

Ed Walker doesn't get out to an Atlanta Braves game very often, but when he does, he invariably leaves with a sense of deja vu.
''The Braves are like history,'' he said before watching the club lose to the Dodgers, 5-2, Monday night. ''It keeps repeating itself, and they always have the same old losing team.''
When the Braves dismissed their manager, Russ Nixon, and replaced him with Bobby Cox, the general manager, last Friday, it added yet another familiar ring to the 25th anniversary season for what may be baseball's most troubled franchise. 
This season was billed as a turnaround year for a franchise that has finished last in the National League West in three of the last four years and that has not won a playoff game since coming to Atlanta.
Instead, the Braves limped out to a 2-13 start, have a 28-42 record, and seem headed to a third straight year as the team with the weakest attendance in baseball.
''I think we're as good as anyone we play,'' said Ron Gant, the center fielder, who has been the Braves' best player this year. ''We just have to get rid of the dark cloud that's over us.''
 
String of Injuries
Indeed, the Braves' season has had a distinct doomsday air to it. Their key off-season acquisition, Nick Esasky, has spent almost all season on the disabled list - instead of at first base -with what has been diagnosed as vertigo. A newly acquired catcher, Ernie Whitt, and the bullpen closer, Jeff Stanton, have also spent most of the year on the disabled list.
The Braves even lost their most loyal fan. Up until this year, their one constant was Pearl Sandow, an elderly woman who came out to watch every one of the 1,889 home games the team played in its first 24 seasons in Atlanta. She fell and broke both shoulders in February and doesn't expect to be able to get to a game all year.
But, then again, no one is ascribing the Braves' troubles solely to injuries. Billed as a team built around pitching, the Braves have a 5.30 earned run average and rank last in the National League in both pitching and fielding.
''There's no hope for the Braves,'' said Mike Mitchell, a college soccer and tennis coach, as he watched the team lose Monday. ''I think back on the last season when they won their division, and it seems like a hoax.''
 
Great Names Limited to the Fence
There are still reminders that this was once one of baseball's great franchises. The park displays the retired numbers of the former Braves greats Warren Spahn, Eddie Mathews, Hank Aaron and Phil Niekro, although most of their highlights came when the team was in Milwaukee. There's a large marker in left field pinpointing the spot where Aaron hit his 715th, home run, breaking Babe Ruth's record, on April 8, 1974.
And Aaron is still a very visible link with the past as senior vice president and assistant to the Braves' president, Stan Kasten.
''It's been very frustrating for me,'' he said. ''We're never truly won the fans over, but it's not the fans' fault, it's the organization's fault. We haven't put a winner on the field.'' There have been few high points during the Braves' 24 seasons in Atlanta, only seven of them winning ones. The team managed divisional championships in 1969 and 1982 but was swept in three games each time in the league playoffs. The Braves drew 2.1 million fans for a second-place finish in 1983, but have drawn under a million for 11 of the last 18 seasons. And the efforts to market the Braves as America's Team on the clubowner Ted Turner's Super Station WTBS have wilted in the face of the team's dismal performance and the more attractive package of televised baseball on ESPN.
This year, the most spirited topic of discussion about the Braves is whether the team stooped to humbling self-parody by choosing the goofball television pitchman and aspiring movie star Ernest P. Worrell (''Know what I mean, Verne?'') as its advertising spokesman for the year.
 
Cox Is Hopeful
Still, there are people both inside and outside the organization who think the Braves are on the right track. The team's young pitching staff is still regarded as one of the most promising in baseball, and Cox said the Braves are much better than their record indicates.
''We have more hitting than we've had since 1982, the defense is O.K., and the starting rotation, although the e.r.a. isn't good, should be a great starting rotation to work with,'' said Cox. ''We just have to get it going. We need to finish ahead of somebody.''
But, in typical Braves fashion, the pitching remains all potential and little reality. Of the four young starters who began the year, Derek Lilliquist is back in the minors, and Pete Smith, Tom Glavine and John Smoltz have e.r.a.'s of 4.79, 4.09 and 5.44, respectively. The bullpen, anchored by Joe Boever, Charlie Kerfeld and Joe Hesketh, has been so bad one local sportswriter has dubbed them the Ghastly Boys.
''Things have been so negative around here for the last three or four years, it's hard for this team to keep a positive attitude,'' said Whitt, who was acquired from the Toronto Blue Jays last winter. ''No offense to the newspapers, but I tell our guys they'd be better off not reading them. You read it, and you believe it. You get into the sixth or seventh inning and instead of saying, ''Guys, we're gonna win this game,' you think, ''How are we gonna lose it?' ''
 
Theories for Failure
There are diverse theories, some more fanciful than others, for the Braves' woes. They include the dismissal of their former mascot, Chief Noc-A-Homa, in 1983; the general malaise shrouding Atlanta's professonal teams, and a history of awful trades.
Once a ball-park regular, Turner is seldom seen at the Braves' games, but officials say he is very interested in the future of the franchise and has no interest in selling it.
Not everyone is upset, however, with the current problems.
''To tell you the truth, I hate a crowded ball park,'' said John Goddard, a 33-year-old musician. ''I like to be able to come out and relax and not have to worry about getting a place to park or stand in line. As long as the Braves lose, I don't have to worry. Atlanta is the last town in the world to support a bad team.''

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Empty seats at a recent Atlanta Braves game. The Braves have struggled for most of their time in Atlanta. (Jim Schultz for The New York Times)

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June 29, 1990, Friday, Late Edition - Final

Albany Leaders Agree on Hospital Aid Increase

BYLINE: By KEVIN SACK, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section B; Page 1, Column 2; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 1154 words

DATELINE: ALBANY, June 28

Legislative leaders agreed tonight on a major revision of the state's system of health-care financing that would bail out distressed hospitals. The pact would also provide substantial incentives for expanding the availability of primary care, although not by as much as Gov. Mario M. Cuomo had requested.
The accord between the Assembly and the Senate will pump $420 million into New York's health-care system. The state will provide $52 million through increased Medicaid payments, a move that will set off an automatic increase in contributions from the Federal government, local governments and private insurers, who will pay the rest. Some business leaders fear that health insurance premiums paid by private businesses could jump as much as 20 percent because of the accord. 
The agreement was seen as a major victory for the state's hospitals, which would receive far more than had been recommended by Mr. Cuomo and his Health Commissioner, Dr. David Axelrod. The money will help hospitals cope with a debilitating nursing shortage and crowded emergency rooms and compensate them for rapidly increasing labor costs and the high price of treating patients with AIDS and drug-related conditions. ''It appears that the Legislature has attempted to come to terms with every major problem the hospital system faces,'' said Kenneth E. Raske, president of the Greater New York Hospital Association.
 
No Veto Expected
Mr. Cuomo, whose aides were not involved in the hospital reimbursement negotiations, had not signed off on the agreement by late this afternoon. But legislative leaders believe their bill gives the Governor enough of what he wants to forestall a veto.
The risk of a veto was not the only political obstacle facing the legislation today. After a day of bizarre election-year maneuvering, the reimbursement bill remained the political captive of two other pieces of important health-care legislation.
When the discussions on hospital reimbursement concluded tonight, the Democratic negotiators representing the Assembly majority believed they had reached an agreement with their Republican colleagues from the Senate on an innovative, but potentially expensive, plan to provide state-subsidized health insurance for poor children.
Senate officials said today that there was a basic understanding on the framework for such a plan. But they said that they would not pass a children's health insurance plan unless the Assembly and Mr. Cuomo accepted legislation to cap the fees doctors can charge senior citizens.
Senator Michael J. Tully, the chairman of the Health Committee, said the Senate Republicans were very concerned about the potential cost of the children's health insurance plan. But he and other Senate leaders suggested that the bill would be easier to swallow if passed in conjunction with the legislation limiting doctors' fees, which is known as mandatory Medicare assignment.
''They want to hold the kids hostage for the seniors,'' said Eve E. Brooks, executive director of Statewide Youth Advocacy and a leading lobbyist for the children's health insurance package.
The political wrangling over the health bills, all of it conducted behind closed doors with the Legislature seemingly close to adjournment, was largely about how the measures might affect this fall's elections. The Republicans hold a 34-to-26 margin in the 61-member Senate, but the Democrats have threatened a strong campaign to reverse that majority. One seat is vacant.
Mr. Cuomo and Assembly Speaker Mel Miller, both Democrats, have made a children's health insurance plan an important part of their legislative agenda for the year. The law would provide free or low-cost insurance for almost half of the 260,000 children in New York State who are currently without medical coverage, a program with great appeal to traditional Democratic constituent groups.
 
New Formula Needed
The Senate Republicans, meanwhile, hope to appeal to the state's influential senior citizens lobby by portraying themselves as the defenders of Medicare benefits.
The Senate's proposal for to limit doctors' fees is actually less generous to senior citizens than one favored by the Assembly. But by insisting that the bill be linked to hospital reimbursement, campaigning Republicans would be able to argue that they forced action on an issue that might otherwise have died this session.
The Legislature has no choice about approving a new hospital reimbursement formula this year. The current three-year formula, which determines the amount hospitals are paid by Medicaid, Blue Cross/Blue Shield and private insurers, expires on Dec. 31.
The state's hospitals have run up operating losses estimated at more than $1 billion in each of the last two years.
The state's budget, which was approved last month, included almost $500 million for a normal inflationary adjustment for hospitals. It also included $13 million to pay for the changes the Legislature would later make in the reimbursement formula.
 
Dividing the Aid
That $13 million covers the state's share of Medicaid payments, the government's health insurance program for the poor, in the last quarter of this fiscal year. Because it also dictates the share of Medicaid payments that must be made by the Federal and local governments, as well as the reimbursements required of private insurers, the state's $13 million, which will grow into $52 million on an annual basis, will bring hospitals an estimated total of $420 million.
Mr. Cuomo and Dr. Axelrod had hoped that the $13 million would be divided by providing approximately $7 million for hospital inpatient services and $6 million for outpatient services. By giving such a large proportion to outpatient services, they reasoned that hospitals would be prodded into opening and expanding family and community clinics, a move that would relieve crowding in emergency rooms.
 
Bonus for Rural Hospitals
The formula announced today, however, would give between $9 million and $10 million to inpatient services and the rest to outpatient programs.
The largest chunk would give hospitals money to increase the salaries and benefits needed to attract registered nurses and other health care professionals. Money also was provided for the acquisition of new medical technology, unexpected capital expenses like asbestos removal and the cost of inpatient admissions from emergency rooms.
Rural hospitals that have difficulty retaining personnel were given a bonus, as were hospitals with high proportions of complicated cases, like AIDS.
Although the money for outpatient services is not as much as Mr. Cuomo wanted, that area did receive a financial boost. Among other measures, the cap on Medicaid payments for visits to outpatient clinics would be raised to $70 from $60 and the maximum payment to hospitals for outpatient services provided in emergency rooms would rise to $97.50 from $90.

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June 29, 1990, Friday, Late Edition - Final

Dinkins Nears Pact to Raise Property Taxes

BYLINE: By DON TERRY

SECTION: Section B; Page 1, Column 5; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 797 words

To narrow the city's budget gap, the Dinkins administration and the City Council appeared close to an agreement late yesterday that would result in $260 million in higher property taxes, officials said.
The added taxes would represent $80 million more than Mayor David N. Dinkins had originally proposed and would reflect a last-minute resolution between the Council and the administration on the proposed $28 billion budget for the fiscal year that starts on Sunday. The administration and the Council raced to finish closing an overall gap of $1.83 billion.
The accord would include $40 million to restore cuts in services like police protection, garbage collection and cultural groups in the Mayor's original proposal and $30 million in alternative reductions, said officials who did not want to be identified. 
 
When Legislators Balked
Last Friday, the Council offered a menu of cuts that it said could amount to more than $85 million and this week sought at least that amount in restorations.
When he presented the budget last month, Mr. Dinkins proposed $859 million in new taxes, including $180 million in property taxes, and more than $200 million in spending cuts. About $540 million of the taxes hinged on approval by the Legislature.
But the Mayor and the City Council were forced to seek even higher property taxes when legislators in Albany balked at approving several taxes and the Council refused to consider the Mayor's plan to raise $12 million through a tax on dry-cleaning, leaving the city at least $126 million short.
Yesterday, the Assembly approved $427 million in higher city taxes. The Senate had not acted. The details of the broad agreement between the Mayor and Council were sketchy last night, but they included adding 500 police officers, restoring the hand-sweeping street cleaners, and restoring three Fire Department units. . Negotiators said they expected to be working on the accord into this morning.
''I brought another shirt, a tie, a hairbrush and a razor,'' Councilman Robert J. Dryfoos, Democrat of Manhattan, said. ''It's going to be a long, long night.''
An additional property-tax increase was widely expected by Council members, other officials and civic groups. Few, however, were happy. ''Their view is going to be very negative,'' Councilman Sheldon S. Leffler, Democrat of Queens, said, referring to homeowners in his district. ''You don't even have to call them. They're going to be very upset. The feeling in my district is that this government is being run for the employees and the managers, rather than the public at large.''
Patricia Dolan, president of the Queens Valley Homeowners Association, one of the largest homeowners' groups in the borough, said the higher property taxes would hit hardest at the elderly people living on fixed incomes.
''We had hoped,'' she added, ''that the Council and the Mayor could have found another way. But I don't blame either side. The problem lies with the fiscal crisis the city finds itself in. These are very bad times.'' $48 Instead of $33 Under the Mayor's original proposal to raise property taxes by $180 million, the average homeowner would have had to pay an additional $33 a year. Under the new plan, that increase would be $48.
The agreement was reached after almost a week of negotiations as the Council tried to flex its expanded powers under the new City Charter. In past years, the City Council had approved the budget in conjunction with the Board of Estimate. This year it has sole authority to pass the final budget, and its leadership was especially eager to make a strong impact.
Mr. Dinkins was also eager to consolidate his power and imprint his stamp on the spending priorities despite tight fiscal times. He included a few modest increases in social welfare, AIDS programs, prenatal care, mental health and services for the homeless.
Mr. Dryfoos, a member of the Council's negotiating team, said that because of the Council's new powers, ''we get much more respect from the Mayor now.''
''There's a sense of power and responsibility,'' he said.
Shortly before Mr. Dinkins and Council Speaker Peter F. Vallone were scheduled to meet at 10 o'clock last night, two mayoral aides arrived carrying plastic bags of food. Lobbyists waited on the limestone steps of City Hall sipping coffee and whispering urgent pleas into Council members' ears.
Mr. Leffler did not appear impressed with the budget process. He said both the Council and the Mayor could have done more to cut waste from the sprawling budget. He said the two sides should have followed his father's example.
''My father was a small-business man,'' Mr. Leffler said. ''Some years business wasn't as good. Did he go out and borrow? No. He couldn't always do that. He worked harder.''

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June 29, 1990, Friday, Late Edition - Final

Jazz Festival;
Pearl Bailey's Pop and the Blues of Wynton Marsalis

BYLINE: By JON PARELES

SECTION: Section C; Page 18, Column 4; Weekend Desk

LENGTH: 484 words

Seriousness and shtick shared the stage of Avery Fisher Hall on Wednesday night in one of those peculiar jazz festival double bills: the trumpeter Wynton Marsalis opening for the singer Pearl Bailey. For her adoring audience, the 72-year-old Miss Bailey did a slightly elevated lounge act, with pop songs, standards and selections from ''Hello, Dolly!'' amid jokes about Social Security and senior citizens' discounts. The 28-year-old Mr. Marsalis, meanwhile, led a septet in extended suites that mixed advanced dissonance and down-home blues. 
Miss Bailey still has a good part of the contralto voice that made her a star in the 1940's. For the most part, she used it glancingly, tossing off lines between stretches of glad-handing audience members or hitching up her gown and strutting across the stage; her voice can go deep, but she always wields it lightly, swinging a song like ''Bill Bailey'' or rising to a melting last phrase in ''Once in a While.'' Her quartet, including two longtime Ella Fitzgerald sidemen (Paul Smith on piano and Keter Betts on bass), provided graceful support, except for Louis Bellson's ostentatious drumming; even with brushes, he managed to be obtrusive.
Miss Bailey's pitch wasn't always secure when she was involved in stage business, but for a few songs she focused on music rather than personality. And her encore, ''The Battle Hymn of the Republic,'' was a perfect blend of devoutness and blues; Mr. Marsalis, who joined her, was no more serious than she was.
The Wynton Marsalis Jazz Band played just two selections in a hour of music. ''The Uptown Ruler Suite,'' as Mr. Marsalis explained, included one theme derived from a late Beethoven string quartet and another with a 12-tone row in the bass line; the second, ''Blue Interlude,'' revolved around two motifs, nominally male and female. What he didn't say was that each piece kept circling back to the blues after moving into more abstract realms.
''The Uptown Ruler Suite'' was a succession of pieces (including one by the band's tenor saxophonist, Todd Williams), usually with theme-solos-theme structures. The themes were from the advanced hard-bop school of the late 1960's, akin to the music of Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter; they pitted saxophones (Mr. Williams on tenor or soprano, Wessell Anderson on alto) against brass (Mr. Marsalis and Wycliffe Gordon on trombone) or set the horns hopping above swinging rhythms (from Eric Reid on piano, Reginald Veal on bass and Herlin Riley on drums); solos often returned to the blues, whether sultry or swaggering.
''Blue Interlude'' was more intricate - a virtual montage of themes and solos, full of tempo and style changes, with solos that demanded concision. In both pieces, for all their complexity, the septet was utterly secure, turning Mr. Marsalis's daring structural experiments into music full of insight, humor and thoughtful invention.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Pearl Bailey blended songs and shtick at Avery Fisher Hall. (Jack Manning/The New York Times)

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June 30, 1990, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

Brooklyn's Exceptional Preacher

SECTION: Section 1; Page 22, Column 1; Editorial Desk

LENGTH: 322 words

Since 1863, the Concord Baptist Church of Christ in Brooklyn has had only four pastors, an average tenure of nearly 32 years. The most recent, the Rev. Dr. Gardner Taylor, retires today after 42 years in the pulpit of one of the largest black congregations in New York. That Dr. Taylor surpasses this average, or any other, hardly surprises those who know him as an exceptional man. 
A native of Baton Rouge, La., Dr. Taylor came to Concord in 1948 and gained a reputation as an activist and a mentor to younger preachers. ''Guest appearances in Taylor's pulpit were hotly coveted by Negro preachers,'' Taylor Branch recalls in ''Parting the Waters,'' his history of the civil rights movement. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was one of those guest preachers at Concord Baptist, and Dr. Taylor would become one of his lifelong friends and advisers.
The Brooklyn minister has also been a force in the National Baptist Convention, once the largest association of blacks in the world. In 1979, Time magazine called him the dean of the nation's black preachers.
Dr. Taylor has augmented his ministry with political activism. In the 1960's, he was one of the leading clergymen who protested discrimination in New York's building trades. He served on the New York City Board of Education, as the first black and first Baptist president of the New York City Council of Churches and on the transition committee of Mayor David Dinkins.
Meanwhile, he has nurtured his congregation, started by Brooklyn parishioners who found it too difficult to travel to Manhattan's Abyssinian Baptist Church. With about 5,000 active members, Concord Baptist operates a credit union worth $1.8 million, a 121-bed nursing home, a senior citizens' residence, an elementary school and a clothing exchange.
''I never wanted to stay too long,'' Dr. Taylor observes upon his retirement. There are countless New Yorkers who wish he could stay longer.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

TYPE: Editorial

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July 1, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Albany Lurches Toward Adjournment

BYLINE: By KEVIN SACK, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section 1; Part 1, Page 30, Column 1; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 1102 words

DATELINE: ALBANY, June 30

Like a jalopy in need of a tune-up, the State Legislature lurched toward adjournment today, resolving some major issues and leaving others mired in partisan politics and confusion.
In one advance, lawmakers from the Senate and the Assembly said this evening that they had agreed on a measure allowing houses and apartment buildings used for drug dealing to be seized by the courts. Current law excludes such property from the assets that can be seized.
Legislative leaders said the drug forfeiture bill they had agreed on would bring New York law into line with some of the toughest forfeiture laws in the country. The proceeds from the seized property would be divided among the state's drug abuse agency and the prosecutors and police in the municipality where the seizure was made. 
The Senate tonight approved New York City's $427 million tax package, which authorizes the city to increase income taxes, hotel taxes and mortgage recording taxes. The package, which had already been approved by the Assembly, is crucial to balancing the city budget, which was expected to be approved by the City Council tonight.
But the settlement of several other major issues seemed to be awaiting the final hours of the session, when matters that have been held captive by one side or the other are traditionally traded in one tremendous hostage swap. A large number of critical issues were still being negotiated while the Senate and Assembly dealt with procedural matters, judicial confirmations and minor bills on the floor.
 
Health, Housing and Taxes
Among the outstanding issues were proposals to create state-subsidized health insurance for poor children; to cap doctors' fees for elderly patients; to increase workers' compensation benefits; to impose a moratorium on the conversion of Mitchell-Lama apartments into market-rate rentals and condominiums; and to approve New York City's tax plan.
In virtually all of those issues, a major consideration was how their solutions could be politically marketed by each party in this year's elections. All 211 seats in the Legislature, as well as those held by Gov. Mario M. Cuomo and other statewide officials, come open this year.
While the elections are expected to have little impact on control of the Assembly, where the Democrats enjoy a sizable majority, they could potentially reverse the Republicans' 34-to-26 majority in the Senate. One Senate seat is vacant.
The fact that so much legislation remained alive, with the Legislature hoping to adjourn this weekend, kept the sandstone halls and gilded lobbies of the Capitol packed with lobbyists, legislators and aides.
 
Death Penalty Is Dead
Not normally accustomed to working on weekends, many lawmakers brought their children along, adding to the sense of disorder. Assemblyman John J. Faso, Republican of Kinderhook, stood debating a bill on election reform while his 5-year-old son, Nicholas, sat next to him pulling apart an Incredible Hulk doll.
Some legislators appeared less than intent on their work. A televised World Cup soccer match between Italy and Ireland drew many Assembly members away for parts of the afternoon.
Although a number of issues remained the subject of furious negotiation, several high-profile bills were formally declared dead.
The chief sponsor of the bill to reinstate the death penalty, for example, acknowledged this morning that he did not have enough votes to override Governor Cuomo's eighth annual veto.
The sponsor, Senator Dale M. Volker, Republican of Depew, conceded that for the second year in a row he would not even seek to override the veto.
Historically, it has been the Democratic-led Assembly that has not been able to muster enough votes to override Mr. Cuomo's veto, while the Republican-controlled Senate has overridden the Governor's veto several times.
 
Bias Bill Is Tabled
This year, the Assembly seemed to have the 100 votes needed to override the Governor. But the illness of a longtime death-penalty supporter in the Senate, James H. Donovan, Republican of Chadwicks, left that house a vote short of the 41 needed.
For the fourth year in a row, a measure that would have stiffened penalties for bias-related violence also appeared to be tabled today because of Senate objections to provisions of the bill aimed at protecting homosexuals.
On Friday, the Senate approved its own version of the bias bill, which would have increased penalties for all assault crimes. But Assembly leaders have said they will not consider the Senate version.
Perhaps the most important, and most politically contentious, legislation being considered was several health-care measures that have become the subject of high-stakes horse trading.
Earlier this week, Assembly and Senate leaders reached agreement on a new hospital reimbursement formula that would pump $420 million in public and private funds into the health-care system. But in the last two days, passage of that plan has come to depend on the resolution of two other issues - the children's health insurance package and the bill capping doctors' fees for elderly patients, known as mandatory Medicare assignment.
 
Elderly Lobby for Medicare Bill
The Assembly unanimously passed a bill this evening that included the hospital reimbursement legislation and a children's health insurance package that would make nearly half of the state's 260,000 uninsured children eligible for state-subsidized coverage. It later passed a manadatory Medicare assignment bill by a vote of 121-20.
In passing those bills, the Democrats in the Assembly laid down a challenge to the Republicans in the Senate. The Senate is concerned that the children's health insurance bill will be too expensive for business and it favors a mandatory Medicare assignment bill that is less generous for senior citizens.
But by not passing those bills, the Republicans risk being portrayed as the party that blocked health-care for children and the elderly, an uncomfortable position in a campaign year.
''Everybody's playing chicken here,'' said Gary G. Fryer, the Governor's press secretary.
On the workers' compensation bill, negotiators met until 2 A.M. today and again this afternoon in a bid to agree on raising benefits, which have been frozen since 1985 and are among the lowest in the nation.
While there is general agreement in the Capitol that the effective rates are scandalously low, the two houses have long been unable to resolve the issue. By some estimates, an equitable package could raise the bill on businesses that pay for workers' compensation insurance by $700 million a year.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: As the Senate moved slowly toward adjournment, Senators Dean G. Skelos, left, and Nicholas A. Spano stopped Ralph J. Marino, right, the majority leader, to ask him a question as he headed to his office. Seated in foreground are Senators Joseph L. Bruno, left, and Hugh T. Farley. (David Jennings for The New York Times)

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July 1, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Federal Cash for Homeless: It's There but Tough to Get

BYLINE: By JASON DePARLE, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section 1; Part 1, Page 14, Column 5; National Desk

LENGTH: 950 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, June 30

Mary Rose Gerdes, lithe and lovely at the age of 63, smiles nervously and says in a fragile voice that this is how she used to be: ''a bag of bones'' and a recovering alcoholic living in a ''perpetual rage cage.'' Other words creep in, like pancreatitis and severe depression, to describe the conditions that caused her to lose her job and then her home.
The technical term is ''disabled.'' But the trouble was proving it. Eventually Ms. Gerdes did, and as a result she now receives $420 a month in Federal benefits, which have helped her leave a homeless shelter and find a room of her own. But it took her three years, three applications and two determined social workers to do it. 
The Bush Administration has pledged to make the program for indigent people who are elderly or disabled, Supplemental Security Income, more accessible to homeless people like Ms. Gerdes. Legislation is pending in Congress that would back that pledge with law.
By most estimates there are hundreds of thousands of homeless people who qualify for the benefits but do not receive them. For many, the modest monthly check could spell the difference between shelter and the streets. But they are either unaware of the program or unable to meet its formidable bureaucratic demands.
 
Overlooked Helping Hand
''It's a Catch-22,'' said Maria Foscarinis, director of the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty. ''You don't qualify unless you're disabled or elderly, but if you're disabled or elderly you're least able to negotiate your way through the system.''
Ms. Foscarinis and others say changes in the disability system may be part of the solution to homelessness. While there is much disagreement about new programs for the homeless, she said, ''here's a solution that's at hand and that's not being used.''
Among those pledging to do something about the problem is Gwendolyn King, the Social Security Commissioner, whose agency administers the program. Mrs. King has directed employees in 1,300 field offices to do more to find the disabled homeless and to guide them through an application process that she herself, in a recent interview, called ''mind-boggling.''
 
Pushing to Aid Homeless
Earlier this year, she joined a member of her staff in visiting soup kitchens and shelters. While crediting Mrs. King's efforts, Senator Donald W. Riegle Jr., a Michigan Democrat, wants to go further. He has introduced a bill that would make such visits a regular and required part of the Social Security Administration's work.
The Supplemental Security Income program was established in 1974 and it serves essentially two groups of indigent people: those who are elderly, and those who are not elderly but blind or disabled.
While about 4.6 million people now receive such benefits, Social Security officials estimate that this group represents only 50 to 65 percent of those who could qualify. Many never apply because they are unaware of the program. Others are daunted by the need to produce extensive medical records to document their disabilities.
The homeless, many of whom are mentally ill, may be the most daunted. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that about 35 percent of the homeless may qualify for S.S.I. benefits, but that only about 4 percent receive them.
Social Security officials said about 37 of every 100 S.S.I. disability applications are initially approved and 15 more are approved on appeal. But Ms. Foscarinis said many eligible people become discouraged and do not appeal. $3 Million Outreach Program In 1987, Congress authorized the agency to spend $4 million in grants to states to help enroll more homeless people in the program. The agency argued that the effort was not needed and did not spend the money.
But Mrs. King has seized on the grant idea as a strategy for enlisting more S.S.I. recipients. She has allocated $3 million in grants to groups conducting programs to reach homeless people.
But in trying to instill new urgency, Mrs. King may face resistance. Earlier this year, the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, polled 146 Social Security district managers and found that 70 percent said the agency was doing enough to meet the needs of the homeless.
The case of Ms. Gerdes is instructive of the kind of difficulties that homeless people often find with the system.
 
Path to Homelessness
After age and illness forced her from her work as a cocktail waitress and dancer, she said, she moved in with an alcoholic man who resented her attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. Fearful that their fights might lead her back to drinking, she left for the shelter.
Ms. Gerdes is often hazy about the dates and details of her life, a quality not particularly helpful in filling out an application for Supplemental Security Income. While the form is meant to be filled out with the help of a Social Security employee, it did not work out that way in Ms. Gerdes's case. She said a social worker simply had it sent to her and she filled it out as best she could. The application was denied.
In early 1986, Ms. Gerdes said she met another social worker, who took an interest in her case. He helped her enroll in a mental health clinic and prepared a second application. It was denied, as was an appeal.
Ms. Gerdes went from living in a group home for the mentally ill back to the shelter, then back again to the group home.
In 1987, a third social worker took up her case, tracking down extensive medical records. After another denial, she finally won her benefits in 1989 on appeal.
Ms. Gerdes used her award to get a room of her own at a new project for the homeless.
''Oohhh,'' she said. ''I like the privacy.''

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Mary Rose Gerdes, who waited three years and submitted three applications before finally receiving Federal aid that enabled her to leave a homeless shelter. (Bruce Young for The New York Times)

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The New York Times

July 1, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

All About/Yellow Pages;
Changing Shopping Habits Keep Those Fingers Walking

BYLINE: By EDMUND L. ANDREWS

SECTION: Section 3; Page 4, Column 1; Financial Desk

LENGTH: 1534 words

Yellow Pages publishers are learning to behave less like utility companies and more like their advertising brethren on Madison Avenue. In the six years since the breakup of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, Yellow Pages have gone from dowdy and predicatable - almost like the white pages - to venturesome and competitive. ''The Yellow Pages have always been perceived as a stagnant and stodgy medium,'' said Larry Small, a vice president of the Yellow Page Publishers Association, an American trade group. ''But people's shopping habits are changing. There is more catalogue shopping, more home TV shopping. If we spend all our time protecting our turf and none of our time exploring new terrain, that's short-sighted.'' The new era brought plenty of challenges, and some quick responses. Newly independent regional telephone companies began invading one another's territories, cloning local directories. Specialty Yellow Pages proliferated, aimed at Hispanics, the elderly, gay people, even weekend boaters. New gimmicks multipled, from tear-out coupons to ''audio text'' numbers that offered recorded messages with anything from sports scores to soap opera updates. Today, many publishers have retrenched, scrapping specialty directories. Yellow Pages titles in the United States, which surged from 5,800 in 1983 to 6,700 in 1986, have declined to 6,300. The most ambitious flop was the Southwestern Bell's ''Silver Pages,'' a directory for senior citizens offered in 90 cities that was dropped in 1988 after three years. The elderly, it seemed, didn't like being singled out. 
Despite the setbacks, Yellow Pages revenues have climbed 8 percent a year since 1985, a slightly faster rate than for other advertising, and accounted for an estimated $8.3 billion of the $123 billion advertisers spent in 1989. ''I've been in this business for 25 years, but it's only gotten really interesting in the last few years,'' said Mary MacDonald, head of the Yellow Pages division of the D'Arcy Masius Benton and Bowles advertising agency.
 
Market Truths
The Symbols Live, Sans Trademark
Legend has it that the Yellow Pages are yellow because, in 1883, a printer in Cheyenne, Wyo., simply ran out of white paper. A.T.&T. chose not to trademark the name or the walking fingers logo, better to promote the idea of the Yellow Pages as an advertising medium so universal that any business would pay for a listing. Although competitors have freely published other directories for decades, most Yellow Pages markets were dominated by their local telephone companies.
The 1984 breakup of A.T.&T. disrupted this placid arrangement. New regional telephone companies were eager to expand and they all knew the Yellow Pages business. Led by Southwestern Bell, they began moving outside their service areas to create rival directories, luring advertisers with huge discounts. But consumers were confused by the blitz of seemingly identical directories, and advertisers were angry about having to buy space in more than one book. Today, most of the regionals have back in their own territories. Southwestern Bell no longer publishes directories in Manhattan, Chicago and St. Petersburg, Fla., though it still has a stake in Pennsylvania and the Washington-Baltimore area.
Some smaller publishers that are not affiliated with phone companies have succeeded by stuffing directories with more features and defining local markets more sharply. White Directory Publishers Inc., which for decades has published a directory in Buffalo, N.Y., has since 1984 issued guides for five other markets from Rochester and Niagara Falls to Erie, Pa. ''We've made a profit on virtually every book in the first year,'' said Richard Lewis, chief executive. Like Southwestern Bell, Mr. Lewis offers a big discount from local telephone charges. In Buffalo, he said, White charges $17,000 for a full-page ad; the Nynex Corporation, $54,000.
Mr. Lewis and others also use what they call ''geographic scoping,'' matching their directories to local marketing areas. On Long Island, for example, Multi-Local Media has successfully competed with Nynex's broader directories by publishing ''little yellow books'' that serve Long Island's individual communities. White Publishing has done the opposite, combining directories for Niagara Falls and nearby North Tonawanda.
 
New Directions
Glossy Pages, Audio And Competition
Anyone can call a directory the Yellow Pages. To distinguish themselves, publishers are seizing on new services. Where consumers once found little more than the numbers for police and fire, they now can often find dozens of glossy pages with tourist sights, maps, sports schedules and even seating charts for concert halls and stadiums. Some publishers have expanded into audio text services, the so-called ''talking Yellow Pages.'' Their directories offer phone numbers that allow customers to select from broad menus of messages.
Still in their infancy, audio services come in ''front of the book'' and ''back of the book'' formats. Front-of-the-book numbers, the most successful so far, are published before the alphabetical listings and offer recorded information on general topics. News and weather, high school sports scores, astrological fortunes, stock quotes, fishing reports, lists of chiropracators and even tips on buying insurance might be among the choices. The front-of-the-book format entices consumers to open the Yellow Pages and carries advertising of its own, played between messages the listener has requested by punching telephone keys.
Back-of-the-book services, not yet as successful, are audio text numbers published in conventional Yellow Pages advertisements. A pizza parlor can play a recording with its latest specials, then connect callers with people to take their orders. Publishers say that advertisers can update their recordings as often as they want, solving a major limitation of Yellow Pages advertising.
But customers often resist audio text; they simply prefer humans. As a result, audio text remains a tiny, although growing, advertising niche. Advertising revenues last year totaled $140 million and are expected to hit $200 million this year, said John F. Kelsey 3d, president of the Audio Tex Group, a consulting firm in Princeton, N.J. About 500 local areas have some form of audio text services, half of them new in the last year.
Since the regional telephone companies are forbidden to offer information services, independent publishers are the most optimistic about the growth of audio text. ''I can see the day in the not-too-distant future when Coca-Cola will buy advertising on every sports line in the country,'' predicted Mr. Lewis of White Directory Publishing.
 
The National Market
Breaking Out of the 'Local' Stigma
Publishers of Yellow Pages are also trying to steal customers from other media. Until recently, most Yellow Pages display advertising was limited to local markets. But for the last several years, the spread of national, toll-free numbers has encouraged national advertisers - including airlines, car-rental companies and other service providers - to buy space in directories around the country.
Now, Yellow Pages publishers are trying to win national product advertisers, who have traditionally shunned the Yellow Pages because the directories do not generally inspire people to buy. Few consumers browse through the directories; instead, they use them to find where they can buy a specific product or service they have already decided they need.
This summer, the Yellow Page Publishers Association plans to introduce a program called ''Brand Sell,'' which will link services with products. A manufacturer of air conditioners, for example, will be offered exclusive display space in the directory listings for vendors and installers of this equipment.
But national advertisers remain unconvinced of the benefits of advertisementsThe Yellow Pages industry is only beginning to develop ways to measure consumer response (box, above). Ms. McDonald of D'Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles, for one, said she has difficulty justifying the money already being spent on the Yellow Pages advertising. However, she added, ''Once we get usage research, it will be an easier product to sell.''
 
TRACKING THE RESPONSE
Advertisers have long complained that they can't verify the amount of business a Yellow Pages advertisement attracts. Now Nynex and Donnelly Directory, owned by Dunn & Bradstreet, are testing programs that track customer responses.
A few advertisers have been assigned special, metered telephone lines whose numbers are listed only in the Yellow Pages. If the number of calls in a year falls well below what Nynex has guaranteed, Nynex gives the advertiser refunds of 40 percent to 100 percent. The Donnelly program promises that advertisers who are unhappy for any reason during the first six months of the directory's life will not be charged for the second six months.
The approach is so new that some executives sound uncertain. ''We'll see how it goes,'' said Bernard Bloomfield, vice president of marketing at Nynex Information Resources. ''It may be the wave of the future - but it may not.''

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Larry Small of the Yellow Page Publishers Association with a few samples of U.S. and overseas directories. (Peter Yates for The New York Times); graphs: total U.S. editins of Yellow Pages, 1983-1989; Yellow Pages American advertising revenues, 1983-1989 (Source: Yellow Pages Publishers Association)

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July 1, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

LONG ISLAND GUIDE

SECTION: Section 12LI; Page 11, Column 1; Long Island Weekly Desk

LENGTH: 1249 words


 
MUSIC MOVES OUTDOORS
Never mind those stuffy concert halls; it's summertime and the music moves outdoors. Today, for example, the free bring-your-own-seating circuit offers such varied delights as:
* An ''Americana'' program, courtesy of the Senior Citizens Pops Orchestra, 2:30 P.M., Gillette Park, Sayville.
* Rock 'n roll songs by Shirley Alston Reeves, who at 7:30 P.M. opens the Town of Hempstead's ''Summer Concert by the Beautiful Sea'' series at the town park in Point Lookout. Fireworks by Grucci will follow.
* Traditional tunes provided by the American Concert Band, 8:15 P.M., Morgan Park, Glen Cove. The different beats continue Tuesday in Great Neck and Long Beach.  At Grace Avenue Park in Great Neck at 8 P.M., the soprano Elaine Malbin and an ensemble from the Tarumi Violin Program are the attractions; at the beach and New York Avenue in Long Beach, Martin Flynn heads an ''Irish Night'' bill that also starts at 8. 
On Thursday, the Suns of Jubal will perform at 7:30 P.M. on the Village Green in Westhampton Beach, while at the Port Jefferson Harbor Friday at 8 P.M., the Brad Terry Quartet will give a jazz concert.
Come Saturday, and the schedule includes the Spinners at 8 P.M. at Eisenhower Park's Harry Chapin Lakeside Theater in East Meadow and the Isotope Stompers Dixieland Band at 7 P.M. at Marine Park in Sag Harbor.
 
SHOOT THE WORKS
With Independence Day falling in midweek this year, fireworks are all over the calendar - and the map.
Today, in addition to the Point Lookout show, Grucci is presenting a major ''Summer in Suffolk'' display at the Smithaven Mall. Then on Tuesday, there is what the company calls a ''World Class'' show at Mitchel Field in Uniondale.
On the holiday itself, the Grucci action moves to Noyac Road in the North Sea area of Southampton. Finally, the holiday festivities go out with a bang Saturday with two additional displays on the South Fork:
* More Grucci efforts in an ''American Picnic With Fireworks,'' a benefit for the Southampton Fresh Air Home for Crippled Children. This will take place at 7 P.M. at an oceanfront home off Meadow Lane (reservations: 283-5847).
* The Devon Yacht Club's presentation, which lights up the sky over Gardiner's Bay in Amagansett.
 
FOURTH OF JULY
There is more to celebrating Independence Day than fireworks and barbecues. How about a traditional parade?
The village of Southampton has one, starting at 10 A.M. along Main Street. Going back in time, there are two mid-19th-century events on tap Wednesday:
* ''A Victorian Fourth of July Celebration,'' complete with period games and tours of the Colonial-Victorian premises, 10 A.M. to 5 P.M., Raynham Hall Museum, 20 West Main Street, Oyster Bay (922-6808).
* ''Old-Fashioned Independence Day Festivities,'' with parades, patriotic speeches, militia drills, music, children's games and a Temperance Society picnic, 12:30 to 4 P.M., Old Bethpage Village Restoration (420-5280).
Coming back to the present, at Eisenhower Park in East Meadow, a free family-oriented program from 9 A.M. to 10 P.M. includes puppet shows, lawn bowling and cricket matches, baseball and softball games and a strolling oompah band, and at the park's Lakeside Theater at 8 P.M., a concert by the Seuffert Band.
In the slightly off-beat department, Station WNYG will spin an ''Oldies Music Festival'' from noon to 4 P.M. on the Town of Babylon's Cedar Beach boardwalk, and the Oysterponds Historical Society will present a bluegrass concert by Back Roads at its ''Fourth of July Picnic'' in Poquatuck Park, Orient (323-3501).
Or why not a ''Butterfly Excursion''? The South Fork-Shelter Island chapter of the Nature Conservancy will lead a hunt for rare butterflies through Montauk State Park (324-1330).
Finally, go way back again with the New Community Cinema in Huntington, which will screen D.W. Griffith's ''America'' at 8 P.M. The classic 1924 silent film about the Revolutionary War will be accompanied by Harry Weiss at the piano.
Information: 423-7610.
 
COLE PORTER CONCERT
A little Cole Porter can go a long way toward entertaining the world-weary; a lot could do wonders. At least, that is a theory to which Steve Ross, the cabaret performer, subscribes.
And so on Thursday night, Mr. Ross - critics say he personifies the style and wit of Fred Astaire and Noel Coward - brings ''Ridin' High: The Cole Porter Concert'' to the John Drew Theater at Guild Hall in East Hampton.
The revue, in which Mr. Ross is backed by an instrumental ensemble, runs through next Sunday.
Tickets: 324-4050.
 
MEET THE AUTHORS
Trading on Bridgehampton's reputation as ''The Literary Hampton,'' the hamlet's Hampton Library once more is asking local scribes to do their bit for books.
''Fridays at Five,'' the library's series of fund-raising talks by writers, starts this Friday at 5 P.M.
To the novelist Susan Isaacs goes the honor of opening the proceedings. She will be followed by Peter Matthiessen, July 27; Judith Rossner, Aug. 3; Michael Thomas, Aug. 24, and Lanford Wilson, Aug. 31. The library is on Main Street. Schedule and ticket information: 537-0015.
 
PICNIC CONCERTS
Although it usually closes at 5 P.M., the Old Bethpage Village Restoration is staying open a bit later this Saturday so that visitors to this mid-19th-century living museum can picnic. What's more, the management is providing entertainment to make those picnic suppers even tastier.
The Hutchinson Family Singers will perform 19th-century music from 5 to 9 P.M. and some of the buildings will remain open. Rumor has it that there will also be some fireworks by Grucci.
Information: 420-5280.
 
AT SUNY/STONY BROOK
To complement its International Theater Festival, which this week has Chinese acrobats and next week a Fine Young Cannibal playing Romeo, the Staller Center at the State University in Stony Brook has called upon Kit-Yin Snyder, a site-specific experimental sculptor, to do her thing at the school's Art Gallery.
This time out, that ''thing'' is ''Kit-Yin Snyder: Enrico IV,'' a large-scale artificial garden and theatrical stage set.
Inspired by Luigi Pirandello's ''Enrico IV,'' the one-person exhibition has wire-mesh architectural sculptures in a stylized garden. It comes complete with voice-over narration adapted from the play by Kim Snyder, the artist's daughter, and spoken by Anthony Korner.
This exhibition - a play without visible actors, garden without grass and fountain without water - opens with a reception from 2:30 to 4 P.M. Saturday. It can be seen from noon to 4 P.M., Tuesdays through Saturdays, and from 7 to 8 P.M. on Staller Center performance nights through Sept. 8.
 
MOON WALKS
A moon is a moon is a moon, and every 28 days it's a full moon. This time of year, the Farmer's Almanac calls it a ''Buck Moon,'' and that is the name the Long Island Greenbelt Trail Conference is using for an excursion at Heckscher State Park in East Islip Saturday.
The ''Buck Moon Beach Walk'' is designed to catch both sunset and moonrise over the water. Hikers - and this is an easy stroll across flat terrain - are to meet at 7 P.M. at the east end of Parking Field 8. Information: 589-5467. Meanwhile, next Sunday - and still under that same moon - there's a ''Full Moon Walk in the Walking Dunes.'' This is through Hither Hills State Park in Montauk, and walkers are to meet at 8:30 P.M. at the campground entrance.
Information: 537-3387. $90BARBARA DELATINER

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Among the Independence Day celebratons will be a parade, militia drills, music, games and a picnic at the Old Bethpage Village Restoration.

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The New York Times

July 1, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

NEW JERSEY OPINION;
We Left the City, Didn't We?

BYLINE: By ANITA DENNIS

SECTION: Section 12NJ; Page 20, Column 1; New Jersey Weekly Desk

LENGTH: 490 words

WHEN I was growing up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, it was a residential backwater where the windows of aging apartment buildings gave off row after row of soft yellow light on winter evenings. My neighbors were mostly elderly people with theatrical pasts or divorced women raising three children in two-bedroom apartments.
I was always surprised when concerned relatives and their frighteningly athletic offspring asked if I was afraid to live there; as a child I felt safe only when I heard voices rising from the street on a summer night or saw layers of skyscrapers cradling the uncomfortably vast expanse of Central Park. 
As an adult, I frequently found myself cornered at parties by people just in from some far-off, unrelentingly clean place who felt compelled to talk to me about New York. It was unique - so energizing, so fascinating, so awe-inspiring! There was always something wonderful to do, and most of the time it was free! It was the most decadent city in the world, but the excitement was well worth the danger!
In their eyes, the city was something scandalous and revolutionary. I began to feel less like a native and more like a stranger in an art museum.
I also noticed that the quiet, slightly shabby neighborhood of my childhood had changed. It had been invaded by people always dressed as if coming from a job interview; people willing to stand in line to enter well-designed spaces that had once been dowdy storefronts. ''Go home,'' I found myself shouting from my window. ''There's a holdup on every street corner - go home!''
I began to think about the people who spend their entire lives in small towns, passing their middle and old age grousing about how the town went downhill once they tore down the grain elevator or started up bus service to Springfield. I wondered if I wasn't becoming their urban equivalent.
And so last year my husband and I bought a house in the once dreaded suburbs of New Jersey. It is a solid old house, last owned by people who moved in in 1929. No one we have met has lived here in Maplewood less than 20 years; the town is like a 1940's movie set invaded by late-model cars.
When spring came, we watched neighbors mowing their lawns, noting anxiously how it was done. We crawled around the yard, peering at plants and bushes, wondering desperately what they were. We ventured warily into home-improvement stores, determined not to be taken for suckers just in from the city.
On Saturday mornings we have breakfast downtown at the coffee shop, absorbing local gossip.
Some days, we head up to nearby parkland that stretches across and over a mountain. On very clear days we drive to the top and can make out the outlines of Manhattan's towers in the distance.
From here, it looks like a wildly exciting place, full of energy and life. As I look out and try to identify landmarks and neighborhoods, I find myself imagining what an interesting city it must be.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: drawing

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The New York Times

July 1, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Dogs and the Elderly: A Benefit for Both

BYLINE: By Roberta Hershenson

SECTION: Section 12WC; Page 27, Column 1; Westchester Weekly Desk

LENGTH: 574 words

DATELINE: TARRYTOWN

AMONG the many losses nursing-home residents suffer is contact with pets. That might explain why one 90-year-old woman recently burst into tears when a gentle bull mastiff entered her room.
''She had thought she'd never see a dog again,'' said Mimi Einstein, the president of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals of Westchester County. Since January, Mrs. Einstein has brought her own dog, a bull mastiff named Doris Day, to the Tarrytown Hall nursing home here for weekly visits with the residents. 
As she and the large, husky animal walk down the hall, they are greeted by men and women in wheelchairs who stop to pet Doris Day or to put their arms around the dog's solid neck. A woman who by choice never leaves her room is content when the animal lies quietly at her feet.
 
How the Dog Will React
Mrs. Einstein brings only dogs she knows well to this outreach program. When the 4 1/2-year-old Doris Day was three weeks away from delivering her fourth litter, Mrs. Einstein substituted dogs from the society's shelter, based in Briarcliff Manor, when she visited the nursing home. The dogs had been at the shelter for a year or two, long enough for the staff to learn their ways.
''The most important thing is knowing how a dog will react'' in a new situation, Mrs. Einstein said, such as when a wheelchair suddenly turns or a person puts his face close to the dog's face. Before she takes them visiting, Mrs. Einstein ''socializes'' the animals by walking them on the street and encouraging the people to come up and say hello.
The benefits of the program extend two ways. ''We have a shelter filled with lonely animals who need companionship and a nursing home filled with lonely people,'' Mrs. Einstein said. ''It's a perfect match and wonderful for the animals - they get to spend a day out of the shelter.''
The Katonah resident, who breeds bull mastiffs and has 15 of her own at home, said the ''basic ingredient'' in a visiting dog is natural friendliness. Yet, she noted, changes occur in dogs who are patted and hugged often by people happy to see them.
''The dogs grow more comfortable each time they go,'' Mrs. Einstein said. ''This program is also making them more adoptable.''
Ronalie Zackman, the activities director of Tarrytown Hall, said that ''one of the values of the program is the reminiscing'' that a dog's presence stimulates. An elderly resident may begin to speak about past family time, restoring his or her sense of identity.
At first, Mrs. Einstein said, the more withdrawn residents may relate only to the dog. ''Then they begin to realize there's a human being attached to the leash,'' and the personal relationship ensues. She told of a woman who came out of a prolonged motionless silence to pat Doris Day and say the dog's her name.
''Now when she sees me coming, she waves at me and smiles,'' Mrs. Einstein said. ''And Doris makes a beeline to her.''
The Bethel Nursing Home and the Victoria Home for retired men and women, both in Ossining, are also part of the outreach program. Mrs. Einstein would like to expand the number of visits, but needs more volunteers - people ''who have a desire to do this kind of work and who also understand dogs,'' Mrs. Einstein said.
''We've kept the program small so we won't let anyone down,'' she explained. ''The residents of these places really look forward to our visits. There are people who literally count off the days.''

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photos; Doris Day, a bull mastiff, during visits with residents at Tarrytown Hall nursing home; a dog being introduced to a resident by Mimi Einstein, left, dog's owner, and Ronalie Zackman, activities director (Photographs by Roberta Hershenson)

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The New York Times

July 3, 1990, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

3 Health-Care Bills Approved in Albany

BYLINE: By KEVIN SACK, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section B; Page 2, Column 4; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 1186 words

DATELINE: ALBANY, July 2

Concluding a session marred by contention and delay, state lawmakers finished a 23-hour legislative marathon this morning by passing three major health care bills, including one that would establish an innovative state-subsidized health insurance plan for poor children.
The State Senate's approval of a huge hospital reimbursement bill, which includes the children's health insurance package, ended a tortuous game of political poker. The Legislature also passed measures to cap doctors' fees for elderly patients and to simplify and expand the state's troubled prescription drug subsidy program for the elderly.
The bleary-eyed senators, who passed 160 bills on their last day, finally recessed at 11:38 A.M. after working through the night and eating a breakfast of bagels and orange juice. The Assembly finished its business at 2:29 A.M. after passing 142 bills. 
 
A Session Is Salvaged
For many in the Capitol, the flurry of last-minute activity salvaged a session that had been poisoned by a seven-week-late budget that was heavy with new taxes. ''What could have been, and looked like it would be, a disappointing session turned out to be an extraordinarily fruitful one,'' said Gov. Mario M. Cuomo.
Mr. Cuomo said the driving force behind the sudden spurt of productivity was the reapportionment politics of this election year. Elections in November will fill all 211 seats in the Legislature, and the victors will draw new legislative and Congressional district lines in 1991.
The Democrats have a secure grip on the Assembly, but the Republicans hold a thin 34-to-26 margin in the Senate. One seat is vacant in southern Queens, a heavily Democratic district.
As the clock wound down, lawmakers shattered logjams to appease politically influential constituent groups. By accepting a number of Democratic initiatives, the Senate Republicans risked alienating their traditional support from businesses in order to neutralize the active opposition of several powerful lobbies.
By relinquishing its opposition to the Assembly's bill on doctors' fees, for instance, the Senate offered an olive branch to senior-citizen groups that had waged a high-pressure lobbying campaign. The Senate had its own bill on the issue, but it was less generous to the elderly than the Assembly bill.
 
Workers' Compensation
Also in the wee hours, the Senate passed legislation to grant the first increase in workers' compensation benefits in five years, an item high on the agenda of the state's labor unions. The Republicans abandoned a long-held insistence that the increases be tied to other measures that could reduce the cost to business.
But the crowning achievement of the Legislature's last days was passage of the children's health insurance program. Although a few other states, most notably Minnesota, have similar programs, New York would become the first heavily industrialized state with large pockets of poverty to underwrite medical coverage for its uninsured children.
The $20 million plan is viewed as a forerunner of universal health insurance proposals that have gained increasing political support in New York and around the country.
''New York's adoption of this subsidized insurance plan is unprecedented in terms of the sheer number of children that will be assisted,'' said Sara Rosenbaum, director of programs and policy for the Children's Defense Fund.
Under the plan's eligibility restrictions, free or low-cost insurance for primary and preventive care would be available to poor children under age 13 who fall through the gaps in the state's Medicaid coverage.
About 125,000 of the state's 260,000 uninsured children would be eligible, said Jay E. Adolf, executive counsel to Assembly Speaker Mel Miller. Some lobbyists for the bill believe the eligible population may be much larger.
 
A Pool of Funds
The annual cost of the program to the state is about $2 million, which, through a complex formula, acts as leverage to generate $20 million from the Federal Government, local governments and private insurers. That money will fatten a $600 million pool of funds currently used to offset hospital losses from the treatment of uninsured patients, and that pool will now support the insurance program.
Even as the legislation was being passed, problems in the bill were troubling Mr. Cuomo and his staff. The Governor and the State Health Commissioner, Dr. David Axelrod, believe the $420 million reimbursement bill gives too much money to hospitals and they have expressed disappointment that the children's health insurance component does not cover hospitalization.
In addition, the health experts on Mr. Cuomo's staff fear that the Federal Government, which pays 50 percent of all Medicaid costs for inpatient care, may not be willing to pay that share for the outpatient services covered in the bill. That could leave the financially strapped state to fill a hole that could grow to tens of millions of dollars.
Mr. Cuomo said he needed to consult with Dr. Axelrod and study the bill before deciding to sign it. Dr. Axelrod is ''still seriously considering a veto recommendation,'' said Peter Slocum, the Commissioner's spokesman.
The legislation to cap doctors' fees for the elderly, which is known as mandatory Medicare assignment, was the subject of a pitched lobbying battle between senior-citizen groups and the New York State Medical Society.
Physicians can currently charge elderly patients rates above the levels of reimbursement set by Medicare, the Federal health insurance program for the elderly. That leaves the elderly who have no other health insurance to pay the difference out of their pockets. Last year there were Medicare overcharges of $220 million in New York State.
A Federal law that takes effect next year would limit the amount doctors can charge to 125 percent of the Medicare reimbursement rates in 1991, 120 percent in 1992 and 115 percent in 1993.
 
To Accelerate Schedule
The bill passed by the Legislature would accelerate that schedule for major medical procedures by capping doctors' fees at 115 percent of the Medicare reimbursement rate in the first two years and at 110 percent in the third year. The Federal schedule would still apply for simple office visits.
The last deal forged Sunday night between the two legislative houses and the Governor's office created a bill to simplify the state's prescription insurance program for the elderly.
Because of complex requirements governing eligibility and cost, the program has failed to attract the heavy participation that was anticipated. The changes made today - the agreement was reached near midnight and the bills were printed and approved within hours - would lower the cost and expand eligibility. The changes would cost the state an additional $24 million.
At least one tenuous agreement on a major piece of legislation collapsed early today. A proposal to declare a moratorium on the conversion of Mitchell-Lama subsidized apartments into condominiums and market-rate rental units fell apart in a dispute over proposed exemptions for some apartment complexes.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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The New York Times

July 5, 1990, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

Human Growth Hormone Reverses Effects of Aging

BYLINE: By NATALIE ANGIER

SECTION: Section A; Page 1, Column 2; National Desk

LENGTH: 1417 words

Treatment with human growth hormone can significantly reverse many effects of aging on the body, a new study has found.
In a clinical trial of 21 healthy men ranging in age from 61 to 81, researchers found that after six months of injections of a genetically engineered version of the natural body hormone, the men emerged with bodies that by many measures were almost 20 years younger than the ones they started with.
But researchers cautioned that the results were highly preliminary and that the long-term side effects of growth hormone remain unknown.
''This is not a fountain of youth,'' said Dr. Daniel Rudman of the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, the leading author of the paper, which appears today in The New England Journal of Medicine. ''We need to emphasize that the aging process is very complicated and has many aspects.'' 
The benefits of human growth hormone observed in his new study, he said, address only one aspect of how the body ages.
Nevertheless, endocrinologists and gerontologists hailed the new study as very promising.
''In my view this is an extremely exciting and positive finding,'' said Dr. John D. Baxter, director of the metabolic research unit at the University of California at San Francisco and a member of the first group to isolate and produce the recombinant version of human growth hormone. ''It's a suggestion that growth hormone can be used much more extensively in old people to promote muscle mass and help get rid of obesity. The net effect of a guarded use of the hormone might be very healthy.''
In the trial, hormonal treatment had its biggest effect on body composition. Although the weight of the men remained the same, they shed nearly 15 percent of body fat and gained almost 9 percent in lean body mass. Diet and exercise were kept constant for those tested. Part of that added bulk occurred in the muscles, while the rest is thought to have helped rebuild vital organs like the heart, kidneys and the gastrointestinal tract, which often shrink with age.
The men's skin regained a youthful thickness, and the level of an important growth-stimulating hormone in the blood returned to that of those under the age of 40. The bones of the spine also gained in mass, although other parts of the skeleton did not.
 
'Their Physique Changed'
''Their physique changed,'' Dr. Rudman said. ''They had the appearance of being more fit and in better condition.''
The results strongly suggest that a decline in human growth hormone production is one critical factor that causes fat to gather, muscles to wither and organs to atrophy as the body ages.
Dr. Rudman said that while his study involved only men, growth hormone applications were likely to have the same impact on women. But he warned that he and his colleagues still did not know whether the changes in body composition and organ size induced by growth hormone treatment translated into improvements in organ function or even better overall health.
Dr. Rudman and other experts also cautioned that the men in the study were inoculated for only six months, and that long-term or wanton administration of the hormone could have severe side effects.
''Too much growth hormone can cause arthritis, diabetes, enlargement of the face and hands, even heart failure,'' said Dr. Mary Lee Vance, an endocrinologist at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, who wrote an editorial that accompanies the report. ''This hormone is a double-edged sword.''
 
Hopes for Helping Elderly
Researchers say that judicious administration of human growth hormone could prove of vast benefit for those elderly people whose muscles are wasting away or who need greater strength to help them recover from a hip fracture, stroke or other debilitating illness.
''The decline in muscle function is a significant thing in aging,'' said Dr. Michael L. Freedman, director of geriatrics at New York University Medical Center. ''Giving the hormone to elderly people may prevent a lot of complications.''
And researchers said that while initial therapeutic use of the growth hormone would probably be confined to frail elderly people, it could eventually be employed more widely to help prevent body changes in the 25 million elderly Americans whose bodies have stopped producing useful amounts of human growth hormone.
Studies of the effects of human growth hormone on the body are relatively new because researchers have only recently had adequate supplies of the substance to perform experiments. Normally the hormone is secreted in very tiny amounts by the pea-sized pituitary gland at the base of the brain.
 
How Growth Hormone Works
The hormone circulates through the body and stimulates the production of another compound called insulin-like growth factor-1, a powerful protein that spurs tissue growth and helps maintain organ health. In most people, the production of human growth hormone by the brain begins declining at age 30, and after the age of 60 is only a fifth or so of its youthful high.
Children born with a deficiency of human growth hormone never grow much taller than three or four feet unless given hormone injections. Until recently the minute amounts of the hormone that were isolated from the pituitaries of human cadavers were reserved to treat that form of hereditary dwarfism.
But within the last few years genetic engineers have perfected a method for mass-producing a recombinant form of the hormone, allowing researchers to begin experimenting with the hormone for disorders beyond childhood dwarfism.
In two other recent studies, doctors examined the effects of growth hormone on young adults who had diseases that entirely suppressed hormonal secretion by the pituitary. The results of those studies hinted that growth hormone can influence the relative composition of fat and muscle in the body.
The new study is the first investigation of the effects of growth hormone treatment on healthy older people who had small but still measurable levels of the growth hormone. And the findings ''are the most dramatic we've seen so far,'' Dr. Freedman said.
Twelve of the men chosen for the study were given injections of the synthetic hormone three times a week, at a dose calibrated to equal the hormone output of a young man. Nine men in the study who served as controls received no treatment. All were assigned a similar diet of protein, carbohydrates and fats.
After six months, all the men receiving the hormone had dropped body fat while gaining muscle mass and skin thickness. They also exhibited blood levels of insulin-like growth factor-1 equal to that of far younger men. Through X-ray analysis the researchers determined that the muscles and organs had grown, although they have not yet learned exactly how much any organ may have increased.
Dr. Rudman said the changes were extremely significant. He pointed out that after the age of 40 or so, most people start losing lean muscle mass at a rate of about 5 percent a decade, and gaining body fat at more or less the same rate.
When compared with the 9 percent gain in lean body mass seen in the new study, he said, the results mean that six months of hormone treatment essentially cut almost two decades of age-induced changes off the subjects' bodies. Although the researchers are not yet certain how long the beneficial effects of hormone injections last, they suspect that once treatment is discontinued, the body composition will gradually revert to its former state.
 
Many Unanswered Questions
The scientists must further determine whether the bigger organs and muscles work any better or more youthfully than they did before.
''They don't know if organ function has improved, if the body is better able to metabolize food and handle nutrients, if the overall well-being of the person has benefited,'' Dr. Vance said. ''This is an important first study, but many questions remain to be answered.''
Dr. Rudman agreed that the findings were preliminary. He said that although the participants in the study suffered only mild side effects from the treatment, including a slight rise in blood pressure, the long-term consequences of growth hormone treatment are still in question.
''We have no idea what will happen if we start treating a lot of people with this stuff,'' Dr. Freedman said. ''Even it if makes you have more muscle or makes your skin better, if it ends up increasing something in the kidneys or gastrointestinal tract that leads to cancer, that's no good.''

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The New York Times

July 5, 1990, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

Talks in Taiwan Urge a Popular Presidential Vote

BYLINE: By SHERYL WuDUNN, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section A; Page 7, Column 1; Foreign Desk

LENGTH: 660 words

DATELINE: TAIPEI, Taiwan, July 4

After five days of strenuous national debate, a national conference on this island's future concluded today with a call for popular presidential elections.
The endorsement of popular elections by the 150 delegates seemed to give a considerable lift to proposals that would restructure Taiwan's political system along much more democratic lines in coming years. President Lee Teng-hui had chosen all the delegates and given them a mandate to grapple with the intensely emotional question of Taiwan's future.
It was the first time that the Government and its opponents had openly discussed on a public stage some critical questions about Taiwan's future. They included: Should the nation revise its Constitution or draw up a completely new one? Should the Government adopt a presidential or parliamentary system? How should the 20 million people on Taiwan build economic links with 1.1 billion Chinese on the mainland? 
''This is a fantastic thing,'' said Kang Ning-hsiang, a prominent member of the Democratic Progressive Party, the opposition group. ''To bring all these people together to talk about our future is the greatest political event.''
With bells ringing every so often to signal the end of a speaker's floor time, delegates stood up one by one on podiums to state their views on various issues. The conference delegates included a student, a Mongolian, a Tibetan, a handful of previously jailed dissidents, and Chinese scholars from the United States.
The conference has no legal authority, and so it is not clear how their conclusions will be carried out.
''Everyone feels a little funny,'' said Jaw Shau-kong, a legislator from the governing Nationalist Party and a delegate to the conference. ''This is outside the legal system.''
The agreement on popular presidential elections was the most important decision at the conference. Currently, the President is elected through the National Assembly, an electoral college that is made up mostly of elderly men, who purport to represent constituencies on mainland China.
 
Charter Revision Proposed
While they agreed on presidential elections, delegates were divided on whether citizens should elect the President through an electoral college or bypass that step and hold direct elections.
The delegates also debated ways to restructure the island's legislature, which has passed only one minor law in its current session, which ends in a few weeks. President Lee and other Nationalist leaders have indicated that Taiwan needs a constitutional overhaul, but that that may not be easy to achieve.
In one move that will make Parliament more democratic, Taiwan's highest court ruled recently that those aging legislators - unelected in decades - must resign by the end of next year. Opposition members want an earlier deadline.
President Lee said in March that he would revoke within about a year the Government's 40-year-old declaration of ''Communist rebellion'' on mainland China. Changing that condition, which vests the President with special powers, would require altering Taiwan's Constitution, and there was no consensus on how to revise it.
The opposition party is demanding that the Government scrap the Constitution and write a new one. And while the party's voice has been more influential than its 30,000 membership would suggest, it is not clear that it has much support on this issue.
Still, delegates agreed that constitutional changes are inevitable and some hoped the conference would deepen the sense of urgency.
''We can keep the momentum of reform, and not just of the Constitution,'' said Ma Ying-jeou, a Nationalist Party delegate and Cabinet-level official. ''The party structure has to be democratized to cope with new constitutional democracy.''
Probably the most delicate and emotional issue of the conference focused on Taiwan's policy toward mainland China. During the last couple of years, relations between China and Taiwan have warmed dramatically.

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July 5, 1990, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

HEALTH;
Personal Health

BYLINE: By Jane E. Brody

SECTION: Section B; Page 7, Column 4; National Desk

LENGTH: 1449 words

Sweltering summer days and school vacations prompt millions of Americans to head for the country or the shore, move to a cabin in the woods or take in the sights in different parts of the country. Most travel by car.
But some will not make it to their destinations and return safely. While there are many causes of accidents on the road, and alcohol figures prominently in half of them, public health experts are calling attention to a seriously underappreciated factor: sleepy drivers.
According to current estimates, more than one driver in five has fallen asleep at the wheel at least once, and sleeping at the wheel is a central factor in 200,000 to 400,000 traffic accidents each year. 
The circumstances vary widely, as these incidents show:
* After lunch on a hot, sunny afternoon, a 40-year-old woman found herself driving on the median of an Interstate highway, having somehow missed hitting a road repair truck she had not seen before falling asleep.
* At 11 P.M., a 60-year-old woman driving home after a long day at work and a late dinner with friends struck the rear end of a car that had stopped at a red light she never saw because she had dozed off half a block away.
* A young man who had taken medication to relieve some allergies was on his way to an afternoon picnic when he awoke suddenly to find his car rolling over in a ditch.
These drivers were lucky. No one was injured and only one car was damaged. Sleepy drivers are not always so lucky. For example, a 25-year-old New York State trooper just finishing his night shift at 3 A.M. died when his car flipped over after he fell asleep at the wheel.
Countless other sleepy drivers injure or kill not only themselves but also the occupants of other vehicles. Truck drivers are a particular risk. Sleep experts say that one-third of the one million truck drivers on the nation's highways may be too tired to stay awake while driving or to respond quickly enough to avert an accident.
People suffering from sleep apnea are also at high risk. The disorder involves periodic interruptions in breathing during sleep, with each interruption followed by a snorting snore as breathing resumes. Sleep apnea results in inordinate daytime fatigue, and people with this disorder are more likely than others to fall asleep at the wheel. They have five times more motor vehicle accidents than other people do, and are more likely to be at fault.
All other things being equal, elderly people are also more likely than others to doze off while driving, perhaps because their sleep habits tend to be more erratic and night sleep is often marred by insomnia.
 
Risky Conditions
To reduce the chances of becoming a highway statistic, you should know why drivers fall asleep and take appropriate precautions. Among the many factors experts have identified are these.
Insufficient sleep - Millions of Americans do not get enough sleep. The many demands and diversions of everyday life prompt millions to deliberately cut their nights short, said Dr. William C. Dement, director of the Sleep Disorders Clinic at Stanford University School of Medicine. They stay up late to socialize or watch television, and they rouse themselves with alarm clocks often hours before they would normally awaken. Then they use artificial stimulants, like caffeine, to mask their sleepiness during the day.
This chronic sleep debt acts as an internal sleeping pill, causing them to lose alertness or become sleepy soon after they get on the road. Motion is a notorious soporific (highly effective for inducing sleep from infancy onward) and modern highways can be hypnotic.
Shift work - The body's naturally sleepy times are from midnight to 7 A.M. and from 1 P.M. to 4 P.M. The afternoon period coincides with siesta time in many countries. Thus, late-shift workers usually suffer from sleep loss or fragmented sleep.
For truck drivers, the federally mandated four-hour sleep shifts for every eight hours of driving forces them to sleep and wake up at times that are not synchronized with their bodies' natural cycles. Thus, they can be sleepy when driving even if they have got enough hours of sleep in each 24-hour period.
Police officers, firefighters, emergency medical workers and others who work variable shifts are also highly vulnerable. In a survey of police officers, 80 percent said they had fallen asleep once a week while on the night shift. And shift workers have been found to have twice as many motor vehicle accidents as those who work a more natural 9-to-5 shift.
Food and drink - The soporific effects of a big meal or alcoholic beverages are well known. Yet millions get on the road after eating or drinking too much. And for those who start out sleep-deprived, even a small meal or one drink can induce sleep.
Carbohydrates - starches as well as sweet foods and drinks - are more likely than protein-rich foods to provoke sleepiness. Many people report that hot drinks are more sleep-inducing than the same beverages consumed cold. And milk and milk-based foods and drinks, which are rich in the sleep-inducing amino acid tryptophan, are well known for their relaxing effect.
Medications - Many common medications, particularly those often used in summer, can induce drowsiness or reduce alertness, coordination, motor skills and judgment. Among them are antihistamines (found in remedies for motion sickness and colds, as well as in allergy suppressants), sedatives, tranquilizers and antidepressants. Anti-anxiety drugs like Valium are often taken without realization of their sleep-inducing potential. Even some antibiotics occasionally induce drowsiness or fatigue.
The sedating effects of drugs are highly unpredictable. They can vary from person to person and even in the same person at different times. The amount of the dose, of course, plays a big role: the more of the drug that is taken, the greater the risk of drowsiness.
Also, certain drugs can adversely affect the alertness needed for safe driving without the users' realizing it because they do not feel sleepy. Even stimulant drugs can be a problem; while they do not make the driver sleepy, their euphoric effect can impair a driver's judgment.
Environment - Nearly every driver is aware of the hypnotic effects of Interstate highways, especially at night. But daytime driving on such roads can also be hypnotic, especially if it is hot or stuffy in the car.
Even the clothes a driver is wearing can have an adverse effect. A tight waistband or belt, for example, can result in shallow breathing and sleepiness.
 
What You Can Do
Before starting out on any drive, be sure you get enough sleep - not just the night before, but for several nights before departing.
Avoid eating big meals before or on a trip. While driving, snack on high-protein foods, just enough to stave off hunger. From time to time, drink a beverage that contains caffeine, but preferably not one that is sweet. The stimulant effects of one cup of coffee last for three hours or more.
Do not drink alcohol within three hours of driving. Some experts urge abstaining from alcohol the day before as well, since it can have long-lasting effects on alertness and judgment.
Create an environment that fosters alertness. Try not to drive between midnight and 7 A.M., or whenever you are normally asleep. Wear loose-fitting, comfortable clothing. Avoid tight-fitting underwear or hose that impairs circulation. Use sunglasses when driving in bright daylight. Keep the car as cool as possible; air-conditioning, though expensive, can be life-saving for summertime drivers. Play interesting tapes or tune into a radio program that captures your attention. If someone is in the car with you, engage in conversation.
Stop often - experts say once an hour - to stretch and walk around for a few minutes. If you feel the least bit sleepy, pull over and take a nap. Even 20 minutes of sleep can be refreshing. While driving, move your eyes around and wriggle your body from time to time.
Recognize and respond appropriately to the telltale signs of impending sleep. Have your eyes assumed a fixed stare or begun to close? Can you remember the last few miles of driving? Do you seem to be reacting slowly to changes in road conditions? Does your car drift toward one side of the road? This is the time to turn the wheel over to another driver or stop the car and nap.
Consider using a ''sleep alert'' device. It fits behind one ear and buzzes when your head tilts, as it probably would if you began to doze off.
Finally, set reasonable driving goals. As one Minnesota highway sign says, ''On the road as in baseball, what counts is how many times you make it home safely.''

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The New York Times

July 6, 1990, Friday, Late Edition - Final

Growth Hormone and the Drive for a More Youthful State

BYLINE: By NATALIE ANGIER

SECTION: Section A; Page 9, Column 1; National Desk

LENGTH: 1119 words

For the last 18 months or so Frederick McCullough has been like Popeye, or Tony the Tiger, or some other cartoon character with hyperbolic energy: shinnying up to the roof to put new concrete around the chimney, washing the aluminum siding around the house, and mowing and re-mowing the lawn.
At one point his wife, Rita, peered at her 65-year-old husband and told him his gray hair was turning black again.
''He does appear to have abnormal energy for a man his age,'' she said. ''He never complains of being sick. Every day he feels fine.'' 
Mrs. McCullough, who is 15 years his junior, added: ''I'm a lot younger, but I don't feel fine every day. I get up dragging sometimes, but he never does anymore.''
 
Some Indisputable Improvements
Mr. McCullough's hair color has probably not changed, and some of his vigor may be as much psychological as real, say researchers who are studying the effects of human growth hormone on aging. But what is indisputable are the improvements that have taken place in his muscle size, body fat, skin texture and other easily measured traits, all as a result of thrice-weekly injections of human growth hormone.
Mr. McCullough is one of 21 healthy men ranging in age from 61 to 81 who recently took part in a clinical trial examining the effects of growth hormone on older men.
Researchers said in a report published yesterday in The New England Journal of Medicine that six months of treatment with a genetically engineered version of the hormone reversed many of the changes in the body that are wrought by aging.
The men who received growth hormone gained almost 9 percent in lean body mass, dropped nearly 15 percent in body fat, regained a youthful thickness to their skin and had a spurt in important growth-promoting hormone in their blood. In many respects, the treatment cut almost 20 years from their bodies.
''The results are quite amazing,'' said Dr. Lester Cohn of the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in North Chicago, one of the investigators in the study. ''We're dealing with people with an average age of 70, who for 40 years had been losing muscle mass and mass in internal organs. Within a short period of time, through growth hormone replacement, we've moved their bodies backward,'' toward a more youthful state.
But researchers warned anybody who might be on the verge of storming a doctor's office in quest of human growth hormone that the hormone would probably be good primarily for those elderly people who are deficient in the compound, which is produced naturally by the pituitary gland at the base of the brain.
 
Low Output of Growth Hormone
They say that only a third of those over 65 have almost worthlessly low levels of human growth hormone; the men chosen for the study fall into that category. The other two-thirds have levels of the hormone that range from somewhat low to, in a few cases, surprisingly high.
As a general rule, growth hormone output begins to drop when people reach the age of about 30.
''Some elderly people continue to produce youthful amounts of growth hormone well into old age,'' said Dr. Daniel Rudman of the Medical College of Wisconsin and Veterans Affairs Medical Center of Milwaukee, the leading author on the report. ''For them, the risks of growth hormone treatment could outweigh the benefits.''
Researchers are not yet sure of all the long-term side effects of growth hormones, but they say an excess of growth hormone may lead to diabetes, high blood pressure, enlargment of the face and hands, heart problems and even cancer.
 
High Leukemia Rate in Children
In some studies, children with a hereditary form of growth hormone deficiency who have been given hormone replacement to help them grow seem to suffer a higher than normal rate of leukemia as a result of growth hormone injections, although researchers say that the statistics are equivocal.
Nevertheless, endocrinologists and gerontologists say the new results are dramatic and promising. The growth hormorne could prove of great benefit for frail, elderly people who need added muscle strength or help in recovering from an operation, experts say.
That was true for Robert Bensing, 72, another participant in the new study. A couple of years ago, before receiving growth hormone injections, he had cataract surgery and needed more than three weeks to recuperate.
Recently, while participating in the hormone experiment, he needed a second cataract operation, and was back up and driving his car again only a week after the operation.
 
Smoother Skin and Stronger Hands
He also says the skin on his face and hands is smoother, more pliant and less wrinkled than it was before, that he can open jars that once would have stymied him, and that he can work in his garden for several hours longer than in his pre-treatment days.
And, despite being only 4 feet 11 inches tall, he says he now walks quickly enough to cover ground more rapidly than younger and taller people. ''I get irritated when I'm walking behind somebody who is slow,'' he said.
His wife, Alice, who is 57, said: ''He's got more spree in his step. He's been looking fitter and trimmer, too.''
Researchers are now studying whether the gain in lean body mass that added bulk to both the muscles and vital organs like the liver, spleen and kidneys translates into real improvement in organ function. They also must determine whether the loss of fat tissue will help to stem or prevent heart disease, stroke and other diseases associated with obesity.
Nor do they know how long the body changes will last after growth hormone injections have been stopped. Treatment ended a year ago for the men in the new study but, while researchers are still compiling data on the follow-up studies, many of the improvements seem to be lingering.
 
Other Trials Are Under Way
Other trials of the effects of growth hormone on the elderly are under way at three other medical centers in the United States. Beyond experimental use, the recombinant drug is approved solely for the treatment of growth hormone deficiency in children.
''It's not the sort of thing that you can fill out at your local pharmacy,'' said Edward West, a spokesman for Eli Lilly and Company, a manufacturer of the drug. ''We've tried to restrict its use because we're worried that it may be misused.''
The medication is very expensive, costing about $14,000 a year, although Dr. Rudman and others predict that the price will come down if it proves useful on a broad scale for older people.
''Would I take the drug?'' said Dr. Cohn, the V.A. doctor in North Chicago. ''Well, I'm 67, so I guess I'm the right age. But I'm going to wait a bit longer to see what the studies show.''

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The New York Times

July 6, 1990, Friday, Late Edition - Final

Preserving Old Values In an Africa That's New

BYLINE: By RICHARD F. SHEPARD

SECTION: Section C; Page 10, Column 6; Weekend Desk

LENGTH: 269 words

Among the modern arts of Africa is film, and eight examples of modern African cinematography will be shown - one film at 4 P.M. and again at 6:30 every Saturday through Aug. 25 - at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Fifth Avenue and 82d Street.
The series, ''Focus on Africa,'' is being screened in conjunction with the exhibition ''The Art of Central Africa: Masterpieces from the Berlin Museum fur Volkerkunde,'' which is on view in the Rockefeller Wing through Nov. 4. 
The motion pictures from five African countries testify not only to the state of film in those nations but also to the current condition of their people. Among the themes considered are family and village life, the preservation of traditional values as city life threatens to extinguish them, stories out of history and romantic comedies.
The first of the films (Saturday) is a 1988 production from Burkina Faso, ''Yaaba,'' a story about an outcast old woman befriended by children in a desert village. Two other movies from Burkina Faso are scheduled: ''Zan Boko''(1988), on July 14, and ''Wend Kuuni'' (1982), on Aug. 11. Screenings from Senegal include ''Ceddo'' (1977), on July 21, and ''Jom'' (1981), on Aug. 25.
Others in the series are ''La Vie Est Belle'' (Zaire, 1987), on July 28; ''Yeelen'' (Mali, 1987) on Aug. 4, and the South African ''Mapantsula,'' on Aug. 18.
There is no extra charge for admission to the films, although tickets are required and may be obtained at the Uris Center Information Desk, near the 81st Street entrance.
Suggested museum admission: $6; students and the elderly, $3. Information: 879-5500.

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The New York Times

July 10, 1990, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

Study Links Alzheimer's and Heart Attacks

BYLINE: By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN

SECTION: Section C; Page 3, Column 1; Science Desk

LENGTH: 414 words

IN a surprising finding from a study in the Bronx, two of the most common ailments of the elderly, heart attacks and Alzheimer's disease, have been linked for the first time.
The study found that elderly women who had had heart attacks were five times as likely to develop Alzheimer's disease or other dementias as other women of the same age. A similar connection was not seen among men. 
The decade-long study of 442 men and women was conducted by researchers from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University. Their report, in the July issue of the journal Neurology, found that dementia was the most important serious illness that developed in men and women after the age of 75, ahead of heart attacks, strokes and cancer.
Alzheimer's is the leading type of dementia, and all dementias were three times as common among elderly women as among elderly men in the study.
The authors urged an aggressive research effort to seek biological explanations for the seeming link between Alzheimer's disease and heart attacks and for the greater susceptibility to dementia among women.
Dr. Miriam K. Aronson, a social gerontologist who headed the research team, said that if the findings were confirmed, dietary, anti-smoking and other steps to prevent heart attacks might have an added benefit: averting dementia.
She and other researchers said they could only speculate whether heart attacks led to the release of some unidentified substance that in turn damaged the brain.
The Einstein researchers found no evidence that a history of head injury or thyroid disease played a role in Alzheimer's disease, as other research has suggested.
The study was begun in 1980 to identify factors that might increase the risk of dementia. The Einstein researchers recruited volunteers who lived alone or with other family members in the northeastern Bronx.
People with neurological problems and chronic diseases were excluded. Only those who had good hearing and eyesight were selected so they could undergo repeated psychological and medical testing.
The findings were based on evaluations of 285 women and 157 men, a proportion reflecting the population of elderly people in the area. There were 75 cases of dementia in the group: 54 among women, 21 among men. Of the 35 who developed Alzheimer's, 29 were women and 6 were men. The relative risks of factors linked to dementia were based on statistical analyses and were reported in that way rather than in raw numbers.

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The New York Times

July 11, 1990, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

As Families Emigrate, Hong Kong's Elderly and Afflicted Are Left Stranded

BYLINE: By BARBARA BASLER, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section A; Page 6, Column 1; Foreign Desk

LENGTH: 1266 words

DATELINE: HONG KONG,

When Fung's family moved away from Hong Kong recently, they left her behind in a bleak, crowded Government home because Canada, their new country, would not accept the mentally retarded young woman.
Now Fung, who is 25 years old, has only one relative here, an aunt. ''Whenever the aunt comes to pay the bills, Fung cries and tries to hold her hand,'' said a worker in the Lai Yiu home.
As thousands of Hong Kong residents emigrate to escape the Chinese takeover of the colony in 1997, they are breaking with some of their most treasured traditions and beliefs. People brought up to cherish their young and honor their old are leaving behind not only their retarded children but their aging parents, who are now Hong Kong's ''elderly orphans.'' 
 
Desperation to Leave
The emigrating families are leaving behind family pets as well, the local humane society says. Emigration has disturbed even the dead, who are being dug up and moved to new family plots in faraway lands. The retarded, unwelcome in many countries, are left behind by parents worried about the fate of their other children and desperate to leave before the Communists come.
''To choose between children, that is no choice,'' said the mother of a 9-year-old retarded boy. ''It is the worst fate of all.''
The elderly, too, are left. With more than 1,000 people a week moving to Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United States, Hong Kong has seen a growing number of what social workers call ''elderly orphans,'' old people left alone when their families emigrate.
Joyce Yip, a spokeswoman for the Government's Social Welfare Department, said that when old people apply to live in Government centers, a social worker must fill out forms stating why their families are not taking care of them. ''The form gives categories to check such as 'All the children are working' or 'Bad arguments with family,' '' she said. In recent months, the Government added a new category to the form - ''Family has emigrated.''
In most cases, experts said, leaving the helpless and the old is a wrenching, heartbreaking decision, not a careless abandonment.
''People do not want to leave their old relatives,'' said Dr. Lee Jik-joen, a lecturer in social work at Chinese University. ''This is not the Chinese way. But the old ones say they do not want to start life all over again at age 65 or 70. The old ones are afraid to leave, and the younger ones are afraid to stay and so the family breaks apart.''
 
'She Missed Her Family'
''I know an old woman who stayed here when her family left and she died within a year,'' said Dr. Lee. ''She died because she missed her family. She was depressed and there was no one here to take care of her.''
The Social Services Department says more than 12,000 old people are awaiting places in Government homes. ''The Government still assumes that families will take care of the old, and now they also assume that if families emigrate, they will continue to send money to their elderly relatives,'' Dr. Lee said. ''That is fine if the relative has his own home and can care for himself. But over the years, these people will need more and more care. What happens then?''
Ms. Yip said there were no figures on the number of old or retarded people left by emigrating families.
Dr. Lee said the colony was ill-prepared to take care of those people. ''That's because this is basically a lame-duck Government,'' she said. ''In seven more years, these people will be the problem of Beijing.''
For the mentally retarded who must remain here, the choices are just as bleak. ''We have a hotline where families can call about services for the mentally handicapped, and more and more families call begging for help because they are emigrating and cannot take their relative with them,'' said Andrew Kung, an administrator at the home where Fung lives. ''This is very, very hard for a Chinese family, because they are very close.''
 
Canada's Tight Restrictions
Canada, the top choice for Hong Kong Chinese emigrants, has tight laws barring anyone who might become a burden to the state because of health. The retarded are routinely rejected as ''medically inadmissible.''
Generally, Canada will deny an entire family entrance if one member is mentally handicapped. ''We do not divide families,'' a Canadian spokesman said, a sentiment echoed by an Australian Consulate official here. But in very rare cases, Canada permits such a family to immigrate for ''compelling humanitarian reasons.''
The United States Consulate here said that the health of one member would not be sufficient cause for rejecting an entire family and that rules against admitting a mentally handicapped person could be waived in the interest of family unity. Still, parents here are fearful and skeptical. So some simply lie and omit the fact that they have a retarded relative in the family.
''I know so many families in my son's school who want to emigrate but who are having problems because of their children,'' said Julie Lee, who is the mother of two boys, one of whom, 9-year-old Yuen-chung, has Down Syndrome. Mrs. Lee and her husband, a civil servant, have applied, as a family, to the United States, Singapore and England.
''We will never leave Yuen-chung,'' she said. ''If nothing works out and we are still here after 1997, we will send our other son away to live with relatives in the United States. But we will not leave Yuen-chung.''
 
Children in Homes for Aged
Mr. Kung said that in the 10 homes run by his agency with Government support, there were at least a dozen mentally retarded young people who had been left by families who had emigrated. And they are the lucky ones, because they are in special homes.
He said some families were forced to put their children in private homes for the elderly, places where ''someone lines up beds in a room.''
Jonathan Chamberlain, chairman of the Down Syndrome Association of Hong Kong, said some families faced with such choices ''have taken their child back to their ancestral village in China to live with relatives.''
''They will emigrate, but pay the relatives to care for the child,'' he said.
Yan Yan, another resident of the Lai Yiu center, waits by the front gate of the home every Friday, the day when families come to visit. Yan Yan's parents emigrated to Australia in May, but before they could go they had to sign a paper pledging they would not try to bring her with them.
Now, Yan Yan's sister comes to visit when she can, Mr. Kung said. ''If the sister cannot come, Yan Yan still waits,'' he said. ''She stands by the gate, and when we take her inside she stands in the corridor. She will not eat that day or that night, and sometimes not even the next day.'' Mr. Kung said he worried because soon Yan Yan's sister would emigrate too, and no one would visit.
 
'Export' of Coffins
If some emigrants are leaving the living behind, others are taking their dead with them. One funeral director said that in past years he exported two or three coffins or burial urns a month, but now routinely sends 10 a month.
The Government said there were 1,647 applications to remove bodies from Hong Kong last year, an increase of 51 percent over the year before. Relatives, some buried for 60 years, are cremated here and flown to the emigrant home, or exhumed and transported in coffins for reburial.
The reasons for disturbing the dead vary. Some emigrants say they do not want their relatives buried in land ruled by Chinese Communists. Others want to be able to honor their dead properly, cleaning their graves and taking offerings.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Many Hong Kong residents hurrying to leave the colony before it is turned over to the Chinese are taking the remains of dead relatives with them. Funeral directors like Robert Leung ship the exhumed remains overseas, often in traditional Chinese coffins, background. (Marc Fallander for The New York Times)

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July 11, 1990, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

OBSERVER;
Backward Flow The Years

BYLINE: By Russell Baker

SECTION: Section A; Page 19, Column 1; Editorial Desk

LENGTH: 744 words

At last it seems possible to get younger. Growth-hormone injections have done the trick for a test group of men aged 61 to 81, according to last week's science news. Practically all of them perked up noticeably, regaining scientifically measurable amounts of the mustard commonly associated with younger men.
The press, always ill equipped to cope with good news, made very little fuss over the announcement. There were the inevitable references to ''the fountain of youth'' and the usual reminders that it would take a lot of data before anybody could be sure the injections don't have evil side effects. 
Their cost was also heavily emphasized. Something around $20,000 per year was the figure I saw most often. Why this should seem an exorbitant price for rolling back old age was never explained.
Sure, aspirin is a lot cheaper, but it can't stop you from growing hair in your ears either, can it? I know New Yorkers who pay more than $20,000 a year to live in apartments hardly bigger than dog houses.
I heard an absurd commentary to the effect that well-adjusted people would surely rather ''grow old gracefully'' than take the chemical route back to vigor. I forget the name of the young woman who uncorked this thigh-slapper; what I remember is that she was a young woman.
What other kind could philosophize so glibly about growing old ''gracefully''? I have seen people grow old and have done a little of it myself. It is an extremely hard thing to do ''gracefully.''
Never mind June Allyson's insouciance in those TV commercials about splendid new diapers American ingenuity has created for senior citizens; it must be extremely hard to be incontinent ''gracefully.'' (Incidentally, it must also be very hard to be patronized by twerps, twits and politicians as ''senior citizens.'') It takes very young people with their profound ignorance of the experience to believe in the pleasures of ''growing old gracefully,'' just as it takes very young people to write the best stories about dying beautifully. (See Ernest Hemingway's early books.) Youth's inexperience of life predisposes it to this kind of romantic nonsense when it strains for philosophy.
Let us not, however, overlook the obvious fact that the press people conveying the growth-hormone news must have been appalled by it. They are in a very competitive business. They have hopes that nature will do its worst, thus enabling them someday to replace the old people at the top - columnists, boss editors, TV anchors.
It must have distressed them to learn that growth hormones can now keep these old birds going on and on. No wonder the stories so far have emphasized the possibly deadly side effects and the price, which these young poorly paid news people think is outrageous.
Outrageous? Does anybody in the network news departments really think Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings or Dan Rather is going to turn down eternal youth because it costs $20,000 a year? They probably pay their barbers more.
Of course I don't want to speak for Tom, Peter and Dan, but if any youngsters around a certain Times Square printing plant are composing letters urging me to discover the delights of growing old gracefully, you are hereby urged to forget it, kids.
My own naturally selfish disposition to start getting younger every day foretells, I fear, a possibly nasty new political problem. If a fine, decent, loving person refuses to ''grow old gracefully'' so the next generation can have its day, what of the mean-spirited and selfish multitudes now holding power in America?
I can foresee them clamoring so desperately for age-reversal shots that they drive the price beyond the reach of the next generation. Even worse, beyond my reach.
I can foresee an era when these swinish men have driven the price to $200,000 a year. By that time, having taken the shots for years, I will probably be desperate enough to pay any price, though it means sticking up all-night convenience stores.
At such prices, however, I will no longer be able to afford the injections needed for my dear little grandchildren. And of course I will want to keep them from aging. It would be ludicrous for me to look and feel 27 if my grandchildren were stooped, creaky and wearing June Allyson's wonderful diapers.
In the long run I suppose the Germans and Japanese would probably be the only people rich enough to afford to get younger. Of course, come to think of it, it's been like that for several years now.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

TYPE: Op-Ed

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July 11, 1990, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Residents Worry As Suspect, 95, Returns Home

BYLINE: By DONATELLA LORCH

SECTION: Section B; Page 3, Column 1; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 773 words

Last month, the police say, a 95-year-old Navy veteran entered an elderly neighbor's apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and bludgeoned her to death - thus becoming one of the oldest murder suspects in the city's history.
Now, the man, Oliver Barre, has returned to his apartment, charged with murder but free without bail pending a grand jury decision. His return has unleashed a torrent of emotion in his building at 235 West 102d Street.
Many tenants in the stylish co-op building are worried that a murderer is stalking their halls and want Mr. Barre put in some sort of custody. More than 100 have signed a petition to that effect, court records show. 
But many also say they would feel guilty about having what they describe as ''an old-style gentleman'' kicked out of the building where he has lived for nearly 30 years. The former World War I torpedoman appears to have no family, they say.
 
'Such a Gentleman'
''He was always such a gentleman,'' Maria Mesa, a neighbor said. ''We exchanged Christmas cards and he always talked to you as if he was a normal person. But where is the law? Where is the justice?'' The police said Mr. Barre killed Norma Marks, an 88-year-old widow and a friend of his, on June 16 in her apartment. But Mr. Barre's lawyer, John Lewis, said he was acting in self-defense.
Mr. Lewis said Mr. Barre, whom he described as legally blind, was attacked by Mrs. Marks after she invited him into her apartment. He was forced by the narrow entranceway to leave his wheel chair in the hallway and followed her inside, feeling his way along the wall, Mr. Lewis said.
Mrs. Marks then suddenly tried to strangle him and they both fell to the ground thrashing at each other, Mr. Lewis said. Mr. Barre hit her with a therapy bar that he carried to exercise a recently broken wrist, he said.
 
Orders From Husband's Ashes
Neighbors said Mrs. Marks, who lost her husband two years ago, was unsteady on her feet, slightly stooped and had had operations on both hips. She lived two floors above Mr. Barre, who shared an apartment with an 88-year-old woman.
Police have a different version of what led to the killing. They said Mr. Barre claimed that Mrs. Marks had attacked him on orders from the ashes of her deceased husband, which had told her to kill his roommate.
Lieut. Raymond O'Donnell, a police spokesman, said that on the day of the killing, Mr. Barre confronted Mrs. Marks, accusing her of poisoning more than 15 senior citizens in the building, and of hexing his roommate and practicing voodoo. He then hit her with the therapy bar, which an officer described as ''more like a lead pipe.''
Neighbors on his floor described Mr. Barre as sweet and quiet. Scoffing at police reports from other neighbors that he fondled elderly women in the building, they said he only touched them to help them up stairs or through doorways.
 
Hiding Agents in Room
However, some said he had delusions. A woman in an apartment on the floor said he had once accused her of hiding Federal agents in her living room to spy on him.
At his arraignment on June 17 in Criminal Court in Manhattan, Judge Laura Drager overruled the prosecutor's request that Mr. Barre undergo psychiatric evaluation and released him without bail. Mr. Barre has testified before a grand jury, Mr. Lewis said.
The tenants of the marble-lobbied doorman building were so upset at his release that a guard was stationed outside his apartment. On July 2 a State Supreme Court judge, George F. Roberts, ordered a 24-hour-a-day health care attendant for Mr. Barre.
Crimes by people of Mr. Barre's age are so uncommon that police and corrections office do not have statistics for criminals over the age of 65. If he is convicted of murder, the minimum sentence is 15 years to life.
 
'He's a Minus Two'
William McCarthy, the associate director of the Criminal Justice Center, said the judge did the right thing in releasing Mr. Barre.
''In connection with all the things threatening society, on a scale of one to ten, this guy is so pathetic, he's a minus two,'' he said.
It is unclear what Mr Barre did after he left the Navy, where he served as a torpedo man during World War I. Mr. Lewis called him the the oldest living submariner in the United States, and said he had been a goodwill ambassador for the State Department to Middle Eastern countries. In his living room are photos and letters signed by Winston Churchill and Saudi Arabia's King Faisal, among others.
''This is for him the most appalling tragedy,'' Mr. Lewis said. ''He knows someone is dead. But these are things that he did in self-defense.''

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Oliver Barre, 95 years old, charged with murder, in the hallway at his West 102d Street apartment. His release without bail has unleashed a torrent of emotion in the building. The woman at left was unidentified. (Neal Boenzi/The New York Times)

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July 11, 1990, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Bidder for Hotel On W. 42d St. To Be Examined

BYLINE: By DENNIS HEVESI

SECTION: Section B; Page 4, Column 6; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 403 words

New York City officials said yesterday that they would investigate allegations that a group that has bid to run a former welfare hotel on West 42d Street had collected rent at two buildings in Brooklyn even after it had been ordered to relinquish control because of poor maintenance.
''If those allegations are true,'' said Jeffrey L. Carples, deputy commissioner for adult services in the Human Resources Administration, ''we would certainly reconsider'' awarding the $1.5 million-a-year contract on the Holland Hotel to the bidder, the Central Brooklyn Urban Development Corporation.
The corporation, headed by Sylvester Leaks, was the lone private agency to propose to run the city-owned 320-room building between Eighth and Ninth Avenues. The chairman of Community Planning Board 4, Peter Obletz, said no other group had submitted a proposal because of the difficulties in managing a hotel of the Holland's size. 
In 1983, an article in The Daily News said yesterday, officials ordered Mr. Leaks to relinquish the management of two federally subsidized buildings in Brooklyn, the Prospect Arms and the President Arms, after an audit had found major maintenance problems like vermin and malfunctioning elevators. In 1986, a report by the city's Housing Development Corporation said Mr. Leaks and his organization had continued to collect rents despite the order.
''That's not true,'' Mr. Leaks said last night. ''I am still the manager of the buildings, as well as the owner. I, myself, decided that I could not handle the paperwork and hired another agent to handle the rent.''
The general counsel for the Housing Development Corporation, Martin Siroka, said, ''The company Mr. Leaks headed was switched as the managing agent.'' He added that complete records could not immediately be retrieved and that he could not say precisely why the switch had been ordered. ''There were clearly complaints,'' he said.
Mr. Leaks said the allegations were from civic groups and a faction on Community Planning Board 4 that did not want ''300 black and Hispanic males in the Holland Hotel.''
''And they are using me, false allegations, out and out lies, to divert attention from their real goal,'' he said. ''They want the city to make it a senior citizens' hotel.''
''We are exploring some percentage of the beds to be used by other clients,'' Mr. Carples said. ''But the majority would be for the frail elderly.''

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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July 11, 1990, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Court in Illinois Allows Cutoff of Man's Food

BYLINE: AP

SECTION: Section B; Page 6, Column 6; National Desk

LENGTH: 229 words

DATELINE: SPRINGFIELD, Ill., July 10

The Illinois Supreme Court cleared the way today for a stroke victim's guardian to seek withdrawal of the food and water that is keeping the patient alive.
The state's highest court, by a vote of 4 to 2, overturned a Cook County circuit court ruling that blocked attempts to withdraw food and water from the stroke victim, Sidney Greenspan, 82 years old. It ordered the lower court to hold further hearings on the matter.
Mr. Greenspan suffered a stroke in 1984 that left him unconscious and dependent on a feeding tube inserted in his stomach for water and nutrition. The Chicago man also has Alzheimer's disease, which is progressively causing further damage to his brain, according to briefs filed with the court.
The Cook County Public Guardian, Patrick Murphy, went to court in October 1988 to ask that the feeding tube be withdrawn. Mr. Murphy, a county official who acts as an advocate for the elderly, the indigent and others, argued that Mr. Greenspan had no chance of recovery and would not have wanted to be kept alive in a vegetative state.
A circuit judge refused the request, holding that food and water could not be withdrawn if death would result from starvation and dehydration alone. But the Supreme Court said life-sustaining treatment may be withdrawn if, among other things, the patient's death would be imminent in the absence of such treatment.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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July 12, 1990, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

Jury Finds Nursing Home Liable for Routine Neglect

BYLINE: By TAMAR LEWIN

SECTION: Section A; Page 1, Column 3; National Desk

LENGTH: 1518 words

A Federal jury in Mississippi has awarded damage verdicts to families of nursing home patients whose last years were blighted by neglect at a home run by the nation's largest nursing home chain.
Although a few nursing homes have been made to pay multimillion-dollar damages for deaths caused by isolated acts of gross negligence, lawyers say the Mississippi cases are a breakthrough, because they involve the kind of routine neglect and abuse that do not kill but cause great suffering for thousands of nursing home patients every day.
 
Modest Sums, Large Issues
''They got damages for what happens to residents in maybe 60 percent of the nation's nursing homes,'' said Trish Nemore of the National Senior Citizens Law Center, a nonprofit advocacy group in Washington. ''It's a very important case, because it doesn't involve spectacular outrages, but the much more commonplace things older people are subjected to as part of daily life in a nursing home, like not having your call bell answered or not getting cleaned up after an accident. They've succeeded in making a case on poor quality of life.'' 
The cases, decided in March and now on appeal, involve Beverly Enterprises, which operates more than 800 nursing homes across the country. The jury, in Jackson, Miss., found that Beverly had not provided adequate care to two former residents of Southwest Extended Care in McComb, Miss., in the mid-80's. It ordered the company to pay $250,000 to each family.
The sums awarded to the families of the residents, Margie Berryhill and Frederick Bolian, both deceased, are not enormous. But advocates for the elderly say the Mississippi verdicts are a legal breakthrough that, if upheld and imitated, could lead to vast improvement in nursing home care.
The jury in Mississippi, finding that the nursing home had ''failed to provide reasonable care'' to the two patients, assigned dollar amounts to the different kinds of neglect they had endured: $50,000 for leaving Mrs. Berryhill in her own excrement, $25,000 for verbal abuse of her by the staff, $15,000 for not bathing Mr. Bolian, $15,000 for keeping him in a smelly room, $60,000 for failing to give him the physical therapy he needed and so on, coming to a total of $125,000 each.
The jury further found that Beverly Enterprises' failure to provide good care was so ''willful, wanton, malicious or callous'' as to merit another $125,000 in punitive damages to each claimant.
Beverly Enterprises has asked Federal District Judge Henry Wingate to overturn the verdicts or hold a new trial. Oral arguments on that motion are to be next week.
''We don't accept the jury findings,'' said William J. Ihle, a spokesman for Beverly Enterprises. ''We feel the quality of care was good in the home. These are very unfortunate cases, very emotional and also subjective. We felt very strongly that the evidence did not support the verdict, and quite frankly we expected to win.''
Mr. Ihle said Beverly had introduced a program to assure good care since the Mississippi cases were brought, and added that in the first nine months of last year the Federal Health Care Financing Administration, which regulates the industry, had issued only half as many citations to Beverly Enterprises' homes as to other nursing homes, on average.
Advocates for the patients at the nursing home in McComb acknowledge that it is far from the worst in the country. Even nursing homes struggling to provide consistently good care face a daunting task, given high staff turnover and the condition of residents, who are often incontinent and demented. And that, the advocates say, is precisely the problem.
 
Much Stress, Little Training
''I know that this was not a particularly terrible nursing home,'' said Jack Harang, the lawyer who brought the cases against Beverly. ''These things happen at lots of nursing homes where you put minimum-wage employees to work under maximum stress conditions with minimal training.''
Mr. Harang, a maritime and personal injury lawyer in Metairie, La., had never handled a nursing home case before a lawyer friend, Mack Brabham of McComb, consulted him about the complaints of Alice Johnson, whose mother was a patient at Southwest Extended Care.
Mr. Harang said Mrs. Johnson complained that her mother ''had been beaten, oversedated, sprayed down with water, restrained unnecessarily and had her food put where she couldn't reach it.''
He added, ''My first reaction, truthfully, was to wonder if these things could really be going on.''
And although Mrs. Johnson's stories, and worse ones involving other residents, were corroborated by a former nurse's aide at the home, Mr. Harang said, the lawyers at first had little idea how to proceed with the case because there was so little legal grounding for claims based on quality of life.
Ruben Krisztal, a Kansas lawyer who handles litigation against nursing homes, said such lawsuits were usually brought only in cases of wrongful death. ''And a lot of lawyers even avoid them,'' he went on, ''because damages are based on age, life expectancy and lost earnings. And with a 94-year-old woman who died of bedsores caused by neglect, that won't work very well unless you can get punitive damages.''
 
Months Poring Over Charts
But Mr. Harang's wife, Suzanne, had a special reason for urging her husband and Mr. Brabham to take Mrs. Johnson's case: She is a former director of nurses at a Louisiana nursing home who quit her job in 1979 after complaining about the abuse of patients and being told that abuse was a fact of life in nursing homes.
Mrs. Harang became an active participant in the case, spending months poring over charts and records from the home, and helping her husband and Mr. Brabham prepare a lawsuit against Beverly Enterprises.
''No one's going to write in a chart that someone was beaten,'' she said. ''But if you look closely you can tell that there was a broken ankle that wasn't treated for a week, or overmedication, or too much weight loss, and you can put together a picture of what might be going on.
''And in most places where the care is bad, there's someone on the staff who isn't too happy about it, and might come forward.''
In the investigation of Southwest, Mrs. Harang heard ever more gruesome stories, later detailed in the legal papers, about residents allowed to eat their own feces, or tied down so tightly their hands turned blue. She had made only a few visits to the nursing home before Beverly Enterprises got a protective order barring her from the premises, along with anyone else working on the case.
Since Beverly is a nationwide corporation. Mr. Harang and Mr. Brabham filed their case in Federal court. At first they sued on behalf of all residents of Southwest, but in 1986 the court refused to hear the case as a class action, saying the complaints were too dissimilar. That left the lawyers with 18 individual cases against Beverly Enterprises. Two have been settled in the range of $6,000 to $15,000, Mr. Harang said. Three have been tried: before the two $250,000 verdicts, there was a $15,000 verdict. And 13 remain to be heard.
 
'A Lot of Poor Care Out There'
The verdicts have not gone unnoticed. Mrs. Harang is consulting with several lawyers filing similar suits in different states, and Mr. Harang is involved in suits against about 10 other nursing homes.
''We haven't been able to get the kind of enforcement we need out of the regulatory process, and we're hopeful that this kind of litigation will help,'' said Elma Holder, executive director of the National Citizens' Coalition for Nursing Home Reform, in Washington. ''We know there's a lot of poor care out there, and it's a big step forward to establish that if you neglect people over a long period of time, it amounts to abuse and you can collect damages.''
No one knows exactly much neglect and abuse takes place in nursing homes. But a study published last year in The Gerontologist, a journal on issues of aging, said it was distressingly pervasive.
The study, by Karl Pillemer of the University of New Hampshire, reported that 36 percent of 577 nursing home aides and nurses interviewed had seen at least one incident of physical abuse in the last year. Six percent said they had themselves used excessive restraints on a patient, and 2 percent reported hitting a patient with an object or trying to do so. Eighty-one percent said they had seen at least one incident of psychological abuse, like threatening to hit a patient or denying food or privileges.
''A lot of families are scared to come forward and complain, because they're afraid of retaliation,'' said Mrs. Harang. ''They may not take their family member out, because moving is traumatic, they may not have found any nursing home that's better, or they may feel the devil they know is better than the one they don't know.
''Some of the people calling me now just need to hear that good care is possible and it's not crazy to fight for it. The nursing home may say their mother bruises easily and there's nothing they can do. I say they can handle her more gently.''

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: A nursing home neglect case hailed as a legal landmark was argued by Jack Harang. His wife, Suzanne, a former director of nurses at a nursing home, examined patients' charts and records to help him prepare. (Matt Anderson for The New York Times) (pg. A18)

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July 12, 1990, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

New Therapy Shown to Fight Bone Loss in Elderly

BYLINE: By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN

SECTION: Section A; Page 1, Column 2; National Desk

LENGTH: 1057 words

The largest study ever conducted on osteoporosis has confirmed that a new treatment can strengthen elderly women's brittle bones and greatly reduce the risk of painful and deforming spinal fractures.
While the new therapy has not been directly compared with existing treatments, which are hormones, it appears to offer substantial advantages over them. It can apparently increase bone mass more than the hormones, and reduce fractures more than an experimental treatment, sodium fluoride.
The treatment involves a drug, etidronate, taken for 14 days; patients then take calcium for 76 days either in the diet or as a supplement. 
 
Bone Loss Is Reversed
In a study of more than 400 postmenopausal women, the regimen reversed the gradual loss of bone that characterizes osteoporosis. Women taking the treatment had half the number of spinal fractures of patients who did not receive the drug. Etidronate (pronounced eh-TID-ro-nate) halted the bone loss by slowing the natural process of bone removal; the calcium helped build bone mass. No significant adverse effects of the treatment were found.
But the study did not find evidence that the regimen prevented broken hips, which are a less frequent but more serious hazard of osteoporosis, which afflicts an estimated 15 million Americans, mostly women.
The research is being reported today in The New England Journal of Medicine.
The etidronate-calcium regimen would presumably also benefit men with osteoporosis, Dr. Nelson B. Watts of Emory University, who headed the team from seven medical centers that did the study, said in an interview.
In an editorial in the same issue of the journal, Dr. B. Lawrence Riggs of the Mayo Clinic and Foundation in Rochester, Minn., said etidronate was ''a welcome new option'' for treatment of osteoporosis. ''In contrast to the pessimistic view held by many only a few years ago, it is now clear that postmenopausal osteoporosis can be treated effectively,'' he said.
 
Licensed for Another Use
Etidronate has not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for treating osteoporosis. But the drug has been marketed for several years for treating another bone condition, Paget's disease. The drug's maker is Norwich Eaton Pharmaceuticals Inc., a Procter & Gamble division. Norwich Eaton has said it plans to apply to the F.D.A. for approval to market etidronate for osteoporosis.
Doctors are free to prescribe a licensed drug for a new use, and it is expected that many will prescribe etidronate for osteoporosis in the wake of the new report.
Dr. Watts said he expected etidronate, if licensed for osteoporosis, to become the treatment of choice for the bone disease because of its safety, effectiveness and ease of administration.
Dr. Riggs said that while etidronate was ''a major new advance'' that would be widely used, it would be premature to say it would be the leading treatment. He said he expected many doctors and patients to continue to use estrogen and calcitonin in fashioning treatment according to each patient's needs.
 
Two Other Therapies
The Federal drug agency has licensed two other therapies for osteoporosis, the hormones estrogen and calcitonin. The hormones are used to prevent bone loss; by contrast, the new treatment appears to strengthen weakened bone, the researchers said.
Two other experimental therapies are also being studied: sodium fluoride and an intranasal form of calcitonin. Sodium fluoride has been shown to build bone mass, but the bone that results is structurally flawed and weaker than normal.
Other experts and the National Osteoporosis Foundation in Washington urged comparative studies of the drugs to determine which was most effective.
Dr. Watts said the etidronate regimen would cost about $300 a year, versus about $2,500 a year for the regimen with injected calcitonin.
 
Cause of Disease Unknown
The researchers called etidronate the first regimen to reduce fractures from osteoporosis by building bone mass.
Osteoporosis results from an imbalance of the complex process of breaking down old bone and rebuilding new bone; the cause of the imbalance is not known. With age, particularly after menopause, the breakdown can exceed formation, leading to brittle bones that are susceptible to painful fractures.
Usually the disease produces no symptoms until weakened bones break. The spinal vertebrae may collapse and cause a deformity known as ''dowager's hump.'' When someone takes a step, the brittle hip may break. Complications from broken hips are a major cause of illness and death in older women.
Normally cells known as osteoclasts remove old bone, leaving pitlike depressions that are filled with new bone formed by cells called osteoblasts. The process takes about 90 days, and that is why the researchers designed the etidronate-calcium regimen for that length of time.
With etidronate, osteoclasts leave shallower pits, allowing osteoblasts to increase bone mass, the researchers said.
Dr. Watts's team undertook the new study lasting two years to clarify conflicting results from earlier studies of etidronate that lasted less than a year. His team said the lack of benefit found in some earlier studies of etidronate might have reflected the way the drug was taken. Because etidronate is poorly absorbed in the intestine, the drug must be taken on an empty stomach an hour before meals or two hours after them.
 
Thinnest Bones Benefit
The new study involved 423 postmenopausal women who had suffered one to four fractures of the spine.
The regimen's most dramatic effect was among women who had the thinnest bones at the time the study began. In this group, the rates of crushed vertebrae were reduced by two-thirds, to 42.3 per 1,000 patient years from 132.7.
In the overall group, the number of new fractures was reduced to 29.5 per 1,000 patient years from 62.9.
The response to treatment was not uniform. For reasons that are not clear, improvement in the bone mass of the hip and wrist did not mirror that in the vertebrae, the researchers said.
The researchers said they were continuing the study to determine whether other regimens would be more effective and whether benefits would persist longer than two years. Another concern is whether the drug will produce adverse effects that show up only after use for many years.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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July 12, 1990, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

Rapes of 3 Elderly Harlem Women Linked

SECTION: Section B; Page 2, Column 1; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 119 words

The rapes of three elderly women in Harlem have been linked to the same attacker, the police said yesterday.
The police said the man has been linked to four rapes, with three of the victims over the age of 70. 
In the last attack, on July 8, he raped a 78-year-old woman and her 35-year-old mentally disabled daughter, the police said.
All the rapes occurred between 4 and 6:30 in the morning in the homes of the victims. The rapist entered the apartments by climbing through open windows, the police said.
'''He doesn't take anything,'' a police spokesman said. ''He doesn't say anything and he isn't armed. He doesn't beat them up.''
None of the women have been able to give a description of the man.

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July 14, 1990, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

CONSUMER'S WORLD;
Concerns Grow About Marketing of Medical Alert Systems

BYLINE: By BARRY MEIER

SECTION: Section 1; Page 46, Column 1; Style Desk

LENGTH: 1424 words

The growing use of personal emergency-alert systems, devices of potential benefit to millions of older people, is giving unscrupulous businesses a chance to prey on some of the nation's most vulnerable consumers.
The systems - which consist of a push-button device, typically worn around the neck, that transmits a telephone alert to a monitoring station - can summon help in a health emergency like a fall or heart attack when the user can't make a telephone call.
About 350,000 people use such systems, and growth is projected at 15 percent annually in coming years, according to Lifeline Systems, which says it is the nation's largest supplier.
As sales increase, concerns are growing. Recently, hundreds of people in Baltimore were sold systems, some of which were useless because the supplier did not pay service charges to the monitoring station that received the signals. Elsewhere, some marketers are using scare tactics to sell devices at high prices, several law-enforcement officials said. Though most systems appear reliable, they may not work well under some conditions. 
 
'Not a Problem Industry'
 ''This is not a problem industry in that the units usually work well,'' said John Nethercut, an Assistant Attorney General in Maryland. ''But it is a dangerous industry, because the consumers tend to be old and scared and vulnerable.''
The alert systems are a product for the times. As the average age of the population rises, more older Americans are living at home, often alone and in need of a reassuring link to the outside world. And with the growing emphasis on home health care, hospitals are also turning to alert systems for patients to use after they have been discharged.
''These systems give confidence to older people and confidence to their middle-aged children,'' said Lee Norrgard, an investigative analyst for the American Association of Retired Persons in Washington. The association encourages the use of alert systems but does not recommend a particular one, he said.
The features of competing systems vary, but they typically rely on a small radio transmitter, a computer chip and a monitoring station. When activated, the transmitter sends a radio signal to the chip, which is in a console by a telephone. The chip dials a monitoring station, where an operator summons emergency assistance. Some companies also provide two-way radio communication between subscribers and a monitoring station.
 
Concern About Marketing
 Some industry executives acknowledged in interviews that there are problems in the way some companies advertise and market their services.
 ''There are a few companies out there that are preying on people's fears,'' said Steven Garson, a marketing manager for Lifeline Systems, whose headquarters are in Watertown, Mass.
 Lifeline and some other companies offer their products through hospitals at monthly rental fees of $25 to $50. But some companies promote their products in television commercials depicting old people in life-threatening emergencies.
Two systems promoted on television are those of Lifecall Systems of Camden, N.J., and Life Alert Emergency Response of Chatsworth, Calif. Lifecall's system can be purchased for $1,200 to $2,000, depending on the length of the monitoring contract, while Life Alert's costs $2,000 to $4,000, with monitoring extra, officials of the companies said.
Some companies have sold the units through ''boiler room'' operations. Last year, a company known as Emergency Alert Center went to mailing-list brokers to get the names of hundreds of older women who lived alone in the Baltimore area, said Mr. Nethercut, of the Attorney General's office. The company quickly sold more than 200 units for $1,295 each, including monitoring service for three years.
''The salesmen basically told people that if they had an emergency and didn't have the system, they'd be dead,'' Mr. Nethercut said.
Those who did buy the system quickly found out through disconnect notices that Emergency Alert was not paying the monitoring company. And when the company sent out new computer chips to connect the users with a different monitoring service, many clients could not determine how to install them. Nearly a year later, some Baltimore residents who purchased the units still have no connection to any monitoring service.
''They are out to make suckers and paupers out of us,'' said Helen Talbott, 69 years old, a purchaser.
Officials of Emergency Alert and a successor company, Health Watch Systems, agreed in April to stop doing business in Maryland and said they would pay $107,000 in fines, largely for refunds to people who bought the system, Mr. Nethercut said.
Lifecall Systems, whose system is promoted on television, was investigated by the Federal Trade Commission after dozens of its franchised distributors accused the company of making fraudulent claims about their earnings prospects.
Lifecall filed for bankruptcy-court protection in October 1987. Records in Federal Bankruptcy Court in Camden, N.J., show that the company earned about $18 million between 1985 and 1987 through the nationwide sale of more than 4,700 Lifecall franchises.
To settle F.T.C. charges of misrepresentation in franchise sales, Lifecall, without acknowledging any wrongdoing, agreed to refrain from such practices in the future, the court records show. Morris B. Levin, a former president of the company, also agreed to pay the F.T.C. a fine of $150,000, the records show. The agreement is still subject to approval by the Justice Department.
 
Some Complaints From Sellers
 This year the company reorganized, with many of its activities assumed by its largest franchisee, Emergency Response People Inc. Both companies have headquarters in Camden. Mr. Levin is a consultant to Emergency Response, with an annual salary of $150,000, bankruptcy records show.
The records also show that several franchise operators complained about the system's effectiveness. One, Melvin Jones, a mail carrier in Jacksonville, Ill., said in an interview that he was unable get several units to work in 1987 when demonstrating them for a potential buyer.
''If it doesn't work one time it's a problem, because people may only need to use it once,'' said Mr. Jones, who said he no longer sold the system.
Richard M. Brooks, Lifecall's president, said the system works well, although he said franchisees have sometimes had problems installing it properly. ''The product saves lives every day of the week,'' he said.
Another television marketer, Life Alert Emergency Response, has also drawn complaints, about both the operation of its system and its sales techniques, according to Daryl Roberts, a deputy district attorney in Napa County, Calif. He said his office was investigating the complaints. Mark Turenshine, the company's general manager, said the system worked well and noted that, by law, customers had the right to cancel the sale within three days and get their money back.
Some industry executives acknowledged that certain conditions - like the thickness of apartment walls or the materials used in a building's construction - might limit a transmitter's range, which is typically about 200 feet.
''There is no way of predicting how a unit will work until a consumer tests it in their environment,'' said Mr. Garson of Lifeline.
So far, little is known about the comparative abilities of competing emergency-alert systems. But Mr. Norrgard of the American Association of Retired Persons said his group planned to test the devices next year.
 
PLANNING BEFORE A CRISIS
 For those who want a personal emergency-alert system, experts have these suggestions:
* Consider renting rather than buying. Rentals are often available through hospitals at $25 to $50 a month, including monitoring fees, while some commercial systems can cost thousands to purchase, with monitoring extra.
* Ignore any commercial solicitation from a company that declines to quote a price over the telephone. Some companies do this in an effort to persuade consumers to agree to a visit from a seller, who may apply great pressure.
* Test any device throughout your home or apartment, because some construction materials may hamper transmissions. And test it at different times of the day to be sure the monitoring station is listening.
A pamphlet about alert systems is free from the American Association of Retired Persons. To receive it, write A.A.R.P. Fulfillment, 1909 K Street NW, Washington, D.C. 20049; request Publication ADN D12905.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Helen Talbott of Baltimore bought a $1,295 alert system. The price was supposed to cover monitoring service, but it did not. (Marty Katz for The New York Times); diagram: how a medic alert system is supposed to work (Source: Lifeline Systems Inc.)

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July 15, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Black Children Living With One Parent Put at 55%

BYLINE: By TAMAR LEWIN

SECTION: Section 1; Part 1, Page 17, Column 1; National Desk

LENGTH: 542 words

More than half the nation's 9.8 million black children under 18 years old and nearly a third of the seven million Hispanic children lived with only one parent in 1989, according to a Census Bureau report.
Among the 51.1 million white children, however, four out of five lived with both parents.
Since 1970, the proportion of black children living with both parents has declined to 38 percent from 58.5 percent and 54.5 percent now live with one parent, according to the report released Thursday. For Hispanic children, the number living with both parents dropped to 67 percent from 77.7 percent. 
''The fastest increase in the number of single-parent families came in the 1970's,'' said Arlene Saluter, the author of the report, an analysis on marital status and living arrangements that the bureau issues annually. ''In the 80's, while the numbers are still going up, the increase is slowing, especially among black families.''
 
Many Live With Grandparents
Among white children, 79.6 percent lived both parents in 1989, as against with 89.5 in 1970, the report said.
The study also found that 13 percent of black children under 18 lived in the home of grandparents, as against 5 percent of the Hispanic children and 3 percent of the white children.
The mother was present as well for about half the black children living with grandparents, the report said; 38 percent had neither of their parents present. Four percent of the black children living with grandparents had both parents present as well and 3 percent had the father but not the mother in the home.
Most children in single-parent families live with the mother. That was the case for 94 percent of the black children living with one parent, 91 percent of the Hispanic children and 85 percent of the white children, the report said.
The study also found that the median age of first marriage has risen to a new high, 23.8 years for women and 26.2 years for men. Marriage ages dropped from 1890, when the data were first gathered, until the mid-1950's, when the median ages were 20.2 for women and 22.6 for men. Since then, the median age of the first marriage has been rising steadily.
 
More Unmarried Couples
The number of unmarried-couple households grew to 2,764,000 last year from 523,000 in 1970. In 6 of 10 such households, both partners were younger than 35. About 7 in 10 such households had no children present.
''We don't ask what the relationship is, but these tend to be younger, never-married people, so that implies that they are cohabiting,'' said Ms. Saluter.
Among the elderly, living arrangements varied dramatically by age. Of those 65 to 74 years old, 63 percent lived with their spouses, 25 percent lived alone and 10 percent lived with other relatives. Of those 85 or older, however, most had been widowed, so 47 percent lived alone, 28 percent with other relatives and only 4 percent with their spouses.
More than half of all young adults 18 to 24 years old lived with their parents in 1989, as did 11 percent of those 25 to 34. Among those 25 to 34, sons were almost twice as likely as daughters to be living with their parents. Nearly 3 of 10 women 25 to 34 years old who lived with their parents had children of their own present in the home.

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July 16, 1990, Monday, Late Edition - Final

Hormone Therapy Seen to Cut Risk of Broken Hip

BYLINE: By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL

SECTION: Section A; Page 9, Column 1; National Desk

LENGTH: 874 words

Women who begin hormone replacement therapy at or near menopause can sharply decrease their risk of having a broken hip in the next decade, a new study of 23,000 women has shown.
In the first large study to examine the effect of hormone therapy on older women, Dr. Tord Naessen and his colleagues at the University Hospital in Uppsala, Sweden, found that the treatments produced a 60 percent reduction in the risk of hip fracture whether the women took estrogen alone or a combination of estrogen and progestogen.
The combination is now recommended because progestogens counteract estrogen's carcinogenic effects on the uterus. But until now it was not known for certain whether the addition of progestogens would also protect against broken hips. 
The new study suggests that it does. But the protective effect seems to be far more powerful when supplements were immediately started at menopause and to diminish when hormones were begun too long after menopause, particularly over the age of 60. The hormones prevent osteoporosis, a debilitating condition characterized by thinning of the bones that generally afflicts older women.
Although many studies had demonstrated that estrogen alone prevented hip fracture, the new study, published today in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine, is the first to show convincingly that the combined treatment would have the same effect.
 
Results Were Predicted
''Those are pieces of data we really needed in determining the proper treatment of osteoporosis,'' said Dr. Robert Lindsay, a professor of medicine at Columbia University who is an expert in osteoporosis. ''This is a paper I was waiting for.''
Endocrinologists had predicted such results on the basis of studies of bone density and calcium metabolism involving women taking supplements. Dr. S. Mitchell Harman, section chief of endocrinology at the National Institute on Aging, said, ''It's an interesting addition to a growing body of literature, all of which points in the same direction: that if you start treating women with hormones at menopause, you could avoid a lot of osteoporosis and get rid of 60 percent of their hip fracture.''
About 300,000 Americans fall and break their hips each year, and more than 70 percent are postmenopausal women, said Dr. Joseph Zuckerman, director of the geriatric hip fracture program at the Hospital for Joint Diseases Orthopaedic Institute in New York.
The idea that hormone therapy can prevent the progression of osteoporosis, coupled with the recent discovery that certain medications seem to reverse bone thinning once it has occurred, holds new hope that postmenopausal women may avoid the fractures that plague them as they age. Risk factors for osteoporosis include the onset of menopause before the age of 48, surgical removal of the ovaries before menopause, high alcohol intake and a family history of the disease.
 
Risk of Breast Cancer
The study's findings add a new element to the debate about whether postmenopausal women should take hormone replacements and who may benefit from them. While evidence suggests that such therapy markedly decreases the risk of osteoporosis and heart disease, it also appears to increase a woman's risk of breast cancer. ''To recommend therapy just to prevent hip fracture for all women is premature,'' Dr. Naessen said in a telephone interview.
But many endocrinologists believe that it is not premature for women at high risk. A woman with average bone mass at menopause has a 15 percent chance of suffering a hip fracture in her life. But some women have very low bone mass, which leaves them vulnerable to serious osteoporosis, and 40 precent of women in that group can expect to break a hip after menopause. Dr. Lindsay estimates that 20 percent to 25 percent of women in the United States are in that category. ''For this group, there's only one more likely event in their life: that's death,'' Dr. Lindsay said. ''We should target this population for treatment.''
Hip fractures can have disastrous implications. Twenty percent to 25 percent of patients will die within a year after a hip fracture from any of a variety of complications, including pneumonia, blood clots in the lungs and heart failure. Even with the best medical care and rehabilitation, only 40 percent of of patients will be able to return to their former level of activity.
For reasons that were not entirely clear, the Swedish study found that women who started taking hormone therapy after the age of 60 appeared to have the same rate of hip fracture as women who took no therapy at all. Dr. Naessen suspects there were not enough older women in his study to detect the more subtle protective effects that might be expected in this group.
Endocrinologists have long known that hormone therapy works best if started early. But previous studies of bone density in postmenopausal women have suggested that the hormone treatment prevents further bone loss at any age and may even solidify bone to a small extent.
''You wouldn't want an elderly woman throwing up her hands and saying 'It's too late' based on this study, because it's not,'' said Dr. Harman of the National Institute on Aging. ''The earlier the better, but hormones will still help.''

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July 17, 1990, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

Hawkinge Journal;
Where the Few Triumphed, Ghosts Haunt Skies

BYLINE: By MALCOLM W. BROWNE, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section A; Page 4, Column 3; Foreign Desk

LENGTH: 948 words

DATELINE: HAWKINGE, England

The ghosts of 1940 still haunt The Cat and Custard pub a half century after the Battle of Britain.
People at the pub talk about the unpopular new poll tax and the tunnel being dug from nearby Folkestone under the English Channel to France. But there are reminders everywhere in Britain this summer that 50 years have passed since the epochal 14-week air battle that saved the nation from Nazi invasion. The pub's pictures of Spitfires and Hurricanes are well dusted, and battle veterans still wander in from time to time - old men who drank here when they were teen-agers after a day's work battling Messerschmitts. 
The Battle of Britain, so named by Prime Minister Churchill, took the lives of fewer than 5,000 British and German combatants combined - a paltry number by World War II standards. But it was a turning point in the war, for it foiled Operation Sea Lion, Hitler's plan for the invasion of Britain.
The German strategy was to destroy the Royal Air Force's fighter planes in the air and on the ground before the storms of autumn began sweeping the English Channel, preventing an amphibious landing. Once the Luftwaffe had achieved control over England's airspace, Hitler believed, the success of the invasion was assured.
 
Invasion Is Canceled
German bombers, escorted by fighter planes, began large-scale raids on England in July 1940. By September, so many R.A.F. pilots had been killed or wounded that no reserves remained. But German airmen were dying at an even greater rate, and British tenacity finally forced Hitler to cancel the invasion.
Observances of the battle's anniversary all over England include innumerable ceremonies, reunions, dinners and toasts. At airshows, refurbished Royal Air Force and Luftwaffe fighters stage mock dogfights, and the snarl of vintage Merlin engines is rattling windows and making old hearts race.
Souvenir stores hawk teddy bears wearing Fighter Command goggles and helmets, and the recorded voice of Dame Vera Lynn is heard again, singing ''There'll Be Bluebirds Over the White Cliffs of Dover.''
But the anniversary has sounded a special chord at Hawkinge, the site of the fighter airfield that was closest to German-occupied France. During the battle several hundred planes were shot down near here over the rolling green fields of Kent, and wreckage, ammunition and the keepsakes of airmen slain in the battle are still being turned up by local farmers.
 
'It's a Desecration'
Hawkinge no longer has an airfield; in fact, it seems likely that most of the abandoned R.A.F. aerodrome here will be taken over for a new sewage treatment plant. But Michael Llewellyn and a band of volunteers are fighting to stave off the conversion. Mr. Llewellyn bought the surviving airbase buildings and three acres of land seven years ago to establish a Battle of Britain museum, which is now supported by the National Trust.
''The museum will stay even if they build that sewage farm, but it's a desecration,'' Mr. Llewellyn said.
Mr. Llewellyn's Kent Battle of Britain Museum is the repository of wreckage from more than 300 aircraft downed in the vicinity.
A recent visitor from Germany, Ulrich Steinhilfer, looked long and hard at the mangled fuselage of a Messerschmitt 109. The discovery of an aircraft factory serial number had identified the wreck as the fighter Mr. Steinhilfer had been piloting in October 1940 when the R.A.F. shot him down over Kent and sent him to a Canadian prison camp.
 
An Unforgiving Foe
Although many Allied and German airmen became friends over the years, some veterans of the Battle of Britain never forgave their former foes.
''One of the least forgiving was Doug Bader, my old wing commander,'' said James A. Goodson, now a resident of nearby Canterbury and one of the few American volunteers who fought in the R.A.F. before the United States entered World War II.
Sir Douglas Bader, the most famous of all the Battle of Britain aces, lost both his legs in a training crash before World War II, but rejoined the R.A.F.'s Fighter Command after proving that he could still fly using prosthetic limbs.
He was shot down over France in 1941, and in the crash lost one of his artificial legs. But the German ace Adolf Galland met his captured foe and arranged to send word through the Swedish Red Cross to the R.A.F., which dropped a replacement leg over a German airbase.
''Back in the 1960's,'' Mr. Goodson recalled, ''Galland organized a Luftwaffe fighter pilots' reunion at the Hofbrauhaus in Munich, and he invited a bunch of us R.A.F. veterans as guests. Bader refused, so Galland asked me to try to persuade him. I reminded Doug that Galland, after all, had tried to help him as a prisoner and arranged to get him a new leg. So Doug finally relented.
''When we got to the beer hall, Doug waddled in on those metal legs of his, looked down at this crowd of maybe 1,000 Germans, and said: 'Who are all these guys? How could we have left so many of the bastards alive?'
''Galland tactfully replied: 'These were mainly pilots on the Eastern front. In the West you didn't leave many of us bastards alive.' ''
Older Britons remember that Sunday, Sept. 15, 1940, was a sunny, hot day. During that day the Germans launched more than 1,000 bombers against London and its defending airfields. The effects were devastating, but the R.A.F. still managed to shoot down 56 German planes and repel several large bomber groups.
On Sept. 17, the official German war diary recorded: ''The enemy air force is still by no means defeated; on the contrary, it shows increasing activity. We cannot expect the weather to hold. The Fuhrer has therefore decided to postpone Sea Lion indefinitely.''

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Visitors to the Battle of Britain museum in Hawkinge, England, on the site of the R.A.F. airfield that was closest to German-occupied France. The hanging plane is a Messerschmitt 109. A proposal to use most of the abandoned base for a sewage treatment plan has brought protests. (Jonathan Player for The New York Times); map of England showing location of Hawkinge.

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July 17, 1990, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

Business and Health;
Programs to Keep Retirees Healthy

BYLINE: By Milt Freudenheim

SECTION: Section D; Page 2, Column 1; Financial Desk

LENGTH: 783 words

AT the Campbell Soup Company's fitness center in Camden, N.J., Bill Brown, a 79-year-old retiree, leads an exercise class called flexibility.
A growing number of employers like Campbell Soup are making special efforts to help retirees stay healthy. They say retirees feel good about the programs. So do active employees, especially those nearing retirement. ''It's great for our employees, who can see that these retirees have such a wonderful attitude about life,'' said John R. Thompson, Campbell's employee health services manager. 
And benefits managers reckon that fewer visits to doctors and hospitals will mean savings for the company health plan.
Studies indicate that wellness programs for older adults can reduce the risk of cancer and improve cardiovascular health, muscle strength and motor capacity, said Robert Levin, director of the Institute on Aging with the Washington Business Group on Health, an employers' association.
''It used to be thought that anything you did in health promotion for seniors would be too little and too late, but two new lines of thinking are changing this,'' said Dr. James F. Fries of the Stanford University School of Medicine. ''First, the likelihood of an illness is many times greater for seniors than for younger people, so you are intervening at the right time. And second, health-care expenses are so much greater for seniors that even a small percentage change will yield relatively large dividends.''
Dr. Fries recently reported on a 12-month study of 6,000 retired employees of the Bank of America. Some of the bank's retiree clubs took part in a wellness program, which included exercising, changing diets and quitting smoking. The club members' medical costs declined 16 percent while the dollar claims by retirees in clubs that did not participate rose 3 percent.
In another study, Dr. Fries and J. Paul Leigh, an economist at San Jose State University, looked at the bank's retirees whose health was thought to be at risk. They were overweight, did not exercise vigorously, consumed at least one pack of cigarettes and two alcoholic drinks each day, and usually did not buckle their auto seat belts.
''The worst-case difference in annual hospital and doctor costs between a person with good habits and one with bad habits was $4,588,'' said Clark E. Kerr, a Bank of America vice president in San Francisco. ''We concluded that health habits can make a big difference on the bottom line of actual claims dollars.''
The bank has expanded the health promotion program, now in its third year. ''The retiree clubs that participated were very happy,'' Mr. Kerr said. ''The control groups all wanted in. This is one of the few things the company can do to save money that also makes the employees happy.''
In a similar approach, Texas Instruments has started retiree clubs at 4 of its 13 fitness centers and is organizing more. Retirees get free lifetime memberships in the centers. ''We ask them to donate 10 to 15 hours of voluntary time a year, to help with mailings and organizing special events,'' said Jenny L. Brock, director of corporate health promotion at Texas Instruments, which has 50,000 active employees and 7,000 retirees. She recently started two-month ''Fit to be 50'' classes, which encourage retirees and older employees to keep active and provide advice on nutrition and dealing with stress.
The Adolph Coors Company in Golden, Colo., regularly invites retirees to take part in free exercise and other health-promotion classes.
Some companies encourage retirees to use community facilities like Y.M.C.A. swimming pools. Others keep in touch through retiree health newsletters. The Reader's Digest, for example, sends them Prime Time, a newsletter published by Kelly Communications in Charlottesville, Va.
''Retirees are a tremendous health-cost liability,'' Mr. Kerr at Bank of America said. The cost of health benefits for retirees under age 65, when Medicare kicks in, rose 14 to 16 percent on average this year at 123 corporations surveyed by the TPF&C unit of Towers Perrin, a consulting firm. The average cost for a retiree with family coverage was $4,764. But even this may be a low estimate, TFP&C said, because many employers do not break out their retiree costs.
''Our analysis for specific clients showed costs for retirees under 65 were 150 to 200 percent of the average cost for the active employees,'' said Richard Ostuw, a TPF&C vice president in Cleveland.
Mr. Kerr listed three choices for reducing such costs: ''cut benefits, shift costs to retirees or help retirees get healthier, which is the one everyone likes.'' He added, ''This is something that more and more companies will be doing.''

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July 17, 1990, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

Careers;
Unusual Ways Used In Filling Jobs

BYLINE: By Elizabeth M. Fowler

SECTION: Section D; Page 13, Column 1; Financial Desk

LENGTH: 831 words

LAST year, Travelers Mortgage Services of Cherry Hill, N.J., a unit of the Travelers Corporation, the insurance giant, increased its staff about 30 percent nationwide, to 1,800 people.
A large number of those hired were found through unusual techniques. They were reached through prerecorded phone tapes and answering equipment, a special fax machine for resumes, radio advertisements during commuting hours when people drive and listen, and saturation of an area with help-wanted fliers outlining job benefits. The hirings cost an average of $3,200 an employee. 
In mortgage servicing, a company receives monthly mortgage payments from homeowners and businesses, passes them on to whatever institution holds the mortgage, and makes the payments of taxes and insurance premiums out of escrow money as required. When the monthly mortgage payments are not received on time, customers are usually reminded by telephone or letter.
The business requires customer service representatives and loan counselors who have good communication skills. Travelers Mortgage Services often tries to lure experienced employees away from competitors - a sign of a labor shortage for the type of employees it wants. It calls many of them ''passive job seekers,'' those who are comfortable in their jobs but interested in a better opportunity if they can be made aware of one.
Unusual approaches help. For example, some months ago the company used direct-mail recruitment fliers sent to 80,000 households within a five-mile radius of its Chicago-area branch office. It invited students, elderly people and others to apply for jobs.
Jo Ann Battagliese, vice president of human resources for Travelers Mortgage Services, said last week that the use of tape recorders for initial contact by telephone allowed human resources personnel to choose from among applicants those that were wanted for a face-to-face interview.
She described how she listened to a middle-aged women describing her accomplishments on the tape recorder. Intrigued by the enthusiasm in the woman's voice, she invited her to an interview. ''We hired her immediately, and recently she was named a supervisor,'' Miss Battagliese said.
Informal open houses for job applicants in the evenings and on weekends have also proved successful, she said. As an incentive, those attending receive dinner certificates for two at area restaurants.
Currently, however, she acknowledges that there is one drawback typical of today's corporate environment - a takeover in process. Most of Travelers Mortgage Services is being acquired by the GE Capital Mortgage Insurance Company, a unit of the GE Capital Corporation of Stamford, Conn., which in turn is a subsidiary of the General Electric Company.
''The deal will not be completed until August, and it is premature to talk about numbers of employees, change of name or change of headquarters,'' said Lisa Van Orden, manager of public relations for GE Capital. She added that mortgage servicing would add a new dimension to the company's mortgage insurance unit.
Robyn R. Frenze, a spokesman for Travelers Mortgage Services, said that ''it is probably cheaper to buy a mortgage servicing company than to set up a new one or expand in an area.'' The Travelers unit has been among the 10 largest mortgage service companies in the nation, she added.
Other major financial institutions have been moving or expanding into mortgage servicing. One is the Chase Manhattan Corporation, whose Chase Mortgage Services now services some mortgages originated by Anchor Mortgage Services, a unit of the Anchor Savings Bank. ''It appears to be a 'hot ticket' area,'' Miss Frenze commented.
Obviously, Travelers employees who face some chance of losing their jobs feel insecure. ''There is a certain amount of apprehension throughout the organization, '' Miss Battagliese said.
In fact, job security - or insecurity - is only one factor in employee attitudes after the first year or so. ''People enter new jobs with high levels of enthusiasm, but the novelty soon wears off,'' said John Parkington of the Wyatt Company in Boston, a consulting company in the human recources area. ''As the saying goes, 'the honeymoon is over.' ''
Wyatt found as a result of a survey that only 43 percent of first-year employees say they are highly committed to their companies. By the end of four years the commitment falls quite sharply, with only 34 percent expressing contentment. The sentiment also reaches into management ranks, where ''only 46 percent of managers express high levels of commitment'' after a few years on the job.
Companies can be blamed for much of this decline in enthusiasm, he said. ''Employees want to commit themselves to companies that are committed to their prosperity.''
He urges counseling to teach managers how to encourage ''a positive working environment,'' along with reward systems for all employees, like the sharing of gains, pay for performance and involvement in decision-making.

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July 18, 1990, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

21 Held in $1 Million Theft Of Food Headed for Needy

BYLINE: By SARAH LYALL, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section B; Page 2, Column 1; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 545 words

DATELINE: UNIONDALE, L.I., July 17

Twenty-one people and 6 companies on Long Island were accused today of systematically stealing more than $1 million worth of Government-subsidized food destined for schoolchildren, the elderly and the homeless.
Twelve of the 21 people named in the Federal complaint filed by Andrew J. Maloney, the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, are current or past employees of Cold Storage of Nassau of Westbury. The company stores and distributes Federally donated food to more than 250 school districts, centers for the aged, soup kitchens and homeless programs in Nassau and Suffolk Counties and in Queens and Brooklyn. 
According to the complaint, the workers stole about 10 percent of each shipment of food and sold it, at about a third of its market value, to various restaurants and vendors.
The foods included milk, peanut butter, chicken, turkey, cheese, butter and tuna.
Among the people named in the complaint are the manager of the warehouse, Martin Moore, and more than a dozen warehouse drivers and workers. #18 Plead Not Guilty The six companies named are Cold Storage, which is under contract with the State of New York and the United States Agriculture Department's Food and Nutrition Service to distribute and store Federally donated food; and two pizza parlors, a bar, a luncheonette and a caterer, which are charged with buying the stolen food from the company employees.
Eighteen of those named were arrested this morning, and all pleaded not guilty in Federal District Court this afternoon. They were released on bails that ranged from $25,000 to $250,000.
An employee at Cold Storage in Westbury said that no one from the company would comment on the arrests.
 
False Vouchers Filed
Mr. Maloney said in a news conference that the Cold Storage scheme was the largest to be prosecuted so far involving the theft of food donated from the Agriculture Department.
''They were able to cover up their operation by filing phony vouchers with the U.S.D.A.,'' Mr. Maloney said. He explained that upon receiving three cases of food, for example, the workers would deliver two cases to a school district and then sell the third. Then they would prepare a voucher for the Government claiming to have delivered three cases; the school district, glad to have the food and not promised a set amount, would not notice the discrepancy.
Mr. Maloney said the complaint was the result of a three-year undercover operation in which special agents from the Agriculture Department, posing as truck drivers, day care workers and school employees, purchased the food from the Cold Storage employees.
The complaint charges that Mr. Moore, as the manager of the warehouse, opened it early in the morning on weekends several times and loaded the van of an undercover agent with stolen food. Mr. Moore also boasted to an undercover agent, the complaint says, that he and other Cold Storage employees sold more than 10,000 cases of food a year to delicatessans, restaurants and other businesses on Long Island.
Cold Storage, the sole distributor of Agriculture Department food for Long Island, will remain closed for the next several days while Federal agents take an inventory of the stock, Mr. Maloney said. He said more arrests were expected.

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July 18, 1990, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

New Vim and Vigor For the Y.M.C.A.

BYLINE: By WILLIAM G. SCHMIDT

SECTION: Section C; Page 1, Column 4; Living Desk

LENGTH: 1507 words

DATELINE: GREENFIELD, Wis.

IT'S a typical morning at the branch of the Milwaukee Y.M.C.A. in this suburb. All through the building, there is a constant coming and going of men and women, mostly in running shoes and T-shirts, on their way to exercise class or weight training or a session on the running track that is suspended above the basketball courts.
But there's something more. In the shallow end of the swimming pool, a group of about 30 elderly people are bobbing in the water, moving in time to an aerobics instructor. Across the hall, a dozen people with cerebral palsy lean back in their wheelchairs, straining while instructors help them lift weights attached to machines. A wave of parents arrive with children in tow, depositing them in the crowded full-day preschool program.
For decades, the Y.M.C.A. has been one of America's most enduring community institutions. Its residence rooms once provided a refuge for farmboys first come to the city, looking for cheap, clean quarters, and its pools were the place where millions of American boys learned to swim, wearing nothing but a self-conscious grin. But the old Main Street Y has changed. 
After years of stuttering progress and periods of financial hardship, the association developed over the last decade an image as one of America's fastest-growing and eclectic nonprofit groups. It successfully rode the crest of the national health and fitness wave, drawing tens of thousands of new dues-paying members, especially in affluent suburban areas and the booming cities of the South and Southwest. It now serves about 13.5 million people, more than half of whom are women.
More surprisingly, the Y.M.C.A.'s traditional focus as a refuge for youth and family has placed the organization at the cusp of the nation's growing demand for child care. According to various surveys, the national network of 959 Y's and their 1,101 branches operate the country's largest child-care program, including both full-day and after-school programs that serve working families and single, inner-city parents on public aid. The Y.W.C.A., a separate organization with 425 centers, also offers child care and fitness programs and serves about two million people, most of them women. But it has not enjoyed the same level of growth as the Y.M.C.A.
Harold Davis, the executive director of the Oakland Housing Authority in California, and chairman of the organization's national board, said the explosion in child care underscores how such programs have expanded in the face of declining Federal investment in cities.
''We like to think of the Y.M.C.A. now as the perfect example of the kinds of public-private partnerships that must increasingly shoulder the burden,'' he said. ''We find ourselves doing more and more things that we used to think of as being within the province of the Government.'' He cited programs in which the Y.M.C.A. runs health and exercise programs for students in state schools for handicapped children, or develops therapy programs to serve elderly patients with circulatory or cardiovascular problems.
Bruce Newman, executive director of the Chicago Community Trust, which helps finance Y activities in Chicago, said that with fewer Federal dollars available to run social service programs, Y.M.C.A.'s have become more innovative.
''There are few other community organizations with their expertise and history in working on the streets with groups of young people,'' Mr. Newman said. ''Strategically, the Y now finds itself in the perfect place.''
The growth in the last decade alone has been phenomenal. Since 1981, the number of people using Y's has increased an estimated 24 percent, according to the organization. At the same time, a study by the magazine The NonProfit Times showed the Y's and their branches together generated more than $1.3 billion in revenue in 1989, making it the nation's largest charity, topping the American Red Cross, the Salvation Army and Catholic Charities. Of that total, about 77 percent was earned income from membership dues and program and child-care fees. About 15 percent came from foundations, donations and fund-raising. The remainder came from public grants, investment and other income.
In some places, so many people have been drawn to the slick new gyms and exercise rooms at Y's that private health clubs have accused the group of unfair competition and pressed lawsuits, with mixed success, to strip the Y.M.C.A. of its status as a nonprofit organization.
In Portland, Ore., for example, a local Y became the first in the country to be assessed property taxes, after the Oregon Supreme Court last December affirmed a decision by a state taxing body concluding that the association was not offering enough ''donative services.''
The court concluded that the Portland Y was using barely 4 percent of its budget to provide such things as scholarships, financial aid and discounts for older people. The Y.M.C.A. is appealing the decision, arguing that it has substantially shifted its program and is spending more than 50 percent of its current budget on such activities.
In Pennsylvania, a similar case is pending against the downtown Pittsburgh Y.M.C.A. But in Oakland, Calif., a local tax board rejected the arguments of a group of local health clubs that had sought to strip the association there of its nonprofit status. And in both Kansas and Illinois, lobbyists helped persuade state lawmakers to pass new statutes affirming the tax-exempt status of the organization to ward off possible lawsuits.
Solon B. Cousins, who for the last decade ran the association at its national headquarters in Chicago and oversaw its growth and expansion, said the challenges from private businesses have forced the organization to come to terms with its mission and its identity.
''Our success has made us more vulnerable,'' said Mr. Cousins, who retired in May as national executive director. ''But it also forced us to confront our own values, and to reaffirm our larger mission.''
As a defense against those who accuse the Y.M.C.A. as unfairly profiting at the expense of private businesses, Mr. Cousins and other officials have been placing increasing emphasis on the Christian values they say are at the core of the Y's ambitions - trust, love, caring and a sense of selflessness.
''There is more to what we do than just get people in shape for their high school reunions,'' he said. ''Greed is not our controlling force. The point is, the Y has been and will always be a force for good in the life of the community.''
The success of the Y.M.C.A. in generating new revenue has also enabled many local groups to embark on rebuilding and remodeling facilities, many of which were origially constructed near the turn of the century.
In the last decade, Y's across the country have put up $1 billion worth of new buildings, especially in the fast-growing cities and suburbs of the South and West, and another $500 million in new construction and renovation is on the drawing boards.
Not all Y.M.C.A.'s have experienced the boom of the last decade. In New York and Chicago and other older cities, where many of the facilities are in aging buildings and where the service areas include large numbers of poor people, there has been a continuing struggle to meet expenses.
''There is a lot of pressure on us to provide more and more social programs,'' said John W. Casey, who is the executive director of the Y.M.C.A. of Metropolitan Chicago.
In addition to the Y's traditional recreational programs, for example, the Chicago organization has embarked on an ambitious social mission that, among other things, includes a juvenile justice program, in which volunteers and specialists work with young people who have got in trouble with the law; a literacy program aimed at preschoolers, and a homemaker service that provides shopping and transportation assistance to elderly shut-ins.
On the city's North Side, it runs a job-training program for residents of a public housing complex. And there is an effort under way to revitalize the Y.M.C.A.'s housing programs.
Just after World War II, the association operated more than 75,000 residential rooms across the country, most of them in the Midwest and Northeast. Although there are fewer than 25,000 of those rooms remaining, many of them are being refurbished as units for the homeless.
At the Y branch here southwest of Milwaukee, there has been a deliberate effort to reach those not served in private clubs. There is, for example, a wide range of closely supervised athletic and exercise programs for the blind and the physically impaired, including a weekly wheelchair basketball league.
One of the regular users of the Nautilus and other exercise machines in the building's $75,000 workout room is Don Streich, a 52-year-old blind diabetic who was turned away from several private fitness clubs. ''The people at the Y just took me and gave me someone to work with,'' said Mr. Streich, whose exercise regimen is supervised by a volunteer. ''This isn't just the Y. This is my home.''

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photos: The Greenfield branch of the Milwaukee Y.M.C.A. has activities ranging from child-care programs to athletics for the elderly. (Tom Capp for The New York Times) (pg. C10)

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July 20, 1990, Friday, Late Edition - Final

A Hudson Retreat Is Split by a Fight Over Development

BYLINE: By ANTHONY DePALMA, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section B; Page 1, Column 2; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 965 words

DATELINE: EDGEWATER, N.J.

Joan Lawlor Reilly remembers taking the 125th Street Ferry across the Hudson River to this sliver of a waterfront town where her parents rented a shack and some sweet shade from a Dutchman named Goethius.
That was more than 50 years ago, and Ms. Lawlor Reilly, now 62, still lives here, although with additions and improvements over the years the shack is now a small house. But the land, incorporated in 1948 as a cooperative known as the Edgewater Colony, has gone through major changes.
There are still no sidewalks, no sewers and hardly any fences. All the land is owned by the 116 shareholders of the colony. But instead of the carefree rustic retreat it once was, the colony is contentious and divided. At the heart of the matter is a question any New York City co-op owner would recognize. Is the colony an investment or a home? 
The conflict started with a rumor that someone wanted to buy the colony.
''That's the whole thing that makes it so crazy,'' said Lucien A. Fontaine, the harness driver and a resident since 1984. ''There's no offer. But perhaps it's for the best, because the community is going to be stronger for it.''
Tucked into a jagged hillside in the shadow of the George Washington Bridge between River Road and the Hudson, the colony is one of the most unusual communities in the state. The entire 26 acres is owned cooperatively, and all but 30 shareholders live here.
Shareholders pay monthly maintenance fees for the land and equal portions of the property tax on the land. They own their houses and pay separately assessed property taxes on them.
The three roads in the community meander under tall densely canopied trees, sometimes turning back on themselves or leaving just barely enough room for an automobile to pass.
The homes make up an eccentric group. The tents that Ms. Lawlor Reilly remembers are gone, replaced by tar-paper shacks, expanded bungalows and California contemporaries costing more than $400,000 perched on rocky ledges with sweeping views of the river and Washington Heights.
In the late 1980's, when development swept much of the Hudson waterfront from the bridge to Jersey City, expensive houses were built in the colony, and many existing houses were modernized and expanded.
Over the last year a rumor, of which there are several versions, about an offer to buy the colony for $30 million or $58 million set residents chattering. There were also controversies brewing over how some people were spending too much or too little on their houses.
Mr. Fontaine and a group of shareholders, many relative newcomers, hired lawyers from big firms and spent more than $150,000 seeking a way to block a sale of the land to a developer.
Another group, which included many old-timers and elderly residents, insisted they had the right to sell, take the proceeds and move.
Older residents tended to favor a sale because they stood for the most part to make out very well. Because of the co-op status, the money would have been divided among the 116 shareholders. Those with big houses on the river would have received less than their houses were worth on the market, and those who owned shacks would have received substantially more.
Mr. Fontaine said he became involved because shareholders who did not live here were being allowed to vote in elections for the co-op board and would presumably be allowed to vote on a sales proposal, which he felt made it more likely that the land would change hands.
In May, Judge Arthur L. Lesemann of Superior Court ruled that nonresident stockholders could not be denied the right to vote. He did say that in the future the board could limit nonresidents' rights to own stock.
 
Split in Elections
Some tensions lingered. After decades of complacency, some residents were reluctant to say hello if they passed one another on the street. Unsigned letters of criticism were dropped in mailboxes.
A month after the ruling, an election was held to fill five of the 10 seats on the board. Both sides put up full slates and campaigned fiercely. Three candidates favoring a sale and two who opposed a sale had the highest vote totals and won. Over all the votes were split almost evenly between the two slates.
Some residents saw that balanced turnout as representative of the community's true feelings about a sale. Under the bylaws, a sale would have to be approved by two-thirds of the shareholders.
''I feel the people have spoken,'' said Jack Ennis, a resident for more than 20 years and one of the 10 who joined Mr. Fontaine. ''They want the colony to stay as a single community.''
 
Letter From Broker
''Now that the litigation is over,'' Ms. Lawlor Reilly said, ''we're hoping sincerely that everybody gets back together so we can be the community we once were.''
But there is evidence that might not be possible. Recently a shareholder who was not involved in the election, Michael J. Ignatieff, wrote an open letter to residents saying he was not for or against a sale, despite rumors that he had once tried to interest developers in the land. He is a real-estate broker.
''What I said was that if an offer should be presented, we should run it past an accountant, and if it holds water then it ought to be put to the shareholders for a vote,'' Mr. Ignatieff said. ''I told them, 'Love thy neighbor as thyself.' ''
Nothing that has occurred in the last few months would prevent a sale, but some residents said they believed that with the economy slowing, it was unlikely anyone would make a serious offer.
Mr. Ennis said he did not think that the legal battle proved that the colony's days were numbered or that the co-op form was no longer workable. ''Look, having 116 shareholders is like being in 116 marriages,'' he said. ''You've got to settle things yourself.''

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Map of Hudson river area showin loacation of Edgewater Colony. (pg. B5)

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The New York Times

July 20, 1990, Friday, Late Edition - Final

Slain Woman 'Loved Her TV' and Baseball

BYLINE: By GEORGE JAMES

SECTION: Section B; Page 3, Column 2; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 674 words

At 91 years of age, Susie White still did her own shopping, attended church on most Sundays, and enjoyed going on trips with the Senior Citizens Center of the James Monroe Houses in the Soundview section of the Bronx.
Late Monday evening she answered a knock at her third-floor apartment and faced a young woman who asked her for $5, the authorities said.
When Mrs. White refused, she was pushed back into her apartment, hit repeatedly over the head with her aluminum cane and fatally stabbed in the body and head with one or two knives from her kitchen, the authorities added.
The attacker took a ring, gold necklace and the 20-inch television set that Mrs. White had used to watch ball games. 
''It's a vicious and brutal assault,'' said the chief of detectives for the housing police, Deputy Chief Vincent Pizzo. ''I've been on the job 28 years and I've seen a lot of horrible scenes, and I would have to say this is one of the worst. For $5, for an elderly woman to suffer through such an incident, it's really a tragedy.''
 
Guilty in Robbery Case
Early yesterday, a 21-year-old neighbor in Mrs. White's building, 1770 Story Avenue, was arrested and charged in the death. The suspect, Denise Solla, had been arrested twice before by the housing police on charges of robbery, said Deputy Chief Pizzo. A neighbor said Miss Solla had often gone around knocking on doors and asking for money.
She was arrested in November, received a six-month jail sentence that was suspended and was placed on probation, Deputy Chief Pizzo said. In May she was arrested again; that case is pending.
Housing detectives and investigators of the 43d Precinct squad said they believed that Mrs. White was killed at 8 or 8:30 P.M. on Monday. The body was found on Wednesday about 3 P.M.
A granddaughter became concerned when Mrs. White did not answer repeated telephone calls.
''She knocked on the door but received no answer,'' Deputy Chief Pizzo said. The granddaughter opened the door partway. ''Then she saw the blood and went to the management office, where 911 was called,'' the officer said.
 
Cane and Knives Recovered
When the police arrived they saw Mrs. White on the living-room floor. The bedroom and kitchen had been ransacked.
A relative of Mrs. White, who would speak only on the condition of anonymity, said that she did not know the worth of the jewelry, but that the television set had been of prime importance in Mrs. White's life.
''It was her world,'' the relative said. ''She loved her TV. She loved her TV. I mean it was the only company she had. She loved baseball. She was a big baseball fan.''
The television set and the necklace were recovered, but the ring was not, said Deputy Chief Pizzo. The police also recovered two knives that had been dropped down a hallway garbage chute into a compactor and Mrs. White's cane, which had been picked up by a sanitation truck with the garbage.
 
'Canvassing the Tenants'
''How we come up with the perpetrator, as most cases are solved, is through canvassing the tenants, and the suspect's name came up as possibly having information on the case,'' he said.
The police picked up Miss Solla for questioning on Wednesday at 8 P.M. and arrested her at 4 A.M. yesterday on charges of second-degree murder, robbery, burglary and criminal possession of a deadly weapon.
Dorothy Kearney, who said she lived next door to Miss Solla, said that the woman had repeatedly been in trouble for three or four years and that her problems had grown this year after her mother died.
Mrs. Kearney, who said she had known Miss Solla since she was 5, added, ''She had been going around the building for most of the year, knocking on doors and begging small amounts of money.''
Mrs. Kearney said she once gave Miss Solla $5 because the woman said she needed it to go to a welfare office.
Mrs. White's relative, a woman who was still in shock yesterday, said of the suspect: ''How could she do that? You're going to ask for $5 and not get it, so you kill her?''
She could find no answer.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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The New York Times

July 22, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

28 Hurt as Bus Hits Girder On the Williamsburg Bridge

BYLINE: By GEORGE JAMES

SECTION: Section 1; Part 1, Page 24, Column 1; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 509 words

Twenty-eight people were injured yesterday when a city bus skidded out of control on a rain-slicked roadway and slammed into an elevated train stanchion as the bus was exiting the Williamsburg Bridge, the authorities said.
Witnesses said the driver was trying to merge into another lane and skidded to avoid sideswiping another vehicle. The police said at least two bus passengers were in critical condition after the crash, which occurred at 4:55 P.M.
''I could hear the screaming of the women and children from across the divider,'' said Lieut. Gerard Owens, a firefighter who was driving to work at Engine Company 5 on the lower East Side of Manhattan when he heard ''a tremendous crash.'' 
Lieutenant Owens said he pulled his car over and ran through the pouring rain to the bus, whose front was ''rolled up around the pillar'' of the J and M line. The front door was smashed and the side door was jammed, so he forced one of the emergency windows to get inside, he said.
 
Crying and Moaning
Lieutenant Owens said there were about 35 people aboard the General Motors bus, which seats 40. Most were women, children and senior citizens. Some were unconcious, many were bleeding and Lieutenant Owens said he heard crying and moaning. Firefighter Philip Kelly of Ladder Company 154 in Queens, who was off duty, was already inside the bus, giving first aid and trying to remove the injured.
The driver, who was conscious, was trapped in the mangled front of the bus. He was later freed and taken to Bellevue Hospital Center in Manhattan with a fractured ankle, said a police spokeswoman, Sgt. Mary Wrensen. He was not identified by the police.
At Bellevue, the administrator on duty, Peter Schechtman, said four men and four women from the accident were being treated. Six were in fair and stable condition. One was a 9-year-old girl.
He said two people were in critical but stable condition, one a woman in her early 60's with head injuries, another a woman with possible internal injuries and a leg injury.
In addition to Bellevue, the injured were taken to St. Vincent's Hospital and Medical Center in Manhattan, to Woodhull Hospital and Kings County Medical Center in Brooklyn and to the City Hospital Center in Elmhurst, Queens, Sergeant Wrensen said.
The cause of the crash was under investigation, said a spokesman for the Transit Authority, Robert E. Slovak.
The B-39 bus, which makes the trip between Allen Street on the lower East Side of Manhattan to Washington Plaza in Williamsburg, was approaching the last stop on its route on the Brooklyn side of the bridge when the accident occurred, said Sergeant Wrensen.
One witness, Nelson Mason, of Queens Village, said, ''As he was merging, a mini-van came toward him from the side and he skidded into the pillar.''
Hours later, the bus remained on the bridge in a grisly tableau: its front end mangled, its windshield blown out, transfer slips and a newspaper hanging from where the windshield used to be and a white baseball cap covered with blood lying on the road outside.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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The New York Times

July 22, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

THE NATION;
A Windfall Nears In Inheritances From The Richest Generation

BYLINE: By NICK RAVO

SECTION: Section 4; Page 4, Column 1; Week in Review Desk

LENGTH: 1020 words

WITH the wealthiest generation of elderly people in the country's history reaching the end of their lives, economists are trying to predict what will happen to their money.
The assumption is that a wave of inheritances will provide their children, the baby boom generation, with a windfall. But the Federal Government is also expected to keep its eyes on the money, and some economists predict a push for higher inheritance taxes to help solve the budget crisis.
''There has been a great run-up of wealth among the elderly,'' said Robert B. Avery, an assistant professor of economics at Cornell University. Much of this accumulation was built between the late 1940's and the late 1960's, when real wages and savings rates were higher and housing costs were lower. For the middle class, the most significant factor may be the escalation of real estate prices over the last 20 years. 
''It's a substantial amount of wealth,'' said Frederick A. Elkind, vice president and director of the TrendSights division of the Ogilvy & Mather advertising agency, which forecasts buying and spending habits. ''And there is a potential for a substantial amount of money and assets to be released or transferred to the baby boomers.''
Not everyone believes there will be an inheritance boom. Cheryl Russell, the editor in chief of American Demographics magazine and the author of ''100 Predictions for the Baby Boom Generation,'' acknowledged the unprecedented wealth of today's older people, but she argued that the size of the baby boom generation has grown faster than the size of the parents' estates. ''Most people will inherit only a middling amount of money,'' she said.
Ms. Russell also maintained that a variety of variables, particularly health care costs, may reduce the size of many estates. ''It's counting chickens before they hatch,'' she said.
But many economists say that even when rising medical costs and other factors are taken into account, inherited wealth is expected to become a significant economic force.
According to Cornell's Department of Economics and Housing, the total worth of estates at death is expected to rise from $924.1 billion between 1987 and 1991 to $2.1 trillion between 2007 and 2011. The estimates are in 1990 dollars.
''Inheritances as a proportion of total wealth have been increasing over the last 20 to 25 years and will certainly continue increasing in the future,'' said Edward N. Wolff, a professor of economics at New York University.
 
'The Rich Beget Rich'
In all, the 64 million baby boomers stand to inherit an estimated $6.8 trillion between 1987 and 2011. Of course not everyone will benefit equally. According to the Cornell study, the richest 1 percent of the population will divide one-third of the worth of the estates, each receiving an average inheritance of $3.6 million; the next richest 9 percent will divide another third for an average inheritance of about $396,000; the remaining 90 percent will share the rest. That means an average inheritance of only about $40,000 for this group. ''The rich beget rich,'' Mr. Avery said.  Mr. Elkind predicted that much of the wealth may be passed on as property that, depending on market conditions, may be sold or used as second homes. He said that the prospect of inheritances will help many baby boomers maintain highly leveraged, spendthrift lives. But he also predicted that many inheritances will be used to make gifts to charity or to help meet tuition costs for members of the so-called boomlet generation. ''It wouldn't surprise me if we started seeing more people put their kids in private schools, especially with the baby boomers having fewer kids,'' he said.
Predictions of an inheritance boom may also lead to efforts to raise inheritance taxes, close loopholes or lower the tax exemption levels. The Federal estate tax now ranges from 37 to 55 percent of the value of an estate exceeding $600,000, or, in some cases, $1.2 million if the money is left by a couple.
''The dead don't vote,'' said Thomas J. Drew, an estate lawyer in New York City and Westport, Conn. ''And with legislators groping to reduce the deficit, it's a more politically palatable target than income taxes.''
The argument for increased inheritance taxes has won favor among some people who oppose most taxes. The philosopher Robert Nozick, known for his libertarian views, recommends that the Government lay claim to estates after they pass beyond one generation.
''It sticks out as a special kind of unearned benefit that produces unequal opportunities,'' Mr. Nozick said.
 
'Wooing Retirees'
Some conservatives, however, have argued that inheritance taxes are unfair because they represent double taxation or are ''anti-family.'' And, so far, many state governments seem more interested in reducing their inheritance taxes. In the last two years, for example, Idaho repealed its tax, and Wisconsin is phasing out its tax.
''It brings in a relatively low amount, and it makes states non-competitive for attracting retirees,'' said Corina Eckl, a senior policy analyst for the National Conference of State Legislatures in Denver.
Furthermore, many people avoid inheritance taxes by giving away some of their money before they die. Others, worried about paying for long-term health care, give away estates so they can qualify for Medicaid.
Looking further into the future, some economists predict that the wealth of today's elderly may have particularly striking effects not on their children but on their grandchildren.
This may be especially true considering that baby boomers are having smaller families than their parents had and are often supporting themselves with two incomes.
''The potential for boomer wealth, in theory, should be even greater than for their parents, because they have been accumulating their own wealth with their parents' wealth,'' Mr. Elkind said. ''It could reach a critical mass and be a tremendous windfall for their children.''
Then again, he added, baby boomers will likely live longer than their parents did. ''Their kids may have to wait a long time to benefit fully,'' he said.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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July 22, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final
Correction Appended

Poland's Black Madonna

BYLINE: By Drusilla Menaker; Drusilla Menaker is a journalist living in Warsaw.<N

SECTION: Section 5; Page 19, Column 1; Travel Desk

LENGTH: 1480 words

For six centuries, through Poland's wars and vacillating fortunes, the faithful have walked days, often the last distance on their knees, to revere the Black Madonna of Czestochowa. Painted on wood - legend has it by the brush of St. Luke - the doleful four-foot-high icon is the focus of the nation's spiritual life. The icon, known as the Queen of Poland, is credited with leading a group of monks holding out against a Swedish siege in 1655. More recently, the madonna's image was never absent from Lech Walesa's lapel during the Solidarity leader's struggle against Poland's Communist regime.
Four million pilgrims come yearly to the monastery on Jasna Gora, or Bright Mountain. Novitiates sit, eyes bright with rapture, before the jewel-encrusted madonna. Elderly women hunched in prayer blink away tears. The chapel walls are covered with hopeful devotions to the picture - silver plaques in the shapes of lungs, legs and eyes, crutches from the lame and school patches of modern-day exam takers.
But Czestochowa (chens-toe-HOE-vuh) is far more than a religious beacon. It is a safe harbor for Poland's history. Its museums hold relics of a proud and painful past: King Jan Sobieski's eagle standard from the defense of Christianity against the Turks at Vienna in 1683, carvings by the Polish general and American revolutionary Thaddeus Kosciusko and a rosary formed from concentration camp bread. 
''Czestochowa has withstood 12 wars, martial law and Chernobyl. We survive,'' said the Rev. Simon Stefanowicz, among the English-speaking clergymen who serve as guides. (Czestochowa is 480 miles from the site of the 1986 nuclear disaster.) Jasna Gora is also part of modern Poland. Again and again through the 1980's, its fields filled with Solidarity banners raised by hundreds of thousands of the outlawed movement's supporters in the sanctuary of the shrine. The white-robed monks and priests of the Paulite order who make the monastery a working home can now recall, almost with humor, the secret policemen who attended their masses and the wiretaps recently revealed to have honeycombed the worn stone walls.
Tadeusz Mazowiecki visited Czestochowa two days after becoming the East Bloc's first non-Communist prime minister last August. John Paul II has made three trips to his native Poland as Pope, always returning to Czestochowa, which he secretly visited as a student pilgrim during World War II. He will come again in August 1991 for an international youth prayer day.
The monastery is preparing now for the half-million adherents, 170,000 of them on foot, who will make their way to south-central Poland for Ascension Day on Aug. 15, making the site something of a mob scene at this time. A contingent has left Warsaw every Aug. 6 since 1711 for the nine-day, 140-mile trek. Now they sing as they walk and camp in gaily colored tents, but elderly pilgrimage veterans recall stealing through the dark countryside at great personal risk during the Nazi occupation and the first years of Communist rule.
For casual visitors, Czestochowa, an otherwise undistinguished city, is a natural day trip from Warsaw, a two and a half hour drive down Poland's best highway. (It is noteworthy that for most of the way the signs do not give the distance to Czestochowa, only to the Communists' more-favored destination of industrial Katowice.) The monastery, resting on brick fortifications and crowned by a 325-foot tower, is approached by car along the likely soon-to-be-renamed Aleja Lenina (Lenin Avenue) or by foot from Aleja Najswietszej Marii Panny (the Avenue of the Blessed Virgin Mary, known locally as N.M.P. Avenue).
Within the walled precincts is the jumbled result of construction, destruction and reconstruction since a timber hilltop parish church was transferred in 1382 to the Paulites, a hermetic order from Hungary beholden to St. Paul of Thebes.
At the heart of the monastery is the chapel where the Black Madonna hangs among candles and silver angels on a dark altar. St. Helena is said to have brought the painting from Jerusalem to Constantinople and started its wandering history through Charlemagne's hands and eventually to Duke Ladislaus of Opole, adviser to Louis of Anjou, King of Poland and Hungary.
Ladislaus, the story goes, was passing Czestochowa with the picture when his horses refused to go on. In his sleep, the Duke was told to leave it at Jasna Gora. That was Aug. 31, 1384.
A multitude of miracles are attributed to the icon, but the most profound for Poland was the siege by the Protestant Swedish army, which had overrun the country in 1655. Seventy monks and 180 supporters held off nearly 4,000 Swedish soldiers until they withdrew after 40 days. The act of defiance inspired the countryside to rise up and throw out the Swedes within a year.
The face of the Black Madonna is actually a burnished brown. A cheek bears the scars of saber slashes purportedly inflicted by robbers - Hussites by some accounts - who desecrated the monastery in 1430. Centuries of votive candles, kisses from privileged patrons and concealment from invaders have taken their toll too.
The madonna holds a similarly woeful infant Jesus and, since the 1600's, both have been dressed in richly jeweled robes covering much of the painting. Robes of diamonds, rubies, coral and embroidery are changed on Maundy Thursday.
The icon is shown only part of the day. The silver covering is drawn up to the fanfare of trumpets at 6 A.M. and lowered at noon. It is reopened from 3:30 P.M. to 4:40 P.M. and 7 P.M. to 7:45.
The chapel, which took its current shape in 1643, is adjoined by an ornate Baroque basilica and a sacristy where priests draw golden vestments from painted 17th-century wardrobes as bells announce prayers. Multilingual confessions and blessings can be requested there.
Off the main courtyard are apartments used originally by royal patrons and later by the Nazi governor. Jasna Gora was spared German bombing, probably for propaganda value, and the Nazis fleeing in January 1945 are said to have left lunch on the table and a smoldering fire that was put out by the monks.
The Knight's Hall, where the Polish Parliament met in 1658 and which for a time was known as the Room of Disputes, is lined with 17th-century paintings tracing the monastery's history from the arrival of the Black Madonna to the Swedish siege. Hanging from the rafters are embellished banners carried by patriotic regiments and ranks of Solidarity laborers.
Nearby is a two-story library built in 1739. The 8,000 volumes, dating to 1477, including illuminated manuscripts on linen pages, are stored in individual wooden cases. Each gilded bookcase is labeled by theological subject, except one containing the works of heretics.
In the treasury above the sacristy, cases of jewels and religious objects, gifts from virtually every noble Polish name and much of European aristocracy show the wealth the devout have showered on the monastery. A MUSEUM built for the 600th anniversary in 1982 starts from the founding document on parchment with a huge wax seal and ends with Mr. Walesa's Nobel Peace Prize. In the arsenal, a reminder of the military might mustered to defend Poland in the name of the Black Madonna, are the weapons of Polish kings, Turkish booty from Sobieski's Vienna campaign and the prayer books of Poles exiled to Siberia after 19th-century insurrections against the three-way partition that wiped Poland off the map from 1795 to 1918.
Shoes made of tires by World War II deportees and tear-gas canisters lobbed at Solidarity protesters are exhibited in a small hall under the bastions.
English translations are spotty in the museums, but a comprehensive guide book is available. Escorted tours in English generally can be arranged on short notice at the gate of the Knight's Hall or in advance by contacting Jasna Gora (2 Ulica Kordeckiego; telephone 450-87 or 450-88). The monastery is open daily.
Like much of Poland, Czestochowa offers little in the way of tourist comforts. The enterprising monks at Jasna Gora are planning a restaurant, but for now packing one's own food is recommended. Bread, cheese, tomatoes and a sweet enjoyed with a farmland vista at the side of the road will likely surpass what is available at any indoor establishment.
Probably the simplest way to visit Czestochowa from Warsaw or Cracow is to organize a private excursion with a taxi driver outside one of the major hotels. For the day's services, $75 to $100 would be a fair offer from Warsaw, $50 from Cracow.
With lovely, and considerably better developed, Cracow an hour's drive away, there is little necessity for an overnight stay in Czestochowa and nothing to recommend it. If a stopover is a must, the most convenient option is along the highway at Motel Orbis (283 Aleja Wojska Polskiego; telephone 572-33), which also has a restaurant.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

CORRECTION-DATE: August 5, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

 CORRECTION:
An article on July 22 about the Jasna Gora Monastery in Poland misidentified the Roman Catholic holy day celebrated on Aug. 15. It is the Feast of the Assumption, not Ascension Day.

GRAPHIC: Photos: The Black Madonna. (Association of Marian Helpers); The chapel in Jasna Gora monastery; half a million people will visit on Aug. 15. The Nobel Peace Prize of the leader Lech Walesa; A few of the 4 million pilgrims who come every year. Visitors to the monastery at Jasna Gora. Visitors under ornate ceiling of the church at Jasna Gora. (Photographs by Witold Szulecki for The New York Times); Map of Poland showing location of Czestochowa.

Copyright 1990 The New York Times Company



247 of 468 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times

July 25, 1990, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Bush's Court Choice;
Ascetic at Home but Vigorous on Bench

BYLINE: By DAVID MARGOLICK, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section A; Page 1, Column 3; National Desk

LENGTH: 2269 words

DATELINE: WEARE, N.H., July 24

When lawyers assess a candidate for the Supreme Court, they generally make comparisons to known judicial quantities. That is how the lawyers of New Hampshire are describing Judge David H. Souter, whom they have followed from private practice in Concord to the State Attorney General's office to the state and Federal bench.
Some see in Judge Souter (pronounced SUIT-er) the quirkiness of Justice John Paul Stevens. Others see the intellectual rigor of Justice Antonin Scalia, or the pragmatic conservatism of Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. And almost everyone reaches back to the 1930's for a Justice of Judge Souter's ascetic style and monastic personal life: Benjamin N. Cardozo.
The one Justice to whom he is never compared here, either in temperament or judicial philosophy, is the one he would replace: William J. Brennan Jr. Small Cars and Cottage Cheese In this green and pleasant state, where lawyers number just 3,500 and State Supreme Court judges just five rather than the usual seven or nine, even someone as reclusive as Judge Souter cannot remain a remote Olympian figure. 
Lawyers here can tell you what kind of cars he drives (and drives and drives): subcompacts, most recently a 1987 Volkswagen Golf. They can tell you what he undeviatingly eats for lunch every day (cottage cheese and an apple); what he wears (his black judge's robe was said to add color to his attire), and how and where he lives (alone, in a weatherbeaten farmhouse in this southern New Hampshire town nine miles from the Supreme Court where he sat for seven years).
They know he is intermittently and selectively gregarious, a good storyteller who displays a dry New England wit to those who really get to know him. He is said to do a splendid imitation of former Gov. Meldrim Thomson Jr., who named him Attorney General, and to tell great tales about Senator Warren Rudman, the New Hampshire Republican who is his long-term political mentor and sponsor.
Outside the courtroom, they say, he can cast aside judicial rigor for a measure of personal warmth. Each Sunday he walks the same elderly woman home from St. Andrew's Episcopal Church in Hopkinton, where he is a vestryman, and each Sunday he visits his mother at a Concord nursing home. After a friend's barn burned down, he offered money to help rebuild it.
Neighbors like Martha Knox and Nellie Perrigo, as well as college classmates from his days at Harvard 30 years ago, describe him as courteous, loyal, unaffected and upright.
''He isn't stuck up, doesn't put on any airs and is very down to earth,'' said Howard Ineson, who lives a mile up Sugar Hill Road from the judge and has known him and his family for 40 years. ''They're going to have to work very hard to find any blemishes.''
On the New Hampshire Supreme Court, where unanimity is common and where the spectrum runs less from liberal to conservative than from humanistic to hyper-logical, lawyers here say Judge Souter is at the far edge of the latter.
If there are any qualms about him, it is a quiet concern over his circumscribed way of life. As a young man he was briefly engaged to the daughter of a State Superior Court justice, but he never married, and even his admirers wonder whether his solitary style has limited his empathy or level of human understanding.
Almost no one here purports really to understand the small, buttoned-down figure who stood by awkwardly as President Bush nominated him to the nation's highest Court on Monday. Even by the laconic standards of this community, he is known for his reticence.
Few, including his fellow judges, have ever been inside his house, with its peeling paint, sagging porch, and lawn clogged with clover and Queen Anne's lace. Those who have say it is filled with books. By all accounts, he is much more interested in Tennyson than tennis, though he likes hiking in the White Mountains at least as much as either.
 
The Judge
Insistent To a Fault
Judge Souter's reticence vanishes on the bench. He is credited with bringing a new level of fire and vigor to the once-sleepy oral arguments that long characterized the court. He is also widely praised for his hard work, dedication, intellectual acuity and independence. ''Souter does not carry this huge cargo of ideological precommitments that seems to have been a qualification for everyone who's been appointed to the Supreme Court for the last 10 years,'' said Martin L. Gross, a lawyer in Concord.
Lawyers say his written opinions are forceful, but long and closely reasoned. ''He has a tendency to disclose compulsively every twist and turn in his reasoning,'' Mr. Gross said. It is an odd fate for someone who, as Attorney General, handed out copies of ''The Elements of Style'' to lawyers working for him.
In conferences, one former colleague recalled, Judge Souter was ''not argumentative in a ranting way, but intellectually insistent.'' To lawyers in his coutroom, that insistence could seem brutal. At least one victim of his grueling interrogations later received a note of apology.
He also impressed his peers with his compulsiveness. Workdays at the court would always begin for him at precisely 9:15 and end at precisely 6:15. ''You could set your watch by his comings and goings,'' another judge said. Each July 30, his desk would be teeming with law books and briefs; by the morning of Aug. 1, when his annual mountaineering vacation began, it was entirely clear.
 
The Student
Formal, Reserved, Intensely Private
Judge Souter, an only child, moved here with his parents at the age of 11. His father, Joseph, was an official at the New Hampshire Savings Bank in Concord.
The younger Souter was a diligent student whose only brush with juvenile delinquency, as one story has it, was being kicked out of the New Hampshire Historical Society for loitering after hours. At Concord High School, he was voted ''most literary,'' ''most sophisticated'' and ''most likely to succeed.'' The high school yearbook described him as ''witty and in constant demand'' and said he enjoyed ''giving and attending scandalous parties.''
Mr. Souter entered Harvard in 1957. From 1961 to 1963 he attended Oxford University on a Rhodes scholarship, studying law and philosophy. He then moved to Harvard Law School, where he did well but did not make the Law Review.
When he graduated from Harvard College in 1961, several classmates came up with the perfect idea for a gift: a scrapbook filled with imaginary news stories about the blazing career everyone foresaw for him. In the book, someone pasted the headline ''David Souter Nominated to the Supreme Court.''
 
'Mr. Justice Souter'
It was a joke that said much about his classmates' affection for him, and about his single-mindedness. ''All David ever wanted to be was a judge,'' said the Rev. John L. McCausland, an Episcopal minister who was one of his closest friends at Harvard. He said Mr. Souter's friends used to call him ''Mr. Justice Souter.''
But just three weeks ago, when Mr. McCausland called Judge Souter to congratulate him on being confirmed to an appellate court seat in Boston and jokingly asked if this would just be a steppingstone to the Supreme Court, the judge replied: ''No. There's no chance I'll be nominated, because I come from a politically insignificant state.''
As an undergraduate, Mr. Souter was fascinated by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, and though he majored in philosophy, he wrote his senior honors thesis about Holmes's judicial positivism. Mr. McCausland recalled an evening meeting at Lowell House at which Mr. Souter read his thesis. ''It was very technical and erudite,'' Mr. McCausland said, but what struck him was that it examined Holmes's belief that a judge should not act out of political persuasion, or ideology.
 
At Oxford, Books and Chapel
Mr. Souter was deeply religious, his friends recalled. David Eisenberg, another Harvard classmate who was a Rhodes scholar with Mr. Souter, recalled that Mr. Souter was one of the few Rhodes scholars who attended chapel and took communion.
Professor Eisenberg, who teaches molecular biology at the University of California at Los Angeles, recalled Mr. Souter as somewhat reclusive and bookish. ''At every break, the rest of us would take off for the continent, to get away from the English cold and to explore,'' he said. ''But David always just stayed at Oxford.''
Mr. Eisenberg called Judge Souter ''an excellent conversationalist, great fun to have dinner with, but formal, reserved and intensely private.''
''I think he is rather an old-fashioned kind of person,'' he added, ''with strong values and principles.''
Other old friends used similar terms. Dr. Melvin Levine, another former Rhodes scholar, said Mr. Souter, his close friend at Oxford, was ''in the 18th-century mold.'' He has ''magnificent handwriting that looks like calligraphy,'' and is courtly and unfailingly polite, said Dr. Levine, who is now a professor of pediatrics at the University of North Carolina Medical School in Chapel Hill.
At Oxford, Mr. Souter was very patriotic, deeply offended at anti-American remarks, Dr. Levine said, adding: ''He's always wanted to be a defender of America and American values. That's why he went into law.''
 
An Aunt's Influence
Mr. Souter was profoundly influenced by an aunt, Harriet Bartlett, who was a pioneer in medical social work. ''She had a combination of being politically and socially conservative, but she fulfilled liberal causes,'' Dr. Levine said.
Dr. Levine said he thought Mr. Souter had modeled himself on her, and added that she might be the source of his interest in medicine and hospitals: for 13 years he served as a trustee of Concord Hospital in New Hampshire, 6 of them as president.
Mr. Souter's old friends took a turn at guessing what kind of Supreme Court Justice he might be. Mr. McCausland, who was a lawyer in Chicago before he became a minister, predicted that his friend would be ''very conservative as a Justice, but my feeling is he is the kind of conservative who can fool the people who appointed him.''
''He's extraordinarily honorable and thoughtful and intelligent,'' Mr. McCausland added. ''He would be technically conservative, but not ideologically conservative, not like a Scalia.
''He might well continue to be a swing vote. He is not a crusader for any cause.''
 
The Legal Mind
Conservative, But What Kind?
After law school, Mr. Souter returned to Concord, a move that surprised some who had expected him to settle in a more distant and exotic place. He joined the Concord law firm Orr & Reno, where he spent two unhappy years. In 1971 he became a Deputy State Attorney General.
He remained in that office for the next 12 years, much of it under the tutelage of Warren B. Rudman, then the Attorney General and now New Hampshire's junior Senator. ''They were the two sides of a perfect public person: Warren Rudman was gregarious and great on his feet, and David Souter more thoughtful, careful,'' said Charles Leahy of Concord, a friend of Judge Souter's. ''It was a chemical, intellectual and emotional match.''
In 1976 Governor Thomson named Mr. Souter Attorney General, and in his two-year stint he took several controversial stands, often at Mr. Thomson's behest. He urged that demonstrators arrested at the Seabrook nuclear power plant be given more than suspended sentences. He also argued, unsuccessfully, that it was constitutionally permissible to fly the American flag at half staff on Good Friday and that New Hampshire could force residents to carry the state slogan, ''Live Free or Die,'' on their license plates.
Mr. Thomson named him to the Superior Court in 1978. Five years later Mr. Thomson's successor, Gov. John H. Sununu, elevated him to the Supreme Court. ''I think when I'm old and gray, people will say, 'This is one of the greatest things you did as Governor,' '' Mr. Sununu said at Judge Souter's swearing-in ceremony.
Those who have watched Judge Souter said they had no doubt about his conservatism. The only question, and it is a crucial one, is the kind of conservative he will be.
James E. Duggan, a professor at Franklin Pierce Law Center in Concord who has often argued before him, described Judge Souter as ''very conservative, but with a streak of Yankee independence that makes him somewhat unpredictable.''
''I'm disappointed that Brennan is leaving, but Bush could have done a lot worse,'' Mr. Duggan said. ''Souter is not a blind right-wing law-and-order judge. On the other hand, he's not going to cut any breaks for criminal defendants.''
Mr. Gross, the Concord lawyer, agreed. ''David places a much stronger value on society's need to protect itself than most civil libertarians would like,'' he said. ''What they'd better be rejoicing about is that they didn't get another right-wing nut. This is a guy who listens intently to what litigants have to say.''
Bruce E. Friedman, director of the civil practice clinic at the Franklin Pierce Law Center in Concord, was less enthusiastic. ''He's smart and diligent,'' Mr. Friedman said, ''but I don't think he will be a general in the war for a kinder, gentler America.''
Mr. Duggan said: ''He's against abortion, and I'm sure that he thinks Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided. What is impossible to measure is whether he's prepared to overturn a Supreme Court precedent. I think his thinking would be that he would not, unless he felt it was egregiously wrong.''
A State Supreme Court judge offered another view: ''I don't know where he will land on abortion, but one thing I can guarantee: he will land there after a lot of thought.''

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: The home of Judge David H. Souter, President Bush's Supreme Court choice, in Weare, N.H. (Associated Press) (pg. A12)

Copyright 1990 The New York Times Company



248 of 468 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times

July 26, 1990, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

HEALTH;
When the Mind Goes Blank: Crisis for the Elderly

BYLINE: By JON NORDHEIMER

SECTION: Section B; Page 7, Column 3; National Desk

LENGTH: 1269 words

It can be a moment of dread for the elderly.
Without warning, the mind slips and goes blank, and a feeling of helpless confusion takes over.
Should this event take place in a strange city, away from the familiar signposts of home, the confusion can border on terror.
The disorder is called acute confusional state or delirium. It is often a signal of an underlying or impending medical disease or disorder like heart attack, stroke or pneumonia, but it is commonly misdiagnosed by family members and even medical personnel who expect older people to exhibit odd behavior on occasion. 
 
Stress May Be a Factor
If the underlying condition is left untreated, the oversight may be fatal.
Many times the same symptoms of sudden confusion or mental stupor occur without the presence of an observable illness, and the victim recovers his senses without any apparent lasting impairment. Adding to the mystery, this type of case often appears in older people who are traveling far from home, and now researchers are asking whether the stress of travel can bring on the condition.
On the boardwalk in Hollywood, Fla., police officers know it as the ''sundown syndrome.''
Officer Paul Duncan encountered a case a few weeks ago when an elderly man walked up and told him, ''I don't know who I am, where I'm at, or why I'm here.''
 
Piecing Together Identity
After the man was checked at a local hospital and was found free of any serious illness, detectives were able to figure out that he had arrived that day on a flight from New Jersey with a friend. With encouragement and reassurance, the victim was able to piece together clues to his identity. The mental fog eventually lifted, and he was reunited with his traveling companion.
''He was a real sundowner,'' Officer Duncan said. ''We see a lot of them around here. They come down here, get disoriented about the time the sun goes down, and walk around in a daze.''
The odds that this type of experience will ever happen to the average healthy older traveler are thought to be extremely low in relation to the 31 million men and women over the age of 64. But as more and more older Americans take extended trips, reports of those who become lost along the way keep adding up.
The term sundown syndrome itself is recognized in medical literature only in regards to patients in nursing homes and other medical institutions who become severely confused and agitated after nightfall.
But the question now being asked by some health officials is whether the loss of sleep, changes of diet and climate, overmedication and a host of other departures from the routine can cause a similar problem for some elderly travelers, especially the very old, whose bodies have greater difficulty regulating functions like heartbeat, blood pressure and body temperature.
 
Illness Often a Factor
They say most of the cases can be explained by the presence of an existing, if previously undetected, medical condition. But can fatigue and emotional stress in combination with dehydration, constipation, alcohol and insomnia also bring on a confused state?
Research into the phenomenon has been spotty, in part because the police and medical records may indicate an individual was treated for another ailment to which the mental maelstrom called attention.
Many times, such confusion is wrongly diagnosed as Alzheimer's disease or senility, both of which usually take years of observed deterioration to reach the point of total confusion. Unlike those chronic, irreversible mental diseases, the confused states are usually transient and may clear up in a matter of hours or days.
''I suspect it's a very much under-appreciated problem,'' said Dr. Gene Cohen, Deputy Director of the National Institute on Aging and a specialist in geriatric psychiatry. ''Its frequency is not well understood, but the thinking is it is a more common event than most clinicians and the public would suspect. We are only just becoming aware of how common it is in certain settings.''
Dr. Robert Butler, chairman of the gerontology department of Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York and a former director of the Institute on Aging, recounted a personal brush with the disorder.
''I was traveling in Australia with my mother, who was 84 at the time, when one night at dinner she was making absolutely no sense,'' he said.
Alarmed, he summoned a doctor, who discovered she had pneumonia. The confused state had been the first symptom of the disease, which was filling her lungs with fluid and reducing blood flow to the brain. She was hospitalized and recovered completely.
Others may never learn the exact cause of an episode.
A year ago a retired couple from Florida in their 80's were driving north on their annual spring visit to their son's home in New Jersey and made an overnight stop at a North Carolina motel along Interstate 95. The wife later recalled: ''A little after 1 in the morning I heard him thrashing about in his bed and blubbering. He had no idea who I was.'' End to Long-Distance Driving She suspected a stroke and within an hour her husband was in an intensive care unit at a local hospital. But no serious illness could be found and within two days he was released. ''It's the sundown syndrome,'' the attending physician said.
The man, who spoke on condition that he not be identified, recently said: ''I have no recollection of the event. I haven't had a recurrence, but I'm afraid to do any long-distance driving any more.''
For Regina Hill of Washington, the experience happened at home. ''I woke up one morning and couldn't remember anything,'' said Mrs. Hill, a 72-year-old widow. ''I thought I was losing my mind. I got so depressed I wanted to kill myself.''
Eventually, doctors found she was suffering a thyroid deficiency, and treatment of that condition restored her mental faculties, said Dr. Cohen, who aided in the case.
Dr. Zbigniew J. Iipowski of the University of Toronto, author of ''Delirium: Acute Confusional States'' (Oxford University Press, 1990) reported this spring that roughly one out of four patients hospitalized for treatment of an existing illness like heart disease or cancer were in an acute confusional state at time of admission or during some part of the stay.
Dr. Sue Levkoff, a specialist in social medicine at Harvard Medical School, said, ''Since the studies are all conducted in hospitals or nursing homes, where the elderly patients are already sick, it's hard to estimate how many cases are occurring in the ordinary world. Physicians often say old people get confused. There's a tremendous amount of under-detection even in hospitals.''
Moreover, there is a mistaken tendency to accept confusion among older people as an inevitable consequence of aging.
 
Prescription Drugs Cited
''The police frequently describe elderly drivers as 'zombies' or 'out of it' when they have these spells,'' said Dr. James Malfetti, a Columbia University professor emeritus of public health and a traffic safety consultant. But often, he said, they are in a confused state brought on by improper use of prescription drugs.
The Travelers' Aid Society says its workers at major airports are occasionally called upon to assist elderly passengers who get off a plane without a grasp of where they are. ''There's no ifs, ands or buts about it: our people see this problem a lot,'' said Alan Sutherland, executive director of Traveler's Aid International headquarters in Washington. ''It's real, and we're going to see a lot more of it as life expectancy increases and there's more money for older people to travel.''

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Table listing certain things to do to decrease travel stress. (source: Gene and Adele Malott, ''Get Up and Go! A Guide for the Mature Traveler,'' Gateway Books.); Photo: The elderly can become confused at home or while traveling. Regina Hill of Washington recovered fully from a memory lapse she experienced at home. With her is Dr. Gene Cohen, a specialist in geriatric psychiatry. (Marty Katz for The New York Times)

Copyright 1990 The New York Times Company



249 of 468 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times

July 26, 1990, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

HEALTH;
Study Suggests Menopause Doesn't Affect Mental Health

SECTION: Section B; Page 7, Column 3; National Desk

LENGTH: 414 words

A new study suggests that contrary to popular belief, menopause does not cause stress or depression in most healthy women, and it may even improve mental health for some.
''Women don't have to expect menopause to be a negative experience,'' said Karen A. Matthews, a psychologist at the University of Pittsburgh.
Dr. Matthews and her colleagues at Pittsburgh and at Duke University interviewed 541 randomly selected menstruating women from the ages of 42 to 50. Three years later they evaluated 69 participants who had ceased menstruating for at least one year and 32 others who no longer menstruated and were taking horomone supplements. The findings were published in June in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology. 
The researchers found that these 101 menopausal women did not differ significantly in anxiety, anger or depression, or feelings of stress, excitability, nervousness or bodily worries from a group of menstruating women in that age range.
 
A Comparison of Results
Menopausal women who did not take hormones reported more hot flashes, but over all they had better mental health ratings than menstruating women or those taking hormones, the researchers found. Menopausal women who were taking hormones reported more worries about their bodies and were slightly more depressed, but these results could be caused by the hormone therapy, the researchers said.
The study is significant in that it tested the women's physical and psychological health before and after menstruation ends. The few past studies done on menopause and mental health have tended to rely on the recollections of older women, rather than on personality tests, and have studied a group of women who sought psychological treatment, rather than a more representative group. In addition, some previous studies had not separated out women taking various medicines that can affect moods.
''I didn't expect the minimum effects we found,'' Dr. Matthews said. She cautioned, however, that since the researchers studied only healthy women, the results may be applicable only to them. It is possible that other difficulties are compounded by menopause, she said.
Dr. Matthews also said that since menopause occurred gradually over several years, the overall period still needed closer examination.
The researchers recommend that psychologists evaluate and treat middle-aged women according to their specific life circumstances and risk factors rather than their menopausal status.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1990 The New York Times Company



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The New York Times

July 27, 1990, Friday, Late Edition - Final

Silber Taps Public's Anger to Run a Strong Race in Massachusetts

BYLINE: By FOX BUTTERFIELD, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section A; Page 8, Column 3; National Desk

LENGTH: 1134 words

DATELINE: BOSTON, July 26

Despite waging an unusual, provocative campaign that has broken many of the rules of politics and offended some women, blacks and the elderly, John R. Silber is running more strongly than expected in the Massachusetts race for governor and could be in position to win the Democratic nomination in September.
''I'd say Silber is now the person to beat,'' said Tom Kiley, a political consultant in Boston who is not affiliated with any of the candidates.
If Dr. Silber, the 63-year-old president of Boston University, does win the Democratic primary election in September, it could put him in a commanding position to capture the governor's office in November in a state with a weak Republican Party, whose two candidates so far have turned in lackluster performances, Mr. Kiley said.
Mr. Kiley and others acknowledged that Dr. Silber could still undermine his chances in the September primary with more of the kind of candid comments that have become his trademark. 
 
Shakespeare Line Flops
In the past week alone, for example, Dr. Silber antagonized many elderly voters by proposing that medical care for the aged be rationed to save the state's deficit-ridden budget. After saying he would not let the state pay for a heart transplant for an 80-year-old, Dr. Silber added: ''I want to remind the voters of Massachusetts that Shakespeare was right when he said 'Ripeness is all.' When you've had a long life and you're ripe, then it's time to go.'' The citation was from ''King Lear.''
Similarly, Dr. Silber outraged some feminists when he said at a forum on women's issues last week that he would not appoint someone like Gloria Steinem to be a judge. ''I would want to make sure that the judge was not so taken up in a cause, either the cause of women or the cause of minorities, that that judge could not act fairly if a male came before that judge,'' Dr. Silber said.
But Dr. Silber, a native of Texas and a former dean of the University of Texas, seems to have turned his candor into a weapon, capturing the popular anger in Massachusetts over a faltering economy, an endless state budget crisis and rising taxes.
''I think because the voters are mad and because he is the meanest dude to come along in a long time, people have elevated John Silber into a status where he is judged by a different standard,'' Mr. Kiley said. ''He has tapped into their alienation, and if he wants to tip the whole thing over, that's fine.''
 
Grabbing the Headlines
Ralph Whitehead, a professor of journalism at the University of Massachusetts, said Dr. Silber had broken one of the standard rules of politics by ''making himself into the issue in the campaign.''
''Normally, that is dangerous,'' Mr. Whitehead said. ''But Silber has managed to use it to dominate the campaign,'' he said, and has largely obscured his Democratic opponents, Francis X. Bellotti, a former State Attorney General, and Lieut. Gov. Evelyn Murphy. The headlines each day in Boston's papers and the local television news are constantly devoted to what have come to be called ''Silber shockers.''
In the most recent poll on the gubernatorial contest, published by the Boston Globe on June 19, Dr. Silber and Mr. Bellotti were tied with 32 percent each, with Ms. Murphy at 27 percent. The margin of sampling error in the poll was plus or minus five percentage points. Although the poll showed the three candidates virtually tied, that represented a huge gain for Dr. Silber, who began the campaign last winter with well under a 10 percent rating.
Lieutenant Governor Murphy has depicted herself as the only liberal in the race, willing to raise taxes to resolve the state's budget crisis and press forward with the expensive cleanup of Boston Harbor. But she has been hurt by her close ties to the now widely disliked Gov. Michael S. Dukakis, who has been blamed for failing to halt the budget mess.
 
Not a Fresh Face
Mr. Bellotti has tried to claim the political center, appealing to traditional blue-collar Democratic voters. But he is 66 years old and has been burdened by his image as an old political warhorse - he first ran for Governor in 1963 - at a time of voter discontent with politicians.
Daniel Payne, another political consultant in Boston not connected to any of the candidates, said Dr. Silber might have injured himself by his comment on rationing medical care for the elderly. Some of Dr. Silber's earlier remarks, including one about the City of Lowell's becoming a welfare magnet for Cambodian refugees and his suggestion that welfare benefits be cut off for teen-age mothers who have a second child, were aimed at people who do not vote, Mr. Payne noted.
''But with the elderly, Silber put his tongue on the third rail of Massachusetts politics,'' Mr. Payne said. ''Silber finally picked on a group that can fight back.''
Nevertheless, Mr. Payne said, ''Silber sounds attractive to a lot of people because he hasn't learned the cautious vocabulary of politicians,'' adding, ''He is fresh and naturally different.''
 
A Hybrid of Sorts
Another of Dr. Silber's appeals is that he is a curious hybrid of liberal and conservative, as he illustrated in a televised debate last week. He once again stated his view that teen-age mothers who have a second child should be stripped of welfare benefits, but he also came out firmly against the death penalty and said he favored strict control on all types of guns.
''Silber is willing to take on the really tough issues,'' said John Cogswell, a retired treasurer of the New England Telephone Company in Boston. ''Too many politicians aren't willing to take on those issues. They're too willing to use platitudes.''
''The way Dr. Silber says things, his choice of analogies and flamboyant phrases, tends to get people to overreact,'' said Mr. Cogswell, who is a member of a special commission appointed by the Massachusetts Legislature to study a universal health care plan for the state. ''But it's part of a constructive dialogue, and he's getting people to think he might be able to change the aspects of government that appear out of control.''
In all the disputes over Dr. Silber, the two Republican candidates for governor, Steven Pierce, the House minority leader, and William F. Weld, a patrician former United States Attorney in Boston, have received far less notice. The Republicans, who make up only 13 percent of the state's registered voters, have not won the governor's office since 1970.
Mr. Pierce, a conservative who has made opposition to tax increases into an angry crusade, won the Republican state convention endorsement and appears well ahead of Mr. Weld.
But in a general election between Dr. Silber and Mr. Pierce, Mr. Kiley said, ''I think people will vote for the real thing,'' the really angry man, Dr. Silber.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: John R. Silber, president of Boston University, who some say may be able to win the Democratic nomination for governor of Massachusetts in September. (Associated Press)

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July 27, 1990, Friday, Late Edition - Final

Municipal Services Shrinking in Suburbs

BYLINE: By SARAH LYALL

SECTION: Section B; Page 1, Column 2; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 1433 words

Cities and towns across the New York metropolitan region are reducing services, sometimes drastically, under pressure from the slowing economy, declining state aid and a populace tired of ever-rising property taxes.
Many communities say they are struggling to keep essential services intact. In affluent towns where essentials are not yet the issue, what is being lost are the extras -cultural events, recreation programs, even door-to-door garbage collection - that helped define the communities and attract many of their residents.
''People expect their tax dollar to pay for more than police, fire and education,'' said Kevin T. Maloney, a spokesman for the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities. ''There's a sense that if you can't go to the library at night, or there are cuts in senior citizens' programs, some people will see this as real quality-of-life issues.'' 
In Windsor, Conn., a suburb of Hartford where taxpayers cut $4 million from the budget this spring, a library branch is closing, some street lights have been turned off and the school system is eliminating 33 jobs.
Savings also show up in scores of smaller ways. In Long Beach, L.I., members of all-star sports teams are receiving commemorative certificates instead of trophies this year. In Middletown, N.J., residents discarding old refrigerators and sofas now must take them to the dump, instead of having them picked up.
As communities re-examine the level of services they can provide, officials say they are caught between two opposing forces. On the one hand, there is a decline in revenue. Federal revenue sharing ended several years ago; state aid has slowed or decreased, and as the economy worsens, towns are encountering slower growth in their tax bases and more people failing to pay property taxes.
On the other hand, residents increasingly oppose large increases in property-tax rates, even as towns must rely on property taxes to finance a growing portion of their budgets.
''The tax burden has merely shifted to the municipal level,'' said Toni Anderson, the finance director of Windsor. ''The Federal Government cut out all its support, and the state government is in the process of cutting out its support while leaving in its mandates. We're the ones who are last in line.''
''It's going to be bad next year,'' said Richard P. Devine, the commissioner of finance for New Rochelle, a city of 72,000 in Westchester County. ''It's either that the tax rate is intolerably high, or we're going to do away with equipment and services that have always been there.''
 
'Room to Scale Back'
Mr. Devine said New Rochelle is affluent and can absorb more budget cuts. ''We have a lot of robust services here, and there is room to scale back some,'' he said.
Yet he said the city is facing the worst of both worlds in its 1991 budget: a tax increase of more than 10 percent, plus the elimination of some services that many residents take for granted.
Red Bank, a town of 12,000 in Monmouth County., N.J., is an example of a town that offers few extras to begin with.
''We really don't have that much leeway to reduce services,'' said Michael Arnone, a dentist who is the town's mayor. ''There aren't really a lot of things you can cut back on. So we cope in the only way we can cope, and that is by raising taxes.''
Because of cuts in state assistance, including general revenue sharing and money for health programs, Red Bank had to raise an additional $1.4 million this year to meet a shortfall in its $7.9 million 1990 budget. The owner of a house valued at $140,000 will see a $500 increase in property taxes, Dr. Arnone said.
Some towns are seeing alarmingly high numbers of people who are not paying their property taxes. Milford, Conn., collected about $1 million in taxes less than it expected in the current tax levy, because only 96.8 percent of the people paid, said Ruth M. Levine, the city's finance director. The town had anticipated 97.5 percent.
''In a budget that is 75 percent funded by property taxes, it's a problem,'' she said.
While many residents said that they do not want taxes raised any more, many also do not want services cut. In Windsor, where school budget cuts eliminated some extracurricular programs and intramural sports and 33 full-time employees, some parents are furious.
''The cuts were a knee-jerk reaction by a certain segment of the town,'' said John L. Reizian, who belongs to a group concerned about the effect of the budget cuts on education.
In New York State, revenue sharing for municipalities has been reduced for next year, but the decrease is being offset by a saving in the money the cities and towns are required to contribute to employee retirement funds. As a result, local government officials say, New York's municipalities are not in as much trouble as those in Connecticut and New Jersey.
 
'Remaining Status Quo'
In Islip, L.I., the Supervisor, Frank R. Jones, said the downturn in financing is being felt in relatively small ways so far. Over the last two years, the town has cut $50,000 from its programs for the aging. In the last year, the price of a meal for elderly people in the town nutrition program was raised to $1.50 from $1.00.
''In general, the programs we would normally expand and improve are remaining status quo, which means we are really falling behind,'' Mr. Jones said. ''We are spending more than we did just to keep the services.''
In New Jersey, cuts in state aid include the state's general revenue sharing program. It was reduced from $50 million to $20 million last year; it was eliminated altogether this year. In addition, the Legislature recently enacted tax increases and a new school-financing system that are intended to provide relief to a majority of the state's towns and cities, but are likely to raise property taxes sharply in many.
Jon R. Moran, senior legislative analyst for the New Jersey League of Municipalities, said that most towns and cities in the state were making cuts in their capital programs, postponing roadwork and other repairs.
In Newtown, N.J., a town of 8,000, taxes were raised an average of $550 a homeowner this year, said Camille Furgieule, the town manager. Still, the town had to reduce hours and cut several positions from its 65-person municipal staff. For the first time, the town will charge for its summer program for children. And the fall clean-up program in which residents could leave bulk trash for the town to pick up has been eliminated.
''The economy isn't as active as it has been, and it has a snowballing effect - it comes down to services in the municipality,'' Mrs. Furgieule said. Even with the cuts and tax increase, she said, for the first time Newton will have to borrow money against taxes it expects to receive in August and November to pay expenses through September.
In Connecticut, municipalities have seen a steady slowing in the growth of their tax bases - the growth was 3.1 percent last year, below the inflation rate - and in state aid. State aid grew 3.6 percent last year, the lowest rise in nine years, said Mr. Maloney of the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities. As a result, property tax increases this year averaged 8.2 percent.
The decline in state aid to West Hartford suggest what is happening around Connecticut. The suburb of 61,000 lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in state aid for non-educational services to private schools; it must pay those costs itself. It lost about $400,000 for special education. Altogether, it lost more than $1 million.
As a result, said Andrew F. Urban, the city's director of financial services, all-day kindergarten has been eliminated except in three schools with needy children; the hours at the public swimming pools and parks have been cut; plans to buy new equipment for the police and fire departments have been postponed, and the summer arts-and-crafts program has been dropped.
The small garbage ''scooters'' used to collect trash no longer go up driveways for door-to-door service, and next year the scooters, a symbol of West Hartford's high level of services, will be eliminated altogether.
Not many people like these budget cuts. And because property taxes are going up everywhere anyway, it is unclear whether residents feel that they are getting any benefit from this year's budgets at all.
''The citizens are not happy,'' Mrs. Furgiuele of Newton, N.J., said. ''They'll come in to my office and they'll sit there and I'll give them the facts. But they don't want to hear the facts. They just want you to fix the bottom line, and you can't do that.''

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Cities and towns across the New York metropolitan area are being forced to reduce their services, in part because of a reduction in Federal aid. In West Hartford, Conn., the scooters used to collect garbage no longer go up driveways for door-to-door service; next year they will be eliminated altogether. (Stephen Castagneto for The New York Times) (pg. B3)

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July 29, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

NO COUNTRY FOR WOMEN

BYLINE: By URSULA HEGI; Ursula Hegi grew up in Germany. Her latest book is a novel set in postwar Germany, ''Floating in My Mother's Palm.''

SECTION: Section 7; Page 26, Column 1; Book Review Desk

LENGTH: 712 words


LOST WEDDINGS
By Maria Beig.
Translated by Peter Blickle and Jaimy Gordon.
143 pp. New York:
Persea Books. $17.95.
To read the German author Maria Beig is like listening to a farm woman who has come to her table after a day of harsh labor and - between bites of hard bread - mutters occasional sentences before she drops back into silences. These silences often become more significant than the words in ''Lost Weddings,'' Ms. Beig's first book to be translated into English. 
Family, tradition and the Roman Catholic Church are the enemies in ''Lost Weddings.'' Their prey are women who fail to marry in the South German villages Ms. Beig knows so well from her childhood. Without passion or compassion, she renders the stories of four women - Babette, Helene, Klara and Martha - in four loosely connected narratives. Their lives are seared by two world wars, but far more destructive is the attitude of the community, which condemns a woman who does not conform to its rigid codes of behavior. Women are punished with disapproval if they're not connected to men, and treated with moral outrage if they have the courage to take lovers.
With some of the single women ''the war was not to blame; they had goiters and warts. But many a one was prettier than average; these had run up their expectations too high, and . . . opportunity had passed them by. Another girl was sincerely devout, and matrimony was too sinful for her.'' Daughters are forbidden to marry outside their class or religion, and on some farms only the oldest daughter is allowed to marry. The focus is on family property and the prosperity of the sons. With all these obstacles, it's hardly surprising that many of the women remain unmarried, isolated within their families, taking on hard chores, nursing the elderly and nurturing the children of the married women. Some flee to convents; others support themselves by cleaning churches or working in factories.
In this class-conscious society, power clearly belongs to the men and - only through them - to the women who marry them. Sadly, no bonding develops between the married women and the ''weddingless'' (a direct translation of the book's German title, ''Hochzeitslose''). Ms. Beig, who wrote six books after she retired from teaching, illuminates the fate of countless German village women in the first half of the 20th century through her four characters. She shows their potential when they are young and the narrowing of that potential as they age.
Although the wars are mentioned only briefly, their presence is felt through the soldiers who graze the lives of the unmarried women and devastate the countryside. Evidence of their occupation remains long after they've retreated: ''Into the paneling on the wall he had cut runes and swastikas, and in one corner a cross.''
Ms. Beig's prose is plain, choppy, stark - and extremely difficult to translate. The organic pattern of her native dialect encumbers the translation with an awkwardness that's impossible to avoid. Many of her passages read like synopses, as she attempts to crowd entire lifetimes into her stories without selecting significant moments or exploring the impact of her characters' experiences.
And yet her characters are memorable - haunting, even. Babette loves men who are inaccessible - a married man and the village priest. Ultimately, she disengages herself from the church and celebrates her own mass - certainly a man's prerogative. Helene is the daughter of a social climber who wants her to become the important wife of an important man - a banker or a doctor. After her last suitor deserts her, Helene slips into an obsession with marriage announcements. As a child, Klara is taller, richer and more beautiful than the other girls. Adored by teachers and classmates, she grows into a vain woman, addicted to admiration and afraid of closeness. Martha, elegant and refined, has gone to boarding school. Her generosity is exploited and misunderstood, her reputation shattered.
But Maria Beig's weddingless women don't complain. Swept forward into bleak years, they mourn the deaths of their illusions and go on to endure even more in their villages where ''the church kept the people in a coma,'' and where aging, single women are pariahs.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

TYPE: Review

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July 29, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Mentors Are for Skewering

BYLINE: By MARIAN URY; Marian Ury is a professor of comparative literature at the University of California, Davis.

SECTION: Section 7; Page 29, Column 1; Book Review Desk

LENGTH: 1181 words


RAIN IN THE WIND
Four Stories.
By Saiichi Maruya.
Translated by Dennis Keene.
234 pp. New York:
Kodansha International. $18.95.
Toward the end of the Japanese classic ''The Tale of Genji,'' one of the principal male characters, bewildered and perhaps even obsessed by the sense that there is some mystery about his birth, learns from an aged woman servant encountered by chance that he is not the son of his supposed father. At the end of ''Tree Shadows,'' a novella in the collection ''Rain in the Wind'' by Saiichi Maruya, an aging novelist, who claims to have been one of the few children who have never fantasized that they are the offspring of different parents (even though he has just been writing an essay about this very fantasy), is told by an even more elderly woman admirer, who has been pursuing him by letter, that he is not the son of his mother. Physically, the environment might almost be a parody of the scenes of romantic rusticity and dilapidation that intrigued 11th-century readers: a shabby, remote dwelling reached through a tunnel of darkness, made hideous by fluorescent lights, an enormous television set, a souvenir money box and a nude calendar. 
The novelist - as usual, Mr. Maruya is bemused and slightly irascible here, and intermittently aware of his capacity for self-deception - determinedly rejects the revelation. Its veracity is, in any event, not beyond question, although most readers, like me, will think the weight of evidence supports it. What is more important, it turns out to be profoundly beside the point. Some readers (but I am not one of them) will think ''Tree Shadows'' too clever by half, for it is full of stories within stories, in different phases of creation - remembered, unfinished, imagined as part of someone else's work. Both the third-person novelist and the first-person narrator who creates him are present to the reader, and both share the same obsession.
The novel ''Singular Rebellion,'' the only other work of Mr. Maruya available in English, from the same translator and publisher (1986), shows him a keenly satiric observer of Japanese fads and fashions, with a particular gift for skewering cultural mentors. One of the characters, a voguish professor who is a tenacious practitioner of the art of sententious blather, ranks with the best comic bores in any literature. Now in his mid-60's, Mr. Maruya once wrote a university dissertation on James Joyce; he has taught courses on Joyce; he translated ''A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man'' into Japanese and he is the co-translator of ''Ulysses.'' Turn the pages of ''Tree Shadows'' and the names of Joyce, Marcel Proust, Franz Kafka and Vladimir Nabokov leap out at you, along with those of Jorge Luis Borges, Daniel Defoe, Saikaku Ihara and a good many others. All of these have left their mark on Mr. Maruya - or at least on the fictitious alter ego in ''Tree Shadows,'' who may be lightly mocking his mentors. One of the stories within a story is an imitation of Nabokov - unless indeed it is the half-remembered story by Nabokov the narrator claims it is, for Mr. Maruya is a very foxy writer.
Very much his own man for all that, Mr. Maruya has also written about medieval Japanese waka poetry and about American and English detective fiction, with which he seems to have an encyclopedic acquaintance. One of his observations about mysteries is that there are many readers who prefer being puzzled to finding the solution.
''Rain in the Wind,'' a longer novella and this collection's masterful title piece, is essentially a detective story, its narrator a scholar of medieval Japanese literature engaged in an apparently futile search to prove that the bibulous monk whose stories entertained the narrator's father for an afternoon in 1940 - or was it 1939? - was a minor haiku poet who has posthumously become the subject of one of those ''booms'' that sweep the Japanese literary world. The partial revelation of the truth, when it does come, will be as unhappy as it is unexpected. In his obsessive search, the narrator has been looking for the wrong thing in the wrong place and, having found fragments of the truth, he cannot bring himself to try to assemble them. The terrain of the search, which is to this mystery what the streets of Los Angeles are to Raymond Chandler's novels, alternates between 13th-century poetry, through which the scholar hunts a word the monk had been heard exclaiming to himself, yokoshigure (''driven rain''), and the post-World War II literary scene.
Burrowing through anthologies and diaries, the scholar constructs suppositions to bolster his succession of hypotheses, one more ingenious than the next, about how the meeting of the monk and his father could have taken place. Like a detective, he imagines and reimagines stories that will explain both the scene and the circumstances. Unlike any fictional detective I can remember, he takes even greater enjoyment in crushing his own logic than in constructing scenarios. What makes it all fun is the narrator's warmth, for the search is an attempt to enliven posthumously a beloved father's drab existence. Mr. Maruya may be convinced that truth is funnier and more ironic than fiction.
He is an expert at putting real frogs into real gardens: the poet in question, Santoka Taneda (1882-1940) - a Zen priest, wanderer, devotee of poverty and drunkard - is so successful a fictional character that it may come as a disappointment to learn that he actually existed. (Again, a few prefatory remarks might have been useful. It is one thing if the author has created the vagrant poet and his works out of whole cloth and another entirely if his game is to blend fact and fiction. Santoka gets a brief mention in Donald Keene's history of modern Japanese literature, ''Dawn to the West,'' and a volume of his poetry has been translated by John Stevens.) His haiku, which are quoted in some number in the story, vary from good to mediocre (we have Mr. Maruya's word for it) to perfectly awful. The narrator in one of his less generous moods describes Santoka as a sponger cultivating the poetic persona of a mendicant, and calls him a ''caricature'' of ''those other two geniuses in the art of using people,'' the well-known novelists Dazai Osamu and Shimazaki Toson. Santoka is shown also as a rabid supporter of the Japanese conquest of Asia in the 1930's, so long as it does not interfere with his drinking. One of Mr. Maruya's theses, cynical but cheerful in the context, is that alcohol prevails over ideology.
Dennis Keene's translation provides a remarkably fluid and beautifully voiced narration, although there were moments when I couldn't help wishing he had persevered more with the details. Of two shorter stories in this volume, one was obscured for me by the relentless use of a British argot which sounds odd in the mouth of a Tokyo bar hostess; presumably this sort of thing goes over better on the other side of the Atlantic. The other, about a young man who discovers life and simultaneously discovers its unreality, is a gem.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

TYPE: Review

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July 29, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

LONG ISLAND GUIDE

SECTION: Section 12LI; Page 15, Column 3; Long Island Weekly Desk

LENGTH: 1213 words


 
POPS GOES THE MUSIC
Pops music and summer go together. And this week those who like to hear big orchestras perform light classical music and show tunes have more than they can handle on the free concert-in-the-park circuit. Today, for example, the North Shore Pops with the Santoro Singers plays at 8:15 P.M. at Morgan Park in Glen Cove; the Sound Symphony appears at 8 P.M. on the Village Green in Stony Brook, and the Concert Pops of Long Island performs at 8:15 P.M. at the Plainview/Old Bethpage Park.
On Friday, the Senior Citizens Pops Orchestra of Long Island will be at Eisenhower Park's Lakeside Theater in East Meadow at 8 P.M., while the Nassau Pops Symphony Orchestra is at Memorial Park, in Mineola, also at 8 P.M. The beat goes on Saturday when the Concert Pops of Long Island plays Post Park in Massapequa at 8:15 P.M.; the Nassau Pops Symphony is at Greis Park in Lynbrook at 8 P.M., and the North Shore Pops, again with the Santoro Singers, appears on the beach at National Boulevard at 8 P.M. in Long Beach. 
 
'HALF-TRUTHS'
Sculptures are sculptures are sculptures; except when they look functional, but really are not. Then, says Marge Goldwater, director of the Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum, they are ''Half-Truths.'' As the guest-curator for a show at the Parrish Art Museum in Southampton, Ms. Goldwater has assembled 20 pieces by eight contemporary sculptors: Robert Gober, Joel Otterson, Erik Levine, Ann Messner, Jack Risley, Grenville Davey, Tony Tasset and Rosemarie Trockel.
Like Ms. Messner's TV monitor transformed into an icon, and Mr. Gober's kitchen sink, the works appear to, well, work, but actually do not. And, says the curator, these ''untrue'' halves suggest ''that sometimes a half-truth can be even more revealing than the whole truth.'' The show opens today at the Parrish on Job's Lane and runs through Sept. 16. Hours: 283-2118.
 
AT THE HALL
The John Drew Theater at Guild Hall this week opens its unofficial ''Second Season,'' a potpourri of nights devoted to various and sundry performing arts pursuits. In addition to music and dance, family-oriented shows and sessions of talk, the new line-up features evenings of movies and theater. So, come Thursday, Andrew Sarris and Molly Haskell,the film critics, begin a weekly series on ''John Huston and Women.'' The first film to be screened and discussed will be the 1942 Bette Davis drama, ''In This Our Life.'' Then, readings of new plays will be staged on Fridays. The series opens with Nancy Marchand in ''After All,'' three one-act plays by Vincent Canby, film critic of The New York Times. Tickets: 324-4050.
 
UFO DEBATE
Not content to merely mount a sky show devoted to the phenomenon, the Vanderbilt Planetarium in Centerport is supplementing the sights in ''UFO!'' with some sounds provided by experts in the field. On Wednesday, such mavens of the unknown as Bob Cooke, science editor of Newsday; John Ford and Dick Ruhl, Long Island UFO investigators, and Joel Martin, the local radio-cable TV host, will debate the pros and cons of the subject. The debate is at 8 P.M. Tickets: 262-7800.
 
SUMMER FESTIVALS
In Sayville, the folks who put together that village's annual Summerfest believe that three days of festivities are better than one, or even two. So, opening with a carnival from 6 to 9 P.M., the 11th annual edition of the festival starts Friday. On Saturday things begin early at 8:30 A.M. with footraces for children and adults and continue through 9 P.M. with musical entertainment and arts and crafts shows. Next Sunday's activities, from 9 A.M. to 9 P.M., have the exhibits and the musical entertainment, and also feature a vintage car show. This all takes place on Main Street and at the Gillette Avenue Parrk and is free, except for what you buy.
The emphasis is on athletics at the first annual Nassau County MDA Fair at the Mitchel Field Athletic Complex in Uniondale. Starting at 7 A.M. Saturday with the MDA Cycling Classic, a 25 or 50, or 75-mile bike tour through Nassau, and continuing at 8:30 A.M. with an elimination softball tournament and then at 11 A.M. with games, entertainment, arts and crafts displays and sales, the fair will run two days, through 10 P.M. Saturday and next Sunday. 746-7403.
On the other hand, in Northville, those who run Hallockville, the living farm museum, prefer to keep things short and, with luck, sweet. Its annual Folk Festival, therefore, will be from 11 A.M. to 4 P.M. on Saturday. As usual, the emphasis will be on traditional country crafts, with demonstrations of such popular mid-19th-century activities as decoy carving, quill-pen making and decorative painting. There will also be interludes of period music and regional foods. The farm is on Sound Avenue. Tickets: 298-5292.
 
WALLENBERG BENEFIT
Sharon Wallenberg of Sea Cliff may or may not be related to Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who saved innocent lives during World War II and then disappeared behind the Iron Curtain. But whether she is or is not - her grandfather was Swedish and came from the same home town - does not matter to her. For years now, she has been involved in trying to discover the truth about Wallenberg's fate.
Now that some Soviet records have been released and there are official calls for an impartial international investigation of the case, Ms. Wallenberg has turned her attention to seeing that ''this hero for everybody'' is memorialized locally. She and her Raoul Wallenberg Committee for Long Island would like to erect a statue in his honor. To raise funds for this cause - and mark Wallenberg's birthday - the group is staging a garden party concert in Eisenhower Park in East Meadow on Saturday. Karen Strauss and Katherine Battel, a harp-flute duo, will play at 1 P.M. Information: 759-2337.
 
PICNIC JAZZ
If you like creating picnic dinners that will be devoured while listening to jazz, then Planting Fields in Oyster Bay is the place to be Saturday. That is when Friends of the Arts holds what has become a two-fold tradition: a contest to crown the ''Perfect Picnic 90'' and a performance by the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. The contest is looking for the ''most elegant,'' the ''most delectable'' and the ''most creative'' picnics. Registration is at 6:30 P.M. at the Festival Tent. The concert, at 8 P.M., is the kind of New Orleans jazz that the band has perfected. Tickets: 922-0061.
 
PARK OPERA
Picnic dinners are not called for at Agawam Park in Southampton Saturday for ''Mid-Summer Opera in the Park.'' But, then again, they couldn't hurt. It might be nice to nibble a bit while Sherrill Milnes, the reknowned baritone, joins the soprano Margaret Jane Wray and the bass-baritone Alan Held, recipients of Richard Tucker Music Foundation Awards, in concert. With Mr. Milnes as host and accompanied by Levering Rothfuss, the pianist, the trio will sing a program of operatic arias and duets at 8 P.M. The event is sponsored by the Cultural and Civic Center of Southampton, and while free for those who want to bring their own seating, a donation to the center rates a seat in a special reserved section of the park and a meet-the-artists reception after the music at the center on Pond Lane. Reservations: 287-4300. $90BARBARA DELATINER

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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July 29, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Power Lines Stir Concern on Health Risk

BYLINE: By States News Service

SECTION: Section 12NJ; Page 1, Column 1; New Jersey Weekly Desk

LENGTH: 2032 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON

AMID growing concern over a possible link between electric power lines and cancer, New Jersey residents are mounting an increasingly vocal campaign against utility companies that want to string new wires throughout the state.
In Essex County, residents of Livingston Township alarmed by a 13,000-volt distribution line being built in their neighborhood sought to block construction by the Public Service Electric and Gas Company. In Ocean County, some 500 elderly residents of Berkeley Township are anxiously waiting for an administrative law judge to decide whether a 230,000-volt line near their homes should be turned off. And in Monmouth County, 1,200 residents of Middletown Township are backing the township and the State Public Advocate in a lawsuit against the Jersey Central Power and Light Company.
In all three cases, utility company officials maintain that there is little or no health risk posed by the lines, while residents cite cases of childhood leukemia, infertility, cancer and birth defects that they say are associated with chronic exposure to electric and magnetic fields. 
Scientists have produced conflicting results and hesitate to draw conclusions. But recent studies point to definite biological effects caused by the fields. And whatever the actual hazards, New Jersey residents are clearly worried.
In New Jersey, the Monmouth County case has become a rallying point for power-line controversies elsewhere. Middletown Township officials have already spent more than $200,000 in legal fees to block the line, which would cover a 9.6-mile stretch along an N. J. Transit railroad right of way from Aberdeen to Red Bank. Meanwhile, officials from Jersey Central Power and Light have vigorously fought to insure that the line goes up as planned, hiring outside lawyers and mounting a costly public relations campaign.
''The entire electric utility industry is looking very carefully at what's happening in this case,'' said Rosemarie Peters, Middletown's Deputy Mayor. ''So our feeling is that we are not only fighting a huge public utility. In addition, this town in New Jersey is fighting the entire public utility industry.''
The Middletown case also has attracted attention in Congress, where Representative Frank Pallone Jr., Democrat of Long Branch, has championed the power-line issue in response to constituent concern. Mr. Pallone has become a leading advocate in the House for stricter laws limiting power-line construction and for additional research funds to explore potential health risks.
''Most of the research that has been done over the last 20 to 30 years has been done by the utilities themselves,'' Mr. Pallone said in a recent interview. ''And people feel that it's biased.''
Mr. Pallone has introduced legislation that would increase Federal funds for Government research into electric and magnetic fields to $34 million over the next five years. He is also drafting a second bill that would set national standards for electric and magnetic field levels at the edge of power line rights of way.
The bills, which gained wide publicity when Mr. Pallone appeared on a CBS news program last winter, have attracted letters and calls from people all over the country. Mr. Pallone said citizens were hungry for information, but ''didn't know where to turn.''
The controversy also has prompted a move for new legislation in New Jersey. Assemblyman Joseph M. Kyrillos Jr., Republican of Middletown, has reintroduced a bill in the General Assembly that calls on utilities to include environmental impact statements with power-line applications and requires the Board of Public Utilities to consider public welfare in approving new lines. The bill failed to pass last spring, but Mr. Kyrillos says he believes that public pressure on legislators is mounting.
''What I am suggesting is that it is not just the need for electricity that has to drive the approval of these power lines,'' he said. ''We have to take into account the health effect and the environmental consequences, in addition to our need for electricity. So it's a real balancing act that has to take place.''
Barbara Iannucci of Middletown, co-founder of Residents Against Giant Electric, a citizens' group, says she believes that her son David's life may depend on whether Jersey Central Power and Light builds the Monmouth County line. David, 10, suffers from thymoma, a rare cancer that Mrs. Iannucci fears may be exacerbated by electric and magnetic fields.
''Any environmental factor could be harmful for David,'' Mrs. Iannucci said. When David was born, the family lived within sight of the Indian Point nuclear power plant in Dutchess County, New York, she said, a circumstance that has made her sensitive to environmental hazards.
Scientific studies suggest that exposure to electric and magnetic fields do not necessarily cause cancer but may indeed serve to promote the disease, according to the Office of Technology Assessment, the research arm of Congress. Research results are ''complex and inconclusive,'' the agency reports, but a growing body of evidence shows that under certain circumstances, even weak electric and magnetic fields can ''produce substantial changes at the cellular level.''
 
Start of a Citizens' Movement
Pearl Cronin, an Ocean County resident, says that any risk is too great for the children and grandchildren visiting her neighborhood in Berkeley Township. She started a citizens' movement among residents of the Holiday City and Silver Ridge retirement communities after she walked out her front door on a December day in 1989 and saw an electric utility pole rising 145 feet in the air less than a block from her home.
Mrs. Cronin got in touch with neighbors and local officials, and the township retained a lawyer to petition the Board of Public Utilities to prevent the lines from being activated. Throughout the spring 200 to 300 Berkeley Township residents packed virtually every Township Council meeting, Mrs. Cronin said. At one February meeting attended by Jersey Central Power and Light officials, she said, the crowd swelled close to 500.
''If there is the slightest doubt - which we know there is - then we shouldn't have this power,'' Mrs. Cronin said. ''It's too close to us.''
In addition to concerns about esthetics, property values and children's health, some elderly residents were frightened by studies indicating that electric power lines can interfere with pacemakers. The power lines, which cover a four-mile strip from Manchester to Toms River, are as close as 75 feet to some Berkeley Township homes.
''It's the power company's affirmative obligation to prove that these are safe, and they haven't done that yet,'' said Jerry Dasti, a Forked River lawyer representing Berkeley Township. After three months of debate, the board decided last Aug. 4 that there was not enough evidence of a safety risk to warrant leaving the lines dead. They were activated Aug. 5.  But Berkeley Township residents have not given up. Mr. Dasti is appealing the decision in New Jersey Superior Court, and the board has referred the matter to an administrative law judge, pending further scientific evidence.
As long as the lines are on, Mrs. Cronin said, residents will not feel safe. ''It's a lovely community, and what we have now is something that has come in and made us feel very uneasy,'' she said.
 
Controversy in Livingston
Livingston Township residents are equally uneasy about a milelong distribution line recently erected near 100 homes on Palmer Drive and in Forest Park and Laurel Hills. Halya Shevcuk, a newlywed who moved to Palmer Drive a year ago, is worried about having children so close to the line. She and some 25 neighbors took their complaints to township officials in January, but the matter ended there.
''It's frustrating, because no one can stop it,'' said Mrs. Shevcuk, who is exploring the possibility of having the portion of the power line that runs near her home buried.
But utility company officials say that burying the power lines, an option Middletown residents also favor, does not necessarily eliminate electric and magnetic fields. Burying lines also costs 10 to 15 times more than constructing them above ground, said Neil Brown, a spokesman for Public Service Electric and Gas.
Partly in response to the Livingston controversy, the utility began an extensive advertising campaign this summer to offset residents' fears.
''We recognize the concern and the questions that have been raised about the possible health effects of electric and magnetic fields,'' Mr. Brown said. He added that the company's position was that the latest and best scientific evidence did not indicate that electric and magnetic fields posed a public health threat.
 
Customers' Needs Cited
Utility companies also point to customers' service needs and their right to affordable electricity. Sidney D. Weiss, a lawyer representing Jersey Central Power and Light, said the Middletown line was needed to provide backup power in the event of a power loss along another line, running from Lacey to Larrabees, that serves 120,000 customers.
''The company is just pursuing its statutory obligation,'' Mr. Weiss said. ''There are planning studies that show this line is necessary. The company can't afford to take the position of having the lights go out.''
But many experts say that New Jersey residents, and others who are struggling to block power-line construction in Texas, Florida, Colorado and California, have good reason to be worried. Paul Brodeur, author of a recent book, ''Currents of Death'' (Simon & Schuster), an examination of research on electric and magnetic fields, points to three studies that found that children living in homes near high-level electric power lines were developing or dying of cancer at twice the normal rate.
''I feel that there is a massive accumulation of evidence - scientific and medical evidence - showing that the magnetic fields from power lines are hazardous at very low levels,'' Mr. Brodeur said. Utility companies have enough information now to begin taking preventive measures, said Mr. Brodeur, who suggests routing lines away from residential areas, burying or restringing wires and developing new ways to ground electrical systems.
 
'Taking It More Seriously'
Louis Slesin, editor of Microwave News, a New York-based newsletter covering electric and magnetic fields, said: ''There always is a danger of overreaction. But there is a legitimate cause for concern. And industry has been late in acknowledging these concerns. They are not willing yet to take this seriously. But I think that they are by the moment taking it more and more seriously. Literally every month there seems to be a new study showing heightened risk level.''
The one point on which scientists agree is that more research is needed. Some researchers who have linked childhood cancer with electric and magnetic fields said the risk, if any, was moderate. David Savitz, who conducted one of the childhood cancer studies cited by Mr. Brodeur, said other factors might have contributed to the illness.
''The evidence is not strongly supportive of spending vast amounts of money or taking drastic action to reduce exposures,'' said Mr. Savitz, an epidemiologist at the University of North Carolina. ''There's a legitimate reason for paying attention and being concerned. In my opinion there is not a basis for panic. The scientific evidence is certainly far from conclusive.''
Utility company representatives note that electric and magnetic fields also are emitted from household appliances like television sets, toasters, electric blankets and personal computers. But the key difference, said New Jersey residents worried about health risks, is that power lines are not in their control.
''I have the option to seek out a television that gives out low electric and magnetic fields, or to keep my family away from it,'' said Mary Cashen Purcell, a Middletown resident and the other co-founder of Residents Against Giant Electric. ''I don't have to buy a microwave. To be sitting under or going to school under a power line seems to put people at undue risk.''

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo of power lines near homes in Holiday City South in Berkeley Township (Harvey Bilker for The New York Times)

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The New York Times

July 31, 1990, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

Rising Incidence of Brain Tumors Is Drawing Attention and Concern

BYLINE: By NATALIE ANGIER

SECTION: Section C; Page 3, Column 1; Science Desk

LENGTH: 1670 words

A BRAIN tumor has long been the most terrifying of malignancies, feared for its lethality and its position at the source of all thought and emotion. And now experts say the incidence of brain cancer may be on the rise.
New studies of epidemiological data from this country and abroad indicate that the rise is especially dramatic among the elderly, but scientists say that even among the young, the rate of at least one rare form of brain cancer is surging.
Other studies suggest that certain jobs may predispose workers or their children to brain cancer, and some researchers believe electromagnetic fields from power lines and power stations can help promote the growth of brain tumors, although many experts fiercely dispute the theory.
 
Experts Are Concerned
''Wherever I go, people ask me whether there's an increase in brain tumors,'' said Dr. Paul L. Kornblith, chairman of the neurosurgery department at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Montefiore Medical Center in New York. ''And an awful lot of people in my field have the impression that there is a greater incidence than there was before. They are concerned about it.'' 
Scientists emphasize that there is by no means an epidemic of brain cancer. They say the incidence of brain cancer remains very low for the population as a whole, accounting for about 1.5 percent of all malignancies. For most age groups, the rate of the two most common and deadly brain tumors, the gliomas and the astrocytomas, has been relatively stable for at least 20 years.
Experts stress that trends in brain cancer are especially difficult to sort out, largely because the technology for diagnosing brain tumors has sharply improved over the last 15 years. With the aid of advanced imaging methods like CAT scans and magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, doctors are now able to diagnose brain cancers that in the past might have mistakenly been described as strokes, senile dementia or other neurological disorders.
''If we agree that we are diagnosing a greater number of patients with brain tumors than before, a lot of that could be explained by the increased sensitivity of diagnostic tools,'' said Dr. Edward H. Oldfield, chief of surgical neurology at the National Institute of Neurolgical Disorders and Stroke. ''When the CAT scan was introduced in the early 70's there was a big jump in the detection of brain tumors, and the MRI has an even greater sensitivity for detecting small tumors.''
 
Studies Track Increase
Yet recent studies indicate that certain patterns in brain cancer trends cannot be dismissed as a result superior diagnosis.
In one study, a new analysis of data collected by the National Cancer Institute's nationwide cancer surveillance program, researchers at the National Institute on Aging in Bethesda, Md., have determined that among people over the age of 75, the incidence of brain tumorsmore than doubled from 1968 to 1985, the last year for which statistics are available. For people over 80, the rate of increase was even more shocking, soaring by 300 percent to 400 percent over the 17-year period, or by as much as 23 percent a year. ''Better diagnosis can explain some of the rise,'' said Dr. Stanley I. Rapoport, chief of the laboratory of neuroscience at the Institute and the main author of the new report, which is to be published in The Journal of the National Cancer Institute. ''But something else is going on as well. Brain cancer in the elderly deserves more attention.''
Further confirming the Rapoport results, scientists at the National Research Council in Washington, the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm and other institutions recently compared mortality figures from about 1968 to 1987 for the United States, Britain, Italy, France, West Germany and Japan. They found that among people 65 and older, deaths from brain tumors rose in all nations at up to 200 percent for the period.
''There's a stunning increase in mortality'' from brain tumors, said Dr. Devra Lee Davis, an author of the paper, which is to appear in the December issue of The American Journal of Industrial Medicine. ''It holds true for all countries, a very sharp increase in a relatively short period of time.''
Dr. Davis said the increases in the six countries have continued long after the introduction of better imaging technology, indicating that improved diagnosis alone cannot explain the persistent rise.
 
Another Possible Cause
Among all age groups, the rate of a rare type of tumor, central nervous system lymphoma, which accounts for less than 5 percent of brain malignancies, has climbed 300 percent in 10 years. Experts say some of the rise is a result of AIDS, which makes people more susceptible to the malignancy. But others speculate that Epstein-Barr virus, which is becoming increasingly prevalent in the general population, may also be a cause.
Beyond the risk of primary tumors originating in brain tissue, malignancies that have spread to the brain from elsewhere in the body are rising rapidly. ''The longer people are surviving from cancers of the breast, lungs and other organs, the more chance they have that some of their tumor cells will metastasize to the brain,'' said Dr. William R. Shapiro, chairman of neurology at the Barrow Neurological Institute of St. Joseph's Hospital in Phoenix. Doctors emphasize that even among the elderly, the risk of brain cancer is low, and that any rise in occurrence is modest compared, for example, with the steep climb in malignant melanoma and lung cancer among women.
But they say brain cancer merits attention as an especially virulent disease for which there often is no treatment. The most prevalent types of brain tumors grow rapidly, spreading tumorous fingers into surrounding tissue and often killing within a year of diagnosis.
''Brain cancer is an awful, depressing cancer,'' said Nigel H. Greig of the National Institute on Aging, a co-author of the Rapoport paper. ''It has one of the worst prognoses of all cancers. It's almost invariably fatal. It's lagged behind other cancers in chemotherapy and treatment, and survival time has not improved.''
For that reason, experts say, it is worth trying to determine why brain cancer seems to be rising among older groups, and to eliminate whatever risk factors can be identified. Dr. Davis says that to understand why brain tumors are on the rise in the elderly, researchers must consider the past.
''You must look at those aspects of the world that changed 30 or 40 yers ago, because the latency period for brain cancer is that long,'' she said.
Speculating on such aspects, she points out that several decades ago, many more people worked in industrial, blue-collar jobs than do now, and that factories are often full of hazardous chemicals, running the gamut of the periodic table. ''There's no question that proportionally more people used to work in dirtier places,'' she said.
The high proportion of factory workers may partly explain why brain tumors are now showing up in many industrial nations. Assuming the workplace is now cleaner than it was, Dr. Davis said, the incidence of brain cancer may begin to drop in the future. But she believes that other chemicals in the environment, like pesticides, will compensate for any improvements in the workplace.
Dr. Davis believes that poor diet may be part of the reason for the rise in brain cancer. In the past, she said, people tended to pickle their meats and fish with suspected carcinogens like nitrites, and they ate few fresh vegetables and fruits, which contain anti-oxidants and other compounds thought to act as anti-cancer agents. Other researchers note that in the past, doctors and dentists were more cavalier in using X-rays and other forms of high-energy, or ionizing, radiation, now known to mutate DNA and wreak destruction in cells.
A number of researchers are now investigating the possibility that even low-energy, or non-ionizing, radiation, may somehow promote the growth of brain tumors. They contend that electromagnetic fields from power lines, power stations and even common household appliances can be a health hazard. But many experts dispute those assertions. They say that, unlike ionizing radiation, which strips apart atoms and damages DNA, electricity is non-ionizing and is not thought to mutate genetic material. Nevertheless, some experts suggest electromagnetic fields could subtly increase the risk of cancer, particularly high-voltage currents and alternating currents generated by large power stations and substations.
Writing in a recent issue of The New Yorker, the journalist Paul Brodeur discussed an apparent cluster of brain tumors on a street in Guilford, Conn., near a power substation. In a report in May, the Environmental Protection Agency said that there was a possible link between cancer and low-level electromagnetic fields, but that there still was not enough evidence to conclude that the fields directly caused cancer. In one study, Dr. David A. Savitz, an epidemiologist at the School of Public Health at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, and colleagues considered all cases of childhood cancer from 1976 to 1983 in the Denver area.
Samples Are Small They concluded that children who live near power lines that expose them to powerful electromagnetic fields had a 50 percent greater chance of developing brain tumors than those who did not live near power lines. But they said the samples were small and other potential health hazards in the environments considered had not been ruled out. Many experts insist the studies are inconclusive and contradictory.  ''People are being very much alarmed over something for which there is no real evidence whatsoever,'' said Dr. Eleanor R. Adair of the John B. Pierce Laboratory at the Center for Research in Health and the Environment, an affiliate of Yale University. ''Electricity has been around for a long, long time, and people's life expectancy has nearly doubled since the invention of the light bulb.''

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Dr. Devra Lee Davis, a cancer epidemiologist, says there has been a ''stunning'' increase in mortality from brain tumors (Fernando C. Sandoval); graphs showing the increase of deaths form central nervous system cancers, predominantly those of the brain in various countries. (source: American Journal of Industrial Medicine)

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The New York Times

August 1, 1990, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

U.S. Is Suspending Hearings On New Disability Payments

BYLINE: By ROBERT PEAR, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section A; Page 1, Column 1; National Desk

LENGTH: 1077 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, July 31

With money for administrative expenses running short at the end of the fiscal year, the Social Security Administration has suspended hearings in September for people seeking disability benefits.
The order to put off hearings will also affect Medicare beneficiaries, because the Social Security judges hear appeals under Medicare, the Federal health insurance program for 33 million elderly and disabled people.
Officials said they hoped that hearings would resume after Oct. 1, the start of the new fiscal year, when they expect to receive an infusion of money. The officials said they believed that the suspension was the first ordered because of a shortage of funds. 
The order for administrative law judges to curtail hearings was delivered today and Monday in messages to field offices. ''We are getting more claims than we budgeted for,'' Louis D. Enoff, Deputy Commissioner of Social Security, said in an interview today. ''We can't spend what we don't have.'' The Social Security trust fund, from which benefits are paid, has a surplus. But money for hearings and appeals comes from a special account, which contains $3.8 billion earmarked by Congress to cover salaries of administration employees, computers and other administrative expenses. And that account is running low.
The $3.8 billion comes from the Social Security trust fund. But Congress sets a statutory limit on the amount of the trust fund that can be spent for administrative purposes. Even though there is a surplus in the fund, the Government cannot exceed that limit.
Administrative law judges said the postponement could cause hardship for many claimants, who must wait another month or more for hearings.
Mr. Enoff said disability claims were running about 8 percent higher than expected. The agency had expected 1.2 million new applications for disability benefits this year, said Philip A. Gambino, a spokesman for the Social Security Administration.
Social Security officials said they had asked the Office of Management and Budget to help with their fiscal problems by releasing money from a contingency fund.
The Social Security Administration made no announcement of its policy, but administrative law judges brought it to the attention of The New York Times, saying they were concerned that justice would be delayed.
 
Complaints About Move
Over the last decade, administrative law judges have repeatedly upheld the rights of claimants against the Government. Last year they reversed the agency's denial of benefits in 62 percent of the cases they heard.
Joseph G. Medicis, an administrative law judge in Syracuse, said it was paradoxical that the agency was now delaying hearings, since Social Security officials had repeatedly prodded judges to clear backlogs by hearing cases as promptly as possible.
''If a claimant is entitled to benefits, he should get them as soon as possible,'' Judge Medicis said. ''If he's not entitled to benefits, he should know that as soon as possible.''
Francis J. O'Byrne, an administrative law judge in Chicago, said the restrictions on hearings were set forth in a telephone conference call today. He quoted Social Security officials as saying that money was not available to pay for judges' travel, for the rental of hearing rooms or for expert witnesses like vocational experts and medical advisers.
Asked about the effects of the restrictions, Eugene K. Anthony, an administrative law judge in Fargo, N.D., said, ''There will be some hardship. People will be paid a month later.'' He said vocational experts were needed in at least 80 percent of cases, to help judges analyze the applicants' ability to work and the type of jobs they could perform.
 
'Unfortunate and Regrettable'
Charles N. Bono, an administrative law judge in Kansas City, Mo., said the judges had been given no reason for curtailing hearings in September. ''If we are running out of money and that's the reason for the delay, it's very unfortunate and regrettable,'' he said. ''I've been with the Social Security Administration 15 years, and this has never happened before.''
Mr. Enoff, the Deputy Commissioner of Social Security, said the Bush Administration was committed to providing ''courteous, efficient, timely service'' to claimants, but needed money to do so.
Social Security pays monthly disability benefits to 4.2 million people: 2.9 million disabled workers and their spouses and children. Twenty-two percent of the disabled workers have been diagnosed as having mental disorders. Eighteen percent have tumors, and 17 percent have disorders of the circulatory system. The median age of disabled workers receiving benefits is 52. Benefits for disabled workers average $565 a month.
Senator John Heinz, Republican of Pennsylvania, sent a letter today to Richard G. Darman, director of the budget office, expressing concern about the disability program.
''The Social Security Administration has requested permission to draw upon its contingency fund to meet a major crisis'' in the program, Mr. Heinz wrote, but the budget office ''thus far has not released these funds.''
''We hope that O.M.B. will recognize the urgent need to release these funds,'' the Senator said.
Recent Congressional hearings found evidence of backlogs and delays, so that ''in each of our states, there are disabled workers and children who have been needlessly denied benefits because of a system that cannot keep pace with demand,'' Mr. Heinz said.
The law establishing the $98 million contingency fund said the fund was intended to pay administrative expenses ''not anticipated in the budget estimates.'' Mr. Gambino, the Social Security spokesman, said the agency asked for the $98 million in December. The budget office released $48 million in March and ''has not released any more since then,'' he said.
A spokeswoman for Mr. Darman said the budget office had no immediate comment.
Senator Heinz said the increase in appeals pending before Social Security judges was, in part, a result of errors by the agency itself. For example, he said, the Supreme Court ruled in February that the Government had improperly denied benefits to disabled children from poor families.
''Hundreds of thousands of disabled children have waited years to receive the benefits that the Supreme Court has ruled they deserve,'' he said, ''and they should not be forced to wait any longer because the Federal Government fails to allocate sufficient funds'' for hearings.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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The New York Times

August 2, 1990, Thursday, Late Edition - Final
Correction Appended

Health;
The Quiet Comeback of Electroshock Therapy

BYLINE: By DANIEL GOLEMAN

SECTION: Section B; Page 5, Column 3; National Desk

LENGTH: 1747 words

For Big Nurse in ''One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest,'' it was a tool of terror, and in the public mind ''shock therapy'' has retained the tarnished image given it by Ken Kesey's novel: dangerous, inhumane and overused.
Despite its poor public image, electroconvulsive therapy, or ECT, is in the midst of a quiet revival. In improved forms, electroshock therapy has gained renewed credibility in psychiatry, emerging as the treatment of choice for the most severe depression when drugs and other therapy fail to help.
While there are no nationwide figures on how often electroshock therapy is used, one indicator is the number of treatments paid by Medicare, the Federal health insurance program for 33 million elderly and disabled people. In 1986 there were 88,847 sessions that were reimbursed, and in 1988 there were 96,276, an increase of 10 percent. 
Another sign of renewed vitality is the amount of scientific research being conducted on the treatment. ''In the early 1970's there were only about 125 scientific articles published each year on the topic,'' said Dr. Max Fink, a psychiatrist at the State University of New York at Stony Brook who is the editor of Convulsive Therapy, the main journal on the topic. ''By 1980 there were 150, and by 1988 it had climbed to 250.''
 
A Pattern of Expansion
Within the last four years in the New York metropolitan area, five hospitals have established new units for electroshock treatments, a pattern experts say is typical of the country as a whole. But manufacturers of the devices used in such treatments declined to give sales figures.
Earlier this year the American Psychiatric Association recommended electroshock therapy for severe depression, and specified precisely when and how it should be used. In May, at the association's convention in New York City, the report giving the recommendations, ''The Practice of Electroconvulsive Therapy,'' was the No. 2 seller among about a hundred titles offered by the publisher, the American Psychiatric Press. The best seller, as it is every year, was the annual review of new developments in psychiatry.
The patients for whom electroshock therapy is recommended by the report are among the most troubling in psychiatry: they are beyond the reach of drugs or other treatment and many are so severely depressed they do not eat, sleep very little and are suicidal. Many suffer from delusions. But in about 80 percent of cases, the report said, electroshock therapy can lift their depression within a few weeks, restoring them to mental health.
''There's no question that ECT is making a comeback, despite its terrible public image,'' said Dr. Richard Weiner, a psychiatrist at Duke University and head of an American Psychiatric Association task force on the treatment. ''It's safer and more effective than ever.''
 
Treatment Induces a Convulsion
Patients receiving shock therapy are given muscle relaxants and a short-acting general anesthetic. Then a brief pulse of electric current is passed through the brain. The current induces a convulsion, or short seizure. For reasons that are still unclear, the seizure seems to relieve the symptoms of depression in many people.
A typical course of electroshock therapy involves six to 10 sessions, usually given three times a week.
Dr. Weiner and other proponents say the side effects of electroshock therapy, which in its earlier forms included broken bones, heart attacks and memory loss, have largely been eliminated. New methods use lower levels of electric current, which proponents say reduces memory loss. Muscle relaxants and anesthesia prevent the muscle spasms that in the past sometimes led to broken bones.
In the 1940's and 50's electroshock therapy was widely used in mental hospitals, often indiscriminately: patients with problems as diverse as schizophrenia and obsessive-compulsive disorder were treated with it. With the introduction of psychiatric drugs in the 1960's and 70's and the acknowledgment that electroshock had been abused, it fell into disuse; many hospitals stopped using it altogether.
Within the last decade, though, psychiatrists have recognized that medications do not work with many of the most severely depressed patients, while electroshock does, leading to the recent increase in its use.
 
Long-Term Memory Problems
Despite the changes, critics say, patients can still suffer long-term memory problems.
''Those psychiatrists who use electroshock don't admit it can cause permanent intellectual deficits, not just short-term memory loss,'' said Dr. Lee Coleman, a psychiatrist in Berkeley, Calif. ''I don't think patients ever really know what risks they are taking when they give their consent for shock therapy. It can leave patients as confused and amnesiac as a brain injury.''
Other critics attribute the revival of electroshock therapy in large part to its quickness, a virtue that fits with new efforts by health insurers to save money on hospital costs.
''The use of ECT has increased primarily because insurance companies are pressing to get patients out of the hospital sooner, and they don't want to pay for drugs or therapy that take longer to clear up depression but have fewer relapses than ECT,'' said Richard S. Abrams, a psychiatrist at Northwestern University.
 
Level of Current Varies
Advocates and critics alike agree that the practice of electroshock therapy appears to have changed markedly from the days when its abuse and its sometimes devastating side effects shaped its public image. ''There's been a sea change in our understanding of ECT in the last decade,'' said Harold Sackheim, deputy chief of Biological Psychiatry at the New York State Psychiatric Institute.
One refinement is in tailoring the level of electric current to each patient. ''Until about 10 years ago patients were commonly given the maximal charge, with machines set at the upper limit,'' said Dr. Sackheim, a psychologist who has guided a federally financed program of research on electroshock therapy. ''But patients vary greatly in the level of current at which they have a seizure.''
For example, patients with thinner skulls need less current, since more electricity gets through to the brain, Dr. Sackheim said.
''On average, a woman needs about 80 percent as much current as a man, and the older you are the more you need,'' he said. ''You need less current if it is applied only to one side of the head instead of both. A woman of 35 might need half the current necessary for a man of 70.''
The level of current is important, Dr. Sackheim said. His research and that of others showed that confusion and memory loss, the main psychological side effects, were caused by too high a level of current.
 
Minimizing Memory Loss
''When the dosage is too great or too frequent, patients can have grave memory loss and acute confusion,'' Dr. Sackheim said. ''But if you do it properly, two or three weeks later patients have no sign of any cognitive problems except for an inability to remember the several hours before the treatment.''
One way to reduce memory loss that the task force report recommends is for the shock to be administered only to the right side of the head. Among most patients that bypasses the brain's verbal center, which is usually in the left hemisphere, thus minimizing confusion and memory loss.
In a survey of electroshock therapy patients now under way, Dr. Weiner said those treated were highly satisfied with the results when they were surveyed six months later. ''Compared to their attitudes before the treatment, they have a much higher belief that ECT works, and much less fear that it is dangerous,'' he said.
The reason for some of the renewed interest in using electroshock therapy is that there is a growing realization of the limits of medications to treat depression, psychiatrists say.
''After all these years, there's a bit of disillusionment about drugs being the answer to depression,'' Dr. Weiner said. ''We used to think that you could just keep trying one anti-depressant after another until you found the right one, but there just is not always one that will work, or that works without having serious side effects.'' #80% Are Severely Depressed About 80 percent of the patients who receive electroshock therapy are severely depressed, Dr. Sackheim said. Another 5 percent are intensely manic, some so disoriented they have stopped eating. Another 5 percent are schizophrenic. The rest suffer from a variety of ailments.
In all cases, electroshock therapy is typically used with patients for whom medications have proven ineffective or when they are in immediate danger of harming themselves.
''We use ECT when we have a patient so severely depressed and suicidal or emaciated that we can't wait the four to six weeks it might take a drug to work,'' said Edward Coffey, a psychiatrist at Duke University who wrote an article on electroshock therapy in the May issue of Hospital and Community Psychiatry.
More typical, though, is the patient described by Dr. Coffey: ''She was an elderly widow, about 70, who had been deeply depressed for the last half year. She had crying spells and would pace for hours, wringing her hands. She lost all interest in things; she wouldn't go out to play bridge or even to visit her grandchildren. She could sleep only an hour each night. And for months she wore the same clothes, and wouldn't wash, brush her teeth or comb her hair.''
 
Marked Improvement Seen
The woman's psychiatrist tried treating her with antidepressants to no avail. Her family brought her to the Duke University Medical Center, where Dr. Coffey treated her.
''Within the first week she began to sleep better, she stopped pacing and her appetite came back, though she still felt down,'' he said. ''By the end of the second week her mood lifted, she started taking care of her personal hygiene and she started looking forward to going home and visiting with her friends and grandchildren.''
Dr. Coffey added, ''It's remarkable, because you see ECT working with a group of patients that nothing else has helped.''
For advocates of electroshock therapy, the tragedy is that the treatment is underused.
''Most patients who get ECT are better-off patients in private hospitals,'' Dr. Sackheim said. ''It's very underused in public hospitals, partly because the anesthesiology equipment is too expensive. That means there is much needless suffering among poorer patients who could benefit.''

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

CORRECTION-DATE: September 1, 1990, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

 CORRECTION:
An article and a picture caption on the Health page on Aug. 2 about electroshock therapy referred incorrectly to the deputy chief of biological psychiatry at the New York State Psychiatric Institute. He is Dr. Harold Sackeim, a psychologist.

GRAPHIC: Photo: Dr. Harold Sackheim, a Psychiatrist, says there has been ''a sea of change'' in the understanding of electroconvulsive therapy. (Mary E. Allen for The New York Times); Table comparing shock treatments, then and now. (Source: ''The Practice of Electroconvulsive therapy'' (American Psychiatric Press)

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The New York Times

August 2, 1990, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

Health;
Pet Owners Go to the Doctor Less

SECTION: Section B; Page 5, Column 3; National Desk

LENGTH: 419 words

Elderly people who own pets visit their physicians less often than those who do not have pets, and dog owners have the fewest visits of all, a study has found.
While previous studies have suggested that pet owners are happier and healthier than people without pets, the new study, reported in a recent issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, is the first finding of a link with the demand for medical care.
The report by Dr. Judith M. Siegel, a psychologist and professor of public health at the University of California at Los Angeles, is based on her study of nearly 1,000 Medicare patients at a health maintenance organization in California. 
At regular intervals for one year Dr. Siegel asked the patients about their health, social support network, living arrangements, pet ownership, visits to physicians and stressful life events like separation or divorce, death of a close family member or friend, major illness of spouse and retirement.
After controlling for sex, age, race, education, income, employment status, living arrangements and chronic health problems, she found that pet owners, particularly dog owners, had fewer contacts with their doctors during the year than did people without pets.
Pet owners averaged 8.42 visits to the doctor during the year, as against 9.49 visits for people without pets. Dog owners had an average of 8.20 visits.
About a third of the people studied were pet owners.
 
Role of Stressful Events
Dr. Siegel also found that an accumulation of stressful life events was associated with more visits to the doctor among elderly patients without pets.
''We know from social research that people go to the doctor for a variety of reasons besides physical ailments,'' she said. Psychological distress and a lack of companionship seem to influence perceptions about health, she said, and are associated with more frequent contact with physicians.
Among the people who experienced the greatest amount of stress during the study, those who did not own pets reported 16 percent more visits to doctors than did pet owners in general and 20 percent more than dog owners in particular.
It may be, Dr. Siegel said, that pets provide companionship and acceptance that people might otherwise seek from their doctors and may moderate the way that people perceive their health. Dogs, in particular, seem to be more of a ''stress buffer,'' she said, possibly because dog owners seem to have closer relationships with their pets than other pet owners do.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Drawing

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The New York Times

August 3, 1990, Friday, Late Edition - Final
Correction Appended

Lies? Worse? The View From Queens

BYLINE: By JOSEPH P. FRIED

SECTION: Section B; Page 4, Column 2; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 547 words

There was no telling 84-year-old Rebecca Claiborne and 82-year-old Benjamin Lance yesterday that their Congressman, Floyd H. Flake, was capable of stealing money meant to help them.
For Mrs. Claiborne, Mr. Lance and other residents interviewed under the warm afternoon sun at the Allen Senior Citizens Housing Complex in Jamaica, Queens, there was unanimous insistence that the accusations leveled yesterday by Federal prosecutors had to be false.
''To me he's a good man, a nice man,'' said Mrs. Claiborne, who lives in the complex of eight-story red-brick buildings at Linden Boulevard and 167th Street, a project sponsored and operated by the nearby Allen African Methodist Episcopal Church, where Representative Flake is the pastor. 
 
'He Helps Everybody'
''People can frame something on you and put you in prison,'' said Mrs. Claiborne, a seven-year resident of the development, as she sat on a bench near a neatly manicured lawn.
For Mr. Lance, the charge that the 45-year-old Queens Democrat stole $141,700 - including thousands of dollars meant to provide transportation for residents of the Allen homes - simply did not comport with his view of the Congressman.
''He helps everybody he can help,'' Mr. Lance, who has lived in the Allen complex since it opened 12 years ago, said of Mr. Flake, a force in Jamaica well before he was elected four years ago to represent the 6th Congressional District of southern Queens.
The Federal grand jury indictment also charges Mr. Flake and his wife, Margarett, with scheming to evade taxes on tens of thousands of dollars paid to him by his church.
 
Achievement and Race
At the news conference announcing the indictment, the United States Attorney in Brooklyn, Andrew J. Maloney, was asked about being in the position of prosecuting a popular black political figure and minister. ''We go wherever the evidence takes us,'' he responded, at the same time paying tribute to the achievements of Mr. Flake and the Allen Church.
But later, on the grounds of the 300-apartment complex, several people said they suspected an insidious racial element in the situation now embroiling Mr. Flake.
''We black people have to be careful,'' said Kathleen Jennings, a 70-year-old resident of the development. ''Anytime we make a step up, there's no good will. They'll pull us down.''
 
Defiance and Disbelief
Sadie Stokeley, also 70, who was visiting the development from her home in the South Jamaica Houses, had a similar perception. ''You finally get a black that's strong enough, he gets to the top, and you want to drag him down to the bottom,'' she said.
Ms. Stokeley recalled that Mr. Flake had come to meetings of her own public housing project's advisory board, of which she is a former president. ''He does hold this community together,'' she said.
Gloria Peek, another resident of the Allen project, said defiantly, ''I would like to see them prove it.''
Still others said they could not believe that someone who had achieved as much as Mr. Flake would be motivated to steal.
''I don't think he got that deep into politics to do this,'' Valeria Lance, a 30-year-old resident of nearby Springfield Gardens, who is no relation to Benjamin Lance, said yesterday outside Mr. Flake's church on Merrick Boulevard.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

CORRECTION-DATE: August 4, 1990, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

 CORRECTION:
Because of an editing error, a front-page article yesterday about the indictment of Representative Floyd H. Flake incorrectly described Jamaica, Queens. It has a mix of low- and middle-income residents.

GRAPHIC: Photo: Rebecca Claiborne, right, was among many people at the Allen Senior Citizens Housing Complex in Jamaica, Queens, who refused to believe the accusations that their Congressman, Floyd H. Flake, would steal money designated for their use. The woman at left was not identified. (Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times)

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The New York Times

August 5, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Campus Life: Wisconsin;
The 'Seniors' at Summer Session Are of the Gray Variety

SECTION: Section 1; Part 2, Page 35, Column 1; Style Desk

LENGTH: 829 words

DATELINE: MADISON, Wis.

Many students at the University of Wisconsin have been surprised by the age of hundreds of their classmates at this year's summer session. These classmates are retirees, mostly from Florida, whose ages range from the early 60's to the early 80's.
''It was like a casting call for 'Cocoon,' '' said Barbara K. Wilder, a junior nursing major from Three Lakes, Wis., referring to the 1985 movie that depicted Florida retirees who became rejuvenated after swimming along with alien beings.
Harlande Samson, dean of summer sessions and intercollege programs, said about 450 non-Wisconsin residents, many arriving through packaged travel promotions, and about 90 in-staters over the age of 62 were auditing classes this summer. 
Auditors, who are like guest students, do not receive credit from the university for the classes that they attend free of charge. They are not allowed to take the exams given to the undergraduate and graduate students nor to ask or answer questions in the classes.
 
Some Resentment
But some undergraduate students resent the large number of the elderly who are crowding into their classes.
''I appreciate the fact that they want to be there, but sometimes it's disrupting,'' said Beth A. Moede, a senior from West Bend, Wis., who is majoring in history and journalism.
Ms. Moede, who is taking an American history class this summer in which about 30 of the 100 students are over 62, cited incidents when some of them interrupted the lecturer, talked loudly among themselves and sometimes even snored loudly in class.
''Students have to take the exams,'' she said. ''Sometimes the senior citizens take away from what I'm trying to get out of the class.''
Glen J. Gendzel, the visiting lecturer who is teaching Ms. Moede's class, disagreed with her assessment. ''I find they're pretty good,'' he said. ''Mostly they just want to contribute what they remember.''
He added that having people in the class who actually lived through the history that he was teaching could be a ''precious resource.''
Edmund Clingan, teaching a European history course in the summer session, said 53 of 85 students in his class were in their 60's. He said he allowed them in his class because the undergraduate enrollment was lower than he expected. ''There are some distractions, but in general, I found them to be quite well behaved.''
 
A Fee Proposal
Recently, the university's Board of Regents has begun talks about charging tuition to nonresident guest students over the age of 62.
The university now charges about $125 per credit for out-of-state guest students under 62. Under the proposal before the regents, elderly out-of-staters would pay half that amount.
Ruth and Bernard Zeigler of West Palm Beach, Fla., said they would like to return to Madison next summer but would reconsider if the price to attend classes was too high.
Mr. Zeigler, who is 83, and Mrs. Zeigler, 78, are both taking a European history class and an American history class this summer. They pointed to the large contribution that the elderly made to the local economy and said it would be unfair to charge them for classes.
 
Praise for Health Services
Madeline L. Livant, who is in her 70's and is also from West Palm Beach, is taking classes in European history and the opera this summer. She said the excellent health-support services led her to come to Madison for the summer.
''Madison's wonderful,'' Mrs. Livant said. ''But as old as we are, we need that available health possibility.''
The number of out-of-state guest students over the age of 62 has doubled since the summer of 1989, said Mr. Samson of the summer session and intercollege program. He attributed the increase to promotional campaigns by local private dormitory owners. ''They promoted Madison as a great place to spend the summer,'' he said.
William J. Levy, general manager of the Towers, a private dormitory in the campus area, said about 240 elderly people were living at the Towers this summer. He said most of them were from Florida or Arizona, where he travels each winter to promote the Towers and Madison. Eight weeks at the Towers costs $975 a person, which includes room and board, he said.
The Towers started to recruit the elderly nationwide in 1989, Mr. Levy said. The Towers would have had to lay off student employees during the summer without the elderly people staying there, he said.
Madison began offering free classes for guest students over the age of 62 in 1975, Mr. Samson said. He said that when the policy was enacted, very few of the elderly people attending classes were from out of state.
Not all the regular students are critical of the elderly guest students. Jamshid J. Sardar, a sophomore from Flossmoor, Ill., who is majoring in journalism, said he has enjoyed having the elderly in his comparative literature class this summer. ''I think it's good to see they're getting out and furthering their education at this stage of their life,'' he said.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Sol Hoffman, left, conferring with Birdie Parmet, right, and Lewis Wise and his wife, Sandrelle, after a class at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. They are among the 450 non-Wisconsin residents over the age of 62 who have audited classes at the university this summer. (Tom Capp for The New York Times)

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August 5, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

HEADLINERS;
Church and State

SECTION: Section 4; Page 7, Column 3; Week in Review Desk

LENGTH: 145 words

Representative Floyd H. Flake served church and state and abused both, Federal prosecutors said last week. Mr. Flake, pastor of one of the largest black churches in New York City, was indicted on charges of misappropriating $75,200 from a federally subsidized housing complex built by his church and with evading taxes on $66,700 of the church's money that he and his wife put to personal use. The 45-year-old clergyman, whose wife, Margarett, was also indicted on some of the same charges, strongly denied any wrongdoing. There were echoes of support in his Queens district, where the 300-unit housing project he is accused of taking money from is one of the few such successful projects for senior citizens in the nation. But there was also consternation among members of his Allen A.M.E. Church, some of whom contended that the charges were racially motivated.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Rev. Floyd Flake (Vic DeLucia/The New York Times)

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The New York Times

August 5, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

THE NATION;
The Operative Word in America: Deficit

BYLINE: By SUSAN F. RASKY

SECTION: Section 4; Page 1, Column 3; Week in Review Desk

LENGTH: 1263 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON

CONGRESS is packing itself off for an August vacation, leaving untouched the nasty business of cutting enough spending and raising enough taxes to squeeze $50 billion out of the ever-swelling budget deficit.
If the scene sounds familiar, it should. It has been played and replayed for more than a decade by lawmakers and the Administration as resolve gives way to blue smoke and mirrors. But this time the stakes on all sides are higher.
What distinguishes this year's budget drama is the sheer size of the deficit: as much as $232 billion for 1991, even by the Administration's estimate, when the cost of bailing out the savings and loan industry is included. Even under the most optimistic forecasts, the numbers get worse before they get better. 
The message lawmakers will take home to constituents is that at least for the foreseeable future, any ''peace dividend'' from the end of the cold war will be washed away by the sea of red ink. But the message that could have much more significance is the one of deepening frustration and cynicism that constituents seem to be sending back.
''People are mad about the savings and loans, about the HUD scandal, about the budget,'' said Representative Mickey Edwards, an Oklahoma Republican. ''The perception out there is that 'we called the leaders and there was nobody home.' Every incumbent ought to take a poll; what they'd find is that their ratings are 10 points lower than they think.''
But frustration also afflicts the lawmakers as they try, with little effect, to reward or serve or at least placate their constituents. For the last decade most creative energy in Washington has been devoted not to policymaking but to budget legerdemain - and to avoiding the automatic spending cuts that are supposed to provide the threat of discipline.
Meanwhile, lawmakers and Administration officials have learned that there is little percentage in inventing programs for which there is no money, and little reward in making things work better when what matters politically is the appearance that the deficit is being reduced.
From the beginning, the $120 billion Medicare program, which helps cover health care costs for the elderly, was and continues to be a convenient place to look for savings. Too convenient as far as Gordon H. Russell is concerned.
Mr. Russell is the administrator of the Hi-Plains Hospital, Nursing Home and Clinic in Hale Center, Tex., one of hundreds of rural hospitals feeling the severe pinch of Federal cuts.
The private hospital, which serves several communities with a total population of about 20,000, was built in 1946 and operated profitably until 1983, when Congress changed the Medicare reimbursement formula to save money.
The problem, Mr. Russell said, was that under the new formula rural hospitals got less than urban hospitals but still had to compete in the same markets for staff and supplies. ''A year ago we were in critical condition and had to borrow to pay salaries,'' he said. ''We're fragile now, and we're holding our breath on what will happen this year with the budget talks in Washington.''
Many health policy experts say the Federal budget crunch has only accelerated a trend that was inevitable, the closing of rural hospitals that are simply too inefficient and unprofitable. But a senior Congressional budget aide who shares that view argues that it misses the point.
''The Federal Government made a decision at the end of World War II to subsidize the country,'' the aide said. ''Over the course of the 1980's, that decision has effectively been reversed.
''It may be the correct policy, but the shift has occurred not because lawmakers decided it was a good idea, but rather because they were backfitting policy to meet budget deficit demands.''
Those demands seem infinite. Donald F. Kettl, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin, said that although the savings and loan debacle has become the focal point for the cynicism and mistrust of Government, other big fiscal messes are on the way.
''I don't think the real economic, political and programmatic effects of a decade of deficit politics have come home to roost yet,'' he said. ''There are more monsters out there: the nuclear waste cleanup, the Medicare trust fund, F.H.A. and the unemployment insurance trust fund.''
One of the most far-reaching effects of the Federal budget crunch has been a shifting of the burden for many social welfare programs to the states. During the early years of the Reagan Administration, this was called ''New Federalism,'' an approach meant to give the states more control over the design and administration of their programs and premised on the notion that cutting Federal taxes would still leave the states some room to increase their own.
Many states did. But as the Federal Government's own budget problems have grown, forcing President Bush to abandon his no-new-taxes pledge, Washington has looked to higher Federal taxes on beer, wine, alcohol, cigarettes and gasoline - all of which have been traditional sources of revenue for state and local governments.
A leaked Administration proposal that calls for limits on deductions for state and local income taxes may never formally make it to the budget negotiating table, but the idea brought protests even from states that have little or no revenue from local income taxes as well as from those, like New York, that depend heavily on them.
''Congress reached its limit and discovered the states as a credit card,'' said one state budget official, referring both to the tax proposals and to Federal mandates for expansion of the Medicaid program, under which states share the costs. ''We're already in trouble out here, and the last thing we need is more help from our friends on the Potomac.''
 
Between Branches
A decade of futile efforts in Washington to bring down the deficit has also had more subtle effects on the Government, increasing the inherent strains between between Congress and the White House and undermining the internal balance of power in Congress, even fundamentally altering the way that Congress conducts its business.
''When the first thing you have to ask is what does it cost and where do you get the money, it totally distorts the policy process,'' said Robert Reischauer, the director of the Congressional Budget Office, a nonpartisan economic research agency that Congress created in 1974 to act as a counterweight to the President's Office of Management and Budget.
''Congress doesn't do what it used to do, look at problems and try to fashion solutions,'' he said.
Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Democrat of New York, refers to a conspiracy, a deliberate plot by President Reagan and his top economic advisers to blunt Congressional power by running up defense spending and cutting taxes so that the resulting deficit would ''strangle the beast.''
Professor Kettl, at the University of Wisconsin, said that while deficit politics may have initially given the White House the upper hand with Congress, the Presidency has also suffered.
''The President has lost his ability to announce any new initiative that costs money,'' Professor Kettl said. ''That's why you see these symbolic causes - the flag, abortion, family values.''
Mr. Moynihan agreed, lamenting especially the loss of American influence at a time of dramatic change in the world. ''They wanted to strangle the beast and they ended up paralyzing the Government,'' he said. ''At the moment in foreign policy we've waited for and worked toward for half a century, we're broke.''

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Bearer of bad news: L. William Seidman telling Congress last week that the Government will need $100 billion from taxpayers in the next fiscal year for the bailout of failed savings and loans (Associated Press) (pg. 1); Graphic: ''The Biggest Numbers Game'' compares Gramm-Rudman-Hollings budget targets, Social Security surplus and estimated deficit, including Saving and Loan bailout, 1991-1995 (Source: Congressional Budget Office) (pg. 5)

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August 6, 1990, Monday, Late Edition - Final

Neglect Found in Residences for Disabled

BYLINE: By SELWYN RAAB

SECTION: Section B; Page 1, Column 5; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 1747 words

Thousands of mentally ill patients and other people unable to care for themselves are being assigned by New York State authorities to live in unsanitary, dilapidated and poorly supervised adult group homes or halfway houses, inspections by a state monitoring agency have found.
Neglect in some of the institutions is so severe that many residents resemble homeless street people, wandering ill kempt and ill fed, despite Federal and state subsidies of over $9,000 a year for each resident, the Commission on Quality of Care for the Mentally Disabled found. The commission investigates complaints involving the mentally ill.
The commission's findings were compiled from its surprise inspections at 47 of the 449 adult homes, which house 25,000 former mental patients or indigent elderly people. Inspectors said they uncovered serious problems at 28 homes, including fire and safety hazards in 20. 
''We found conditions in some homes so wretched that they looked like the old back wards of mental hospitals of a generation ago,'' Clarence J. Sundram, the commission chairman, said in an interview.
 
Commission's Charges Disputed
But another state official, Judith Berek, a deputy commissioner in the Social Services Department, which oversees the homes, disputed the commission's findings.
''Over all, many of the homes serving the mentally ill do need improvement,'' said Ms. Berek. ''But I don't think in most instances people are being seriously neglected or abused.''
About 9,000 patients who have been discharged from state mental hospitals and 16,000 other people too old or too frail to care for themselves live in the 449 adult homes. The homes, also known as halfway houses, will receive about $150 million in Federal and state subsidies this year.
Owners and administrators of homes classifed as substandard described the commission's findings as biased and exaggerated. They attributed housing defects and material shortages partly to destruction and vandalism caused by a recent increase in younger, violence-prone residents. The homes are privately run and most patients are assigned by the state or a local authority.
''We can't be a five-star hotel on $24 a day,'' said Peter Henigman, proprietor of the Dawn View Home for Adults in Hauppauge, L.I.
 
Homes Cite Money Shortage
Susan Peerless, executive director of the Empire State Association of Adult Homes, a lobbying and trade association, also complained about the amount of money provided by the state. ''The state does not want to increase funding,'' she said, ''and it does not want to close them, because where would you put 9,200 mental dischargees?''
The commission's inspections were conducted from September 1989 to February 1990. The inspection reports were obtained by The New York Times under the state's Freedom of Information law.
The state requires the halfway houses to provide a room, three meals a day and limited medical supervision. They are not nursing homes, and residents must not be bedridden. The homes are expected to help mentally ill residents become self-sufficient, although mental health authorities say that few return to independent living.
In the last 25 years, similar halfway house systems have been adopted in many other states, including New Jersey, Pennsylvania and California, as a method of treating mentally ill outpatients and to cut public hospitalization bills. The number of patients in New York mental hospitals decreased from 75,000 in 1965 to 15,000 now.
The commission, as part of a study requested by the State Legislature, chose 47 houses in which at least 25 percent of the residents were mentally ill.
 
Larger Homes 'Among the Worst'
Fourteen of the homes were classifed as ''poor,'' with serious or significant problems in virtually every major category, including safety, health care, nutrition and housekeeping. Another 14, each having two or more serious problems, were classified as needing improvement. Only 19 were rated ''good.''
Larger homes - those with 150 or more residents - and those in New York City and its suburbs ''tended to be among the worst,'' Mr. Sundram said.
Of those classified as poor, six were in the city, three on Long Island, three in the northern suburbs and two upstate.
Mr. Sundram said the findings showed the ''historic weakness'' of inspections by the Social Services Department and the ineffectiveness of fines imposed by the department, usually $50 a day for infractions.
 
'Cost of Doing Business'
''The owners see the fines as just a normal cost of doing business,'' said Mr. Sundram, who has headed the commission since 1978.
An ombudsman agency, the commission investigates complaints of mistreatment of mentally ill patients. It has no enforcement powers.
Ms. Berek of the Social Services Department, insisted in an interview that inspections by her unit were ''tough,'' noting that in 1988 an adult home in Queens was fined $17,000 for violations.
State law requires the department to conduct an unannounced inspection of each home at least once a year with a follow-up review to ensure that violations have been corrected.
The department has the authority to impose fines of up to $1,000 a day for violations and can close homes for repeated offenses.
 
Payment System Is Suspect
Mr. Sundram said that the fixed-rate system of subsidizing owners might be contributing to chronic abuses. Although all homes in the same area operate on the same reimbursement formula, Mr. Sundram said the survey found ''enormous variances'' in services and living conditions.
''When you have a fixed rate in a profit-making system,'' he said, ''there is a constant tension between an operator's desire to provide basic services or to increase profits by cutting services.''
Ms. Peerless of the adult home association said: ''Sure, some owners are making over $100,000 a year. But remember this is a for-profit industry, profit is not a dirty word, and some of the owners have large investments in these facilities.''
The Social Services Department does not audit the spending or profits made by the homes. Ms. Berek said she relied on strict enforcement ''to get the bad guys out'' and she doubted that profits were excessive.
Many owners emphasized that their buildings were more than 50 years old and that the fixed fees did not cover the costs of repairs and maintenance.
Owners of 11 of the 14 homes cited by the commission as ''poor'' said in interviews that they had been in compliance with state rules when they were reviewed by the commission. Most of the owners characterized commission investigators as incompetent.
''They came in like the Gestapo,'' Simon Halpert, the owner of the Park Manor Adult Home in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, said. ''They made the residents nervous.''
 
All 14 Cite Money Problems
All of the 14 owners or administrators claimed that they were losing money or barely scraping by.
The Rev. Calvin W. Babcock, the executive director of the nonprofit Hiawatha Manor Home for Adults in Niagara Falls, which was rated substandard, said the commission ''refused to put into perspective that we take some of the most difficult patients released from mental hospitals.''
''Sure, we don't have the furnishings we'd like to have,'' he said, ''but I'm investing in staff to keep people off the streets.''
In challenging the commission's findings, Ms. Berek singled out the Hiawatha Home for its ''wonderful care.''
Still she agreed with several of the commission's conclusions and said she had begun disciplinary actions against four of the adult homes that received bleak ratings from the commission: the Leben Home for Adults in Elmhurst, the Wavecrest Home for Adults in Far Rockaway, the New Queen Esther Home for Adults in Rockaway Park, all in Queens, and the Hunter House Home for Adults in Utica.
The Leben and Wavecrest homes, both graded poor by the commission, are owned by Alexander Edelman. Two women residents at the Leben Home were beaten to death there last year.
Leben, which is the third largest home in the state, with 361 beds; Wavecrest, with 242 beds; and a third home owned by Mr. Edelman, the Parkview Home for Adults in the Bronx, face possible license revocations.
''I have very serious problems with Edelman's places,'' Ms. Berek said.
In reply, Mr. Edelman said, ''We are in the process of preparing a report showing they don't know what they are talking about. It's innuendo and baseless charges.''
Emanuel Guttman, the owner of the New Queen Esther home, rated poor in the survey, also owns the New Seville Home for Adults in Rockaway Park. The New Queen Esther, which failed every category in the commission's inspections, and the New Seville have become targets for license removals.
''Both have to shape up or get out of the business,'' Ms Berek said.
 
'None of This Is True'
Mr. Guttman, in an interview , said of the complaints, ''We are providing first-class care. None of this is true.''
In Utica, the Social Services Department obtained a court order on July 17 temporarily removing the administrators of the Hunter House home, which was ranked among the worst in the commission's survey.
Of the 14 homes listed as poor, only the Hiawatha and the Park Inn Home for Adults in Arverne, Queens, allowed unrestricted access to a reporter and a photographer from The New York Times. In recent visits, both places appeared to be neat and clean although their furnishings were often threadbare and many rooms were shabby.
Samuel Koenig, the owner of the Park Inn, a converted hotel more than 100 years old, said that after the commission's inspection late last year he hired a consultant to improve personal care. He said sections of the building had been refurbished as part of ''normal maintenance.''
More than a dozen residents at adult homes in the New York City area, none of whom are mentally ill, said in interviews that employees routinely tried to prevent them from complaining to state inspectors about abuses that included muggings by intruders, unsanitary conditions, lack of heat in the winter and poor food. The residents said administrators and employees often threatened residents with eviction if they complained.
George Gitlitz, the Adult Home Project Director for the Coalition of Institutionalized Aged and Disabled, which counsels residents on their rights, called such abuses common.
''Almost everyone is penniless, without a family and afraid to speak up,'' he added.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Inspectors have found that many adult group homes for the mentally ill in New York State have serious health, safety and fire hazards. The Park Inn Home for Adults in Arverne, Queens, where a woman rested in her room, was among 14 homes that received a rating of ''poor'' by a state commission. (John Sotomayor/The New York Times) (pg. B6); graph of the 14 worst adult homes rated by New York State (Source: State Commission on Quality of Care for the Mentally Disabled) (pg. B6)

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The New York Times

August 7, 1990, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

Amnesty Starts And One Owner Turns In 3 Guns

BYLINE: By JAMES BARRON

SECTION: Section B; Page 3, Column 6; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 658 words

On the first day of a citywide amnesty program for people with illegal guns, only three weapons were turned in - all by the same person.
Officers at the 105th Precinct station house in Queens Village said that a man walked in at 12:40 P.M. and handed over the three guns - a .357 Magnum, a .45-caliber Colt automatic and a .380 Beretta automatic.
The police refused to identify the man or say why he decided to bring in the guns. The police have been asking that people with weapons to surrender call their local precinct before making the trip. It was not clear whether the man had done that. 
The 60-day amnesty campaign was announced last week by Mayor David N. Dinkins in response to recent shootings. The Mayor and Police Commissioner Lee P. Brown promised to see that those who did not turn in their guns and were caught would face a minimum of a year in jail.
 
Looking to Advertise
The Dinkins administration's amnesty program lacked the advance fanfare of previous efforts to persuade people to turn in illegal guns. In 1980, for example, the Koch administration ran advertisements for an amnesty program that was tied to a state gun-control law, and 372 guns were turned in.
This time, said a police spokesman, Officer Fred Weiner, the department is ''looking into'' advertising but has made no decision on whether to try it.
But gun owners, as well as officers who patrol the streets in high-crime areas, desk sergeants who take calls from the public and commanders who worry about crime statistics said that it would take more than advertising to make a dent in the illegal gun problem.
''We don't believe that it's going to be effective,'' said Cecil Cohen, legislative director of the New York State Rifle and Pistol Association, a gun-owners group. ''They've tried it many, many times before. I remember it as far back as practically as La Guardia and it's never worked and never will.''
 
Outpost for Drug Dealers
''The people who are going to turn guns in are legitimate people who just found them,'' said Deputy Inspector Patrick J. Carroll, commanding officer of the 75th Precinct in the East New York section of Brooklyn, where two children were recently killed by bullets fired at someone else. ''The kids are unlikely to turn them in. We hope they will.''
''You always have hope,'' said Sgt. George Hohenstein, who is also assigned to the 75th.
On Sutter Avenue, which runs through the 75th Precinct, residents said that Sergeant Hohenstein's hope was in vain. They told how their neighborhood, once a quiet community where many elderly people lived comfortably, had become a dangerous outpost for drug dealers.
The sound of gunfire is now heard all too often, they said, and resident after resident expressed doubt that the amnesty program would do any good. The reason, they said, is that for drug dealers, guns are a tool of the trade. And for people who feel they are potential crime victims, a gun can be the only protection.
 
'This Is a Jungle'
''Nobody will turn in their guns,'' said Russell Miller, who runs a hardware store near the 34th Precinct station house in Washington Heights in Manhattan. ''This is a jungle, and in a jungle you don't lay down your weapons. Everyone around here has considered buying a gun.''
In the Bronx, hours after the amnesty began, mourners gathered for the funeral for Rayvon Jamieson, who was killed when his family's apartment on the Grand Concourse was sprayed with bullets last week. ''I don't think it will be very effective,'' the undertaker, Fred Johnstone, said of the amnesty campaign, ''but they need to try every angle they can.''
Others took it less seriously. In East New York, a 23-year-old man who would identify himself only by the letter D said the amnesty reminded him of a television movie he had seen.
''The sheriff wanted everybody to turn in their guns at sundown,'' he said. ''They came at sundown, but they shot the sheriff.''

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Hours after the city began a 60-day amnesty program to get people to turn in illegal weapons, neighborhood children gathered to view the casket of Rayvon Jamieson at the Grand Concourse Seventh Day Adventist Temple. He was killed when his family's apartment was sprayed with bullets. (Jim Estrin for The New York Times)

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August 11, 1990, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

CONSUMER'S WORLD;
New Rule on Medicare Paper Work

BYLINE: By LEONARD SLOANE

SECTION: Section 1; Page 30, Column 1; Style Desk

LENGTH: 821 words

Starting Sept. 1, Medicare patients will no longer be able to file their own claims. Doctors and medical suppliers will have to do it for them.
This rule is part of the budget law enacted last year and is intended to make it easier for older Americans to receive reimbursement for medical expenses from Medicare. Patients now have the choice of either submitting the claim forms themselves or asking the doctor's office to do it for them. But as Sept. 1 nears, the requirement that doctors fill out Medicare forms is provoking heated debate. 
 
An Irritant or a Boon?
 Physicians and their bookkeepers say the change is an irritant because it increases paper work in busy offices. They predict that it will also prove to be a hardship for many patients because they may have to wait longer for reimbursement.
But the American Association of Retired Persons says the law will relieve older Americans of what for them is often an arduous or even insurmountable task. And other proponents of the new system say a large number of beneficiaries never receive the reimbursements due them because they find filling out the forms, which are similar to private insurance forms, too complicated.
One opponent of requiring doctors to file all Medicare forms, Dr. Seymour M. Cohen, an associate clinical professor of medicine at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, said many older people ''are perfectly capable of filling out their forms.'' He said the patient ought to be allowed to decide ''if he wants the doctor to do it or wants to do it himself.''
But Patricia Smith, a senior coordinator for health issues at the Association of Retired Persons, said: ''The paper work for beneficiaries receiving Medicare has always been burdensome. Many more beneficiaries will be getting claims filed for them that were never filed before.''
 
Repeal Is Being Sought
 Representative Joe Kolter, Democrat of Pennsylvania, disagrees strongly and introduced legislation to repeal the new requirement.
He said the measure was ''passed without any real debate over its efficacy or the need for the mandate it contains.'' He said it represents ''a needless hassle of dubious benefit.''
The law bars physicians from charging beneficiaries for preparing and filing claims. Claims must be submitted on a standard Government insurance form, HCFA-1500. Some insurance carriers, however, say they will continue to accept other forms that are now in use during an unspecified transition period.
Some Medicare beneficiaries now file their claims immediately after seeing a physician. But doctors have at least 15 months to file claims and there is no requirement that the doctors notify patients when the claim is submitted.
In many cases doctors will provide patients a copy of the completed Medicare claim. But because of the heavy paper work load in some offices, the patient may still not receive reimbursement promptly, even though the patient paid the physician's fee at the time of service.
''Consumers are going to wait longer for the receipt of their money,'' said Martin Schaum, counsel for the New York Alliance for Physicians and Surgeons. ''All this under the guise of consumer protection.''
Dr. Joseph Boyle, executive vice president of the American Society of Internal Medicine, said, ''Somebody is trying to fix something that wasn't really broken.''
Dr. Thomas R. Reardon, a Portland, Ore., general practitioner who is a trustee of the American Medical Association, said, ''Many patients like to be independent, and part of that independence is their ability to file their own claim forms.'' Supporters of the new law note that more than four out of five Medicare claims are ''on assignment,'' meaning the doctor accepts the payment from Medicare as 80 percent of his fee, after deductibles are paid. In those cases, the physician already does the filing.
''We don't think there's going to be much of a problem of waiting for claim filing, primarily because the physician wants the patient to come back to him,'' Barbara J. Gagel, director of program operations at the Health Care Financing Administration, the Government agency that administers the Medicare program.
And Ms. Smith of the A.A.R.P. said: ''Claim filing can be particularly tough on a single older person in a rural area who has very little assistance. Doctor filing can make it much easier.''
 
Beneficiaries Notified
 Medicare beneficiaries have been notified about the new requirements by H.C.F.A. and their insurance compnaies, or on explanation-of-benefit forms or in the envelopes containing their Social Security checks. But many of them are still unfamiliar with the new procedure.
At least one insurer - Empire Blue Cross-Blue Shield, which handles Medicare payments in 16 counties in downstate New York - says it will continue to handle claims submitted by beneficiaries for a time after the new rule goes into effect.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Many doctors will stamp warnings on patients' copies of claims. Dr. Seymour Cohen and a staff member, right, discuss forms (Peter Freed for The New York Times)

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August 12, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Hispanic Elderly Are Unaware of Available Aid

BYLINE: By MARVINE HOWE

SECTION: Section 1; Part 1, Page 30, Column 4; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 822 words

For three years after coming to the East Bronx from Peru, 83-year-old Alejandra Ramirez and her family believed that she was ineligible for public assistance, that she could not be fed by Meals-on-Wheels, for example.
That left Mrs. Ramirez's daughter, Juana Benites, to attend to her needs, at the same time that Mrs. Benites was raising five children of her own and her husband, Mancilla, was working seven days a week to support them.
But the Benites family was misinformed. Mrs. Ramirez had, for all that time, been eligible for some public assistance. The family simply did not know. 
Their situation is not unusual. Hispanic men and women make up the fastest growing sector of New York City's over-60 population but there are few services for them, and those that do exist are often unknown to them or inaccessible, according to advocates for the elderly.
 
Bilingual Services Needed
The New York City Department for the Aging anticipates that by the year 2015, the city's elderly Hispanic population will be quadruple its current level of 100,000.
Over the last 10 years, said Edwin Mendez Santiago, who heads Raices, the council for the Spanish-speaking elderly in Brooklyn, Hispanic people have fanned out from the traditional barrios and are now found in every district of the city. But most agencies for the elderly do not have bilingual services, he said.
Mario Tapia, who heads the New York Chapter of the National Hispanic Council on Aging called the situation ''very serious.'' He stressed that while Hispanic residents make up 8 to 10 percent of the city's elderly, there are only seven Hispanic-sponsored centers for the elderly, out of a total of 350.
''The demographics are changing right under our feet and we're not prepared for them,'' said Bonnie Lester, director of the East Bronx Council of the Aging, a nonprofit organization.
 
Least Likely to Get Help
According to a recent nationwide study by the Commonwealth Fund, Hispanic elderly in this country, estimated at around one million, are twice as poor as the elderly in general, in worse health, and least likely to receive assistance.
The fund's Commission on Elderly People Living Alone found that 22 percent of Hispanic elderly live below the Federal poverty line, compared with 12 percent of all elderly; 22 percent of elderly Hispanics were hospitalized in the past year, compared with 18 percent of all elderly; 77 percent of the Hispanic elderly receive Social Security, compared with 92 percent of all elderly.
Bilingual services for the Hispanic elderly exist in New York city's traditional Hispanic neighborhoods, like the Williamsburg and Bushwick sections of Brooklyn, East Harlem and Red Hook, the South Bronx and the Lower East Side of Manhattan, said Valerie Levy, director of minority affairs for the city's Department for Aging. But she added that the new Hispanic communities - in the Bensonhurst and Borough Park sections of Brooklyn; Sunset Park, Sunnyside, Astoria, and Long Island City in Queens; and the West Bronx - ''are heavily in need of expanded bilingual services.''
 
'Today's Realities'
City-sponsored programs for the elderly, set up with community-based social-service agencies in 1973 ''no longer reflect today's realities,'' Ms. Levy said. She noted that since then, Hispanic residents and other minority-group members have moved out of their barrios and can be found all over the city.
''Many sponsors want to reach out to the newcomers but don't know how,'' Ms. Levy said. She said many agencies lacked bilingual staff and that their programs were not geared to potential new users.
In the East Bronx, Hispanic elderly have ''easily doubled'' in the last five years, according to Ms. Lester of the East Bronx Council of the Aging. Only a decade ago the neighborhood was overwelmingly Irish, Jewish and Italian.
Many Puerto Ricans, in particular, have come into the area from the South Bronx, and there are now large pockets of Hispanic elderly, in the Morrisania, Soundview and Parkchester sections. In the East Bronx close to 20 percent of the elderly population of 130,000 is Hispanic. But they receive only 5 percent of the home-delivered meals, according to a recent survey by the council.
 
A Three-Year Wait
''The trouble is we don't hear about the Hispanics,'' said Ms. Lester.'' The Benites family is a case in point. Like many Hispanic people, the Benites family did not know about help for the elderly when they came to this country from Peru three years ago. Mrs. Benites says they were told that as sponsored immigrants they would have to wait three years for any kind of public assistance for her mother, Mrs. Ramirez, who had immigrated with them.
That is a common misconception, according to Ms. Levy, who said that while sponsored relatives are not entitled to some Federal benefits for three years, they are eligible for Meals-on-Wheels and most other city programs.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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August 12, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Bystander Deaths Reshape City Lives

BYLINE: By JANE GROSS, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section 1; Part 1, Page 18, Column 1; National Desk

LENGTH: 1120 words

DATELINE: OAKLAND, Calif., Aug. 11

As the homicide rate soars around the country and the killing of bystanders becomes a fact of life, the routines and rhythms in certain American neighborhoods have been reshaped by fear.
In these drug-ravaged inner cities, where the streets ring with gunfire, residents do not tremble or cry out anymore. Rather, they have learned to cope, changed their habits, taught their children to duck and cover.
Iona Poole, who lives with her granddaughter and great-granddaughter, has taught 6-year-old Miesha where to hide. 
''We better head for the bathtub, Nanny,'' the child says, by rote, when she hears the telltale crackle.
''That's the safest place,'' Mrs. Poole explained as she peeled peaches for cobbler. ''You just get in there and lie down until the shooting stops.''
 
'Changes Your Whole Psychology'
These new patterns are not limited to New York City, where four children have been killed and seven wounded by stray bullets in recent weeks. They are common here, too, on the streets of East Oakland and in the housing projects of San Francisco, where residents cower inside after dark, sleep on the floor to stay out of the line of fire and give a wide berth to neighborhood teen-agers, who sometimes settle their disputes with semiautomatic weapons.
Small children in East Oakland rarely play outdoors, where once they roamed free, because it is too dangerous. Elderly women have given up the evening church services that meant the world to them since the streets, after sunset, belong to the criminals.
''It changes your whole psychology of being,'' said Don Perata, the chairman of the Alameda County Board of Supervisors, whose district includes East Oakland, the most dangerous neighborhood in the East Bay city. ''There are enormous pressures on people on a day-to-day basis, which they can't even always articulate.''
Gunfire at night is common, residents say, and there are practiced responses. Celestine Greene, who lived here for nearly 40 years, became skilled at rolling from her bed at the first sound of shots, her covers clutched around her. Then she would creep along the floor until she was in a back hallway, where she would curl up and try to get back to sleep.
 
Persuaded to Move Out
''I'm not one of those frightened little old ladies,'' Mrs. Greene said, ''but I was terrorized.'' She said her six grown children recently persuaded her to move to nearby Hercules when they realized she was sleeping on the floor.
Don Hoskins, an expert on drug and alcohol abuse, has trained his wife and three teen-age children to turn off the lights when the shooting starts so they are not silhouetted in the window.
While the actual number of bystander killings is relatively small, their randomness exaggerates the fear they provoke. ''It's like terrorism,'' said Lawrence W. Sherman, a University of Maryland criminologist. ''It disrupts your expectation of safety in ordinary places.''
Dr. Sherman conducted the only known study of bystander shootings, based on newspaper reports, and found that such killings more than tripled in New York, Los Angeles, Washington and Boston from 1985 to 1988. A telephone survey of police departments in a dozen major cities last week produced few reliable current statistics. Only New York City, with 15 bystander killings so far this year, keeps count of such homicides.
 
Among the Homicide Leaders
In Oakland there is no official count of bystander killings, but the city recorded its 100th homicide of 1990 last weekend, a record pace. With a population of 350,000, Oakland is too small to be included in the Federal Bureau of Investgation's homicide rankings. But if the current rate continues, there will be 46 homicides for each 100,000 residents this year, which would make Oakland fifth behind Washington, Detroit, Atlanta and New Orleans.
This level of violence alters routines outside the house as well as within. Several East Oakland Baptist churches have canceled evening services because of poor attendance, said Frank Gilbert, a community organizer.
Each week attendance seems to drop at block association meetings, like the one on the street where Oscar Montgomery lives. Mr. Montgomery, a retired railroad worker, said his group, which alerts the police of drug activity, lost two-thirds of its 15 members, some because they are afraid to go out at night and others because they fear retaliation from the drug dealers.
''They single you out sometimes,'' said Mr. Montgomery, whose front door bears a plaque that says ''God Bless Our Home.'' ''That's slowed people up, cut out a lot of getting involved.''
 
'Had Enough Yet?'
Mr. Gilbert said the fear recently forced him to flee from East Oakland for neighboring Alameda. Well-known for anti-drug activity, Mr. Gilbert was a frequent target, his house was defaced with paint and his car was followed.
''Had enough yet?'' his tormentors yelled one day, while the 65-year-old Mr. Gilbert was taking his grandson on an outing. He had.
Over and over, adults in East Oakland said they felt so intimidated by young, armed men that they no longer spoke their mind to neighborhood teen-agers who were misbehaving. In this way, many of those interviewed agreed, the fabric of the community weakens.
Mark Allen, an aide to Mr. Perata, pointed to a knot of young men in a shopping mall adjacent to the supervisor's East Oakland district office. ''Youngsters messing up, being loud, embarrassing people,'' Mr. Allen said. ''When I was growing up, somebody would grab you and say, 'You can't do that anymore.' I wouldn't dare do that nowadays. A kid would pull out a gun and shoot me.''
 
Many People Own Guns
In these neighborhoods, a majority of people interviewed said they had a gun, even though they worried that children could injure themselves and even though it would not protect them from a random bullet. But despite all the good reasons not to have one, they said that they felt safer with a gun.
''It kind of scary with no man in the house,'' said Mrs. Poole, a widow, who recently went looking for the pistol that her husband had kept hidden. ''I'll never bring it out unless I have to.''
Mr. Hoskins's household weapon is a small-caliber rifle and his wife is considering an electric stun gun. The need for a family arsenal troubles him, but not as much as the subtle changes in routine, like family's decision to stop tending the front lawn after his 17-year-old daughter heard bullets whiz by while she watered the grass at dusk.
For Mr. Hoskins, even setting off for work in the morning, a short daylight walk, is not what it used to be. ''Those goodbyes become a little deeper,'' he said, ''when you don't know if you'll make it back again.''

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photos: Residents of high-crime inner-city areas have learned to cope with, rather than tremble at, the frequent sound of gunfire. Iona Poole of Oakland, Calif., has taught her great-granddaughter, Miesha, center, how to hide. At rear was another of her great-grandchildren, Laronna; Don Hoskins, an expert on durg and alcohol abuse, has his wife and three teen-age children turn off lights when the shooting sharts so they are not silhouetted in windows. He stood inside his Oakland home. (Photographs by Terrence McCarthy for The New York Times)

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August 12, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Not All Drug Lords Are Outlaws

BYLINE: By Pete Stark; Pete Stark, Democrat of California, is chairman of a House subcommittee on health.

SECTION: Section 4; Page 21, Column 2; Editorial Desk

LENGTH: 597 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON

The list of drug traffickers in the war on drugs includes a lot of unscrupulous villains: the Colombian drug lords, gangs like the Bloods and the Crips and some U.S. pharmaceutical manufacturers.
Huh? American pharmaceutical manufacturers?
Yes, that's right. The drug companies - and a core group of unwitting doctors who supply the illicit market and keep millions of Americans needlessly addicted to tranquilizers, sedatives and other dangerous controlled substances. Drug companies and doctors also present the biggest obstacle to prescription drug reform and a plan to save taxpayers hundreds of millions annually. 
The problem is 41 state Medicaid programs that lack simple oversight over the prescribing of almost 200 types of controlled substances, including the tranquilizers Valium and Xanax as well as dangerous sedatives and amphetamines. Recent Federal data reveal that these controlled substances are responsible for a third of all drug overdoses that turn up in hospital emergency rooms - a total of 80,000 a year, or three times the rate of heroin overdoses.
The nine other states require doctors who prescribe these dangerous legal drugs to use multiple-copy prescription forms, similar to credit-card slips. One copy of the prescription is kept by the doctor; one copy is given to the patient to take to the pharmacy. The remaining copy goes to the state health agency, which can then monitor prescriptions.
The idea is straightforward: Make doctors accountable for their prescriptions of dangerous drugs. This eliminates forgeries, illegal dispensing and fraud by patients, and also reminds doctors that these substances require special attention. The costs of implementing this program to Medicaid, by the way, are minimal.
In each of the nine states that require multiple-copy forms - including New York, Texas, California and Illinois - prescriptions for dangerous drugs fell 35 to50 percent after controls were instituted. Nationally, with 1.5 billion prescriptions issued annually for dangerous drugs, the plan could save hundreds of millions a year.
The benefits are obvious:
* Reductions in prescription drug abuse and associated Medicaid fraud, not to mention decreased illegal diversion of these drugs for resale. New York found that covering just one class of heavy sedatives saved their Medicaid program $24 million in the first year.
* The reduction of illegal prescribing and ''doctor shopping'' by addicted patients . Last year, for example, one New Mexico doctor was responsible for 28 percent of all Valium prescribed to Medicaid recipients in the state.
* The protection of millions of elderly people from drug-induced injury. Some estimates put the number of senior citizens needlessly addicted to tranquilizers alone at 2 million.
Why haven't all 50 states instituted such programs? Because of the strong opposition of drug manufacturers, who stand to lose up to 50 percent of their sales of sedatives, tranquilizers and amphetamines.
How can the U.S. drug companies reasonably defend a system that invites fraud and forgery? How can the pharmaceutical lobby advocate the needless addiction of millions of senior citizens to powerful psychoactive drugs?
This is clearly unacceptable. Limited Medicaid dollars ought to go toward improving services, rather than subsidizing drug abusers and paying for injuries caused by unnecessary medication. Instead of defending their profits, drug companies and organized medicine should join with consumer, elderly and law enforcement groups to support multiple-copy prescription plans.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

TYPE: Op-ed

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August 12, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

WHAT'S DOING IN;
The Twin Cities

BYLINE: By Suzanne Winckler; Suzanne Winckler is the author of Great Lakes and Plains States volumes of ''The Smithsonian Guide to Historic America'' (Stewart Tabori & Chang).

SECTION: Section 5; Page 10, Column 1; Travel Desk

LENGTH: 1815 words

Minneapolis and St. Paul rise up on the plain like two glimmering mirages. They are known to outlanders as the Twin Cities, but since there's nothing for hundreds of miles across the farmscape that might invite comparison or confusion, most Minnesotans simply call them the Cities. They perch on tree-lined bluffs at the confluence of the Mississippi and the lesser-known but equally handsome Minnesota River.
Poised on these brinks, the cities somehow seem lofty, and from many vantage points a person has the giddy sensation of standing on a balcony or the prow of a boat. The Dakota Indians, from whom Zebulon Pike purchased the land in 1805 that inaugurated white settlement in these parts, called the area Mendota, or Meeting of the Waters.
As cities go, Minneapolis and St. Paul maintain a remarkable affiliation with nature. Excellent proof of this coalition are the four pairs of peregrine falcons that nested this year on the rooftops of high-rises in the metropolitan area. As August merges into September the air turns brisk, the trees start to gild, and people go out for a last-minute revel. 
There are a lot of places in the Cities for autumn basking. Perhaps the best-known natural attraction set aside for public use is the cluster of jewel-like lakes - Cedar Lake, Lake of the Isles, Lake Calhoun, Lake Harriet, Hiawatha Lake and Lake Nokomis - that lie in the heart of Minneapolis. But there are also many hiking and nature trails throughout the 7,000-acre Minnesota Valley National Wildlife Refuge in the suburb of Bloomington (visitor's center, 3815 East 80th Street; 612-854-5900).
In St. Paul, Como Park (main entrance at Midway Parkway and Hamline Avenue, 612-488-7291) is a lovely 350-acre park, which was established in the 1880's. It features a free zoo (612-488-4041) and a beautiful Victorian conservatory.
 
Events
The annual event that caps summer in these parts is the Minnesota State Fair (main entrance at North Snelling and Midway Parkway, 612-642-2262 or 800-383-3247). This year the fair runs from Aug. 23 to Sept. 3. The many exhibit barns and show arenas remind Twin Citians of the agricultural base of their urban economy. Performers at the fair will include Bill Cosby, Bob Dylan, Bonnie Raitt, the Beach Boys and George Strait. Gate tickets are $4 for adults, $2.50 for children and senior citizens. General admission to the shows is $6.75 to $8.25; reserved seats are $11.75 to $13.25.
At the Walker Art Center (Vineland Place, 612-375-7577), a show on ''Russian Constructivism, Art Into Life 1914-1932,'' runs from Oct. 7 to Dec. 30. Open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 to 8, Sunday from 11 to 5. Admission is $3, $2 for children and senior citizens, except on Thursday, when admission is free.
At the Minneapolis Institute of Arts (2400 Third Avenue South, 612-870-3131), ''Mirrors of Empire: Dutch Marine Art of the 17th Century'' runs from Sept. 23 to Dec. 30. Open Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday from 10 to 5, Thursday from 10 to 9 and Sunday from noon to 5. Admission free.
The institute has also just completed restoration of the William Purcell House (2328 Lake Place), which was designed in 1913 by the architecture partners William Purcell and George Elmslie. This Prairie School masterpiece will be open to the public every weekend throughout September and the second Saturday of each month thereafter. Reservations are necessary. In St. Paul, the Science Museum (30 East 10th Street, 612-221-9488) dispels ursine myths with ''Bears: Imagination and Reality,'' which runs through Jan. 30. Shows at the museum's Omnitheater, noted for its large, wraparound screen, are ''Race the Wind,'' a movie on sailing that runs until Nov. 11, and ''The Great Barrier Reef,'' which opens Nov. 13 and runs to March 17. Open Monday to Saturday from 9:30 to 9, Sunday from 11 to 9. Admission $6 adults, $5 children and senior citizens, including the movie.
 
Great Vistas
The following spots reveal the blufftop character of the Twin Cities.
Fort Snelling (Routes 5 and 55 near Mendota Bridge, 612-726-1171) was a frontier outpost established in 1819 to regulate trade and traffic on the Mississippi River, which was then the main avenue of travel on the continent. Standing on sheer cliffs at the confluence of the two rivers, the diamond-shaped limestone compound commands a fine view. Open daily through Oct. 31 from 10 to 5; admission $2 adults, $1 children and senior citizens.
The James J. Hill House (240 Summit Avenue, 612-297-2555) sits on the edge of the bluff at the head of the most fashionable residential street in St. Paul. The 36,000-square-foot Richardsonian Romanesque mansion was the home of the 19th-century entrepreneur who built the Great Northern Railroad. Open Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday from 10 to 3:30; $2 adults, $1 children and senior citizens.
Windows on Minnesota (612-349-6250) is a restaurant on the 50th floor of Johnson and Burgee's well-known 20th-century architectural landmark, the IDS Center (717 Nicollet Mall), in downtown Minneapolis. While the tariff is steep (dinner for two will run around $90), this perch offers stunning views of the Mississippi River and the city of St. Paul to the east.
The Pillsbury A Mill (Main Street Southeast at Third Avenue Southeast) is a huge limestone structure built in 1881 to use waterpower from nearby St. Anthony Falls on the Mississippi. This cascade was the nucleus around which commercial-industrial Minneapolis grew. Call 612-296-8205 to get information on how to obtain Walking the Falls, a self-guided walking tour of the district.
 
Where to Stay
Hyatt Regency Minneapolis (1300 Nicollet Mall, 612-370-1234) is tucked into a surprisingly cozy corner on the south end of Nicollet Mall, nirvana for shoppers and window-shoppers. It is also an easy walk from the Walker Art Center and Sculpture Garden. Rates for two from $165 to $180 during the week; $99 to $110 weekends.
Normandy Inn Best Western (405 South Eighth Street, outside Minnesota 800-372-3131, in state 800-362-3131) is a short walk to Nicollet Mall and the Metrodome. Rates for double occupancy range from $56.50 to $72.50.
Budget choice (Minneapolis): Nan's Bed and Breakfast (2304 Fremont Avenue South, 612-377-5118) supplies a homelike atmosphere in a restored Victorian house. A room for two people, with shared bath, is $45.
The Radisson Hotel St. Paul (11 East Kellogg Boulevard, 612-292-1900) is in the downtown business district right next to the Mississippi River. A double is $99 during the week; $65 on weekends.
The Sheraton Midway in St. Paul (I-94 at Hamline Avenue, 612-642-1234) offers convenience for car travelers, since I-94 is the quickest route between the two cities. Weekday rates for a double are $79; weekend rates are $49.
Budget choice (St. Paul): The University Club (420 Summit Avenue, 612-222-1751), where F. Scott Fitzgerald used to meet friends for drinks, is now a tennis, athletic, eating and drinking spot for Summit Avenue neighbors. It also has two rooms for guests, which run $45 and $65 respectively for two people.
 
Where to Eat
Haute cuisine is not in overabundance in the Twin Cities and what survives there must pass the muster of a clientele that is by birthright thrifty and wary of affectation. Part of the fun of dining at a high-ticket establishment comes after the meal with the inspection of the check and discussion as to whether the occasion equaled the tab.
Under recent scrutiny was Azur (651 Nicollet Mall, 612-342-2500) in the Gaviidae Common shopping mall in downtown Minneapolis. Azur, with an icy underwaterlike interior of purple and black neon, has glass curtain walls overlooking a sleek urban landscape that includes a peek at the venerable Art Deco-style Foshay Tower. The artfully served Provence-inspired menu includes a scrumptious duck liver and rhubarb appetizer, tender medallions of lamb strewn with arugula, and numerous fresh fish and crustacean dishes adorned with seasonal vegetables. Dinner for two with a bottle of wine: $85, plus tip. Just down the street, in the Conservatory shopping mall, is Tejas (800 Nicollet Mall, 612-375-1132), a friendly, chic and breezy purveyor of neo-Mex, the lighter, more artful version of Tex-Mex. Dinner for two: about $65 with wine, plus tip.
The Loring Park Cafe (1624 Harmon Place, 612-332-1617), positioned conveniently between downtown Minneapolis and the Walker Art Center, is a crowded, sophisticated bistro. Dinner for two: $60 with wine, plus tip. After eating, take one of the greatest strolls in urban America: a walk to the Walker Art Center's Sculpture Garden across the beautiful blue and yellow bridge spanning Interstate 94.
Gelpe's Old World Bakery (2447 South Hennepin Avenue, 612-377-1870) sits amid the fun and funky shops that line a dozen or so blocks of Hennepin Avenue from Franklin Avenue south to Lake Street. The bakery makes Old World breads and a cosmopolitan array of cookies and sweets, from Viennese crescents to Ethiopian truffles and Java sticks.
On the culinary homefront, the Mississippi mud pie cupcake is a surpassing tribute to that local landmark.
A few pockets of 1960's counterculture can still be found in Minneapolis, the city that put Bob Dylan on the map. An inexpensive place to sit down to one of those cornucopian egg-potato-cheese-sprouts-avocado breakfasts of yore amid vintage 60's patrons is the Seward Community Cafe (2129 East Franklin Avenue, 612-332-1011). Try the earth breakfast ($3.20 to $7.70).
In St. Paul, not far from the baronial mansions on Summit Avenue, Cafe Latte (850 Grand Avenue, 612-224-5687) is a cafeteria-style eatery and bakery that serves fresh pasta salads, soups, sandwiches and some of the best desserts in the Twin Cities, including a chocolate-Kahlua cheesecake. Lunch for two: $14.
 
Shopping
In St. Paul, Grand Avenue between South Snelling Avenue and North Dale Street is lined with shops from the mainstream to the oddball in storefronts and old Victorian houses. Treadle Yard Goods (1338 Grand Avenue, 612-698-9690) carries an exceptional selection of natural fibers, including many hand-washed silks and pima cottons. Bijoux Bead (715 Grand Avenue, 612-221-9103) sells glass, metal, wood, plastic and ceramic beads, plus the paraphernalia for stringing the baubles into jewelry.
The West Bank is Bob Dylan territory. This mercantile zone lies along Cedar Avenue within sight of the Metrodome and the University of Minnesota campus, which has spilled over from the east bank of the Mississippi River. The West Bank's covey of shops and cafes is definitely more laid back than Nicollet Mall. Midwest Mountaineering (309 Cedar Avenue South, 612-339-3433) is a wilderness outfitter par excellence. Across the street, Tatters and Platters (316 Cedar Avenue South, 612-332-0071) is renowned for its hip recycled clothes and records.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photos: St. Anthony Falls, on the Mississippi; ''The Spinner'' by Alexander Calder, 1966, outside the Walker Art Center; A booth at the Minnesota State Fair. (Steve Woit for The New York Times); Table listing Minneapolis' vital statistics. (Source: Runzheimer International, Greater Minneapolis Chamber of Commerce, The Times Books World Weather Guide); Map of Minneapolis

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August 12, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

LONG ISLAND GUIDE

SECTION: Section 12LI; Page 15, Column 1; Long Island Weekly Desk

LENGTH: 1509 words


 
ROOTING FOR TAPROOTS
In the 17 years the program has operated at libraries, senior-citizens' centers and health-related facilities in Suffolk County, the Taproot Workshops and their Journal have turned some 5,000 older people on to writing. And while Taproots, based at SUNY/Stony Brook, is mostly supported by Federal, state and local grants, a little extra can't hurt. Some of that ''extra'' will be raised today at a Literary Festival.
Actually, it is more of a theater festival, since it features the presentation of ''A Visit With Miss Smith,'' a play by Taproots's founder, Claire Nicolas White; the performance of the second act from Neil Simon's ''Plaza Suite'' and readings from the works of Anne Morrow Lindbergh. All this takes place at 4 P.M. at the Smithtown Historical Society's Brush Barn on Route 25, followed by a reception at Epenetus Smith Tavern. Reservations: 632-6635. 
 
SHAKESPEARE OUTDOORS
If Shakespeare and the outdoors are your cup of ale, then rest easy. Just as the Arena Players conclude their free season in the sun with ''Macbeth'' today at 5:30 P.M. at the Bayard Cutting Arboretum in Oakdale, here comes the American Globe Theater to Lido Beach Town Park. But instead of an entire play, the Manhattan-based company is offering ''Will Power'' on Thursday and Friday. This is a 60-minute potpourri of scenes from ''A Midsummer Night's Dream,'' ''Twelfth Night'' and ''Othello.'' It will be performed at 8:15 P.M. each night under a tent at the Hempstead Town Park on Lido Boulevard, and there is no admission charge.
 
SOME SUMMER JAZZ
With nine special concerts devoted to America's indigenous music on tap, this is very jazzy week on the Island. It all begins tomorrow with the first of three 8:15 P.M. concerts: Dakota Staton's ''A Tribute to the Great Ladies of Jazz'' at Oceanside Park. It continues Tuesday with ''A Tribute to Satchmo'' by Arvell Shaw and his Louis Armstrong Legacy Band at Echo Park in West Hempstead; and Wednesday with ''A Tribute to Roy Eldridge'' by the Jimmy Ryan All Stars at Seaman's Neck Park in Seaford. The free programs conclude Friday at 7:30 P.M. at Sag Harbor's Marine Park when Hal McCusick and his ensemble perform.
On Saturday, jazz fans can choose between Dave Brubeck, who appears at 7:30 and 10 P.M. at Guild Hall's John Drew Theater in East Hampton (324-4050); Branford Marsalis, who plays at Planting Fields Arboretum in Oyster Bay at 8 P.M. (922-0061); the Zawinul Syndicate, which brings its fusion sound to the Inter-Media Art Center in Huntington at 9 P.M. (549-ARTS), and the Newport Jazz Festival, which moves to the Jones Beach State Park Theater for a two-night stand. George Benson, Grover Washington Jr. and the Count Basie Orchestra head the bill Saturday; Miles Davis, B.B. King, Dave Brubeck, Wynton Marsalis and Spyro Gyra will be on stage next Sunday. Tickets: 221-1000.
 
UNUSUAL ANNUALS
Impatient with impatiens or perturbed by petunias? There are, of course, annuals alternatives. And on Tuesday, Dr. Howard S. Irwin, director of Clark Botanic Garden in Albertson, will describe them when he lectures on unusual annuals. What's more, Dr. Irwin, who has traveled far and wide collecting seeds that he then planted at Clark Garden, will let his listeners in on his secret seed-saving techniques. The program is at 7 P.M. at the garden on I.U. Willets Road. Registration: 621-7568.
 
LON CHANEY FESTIVAL
Lon Chaney was known as the man with a thousand faces, and on Tuesday the New Community Cinema will show movie buffs one of them: ''The Phantom of the Opera.'' Accompanied by Harry Weiss at the piano, the silent classic marks the start of a kind of Chaney mini-festival. On Aug. 21, the Cinema will screen ''He Who Gets Slapped,'' which critics called one of the 10 best films of 1924. Mr. Weiss will again be on hand to spice up the work musically. Both programs are at 8 P.M. at the Cinema, 423 Park Avenue in Huntington. Tickets: 423-7610.
 
EARLY 'MESSIAH'
Depending upon one's basic philosophy, the Long Island Choral Society is either late or early with its outing this Tuesday. That's when, in the second of three Summer Sing-Ins, the society will share Handel's ''Messiah'' with anyone who would like to sing along with Parts I, II and III. The program is at 8:30 P.M. at St. Agnes Cathedral in Rockville Centre, and participants, who must pay $5 to exercise their vocal chords, can bring their own scores or borrow the society's. Incidentally, the third and last sing-in is Aug. 27 at St. John's Episcopal Church in Cold Spring Harbor, where the nonseasonal work to be tackled is Mendelssohn's ''Elijah.''
 
KITE FESTIVAL
There are kite fliers and then there are kite fliers; and the twain can meet Saturday and next Sunday at Eisenhower Park for the Summer Skylark Kite Festival and New York State Stunt Kite Championships. Produced by the American Kite Flyers Association, the two-day event will feature amateurs as well as professionals. On a first-come, first-served basis, adults and children will receive free kites and instructions on how to use them. There also will be contests and demonstrations; a mass kite launch trying for a New York State record, and bluegrass music in the background. The free activities are from 11 A.M. to 4 P.M. each day at the park in East Meadow.
 
ARTISTS VS. WRITERS
Most of the season, when they meet socially, the artists and writers who call the Hamptons home - or second home - can be friends. Come August, however, buddies give way to foes, at least on the diamond. And Saturday is the day athletic lines are drawn between the two arts, via the annual Artists and Writers Softball Game, which this year raises funds for the East Hampton Day Care Center and the Retreat, a service and soon-to-be shelter for battered women.
At 3 P.M. at the Herrick Playground off Newtown Lane in East Hampton Village, the writers will field a team that includes George Plimpton, Peter Maas, Ken Auletta and John Irving. Augmented by such show-biz types as Paul Simon, Lori Singer, Gerry Cooney and maybe Alan Alda, the artists' lineup includes Walter Bernard, John Alexander and Eric Ernst. Donations: 329-2200.
 
AIDS BENEFITS
With Long Island reporting more AIDS cases than any other American suburb, folks on the East End are doing their bit to raise funds to help those afflicted. On Saturday, there is ''Harvest '90 ... A Gathering of Friends,'' which Photoaid, the Photographers' Foundation for AIDS, is holding at 4:30 P.M. at Le Reve Winery in Southampton. Benefiting four organizations, including the People With Aids Coalition of Long Island, this is a wine, art and memorabilia auction offering such gems as the pants worn by Laurence Olivier in ''Pride and Prejudice,'' a walk-on part on ''Knots Landing'' and lunch with Steve Sax. Tickets, at $50, are available at the door.
Then, next Monday, Aug. 20, Sally Ann Howes spends her night off from her current stint in ''A Little Night Music'' at the New York City Opera, to perform her one-woman show, ''From This Moment On,'' at the John Drew Theater at Guild Hall in East Hampton. Proceeds from this 8 P.M. concert will go to the Long Island Association for AIDS Care, which provides social services to people with AIDS. Tickets are $50 and $125, but a $150 donation includes a champagne and dessert party at the Palm at the Hedges Inn. Reservations: 324-2468.
 
ISLAND BOUNTY
While celebrating Long Island harvests is traditional, the way it is being done Saturday at a benefit for lyme disease research at University Hospital/Stony Brook is decidedly new-hat. The chefs at more than 15 leading restaurants on the North Fork and East End of the Island are taking the bounty from the local soil and sea and fashioning it into a menu that will be accompanied by wines from more than a dozen Long Island vineyards, ranging alphabetically from Banfi Vintners in Nassau County to Pugliese Vineyards, one of the newest wine producers on the North Fork.
Sponsored by the Wine Spectator, the large-circulation wine publication, this first annual Long Island Barrel Tasting and Barbecue is from 4:30 P.M. to dusk at the Hargrave Vineyard in Cutchogue and, at $100 a person, includes dancing to country and western bands along with a dinner prepared by Star Boggs's restaurant in Westhampton Beach. Guests will also have an opportunity to taste barrel samples of the 1989 Long Island merlot. Reservations: 734-5158.
 
THE L.I. PHILHARMONIC
With Marin Alsop, the new music director, on the podium, the Long Island Philharmonic starts its two-night summer run Saturday at Heckscher Park in Huntington. The program includes Gershwin overtures from ''Oh, Kay'' and ''Girl Crazy''; Ravel's ''Bolero''; excerpts from Bernstein's ''On the Town''; Tchaikovsky's ''Romeo and Juliet,'' and Kruetz's ''Concerto for Dixieland Band and Orchestra.'' The concert is at 8:30 P.M. and will be repeated next Sunday at 8 P.M. at Eisenhower Park in East Meadow. Both outings are free. $90BARBARA DELATINER

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August 12, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

THEATER REVIEW;
'Driving Miss Daisy' In Island Premiere

BYLINE: By LEAH FRANK

SECTION: Section 12LI; Page 11, Column 5; Long Island Weekly Desk

LENGTH: 741 words

ALFRED UHRY'S multi-award-winning play, ''Driving Miss Daisy,'' has not only just ended its deservedly long Off Broadway run in Manhattan, but the Oscar-winning movie version has recently been released on video with an accompanying television advertising blitz.
At the same time, the production rights to the play have been released to small theaters. Consequently, ''Driving Miss Daisy'' is receiving a dual Long Island premiere, at the Studio Theater in Lindenhurst and the Arena Players Repertory Theater in East Farmingdale. The production at Studio Theater, which continues through Sept. 1, is overwhelmed by the competition, as is the one at Arena Players. 
The play, as opposed to the screenplay, of ''Driving Miss Daisy'' offers insights into the characters that the expanded movie version does not. On the other hand, the movie paints a larger portrait of these characters than is possible onstage. In light of the ubiquitous presence of ''Driving Miss Daisy,'' the question is why, of all the plays available to them, Studio and Arena would choose to produce this one. Judging from the chatting, the volume of cellophane candy wrappers being opened and the near-symphonic levels of accompanying chewing sounds, the audience at Studio Theater last Saturday night was not interested in being there.
''Driving Miss Daisy'' is about the friendship that develops between an elderly Jewish woman and her black chauffeur over 25 years. The action takes place primarily in Atlanta. As the play opens, 70-year-old Daisy Wertham is arguing with her son, Boolie, that she does not require anyone to drive her car.
The fact that her insurance company will not continue to pay damages inflicted by Miss Daisy's increasingly erratic driving habits does not sway her. She does not want to concede that she needs assistance getting around. Boolie ignores her and hires Hoke Colburn, a dignified black chauffeur who is too old to compete with young men in the job market and who is as feisty in his own way as Miss Daisy is in hers.
''Driving Miss Daisy'' is a heartwarming tale about the manner in which two people of goodwill cross the deep ravines of cultural borders and come to an understanding and respect for each other.
The wealthy Jewish woman and the poor black man are both outsiders in their white Southern Christian community. But as different as they are, what they share in common as older adults is what ultimately brings them together.
It begins with Miss Daisy angrily denying that she needs help from anyone. It ends with a visit to the nursing home and Hoke picking up a fork to feed Miss Daisy some Thanksgiving pie. ''Let me help you with this,'' Hoke says, and Miss Daisy opens her mouth. This single action expresses a quarter of a century of personal trust and genuine friendship that these two characters have developed.
There are strong and weak points in the Studio Theater production, directed by Roy F. Siegel. The overall effect, however, is one of blandness, which is fatal in the face of all the competing versions.
Frank Tangredi is warm and responsive as Boolie, the loving son who patiently puts up with his mother's quirkier mannerisms while clearly being amused by them. Felice Cohen gives a sterling performance as the tenacious, sometimes cantankerous Miss Daisy. There is no way, however, Ms. Cohen can match the flawless professional performance of Jessica Tandy, and the inevitable comparisons hurt. The same problem, being compared with Morgan Freeman, is faced by Robert E. Boyd, who plays the resolute Hoke.
The movie soundtrack is played too often too loud, and leads to odd juxtapositions, such as having the sound of real birds chirping as Miss Daisy mimes planting flowers at the cemetery. At other times the main focal point of the scene unintentionally becomes the soundtrack.
It is possible for ''Driving Miss Daisy'' to be a poignant, intimate view of the larger social issues that took place in the South during the 25 years Hoke drove for Miss Daisy. But at Studio Theater the necessary subtle shifts that move the action forward are blurred.
''Miss Daisy'' is performed on a sparsely furnished stage so that action can flow from one area to another and from one era into the next. Dramatic effect is taken up by lighting design. Eric D. Schlobohm's lights are appropriate and effective, although the people who are running the lights need more practice at getting their cues down.

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The New York Times

August 16, 1990, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

METRO DATELINES;
Man Held in Robbing Of 31 Elderly People

SECTION: Section B; Page 7, Column 2; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 181 words

DATELINE: PARKCHESTER

An unemployed man was charged yesterday with robbing 31 elderly people during a crime spree that began in January in the Parkchester section of the Bronx, the police said.
The suspect, Ramiro Serita, 33 years old, of 2264 Waterbury Avenue in the Schuylerville section of the Bronx, was identified yesterday by several of the victims at a lineup in the 43d Precinct station house, the police said. 
Mr. Serita was arrested at 1:15 P.M. on Tuesday after a resident of a building at 1480 Parkchester Road who had just been robbed pointed him out on the street to the police, said a police spokeswoman, Officer Janice Swinney. ''He would follow senior citizens into the lobby of their buildings, then into the elevator, where he would rob them at knifepoint,'' she said.
The robbery Tuesday fit that pattern, she said, adding that the police had recovered a 5-inch kitchen knife.
None of the victims - who lost a total of about $1,000 - was injured, Officer Swinney said. Mr. Serita was charged with first-degree robbery, possession of stolen property and possession of a weapon.

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August 17, 1990, Friday, Late Edition - Final

Study Says Alzheimer's Medicine Is Useless

BYLINE: AP

SECTION: Section A; Page 16, Column 5; National Desk

LENGTH: 233 words

DATELINE: DENVER, Aug. 16

A study made public today concludes that the only medication approved by the Government for treating Alzheimer's disease is useless and may actually make the disease worse.
The researchers who conducted the six-month study at the University of Colorado Medical School found that Alzheimer's patients who took Hydergine, the 11th most prescribed drug in the world, deteriorated faster than those who were given dummy pills. 
In the report, published today in the The New England Journal of Medicine, the researchers said this was a surprise, and they were not sure why it had happened.
''We can only speculate that the drug may cause cognitive dysfunction, perhaps through a direct toxic effect or by accelerating the progression of Alzheimer's disease,'' they wrote.
The study was paid for by the Sandoz Pharmaceuticals Corporation of East Hanover, N.J., which has manufactured and marketed Hydergine worldwide for more than 20 years. The drug costs patients about $700 a year.
The researchers described the study, begun in 1985 on 80 older adults, as the most extensive attempt in the United States to evaluate the drug's effects.
Hydergine is the only drug approved by the Food and Drug Administration for treatment of Alzheimer's, an incurable brain disease that slowly robs its victims of the ability to function. The drug supposedly reduces memory loss and other symptoms of dementia.

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The New York Times

August 18, 1990, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

BUSINESS DIGEST: SATURDAY, AUGUST, 18, 1990


SECTION: Section 1; Page 33, Column 1; Financial Desk


 
The Oil Jolt
 President Bush has decided in principle to call up a limited number of military reservists because of the Middle East crisis, Administration officials said. The Pentagon commandeered 38 wide-body jets from 16 airlines to carry troops and cargo. [1.] Japan indicated that it was considering sending nonmilitary support personnel to back American and other forces opposing Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. [6.] Saudi Arabia stressed to other OPEC members that it was seeking a meeting to discuss raising production. Oil prices continued to advance, rising $1.27 on the New York Mercantile Exchange to close at $28.63. [33.] Higher oil prices could create much greater hardships in dozens of third world nations because their economies are in far worse shape than during the last oil shock a decade ago. [33.] 
 
 
 
Companies
 Walter R. Yetnikoff, the chief of CBS Records, has signed a new contract under which he will remain as chief executive for two years and then become a consultant to the company, several top-level industry executives said. [33.] The St. Petersburg Times has agreed to buy the shares of a group of unwelcome investors that includes Robert M. Bass, the Texas financier. [33.] The Halston name in women's apparel will soon disappear almost entirely from sales racks in this country. [34.] The New Jersey State Casino Control Commission postponed a ruling on Donald Trump's complex financial bailout plan until Tuesday, saying it needed more time to review more than 1,000 pages of documents. [35.] Resorts International's reorganization was approved by a bankruptcy court and the New Jersey casino commission. [35.] Nordstrom has settled unfair labor practice charges in an agreement with the National Labor Relations Board. [35.]
 
 
 
Markets
 The stock market fell again, finishing a tumultuous week 71.78 points lower. The Dow fell 36.64 points yesterday, or 1.37 percent, to 2,644.80. It was the Dow's lowest closing level since March 1, when it was 2,635.59. For the week, the Dow lost 71.78 points. [33.] The Government securities market stabilized. Trading was described as a lackluster tug-of-war between market participants influenced by inflationary fears and further weakness in the dollar and those counting on a continuing decline of the economy. [36.] The dollar sank to another all-time low against the German mark and fell against all other major currencies except the yen, reflecting continuing pessimism about the U.S. economy. [41.] Live cattle futures settled lower on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. [41.]
 
 
 
Today's Columns
 When a court becomes responsible for the financial well-being of elderly people they are often poorly served, a report by a lawyers' committee says. Your Money. [34.] A patent for a cookie that erupts like a volcano when heated in a microwave oven was awarded to Nabisco Brands. Patents. [34.]

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TYPE: SUMMARY

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August 18, 1990, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

Your Money;
Power of Attorney In Elderly Care

BYLINE: By Jan M. Rosen

SECTION: Section 1; Page 34, Column 1; Financial Desk

LENGTH: 808 words

As medical science prolongs life, an increasing number of people are outliving their mental abilities to make financial and health-care decisions. And these elderly people are often poorly served when responsibility is handed over to other parties by the courts, reports the Committee on Legal Problems of the Aging of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York.
In a detailed report on a study of how New York's conservator and committee statutes have worked, the committee found that court proceedings are extremely slow, an average of three and a half months and up to 10 months; that the statutes are used primarily to free funds for long-term health care, rather than for personal property management, and that the guardians appointed to represent people while court hearings are conducted are not strong advocates for the proposed wards. The report also states that judges give conservators broad powers over a person without regard to the individual's actual needs and disabilities and that there is inadequate monitoring of personal management and insufficient supervision of referees. 
The committee has called for the adoption of an adult guardianship law to rectify these problems. But, the report's authors say, it is far better for people to anticipate the possibility of incapacity and prepare for it with a durable power of attorney or through trusts or joint bank accounts than to have to come under court protection.
''Leaving it to the courts even in the best of states with the best of statutes is cumbersome, expensive and very public,'' said Nancy N. Dubler, one of the authors. She is director of the division of law and ethics in the department of epidemiology and social medicine at Montefiore Medical Center/ the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.
''This is sort of a back-water area of the law that has never been modernized,'' said John J. Regan, the committee chairman and a professor at Hofstra Law School, as well as a member of the American Bar Association's Commission on the Mentally Disabled. He characterized the system as being plagued with ''unconscionable delays'' and as being largely inaccessible to many people.
A durable power of attorney, which is now recognized in all states, gives another person broad discretionary powers over one's assets, including real estate, bank and brokerage accounts, insurance, Social Security and other income, unless limitations are written into it. It continues to be valid when a person is incapacitated. Some states allow for a springing power of attorney, which comes into play only when a person is incapacitated.
People with more substantial assets may also want to use living trusts as an alternative or in combination with a durable power of attorney, Professor Regan said. A trust costs money to set up and to administer, he noted, but it keeps assets out of probate and may be advisable when expertise is needed to administer certain assets.
Whatever solution is chosen - durable power of attorney, joint accounts or living trusts - a vital consideration is who is to direct one's affairs. ''Charlatans and confidence men prey on the elderly,'' Professor Regan said. ''An heir may not be the best person to select if there is any possibility of a conflict'' between the elderly person's interest and his own, he added. ''It may be overcome by love, but it may be better to select a relative or close friend who does not stand to benefit from the will.''
Julia C. Spring, the other author of the report and an associate clinical professor at the Columbia University School of Law, suggested a family meeting to discuss who should have power of attorney or how to divide responsibility. In this way later conflict and suspicion within the family may be averted, and there is less chance of an elderly person's being deceived by a family member.
The next step, Professor Spring said, is to consult a lawyer who specializes in estate planning. She recommended having a living will to specify wishes in regard to health care and a durable power of attorney prepared at the same time.
For a referral for a lawyer, a local bar association can be contacted. In New York the number to call is (212) 382-6625. The association will match the caller with a lawyer. There is a $25 fee for the first half-hour of consultation.
Ms. Dubler noted that people with relatively simply finances, perhaps only a checking account, might find the thought of going to a lawyer a bit daunting. They can execute a legal durable power of attorney simply by filling out a legal form, obtainable from a stationery store near a courthouse. The power of attorney must be witnessed, and in some states notarized. Also, she added, some banks and financial institutions insist that their own forms be used, so it is best to check with the institutions where one has accounts.

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August 18, 1990, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

CONSUMER'S WORLD;
On a Scooter, Mobility Comes With Style

BYLINE: By LEONARD SLOANE

SECTION: Section 1; Page 50, Column 1; Style Desk

LENGTH: 857 words

Ever since Patricia Frome, a Manhattan lawyer with multiple sclerosis, bought a battery-powered scooter two and a half years ago, her life has changed. Ms. Frome rides in an Amigo scooter both inside and outside her home.
''It enables me to go to museums and various stores,'' she said. ''I don't tire as much as people who are on their feet. And there's an enormous psychological difference from a wheelchair.'' 
Mobility is the big advantage of electric scooters, also known as power-operated vehicles, carts and three-wheelers. They are used by people who have trouble walking because of illnesses like multiple sclerosis, muscular dystrophy, cerebral palsy and emphysema. Elderly people who find it difficult to get around, but who are generally in good health, also use them.
Sales of scooters have increased steadily since they first came on the market about 25 years ago. While precise figures are not available, the 1989 industry sales estimate for the three dozen or so manufacturers was at least 30,000. The passage this year of the Americans with Disabilities Act, which is expected to open up more public accommodations and transportation to the disabled, is expected to further stimulate sales.
The most important factor in scooter sales now is the aging of the population, said Thomas M. Antone, president of the National Association of Medical Equipment Suppliers, a trade group.
''People are living longer and also experiencing a greater incidence of the kind of disease that might make a scooter desirable,'' he said.
 
Stylish Designs
Motorized scooters serve the same function as motorized wheelchairs, but the scooters are easier to maneuver and are more versatile. And because they now have sleek designs and are marketed primarily as a product to facilitate movement, rather than to assist the disabled, they appeal to a broader spectrum of the public.
''People are looking for an alternative to a wheelchair,'' said Beth Christie, power products marketing manager of Ortho-Kinetics, a Waukesha, Wis., manufacturer of scooters. The scooters are ''more socially acceptable,'' she said.
Scooters start at around $1,000 and go up to $3,500 or so for the largest and most durable types. Accessories like armrests, wire baskets and seat belts are also sold.
Some private health insurance plans will reimburse policyholders, either partly or fully, for the cost of a scooter. However, under Medicare rules, a neurologist, rheumatologist or other specialist must certify that the scooter is medically necessary for a person over 65 to be reimbursed. Vehicles used for recreation are not covered.
''These vehicles have been appropriately used in the home setting for vocational rehabilitation and to improve the ability of chronically disabled persons to cope with normal domestic, vocational and social activities,'' according to a statement from the Health Care Financing Administration of the Department of Health and Human Services. ''They may be covered if a wheelchair is medically necessary and the patient is unable to operate a wheelchair manually.''
Many manufacturers call the scooters ''platform mobility aids,'' said Kenneth Brown, a project engineer at the Emergency Care Research Institute, a nonprofit organization in Plymouth Meeting, Pa., that tests scooters for performance, safety and ease of use. ''But by calling them power wheelchairs, the chances of reimubursement by Medicare are better.''
Most scooters, whether for indoor or outdoor use or both, have three wheels and come in either front-wheel or rear-wheel drive models. They range from 50-pound machines with a single 12-volt battery system to 150-pound versions with a two-battery 24-volt system. They travel at three to nine miles per hour, depending on the load and terrain. Batteries need recharging after about five hours. When selecting a scooter, there are a number things to keep in mind. ''A person with some physical problems really shouldn't be in a scooter,'' said Mike Cook, owner of Hill Country Medical Equipment, a dealership in Kerrville, Tex. Someone unable to steer because of a neurological problem, for example, would obviously not benefit from a scooter.
 
Buying the Right Model
The comfort of the person using the scooter is also a concern.
''Most of the scooters have a swivel seat, but a lot of times it is very difficult to swivel from 90 degrees to a steering position,'' said Aaron Stegeman, product development manager of the Ranger All Season Corporation, a manufacturer in George, Iowa. ''So you should look for a seat that's comfortable for you.''
Purchasers should also make sure the scooter is appropriate for their use.
''Some elevators only accept scooters up to 48 inches long,'' said Ray Krieger, sales director of Jubilee Scooters, a producer in Foster City, Calif. ''And you have to be careful about hills and weather.''
But most of all, remember that a scooter should be used primarily for medical reasons. ''It may provide an easy way out for people who should have more exercise,'' said Charles Struck, president of the C. F. Struck Corporation, a manufacturer in Cedarburg, Wis.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photos: Patricia Frome, who has multiple sclerosis, says the $2,300 she paid for her scooter was well worth it (William E. Sauro/The New York Times); various scooter models and their prices.

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The New York Times

August 19, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

CONFRONTATION IN THE GULF;
Trapped in the Mideast: A Cross Section of U.S. By LISA BELKIN

BYLINE: Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section 1; Part 1, Page 10, Column 1; National Desk

LENGTH: 1346 words

In a windowless room of the State Department building in Washington, a carefully guarded list of nearly 2,000 names is said to contain all the information the government has managed to gather on the Americans stranded in Iraq and Kuwait: their names, their purposes for being in the region, their ages, hometowns, relatives' names and phone numbers, when they were heard from last.
These are the people trapped in the middle of the Middle East conflict. And their status seems to grow more precarious with every pronouncement from Baghdad: Friday night Iraqi officials announced that Americans in the region would be detained until ''the danger of oppression has been eliminated'' and that they would be moved to military bases and other strategic installations. And yesterday, Iraq said the naval blockade could limit the amount of food available to feed the foreigners, a group, the announcement pointed out, that includes old people and babies.
In the most promising development, almost every day, it seems, a few more Americans sneak across a border to safety in Saudi Arabia or Jordan. 
 
Details From Relatives
The State Department has refused to release the list. And in the past two days some relatives of the stranded Americans have become increasingly reluctant to release details about them, like their last known whereabouts, for fear that would make them easier for Iraqi officials to find. But most are more than willing to talk about the sort of people their relatives are.
Details about a diverse group of Americans have emerged from dozens of interviews with employers and family members that probably reflects the State Department list, but is impossible to know how truely representative the subgroup is.
There are apparantly few blacks, Hispanics and Jews among the Americans in Kuwait and Iraq, because the region tends not to be hospitable to those groups. For the same reason, there appear to be few women traveling alone.
Otherwise, only three generalizations can be made about the Americans who have found themselves on the list: they carry United States passports, they are adventurous enough to have traveled halfway around the world and right now they would probably rather be someplace else.
 
From Nearly Every State
Many are from Texas, but there are some from nearly every state. Some are infants and at least one is young and on her own - 14-year-old Vinil Polam, who was flying alone for the first time, from her home in Pittsburgh to her grandparents home in India when her plane made a fateful stopover in Kuwait in the middle of the invasion.
Some are not that young, like William Hollingsworth, 63, and his wife Nancy, 62, who lived in Huntsville, Ala., until he retired from the military last year and the couple decided to spice up their lives by moving to Kuwait, where Mr. Hollingsworth was doing civil service work.
 
Many Are Alone
A large percentage appear to be there alone, as is Gary Wade Duncan, 41, of El Dorado, Ark., who spent the six weeks before the invasion helping to build a chemical plant in Iraq.
Others are there with their families. Receiving a lot of attention in the news media lately are the Bazners, who were on the way to Maylaysia, where Kevin Bazner works as a vice-president for A & W Restaurants International. It was their situation that Ted Koppel raised with Iraq's foreign minister, Tariq Aziz, during a ''Nightline'' interview on Wednesday night.
At the time, Mr. Bazner was one of 35 Americans being held at the Al Rasheed Hotel in Baghdad with his wife, Dawn, and two children, one of whom is six months old and needs medical treatment. The whereabouts of those 35 is now uncertain since they were moved from the Al Rasheed on Friday.
Not surprising, a large number of the Americans work for oil companies. Two Chevron Corporation employees, both chemical engineers who were on a three-week consulting trip to Kuwait have not been in contact with the company since Aug. 2, though a company spokesman said the State Department list indicates that one of the two contacted the United States Embassy in Kuwait City on Aug. 11.
The Santa Fe Drilling Company of Alhambra, Calif., and OGE Drilling of Houston, have six American employees between them who were working as joint consultants on a drilling project near the Iraq-Kuwait border and who were apparantly removed from their posts by Iraqi soldiers during the invasion and taken to Baghdad.
But other types of companies employ Americans as well, a reflection of the wide-ranging nature of American business activity in the region, particularly in Kuwait.
The Boeing Company has two field representatives in Kuwait, both of whom are American and live there to serve as liaisons between the company and the airlines in the area that operate Boeing aircraft. The General Motors Corporation, which sold 15,000 cars to Iraq in 1988 and 1989 has four American employees in that country, two of whom are there to begin work on a planned GM assembly plant near Baghdad. A spokesman said that project was suspended on Aug. 2, the day of the invasion.
Some Americans consider the area home, like 31-year-old Beth Hanken of Monticello, Iowa, who has lived in Kuwait for five years with her Kuwaiti husband. Others, like George and Deborah Saloom of San Francisco, never had a chance to get their bearings. The Salooms and their 17-year-old son Preston arrived in Kuwait, where Mr. Saloom was to begin a job working for the national bank, two hours before the invasion.
''There's no way to take this list and make a composite that represents the so-called average American in Iraq or Kuwait,'' said a State Department spokesman. ''They're as diverse as everything else in the United States.''
Patricia Hale, whose husband, Edward, was one of the oil workers escorted from his rig by Iraqi soldiers, disagrees slightly. ''There's one thing you can say about them all,'' she said. ''Any of them could have been anyone's husband. One of them happened to be mine.''
Jean Pryor says she was not surprised when her daughter packed up and moved to Kuwait three years ago. ''She was in love,'' said Mrs. Pryor, referring to her daughter by her Arabic name, Hadil, for fear that her American name, which appears on her passport, would put the 29-year-old woman in danger.
The girl who would take the name Hadil was raised in Pelham, Ala. She was an art major at the University of Alabama in nearby Birmingham when she met a young man named Hisham, who is Palestinian, but whose family had lived in Kuwait for many years. Hisham graduated in 1985 and went back to Kuwait.
The couple corresponded for a year, were married in 1986 and Hadil, who had converted to Islam, moved with her husband to a one-bedroom apartment in a foreigner's complex in Kuwait City. He was an engineer with the national Housing Authority. For a year she taught English to Arab students, then had her first child, Omar, who is now 3.
''She's a brave girl,'' Mrs. Pryor said. ''She gave birth in a hospital where she didn't speak any Arabic and they didn't speak any English and she thought it was an adventure.''
Life in Kuwait was very different than life back in Alabama. In weekly phone calls to her mother Hadil spoke of not being able to leave her apartment alone and having to wear a veil over her Western clothes whenever she walked in public. Every May the family would visit Mrs. Pryor and with each year there were signs that both Hadil and Hisham were becoming eager to move back to the United States.
Hisham has been applying for jobs in the States in recent months, she said, and had scheduled several interviews in Alabama this week. The family did not visit in May this year because that was the month their second child, Hala, was born. Mrs. Pryor has not spoken to her daughter since the invasion but did receive one short message from her through a friend of a friend who had fled Kuwait.
It said: ''I'm fine. I don't think I'm in any danger. They have moved me from the city into another province.''
It was signed with her Arabic name.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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The New York Times

August 20, 1990, Monday, Late Edition - Final

Rebecca Ivry and Clifford Stein Wed

SECTION: Section B; Page 6, Column 5; Society Desk

LENGTH: 194 words

Rebecca Ann Ivry, a daughter of Dr. Joann Ivry and Dr. Alfred L. Ivry of West Newton, Mass., was married yesterday to Clifford Seth Stein, the son of Mr. and Mrs. Ira Stein of Fair Lawn, N.J. Rabbi Scott Rosenberg performed the ceremony at Temple Reyim in Newton, Mass.
The bride, who is keeping her name, received a law degree in June from Boston College, where she was an editor of The Third World Law Journal. Her father, a specialist in Jewish and Islamic medieval philosophy, is the Skirball Professor of Jewish Thought at New York University. Her mother was formerly with Jewish Family and Children Services of Greater Boston, where she was the director of resettlement services for elderly people and refugees; she is to become an assistant professor of social work at Hunter College in September.
The bridegroom, 24, is a candidate for a doctorate in computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is a summa cum laude graduate of Princeton University and a member of Phi Beta Kappa. His mother, Irene Stein, teaches mathematics at Fair Lawn High School. His father is a senior technical consultant at ITT Avionics in Nutley, N.J.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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The New York Times

August 21, 1990, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

Flake Pleads Not Guilty to All Charges

BYLINE: By JOSEPH P. FRIED

SECTION: Section B; Page 1, Column 2; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 629 words

As hundreds of his supporters packed the courtroom and filled the air with hymns on the sidewalk outside, Floyd H. Flake, the Congressman and minister from Queens, pleaded not guilty yesterday to charges that he had embezzled funds from a federally subsidized housing complex and cheated on his income taxes.
The proceeding in Federal District Court in Brooklyn was swift and dry as the 45-year-old Democrat and his wife, Margarett, 42, who is also charged in the case, entered their pleas through their lawyers in a courtroom packed with 100 supporters.
Outside the courthouse on Cadman Plaza East in downtown Brooklyn, the atmosphere was that of an emotional church service as the crowd of Mr. Flake's congressional constituents and church congregants sang hymnal lines that included ''rejoice for the steps of a righteous man'' and ''in the time of trouble God will uphold you.''
The supporters, many of them elderly people who had been transported from Mr. Flake's southern Queens district by buses provided by the Jamaica church where he is the pastor, also carried signs announcing their backing of the two-term House member and urging, ''Come See the Great Work He Has Done.'' 
Judge Eugene H. Nickerson scheduled another pretrial session for Oct. 2 and said Mr. and Mrs. Flake could remain free without bail as their case proceeded. The couple, who said nothing as they stood before the bench, then emerged from the courthouse.
''We will be vindicated,'' the Congressman assured the cheering crowd. He vowed that ''we will be back to do the work'' that God wanted.
He and Mrs. Flake are charged with embezzling $75,000 from the housing complex - which Mr. Flake's church sponsored and operates - and then evading taxes on that money and on $66,700 of Mr. Flakes's income as a pastor over several years.
Although some of Mr. Flake's supporters said outside the courthouse that they believed there was a racial element in the Government's prosecution of the black Congressman, Mr. Flake told reporters when asked if he shared that view, ''I don't get into all of that.''
''I'm not talking about ethnicity,'' he said, adding that ''these issues are greater than that'' and that ''we're talking about the empowerment of the community.''
 
Socially Involved
The United States Attorney in Brooklyn, Andrew J. Maloney, has said of the case, ''We go wherever the evidence takes us.''
Mr. Flake has been pastor of the Allen African Methodist Episcopal Church in Jamaica, one of the oldest and largest black churches in the city, since 1976.
He is charged with criminal conspiracy, tax violations, fraud and embezzlement. The fraud and embezzlement counts are the most serious, each punishable by up to 10 years in prison. He faces 17 counts; his wife faces nine.
The apartment development from which the Flakes are accused of embezzling the money, a 300-unit complex for the elderly in Jamaica, is one of a series of social-betterment projects his church has sponsored. Others include a parochial school and services for women, teen-agers and the disabled.
 
'Just a Registered Voter'
''He did more for the neighborhood than any other elected official,'' said Joseph Sharpe, 71, a retired mechanic from Jamaica who was one of those on hand yesterday to support the Flakes. Mr. Sharpe, who said he was not a member of Mr. Flake's church but ''just a registered voter'' in his district, termed the charges against the Flakes absurd.
Mr. Flake's lawyer, Gustave H. Newman, disputing the charge that the Flakes evaded taxes on his pastor's income, held that the Government accusations were ''novel'' because ''this is the first time the Government has decided it will determine whether expenditures made by a preacher are personal or church related.''

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photos: ''We will be vindicated,'' Mr. Flake told the crowd. He and his wife, Margarett, remained free without bail.; Supporters of Representative Floyd H. Flake outside Federal District Court in Brooklyn yesterday where they sang hymns in support of the Congressman and minister from Queens, who pleaded not guilty to charges of embezzlement. (Photographs by Nat Valentine)

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August 23, 1990, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

Elderly in Apartments: Feeling Trapped

BYLINE: By CALVIN SIMS

SECTION: Section B; Page 1, Column 5; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 1149 words

Esther and Leonard Farb, an elderly couple in Upper Manhattan, often feel like prisoners in their own home. Fear of crime keeps them inside at night, and they often stay inside during the day, too, because the elevators are chronically broken, they say, and they are too weak to take the stairs.
For three days last weekend, the Farbs ate only yogurt and cottage cheese because they had no other food. The Farbs and hundreds of other elderly and handicapped people were stranded in their apartments in the Red Oak complex, at 135 West 106th Street, when the building's three elevators stopped working. 
''I'm being treated like an animal in a cage,'' said Mrs. Farb, a 70-year-old retired nurse who has arthritis and osteoporosis, while Mr. Farb has ulcerated veins in his legs. ''It's like a prison. We could die in here, and no one would care. They think we are old and ready to leave this world.''
 
Thousands Reported Suffering
The incident at the Red Oak, a Federal project, underscores the quiet suffering that hundreds of thousands of elderly people in New York City endure each day, a feeling of being trapped, say city officials, social service organizations and advocacy groups for the elderly. Crime, broken elevators and poverty all conspire to make simple routines an ordeal, deadening the pace of daily life and often hiding serious, sometimes fatal, health problems.
''We find people who have not eaten for a week, are dehydrated and near death,'' said Judith Herbert, casework supervisor for Project SOS, a social service group for the elderly in the Bronx. ''It's like Lebanon up here. These old folks live in neighborhoods where they never leave their apartments because of the high level of crime and drugs.''
Project SOS, which stands for Serve Our Seniors, is financed by the City Department for the Aging and the City University of New York. It provides rent subsidies, meals in the home, housekeeping help, discounts on prescription medicines and medical and personal care for about 600 people.
Last year Ms. Herbert said her agency found an 87-year-old man who lived in a Bronx apartment that had no electricity, water, food or security. It also came across a 38-year-old amputee who had to crawl up six flights of stairs with packages in his mouth because the elevators in his building were constantly broken.
 
Elevators Often Broken
Helen Lenney, director of community programs for the Community Agency for Senior Citizens on Staten Island, said: ''We get complaints all the time from older New Yorkers living in city housing projects and private buildings who say that their elevators are constantly broken. It's particularly bad for the elderly because many have severe medical problems and can't go grocery shopping, and people trying to provide social service can't reach them.''
A 70-year-old Staten Island man recently asked the community agency for help because the elevators in his building were always broken and the windows of his car were vandalized. The man, who has a kidney ailment and is not supposed to use stairs, needs the elevator and his car to go to the doctor for dialysis three times a week.
Rising crime is also having an effect on the quality of life for older New Yorkers. Many elderly crime victims become reclusive, refusing to leave their apartments, even to buy food or dispose of trash.
 
'Crippling' Fear of Crime
''The fear of crime is as crippling as the crime itself,'' said Stephen Seunarine, assistant director for the Elderly Crime Victim Resources Center, a division of the New York City Department for the Aging. ''It causes older people to shut up inside where no one can hear their cries for help.''
Mr. Seunarine cited the case of an elderly man who was robbed in the elevator of his building and subsequently refused to ride in elevators. The man, who has a heart condition, now walks up and down six flights of stairs - activity that his doctor has warned against.
The number of reported crimes involving elderly victims has been increasing by 5,000 crimes a year in the city in recent years, and last year rose to 82,598 from 78,248, according to statistics provided by the resources center. It counsels elderly crime victims, gives them limited financial help and refers them to available services. In many instances the center will install window grates, locks and other security devices so victims can return immediately to their homes.
Since the elevators broke down Friday at the Red Oak, some elderly and disabled tenants have been walking nine flights of stairs - or have been e carried up and down in their wheelchairs by friends and relatives - to shop for food, attend church, visit friends or just get a breath of fresh air.
 
Repairs Seem to Lag
''We are talking about 70- and 80-year-old people who are climbing eight and nine flights of stairs and then complaining of severe chest pains,'' said Paula Vazquez, president of the Red Oak Tenants Association. ''We have complained time and again to the landlord, and they promise to fix the elevators, but in the end nothing happens. If something isn't done soon, I am afraid someone could die.''
The manager of the Red Oak said that one of the building's three elevators was now working and that the others would be overhauled as soon as the Federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, which oversees the Red Oak, approved a work contract. A spokeswoman at H.U.D.'s office in Manhattan, Francine Kelman, said she did not know how long this would take.
The Red Oak is for elderly and disabled people, with about 80 percent of the tenants elderly and 20 percent handicapped, Ms. Vazquez said. The nine-story building, which has 230 apartments, is managed by the Westside Federation for Senior Housing, a nonprofit group, which is a general partner in the ownership of the building.
''We are doing the best we can,'' said Laura Jarvis, Westside's executive director. ''We have had sporadic problems with our elevators, as any building has. It's not satisfactory, but we are working on it.''
 
'I'm Old and Could Fall Down'
Madeline Waithe, 74, said she walked nine flights of stairs on Saturday to go to the store and again Sunday morning to attend church. ''I live by myself and have no one to do things for me, so I have to walk them,'' she said. ''But I'm old and could fall down.''
Amma Rios, 74, who is blind, has diabetes and uses a wheelchair, had to be carried down and back up the stairs from her second-floor apartment, to get the fresh air that her doctor says she needs everyday. ''I just had surgery on my foot to remove my toes because of diabetes, and I need the elevators,'' she said.
Velma Wallace, 79, a retired hotel supervisor, said: ''I have a bad heart, and every time I walk up and down those stairs I get bad chest pains. You know how a heart attack feels? Well, it feels like that.''

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photos: Crime in upper Manhattan and broken elevators in the Red Oak Federal housing complex often confine Esther and Leonard Farb to their apartment. ''I'm being treated like an animal in a cage,'' Mrs. Farb said. ''It's like a prison.''; Amma Rios, 74, who is blind and suffers from diabetes, had to be carried up and down the stairs while the Red Oak project's elevators were broken. (pg. B1); Madeline Waithe, 74, had to walk up nine flights of stairs at the Red Oak housing project in Manhattan last weekend because the elevators were broken. (Photographs by Marilynn K. Yee/The New York Times) (pg. B4)

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August 23, 1990, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

CHRONICLE

BYLINE: By Susan Heller Anderson

SECTION: Section B; Page 22, Column 3; Style Desk

LENGTH: 172 words

August has been the nicest month for MAGGIE KUHN, who founded the Gray Panthers 20 years ago: she became a Giraffe, she received 1,000 pints of Ben and Jerry's light ice cream and she turned 85.
The Giraffe Society is a nonprofit organization created in 1983 ''for people who stick their necks out,'' said ANN MEDLOCK, the founder. Giraffes are chosen each month. This summer Ben and Jerry's asked the Giraffes to nominate people for an award it calls 1,000 Pints of Light.
A truck drove up to Ms. Kuhn's house in Philadelphia on Monday, loaded with the ice cream. Characteristically, she gave it to the neighbors. She has been giving to people since she founded the Gray Panthers after being forced to retire from her job with the United Presbyterian Church. The Gray Panthers quickly became a persistent voice for the elderly, challenging retirement requirements that the group calls discriminatory.
On Aug. 3, Ms. Kuhn celebrated her birthday, saying that she would ''try to do something outrageous at least once a day.''

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Maggie Kuhn

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The New York Times

August 23, 1990, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

Currents;
Tropical Plants Thrive In the Great Indoor Jungle

BYLINE: By LINDA YANG

SECTION: Section C; Page 3, Column 4; Home Desk

LENGTH: 188 words

GARDEN shops are now stocking tropical plants suitable to the low light of indoor winter gardens. ''Now's the time to start to look at these plants and see which ones appeal to you,'' said Nancy Tim, horticulturalist at the Central Park Zoo. 
Rather than a quick trip to a South American jungle, there is the zoo's aviary. There, children should be happily distracted by the newest brood of red-throated parrot finches as adults contemplate the fishtail palm, red-stemmed bananas, palm grass and Chinese evergreen.
''Here you'll see tropical species in their mature size,'' Mrs. Tim said, ''so if you have a two-by-four apartment, you might not want to grow what you won't have space for.'' Adding color to the aviary collection now are the yellow blossoms on the allamanda, purple blue flowers on Thunbergia grandiflora vines and pink blooms on the bougainvillea.
The zoo, in the park at 64th Street and Fifth Avenue, is open from 10 A.M. to 5 P.M. daily and until 8 P.M. on Tuesdays through Sept. 30. Admission is $1 for adults, 50 cents for the elderly and 25 cents for children age 3 to 12. Telephone (212) 439-6500.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Nancy Tim at the Central Park Zoo. (Ed Keating for The New York Times)

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The New York Times

August 26, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Alicia Drummey Weds John Doner

SECTION: Section 1; Part 2, Page 64, Column 2; Society Desk

LENGTH: 175 words

Alicia Louise Drummey, the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Richard T. Drummey of Garden City, L.I., was married yesterday to Dr. John William Doner, a son of Mr. and Mrs. Royal DeVere Doner of Chalfont, Pa. The Rev. Canon Robert Broesler performed the Episcopal ceremony at the Cathedral of the Incarnation in Garden City. 
Mrs. Drummey Doner, 25 years old, is an assistant account executive at FCB/Leber Katz Partners advertising agency in New York. She and her husband are 1985 graduates of Lehigh University. Her father is an executive director of the Eastern Produce Council in Garden City and a consultant to the produce industry. Her mother, C. Patricia Drummey, teaches second grade at the Commack Road Elementary School in Islip, L.I.
The bridegroom, who is 27, graduated from Palmer College of Chiropractic West and is an associate with Enlow Chiropractic Associates in Birdsboro, Pa. His mother, Helen Baker Doner, is a retired director of senior citizens'centers in Bucks and Montgomery counties, Pa. His father is a real-estate developer.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Mrs. Drummey Doner (JoVon Studios)

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The New York Times

August 26, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

CONNECTICUT OPINION;
Coming To America...And Staying

BYLINE: By Kul B. Rai; Kul B. Rai is chairman of the department of political science at Southern Connecticut State University, in New Haven

SECTION: Section 12CN; Page 26, Column 1; Connecticut Weekly Desk

LENGTH: 912 words

I ARRIVED in the United States on Sept. 5, 1965. I had come as a foreign student in a Ph.D. program at a major American university and intended to return to India, my native land, after obtaining a doctorate. I stayed on to enjoy the freedom, an organized way of life and the creature comforts that were not available to me in my old country. But adapting to America has been a slow and difficult process for me.
There were some initial surprises that did not require much effort getting accustomed to. That the automobiles in the parking lot of the university's graduate student housing were owned by the students was an eye opener for me. American informality required social as well as many professional interactions on a first-name basis. Coming from a culture where age has privileges, I found it somewhat strange to address older people, especially women, by first names. Busy American life stipulated that visits to friends be made only after an invitation or at least a telephone call. 
The university I attended had 500 foreign graduate students and a much smaller number of undergraduates from other countries, mostly from the Third World. Like other foreign students, I was driven to pursue success. The American students sought success for a better life and satisfaction of achievement. Like other foreigners, I had an additional and compelling reason to succeed. After having traveled thousands of miles, it was unthinkable to go back and face family and friends with failure.
After earning a Ph.D. in 1969, I landed a teaching position in Connecticut. I met with the dean of the college, and he started explaining the options to me. I pretended to listen but paid no attention to what he said. Retirement in America seemed unthinkable to me at that time. I wanted to teach for two years, do some writing, save a couple of thousand dollars, travel and then return to India. Two years later, I did return to India, but only for a visit.
What had appeared normal in India six years before was now bothersome to me. I found the lack of central heat uncomfortable. (It was a cold winter, and the places in northwest India that I visited had temperatures ranging from 35 to 50 degrees.) I went to the post office to buy stamps. There was little order among the customers, and no one paid attention to the first-come-first-served principle.
For a routine transaction in the bank, I sought the help of a friend who knew a bank employee. That was the expedient way of getting things done. I traveled by train; a relative had connections to get reservations.
I became very aware of the relative lack of freedom in India. For a Third World country, India has had an enviable record of political freedom. It is in the nonpolitical areas that I felt that freedom was restricted. The social hierarchy of India, the rigid caste system, regional and linguistic loyalties and the pervasive corruption in daily life severely limited choices available to me and most other people.
During my one-month stay in India, I was constantly reminded of my life in the United States. Yet when I left, I felt very sad. I wondered if separation from my parents and other relatives was responsible for it. I was traveling with my wife, who was born and raised in India, and our two small babies, both born in New Haven, but my parents and close relatives remained in India. I recalled that when I left for the United States in 1965, I was very excited and did not think much about being away from family. The short stay in India had started to convince me that I was not returning there except for visits, and that, strange though it may seem, made me sad.
I settled back into my life in the United States. My professional life was going well. I published and rose in rank. The year I turned 40, I became a full professor. I was hardly aware of the mid-life crisis, perhaps because India was still a part of me: Indian life is so full of crises that people do not want to add another!
Almost imperceptibly, I was becoming a part of America. I served on several college committees and participated in other campus activities. National as well as local issues seemed increasingly interesting to me. Gradually, very gradually, I felt I was becoming an American.  Sometime during 1975, 10 years after I had first come to the United States and six years after I had become an immigrant, I started saying ''we'' for Americans in my classes. I thought it was time to apply for citizenship. I became an American citizen just in time to vote in the 1976 elections.
Notwithstanding my American citizenship, India seemed to have a grip on me. I have visited India every two or three years for professional or personal reasons. About five years ago, I thought of returning to India permanently. A major university offered me a position with the rank of full professor. I knew of many immigrants who returned to their native countries in similar situations. I also knew that most came back to America.
I talked to my wife and our two teen-age children. My wife's feelings were similar to mine. She was willing to give up her professional career in the United States and resume it in India. The children were unhappy about the prospect of settling in the country that they had known only as visitors. The more I thought about leaving the United States, the more I realized that I greatly valued what this country had offered me. So I have stayed, and I have stopped thinking of going back.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Drawing

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The New York Times

August 27, 1990, Monday, Late Edition - Final

The Board of Estimate's Upbeat End

SECTION: Section A; Page 16, Column 1; Editorial Desk

LENGTH: 466 words

New York City's Board of Estimate, due to die on Sept. 1 under the new City Charter, in its protracted final session last week reached acceptable compromises on four disputed matters. A last issue remains for today.
The board resolved a controversy over the landmarking of two model tenement ''estates'' by sensibly reducing its scope. In a 6-to-5 vote, the board removed about one-fourth of the York Avenue and First Avenue estates from landmark status. That permits construction of a 45-story apartment house whose developer, Peter Kalikow, had challenged the landmark designation. 
Faced with resistance from Rockaway residents to the 306-acre development planned for Arverne, the board reduced the proposed 10,000 units to 7,500. That could finally allow development to go forward on a site that has remained unused for 30 years. But the reduction will also increase the unit cost of land, streets, utilities and public amenities, all chargeable to the developer. The compromise therefore leaves open the question of a new cost-sharing formula that will make it possible to market the future homes.
The most emotional issue before the board involved the Audubon Ballroom, an unused structure in Washington Heights on whose site Columbia University wants to erect a commercial biomedical laboratory. Some opponents wanted to save the building's facade and its entire second-floor ballroom, where Malcolm X was assassinated in 1965.
Rejecting a compromise that would have saved 40 percent of the ballroom, Manhattan Borough President Ruth Messinger held up necessary funds. She relented after intricate negotiations produced a new compromise: About 55 percent of the ballroom and as much of the facade as feasible will be preserved. Ms. Messinger will devote $4 million to the project - about a third of the capital funds at her disposal - and the building is to include a community health facility.
The board also made minor changes in the Hunters Point plan, a $2.3 billion city-state-private collaboration to redevelop the Queens riverfront site facing the United Nations. To mollify opponents, the public agencies agreed to reserve a tenth of the first 1,500 apartments for low-income local residents and senior citizens and to add a free-standing community center.
Today the board will consider a final project on which it could not reach agreement last week. It is a proposal by the United Parcel Service to enlarge its package-sorting facility two blocks north of Canal Street. Expansion, bringing increased efficiency and saving jobs, merits board approval. Neighbors worry that the plan might aggravate traffic on Canal Street, but U.P.S. promises an ample indoor parking garage that ought to ease traffic tie-ups. Approval of the U.P.S. plan would be a respectable last act.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

TYPE: Editorial

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The New York Times

August 29, 1990, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Canada's Military Prepares Move Against Mohawks at Barricades

BYLINE: Reuters

SECTION: Section A; Page 12, Column 3; Foreign Desk

LENGTH: 491 words

DATELINE: MONTREAL, Aug. 28

The Canadian military stepped up pressure on Mohawk protesters today, sending fighter planes over fortified Indian barricades that it has been ordered to destroy.
The army did not say when it would start to take down the barricades, saying it could not divulge too many details without risking soldiers' lives.
''We will inform the public to the extent possible,'' Lieut. Gen. Kent Foster, the officer in charge of the operation, said at a Montreal news conference. 
After negotiations failed, Premier Robert Bourassa of Quebec on Monday asked the army to dismantle Indian barricades at the resort town of Oka, where the conflict began last month, and at the Kahnawake reservation south of Montreal, where armed militants from the Kahnawake reservation closed off the Mercier Bridge to the island of Montreal. The Mohawks have been evacuating women and children from the reservation since Mr. Bourassa issued his order.
About 4,000 soldiers have surrounded the two Mohawk strongholds. It is the first time the army has been called into Quebec since 1970, when a fringe French Canadian separatist group waged a campaign of violence.
 
Effort to Restart Talks
Although Mr. Bourassa said he had broken off talks with the Mohawks, there were reports today that Mohawk leaders were meeting with Government officials to prevent a blood bath.
''There has been an effort to restart negotiations by both parties,'' said a Mohawk negotiator.
Tensions rose when a crowd of angry Canadians tried to block cars carrying elderly Mohawks, women and children out of the reservation. The convoy got through after officers broke up the crowd. Suburban residents have blocked access routes to Kahnawake in retaliation for the Mohawks' bridge closing.
The army estimates that 200 Mohawk warriors, including some Vietnam veterans, are manning the barricades at Kahnawake and Oka.
The conflict erupted on July 11 when a Quebec policeman was killed at Oka, 20 miles west of Montreal, as Mohawks resisted a police raid on barricades that they had erected to stop the town from extending a golf course onto land regarded by them as sacred. Kahnawake militants subsequently closed off the Mercier Bridge across the St. Lawrence River; Indians across Canada mounted sympathy protests.
The army said it would send CF-5 fighters on reconnaissance missions over the Mohawk reservations and dispatch a naval reserve tender to patrol the riverbank of the reservation.
It issued a videotape today describing the Mohawk arsenals, which army officials say include AK-47 assault rifles and Uzi machine guns.
''We suspect they may have land mines, plastic explosives and a mortar,'' an officer said in the video. ''This is a dangerous situation.''
The army has said that its soldiers would not shoot first. ''No person who is standing at a barricade without arms needs to fear the Canadian army, whether it's women, children or Mohawks,'' General Foster said.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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August 29, 1990, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

To a Child, Staff of Life Is Surely Peanut Butter

BYLINE: By MOLLY O'NEILL

SECTION: Section C; Page 1, Column 3; Living Desk

LENGTH: 1389 words

LIKE many primordial preferences, personal taste in peanut butter is idiosyncratic.
Some believe that early-childhood experience establishes a lifelong predilection for a sweet or a salty, a creamy or a crunchy peanut butter. Others believe that tastes in peanut butter mature, just as palates seem to, moving from an early yen for the sweet and bland into a yearning for more robust flavors. Others are convinced that an individual's propensity in the peanut butter department is as irrevocable as the color of one's eyes.
''Congenital, absolutely congenital,'' said William F. Buckley, the syndicated columnist whose single attempt at poetry is the sonorous couplet: I know that I shall never see A poem lovely as Skippy's peanut butter. 
But whether cleaving to the early-childhood theory, the progressive development model or the construct of pre-ordained taste in peanut butter, no one argues the national taste for peanut butter.
For decades the spread has carried Americans through childhood as certainly as children have toted peanut butter sandwiches to school. It is an economical, nutritious and convenient food that parents and children can agree on. Recent samplings by a group of three adult food writers and a panel of preschool children showed that preferences in peanut butter can vary from generation to generation. Nevertheless, 85 percent of American homes stock peanut butter, according to the Peanut Advisory Board, a trade group in Atlanta.
Half the peanuts consumed in the United States are eaten in peanut butter, about 800 million pounds a year. That amount could smoothly coat the Grand Canyon, according to the Peanut Advisory Board. It is not clear whether this would be a mere smear or a nice thick coating.
Peanut butter is a $1 billion annual business and it is growing. Mitch Head, executive director of the board, said peanut butter consumption has grown by an average of 5 percent a year for each of the last five years, even as the school-age population has been declining. ''Our research indicates that the growth is coming from senior adults,'' people over 55, Mr. Head said.
A historian of peanut butter, Mr. Head sees a certain poetry in the graying of peanut butter. It was invented, he said, either by an unidentified physician in St. Louis or by Dr. John Harvey Kellogg of Battle Creek, Mich. Dr. Kellogg filed a patent for the ''process of preparing nut meal'' in 1895. That same year, the unsung physician is said to have encouraged the Bayle Food Products Company in St. Louis to produce a similar paste. Both doctors envisioned high-protein food for elderly people.
Mr. Head doesn't claim that pulverized peanuts were the creation of a health-conscious turn-of-the-century American. Peanuts themselves were probably native to Bolivia or Peru, where they were discovered by Spanish explorers. The Spanish carried them to Africa where they were cultivated and used in cooking, Mr. Head said.
While researching them at Tuskegee Institute, George Washington Carver developed 300 uses for peanuts and, in 1925, published 125 peanut recipes, several of which called for peanut pastes that were distant cousins to modern smooth and spreadable peanut butter.
In the early 20th century, improved technology produced an increasingly smooth, gritless peanut butter. By 1928, the addition of hydrogenated vegetable oils was found to keep the oil from separating from the peanut paste. The hydrogenating process was first used commercially by the company that later became Peter Pan. Skippy soon followed. In 1958 Procter & Gamble began producing Jif. Its benchmark advertising campaign - ''Choosy mothers choose Jif'' - established peanut butter as far from geriatric fare; peanut butter had become synonymous with childhood.
It still is. ''Per capita, children are the biggest consumers,'' Mr. Head said. Jif, Skippy and Peter Pan are still the top selling brands, sharing 65 percent of the market.
According to Mr. Head, the boom was precipitated by World War II. ''The Government provided peanut butter to the G.I.'s, they came home with a taste for it and started the baby boom,'' he said.
This could support Mr. Buckley's congenital theory of the origins of personal preference in peanut butter. Yet, it does not rule out the early-childhood-experience theory. C-ration peanut butter and 90 percent of those sold today are hydrogenated, sweetened and salted. Therefore a taste for a sweeter or a smoother spread could be an effect of environment.
Studying adult peanut butter eaters sheds little light on the origins of personal preference. Mr. Head said studies show that most Americans eat peanut butter until their early 20's, stop until they have children of their own and resume until their children have left home. ''They start eating it again in their later years for the exact same reason it was invented, good cheap, easily digestible nutrition,'' he said.
Despite this pattern, adults tend to treat their passion for peanut butter as aberrant, throwback behavior. In a vain effort to divert attention from their lapse, they rely on cute props. There are now 60,000 members in the Peanut Butter Lovers Fan Club that Mr. Head helped establish in 1986. His quarterly newsletter, Spread the News, circulates among 10,000 people. About 2,000 people are expected to attend the club's celebration on Labor Day weekend at Disney World to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the first manufacture of peanut butter in St. Louis.
Other grown-ups bring more serious concerns to bear on peanut butter. Those involved with dietary issues point out that two tablespoons of peanut butter contain about 190 calories, 5 grams of polyunsaturated fat and 3 grams of saturated fat, and that peanuts are a good source of protein.
Adults have also raised questions about aflatoxin, a carcinogen present in some moldy peanuts that was found to damage the livers of laboratory animals. In its September issue, Consumer Reports magazine said it found traces of aflatoxin in all the peanut butters it tested, although it said all its samples had levels below that permitted by the Food and Drug Administration. Based on its studies, the magazine estimated that with ''an intake of one peanut butter sandwich every 10 days, the lifetime risk might be about seven cases of cancer per million consumers.''
Mr. Head said that aflatoxin occurs in nature in various grains and that in the peanut industry the incidence of aflatoxin is below the safety standard set by the Government.
So far, these concerns have not deterred adult peanut butter lovers. And their pattern of consumption appears to prove the developmental theory of peanut butter preference. Generally, grown-ups choose one that best reflects their evolving self image. At the height of the I-am-as-upscale-as-I-can-eat 80's, for instance, Tromply's Peanut Butter Fantasies of Boston made a splash with products like chocolate raspberry and banana crunch.
Then, ''fun'' and ''trendy'' gave way to ''pure'' and ''healthy'' in the nation's food vocabulary, and the pattern spilled over to peanut butter. ''The fastest-growing area is in the all-natural category,'' said Paul Burnish of Kroger Stores in Cincinnati.
Craig Sonksen, owner of the Krema Products Company, in Columbus, Ohio, the nation's oldest peanut butter manufacturer, said a public desire for ''good old-fashioned flavors'' may also be fueling his skyrocketing sales. Krema is still made the way it was 100 years ago, by roasting peanuts, grinding them twice and hand-packing the butter into jars.
Krema, once strictly a regional product, is now sold throughout the Midwest and it is headed for stores nationwide. ''We can't keep it on the shelves,'' said Mr. Sonksen. ''Baby boomers want their babies to have the real thing.'' At least they think they do. In a recent test at The New York Times, three adults who sampled nine peanut butters all ranked a New York store's fresh-ground natural peanut butter No. 1. But opinion diverged when it came to second choice. Although the samples were tasted from unmarked containers, the tasters ranked the peanut butter brand of their childhood or the brand they currently keep at home as a close runner-up. Personal taste in peanut butter can be educated, refined and matured. But backsliding is just a memory away.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Drawing; photos: Judges from left: Aya Rodriguez, Jarrell Stewart, Wyatt Ford and Hannah Reitman, right. (pg. C1); drawing; photos: Some of the peanut butter panel expressing their reactions to the various brands tasted. From left: Aya Rodriquez, Jarrell Stewart and Rhyne Redula. (Photographs by Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times); table showing the consistency, balance, taste and aroma of various brands of peanut butter. (pg. C6)

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August 30, 1990, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

CLUES FOLLOWED ON FLORIDA KILLER

BYLINE: By PETER APPLEBOME, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section A; Page 20, Column 1; National Desk

LENGTH: 837 words

DATELINE: GAINESVILLE, Fla., Aug. 29

The police said today that they believed a ''shrewd, methodical'' killer was behind a string of five slayings that has traumatized this university town.
Chief Wayland Clifton of the Gainesville police said he believed that the killer was not a transient, but someone who knew the area near the University of Florida campus where all five killings took place. The killer broke into three students' apartments on separate nights late last week, he said, and might have previously made himself familiar with the routines of some of his victims.
The similarities in the appearance of the four slain women - all were petite and had dark hair - might indicate the killer had singled out women of that physical type, Chief Clifton said. 
Officials are still developing a profile of the killer and are analyzing what they describe as substantial physical evidence. They said their investigation was leading them to believe that the killer coolly plotted and carried out the slayings, which included the mutilations of three women.
''We're not dealing with someone who gets into the scene and simply goes into a frenzy,'' Chief Clifton said. ''It looks as though this individual is methodical. It's not someone who does not know what they're doing.''
Asked if the word methodical described the way the killer inflicted injury or the way he stalked his victims' dwellings, Chief Clifton replied, ''Yes and yes. It looks like everything this individual does is methodical.''
 
Profile Is Incomplete
The police said that they had not dismissed the possibility that more than one individual was involved and that their profile was incomplete.
Officials today, for the first time, said how the students died: all were stabbed to death.
Sheriff's officials this afternoon were investigating the apparent shooting deaths of two elderly people near Melrose, about 20 miles east of Gainesville, but the location, age of the victims and the fact that the victims were shot to death, seemed to indicate that the incident was unrelated to the campus killings.
The emerging profile of the students' killer has brought some of the nation's experts on serial killers here to work on the case. It has also led to widespread comparisons with Theodore Bundy, who confessed to killing 31 women before he was executed in 1989, and evoked echoes of his rampage at the Chi Omega sorority house at Florida State University in Tallahassee in 1978. In that incident, he killed two women and brutally beat three others.
 
Panic at the University
In the face of continued fears in the university community here, law-enforcement officials said today that they were beginning to identify possible suspects in the killings.
But four days after the first bodies were found, this remains a terrified community, especially in the neighorhoods where the victims were found. Three of the victims were university students, and two were students at Santa Fe Community College, which is also in Gainesville.
Stores continued to sell out of guns, Chemical Mace and other weapons. Hundreds of students have left for home. On bulletin boards at the university, advertisements for stun guns share space with sorority rush flyers. Every pay phone seems to be occupied by a nervous student calling home, and the pizza delivery business is down because students are wary about opening their doors to strangers.
The campus continues to be whipsawed by rumors: that other bodies have been found, that two police uniforms were stolen so the killer may be disguised as an officer, that the killer has called the police to tell them where other bodies are.
The police say none of the rumors are true, and caution students not to be panicked by them.
 
Looking for Links
The first two victims, Sonya Larson, 18 years old, and Christina Powell, 17, were found Sunday afternoon in the apartment they shared near the university campus. Eight hours later, deputies found the body of 18-year-old Christa L. Hoyt. The last two victims, Manuel R. Toboada, and Tracy Inez Paules, both 23, were found Tuesday morning in the apartment they shared.
Chief Clifton said investigators are trying to find information linking the three separate attacks. but have not yet done so. He said the killer in each case either entered through an unlocked door or forced his way in through a window or sliding glass door.
Because of the proximity to Florida State, about 135 miles to the northwest, and the similarity to the killings at the Chi Omega house there, references to Ted Bundy are rampant here.
Two experts in the Bundy case, Alexander Bassin, a professor of criminolgy at Florida State University, and Joe Aloi, who was the chief investigator in the case, said they believed it was quite likely that the killer could either resemble Mr. Bundy or even be a copycat killer. Mr. Aloi, who is now a private investigator in Tallahassee, said he expected the killer to strike again.
Mr. Bassin said, ''I would not be at all surprised if he is a facsimile of Bundy.''

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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August 30, 1990, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

HEALTH;
Personal Health

BYLINE: Jane E. Brody

SECTION: Section B; Page 14, Column 5; National Desk

LENGTH: 1280 words

If you frequent a health club, you probably don't expect to see an 80-year-old person pumping iron or working out on a nearby machine. But based on the results of recent studies involving people up to the age of 96, strength training is likely to become increasingly popular among old and very old Americans.
The studies show that regular strength-building exercise can counter the loss of muscle mass and reverse the encroaching weakness that otherwise inevitably accompanies aging, particularly among those over 65. While regular workouts cannot transform an 80-year-old body into that of a 50-year-old, increases in strength are comparable to those experienced by much younger people. For example, after eight weeks of strength training, 92-year-old Dorothy Tishler of Boston said she was able to walk faster than her 70-year-old daughter.
 
Why Bother?
As people age, two things happen to drain them of physical strength. One is an unavoidable biologically determined decline in the size of muscles, which happens even to master athletes as they age. On average, muscle strength declines 30 to 40 percent over an adult's life span. The second is an increasingly sedentary life style as people age that causes muscles to atrophy even faster than they would if they were regularly used. 
''Older people probably lose more strength than they need to, even if they remain healthy and have no disease, simply because they decrease their activity level,'' said Dr. Maria A. Fiatarone of the Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University in Boston.
Muscle weakness, particularly in the lower half of the body, is a major contributor to the injuries and disability associated with aging. About 40 percent of people over age 65 fall at least once a year. Many of these falls result in serious injuries, particularly hip fractures, which are a common cause of permanent disability and death among the elderly.
Even when a fall results in only a minor injury or no injury at all, it can decrease mobility and quality of life by making people fearful of physical activities. This limited activity leads to an even greater loss of muscle strength, and that, in turn, increases the chances of future falls and more extensive injuries.
But accidents are hardly the only problem. As older people become weaker, they are more likely to need the assistance of others to perform the ordinary chores of life, like getting in and out of chairs. Such disability often means the end to independent living and the need to move to a special care center.
 
Training Benefits
Dr. Fiatarone is one of a number of researchers who have demonstrated in recent years that regular workouts can sharply increase strength among older people, and thus improve their lives.
The most recent study, conducted by Dr. Fiatarone in collaboration with five other researchers, involved nine very old and frail men and women who were living in a long-term-care center in Boston. The volunteers, who averaged 90 years in age, completed an eight-week strength-training program that focused on building up strength in their legs. Three times a week they worked out on a high-intensity resistance machine, doing leg-lifts against increasingly heavy weights.
The results, published June 15 in The Journal of the American Medical Association, showed ''highly significant'' gains in muscle strength in all the participants. On average, strength increased 174 percent in the right leg and 180 percent in the left, with some participants experiencing a threefold and fourfold increase in strength. Weights that could be repeatedly lifted with each leg increased from about 18 pounds to about 44 pounds.
Interestingly, at the end of the training, increases in strength were still occurring, suggesting that even further improvements could be made if the workout sessions were continued, using heavier weights as the individual's strength increased.
The researchers concluded that at the end of training the participants were probably ''stronger than they had been many years previously.''
Muscle mass in the legs also increased by about 10 to 15 percent among participants who maintained a stable body weight. Most important, however, were improvements in function. Speed and balance in a heel-to-toe walking test increased on average by 48 percent. Two people who had needed to use canes were able to walk without assistance after strength training, and one person who could not rise from a chair without using his arms became able to do so.
None of the participants experienced any ill effects. There was not even any flareup of pre-existing arthritic or other joint disorders. In fact, the stronger one's muscles, the less stress there is likely to be on one's joints. Only one man had to drop out, early in the training, because the workout strained a previously repaired hernia.
''The favorable response to strength training in our subjects is remarkable in light of their very advanced age, extremely sedentary habits, multiple chronic diseases and functional disabilities and nutritional inadequacies,'' the researchers said. In other words, if exercise can dramatically help such people, much more could probably be done for younger, healthier people.
Just as dramatic were the declines that occurred once the training study ended and the participants resumed their earlier sedentary life. After only four weeks, there was a 32 percent loss in muscle strength.
Dr. Fiatarone is now conducting a similar study with 100 volunteers from the Hebrew Rehabilitation Center for Aged in Boston.
 
A Safe Approach
Dr. Fiatarone believes the risks of high-intensity exercise to the elderly ''have been overplayed.'' Still, she and others caution, there can be problems, and precautions should be taken to assure safety. Older people, especially those who have long been sedentary, should not undertake a strength-training program without knowledgeable medical supervision.
One possible problem is a temporary rise in blood pressure during weight lifting. This is most likely to happen if people do not breathe properly in a workout (the breath should never be ''held''; rather, one should exhale during maximum exertion and inhale when the muscles relax) or if they try to sustain a muscle contraction for too long.
Still, experts recommend that people with high blood pressure should be carefully evaluated before they enroll in a strength-training program. Dr. Fiatarone also cautions against participation by people with uncontrolled angina or those who have recently had a heart attack.
Dr. Michael Pollack, director of the Center for Exercise Science at the University of Florida in Gainesville, compared injuries among elderly people randomly assigned to either a strength-training or a jogging program. While there were numerous injuries sustained by the joggers (even those who first trained in a walking program for three months), no injuries occurred among participants in strength training.
Accordingly, Dr. Pollock and his colleagues recommend that older people avoid jogging and pursue strength training (using light hand weights or a weight machine with adjustable weights) and low-impact aerobics, like walking. Others add flexibility exercises to this regimen.
Dr. Pollock suggests that the elderly exercise all the major muscle groups two to threes times a week for a total of 20 to 30 minutes a session. He recommends 8 to 10 exercises that work on muscles of the chest, back and trunk, as well as the limbs.
How can you tell if you are trying to do too much? If you feel tired the day after an exercise session, cut back a little and build up more gradually.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Dr. Maria A. Fiatarone of the Human Nutrition Research Center in Boston measuring improvement of Dorothy Tishler, 92, after exercise. (U.S. Department of Agriculture)

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August 30, 1990, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

Official Will Be Named To Police S.& L. Assets

BYLINE: By STEPHEN LABATON, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section D; Page 2, Column 5; Financial Desk

LENGTH: 651 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Aug. 29

Concerned about the huge potential for fraud and abuse in the savings and loan bailout, the Government agency managing the rescue effort will name an overseer within the agency to ferret out corruption among Federal officials and private firms managing the assets of failed institutions.
Officials of the agency, the Resolution Trust Corporation, estimate that contracts valued at $20 billion to $30 billion will ultimately be awarded to manage a wide range of assets the Government has inherited, including car washes, golf courses, horse farms, hotels, office buildings and senior citizens' homes.
Hundreds of contractors and thousands of subcontractors are expected to be hired, and officials have concluded that kickbacks and rigged bids are inevitable.
The position is being formed under the guidance of Salvatore R. Martoche, a former Assistant Secretary of Treasury for Enforcement and United States Attorney in Buffalo, who served as interim director of the Office of Thrift Supervision earlier this year. 
''We will be trying to track the people with larceny in their hearts,'' Mr. Martoche said in a telephone interview today from his law office in Buffalo, where he recently returned from Washington. $2.4 Billion Contract The largest contract, totaling $2.4 billion, is expected to be announced soon for managing property the agency took over from the University Federal Savings Association in Houston, which closed in October. The contract is said to have been awarded to the J. Robert Companies in Alexandria, Va., which will manage shopping centers, apartment complexes and office buildings that had been under the control of University Federal. The assets had been managed on an interim basis by the NCNB Corporation in Charlotte, N.C.
The new assistant director's position to police contracts is expected to be filled next month. The office will then be staffed by a small group of examiners in Washington and the agency's branch offices.
Most Government entities, including Resolution Trust, have an inspector general who fills a similar role. But agency officials created the unusual high-level position because of the inadequate regulation of the savings industry in the past and the Government's poor track record in managing large amounts of seized assets.
The office is being formed when some critics in Congress have accused the Bush Administration of mishandling the bailout effort and of not moving fast enough to prosecute executives of failed institutions who may have violated criminal laws. The Justice Department has responded by asking Congress for more money to prosecute such cases and urging United States Attorneys to make those prosecutions a high priority.
Stephen Katsanos, a spokesman for Resolution Trust, said the duties of the new office would include acting as liaison with other regulatory agencies and departments, including the Justice Department, the Internal Revenue Service and the Securities and Exchange Commission.
John J. Adair, the R.T.C.'s inspector general, said the office would not conflict with his department, but would complement it.
''It's not a turf battle or anything like that,'' Mr. Adair said. ''I'm delighted with the idea of more manpower dedicated to looking at bribery, kickbacks, faulty appraisals and things of that nature.''
He added that a fundamental difference between the two positions was that the new office would be part of the management of Resolution Trust, while the inspector general maintained an independent office.
Mr. Martoche said, ''We're looking for a systematic way to monitor contracts beyond just keeping track of the people at the R.T.C., and we will be keeping our investigatory skills focused on the contractors as well.''
In recent months, the agency has begun issuing contracts with hundreds of private firms around the nation to manage and sell tens of thousands of parcels of real estate.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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The New York Times

September 1, 1990, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

MEDICARE FEE PLAN SENT TO CONGRESS

BYLINE: By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL

SECTION: Section 1; Page 1, Column 2; National Desk

LENGTH: 874 words

In what health officials called a major step toward overhauling Medicare's chaotic reimbursement system, the Secretary of Health and Human Services yesterday gave Congress a model national fee schedule for 1,400 commonly performed medical procedures.
The report by the Secretary, Dr. Louis W. Sullivan, is the culmination of several years of Government effort to narrow the wide discrepancies in payments that doctors in different regions and different specialties receive from the Federal insurance plan for the elderly and disabled. Officials hope the new system will raise fees for primary-care doctors, whose services are felt to be undervalued, and in general reduce those for surgeons and other specialists for their procedures.
 
Scale of Relative Value
Dr. Sullivan's report was mandated last year when Congress directed the Department of Health and Human Services to develop a national fee schedule based on a ''relative-value scale'' that would take into account physicians' time, overhead and insurance expenses in the setting of fees. 
The report made public yesterday was a preliminary proposal for evaluation by Congress, physicians and others. A final version must be in place by Jan. 1, 1992, the deadline Congress has set for the new system.
There is no national fee standard now and each doctor's reimbursement is determined separately. Payments are based on the fees physicians charged two decades ago, with small incremental increases that in recent years have often not kept pace with inflation. As a result, doctors practicing in the same field and in the same building could receive different Medicare reimbursements for the same procedure because of historical differences in their fees.
Although the specifics of the model plan are tentative and certain to be substantially changed, ophthalmologists in most parts of the country would probably have their payments reduced for cataract operations with an artificial lens implant. In the Secretary's model, that service comes out to about $1,300, but the operation is now sometimes allotted more than $2,000 in doctor's fees.
For general practitioners seeing a new patient, the results would be mixed: a private doctor in Manhattan might find his reimbursement cut from a current rate of perhaps $150 to about $70, while his counterpart in rural Kentucky might find his payment raised from $50 or so.
''The national fee schedule will be the most wide-ranging and fundamental change in Medicare's physician payment system since the creation of the Medicare program in 1965,'' Dr. Sullivan said in a statement accompanying the report.
The Government's relative-value scale will apply only to reimbursement for Medicare patients, but health experts expect rates set in that manner to influence physicians' fees and payments in the private sector as well.
While health experts have expected a proposal for relative-value reimbursement for almost a year, Dr. Sullivan's model is expected to touch off an energetic debate about how the different medical services have been valued.
Dr. James S. Todd, executive vice president of the American Medical Association, said, ''There have been many many models in the past year but this is the first official one given to Congress to say grace over and the first official document that will be acted upon.'' The association has supported what Dr. Todd called ''the radical concept'' in a general way.
''It is the first step in rationalizing the way in which physicians are compensated by the Government,'' Dr. Todd said.
The new system involves ''value units'' assigned to each procedure or medical service based on a doctor's time, overhead and risk of malpractice suits. The total relative-value score is multiplied by a conversion factor in dollars to determine the payment for a visit.
For example, a comprehensive medical examination for a new patient earns 35.9 points for the primary-care doctor's time, 22.9 for overhead and 3 for malpractice risk, for a grand total of 61.8. A CAT scan of the abdomen earns 57.6 for the doctor's time, 146.9 for overhead (presumably based on the cost of the equipment) and 16.4 for malpractice, for a total of 220.9. A skin biopsy earns 25.5 time points, 17.8 in overhead and 1.0 in malpractice for a sum of 44.3.
 
Changes Are Foreseen
The conversion factor proposed in Dr. Sullivan's report is $1. While the report states that this number is ''not arbitrary,'' experts predict it will be modified as a result of the coming debate and must be set to assure that the total cost of the Medicare program does not change.
The 1,400 services listed in the new proposal include procedures from every major medical field except anesthesia and represent two-thirds of the annual outlay for Medicare. Values for the rest of the approximately 7,000 procedures will be set in coming months. The Government is still working on how to allot relative-value units to the anesthesiologist's time, a Federal spokesman said.
Federal health officials said they hoped the proposal would narrow the gap between the incomes of specialists and primary-care doctors as well as that between urban and rural doctors, many of whom are struggling because fees set long ago are extremely low.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Dr. Louis W. Sullivan, Secretary of Health and Human Services, who sent a new Medicare fee schedule to Congress yesterday. (NYT)(pg. 9)

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The New York Times

September 1, 1990, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

For Elderly Just Hanging On, An Oasis of Jobs Is Shrinking

BYLINE: By PETER T. KILBORN, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section 1; Page 1, Column 1; National Desk

LENGTH: 1769 words

DATELINE: GRAND ISLAND, Neb., Aug. 25

''I'm what you call a displaced homemaker,'' said Doris Gibson, who is 66 years old and by any measure poor. She traces her poverty to the day 13 years ago when her husband walked out on her, and her survival to a Federal paycheck that will be harder and harder for future Doris Gibsons to get.
Mrs. Gibson is paid the minimum wage for helping to keep the books at an adult day care center in this placid community of 39,000 people that is no more an island than the state of Nebraska is.
She and her co-workers at the center, Irene Holroyd, 71, and Howard Tibbs, 77; and other people in similar straits like Helen Shultz, 61, a kitchen aide at Northwest High School here, and Dorothy Bernice Trout, 64, who does word processing at a nearby community college, are participants in a little-known public assistance program that is a rare survivor of Washington's antipoverty initiatives of the 1960's. #20 Hours of Community Work Through the Labor Department's Senior Citizen Community Service Employment Program, the neediest of able-bodied older people are paid $3.80 an hour for 20 hours of community service work a week. But as things now stand fewer people will be able to join the program because it is feeling the squeeze on the Federal budget. 
The Labor Department says the $367 million budgeted for this year will support jobs for 64,933 people nationwide, 865 fewer than last year. In the current budget deliberations, Congress is considering spending about $400 million next year. But because of increases in the hourly minimum wage, from $3.35 to $3.80 last April and to $4.25 next April, at least 4,000 more jobs would be dropped.
The jobs are with public agencies and nonprofit institutions; the program also provides training that permits about 20 percent to go on to regular jobs. Participants must be over 55 years old and have less than $10,525 a year in income, including Social Security, in the case of couples, or $7,850 if single. Both figures represent 125 percent of the federally calculated poverty line.
 
Only Neediest Need Apply
Almost 10 million older people meet the economic qualifications, so the law requires that the jobs go to the neediest among those who hear about the program and apply for it. The average age of participants is 68, one-third are over 70, and a few are past 90. Some are under 62, the age when people can start collecting pension benefits and Social Security.
The Labor Department distributes money to states largely according to their population. California, with $29.4 million, and New York, with $24.8 million, get the most, while Alaska, Hawaii and Delaware get the least, $1.6 million each. Nebraska gets $2.9 million.
Ten national organizations screen applicants and manage the program, among them the National Council of Senior Citizens, the American Association of Retired Persons and the National Urban League.
The agency that manages the biggest part of the program, however, is a lesser-known organization called Green Thumb Inc., which is getting $93.9 million of the $367 million this year. Green Thumb was originally founded by the National Farmers Union to steer retired farmers to government groundskeeping jobs. It now manages the program for 18,000 participants, two-thirds of them women, in the rural areas of 44 states. It supports 363 people in Nebraska.
 
Too Old for New Careers
Nationwide, a tight labor market has persuaded business to look to retirees as a new source of workers. But that trend offers little hope for the people who apply to Green Thumb. Many are too old to embark on new careers or work the standard 40-hour week. Many employers also balk at hiring old people for fear that their health will fail, pushing up insurance costs.
Some people here have been rescued by their twice-a-month $152 Federal paycheck, but that does not mean they all regard it as a godsend.
Most of the women never had jobs, or they left them ages ago to work at home rearing families. While many say they relish proving themselves in the workplace, they resent the turns of fate that forced them to go to work at a time of life when so many others are relaxing. And they say it is demeaning to learn that their homemaking skills are worth just the minimum wage.
 
An Array of Life's Problems
Participants tell widely different stories of the circumstances that drove them into the program, but most involve deteriorating health or the loss of a spouse or sometimes both.
Mrs. Gibson's husband, Bob, was a traveling man, an agent for the Railway Express Agency, now defunct. ''He loved people,'' she said. ''He loved women.''
''He was going to Sioux City, Iowa,'' she recalled. Then the homebound mother of two young daughters, she said she told him: '' 'Eleanor and Leonard live there. Why don't you look them up?'
''He called the next night and said, 'I found Eleanor.' I said, 'What about Leonard?' 'Divorced 15 years,' he said.
 
I said, 'Uh-oh.' ''
Suddenly alone, poor, middle-aged and searching for work, Mrs. Gibson said, she found that no one could use her for the work skills that her husband had asked her to put aside a quarter century earlier. So, for several years, she did menial jobs in Grand Island nursing homes and took Government-subsidized courses to get the equivalent of a high school diploma.
Then three years ago, when she was hounding the local office of the state's job service, people there urged her to see Ada Miller, Green Thumb's area director. ''Ada said, 'How about an office job?' and I said I'd love it. At the center I do bookkeeping. I keep track of the volunteers - their hours and expenses - and then I have to write a check for them every month.''
 
Ailing Wife and the Janitor
The janitor at the day care center is Howard Tibbs, a spry, compact man with a full head of dark hair. He reared 10 children while operating an automobile repair shop at his home here for more than 50 years. Then his wife's poor health, and cataracts in both of his eyes, put his business on hold.
His wife, Eulalia, 71, came down with a degenerative disease 12 years ago. ''She fell through the screen door, and we laughed about it,'' Mr. Tibbs said. ''Gradually she went to a walker. After a while she couldn't do that. It's a little like Alzheimer's. I had them write it down.'' He took a physician's card from his wallet. ''Olivopontocerebellar degeneration,'' it says.
''I've been taking care of my wife most of the time,'' Mr. Tibbs said. ''Ain't nothing wrong with her mind, but her voice is gone. She can just barely move her head and hands. She's been in the hospital since the fifth of February. After I leave here, I go up there to the hospital and feed her every night.''
Her medical care is covered by Medicaid. For income, Mr. Tibbs said, ''I have Social Security, $380 a month. That's all I have besides this.'' He said he works from 12:30 to 4:30 P.M. five days a week at his Green Thumb job but comes earlier and stays later doing volunteer work there, like helping an old man with an artificial leg. ''He can't go to the bathroom unless it's off,'' he said. ''I take it off.''
 
Her Fortunes Crumbled
Dorothy Bernice Trout, whose only other income is a $455 monthly Social Security payment, says her fortunes crumbled with the loss of her husband, who was a diesel mechanic for trucks. ''He died in 1970 of Lou Gehrig's disease,'' she said. ''He was 45. We were raising three children. He had it for six years and it wiped us out. That's why I'm working. He was not a believer in life insurance.''
Mrs. Trout went to work for the first time at the age of 44, first as an editor and reporter for a small-town newspaper and later as an aide to a veterinarian. Now she has emphysema. Regular employers will not hire her for fear of becoming ensnared in her medical costs, she said, and she is only able to work part time. Thanks to the Federal program, she types course lessons into a word processor for instructors at Central Community College in Hastings, Neb., and does other clerical chores.
Delbert L. Niemeier, Green Thumb's director for Nebraska, said he has 34 active applications for the program. ''It's been going up over the last three years,'' he said. ''They lost the farm. They lost the spouse. They're desperate in the sense that they don't have enough to meet their obligations.''
Helen Shultz, the aide in the high school kitchen, never had a regular job. ''I was just a housewife,'' she said. ''I had nine children. They're 43 to 17. Men you see for jobs - they don't know what it is to run a house.''
''I've applied for other jobs and haven't gotten any,'' she said. ''Nobody bothered to call back.''
Mrs. Shultz's husband has retired from his job as a house builder, and all they had was his Social Security check of $517 a month when Green Thumb put her in the high school kitchen a year ago.
 
'Out With Other People'
''This job is the first time I've been out with other people,'' Mrs. Shultz said. ''I get the ice. I stack the cookies. I wash the tables after they eat. I took a home-care course and was certified. But I don't know if I'd like to take care of people who are terminally ill. I wanted to be around children. Happiness is children. I wanted to be around noise and activity.''
But even women with long work force experience, unlike Mrs. Shultz, and in good health, unlike Mrs. Trout, find they have to turn to the program. Irene Holroyd had three children and was divorced 22 years ago. She had run a bakery with her husband and then took a job as a dental technician.
Mrs. Holroyd retired at 65 but could not get by on her Social Security check of $393 a month, her sole income. ''I own my house,'' she said. ''I raise practically everything I eat. The insurances are what's bad.'' She spent weeks looking for work through the office of the state's job service here.
''They couldn't find anything because of my age,'' she said, so Mrs. Miller of Green Thumb found her a job at the day care center. ''Today I cooked oatmeal and fixed their breakfast,'' she said. ''I try to keep them busy, like playing cards with them or whatever they want to do. I do the dishes.''
But the days at work appear to be numbered for her co-worker Doris Gibson. Mr. Gibson never divorced her, and just before he died in April, he told their daughters of his railroad pension.
Mrs. Gibson said she should be getting the pension checks, $814 a month. She is glad for that, she said, but she expects it to put her beyond the limit for the work program and out of a job that means so much to her - the only job she was able to get.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: A little-known assistance program for poor, able-bodied elderly people like Doris Gibson, who earns minimum wage at a day care center for adults in Grand Island, Neb., may fall prey to Federal budget cuts. (Randy Hampton for The New York Times)(pg. 7)

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The New York Times

September 1, 1990, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

Missouri Executes Man Convicted of Killing 5

BYLINE: AP

SECTION: Section 1; Page 20, Column 1; National Desk

LENGTH: 388 words

DATELINE: POTOSI, Mo., Aug. 31

A man convicted of five murders was put to death by injection early today for killing an elderly woman 11 years ago.
The condemned man, George C. Gilmore, was declared dead at 12:10 A.M. at the maximum-security Potosi Correctional Center in this small city in eastern Missouri, about 60 miles southwest of St. Louis.
The authorities say Mr. Gilmore, who was 44 years old, and his partner, Leonard Laws, killed five people in a crime spree in the St. Louis, singling out elderly or helpless people for robbery and murder. Mr. Laws was executed in May. A brother, a niece and a fiancee who were not identified wept and covered their faces with their hands as officials announced that a mixture of sodium pentothal, Pavlon and potassium chloride had been delivered through a tube into the condemned man's arm. 
Strapped to a gurney and covered to his chin by a blanket, Mr. Gilmore strained at first to see his friends and appeared to say, ''I love you.'' Then he turned his head to the side and was still. Two minutes later he was declared dead.
''He had no last words,'' said Dale Riley, a prison spokesman. A series of appeals Thursday failed to stop the execution, the 137th nationwide and the fifth in Missouri since 1976, when the Supreme Court ruled that states could resume the use of capital punishment.
 
Legal Appeals Fail
The Supreme Court refused, by a 6-to-1 vote, to block Mr. Gilmore's death. Justice Thurgood Marshall, who opposes the death penalty in all circumstances, dissented. Justice Antonin Scalia did not take part in the case.
Federal District Judge Edward L. Filippine, who was named to the bench by President Jimmy Carter in 1977, and the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, in St. Louis, also dismissed Mr. Gilmore's appeals Thursday.
Mr. Gilmore was executed for killing Mary Luella Watters, 83, in August 1979. He had also received the death sentence for three other murders and was given a life sentence for a fourth.
Appeals filed for Mr. Gilmore by his lawyers, Kevin Collins and James Delworth, contended that mitigating evidence had not been considered earlier. Mr. Gilmore, whose parents were alcoholics, suffered fetal alcohol syndrome and organic brain damage, Mr. Delworth said.
William L. Webster, the Missouri Attorney General, rejected those arguments.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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The New York Times

September 2, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

IN SHORT: FICTION;
Nursing Home Memories

BYLINE: By ELIZABETH HANSON

SECTION: Section 7; Page 16, Column 1; Book Review Desk

LENGTH: 315 words

MISSING PIECES. By Stanislaw Benski. Translated by Walter Arndt. (Helen and Kurt Wolff/Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, $19.95.) These spare, poetic stories were written during the 25 years that Stanislaw Benski was director of a Warsaw nursing home whose elderly residents included some of the last of Poland's Jews. Many of the 16 stories, deftly translated by Walter Arndt, are set in the nursing home; all tell of the anguish of surviving the Holocaust, of the struggle to recreate a life while tormented by memories. Benski (who died in 1988) reveals his characters' pain quietly. In ''The Tzaddik's Grandson,'' a woman named Rose, upon seeing a baby, says, ''I had three children. Three wonderful boys. By now I could have had grandchildren.'' In ''On the Corner,'' blind Abram visits the Warsaw district where he lived before the war, lovingly describing it as his friend Haskiel leads the way; Haskiel does not have the heart to tell him that his familiar landmarks have vanished, that nothing of the old neighborhood remains. In ''Missing Pieces,'' we also learn of a hunchback who saves a Jewish family by hiding them in a trench under his latrine; a widow who takes in a crippled Jewish girl who has jumped from a Treblinka-bound transport; a policeman who risks visiting a young Jewish woman sequestered in a windowless attic, making her realize that ''one could be glad of something after all, that one could miss another human being, that one could dream pleasurable dreams.'' Then there is the guilt-ridden Jewish couple in the title story, who spent the war outside Europe but decide to write new histories for themselves as if they, too, had known the horrors of the German occupation and the camps. I finished this book in one sitting, moved by the characters' tragic experiences, yet coming to know them as people with a full complement of human strengths and weaknesses.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Drawing

TYPE: Review

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The New York Times

September 3, 1990, Monday, Late Edition - Final

Huge Fraud Case Shaking New Jersey Haven for Aged

BYLINE: By JOSEPH F. SULLIVAN

SECTION: Section 2; Page 23, Column 4; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 1227 words

DATELINE: MANCHESTER TOWNSHIP, N.J., Aug. 31

County Prosecutor James W. Holzapfel said Mr. Portash, who was Township Administrator for 13 years after earlier service as Mayor, paid himself $254,810 last year, although his authorized salary was $68,663.
Mayor Jane Cordo Cameron, who took office in July, said she estimated the total fraud would reach $10 million.
Mr. Portash died of a heart attack in February at the age of 58 at his vacation home in Maine, where he had gone after the voters approved a change of government, numbering his days in power.
 
Retirement Business Pays
He settled in the rural township in the late 1950's, and became a leader in the drive to turn the municipality into the state's retirement capital. 
In an interview in 1984, he told how the township was on the verge of bankruptcy in 1961 and unable to attract industry because it could not afford water and sewer systems. It decided to court developers of retirement homes and to tap potential markets in New York and Philadelphia, he said.
The plan worked: the taxes generated by the new housing paid for the public utilities. Mr. Portash said: ''We don't want industry. Senior citizens are our industry.''
As the recognized municipal leader, Mr. Portash was able to deflect scrutiny by residents until sharp tax increases in recent years, prompted in part by the corrupt practices, inspired the insurgent movement that ousted his administration this year.
 
Heavy Gambling Involved
Investigators have discovered that Mr. Portash, using the name ''Joe Jacobs,'' was a familiar figure at gambling casinos in Atlantic City and Las Vegas. ''He was well known to pit bosses and dealers at the baccarat and blackjack tables, and his average bet was $400,'' Mr. Holzapfel said.
Mrs. Cameron, a lawyer who moved to Manchester with her husband and their four children in 1977, said she was among those residents who became increasingly disenchanted and suspicious of tax increases. Her property taxes rose from $1,400 to $2,900 in the last four years, with little apparent justification.
''You don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure something was wrong,'' she said. ''We have 44,000 residents, 80 percent of them senior citizens who live in self-contained villages that require little or no municipal services and who pay their taxes.
''We wanted to know what was happening, and where the money was going,'' she said.
 
Attempt to Destroy Records
Some of the answers were provided on June 29, the Portash administration's last day in office, when police officers saw municipal employees loading township records into trucks. The police followed and saw the records being dumped in the municipal landfill and prepared for a covering of sewerage sludge. Most of the records were recovered, and the prosecutor was notified.
Mr. Holzapfel said other documents were recovered from the homes of former officials. The cache, he said, revealed a picture of ''fiscal chaos'' and evidence of wide fraud.
Mr. Holzapfel said that check stubs did not agree with the issued checks, that payments were apparently made to nonexistent suppliers and that many checks and vouchers were missing. He is awaiting bank records to try to put the puzzle together. The prosecutor said he would begin presenting evidence to a grand jury in about a month.
Barry Skokowski Sr., director of the State Division of Local Government Services, has appointed a fiscal officer to manage the municipality's finances until its accounts are put back in order. The state also advanced the township $1.5 million in utility gross receipt taxes that it was scheduled to receive later in the fiscal year, so the municipality could meet its payroll and pay other bills.
 
Residents Helping Township
In addition, Mayor Cameron said, residents are helping to keep the township solvent. ''Many residents have been paying their anticipated property taxes without even receiving their tax bills,'' she said. ''So far we've collected $1.5 million.''
She has told residents to expect higher taxes for the next two years, and has promised to sue any individuals found guilty of fraud as a result of the investigation.
Mr. Skokowski said that in his 20 years in office, ''I have never seen fiscal mismanagement and very probable criminal activity of the scope that exists in Manchester Township.'' He said the apparent corruption was ''blatant and institutionalized.''
''They simply wrote checks to themselves whenever they wanted,'' he said, adding that ''in most towns, when they want a copying machine or cars or other pieces of equipment, they buy it. But Manchester leased everything, paying high prices, and they didn't just do business locally, but with companies far out of the area.''
Mr. Skokowski has asked the State Board of Accountancy to review the work of the former Manchester auditor, Jerry Skinner of the Toms River firm of Russo & Skinner. A request for an interview left at Mr. Skinner's office was not returned.
 
Public Apathy Noted
Mr. Holzapfel and Mayor Cameron said that because of the unusual nature of the township, with most residents living in self-contained villages, there was an absence of the normal interest in the workings of the municipal government. This enabled Mr. Portash to operate as a one-man government, they said, with the elected committee members, many from the retirement villages, serving as rubber stamps.
In 1976, Mr. Portash was convicted of accepting more than $30,000 in bribes from the developer of one of the retirement villages. The conviction was overturned on appeal because the prosecution brought up testimony that Mr. Portash gave to a grand jury under a grant of immunity. He was retried and acquitted.
During the time he was out of office because of the conviction, Mr. Portash served a consultant to the Township Committee. His wife, Adelaide, was appointed to fill his seat on the committee and all of his posts - finance chairman, police commissioner and membership on the Municipal Utilities Authority. In addition township residents, who numbered only 19,000 at the time, raised $6,000 to help defray his legal expenses.
Mayor Cameron said Mrs. Portash's last official act before she left the township government as Mayor in 1977 was to name her husband Township Administrator.
Mr. Portash was the professional, whose advice was always accepted and who was pictured as adept at fielding questions from residents during meetings. Mayor Cameron depicted the attitude of many residents as ''whatever Joe says is O.K., Joe knows what's best, Joe will take care of it.'' Then, after a pause, she said, barely hiding her anger, ''He had a ball taking care of it.''

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photos: James W. Holzapfel, the Ocean County Prosecutor, said Manchester Township's Administrator, Joseph S. Portash, paid himself $254,810 last year, although his authorized salary was only $68,663.; ''You don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure something was wrong,'' said Jane Cordo Cameron, who took over as Mayor of Manchester Township in July. Investigators are calling the previous administration one of the most corrupt in New Jersey's history. (Photogrphs by Frank C. Dougherty for The New York Times); Joseph S. Portash, who served as the township's Administrator for 13 years after earlier service as Mayor, died of a heart attack after being defeated in an election. (Associated Press, 1975); map of New Jersey showing location of Manchester Township. (pg. 26)

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The New York Times

September 5, 1990, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Genetic Link Suggested In One Form of Arthritis

BYLINE: By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section A; Page 18, Column 5; National Desk

LENGTH: 1076 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Sept. 4

The researchers, from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland and Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, studied members of an Ohio family prone to severe arthritis that develops early in life. The researchers found that those affected had a genetic defect that resulted in an abnormal collagen, the principal building block of cartilage, the tough material that covers and protects the bony surfaces in joints. In osteoarthritis, the normally smooth cartilage surface is torn and frayed.
The research, published today in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, raises the possibility of devising specific new treatment for what is now an inexorably progressive condition, either by manipulating collagen or the defective genes themselves. Currently doctors treat the pain rather than the underlying disease. The research also offers the strongest evidence to date that collagen plays a major role in joint destruction. 
 
'A Landmark Discovery'
''It's a landmark discovery, one that will probably lead to more research which will helps sufferers,'' said Dr. Henry J. Mankin, chief of orthopedics at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.
Dr. Arthur I. Grayzel of the Arthritis Foundation said the paper ''has the potential to change the way people look at osteoarthritis.''
The researchers, led by Dr. Roland W. Moskowitz at Case Western Reserve University and Dr. Darwin J. Prockop at Thomas Jefferson University, said they did not know how common the defect was in the general population. But they said people with less severe arthritis might have different abnormalities producing less serious defects in collagen.
Until recently, doctors considered osteoarthritis to be a regrettable consequence of aging, as predictable as shock absorbers wearing out as a car grew old. But in the last few years, they found that the tissue in arthritic joints had destructive enzymes rarely found in normal joints and the condition came to be seen as a process of destruction rather than decay.
 
Origin Long a Mystery
The origins of osteoarthritis have long mystified doctors, and treatment is frequently unsatisfactory.
There are two forms of the disease. The first develops after trauma or injury to a particular joint. The second form, called ''primary'' or ''idiopathic'' osteoarthritis, develops without clear precedent, usually in the fifth or sixth decade of life, and often involves many joints simultaneously. Experts say that more than half of people over 70 will suffer from the condition to some degree.
The condition is now treated with aspirin or non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs like ibuprofen, which dull the pain and inflammation but seem to have little ability to stem the progression of the disease. When the pain, stiffness and swelling become overwhelming, the joint is simply replaced.
The notion that osteoarthritis has a genetic component comes as somewhat of a surprise to researchers since the disease typically afflicts older people regardless of family history. Studies have found little evidence of familial tendencies towards osteoarthritis of the knee and hip, for example. But osteoarthritis of the hands does seem to run in families, experts said.
For researchers, the major question is how many cases of osteoarthritis have a genetic component. ''It's too soon to say that osteoarthritis in general is a genetic disease,'' said Dr. Kenneth D. Brandt, chief of the rheumatology division at the University of Indiana. ''Dr. Moskowitz's work is a very powerful clue for a new direction for research, but we don't know if the findings on this family are generalizable.''
Worldwide, nine other families prone to the disease are being studied and, so far, researchers have found distinct defects in the collagen gene in three of the groups, said Dr. Prockop, who cautioned that the analysis of the other seven was not finished. #25 Percent of Collagen Defective In the Ohio family, patients with premature osteoarthritis had one normal gene and one defective gene for collagen 2, a protein that is the predominant type of collagen in joints. People possess two genes that code for the molecule, one inherited from each parent. The researchers found that the joints of those afflicted contained 25% abnormal collagen 2 and 75% of the normal varient.
The fraction of abnormal collagen was apparently enough to leave the joint vulnerable. ''The collagen blocks behave like bricks in the wall,'' said Dr. Prockop. ''The bad collagen makes bad bricks. They are weak structural elements and so the whole wall is weaker.''
Although the collagen molecule contains thousands of amino acids, only one was affected by the familiy's inherited mutation: an arginine is replaced by a cysteine. No one is sure exactly why this single substitution is so devastating. But one theory is that it prevents the collagen 2 molecule from folding and coiling properly to assume the shape it must take to fit into the cartilage wall.
Dr. Moskowitz said the fact that the arthritis victims all had one normal gene would potentially allow doctors to use genetic manipulation techniques to shut down the gene coding for the defective collagen and boost the output of the normal gene.
''There is now hope that a curative therapy for patients with osteoarthritis will be forthcoming,'' he said.
The researchers stressed that if genetics held the key to osteoarthritis there were likely to be many different genetic mutations that could leave patients vulnerable. Thousands of DNA building blocks make up the gene which codes for collagen 2 and a defect in any one could cause problems.
They also said that for people with less serious mutations than those of the Ohio family, the genetic predisposition to arthritis may need to be modified by environmental influences to produce painful joints. For example, a person with a vulnerable genetic makeup might show symptoms only if they became overweight or worked in a job that involved repetitive movements.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Dr. Roland W. Moskowitz of Case Western Reserve University announcing arthritis discovery at a news conference. (Associated Press); diagram illustrating a joint with osteoarthritis. (sources: Arhtritis Foundation, Dr. Roland W. Moskowitz)

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The New York Times

September 6, 1990, Thursday, Late Edition - Final
Correction Appended

MEDICARE'S WOES FOUND WORSENING

BYLINE: By MILT FREUDENHEIM

SECTION: Section A; Page 1, Column 2; Financial Desk

LENGTH: 1689 words

Not surprisingly, increases in payments to physicians have been growing at rates well above that of general inflation under Medicare's system of basing payments on customary charges. In the fiscal year ending this month, the amount will grow an estimated 13.2 percent, up from a 10.9 percent rise in the previous year. While payments to hospitals were placed under limits to help rescue the program in 1983 and freezes on physician fees have occasionally been imposed, systematic attempts to limit payments to physicians are only now about to be tried. Dr. Louis W. Sullivan, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, sent to Congress last Friday a preliminary outline for a national schedule of Medicare fees to physicians, which is to take effect in January 1992.
Another problem is the weakening economy. Medicare payments to doctors are financed from general tax revenues, with an assist from monthly premiums paid by the elderly. The program pays hospitals with money from a tax on payrolls, and this fund is expected to begin to decline in the middle of this decade as its revenues no longer keep up with Medicare's growing costs. If the economy deteriorates more and employment rates drop, tax revenues could fall even further behind Medicare's needs. 
 
The Surge in Outlays
All in all, Medicare outlays are 27 times the $4 billion of 1966, the first year of operation, and are projected to reach $320.8 billion in the year 2000, according to a 1987 Government estimate that assumed moderate inflation rates.
Gail R. Wilensky, the Administrator of the Health Care Financing Administration, which runs Medicare, said the agency's trust fund for hospitals is expected ''to go belly up around 2005.'' But Government actuaries say the fund could run out of money as early as 1999, depending on trends that include the state of the economy, inflation rates and the number of Medicare beneficiaries.
Yet Americans' expectations of Medicare seem to be rising. Consumer advocates and spokesmen for the elderly, like John Rother, legislative director of the American Association of Retired Persons, say the program does not cover some of their most urgent needs, like Alzheimer's disease and other long-term illnesses, as well as medical checkups, dental work, eyeglasses, hearing aids and prescription drugs.
At the same time, doctors and hospitals say they are becoming increasingly disillusioned with the program. Indeed, some doctors are beginning to talk of refusing to accept Medicare patients, citing the growing burden of paperwork and restrictions on fees and on the treatments they will be reimbursed for. For example, a new law that took effect last weekend makes the doctor, instead of the patient, responsible for handling the often confusing paperwork that Medicare requires before it pays.
 
'The Hassle Factor'
And on Jan. 1, a new requirement will limit the added fees that doctors can charge patients to 25 percent of the amount that Medicare pays; there is currently no limit.
Also, experts say the schedules being drawn of what Medicare will pay for a doctor's services may be a step toward more restrictions that will slow the growth in payments to doctors.
''If the hassle factor continues, the reduction in reimbursement continues, finally the doctor gets to the point where he says I don't need this anymore,'' said Dr. James S. Todd, executive vice president of the American Medical Association.
Marilyn Moon, a senior research associate with the Urban Institute, said there was some concern about Medicare following in the path of the Medicaid program for the poor. Many doctors and hospitals now avoid accepting Medicaid patients.
Then again, Ms. Moon noted, elderly patients provide most of the business for most physicians, except in a few specialties, and therefore it would be difficult to turn away such patients.
As for hospitals, 62 percent of them will lose money on Medicare patients this year, said Carol McCarthy, president of the American Hospital Association. Executives of hospitals, which received 55 percent of Medicare spending in 1989, say that like physicians, their institutions must make up the losses through higher fees to private health plans. But employers, who pay a large share of private health insurance, have begun to challenge this shifting of costs and demand discounts from providers of medical care.
 
Money-Saving Strategies
Some experts, like Carolyne K. Davis, a former Medicare Administrator, think Medicare can survive without drastic changes. They say the program can be kept afloat through money-saving strategies, like those used by private health plans, that direct patients to hospitals and doctors selected on the basis of quality of care and cost. They say that eliminating unneeded medical procedures could yield large savings.
But critics like Deborah Steelman, who was an adviser in President Bush's election campaign and heads an advisory council on Social Security and health policy, say the Government program will have to be at least partly dismantled, forcing the elderly to finance even more of their own health bills than they now do.
Medicare already absorbs about 18 percent of the nation's spending on health care, and such expenditures are growing faster than any other part of the economy - about 10 percent each year. Even if the Bush Administration succeeds with its proposal to cut $5.6 billion from the program in 1991, Medicare's budget would still increase to $110.4 billion.
Payments to hospitals - $60 billion in 1989 - are financed by a 1.45 percent tax on employees' wages and a matching amount paid by employers. Most of the payments to physicians ($43 billion this year) come from general tax revenues, with about 27 percent of the total contributed by the $28.60 monthly premiums paid by enrollees. (About $5 billion goes for equipment like wheelchairs, limited home care and administering the program.) ''Either we are going to have to change the financing or change something about what we pay for and how much,'' said Ms. Wilensky, the Medicare Administrator.
 
Would Have Affluent Pay More
Some experts say affluent elderly Americans should pay more of their health costs, freeing Government money to keep the program going. Dr. Todd of the American Medical Association said the elderly should pay Medicare premiums on a scale reflecting their assets.
''But Congress is going to be shy about doing anything that arouses the elderly constituencies,'' said Theodore Marmor, a professor of public policy at Yale University. Many members of Congress were embarrassed last year when elderly voters revolted against a surtax on Medicare premiums for catastrophic illnesses, and the new law was repealed. The more affluent elderly would have paid the highest tax.
Ms. Steelman proposes transferring part of what is covered by Medicare to a new form of Government-regulated private insurance that would be purchased by people during their working years and would cover all medical costs up to, say, $25,000. The money saved by Medicare would be used to pay all costs for the elderly that exceed $25,000, including long-term care and prescription drugs, which are not covered now.
Ms. Steelman conceded that her approach was ''futuristic.'' She said the Government should test her plan with volunteers to see how it works and whether company health plans would participate. Her proposal will be included, along with alternatives, in a report to the President and Congress early next year, Ms. Steelman said.
Dr. Todd called for ''a fundamental change that would first determine the level of health care to which everyone should have access and then decide how to pay for it.'' Noting that ''one-third of Medicare dollars are spent on patients in the last six months of their lives, and a fair amount of it futilely,'' he said that both the medical association and Government health officials are looking at proposals for standards that could ''eliminate care that is unlikely to be beneficial.''
 
Payroll Tax Rise Sought
The medical association also favors an increase of four-tenths of a percent in the payroll tax, and tax incentives to encourage savings for retirement ''so that the individual would have accumulated enough to provide for care for both acute and chronic illnesses.''
Ms. Davis, now a health-care adviser with Ernst & Young, the consulting firm, noted that the trust fund had overcome earlier threats to its survival. ''In 1982,'' she said, ''it looked like the hospital trust fund would be bankrupt by the period between 1986 and 1990.'' The shortage eased after a radical change in Medicare's method of paying hospitals.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

CORRECTION-DATE: October 2, 1990, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

 CORRECTION:
An article on Sept. 6 about the financial squeeze on Medicare misstated the limits on physicians' charges to Medicare patients. Since 1987, Medicare has limited what a doctor may charge for each service to an amount based on that doctor's 1984 charges, plus a specified annual increase.

GRAPHIC: Photo: Gail R. Wilensky, the Administrator of the Federal agency that runs Medicare, said the agency's trust fund for hospitals is expected ''to go belly up around 2005.''; Chart of a Government projection of the year-end balance of Medicare's Hospital Insurance Trust Fund. (source: U.S. Health Care Financing Administration.) (pg. D6)

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September 6, 1990, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

Tarrytown Making Do In Schools

BYLINE: By LISA W. FODERARO, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section B; Page 1, Column 5; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 818 words

DATELINE: TARRYTOWN, N.Y., Sept. 5

Over the summer, residents, in a third vote, restored most bus transportation and interscholastic sports in a $21.9 million budget, an increase of only 1 percent over last year's. But dozens of teachers, secretaries and administrators were laid off, and there is no money for new school supplies, library books, routine repairs or for extracurricular activities, from the yearbook to the debate team.
 
Companies Challenging Taxes
The tax base of Tarrytown and North Tarrytown has eroded as corporations like General Motors Corporation, with a large plant in North Tarrytown, and the Consolidated Edison Company, succeeded in reducing their tax payments by challenging their assessments in court. In the largest case, G.M. cut its annual school tax by a third, or by about $1 million. 
In the tax revolt that led to the austerity school budget, elderly residents on fixed incomes were the strongest voting bloc, school officials said. But even with the austerity budget, school taxes will rise 3 percent in North Tarrytown and 10 percent in Tarrytown.
''There is a graying of America, and the senior citizens support education, but they can't afford where education is going,'' said the superintendent, Dr. H. Murray Blueglass.
At schools today there was a determination not only to survive but also to flourish. Just as the Whos of Who-ville in ''The Grinch Who Stole Christmas'' emerged singing and holding hands despite the disappearance of all their holiday trappings, administrators, teachers and some students tried to put a bright face on the circumstances.
 
Parents Providing Supplies
''We're committed to the notion that learning doesn't stop because of money,'' said Dr. Robert T. Muller, the principal of Washington Irving.
The school, like others in the district, asked parents to provide all of their children's school supplies, from glue and construction paper to computer disks and tissues. It is looking for volunteers on Saturdays to help trim hedges and maintain the grounds beyond mere lawn-mowing, all that is allowed under the budget.
Max Riso, a 10-year-old wearing a bright yellow sweatshirt, said: ''It's going to be a great year because we have a great principal and a great teacher. It's better if your parents buy the supplies because then you get what you want.''
In the corridors of Sleepy Hollow High School today, the principal, Dr. Ira E. Oustatcher, encouraged students to smile, fielded questions and accepted suggestions.
 
Praise for Cost-Cutting Ideas
He gently told a social studies teacher that she might have to live with the broken lock on her file cabinet containing tests and videocassettes because it was not an emergency repair. He congratulated Scott Abraham, a senior on the yearbook staff, for his idea of taking group pictures of students instead of individual ones.
While the high school is not getting the money it had anticipated for clubs and activities, the extracurricular program is still considered alive.
''We're starting the year saying everything's a go,'' Dr. Oustatcher said, ''and as the bills start to come in, I will wear a new hat and start soliciting.'' He said he would appeal to community organizations and corporations for money to finance the program.
Some could not conceal their discouragement. Amy Gross, a junior, had to walk two miles to school today. Previously, all students who lived more than a mile from the school could ride the bus. But with the budget squeeze, high school students must now walk if their homes are within two miles. ''I can't wait till it snows,'' she said bitterly.
The librarian at Sleepy Hollow High School, Mary Weinrich, is down two staff people - leaving a full-time staff member and a part-time worker - and will not get the 1,500 new books she would have ordered in a normal year. That includes such annual titles as the World Almanac and Barron's Guide to Colleges.
''Somebody asked me the other day if I was glad to be back, and I started to cry,'' she said as she tried to fix an overhead projector, a repair that, in the past, would have been done by an assistant. ''You work hard to build a program, and then you have to watch it slip in the mud.''

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: After tax-weary voters rejected school budget increases in Tarrytown, N.Y., schools are having to make do. Dr. Robert T. Muller, principal of Washington Irving Intermediate School, greeted students yesterday. (Alan Zale for The New York Times) (pg. B3)

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September 8, 1990, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

CONSUMER'S WORLD;
Fee Caps Near for Medicare Patients

BYLINE: By LEONARD SLOANE

SECTION: Section 1; Page 46, Column 1; Style Desk

LENGTH: 799 words

New York State jumped the gun on the Federal plan this summer and limited the amount that can be charged above the Medicare allowance to 15 percent in 1991 and 10 percent in 1993 for many, but not all, types of physicians' services. Some other states also have laws that prohibit or limit the excess charges.
 
Elderly Applaud; Doctors Criticize
The latest Federal effort to lower the nation's health costs has already brought debate. The elderly applaud the measure as one that will, in many cases, reduce the amount they pay for medical services. But medical organizations condemn it, saying it is likely to cut physicians' fees and reduce the availability of care. 
''It's a great step in the right direction,'' said Martha A. McSteen, president of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare. ''From the consumer's point of view, it means that medical costs will be controlled.''
But Dr. James S. Todd, executive vice president of the American Medical Association, said: ''Singling out a specific segment of the population for price-fixing is unfair. Your revenue has to exceed your expenses or you're going to go broke.''
 
Accepting Payment
The new restrictions will affect patients who use so-called nonparticipating doctors. Participating doctors have agreed in advance to accept as their full fee what Medicare allows as payment for a procedure. The Government pays 80 percent of the fee after deductibles are met and the patient, or her private Medicare supplementary insurer, pays the rest. When a doctor is paid this way the case is termed ''on assignment,'' meaning the patient assigns payment from Medicare directly to the doctor.
Nonparticipating physicians may either accept assignment, if they choose to, based on the patient's circumstances, or charge a higher fee. When they do not accept assignment, Medicare bases its payment on 95 percent of what a participating physician is allowed to charge. The patient is then responsible for the 20 percent of that sum, plus the balance of the physician's actual fee. It is this excess fee, above the Medicare allowance, that the new rules will limit.
Because some physicians' societies, like the American Society of Internal Medicine, anticipate that the new law will limit the fees of many doctors in 1991, bringing income to below 1990 levels, they are pressing for a year's delay in the rules, until another major Medicare change becomes effective on Jan. 1, 1992.
 
National Fee Schedule
At that time, a national schedule will be imposed, providing higher fees for certain physicians whose charges have been deemed by an advisory panel to be too low compared with the fees of doctors in other specialties. In many cases, these would be the same primary-care doctors, like internists, who expect to be hit by limited fees under the 1991 rules. A delay in the new rules would prevent a yo-yo effect, doctors say, of Medicare recipients' payments going down next year and then up in 1992.
The concept of limits on Medicare fees dates to 1984, when fees were frozen. Two years later, a formula was imposed setting caps on fees on a doctor-by-doctor and procedure-by-procedure basis. When the new limits go into effect, the computations to determine the cap will become much simpler, according to the agency that runs Medicare.
Asked what this means to a Medicare patient, Bob Jackson, coordinator of the Medicare assistance program of the American Association of Retired Persons, said: ''It's going to limit the out-of-pocket risk to Medicare beneficiaries.
Various physicians' organizatons see the changes differently. In rural areas, for instance, ''we have a major problem attracting physicians to go into primary-care specialties,'' said Mike Sulzycki, associate director of the Oklahoma State Medical Association. Medicare reimbursements vary by region, and doctors in rural areas generally receive less than city doctors.
And Robert Doherty, a vice president of the internal medicine society, said that a result of the limits, there might be more doctors reducing or even eliminating Medicare patients from their practices.
''You could see a trend to primary-care physicians' limiting the number of Medicare patients or building a practice base in areas where there are not many Medicare patients,'' he said.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: ''Revenue has to exceed your expenses or you're going to go broke,'' said Dr. James S. Todd of the American Medical Association. (Jonathan Kirn for The New York Times)

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The New York Times

September 9, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Lifestyle: Sunday Outing;
Finding Thrills Aloft in Parachutes Built for Two

SECTION: Section 1; Part 2, Page 54, Column 3; Style Desk

LENGTH: 1214 words

''It was a great view, but I didn't notice,'' Jake Connolly, a 20-year-old Bucknell University student from Northport, L.I., said a few seconds after tumbling onto the ground. He looked paler than he had earlier in the day and his eyes were glazed, but he also had a huge smile.
''It felt much better knowing that there was someone on my back,'' he said. ''It was awesome. I need to do it again so I can remember what it feels like.'' 
The tandem parachutes are still regarded as experimental, but after six years of tests, the Federal Aviation Administration will propose rules later this year to lift a requirement for special exemptions for users and manufacturers of the equipment.
''The age of tandem jumping is here,'' said Ted Strong, one of the developers of the new parachute. ''It's the newest and safest way to start. It's an easier way to learn and you can fall faster and farther.''
The parachute that Mr. Strong and others developed is almost twice as large as a solo parachute but still can be packed on one person's back. The tandem rig is equipped with an extra pair of steering handles and a dual harness that hooks two people to each other and to the parachute. Many of the units also have two rip cords.
 
Shouts in the Ear
After their plane takes off, the two jumpers are linked together and must waddle to the edge of the plane before they leap. As they fall face down at 120 miles an hour, the instructor is on the student's back and can shout in his or her ear or communicate with hand signals.
On some jumps the student is taught to pull the rip cord, but if it does not happen by 6,500 feet, the instructor takes charge. For an extra fee, jump centers will often send along another sky diver to videotape the event.
In sky-diving circles, the tandem jump is seen as part carnival ride and part instructional tool.
Many first-time jumpers prefer the tandem to the traditional static-line first jump. Mr. Connolly said he chose the tandem jump because he wanted to experience the 5,000-foot free fall before his parachute opened.
But for others, the free fall is irrelevant; they like having a more experienced jumper with them.
''The tandem attracts some people who wouldn't think of going alone,'' said Kevin Gibson, editor of The Parachutist, the magazine of the United States Parachute Association.
 
Physically Impaired Can Jump
People who use wheelchairs and elderly men and women have been taken on tandem jumps. At the Ranch Skydiving Club recently, a young man with cerebral palsy tried it, after being carried onto the plane and given assistance to reach the door.
While students for a static-line jump receive at least five hours of training, some instructors question whether that time spent on steering and landing is always worthwhile.
''Most people are only concerned about the parachute opening, which is a very good concern to have,'' said Mr. Maynard at Skydive Long Island. ''Their heart is beating a million beats a second and then it opens and they think, 'Whew, I'm going to live.' Then they sometimes have brain lock. They forget how to steer. They forget how to land.'' This sometimes results in twisted ankles or broken bones.  With a tandem parachute, there is no need for the new jumper to remember all the details. ''It relieves apprehension,'' Mr. Maynard said.
 
A Sobering Warning
In Mr. Connolly's orientation session at the Ranch club, he and the tandem instructor practiced jumping from the grounded plane several times and went over hand signals that they would use in the air.
Mr. Connolly was also shown a videotape from a parachute manufacturer. The tape explained that ''there is no such thing as a perfect parachute,'' that he was risking death or severe injury and what his legal rights were. He signed two forms releasing the manufacturers and operators of liability.
Since tandem parachutes first became available in 1984, they have been used in more than 150,000 jumps. At least seven accidents have occurred, killing 14 people. Investigators have discovered the cause of some of the accidents and corrected procedures, but a few remain a mystery.
All the accidents occurred with parachutes made by Relative Workshop, one of the three companies making tandem parachutes and the one that has sold the most.
Bill Booth, founder of the DeLand, Fla., concern, said investigators had found that errors by the users had caused the accidents. Mr. Gibson of The Parachutist magazine agreed, saying that no problem has ever been found with the equipment.
In any case, sky divers often brush aside the risk. ''The most dangerous thing I do all day is drive my car to work,'' said Jack Gregory, a tandem instructor at the Ranch.
The Ranch club is six miles south of New Paltz, N.Y., about two hours northwest of New York City by car. To get there, follow the Gov. Thomas E. Dewey Thruway, which is Interstate 87, to exit 17. Take Route 32 north to Modina, where you go left on Route 44/55. Follow it about 5 miles untiul you are in Gardiner. There turn left on Sand Hill Road. the airport is a few hundred yards away.
Skydive Long Island is about an hour and a half by car from New York City. Take the Long Island Expressway to Exit 70 in Suffolk County, then turn right to County Road 111, then right again onto County Road 51 and continue to its end. There, turn left onto Montauk Highway; the airport is a quarter of a mile away.
Reservations are required at all the clubs, and jumpers can get detailed directions when they make reservations.
 
TANDEM JUMPS: WHERE TO CALL
Here are some sky-diving centers that offer tandem jumps, with costs ranging from $175 to $250. All require reservations. Many have telephone answering machines and are open only on weekends or do not keep regular hours. Ranch Skydiving Club Gardiner, N.Y. (914) 255-4033. Skydive Long Island East Moriches, L.I. (516) 878-5867.
Albany Skydiving Center Duanesburg, N. Y. (518) 945-1554.
Woodstock Parachute Center South Woodstock, Conn. (203) 928-4652.
Connecticut Parachutists Ellington, Conn. (203) 871-0021.
United Parachute Club New Hanover, Pa. (215) 323-9667. Skydive Chambersburg Chambersburg, Pa. (800) 526-3497.  Skydiving Center of Greater Washington California, Md. (301) 870-3686.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Jake Connolly goes over technique with Richard Spathes, instructor. Barry Bank floats to earth in tandem with his instructor, Richard Spathes. Jake Connolly after landing on his maiden jump. (Suzanne DeChillo for the New York Times)

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September 9, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Headliners;
Old Story

SECTION: Section 4; Page 7, Column 4; Week in Review Desk

LENGTH: 156 words

Ever since Mr. Blanchard said a few weeks ago that the 78-year-old Mrs. Griffiths would be dropped from his re-election ticket because of her age and increasing frailty, he has been under a steady hail of criticism from two of his most loyal constituencies, the women and the elderly whose votes helped him win his first term in office. Mrs. Griffiths, a former 10-term Congresswoman and an icon in Michigan Democratic politics, was initially furious. ''The biggest problem in politics,'' she said, ''is that you help some S.O.B. get what he wants and then he throws you off the train.'' But Mr. Blanchard seemed to have Mrs. Griffiths' supporters in mind last week when he named his new running mate -Olivia Maynard, the 54-year-old director of the state Office of Aging.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Martha W. Griffiths (Associated Press)

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September 9, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Hers;
A Second Time Around

BYLINE: By Andree Brooks; Andree Brooks is the author of ''Children of Fast-Track Parents'' (Viking).

SECTION: Section 6; Page 34, Column 3; Magazine Desk

LENGTH: 1162 words

I later found out that what he really meant was that he wanted to take part in a growing tradition. A second bar mitzvah is a relatively modern custom celebrating old age - the fact that a person has lived out his biblical allotment of 70 years (Psalms 90:10). After 70 that person begins counting over. Upon reaching the year when he is again 13, actually 83, he may elect to go through a ceremony that echoes his bar mitzvah. Many of these elderly people choose to read the same portion from the Torah - in my father's case, a passage from Exodus - that was read all those years before. No need, it seems, to learn a new one. A true blessing.
It is a lovely idea: an honored ritual for the elderly as well as the young, a way to bring families together, to reflect on tradition and constancy in our fast-paced era. Well, in theory anyway. 
Our bar mitzvah boy was bald, had a paunch, was married twice and widowed once, wore a hearing aid and had long since taken his place among the men of the congregation. There were no longer any parents, grandparents, aunts or uncles to lead the celebrations. We would simply reassign traditional roles.
His children, my sister and myself, would give the customary party afterward. He would pay tribute to his children and grandchildren, we hoped, instead of to his parents. Members of the congregation would thank him for his services rather than exhort him to come to them. And since it is customary to receive a fountain pen as a gift the first time around, we would give them out at the second. I immediately ordered pens printed with his name and ''Bar Mitzvah II.''
There would be more benefits than just family solidarity, my sister and I felt sure. The candidate would behave himself in a more mature fashion than a 13-year-old. No tantrums. No last-minute loss of voice. No resisting instruction. Or would he?
As events began to unfold it became clear that the passage of 70 years is no insurance against such occurences. No sooner had I arranged a family party at a restaurant near his home in central London than my father called long-distance to tell me he was not sure he liked the arrangements. There were extra friends he wanted who could not be accommodated. Would I mind if he walked over to the restaurant and canceled? He would take care of arranging an alternative himself.
From across the Atlantic I decided not to argue, only to learn shortly before the Great Day that he was bemoaning the fact that no party had been arranged for him.
No sooner had we arranged to assemble our far-flung family - my sister from France, my son from Singapore, my daughter from South Dakota - than we discovered father was not going to chant his portion of the Torah after all. He had arranged with the rabbi for a sort of dispensation - the kind normally given to someone who is infirm or has a learning disability. He had had no time, he insisted, to relearn the portion.
Besides, he would be traveling by car to services, and since it was an orthodox synagogue he would not be permitted to read. Or so he said. We nodded. We understood. Had he at least prepared a speech for the reception afterward? He had asked his wife, our stepmother, for help. But she had decided he should do it for himself. We agreed. So that was put off, too.  The big day arrived. The Almighty had a gift ready - glorious sunshine. It set the tone. The occasion was to be special, irrespective of prior chaos. By 10 A.M. we were all gathering in our finest clothes at the old domed synagogue in the Shepherd's Bush section of West London, where our family had worshiped since I was a small child - cousins, aunts, childhood friends, old family friends, neighbors, new spouses, old spouses. This was also the holy place that had played host to so many of my own milestones: my wedding, my daughter's bat mitzvah, my son's bar mitzvah, and the funeral of my grandmother only a few months earlier.
Then, in a ritual repeated since those bleak days after World War II when I was almost too small to climb the steep stairs, the women of our family made their way up to the gallery, as is traditional for an orthodox service, to help surround my father from above as well as below with the people who had shared his life. The wailing prayers began, chanted in the traditional Sephardic idiom, the Ladino of the Greek and Turkish Jews.
I looked down. There was my father wearing a black silk top hat, sitting in his place of honor near the ark as leader of the congregation, busy shaking hands with friends, relatives and colleagues as they slowly filed into the sanctuary - dozens more than we had expected.
My daughter, now a sophisticated woman of 28, was beside me in the next seat; my lanky son, 24, had taken his rightful place with the men below despite some last-minute protests that religion was not his thing.
The ceremony was indeed an affirmation of constancy in an evanescent world. Later, at a small reception in the musty synagogue hall, we gossiped, met the new babies of the family and rekindled friendships with cousins.
Our bar mitzvah boy was proud. When we dined at the restaurant that evening (he had, in fact, laid on a rather elegant last-minute dinner at the Inn on the Park Hotel) he was moved to mention the ceremony to a perfect stranger. On the hotel mezzanine near the restaurant, we had noticed anordinary bar mitzvah party taking place. My father approached two boys to share his euphoria with someone who had just been through the same ordeal. ''Are you the bar mitzvah boy?'' he asked. ''No, it's my friend,'' replied the first boy, pointing to the other.
My father walked over to the startled lad. ''I am a bar mitzvah, too,'' began the beaming old man. They stood facing each other at the top of the wide staircase, each a model of sartorial elegance in his suit, carefully pressed and clearly brand-new: the older man in smoky gray with a white monogrammed shirt and silver cuff links; the younger one somewhat awkward in midnight blue wool with a plain white shirt and quiet tie. ''We're in the same boat today, you and I,'' my father said, as he proceeded to tell his story with a gleam of glory in his eye. ''I am a bar mitzvah, too.''

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Drawing

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The New York Times

September 9, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Guide for Home Buyers, Sellers and Renters;
In Jersey and Connecticut, Less Protection for Tenants

BYLINE: By Shawn G. Kennedy

SECTION: Section 10; Page 11, Column 4; Real Estate Desk

LENGTH: 555 words

In the past few years, the perception that rent control has eroded the tax bases in some localities by holding down the value of rental properties has prompted the adoption of vacancy decontrol as an antidote to ease the pressure.
Last June, a bill that would have protected renters statewide was narrowly defeated in the State Legislature. It would have given tenants in buildings being converted into co-ops or condominiums the right to remain indefinitely. With the exception of the elderly, the handicapped or other tenants needing special consideration, residents of buildings converted to owner-occupied housing now have the right to remain as tenants only for three years if they decide not to buy their apartments. The vote to extend the protection for renters was defeated by a narrow margin and the measure is expected to be reintroduced in the fall. 
In Connecticut, there is no mandated rent regulation. But 23 towns out of 169 in the state have quasi-governmental bodies called ''fair rent commissions'' to which tenants may appeal if they think rent increases demanded by their landlords are excessive or unfair.
The commissions are designed to handle only severe cases. Usually comprised of a mix of tenants, landlords, public officials and homeowners, the operate on a case-by-case basis and usually do not intervene unless rent demands are harsh.
According to Raphael Poldolsky, an attorney with Connecticut Legal Services, the towns with commissions contain about half the rental units in the state.
Last year, to prompt expansion of the fair rent commission system, the state called on towns with more than 5,000 rental units that had not adopted fair rent panels to at least consider such commissions. Among the communities that now have commissions are Stamford, Norwalk and Bridgeport, Groton and Galstonbury.
''The idea of rent control has not been embraced in the state,'' said Mr. Poldolsky, ''Its not that people do not believe that some renters deserve protection. But many people, including renters themselves, associate rent control with bombed out buildings in the Bronx.
''Places that have commissions also tend to be those where senior citizens, and middle income workers like teachers and insurance company employees. make up a substantial portion of the voter base,'' he added.
The commissions do not set rent levels but rather act as mediators. They can recommend settlements but cannot compel landlords to accept lower rents. Mevertheless, a Legal Services agency study found that 70 percent of 1,600 complaints brought to the commissions in a two year period were settled through mediation.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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The New York Times

September 9, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Elderly Worry About School Tax Revisions

BYLINE: By JAY ROMANO

SECTION: Section 12NJ; Page 1, Column 5; New Jersey Weekly Desk

LENGTH: 1876 words

''The Quality Education Act will have a ruinous effect on thousands of the state's senior citizens,'' said Warren Heide, a member of the New Jersey state legislative committee of the American Association of Retired Persons, a national organizationwith more than 600,000 members in New Jersey.
Mr. Heide said that the organization, though supportive of the state's attempt to increase school aid to urban districts, was concerned that the act ignored the effect that the loss of aid to the wealthier districts would have on some elderly citizens. ''There are perverse elements in this legislation that distort the reality of the situation,'' he said. For example, he said, the act fails to consider the wide disparity of incomes in even the wealthiest communities.
Mr. Heide estimates there are at least 60,000 low- income elderly households in those municipalities that will lose aid under the new law. That estimate is based on the number of elderly people in those municipalities who now receive the $250 property tax deduction available to those with household incomes of less than $10,000, exclusive of Social Security. 
The actual number of elderly affected, Mr. Heide said, is probably even higher than 60,000 since his estimate counts households rather than individuals. Nor does he count renters, who, he said, may be forced to pay higher rents because landlords can pass tax increases along to their tenants.
''These are hard facts that are indisputable,'' he said. ''And it's not just the senior citizens who are suffering. This law affects any low-income homeowner or renter, young or old.''
Last week, representatives of the A.A.R.P. met in Princeton to discuss the impact that the act and rising property taxes will have on the state's elderly residents. A report and recommendations are expected to be released next week.
The Quality Education Act, which became law in June, provides for the gradual withdrawal of state aid to about 150 of the state's wealthiest public school districts. Beginning in 1992, those districts, which are predominantly suburban, will receive decreasing amounts of ''transition aid'' until all aid is terminated by 1996.
While those communities are losing state aid, the remaining school districts in the state will be receiving increased infusions of state dollars; the poorer the district, the more state aid it will receive.
 
Goes Beyond Court Ruling
The act was essentially drafted in anticipation of the State Supreme Court's decision in Abbott v. Burke. In that case, the court ruled that the state's policy of providing minimum aid to all school districts, including wealthy ones, was unconstitutional. In addition, the court directed the state's lawmakers to devise a new formula to provide increased aid to 28 of the state's poorest school districts.
The act that was ultimately passed, however, goes beyond the court's ruling and by a formula increases aid to 360 school districts while decreasing aid to about 150 districts.
''The formula allocates state aid based upon the wealth of a community,'' said Thomas Corcoran, the Governor's chief policy adviser on education. The measure of that wealth, he said, is determined using a combination of property values in a community and the income of that community's residents.
Under the old formula, only the property values were taken into consideration in allocating state aid. The new formula, Mr. Corcoran said, is more equitable since it accounts for the large increase in real-estate values over the last 10 years.
''When you add income into the formula, it has the effect of balancing out some of the great disparities in property wealth,'' he said. ''You put that into a computer, and it distributes the aid accordingly.''
 
Counting the Losses
But not everyone agrees with the computer's calculations.
''I don't know how in their wildest dreams they consider us a wealthy district,'' said Robert Ciliento, Superintendent of Schools for Berkeley Township in Ocean County. ''I believe that about 78 percent of our population are senior citizens,'' Mr. Ciliento said. And most of them live on fixed incomes in the township's retirement communities, he said.
''We have only 1,750 students in our school system, and we spend $2,000 per student less than the state average to educate them,'' Mr. Ciliento said. ''Yet over the next five years we will lose about $2.8 million in state aid.'' That, he said, will translate into a tax increase for residents. ''Something has gone askew here,'' he said. State officials acknowledge that the formula may not be perfect.
''The school formula is based on community characteristics, not individual characteristics,'' Mr. Corcoran said. ''It does not respond to variations within a given school district.''
The extent of those variations, he said, along with the number of elderly people on fixed incomes in the districts losing money, had not been calculated before the formula was established. ''We're trying to pull together some data on that now,'' he said.
 
'Technically Sound' Formula
The elderly, however, say that should have been done before the law was passed.
''They pushed the thing through in a couple of weeks,'' said Michael Carrig, president of the Ocean County Senior Coordinating Council, which represents 80,000 elderly residents in southern New Jersey.
''You research it before you vote on it,'' Mr. Carrig said. ''Now they're just trying to sell something that won't work.''
Mr. Corcoran, however, said that the formula was ''technically sound,'' and that when it was applied properly, ''the aid is distributed directly in accordance with a community's wealth.''
Nevertheless, he said, ''I would agree that there is an issue here that really needs attention and must be addressed. We are now looking at the dimensions of that problem.''
But as a rule, Mr. Corcoran said, most municipalities will be treated equitably under the new formula.
''Well, we're one of the exceptions to the rule,'' said Jane C. Cameron, the Mayor of Manchester Township, which is near Berkeley. ''We have 44,000 residents here, and 80 percent of them are senior citizens on fixed incomes.''
 
'We're Cash Poor'
Manchester Township, which has 2,700 students in its school system, will lose $3.8 million over the next five years out of a total budget of $20 million.
''Maybe our land is worth a considerable amount,'' Mrs. Cameron said, ''but we're cash poor. Based on that, there should be some kind of adjustment in their formula.''
But officials say that such an adjustment has already been provided, although it is not necessarily included in the school financing formula. Normally, the way a state would compensate for a disparity of incomes would be through a rebate program program, Mr. Corcoran said.
Mr. Florio's new property tax rebate program, the Governor's liaison on education continued, which provides for rebates as high as $500 a year, should adequately compensate most elderly people for tax increases that result from the loss of state aid. Still, many are wary of such assurances. ''What rebate?'' said Charles T. Hufsmith, a retired accountant living in Manchester Township. ''You mean the one that's two years down the road? I won't believe it until I see it. And even if it comes, I don't think we'll benefit by it.''
 
How to Offset Pension Costs?
One of the reasons Mr. Hufsmith and others doubt that the property tax rebate will be sufficient to offset tax increases is the additional burden of $1 billion in teachers' pension and Social Security contributions that will be placed on municipalities under the act.
''We're going to get a double whammy,'' said Charles Pappas, chairman of the Senior Citizen Council of Bergen County, an organization of 70 local groups for the elderly.
''First they're going to cut the funds that ordinarily come to each district, and then they're going to make us pay for the teachers' pension and Social Security costs,'' he said.
That, he said, can only lead to difficult negotiations and rejected school budgets when pension costs increase, a concern also expressed by the teachers' union when the shift was first proposed..
''We have always felt very secure about the teachers' pension funds,'' said Debbie Scott, a spokeswoman for the New Jersey Education Association, the 134,000-member statewide teachers' union.
''But public sentiment is running very high right now against tax increases,'' she said, ''and we feel that that kind of sentiment puts not only our jobs but our pensions and our contributions in jeopardy.''
School budgets, Ms. Scott said, which must be approved by voters, are more likely to be defeated if pension increases cause an increase in taxes. Last year, she said, even with the state providing aid to all districts and paying for teachers' pensions, 48 percent of the school budgets were defeated by voters. And when a budget is defeated, something has to give. ''In the business world they wind up asking the unions to take back some of the costs,'' Mr. Pappas said. ''Well, that may apply to some of the teachers.''
 
Calls for a Freeze
But a better solution than tax revolt and budget rejections, Mr. Pappas said, would be a freeze on school tax increases for the elderly.
Indeed, several bills have already been introduced in both houses of the Legislature that provide just such relief for the elderly.
State Senator Leonard T. Connors Jr., Republican of Surf City, is a sponsor of one of those bills.
''Everyone would pay school taxes,'' he said, ''but the senior citizens would get a rebate check for the amount they paid over last year.''
In order to be eligible, he said, a person would have to be 65 years old and a resident of the state for at least five years and have an income of less than $30,000 a year.
Such legislation is necessary, Mr. Connors said, because ''wherever there are pockets of senior citizens who own homes, you're going to find an unequal situation.''
''They're being penalized badly,'' he said.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo; Charles T. Hufsmith with his wife, Adele, in their garden in Manchester Township. He and other retired citizens are concerned that the state's new school financing plan will burden those on fixed incomes (Frank C. Dougherty for The New York Times)

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September 11, 1990, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

Dukakis Antagonist Abandons Primary Race

BYLINE: By FOX BUTTERFIELD, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section B; Page 10, Column 4; National Desk

LENGTH: 621 words

DATELINE: BOSTON, Sept. 10

Mr. Dukakis's popular support has vanished since the state's economic condition became clear in the aftermath of his loss to George Bush in the 1988 Presidential election. Ms. Murphy, like Mr. Dukakis, is a liberal, and they share many supporters, the aide pointed out.
The aide said Ms. Murphy's challenge to the Governor, which forced him to delay his European trip, only further tarnished the image of the state's Democrats, who have already been badly hurt by the prolonged fiscal mess, and enhanced the chance that the small Republican Party here could win the governor's office for the first time since 1970.
Ms. Murphy said today that she would support Francis X. Bellotti, a former state Attorney General, who is leading in the polls for the Sept. 18 primary. Mr. Bellotti ''comes closest to the values that are important to me,'' Ms. Murphy said, particularly on the issue of women having a right to choose abortion. 
 
Silber Raises Anger
Ms. Murphy did not indicate whether she would campaign for Mr. Bellotti, a 67-year-old veteran politician. Many of Ms. Murphy's liberal backers have already been deserting her for Mr. Bellotti in hopes of stopping the third candidate, John R. Silber, the president of Boston University.
Ms. Murphy's action therefore appeared likely to deal a further blow to Mr. Silber, a political maverick whose public standing has been slipping in the past few weeks after he made barbed comments that have alienated many voters. In one debate, for instance, Mr. Silber seemed to suggest rationing health care for the elderly when he said, ''When you've had a long life and you're ripe, it's time to go.''
But Mr. Silber said he welcomed Ms. Murphy's withdrawal. ''It's a new race in which voters will have a clear choice between the politics of the past, as represented by Frank Bellotti, and the fundamental changes in government that I have proposed,'' he said.
 
Facing Up to Reality
In explaining Ms. Murphy's public rebellion last week, Mark Longabaugh, her campaign manager, said today: ''She knew that her candidacy was a long shot. And she knew it would have repercussions on her campaign.'' But he added, ''she had some ideas she needed to put on the table.''
Then over the weekend, when her own polls showed that Ms. Murphy was still trailing badly in the three-way race, she decided to drop out, said Michael Goldman, a consultant to her campaign. ''It was an effort to come to grips with reality,'' he said.
Mr. Dukakis, speaking from Paris, said: ''I know something about disappointment in politics. Evelyn Murphy ran a strong and progressive campaign, and she put her heart into it.''

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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The New York Times

September 13, 1990, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

HEALTH: Personal Health;
Food poisoning called shigellosis is on the rise, prompting efforts to fight it.

BYLINE: By Jane E. Brody

SECTION: Section B; Page 11, Column 1; National Desk

LENGTH: 1304 words

As child care and food handling become more centralized, food-borne diseases that spread easily in communal settings can flourish unless a concerted effort is made to prevent them.
So it is not too surprising that shigellosis, a sometimes severe form of food poisoning associated with poor personal hygiene, is rising rapidly throughout the country, newly released Federal statistics indicate. Shigellosis, which afflicts mostly young children, is also common in women of childbearing age and poor people of all ages.
Laboratory-confirmed cases of the disease that were reported to the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta nearly doubled from 1986 to 1988 -from an incidence of 5.4 per 100,000 people to 10.1 per 100,000. The number of reported cases in 1988 - 22,796 -was the highest since the centers began a national surveillance program for the illness in 1965. The actual incidence is unquestionably many times that level, since most cases are not checked out in a laboratory and many do not even come to medical attention. 
In the mid-1980's data suggested that 300,000 to 450,000 cases of shigellosis occurred annually among Americans; the current number is believed to be two or three times that. Though less common than salmonella food poisoning, shigellosis is one of the leading food-borne diseases in the United States.
The centers' Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report of Aug. 3 noted that many of the recently reported communitywide outbreaks of shigellosis had been difficult to control because the disease spread so readily from one young child to another in day care centers and schools, where hand-washing practices are usually lax.
 
Common Sources
Before 1945 shigellosis was usually acquired directly from food and water that had been contaminated with fecal matter. But this source of the infectious bacteria was largely controlled through improvements in treating sewage and water supplies and through requirements that food handlers follow more hygienic practices, especially washing their hands with soap and water after using the bathroom.
Today, in developed countries, the disease is most often transmitted from person to person when hands are not properly washed after using the toilet or when food consumed was contaminated by an infected person who failed to follow standard hand-washing rules.
Shigellosis has become a major problem in day care centers, where both children and their supervisors may neglect to wash their hands after using the toilet or before handling food. A day care worker, for example, may change an infected child's diaper and then, without washing hands thoroughly with soap and running water, handle food consumed by other children. Or, more commonly, an infected child with contaminated hands may touch the hands, mouths, toys or foods of other children.
The disease is also common among the elderly in nursing homes and other institutions and among institutionalized mentally retarded people of all ages. It has also been described as a growing problem among male homosexuals, where transmission can occur through oral-anal contact.
Symptom-free carriers of the shigella bacteria and people who are recovering from the disease are the most frequent originators of communitywide outbreaks. Infectious organisms can live in a person's intestinal tract for months, long after symptoms have gone. Fully half of infected people harbor the bacteria for one month after they recover and can transmit the infection to others if their personal hygiene is lax.
It takes surprisingly few organisms - as few as 10 to 200 bacteria -to cause the illness. (For salmonella, on the other hand, it takes a thousand to a million organisms to cause illness.) Laboratory studies suggest that once the shigella organism gets into food, it may survive for weeks, even at freezer temperatures. The bacteria, any of several species, can multiply easily in moist foods kept at room temperature. This is especially troublesome if the foods are then consumed unheated.
The disease occurs most often in summertime, when salads and other cold or uncooked foods are frequent fare. But if contaminated foods are cooked or thoroughly heated before they are consumed, the bacteria are destroyed and the food can be eaten safely. The bacteria also do not survive well in acidic foods.
Foods most commonly associated with transmission of shigellosis include salads, like potato, tuna, shrimp, macaroni and chicken, and ingredients that have been cut, diced or chopped and mixed with other foods that are not subsequently heated. Typically, the ingredients start out free of the bacteria but become contaminated when handled or mixed by an infected person.
Outbreaks of shigellosis rarely result from processed foods unless the foods become contaminated by an infected person in a restaurant or other food service establishment, at home after purchase or in a store's take-out or deli department.
 
Symptoms
The disorder, like most other types of food poisoning, causes gastrointestinal upset, especially diarrhea. The diarrhea is often watery and voluminous and tends to worsen as the disease progresses. Bloody mucus may be present in the stool. Other common symptoms are abdominal pain, fever, headache and vomiting. Some infected children do not develop the usual gastrointestinal symptoms, but instead suffer headache, high fever, abdominal cramps and convulsions.
Symptoms appear one to seven days after exposure, usually within three days. Since the ''dose'' of bacteria required to cause illness is so small, as these illnesses go, it does not take much contamination to cause an outbreak that affects hundreds in a day care center or convalescent home.
Symptoms typically last five to six days, but can last as little as 12 hours or as long as three weeks. Infected people can transmit the infection long after recovery regardless of how long their symptoms lasted or how ill they were.
 
Prevention and Control
''Hand-washing with soap and running water may be the single most important preventive measure to interrupt transmission of shigellosis,'' the centers' bulletin states. ''Because young children are most likely to be infected with shigella and are also most likely to infect others, a strict policy of supervised hand-washing for young children after they have defecated and before they eat is crucial.''
In communities that have battled stubborn outbreaks of shigellosis, some of which lasted for many months, the chain of infection was finally broken when teachers and parents made certain that all children washed properly after using the toilet and before eating.
In addition to diligence about hand-washing, it is also important for everyone who has diarrhea or is recovering from it to refrain from preparing or handling foods that are to be consumed by others.
Some experts recommend that food handlers be tested for the presence of the bacteria after they recover. At least three stool cultures should be negative for shigella before the food handlers resume work. If food handling by a possibly infected person is unavoidable, that person must be absolutely diligent about personal hygiene.
Furthermore, when shigellosis is known to be present in a community, it would be wise to avoid the use of home-prepared foods at large gatherings. This can reduce the risk of spreading the infection to large numbers of people at one time.
Because shigellosis clears up on its own without complications, it is not usually treated, said Dr. Allen Ries, an expert in enteric diseases at the Atlanta centers. But he said severe infections in the very young or elderly people may be treated with any of several antibiotics. He warned against using antibiotics to treat mild disease because the organism easily develops resistance to the drugs.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Chart showing the increase of confirmed cases of shigellosis. (source: Centers for Disease Control)

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The New York Times

September 14, 1990, Friday, Late Edition - Final

CONFRONTATION IN THE GULF;
U.N. Council Votes Strict Limits On Food Aid to Iraq and Kuwait

BYLINE: By PAUL LEWIS, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section A; Page 1, Column 1; Foreign Desk

LENGTH: 1027 words

DATELINE: UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 13

The Security Council voted overwhelmingly tonight to adopt a plan setting tight limits on humanitarian food supplies sent to Iraq and occupied Kuwait.
The Council voted 13 to 2 in favor of the plan, with Cuba and Yemen in opposition. The resolution, drafted by the United States and the other four permanent members - Britain, France, the Soviet Union and China - says the Council alone will determine when such deliveries are justified in light of the United Nations embargo against Iraqi commerce.
The measure also requires that any food supplies be distributed ''through the United Nations in cooperation with the International Committee of the Red Cross or other appropriate humanitarian agencies'' to insure that they reach ''the intended beneficiaries'' and are not seized by the Iraqi Government for its supporters. 
The Council plans to monitor Iraq's supplies to determine whether a threat of famine exists that would justify emergency food deliveries.
It pledged to pay particular attention to the plight of the more vulnerable groups, including children under the age of 15, pregnant women, the sick and the elderly.
 
Cuba and Yemen Vote No
In voting against the limits, Cuba and Yemen, the Council's sole Arab member, argued that the 15-member Council had no right to place any restrictions on access to food.
But the United States Representative, Thomas R. Pickering, described the plan as ''a fair procedure'' that would enable the Security Council to meet genuine humanitarian needs without undermining the trade sanctions.
The plan seeks to insure that the embargo, which has been in effect since early August, can legally be relaxed only in extreme cases. Iraq has said it will not permit international supervision of the distribution of food, raising doubts about whether even the limited shipments allowed in principle by the resolution will ever take place.
Because the Security Council resolution adopted last month on trade sanctions included provisions for humanitarian relief, questions quickly arose on whether Iraq would be able to evade the embargo by having friendly countries send in ''humanitarian'' aid.
The United States made it clear last week that it intended to press for United Nations approval of exceptions to the embargo on a case-by-case basis, with each shipment monitored by an international agency, like the Red Cross.
At the meeting on Sunday in Helsinki between Presidents Bush and Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the two men agreed on such monitored food shipments.
An Iranian newspaper that reflects the views of the Government of President Hashemi Rafsanjani said on Wednesday that Iran was considering sending food and medicine across the border to Iraq. ''Muslim Iraqi people shouldn't pay for the mistakes of their Government,'' the editorial in The Teheran Times said.
The Council is expected to allow India to send a shipload of food to Kuwait for the hundreds of thousands of its citizens living there and in Iraq who, along with tens of thousands of other expatriate workers, are having trouble finding food.
There have been reports of severe food shortages in Kuwait, with Iraqi troops reportedly seizing supplies and sending them home. There have been no reports of severe food shortages in Iraq itself.
Western diplomats see the witholding of food from Asians in Kuwait and Iraq as a calculated attempt by Baghdad to weaken third world support for sanctions.
The final votes on the guidelines for humanitarian aid and on India's request to dispatch its food ship were held up by Cuba and Yemen, which have consistently sought to weaken and delay sanctions against Iraq in the past.
Today Cuba introduced an alternative resolution that would have exempted all food supplies from the United Nations trade embargo, but the measure won no support from other members. Western diplomats accused both countries of trying to postpone a final decision through a variety of procedural maneuvers but expressed confidence throughout the day that their version would eventually be approved.
Cuba and Yemen sought to link approval of the Indian relief shipment to Kuwait with acceptance by the Council of the general guidelines for emergency supplies proposed by the five permanent members. They argued that the United States might block the Indian shipment once the Council approved the restrictive guidelines. Will the Needy Get the Food?  The potential effect on world opinion of the sight of starving women and children has long been recognized by the Security Council as one of the most vulnerable aspects of its effort to use a comprehensive trade embargo to force Baghdad to retreat from Kuwait.
But whether needy people in Iraq and Kuwait will ever receive food supplies was thrown into doubt on Tuesday by Iraq's United Nations representative, Abdul Amir al-Anbari.
After meeting with the Secretary General, he told reporters that Iraq would never allow foreign organizations to control the distribution of food suppplies, saying that this would be an affront to its sovereignty. But Western diplomats said they doubted that local Iraqi humanitarian organizations like the Iraqi Red Crescent could be relied on to insure that the food goes to the people for whom it is intended.
Finland's deputy representative, Marjatta Rasi, who heads the Security Council committee monitoring compliance with the embargo, said today that Iraq's food stocks are still relatively plentiful, enough to last anywhere from two months to more than six months.
 
Using 'the Food Weapon'
But Mrs. Rasi said that Iraq was already using ''the food weapon'' against tens of thousands of poor Asian workers still in the country by denying them ration cards. Withholding food in this way, she said at a news conference, constitutes a ''gross violation'' of Iraq's duty to protect foreign nationals under international law.
Asian diplomats confirmed that Iraqi authorities had told India, Sri Lanka and the Philippines that their nationals would be given no food and would have to rely on suppplies from home. An estimated 150,000 Indians, some 93,000 Sri Lankans and about 60,000 Flipinos are in Iraq and Kuwait.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: The United Nations Security Council voted overwhelmingly yesterday to set tight limits on food relief sent to Iraq and Kuwait. Kuwait's chief delegate, Mohammad A. Abulhasan, right, conferred during the session with Javed Zarif, deputy chief delegate from Iran. (Reuters) (pg. A10)

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The New York Times

September 14, 1990, Friday, Late Edition - Final

DYING MAY REFUSE FOOD, COURT RULES

BYLINE: AP

SECTION: Section A; Page 22, Column 4; National Desk

LENGTH: 462 words

DATELINE: TALLAHASSEE, Fla., Sept. 13

Florida's Supreme Court ruled today that dying people had a right to refuse food and that guardians could make the decision for people who were incompetent to act on their own.
Further, the justices ruled, dying people and their guardians need not have a court's approval before they stop forced feeding.
The foundation of the decision, in the case of an elderly woman who died last summer, is the right to privacy as guaranteed by the Florida Constitution. 
''The right of privacy would be an empty right were it not to extend to competent and incompetent persons alike,'' Justice Rosemary Barkett wrote for the majority.
 
'Living Will' Was Left
The woman in the case, Estelle Browning, spent the last two and a half years of her life hooked up to a feeding tube in a Clearwater nursing home, despite a ''living will'' she had left that said she did not want to be kept alive under such conditions. She was not comatose, but she could neither swallow nor communicate and was considered incompetent.
Doris Herbert, her second cousin and only living relative, petitioned the state for permission to remove the feeding tube in September 1988. The trial judge refused, saying removal was not warranted because the patient's death was not imminent. In March 1989, the Second District Court of Appeals said the right of privacy made removal of the tube legal. The state appealed, and the Florida high court heard oral arguments in January.
In June, the United States Supreme Court, ruling in the case of a comatose 32-year-old woman, Nancy Cruzan, said the State of Missouri had a right to demand clear proof that a patient in an irreversible coma would wish to die. It also said competent people had a right to refuse medical treatment.
 
Power of Guardians
The Florida court, which cited the Supreme Court ruling, went on to cite its own previous rulings that incompetent people had the same right as competent people to refuse treatment and could do so through guardians acting on statements made before their wards became incompetent. In the Browning decision the court extended that analysis to people in Florida who were not comatose but could not make their own decisions.
''The decision to terminate artificial life-sustaining measures is being made over and over in nursing homes, hospitals, and private homes in this nation,'' Justice Barkett wrote. ''It is being made painfully by loving family members, concerned guardians, or surrogates, in conjunction with the advice of ethical and caring physicians or other health care providers. It is being made when the only alternative to a natural death is to artificially maintain a bare existence.''
The opinion was fully endorsed by five of the seven justices, and another justice agreed in part.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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The New York Times

September 15, 1990, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

No Special Favors on Medicare

SECTION: Section 1; Page 22, Column 1; Editorial Desk

LENGTH: 346 words

Reports this week that Congressional budget negotiators were considering cuts in Medicare costs were greeted with howls of protest from senior citizens. The summiteers were said to react by scaling back a key component of their reform plan: to charge upper-income retirees higher premiums.
Such cowardice would be regrettable. With expenditures for Medicare now exceeding $100 billion a year and ballooning even further out of control, the program is surely ripe for cutbacks. 
The initial proposal would have cut payments to hospitals and physicians, raised premiums to upper-income beneficiaries and required every retiree to pay higher out-of-pocket costs. The savings would have exceeded $70 billion over five years -about half of all non-defense spending cuts in the budget reduction plan. This astounding saving on a single program justifies the prominence of Medicare reform in the budget negotiations.
Currently, Part B of Medicare covers physician bills - up to a limit - with monthly premiums that are unrelated to the retiree's income. The premiums cover less than one-quarter of the costs of the program; taxpayers foot the rest of the bill. It is this huge subsidy, now spinning out of control, that the summiteers intend to cut. But the mere mention of linking premiums to income generated furious opposition by the same groups that last year forced the repeal of Medicare insurance for ''catastrophic'' expenditures. That program would have imposed a surtax on well-to-do retirees in order to finance insurance for large medical bills otherwise excluded from Medicare.
Yet health-catastrophe insurance was undone because retirees subject to the surtax resented subsidizing poor retirees all by themselves. Under the Medicare reform now contemplated, the well-to-do elderly would be required to pay a larger share of their own care, but would not be asked to subsidize anyone else.
The summiteers are on the verge of recommending budget cuts of $500 billion that will affect nearly every segment of society. Wealthy retirees deserve no special exemption.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

TYPE: Editorial

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The New York Times

September 15, 1990, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

Marya Mannes, the Writer, Dies; Social Critic and Satirist Was 85

BYLINE: By ERIC PACE

SECTION: Section 1; Page 29, Column 1; Cultural Desk

LENGTH: 635 words

Marya Mannes, an author, journalist and critic, died Thursday at Laguna Honda Hospital in San Francisco. She was 85 years old.
Her son, David R. J. Blow, said she had died after suffering a series of strokes this week at the hospital, a geriatric facility that she entered in March. She had lived in various residences for the elderly, mainly in California, since 1983, after residing most of her earlier life in Manhattan. 
The versatile Ms. Mannes was a social critic and a critic of radio, television and theater. She worked as a staff writer for the magazine The Reporter from 1952 to 1963. Her writing there included articles, essays and reviews. She even wrote satirical verse, under the pen name ''Sec.''
She did much writing over the years for The New Yorker and for other publications ranging from McCalls to The New York Times, and was the author of several books.
 
More Than Outspoken
Ms. Mannes's 1958 collection of essays - largely from The Reporter -was contentiously titled ''More in Anger: Some Opinions, Uncensored and Unteleprompted.'' William du Bois, reviewing it in The New York Times, said that ''to call these pages outspoken is putting things mildly.'' The book, he continued, ''is guaranteed to shock you into awareness of its author as an original thinker.''
''Whether she is writing of the Rheingold girls or the boys in Washington,'' he observed, ''of social-minded mothers and their child victims, of the world of Miltown or the think-room at the United Nations, of the 'half-people' of our automotive age or the heirs of Senator McCarthy, she hews to the line and lets the quips fall where they may.''
For some years, Ms. Mannes was seen often on television, but she was a champion of the written word. In a speech to a gathering of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, she once said, ''No picture on a screen can ever be an adequate substitute for the reporting of a trained observer and an honest writer.''
Marya Mannes was born on Nov. 14, 1904, on the West Side of Manhattan. Her parents were David Mannes and the former Clara Damrosch - founders of the Mannes College of Music.
She grew up in Manhattan, graduating in 1923 from Miss Veltin's School for Girls. Instead of going to college, she went to Europe for two years and studied sculpture, mainly in England.
She went on to do varied writing - including a play, ''Cafe,'' that failed on Broadway in 1930. From 1933 to 1936, she worked for Vogue magazine, as an associate editor and later as feature editor.
 
Wartime Analyst
During part of World War II, she was an intelligence analyst with the Office of Strategic Services. After the war, she did much free-lance writing in addition to her work on The Reporter. Over the decades, 329 articles with her byline were published - 275 of them in The Reporter.
In later years she appeared on various televison programs. The Times television critic Jack Gould wrote in 1961 that ''her sustained acerbity is one of the attractive adornments of contemporary criticism.'' She also lectured across the country.
Her books include ''Out of My Time'' (1971), an autobiography; ''Message From a Stranger'' (1948) and ''They'' (1968) - both novels - and ''Subverse: Rhymes for Our Times'' (1959), a volume of satiric verse.
She was also a co-author of ''Uncoupling: The Art of Coming Apart'' (1972), a book about divorce. ''The Best of Marya Mannes,'' an anthology of her writing edited by Robert Mottley, was published in 1986.
In 1958 she won the George Polk Memorial Award, one of many honors given for her writing.
Her three marriages - to the set designer Jo Melziener, to Richard A. Blow, an artist, and to Christopher Clarkson, a representative of British companies - ended in divorce.
She is survived by her son, who lives in San Francisco.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Marya Mannes (Jill Krementz, 1971)

TYPE: OBITUARY

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The New York Times

September 16, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Campus Life: Oberlin;
Six Housemates Bridge the Gap Of Generations

SECTION: Section 1; Part 2, Page 54, Column 3; Style Desk

LENGTH: 685 words

DATELINE: OBERLIN, Ohio

The day may come when all the residents of the Jeanne Beattie Butts House will get together to play a board game on the living-room floor. But the two elderly residents, ages 77 and 79, three college students and one recent graduate who are sharing a ground-breaking intergenerational house at Oberlin College have not come that far yet.
''Our interaction is kind of coming in, watching the news together and chatting on the way in and out,'' said Mary Thornton, a junior religion major from Fort Smith, Ark. ''We haven't done a lot of cute things, like play Scrabble in the evenings, because there really aren't enough people yet.'' 
The house, owned by Oberlin College, is the first in the nation to provide both intergenerational living and a live-in assistant for the elderly residents, said Helene Stone, the associate director of Neighborhood House, a local social-service agency. The other young people, who moved in three weeks ago, are John Brooking from Massena, N.Y., who graduated in May; Julia Walbridge, a senior neuroscience major from Chicago, and Lars Negstad, a senior history major from Minneapolis.
The idea for the house came from Jeanne Beattie Butts, an Oberlin social worker, who said she began planning the house nine years ago after having visited with a dynamic older woman who was about to be moved to a nursing home. ''I wanted to create a place for people who could not live alone,'' Mrs. Butts said, ''but didn't need a nursing home.''
 
Renovating a Victorian House
The college bought an old Victorian house on 90 East College Street and a run-down house on the adjoining property. After having the dilapidated house torn down, and with money from the Ohio Department of Aging, the college built a ground-floor addition to the Victorian house, making it accessible to the handicapped. Grants from private corporations and foundations also helped.
The elderly residents pay $600 a month, the students, $220. The students pay their rent to the college, which will turn ownership of the house over to Neighborhood House in 25 years. By that time the students' collective rent will have paid for the mortgage on the house, said David Clark, Oberlin's senior trust officer.
Mrs. Butts chose the students who live there. ''I picked people who love seniors, who will socialize with them naturally,'' she said. ''They don't eat with them, they don't sleep with them, they just keep them company.''
Ms. Stone said the house's small number of residents is an asset. ''I think it's a good thing that we're starting out small, so the residents can have natural interactions,'' Ms. Stone said. To fill the house, intended for six students and nine elderly people, advertisements have been placed in a local newspaper.
 
Consultant in Geriatrics
Neighborhood House, which is responsible for the home's operation, will help ease students into a life with people who are older and sometimes troubled with health problems. A nurse specializing in geriatrics will regularly consult with the students, Mrs. Stone said.
The students said they moved in because they felt isolated living only with 18- to 22-year-olds.
Mr. Brooking, who was a computer-science major, said: ''I wanted to feel like I was doing something for the aging rather than ignoring the problem. If I can't help my grandparents readily, at least I can live here and do something for the residents.''
Dorothy Dorsey, 77, from Cincinnati, who suffers from Parkinson's disease, is living in the house. Her daughter, Barbara Cummings, lives nearby.
The other elderly resident, Viola Busch, 79, from Lorain, Ohio, said she was attracted to the home partly for its comfort and convenience. ''It's like a family affair,'' Mrs. Busch said. Her daughter, Sally Zadansky, lives in Oberlin.
Living with college students was an attraction, Mrs. Busch said, ''because it keeps you up with the things going on today.'' The campus community was also a magnet, she said.
''There's a lot of things going on in the college,'' she said. ''It gives you a lot of opportunity to go to things that are reasonable or free.''

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Dorothy Dorsey, 77, listening as John Brooking, an Oberlin College student, performed during a gathering at the Jeanne Beattie Butts House, where they both live. The new intergenerational house, which is owned by the college, houses three college students, one recent graduate and two elderly residents. (Mark Lyons for The New York Times)

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The New York Times

September 16, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Review/Stage;
Skelton's 1-Man Band Of Comical Characters

BYLINE: By LAWRENCE VAN GELDER

SECTION: Section 1; Part 2, Page 64, Column 3; Cultural Desk

LENGTH: 519 words

A fellow named Lou went into a synagogue one day and asked the Lord to make him a lottery winner.
The next week, having failed to win, he was back - again beseeching the Lord to make him a lottery winner. The third week, he asked once more.  And finally he heard a voice. ''Lou,'' it said, ''Meet me halfway. Buy a ticket.'' Lou was onstage at Carnegie Hall on Wednesday night. So were assorted drunks, an American Indian, an old woman, several old men, a salad maker in a Greek restaurant, a little boy, a new father and a rustic named Clem Kadiddlehopper. The occasion, naturally, was a one-man show - starring Red Skelton. In 2 hours 15 minutes, Mr. Skelton, who is 77 years old, kept a near-capacity audience in near-constant laughter with jokes, anecdotes and character sketches on subjects that ranged from New York City and crime to Donald Trump, television evangelists, wives, old age and musings about the afterlife. 
''People in hell,'' Mr. Skelton wondered. ''Where do they tell people to go?''
On New York City: ''I never saw so much construction in my life. The state bird must be the crane. There's one in every vacant lot.'' Lawlessness: ''You think New York is bad? You ought to go to Detroit. You can go 10 blocks and never leave the scene of the crime.''
Drugs: ''How can a kid 10 years old find a dope pusher and the F.B.I. can't?''
Donald Trump and the beautiful view from his penthouse: ''On a clear day, he can see the poorhouse.''
Television evangelists: ''I bought Oral Roberts's Christmas album, but I couldn't play it. The hole healed up.''
Wives: ''Webster wouldn't have written his dictionary if it wasn't for his wife. She was always saying, 'What's that supposed to mean?' ''
Old age: '' 'For a guy your age,' '' Mr. Skelton said his doctor told him, '' 'you're sound as a dollar.' That scared the devil out of me.'' If there was a jarring note in the almost ceaseless merriment, it came almost at the end, when Mr. Skelton, turning serious, injected his own political opinion by terming ''idiots'' the Supreme Court justices who upheld the constitutional right to burn the flag and calling for members of the High Court to be elected rather than appointed. The suggestion was met by cheers and a couple of boos, but it was a moment that clashed with the mood of evening.
Mr. Skelton might have taken his cue from Clem Kadiddlehopper. ''I don't pick on politicians,'' Clem told the audience. ''They ain't done nothin'.''
Still, ''An Evening With Red Skelton,'' as the show was titled, was great good, clean fun. Mr. Skelton's performance - which was signed for the hearing-impaired - was backed by an orchestra conducted by Frank Leone.
Mr. Skelton began his career in 1923 and has worked in everything from tent shows and circuses to films, radio and television. The combination of talent and experience makes him a formidable comedian. Audiences like the one at Carnegie Hall, which gave him standing ovations at his entrance, during the show and at the finish, surely hope that Mr. Skelton will grow older. But they can scarcely hope that he can grow much better.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

TYPE: Review

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The New York Times

September 19, 1990, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Massachusetts to Lay Off Mental Health Workers

BYLINE: Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section A; Page 20, Column 1; National Desk

LENGTH: 466 words

DATELINE: BOSTON, Sept. 18

Because of Massachusetts' deepening fiscal crisis, 517 workers at schools for the mentally retarded are being laid off in an effort to cut $24 million from the state budget.
Those being laid off, who account for about 5 percent of the department's work force, are among the first casualties of the Legislature's recent 4 percent across-the-board budget cut. Another 4 percent reduction, announced earlier this month by Gov. Michael S. Dukakis, has not yet gone into effect. 
''We had already cut ourselves to the bone,'' said Commissioner Mary A. McCarthy of the State Department of Mental Retardation. ''To deal with this new cut we've had to do all kinds of drastic things.''
Last year's budget of $595 million was already down $20 million from 1988 levels, she said, adding, ''Further cuts will only mean devastation.''
 
Special Programs to Be Cut
The layoffs, which account for about $7 million of the $24 million in cuts now required, are intended to affect support and administrative staff members more heavily than those who provide services like teaching and therapy. But the Commissioner said that for the first time more than one-third of those laid off would be teachers and therapists, meaning that several special programs at the state's six schools would be eliminated and ''personal attention will be diminished.''
The state schools serve as full-time residences for about 2,700 people, most of them severely retarded. About 6,000 others are helped by people and businesses who work under contract with the state. Nearly 3,000 people are on waiting lists for these services, Ms. McCarthy said.
State spending on human services totaled $6 billion in the fiscal year 1990, almost half the state's budget.
Philip Johnston, Secretary of Human Services, said the recent budget cuts, which total about $185 million, are severely straining a department already in crisis. Although its caseload has increased sharply with the rise in homelessness and drug addiction, the budget for the Department of Human Services has not been significantly increased since 1988.
As a result, more than 2,500 human services workers have been laid off, Dr. Johnston said, adding that the current cuts will take an additional 1,500 to 2,000 of the department's 36,000 jobs.
''Words fail me at this point,'' said Dr. Johnston, who maintained that his cries for help had been drowned out in the clamor over the state's financial disarray. ''The words 'devastation' and 'destruction' have become meaningless.''
Officials said health care programs like Medicaid, which have previously been immune to the cuts, will be pressed to share the impact of the budget cuts. Otherwise, Dr. Johnston said, ''the mentally ill, the mentally retarded, the elderly and the homeless take it on the chin.''

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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The New York Times

September 19, 1990, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

COMPANY NEWS;
A New Business For Marriott Corp.

BYLINE: Reuters

SECTION: Section D; Page 5, Column 2; Financial Desk

LENGTH: 105 words

DATELINE: MIAMI, Sept. 18

The Marriott Corporation began work on a complex for the elderly in Florida in what an executive says is a new direction for the hotel company. Retirement housing ''will be a significant part of the Marriott Corporation in the next 10 years,'' said Brian Swinton, a vice president of the Bethesda, Md., company's Senior Living Services division.
''We'll be spending over a billion dollars'' on developing about 150 retirement complexes over the next five to seven years, Mr. Swinton said. The company has planned two prototype communities that it will build in Florida and adapt for metropolitan areas nationwide, he said.

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The New York Times

September 20, 1990, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

THE 1990 CAMPAIGN: Man in the News;
Outspoken Newcomer: Dr. John Robert Silber

BYLINE: By JAMES BARRON

SECTION: Section A; Page 16, Column 5; National Desk

LENGTH: 1153 words

John R. Silber is a lot of things. Reticent has never been one of them.
From his days as a junior professor at the University of Texas to the campaign trail in Massachusetts, he has not been afraid to say whatever was on his mind, even if that meant turning what were billed as friendly round-table sessions into take-no-prisoners confrontations and zinging everyone in sight with caustic, withering criticism. Over the years, his shoot-from-the-lip style came to be considered downright combative, not just argumentative or bombastic. 
Soon after he arrived at Boston University in 1970, he declared that the faculty was loaded with deadwood, ''very complacent, fat and sassy.'' A decade later, after threatening to go to the Supreme Court to deprive a faculty union of rights already recognized by the National Labor Relations Board, he called professors who joined the union's campus chapter ''lemmings'' and ''coffeehouse unionists.''
On the campaign trail this fall, his rhetoric was no less pointed. He called Massachusetts a ''welfare magnet'' and proposed cutting off benefits for unmarried mothers who have a second child while still on public aid. He questioned saving the lives of terminally ill elderly people, quoting Shakespeare and saying that ''when you've had a long life and you're ripe, then it's time to go.'' He said that the feminist Gloria Steinem, the black Muslim leader, Louis Farrakhan, and white supremacists are ''the kind of people I wouldn't appoint as judges.''
 
Outrageous, Some Say
He is outspoken - some say outrageous - and, on the surface, a man of contradictions: a Democrat who admits to having voted for Ronald Reagan and George Bush, a philosopher who has been compared to Sir Thomas More, George C. Wallace and the comedian Andrew Dice Clay, among others.
Dr. Silber said in 1987 that too many Democrats had become simply ''knee-jerk liberals, ideological purists, one-issue people. They'd rather be right than be President.'' He took issue with the Democrats on foreign policy, accusing them of moving too far away from Presidents Truman and Kennedy and their tradition of favoring a ''strong defense and keeping the Communists out of the Western Hemisphere.''
In his disputatious tenure as one of the highest-paid college presidents in the nation, earning almost $300,000 a year, Dr. Silber has become recognized by even his critics as an important national spokesman for higher education.
''Drug usage, crime and welfare all result primarily from a failure of the educational system,'' he said in 1987. To change things, Dr. Silber has proposed a national day-care program and another national Head Start program.
Critics and admirers say he is not easily labeled or reduced to sound bites. ''Silber is a complex man,'' said Peter Diamandopoulos, president of Adelphi University and a fellow philosopher, who has known Dr. Silber for more than 30 years. ''The simplifications tend to emphasize his idiosyncrasies as they're distorted and interpreted in sinister terms, which does less than justice to his seriousness.''
Much of what has been written about Dr. Silber focuses on his reputation as a kind of academic philosopher-king who drives his beliefs down people's throats. His strategy has always been to provoke and to challenge, and many view that as shoving his opinions down their throats. ''It depends on the people,'' said Dr. Diamandopoulos. ''Some people perceive the fervor with which Silber argues a point as designed to diminish or threaten them. If they're that squeamish, they should be smart enough not to argue with Silber.''
Even his friends say he sometimes sounds like the last angry man, as he caroms restlessly from one controversial remark to another.
''Everything you say about him is true,'' said Henry A. Kissinger, the former Secretary of State, who headed a 12-member commission appointed by President Reagan in 1983 to review United States policies on Central America and to which Dr. Silber was named. ''He was just obnoxious at the beginning. He fights no small battles, so everything turned into a bloody brawl, and I thought to myself, 'Am I going to kill him, am I going to resign, it cannot end well.' But then, I think largely due to the fact that I didn't get intimidated or outwardly outraged, he considered me nearly an equal, which is about as much as you can achieve.''
 
'An Intellectual Bully'
Dr. Silber's opponents accuse him of trying to tear if not destroy the fabric of academic life during 20 years as Boston University's seventh president. Howard Zinn, a recently retired professor who was one of Dr. Silber's sharpest critics, describes him as ''an intellectual bully, a person who destroyed civil liberties on the Boston University campus and created an atmosphere of fear among faculty and employees, basically by punishing people who disagreed with him.''
Born in San Antonio on Aug. 15, 1926, John Robert Silber was the son of a German-born architect who built churches across Texas and a tough-talking schoolteacher who had a Presbyterian Sunday school class in one of those churches. As an adult he discovered that his father's family was Jewish and that he had an aunt who had died in Auschwitz.
He was a small, intellectually adept child, who was, he has said, 5 years old when he realized that he had a deformed right arm. Schoolmates nicknamed him ''one-armed Pete'' and he became a target in fights. In the second grade, he was a subject of his mother's unrelentingly high expectations. She was the teacher - an experience both now say they regret.
He went on to become a champion debater at Trinity University in Austin. He enrolled at the Yale Divinity School, but changed career plans after a year and concentrated on philosophy, earning a master's degree in 1952 and a doctorate in 1956.
In 1957 he went back to Texas as an assistant professor at the University of Texas. He became a professor and then department chairman in 1962 and was named dean of the College of Arts and Sciences in 1967, winning a reputation as an outspoken liberal.
But in July 1970, the chairman of the Board of Regents, Frank C. Erwin, asked him to resign as dean. His supporters gathered 7,000 signatures on petitions demanding his reinstatement, but the university did not take him back.
His subsequent job search took him to Boston University, where he has been credited with upgrading academic standards and eliminating budget deficits. But his tenure has not been without rancor. In 1976, 10 deans demanded his resignation. The faculty senate supported the demand by a vote of 377 to 117, but the trustees voted unanimously for Dr. Silber, who stayed on.
Now, after 20 years under Dr. Silber, some faculty members complain that he has diminished their authority over everything, including selecting textbooks and choosing department heads, and, in the process, the quality of academic life.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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The New York Times

September 22, 1990, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

Your Money;
Shielding Children After Remarriage

BYLINE: By Jan M. Rosen

SECTION: Section 1; Page 32, Column 1; Financial Desk

LENGTH: 789 words

When people who have children get a divorce and remarry, special care needs to be taken in financial and estate planning - particularly if the new spouse also has children from a previous marriage.
''You've got his, hers and ours,'' said Herbert Paul, who as senior tax partner of Mahoney Cohen Paul & Company in New York, often counsels people on estate planning. ''The original children often tend to get short-changed.''
Some men feel resentful about their divorces and any court-ordered payments for alimony or child support, he said. Consequently, ''the former family may not have all the luxuries he's bestowing on the new family,'' nor will they be treated equally in the will, he added. 
Following conventional estate planning rules, husbands and wives generally leave the bulk of their estates to each other, and if they die without a will, state laws that favor spouses come into play.
There are common sense reasons for this. When children are young, the surviving spouse will be responsible for the family, and when children are grown and presumably self-sufficient the surviving spouse may need assets for retirement. And there are important tax reasons to leave the bulk to a spouse on estates of more than $600,000 because there are no estate taxes on bequests to a surviving spouse. Otherwise on large estates, taxes can be as high as 55 percent.
But in the case of second or third marriages, leaving everything to the spouse can leave children from the first marriage out in the cold.
Tamara Telesko, vice president of the Chase Manhattan Bank and a lawyer who advises the bank's private banking customers on personal finances, said such problems sometimes occurred when older men remarried, choosing women in the same age range as their children.
The young wife is likely to survive the husband, inherit everything and remarry, perhaps having another family she will favor in her will.
This can lead to a particularly nettlesome situation if there is a family business and the adult children find they are working for the new, young wife who is not involved in it. One possible solution would be to purchase insurance to provide for the wife and to give control of the business to the children who are working in it.
A key way to avoid problems, Ms. Telesko said, is through trusts, making sure everyone has been provided for. Using a QTIP trust, which stands for qualified terminable interest property, one spouse can give the other all income from the property for life and direct that the property pass to the children upon the spouse's death.
This makes sure that the property goes to his children, she said, instead of to her family by a subsequent marriage. No estate taxes are due on the property in a QTIP trust until the second spouse dies.
In some instances, Mr. Paul said, there may be reason not to treat children equally. For example, if some are grown and self-sufficient but another is still in school, or if one is in a remunerative position but another is in an idealistic but low-paying job, or if one has special medical needs.
In those cases, he advised writing in the will, ''I love all my children equally, but'' and explaining the reasons for favoring one financially. The mention of love and the explanation can go a long way to overcome injured feelings, he said. So can a frank family discussion of estate plans in advance.
Gerald Morlitz, a lawyer with the Cowan Financial Group in New York and an expert on estate planning, recommended that prenuptial agreements be used whenever divorced people with children remarry, particularly when there is some degree of wealth. ''The sad fact is, few do it,'' he said.
Many do not even think about adopting their new spouse's children and naming new guardians for their children in their wills, he added. They just refer to ''my children,'' without legally adopting them. ''Then if the wife predeceases the husband, guardianship goes to the natural father, and the family is broken,'' he said.
Or bitterness may develop because family members have made different assumptions about how the estate will be divided but have never discussed them.
''There is no hostility like family hostility,'' Mr. Morlitz said. ''It really gets bitter.'' The best way to avoid family problems over money is ''full disclosure in advance,'' he said.
Family members should sit down together and think through everyone's needs, and think generally of how they are to be met in the family's financial and estate plans, possibly with professional advice. Then they should see a lawyer who specializes in trusts and estates to write a will that would not be subject to challenge under state law and set up any trusts needed to carry out the estate plan.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: DRAWING

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The New York Times

September 24, 1990, Monday, Late Edition - Final

Chronicle

BYLINE: By SUSAN HELLER ANDERSON

SECTION: Section B; Page 9, Column 1; Style Desk

LENGTH: 207 words

CLAUDE POMPIDOU and 80 friends flew into New York on Friday for the weekend. The widow of a former French president, Mrs. Pompidou was beating the drums for her foundation, which aids elderly and disabled people in France. 
She started the foundation, Fondation Claude Pompidou, 20 years ago with no money and 10 volunteers, her friends. ''I took the volunteer idea from New York,'' Mrs. Pompidou recalled, ''but it's a very un-French concept.'' While her husband, Georges Pompidou, was president from 1969 to 1974, she spread the word in interviews, and after he died in 1974, she worked on it full time.
The foundation now has 1,500 volunteers and an annual budget of $40 million. It manages social clubs and homes for the elderly, helps build centers for the disabled and provides volunteers to hospitals and to parents of disabled children. It also gives scholarships for medical research in geriatrics and perinatal development.
The 80 friends with Mrs. Pompidou paid $6,000 each for the weekend, which included a reception given by BENOIT d'ABOVILLE, the Consul General in New York, a dinner given by BERNARD ARNAULT, chairman of LVMH, the fashion and spirits company, and a dinner aboard the new ocean liner, the Crown Princess.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Claude Pompidou

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The New York Times

September 25, 1990, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

Review/Television;
When Kennedy and Nixon Faced a Camera

BYLINE: By WALTER GOODMAN

SECTION: Section C; Page 18, Column 1; Cultural Desk

LENGTH: 694 words

Did Richard M. Nixon come off as badly against John F. Kennedy as memory insists in their famous 1960 Presidential television debate? Judge for yourself tomorrow night at 8, when the Arts & Entertainment cable network carries portions of the encounter in ''As It Happened: The Great Debate 1960'' as part of its series ''Campaign '60.'' The series includes, at 8 tonight, David L. Wolper's 1963 documentary, ''The Making of the President 1960,'' based on Theodore H. White's book, and concludes Thursday and Friday with that year's Election Night coverage.
From the beginning, the tube has played favorites. There is no justice to it. Because Mr. Kennedy glowed in their first debate and Mr. Nixon perspired may have been a reason to use the Democrat's brand of face powder, but to choose a President? Yet who not could help being struck by the difference? 
Both men were trying to replace a negative image, but their approaches were a contrastof styles. Facing a decade of charges that the Democrats were soft on Communism, Kennedy plunged ahead in his opening statement, which was supposed to be about domestic issues, with a call for a more powerful America in ''our struggle with Mr. Khrushchev for survival.'' He was all energy thereafter, lunging at questions before they were quite out of the mouths of the network correspondents. He showed an instinctive grasp of the camera's love of fast action.
Mr. Nixon, evidently out to revise his reputation as a rough campaigner, was polite to the point of paralysis. Like a bare-knuckled slugger trying to box, he let himself be smacked around the ring: ''I agree with Senator Kennedy's appraisal in general in this respect.'' The most startling moment of the evening came when he expressed support for fairness in dealing with the threat of subversion. Mr. Nixon flat-footedly assumed that he was in a conventional debate, while Mr. Kennedy was giving a solo television performance.
In a portent of Presidential debates to come, this wasn't much of one. Substantive differences were mentioned almost as asides: Mr. Kennedy called for a medical program for the elderly under Social Security and an increased minimum wage; Mr. Nixon, less specific and always on the defensive, came out against big Government.
Their bromides could have been written by the same drudge. ''I think it's time America started moving again,'' said Mr. Kennedy.
Mr. Nixon offered, ''When you're in a race, the only way to stay ahead is to move ahead.''
The unoriginal words quickly slipped away; the differences of appearance and address stayed. Mr. Kennedy delivered his lines crisply, while Mr. Nixon occasionally stumbled (''During that period until we get rid of the farmer. . . . uh, the surpluses. . . .''), licked his lips, gave peculiar little smiles.
Beginning a pattern that continues to deaden Presidential debates, the questions from four network reporters elicited little beyond canned expositions in sometimes painful locutions. Mr. Nixon, the worse offender, announced, ''I costed out the costs of the Democratic platform.''
The program tomorrow, interesting as history, also directs one's attention two years into the future, when two other candidates will be going at each other on television. Political commercials on television have become more revolting since 1960, and for all the talk about change it is unlikely, given the lessons of Mr. Bush's success in 1988 and the quality of this year's state races, that the level will rise in 1992.
But perhaps by the next Presidential campaign, the rules for the debates will be changed, despite efforts by both parties to protect their standard-bearers. Perhaps a single tough interviewer will be substituted for the clumsy panels, prepared statements will be eliminated and questions from both reporter and opponent will be pursued until viewers get answers or at least can recognize that the questions are being evaded.
Maybe, after 30 years of ducking and dodging, the debates will be arranged to serve the nation instead of the performers.
 
As It Happened
 
The Great Debate 1960 John Chancellor, host. At 8 tomorrow night on Arts & Entertainment.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Excerpts from the 1960 debate of John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon are to be televised tomorrow night. (George Tames/The New York Times)

TYPE: Review

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The New York Times

September 26, 1990 Wednesday  
Late Edition - Final

Women on the Subject of Menopause

BYLINE: By CARYN JAMES

SECTION: Section C; Column 1; Cultural Desk; Pg. 9

LENGTH: 490 words

There is no self-pity, no wailing over lost youth among the real and fictional women who tackle the usually veiled subject of menopause in Yvonne Rainer's ''Privilege.'' Shrewd, self-accepting and lusty even as they talk about hot flashes, these women are the best news about the film. The worst is that anyone expecting a lucid, informative take on the issue has to wait for another movie. 
 ''Privilege'' is not a documentary but an art film, and its diffuse artistry - a mix of interviews, dramatized stories, texts that appear on a computer screen and old film clips of doctors giving advice - dulls the edge of its provocative themes.
  Ms. Rainer, the choreographer and film maker, does not use this once-iconoclastic method effectively in ''Privilege,'' which desperately needs intellectual rigor. It is to be shown at the New York Film Festival at 6:15 tonight.
 Its narrative center is a film being made within the film, in which a black woman named Yvonne Washington interviews a white woman named Jenny, who recalls her days as a young woman in New York City. She calls this story a ''hot flashback,'' one of the film's clumsier attempts at humor, but a word that captures the stilted quality of her dramatized memoir.
 Jenny's one-time neighbors include a feuding Puerto Rican couple and a lesbian. Along with Ms. Washington, they suggest the connection between menopausal women and minority group members. In mainstream society, all are ''on the wrong side of privilege,'' the film announces. It's a long, flat road to this obvious conclusion.
 A fresher approach to the subject of women's identity is taken in ''Night Cries: A Rural Tragedy,'' the 17-minute film preceding ''Privilege.'' Written and directed by Tracey Moffatt, an Australian film maker, this unsentimental and self-consciously artificial work is set against the super-real painted backdrop of a flat blue sky.
 A belligerent middle-aged aboriginal woman cares for an elderly white woman, whom we discover to be her foster mother. At first, mother-daughter seems too strong a way to describe this painful attachment, but the film undermines any easy assumptions or conclusions.
 There is no dialogue, only sound effects and a heavily ironic song about the comfort of telephoning Jesus. ''Night Cries'' manages to be formally innovative and thought-provoking at once.

Privilege
Directed, written and edited by Yvonne Rainer; director of photography, Mark Daniels; a Zeitgeist Films Ltd. Release. At 6:15 tonight at Alice Tully Hall, as part of the 28th New York Film Festival. Running time: 103 minutes. This film has no rating.

Jenny . . . . . Alice Spivak
Yvonne Washington . . . . . Novella Nelson
Brenda . . . . . Blaire Baron
Carlos . . . . . Rico Elias
Digna . . . . . Gabriella Farrar
Stew . . . . . Tyrone Wilson
Robert . . . . . Dan Berkey

Night Cries A Rural Tragedy
Directed by Tracey Moffatt; a Women Make Movies Release. Running time: 17 minutes. This film has no rating.

URL: http://www.nytimes.com

LOAD-DATE: February 16, 2004

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

DOCUMENT-TYPE: Review

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper


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The New York Times

September 27, 1990, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

Study Finds Calcium Helpful to Older Women

BYLINE: AP

SECTION: Section A; Page 15, Column 1; National Desk

LENGTH: 422 words

DATELINE: BOSTON, Sept. 26

Women over the age of 55 can keep their bones strong and probably prevent fractures by consuming every day the amount of calcium contained in three glasses of milk, a study has found.
''Evidence is mounting that calcium matters,'' said Dr. Bess Dawson-Hughes, director of the study. ''Here is the first real proof that it makes a difference in older women.'' 
The study found that women past menopause who increased their calcium intake to the recommended daily allowance of 800 milligrams completely stopped the otherwise slow, steady erosion of bone in their hips, wrists and spines. Older women typically consume half or less of the recommended amount of calcium.
A loss of bone density, or osteoporosis, is a common crippling affliction of growing old. It affects an estimated 15 million to 20 million Americans and primarily strikes women after menopause, when their bodies make less of the hormone estrogen.
Some dietitians have doubted that the consumption of calcium, while crucial for the young, helps older women.
Dr. Dawson-Hughes and her colleagues conducted the study at the Federal Department of Agriculture's Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University. The results are being published Thursday in The New England Journal of Medicine.
Women often lose bone rapidly after menopause, typically around the age of 50. The latest study found that adding calcium does nothing to prevent bone loss in the first five years after menopause. But by about age 55, enough calcium in the diet can stop the erosion completely, the study said.
Foods rich in calcium include milk, dark green vegetables and bony fish like sardines.
The study involved 301 women with low calcium intake. Doctors tested 500-milligram daily doses of two forms of calcium: calcium carbonate, the type usually sold in calcium supplements, and calcium citrate malate.
Calcium citrate malate worked better, stopping loss of bone in the spine, wrist and hip. Doctors said this form of calcium is absorbed more readily, although larger doses of calcium carbonate could achieve the same effect.
Calcium citrate malate is commercially available only in Citrus Hill Plus Calcium brand of grapefruit and orange juice. Procter & Gamble, which makes the juices, co-sponsored the study with the Agriculture Department.
The Government's recommended daily allowance for calcium is 800 milligrams a day for children up to age 11 and adults over 25. It is 1,200 milligrams for those between 11 and 24 and for pregnant and nursing women.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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The New York Times

September 28, 1990, Friday, Late Edition - Final

Social Security: A Tinderbox Both Parties Handle Gingerly

BYLINE: By MICHAEL ORESKES, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section A; Page 15, Column 1; National Desk

LENGTH: 667 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Sept. 27

There are few subjects more perilous for politicians, particularly in an election year, than the suggestion that they might be tampering with Social Security.
That is the reality that budget negotiators were dealing with as they gingerly searched for budget savings today in this most sacred of all American benefit programs.
''We've seen that in the past to be a very explosive subject,'' said Gov. Richard F. Celeste of Ohio, chairman of the Democratic Governors' Conference.
''We've been up and down that hill many times,'' said Representative Bill Archer of Texas, the ranking Republican on the Ways and Means Committee. ''There's a concern about doing anything to the elderly.'' 
In the course of the 1980's the issue was highly partisan as well. In both 1982 and 1986 the Democrats depicted the Republicans as a threat to Social Security and made big gains in the elections.
 
Cycle of Negative Campaigns
Indeed, Republicans often cite the 1982 campaigns Democrats ran against Republicans on Social Security as the start of the cycle of negative campaigning that came to dominate politics in the decade.
''The Republicans feel as burned on this issue as the Democrats feel burned on the tax issue,'' said Anita Dunn, communications director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. In a political sense, for the Democrats to agree to changes in Social Security, and thus weaken one of their best issues, is the rough equivalent of President Bush's willingness to abandon his no-new-taxes pledge.
With 40 days until the midterm elections, there are few members of Congress who would voluntarily want to go to their districts to explain any curtailment of Social Security benefits.
America's older citizens are among the nation's most potent constituencies. They vote at higher rates than most other Americans. In addition, their organizations, lead by the American Association of Retired Persons, swing great weight on Capitol Hill.
At least 39 million Americans receive regular benefit checks from Social Security, and millions more have parents or grandparents who receive benefits and plan to receive benefits themselves some day.
The subject is so sensitive that many Democrats rebuffed the suggestion of cutting the payroll tax imposed to pay Social Security because pollsters told them that it made many Americans nervous that the tax cut might endanger their Social Security payments.
 
Selecting an Issue
Tony Coelho, a former Representative from California, was a leading architect of the Democratic strategy to invoke Social Security as an issue.
''In 1982 we were looking for an issue to run the campaigns to try to offset Reagan,'' he said, ''and we decided to take on the issue of Social Security.''
Democratic candidates tried to tie Republicans wherever they could to a budget plan, offered in 1981 by David A. Stockman, a budget director under President Ronald Reagan, that would have cut Social Security.
That issue, combined with a recession that developed in the final weeks of the campaign, led the Democrats to a gain of 26 seats in the House.
But there was a downside, Mr. Coelho said. ''It became a motherhood issue much stronger than we ever expected,'' he said. ''You couldn't even tinker with the system when you needed to.''
On Capitol Hill there is a growing anger toward the elderly. Last year, some older people staged an uprising against a program to provide insurance against the soaring costs of catastrophic illnesses. They were happy to receive benefits, but many objected to premiums. In Chicago, some threw themselves in front of the car carrying Representative Dan Rostenkowsi, chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. The program was repealed.
Representative Leon E. Panetta, chairman of the House Budget Committee, said the debacle of the catastrophic health care program was a warning of the storm that would greet any changes in Social Security. ''Whatever happened on catastrophic,'' he said, ''multiply that by two.''

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The New York Times

September 30, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

BUSH DROPS FIGHT FOR A LOWER TAX ON CAPITAL GAINS

BYLINE: By DAVID E. ROSENBAUM, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section 1; Part 1, Page 1, Column 6; National Desk

LENGTH: 1255 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Sept. 29

The White House today dropped its insistence on a tax break for capital gains, opening the way for a compromise with Congress on reducing the Federal budget deficit.
Word of the shift came from people with direct knowledge of the budget talks. With their deadline close at hand, Congressional leaders and White House officials met into the night to lock up the final elements of a deal that would cut the deficit by $50 billion in the new fiscal year and $500 billion over the next five years.
Among the measures in the package are a higher gasoline tax and deep spending cuts in Medicare and other domestic programs. Congress has scheduled an unusual Sunday session so that action can be taken before the fiscal year begins on Monday. 
The capital gains concession is bound to be seen as a political defeat for President Bush, but officials for both parties said the White House preferred no capital gains break to a higher income tax on the wealthy, which Democrats had insisted on as a tradeoff. With the President yielding on capital gains, Democrats were ready to drop their call for higher income taxes on the rich. As of this afternoon, it appeared the final deal would not change tax rates.
 
Recalling Campaign Pledge
The capital gains issue had deadlocked the talks for months. President Bush maintained that lower rates or some other favorable treatment be given for capital gains, which are profits on the sale of investments. He said that was essential to promoting savings and investment and to stimulate the flagging economy. Democrats argued that better treatment for capital gains would be a windfall for the wealthy.
On Friday, Administration officials agreed in negotiations to accept higher tax rates. But in the end, a Republican said, Mr. Bush determined that higher rates would violate the ''no new taxes'' pledge that was the staple of his election campaign.
As for the capital gains break, another Republican official said, ''We just couldn't get it.''
As a concession to the Administration, Democrats agreed today to new tax breaks for science laboratories, investments in small businesses and businesses formed in poor neighborhoods. These steps will allow Republicans to assert that the budget deal is ''growth oriented.''
The loss of the capital gains feature is bound to disappoint Congressional Republicans, even though they felt less strongly about it than did Mr. Bush.
 
Where Spending Will Drop
Even before this step was taken, some Republicans were threatening to vote against any deal that contained higher taxes. The measure under consideration would raise the gasoline tax by 8 cents a gallon to 17 cents, impose a tax on other kinds of fuel and apply higher taxes to alcoholic beverages and some luxury items.
Other deficit-reduction measures tentatively agreed to by the negotiators include an increase in insurance premiums paid by the elderly for doctors' care under Medicare, an increase in the deductible for treatment paid for by Medicare, a five-year limit on all domestic spending to the amount needed to keep pace with inflation and a reduction in military spending.
The purpose is to lower the deficit in the $1.3 trillion Federal budget from the current $250 billion to a level in the low double digits.
The Administration officials and lawmakers have been racing the clock to reach a compromise before across-the-board spending reductions required by the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings budget-balancing law go into effect automatically on Monday, the beginning of the new fiscal year.
President Bush has promised to veto any measure that extends the deadline unless the outline of an accord is drawn.
 
Devastating Effects Feared
Without new appropriations, the Government would be forced to close down Monday except for a few essential employees like prison guards.
Government workers have been ordered to report to work as usual Monday morning but have been told they will be sent home if the politicians remain deadlocked.
Even if Congress approves an accord in its Sunday session, it is likely to be in the form of a continuing resolution meant to keep the Government functioning on a temporary basis. Lawmakers say it would take days and possibly weeks to enact the tax and spending bills to implement an accord.
The budget law requires that the deficit be reduced to $64 billion in the new fiscal year. Economists and politicians agree that the steps needed to reach a target that low would be devastating to the economy. So part of the deal will be to revise the annual deficit levels over the next five years.
The White House chief of staff, John H. Sununu, and the Senate Republican leader, Bob Dole of Kansas, canceled plans to join President Bush in New York tonight for a reception for a United Nations conference on children.
 
Social Security Discussed
The White House said the President was prepared to return to Washington immediately if he were needed to ratify a budget agreement.
While the top White House officials and Congressional leaders met in the office of Speaker Thomas S. Foley on the second floor of the Capitol, other officials and lawmakers met elsewhere over the other main area of dispute, Social Security.
Both sides have tentatively agreed that Social Security beneficiaries should bear some of the cost of deficit reduction, but they have disagreed over how.
Democrats want to tax a higher portion of the benefits of retirees with moderate and high incomes. Republicans want to delay cost-of-living increases for all Social Security recipients.
 
A Different Perspective
Favorable tax treatment of capital gains has always been more important to President Bush than to Republican leaders in Congress.
Senator Dole and Representative Robert H. Michel of Illinois, the House minority leader, had suggested that the White House back off its position on the issue. So had Senator Pete V. Domenici of New Mexico, the top Republican on the Budget Committee.
But the President and his chief negotiators, Mr. Sununu, Treasury Secretary Nicholas F. Brady and Richard G. Darman, the budget director, held fast. Mr. Bush had campaigned for a lower capital gains tax as well as for no tax increases.
Apparently, the White House decided that the capital gains pledge was expendable, while opposing higher tax rates was the last vestige of the President's promise not to raise taxes.
Until 1986, capital gains were taxed at a lower rate than other income. Republicans cite studies showing that a reduction in the capital gains tax is an incentive for investment and entrepreneurship.
The monumental Tax Reform Act of 1986 was based on a compact between the two parties. The top overall tax rate to 28 percent from 50 percent. In return, capital gains were taxed at the same rate as wages and salaries.
 
Preparing for Worst
While lawmakers and Administration officials were working in the Capitol, the managers of Federal departments and agencies were trying to determine what to do if the political deadlock could not be broken. They face at least two alternative circumstances, agency officials said, and they have no way to predict which will occur.
One is that the Government is left entirely without a budget when the fiscal year begins Monday, if Congress fails to pass one or President Bush rejects it. In the other, Congress would pass a temporary budget at the last minute, but with a deficit so big that it would trigger steep automatic spending cuts throughout nearly every agency of government.

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October 2, 1990, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

THE BUDGET AGREEMENT: The Elderly;
Cost Increases for Medicare Recipients Stir Protests

BYLINE: By ROBERT PEAR, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section A; Page 24, Column 4; National Desk

LENGTH: 956 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Oct. 1

A bipartisan budget agreement that would significantly increase costs for 33 million Medicare beneficiaries stirred angry protests today from elderly people, who threatened to take political vengeance against members of Congress who support the measure.
The first stirrings of anger from the elderly were felt on Capitol Hill, but it was unclear whether lobbyists for the elderly would succeed in blocking the changes, which were agreed on Sunday by the Bush Administration and Congressional leaders.
Members of Congress who specialize in health policy, including Representatives Pete Stark and Henry A. Waxman, both California Democrats, criticized the Medicare provisions of the agreement, saying they imposed a disproportionate burden on the elderly.
''To put such a burden on the backs of the elderly, while the budget summit agreement lowers the burden on the rich, is obscene,'' said Mr. Stark, who is chairman of the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Health. Mr. Stark, one of the more liberal members of his party in Congress, said he would ask the Ways and Means Committee to approve an alternative that would increase the amount of income on which Medicare payroll taxes are collected beyond the level set by the budget negotiators. 
Mr. Stark, who has served in the House for 18 years, expressed irritation with the Speaker of the House, Thomas S. Foley, saying he had been too lenient in negotiating with the Administration.
''The Speaker is too willing to compromise just to keep peace,'' Mr. Stark asserted. ''That's not what the leader of the Democrats ought to be doing.''
 
'Disillusionment' With Speaker
He added, ''There's disillusionment with the Speaker among more than a few Democrats up here.''
Mr. Waxman, the chairman of the Health Subcommittee of the Energy and Commerce Committee, said in an interview that he would vote against the deficit-reduction package because ''the elderly take an enormous hit under this agreement.''
''The budget agreement would freeze public health programs at current levels,'' Mr. Waxman said. ''Unfortunately, infectious diseases will not be frozen at current levels. There is a measles epidemic in the United States. Tuberculosis is growing, and AIDS continues to increase, especially among those least able to pay for their own care.''
Representative Bill Gradison of Ohio, the ranking Republican on the Ways and Means Subcommittee on Health, said he could ''live with'' the changes envisioned in the deficit-reduction package. ''We didn't write this budget agreement, but we have to offer the House a means of implementing it, so the House can work its will,'' Mr. Gradison said. ''I haven't decided how I will vote on the overall package.''
Mr. Gradison said it was incorrect to suggest that Medicare would be cut as a result of the budget agreement. The program, which cost more than $100 billion in the fiscal year that just Sunday, would still grow at an annual rate of 11 percent in the next five years, he said. The agreement would make ''a modest cut in the rate of growth'' of 12.6 percent a year envisioned under current law, Mr. Gradison said.
Arthur S. Flemming, who served as Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare in the Eisenhower Administration and now leads a coalition of advocates for the elderly, said, ''If the budget summit agreement is put into effect, it's clear that Medicare beneficiaries would be paying far more out of their own pockets than has been the case up to the present.'' $60 Billion in Savings The agreement would save $60 billion in Medicare over the next five years. That represents nearly one-fifth of the $301 billion to be saved through cutbacks in Federal spending and half of the $119 billion to be saved in Federal benefit programs.
''That's an indefensible, inequitable situation,'' said Mr. Flemming, who is 85 years old. ''People at the grass roots are aroused and will express themselves in no uncertain terms between now and the elections in November.''
About half the $60 billion to be saved would come from restricting payments to doctors, hospitals and others who provide health care services.
Details of the budget agreement have not yet been worked out, but it would result in three other major changes in the Medicare program. The Medicare premium for insurance covering doctors' bills, now $343 a year, would rise to $651 in 1995 under the agreement. The Medicare deductible, which must be paid by beneficiaries before the Government starts to pay doctors' bills, would rise to $100 on Jan. 1, then to $125 in 1992 and $150 in later years. The deductible has been $75 a year since 1982. The budget agreement would also require Medicare beneficiaries to pay 20 percent of the cost of work done for them by medical laboratories. Under current law, Medicare now pays the entire cost of such work.
 
More Income Subject to Tax
In addition, the agreement includes a related provision that would increase the amount of wages subject to the Medicare payroll tax. Currently, employer and employee each pay 1.45 percent of the first $51,300 of a person's annual earnings. The agreement would increase wages subject to the tax to $73,000 a year, effective Jan. 1, 1991. The extra tax, which Mr. Stark said would generate $13 billion a year, is not counted as part of the savings from Medicare.
For most elderly people, Medicare premiums are automatically deducted from monthly Social Security checks. Generally, an increase in the premium would not mean a reduction of the amount of their Social Security check for recipients. The cost is less than that of an automatic cost-of-living adjustment that most recipients would receive, so beneficiaries would in effect receive a smaller adjustment.

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October 3, 1990, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Governing America by Cabal

SECTION: Section A; Page 32, Column 1; Editorial Desk

LENGTH: 471 words

Sixteen years ago, in an unusual stroke of good sense, Congress created an orderly Federal budget process. It was never perfect, but then came the mammoth deficits of the Reagan years, which killed it.
Instead of basing budgets on reasoned, public review of spending demands and potential revenue, critical decisions are now made on an all-or-nothing basis by Administration officials and a handful of Congressmen, negotiating in secret, not knowing themselves exactly what they've done. 
The process amounts to governing by cabal, and that's no way to run the U.S. Government.
Prior to the 1974 budget law, spending was handled by the appropriations committees and committees with jurisdiction over subsidy and benefit programs. Tax committees handled taxes and some entitlements. No one considered the total impact of what was being enacted piecemeal. There was no attempt to construct a budget that made economic sense.
The 1974 act created House and Senate budget committees to do that, starting with a plan shaped before the other committees barged ahead, each in its own area. The system worked creakily, and then broke down because of the preposterous assumption of Reaganomics - that it was possible to pump up defense spending, slash taxes and still balance the budget.
Congress bought Mr. Reagan's nostrums, because more spending and lower taxes were irresistible. The deficits that ensued were no surprise.
Not until 1985, after gorging itself on four deficits in the $200 billion zone, did Congress try to put a lock on the refrigerator door with the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings law. It was sold as a guaranteed formula for reducing the deficit so rigorously that the budget could be balanced by 1990.
The budgeting process has become so mired in dispute over what to cut that Congress couldn't complete its work by Oct. 1, when a new fiscal year began. Stalemate intensified because President Bush insisted on no new taxes and, indeed, on cutting the tax on capital gains. Members, meanwhile, balked at reducing popular spending.
The only way out of impasse, or deeper debt, was negotiation between the White House and Congressional leaders. And even now, the budget compromise is not a done deal; it must be approved, in a rush, by both houses before they adjourn for next month's election.
This all-or-nothing compromise is better than nothing. But it is far worse than sensible government. Neither the negotiators nor their Congressional colleagues can possibly know, for instance, how the proposed new investment incentives will play out. Without hearings or study, it's impossible to know just what the Medicare cutbacks will do to health care for the elderly.
This package will reduce the budget deficit. But the way it was achieved also reduces Americans' respect for the way their Government works.

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The New York Times

October 4, 1990, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

Lobbies Mobilize Force For Battle of the Decade

BYLINE: By PHILIP SHENON, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section D; Page 21, Column 5; National Desk

LENGTH: 814 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Oct. 3

The American Trucking Association has installed 10 extra phone lines and ordered its lobbyists to cancel autumn vacations. Families U.S.A., a lobbying group for the elderly, has contracted with a computerized mail service to reach 11,000 of its most aggressive supporters.
Geoffrey Peterson, a lobbyist for the liquor industry, is putting in 15-hour days this week as he roams the halls of Congress, buttonholing lawmakers in a campaign to block new excise taxes on distilled spirits. ''I would have to call this a frenzied atmosphere,'' he said. ''We have very little time.'' On Capitol Hill and across the nation, thousands of special-interest lobbyists are gearing up for what may emerge as the first great Washington lobbying battle of the 1990's. 
For some, it is a campaign to rewrite or scrap the sweeping agreement for $500 billion in deficit reduction over five years that was struck last weekend between President Bush and the Congressional leadership. For others, it is a fight to preserve whatever advantages they see in an agreement that is facing spirited opposition from rank-and-file lawmakers.
 
Moving Across the Nation
With an eye on next month's Congressional elections, some special-interest organizations are moving their lobbying efforts out of Washington, to appeal directly to voters who might be harmed or helped by the budget agreement, and who are willing to make their views known at the ballot box.
''We're trying to create a firestorm out there,'' said Ron Pollack of Families U.S.A., which is mounting a nationwide effort with other elderly-rights groups to frighten lawmakers into abandoning a cornerstone of the agreement: nearly $60 billion in cuts in Medicare spending.
Lobbyists say their best hope in altering the budget package rests with appeals to rank-and-file lawmakers who are frustrated because they played no role in hammering out last weekend's agreement.
Several of the most powerful lobbying organizations in Washington - including groups representing farmers, the trucking industry, liquor manufacturers and the elderly - have already lined up against major elements of the budget package.
But they face daunting, possibly insurmountable, odds.
 
Time for Lobbies Running Out
There is almost no time left to act. The House and the Senate are supposed to vote this week on a budget resolution incorporating the broad outlines of the agreement. By Oct. 19, lawmakers must hammer out a final agreement for Mr. Bush's signature.
Even more worrisome to some lobbyists, Congressional leaders have agreed to resist any effort to alter the bill through amendments.
''A classic lobbyist goes in and tries to get a comma changed or an amendment slipped in,'' said Jack DeVore, a spokesman for Senator Lloyd Bentsen, the Texas Democrat who is chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. ''But there are just not going to be an amendments on this thing. It's going to be structured so that it's a simple up-or-down vote.''
Many lobbyists insist that the Congressional leadership and the White House are bluffing, and that package is so flawed that it will never get through Congress without substantial change.
''We believe there will have to be modifications,'' said Mr. Pollack.
Families U.S.A. wants Congress to reject the part of the agreement that would force Medicare recipients to pay premiums if their incomes are 125 percent of the poverty line or higher. Mr. Pollack said the plan would be put too much of a burden on the poor, and that the limit must be no higher than 150 percent, or about $9,500, for an elderly man or woman living alone.
 
Fight Against Medicare Cuts
He said his group's efforts would include the usual lobbying methods of phone calls and meetings with legislators. But he added that the fight would also take place far from the capital.
Through its electronic mail system, Families U.S.A. has urged thousands of its members to begin a grassroots effort against lawmakers who indicate they might support the Medicare cuts and who are up for re-election next month.
''I wouldn't be surprised if we see some public demonstrations,'' Mr. Pollack said. ''If these lawmkers want to declare war on us, they shouldn't expect pacifism from us on Election Day.''
Jeff Napier, president of the National Marine Manufacturers Association, is battling a proposal to impose a 10 percent tax on yachts.
He said his organization, which represents 400 boatbuilders and hundreds of boating equipment makers, would target House members who were not able to defend the interests of their constituents in the budget talks.
''It was an extremely closed process, and a lot of members of Congress felt left out of the action,'' Mr. Napier said. ''In the House, all of them are up for re-election and they don't want to go back to the voters and look like they're not important. We hope they'll help us.''

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The New York Times

October 5, 1990, Friday, Late Edition - Final

THE BUDGET AGREEMENT;
CUOMO AND FLORIO SEE HIGHER COSTS

BYLINE: By SAM HOWE VERHOVEK, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section A; Page 25, Column 6; National Desk

LENGTH: 536 words

DATELINE: ALBANY, Oct. 4

Officials in New York and New Jersey today attacked the Federal plan to reduce the budget deficit on several points, including shifts in the cost of health care and housing to their states.
Gov. Mario M. Cuomo of New York and Gov. Jim Florio of New Jersey, both Democrats, offered harsh assessments of the plan and urged that their states' lawmakers in the Capitol work to change it.
''Washington's idea of belt tightening is tightening someone else's belt,'' Mr. Florio said at a news conference in Trenton. ''This is not cutting; this is shifting,'' he said. 
''Hundreds of millions of dollars over the next three or four years will be shifted to the state of New Jersey off of the Federal budget,'' Mr. Florio said.
 
'Handful' of Winners Seen
Mr. Cuomo said the plan would raise the cost of Medicaid, the health care program for the poor, in New York alone by $80 million a year.
''This proposal continues the unfairness and inefficiency of the policies of the last decade,'' Mr. Cuomo said in an analysis of the budget plan.''It makes things worse for the middle class, the elderly, the states and local governments. The winners are the handful of people who are richest in the country.''
The president of the Hospital Association of New York State, Daniel Sisto, said the proposed cuts in Medicare would translate to $238 million in losses for hospitals. ''These cuts will only exacerbate the already precarious position of our hospitals and make it harder for them to serve their communities,'' Mr. Sisto said . Connecticut's Governor, William A. O'Neill, a Democrat who is retiring this year, has been less strident in his remarks on the plan, and his spokesman, John Sandberg, said Mr. O'Neill had not taken a specific position on it. But the Governor ''feels that there are provisions in there anybody would oppose,'' like higher Federal gasoline and heating oil taxes, Mr. Sandberg said.
 
Victory on Deductions
Brad Johnson, who directs Governor Cuomo's office in Washington, said elimination of the Federal Mortgage Revenue Bond program, which uses tax-exempt financing to provide affordable housing for many families, would eliminate money for more than 6,000 mortgages annually in New York state. It has not been decided in the Legislature whether New York will assume the costs of the program.
The Governors' opposition came in spite of a victory they and other states won on the issue of deductibility of state and local income taxes on Federal returns.
Many Northeastern states, especially New York, had pressured members of Congress against limits on deductibility, and the treatment of deductions in the budget plan was seen by many state officials as less objectionable than some of earlier proposals.
Despite the opposition to some provisions of the budget agreement by various regional officials, some business leaders said that continued inaction the Federal deficit might be more onerous that implementing the plan worked out by Congressional leaders and White House officials and announced Sunday.
''It's a major step to reduce the deficit and that helps New York State more than anything,'' said Daniel B. Walsh, president of the Business Council of New York State.

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The New York Times

October 6, 1990, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

The Budget Agreement;
Budget Boomerang

BYLINE: By MICHAEL ORESKES, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section 1; Page 8, Column 1; National Desk

LENGTH: 1189 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Oct. 5

In provoking what he planned as a one-week confrontation with Congress over the 1991 budget, President Bush instead brought Washington to the brink of a major crisis of confidence about his leadership and the ability of the nation's Government to make a budget.
Many in Washington say the crisis, set off by the rejection in the House early today of a deficit-reduction package months in the making, is a watershed in the nation's budget ordeal.
Democrats and Republicans alike described it as the ultimate breakdown of an approach to budgeting that for nearly a decade has attempted to substitute bipartisan deal making between the President and a handful of Congressional leaders for any real national consensus on Government spending and taxes.
''What this vote proved was that closed-door sessions don't work,'' said Representative Bill Thomas, Republican of California. Mr. Thomas wanted lower taxes and more spending cuts. Many Democrats wanted higher taxes on the rich and fewer spending cuts. Almost nobody wanted to cut medical benefits for the elderly. 
 
A Backfire on Television
Pressured by defections in his own party, President Bush appealed to the public. But his televised address on Tuesday evening boomeranged, officials on Capitol Hill said. It not only failed to persuade the public that there was a real crisis, but it drew more attention to the budget deal and helped stir up opposition to it, provoking what one member called ''an avalanche'' of public protest.
Both Republicans and Democrats who walked away from the deal said they were outraged over how it had been presented to them as a fait accompli and agreed with Mr. Thomas that ''the whole process should begin and end with full public debate.''
House members were rejecting not just a proposed budget plan, but an entire insiders' approach to budget making that now seems fatally flawed.
''This is the beginning of the post-Reagan era,'' said Representative Thomas J. Downey, a Long Island Democrat and member of the Ways and Means Committee.
 
A Stockman Legacy
The flaws stem in large measure from the dismantling during the Reagan Presidency of the messy but fairly well-defined procedures set up by the Budget Act of 1974. Those procedures were designed to make Congressional budget making more coherent and more resistant to White House manipulation.
But the 1974 process was effectively overridden by the penchant for private deal making of Mr. Reagan's first budget director, David A. Stockman, and the current budget director, Richard G. Darman.
This deal making became the only way around the larger political stalemate. Mr. Reagan had driven tax increases out of the political dialogue, and Democrats had retaliated by driving cuts in domestic spending, particularly Social Security, off the table.
The only way to get budgets approved was to lump all the pain into one catch-all agreement whose defeat would be even worse than the unpleasantness of all of its parts. The failure of the budget deal today was the failure of this system.
 
Some Tactical Blunders
A set of tactical blunders by the White House contributed to the defeat. Mr. Darman and John H. Sununu, the White House chief of staff, ignored warnings that defense spending was too high and that Medicare cuts were too deep for the deal to pass.
But the key moment was President Bush's appeal to the nation. The speech was tepid and stunningly brief for a prime-time Presidential address. It did nothing to convince Americans, most of whom believe cutting waste is still the best way to bring down the deficit, that there was a true crisis that required sacrifice.
''The bottom line is that deficit reduction, while it is a top issue inside the Beltway and in select places like Wall Street, to the man and woman in the street means virtually nothing,'' said Representative Charles Schumer, Democrat of Brooklyn. ''So the positive good that would come out of deficit reduction is not felt by the public, while the pain is felt by them acutely.''
Mr. Bush, whose 1988 Presidential race did nothing to prepare Americans for austerity, tried to skirt this problem by gathering the bipartisan leadership of Congress around him in the Rose Garden last Sunday so they could share the political blame for a package none of them liked.
 
The Gingrich Factor
But almost immediately the White House was shaken by a revolt started by a member of the President's own party, Representative Newt Gingrich of Georgia, who drew his support from a small group of Republican backbenchers who thought Mr. Bush ought to be held to his no-taxes pledge. Mr. Gingrich's defection could not by itself have brought down the package, but it made it far easier for Democrats to walk away too.
In the short run, Mr. Gingrich appears to be the dragon slayer. But in the longer term he has big problems. Many of his Republican colleagues are furious with him for forcing a showdown with a Republican President. There is talk of a White House-assisted campaign to oust Mr. Gingrich from his post as minority whip.
Even the Democratic leaders who made the deal with the President expressed grave doubts about it. By this morning, House Speaker Thomas S. Foley was talking about taking back Congressional budget prerogatives from the White House and pressing ahead with a Democratic plan.
But the reason House Democrats did not do this from the beginning is that the Senate's 55 Democrats do not have the votes to pass a purely Democratic plan, because 60 votes are needed to stop a filibuster.
 
New Nexus of Power
Indeed, this crisis illustrates how the House, with its lopsided Democratic majority, has become the nexus of Democratic influence, a striking reversal from the days of Lyndon B. Johnson, Hubert H. Humphrey, Henry M. Jackson and other giants of the Senate.
It is not clear yet how much permanent change in Federal budget making will be wrought by this morning's debacle. Having said that approval of the original compromise was crucial to avoiding recession, the White House now said it had only lost ''a skirmish,'' and Mr. Bush sent his negotiators back to Capitol Hill.
The White House team badly misjudged the politics of Congress, if not of the country. In pressing ahead with a package they were warned might not pass, Mr. Darman and Mr. Sununu were apparently emboldened by the President's strong standing in the aftermath of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.
Mr. Bush's plan was that Congress would approve the package because the alternative was so much worse: across-the-board budget cuts mandated by the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings deficit-reduction law, or even a shutdown of the Government. Mr. Bush tightened the screw further by saying he would not approve temporary extensions of Government spending authority unless a deficit-cutting plan was in place.
''He backed us against a tight deadline, thinking Congress would roll over,'' said Representative David R. Obey, Democrat of Wisconsin.
At 1 o'clock this morning, the House of Representatives said no. ''It's the first time since I've been here that someone didn't blink,'' said Mr. Schumer.

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TYPE: NEWS ANALYSIS

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October 6, 1990, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

John Whittier, 71, Doctor and Expert On Geriatric Illness

SECTION: Section 1; Page 30, Column 3; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 245 words

Dr. John Rensselaer Whittier, an expert on Huntington's disease and illnesses affecting the elderly, died on Tuesday at Eastern Long Island Hospital in Greenport. He was 71 years old and lived in Orient, L.I.
He died of a heart attack, his wife, Margaret, said. 
A 1943 graduate of Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, Dr. Whittier did his internship at Gorgas Hospital in the Panama Canal Zone and served in the Army on a hospital ship as medical transport officer in both the European and Pacific theaters.
He did a residency in neurology at the Neurological Institute of New York and a psychiatry residency at the Veterans Administration Hospital in the Bronx. He was in private practice in New Jersey before being appointed principal research scientist in psychiatry at Creedmoor Institute of Psychobiological Studies at Creedmoor State Hospital in Queens.
Dr. Whittier was director of medical information for the Committee to Combat Huntington's Disease, a national organization seeking a cure for the brain disorder. After the institute was closed in 1976, he became director of a psychobiology unit at the Long Island Research Center in Stony Brook. and later was clinical psychiatrist for Catholic Charities Service in Rockville Centre, L.I.. He retired in 1979.
In addition to his wife, he is survived by two sons, Coty, of Washington, and Brian, of Hollywood; a stepbrother, Raymond, of Little Rock, Ark., and four grandchildren.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

TYPE: OBITUARY

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The New York Times

October 7, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

New Yorkers, etc.

BYLINE: By Enid Nemy

SECTION: Section 1; Part 2, Page 52, Column 1; Style Desk

LENGTH: 753 words

Maybe they're accidental and maybe they're preordained, but casual happenings do influence a good part of our lives.
If we hadn't dragged ourselves to that cocktail party, we wouldn't have met our spouses or significant others. If we had taken a taxi rather than a bus, we wouldn't have bumped into the old friend who knew of a job. And, parents aside, if we hadn't come into contact with certain people in our youth who influenced us (whether or not we realized it at the time), our lives would conceivably be very different today. 
For Sheldon Fireman, who grew up in the Bronx, that certain person was his Uncle Louis, who, he said, had one eye, one lung and didn't work for 30 years. What Uncle Louis did do was read a minimum of five books a week. One day, when he was about 50 years old, he declared he was fed up. Although he was supposed to have died years before, he said, he was tired of staying home, and he was going to get a job. He did, at 40 cents an hour.
''He ended up making more money and having more adventures than any of us,'' said Mr. Fireman, the president of a restaurant group that includes Trattoria Dell'Arte and Fiorello's. ''He taught me that there is no point feeling sorry for yourself, that you can do things if you want to, at any age.''
A very small thing made a lasting impression on Raymond Bickson: his grandfather taught him to ride a bicycle. ''He instilled confidence in me and the idea that you can do things if you think positively,'' said Mr. Bickson, the general manager of the Mark Hotel.
In Myrna Weiss's case, it was her grandmother, already an elderly woman when she was a child but someone who, Ms. Weiss said, ''commanded respect by her intelligence.''
''She was a feminist without realizing it,'' said Ms. Weiss, a partner in the Lared Group, a firm that negotiates joint ventures. ''She stressed both education and hard work. The message was that I could do most of the things I wanted if I got ahead academically.'' Bill Beutel never met the man who had the greatest influence on his life, but he did have a number of elevator rides with him: Edward R. Murrow.
Mr. Beutel was 11 years old and living in Cleveland when he began listening to Mr. Murrow's CBS broadcasts during World War II. ''I knew I had to do what he was doing,'' he said. ''When I was in law school, I wrote him a letter saying I very much wanted to be a radio journalist - there wasn't much television in those days. I had a letter back advising me to go to the Columbia School of Journalism.''
Mr. Beutel, the WABC-TV anchorman and reporter, didn't follow the advice, but he eventually got a job with CBS, where, occasionally, he would go up or down in the elevator with Mr. Murrow and gaze at him, tongue-tied. ''I wanted to sound like him, report like him and be like him - and I still try,'' Mr. Beutel said.
Luella Gear, a musical comedy actress and a dear friend of her mother, inspired Betty Furness to become an actress.
''She seemed so glamorous to me, both the fact that she was an actress and also as a person,'' Ms. Furness recalled. ''She was interesting, exciting and sophisticated, and my reaction was 'Wow!' '' So, at 16, Ms. Furness headed for Hollywood and became an actress, later going into television commercials and consumer reporting for NBC.
Barbara Sedlin, who owns the Ghiordian Knot, a gallery dealing in tapestries, textiles and antiques, gives full credit to two women who taught her in high school in Portland, Ore. And Dr. Robert Batscha, the president of the Museum of Broadcasting, remembers the first male teacher he had when he was 11 years old and living in Rochester.
''He was very important to me as a male role model,'' he said. ''Here was a Korean veteran, young, energetic and athletic, and yet he found so much value in learning.''
Liz Lee Fabiaschi was 2 years old when her family left California for Saudi Arabia, where her father was in the oil business. She lived there for almost 17 years, and the greatest influence in her life, she said, wasn't an individual but an industry: the movies. ''The movies were a couple of years old by the time we got them,'' she said, ''but they were so glamorous. I knew that if you came to New York, you had a fabulous career and lived happily ever after.''
She came to New York after Colorado State University and became a top model for such designers as Geoffrey Beene, Adolfo and Arnold Scaasi. She also became a wife and the mother of two, and, she figures, the movies didn't steer her wrong.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Drawing

Copyright 1990 The New York Times Company



331 of 468 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times

October 8, 1990, Monday, Late Edition - Final

THE BUDGET BATTLE;
New Proposal's Lack of Detail Leaves Room to Compromise

BYLINE: By SUSAN F. RASKY, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section A; Page 1, Column 4; National Desk

LENGTH: 1148 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Oct. 7

The bipartisan budget plan that Congressional leaders outlined to rank-and-file lawmakers today would mean less severe cuts in the Medicare program than the plan rejected by the House early Friday. It would also leave room for a deal in which taxes on capital gains would be cut in exchange for raising income tax rates for the wealthy.
While the proposal includes no specifics about the Medicare program, lawmakers said it would allow the Congressional tax committees to take $18 billion less out of the program in the next five years than the $60 billion that had been stipulated in the rejected budget plan.
Legislators said this would mean smaller increases in monthly Medicare premiums for the elderly, to $47 a month by 1995, rather than the $54.30 a month in 1995 that had been stipulated in last week's budget agreement. The premium level is now $28.60 a month. 
Lawmakers said cutting less from the program would also require a smaller increase in the amount that recipients must pay in doctor bills before their Medicare insurance takes over. The deductible, now $75, would rise to $100 in 1991 and remain there, rather than rising to $150 by 1995, as proposed in the original agreement.
The increase in Medicare payments was a major source of opposition from a number of Democrats to last week's compromise, and today's effort was intended to reassure lawmakers who were under pressure from groups representing elderly Americans. Democrats said the groups had endorsed today's plan.
Lawmakers were also told that under the framework of today's plan a 2-cent-a-gallon tax on home heating oil that had been stipulated in the original agreement was likely to be dropped because of strong opposition from members in Northeastern states. Another provision requiring a two-week waiting period for unemployment insurance benefits is also likely to be dropped.
But the most important feature of the new plan is an absence of specifics, and Congressional leaders hope this will speed its passage.
 
Bitter Fights Are Seen
While such an arrangement may get Congress over the short-term hurdle of agreeing to a general deficit reduction plan, it also means that many of the bitterest fights over taxes and spending will now simply be waged in the committees over the next two weeks before they are sent to Congress and then to President Bush for approval.
Like the plan rejected in the House on Friday, the new proposal would seek to cut $40 billion from the Federal deficit in the current fiscal year and $500 billion over five years. Democratic leaders in the House spent most of today in conferences with their Senate counterparts and moderate Senate Repubicans trying to refine the agreement so that it could be adopted in the House tonight.
That agreement will not spell out any of the details on Medicare, but those given to House Democrats were designed to make the proposed package more acceptable to liberals who dominate the House Democratic Caucus. Although Democrats had initially demanded that any budget agreement be endorsed by a majority of Republicans as well, they now appear to have to pass the agreement in the House largely with Democratic votes.
Bitterly divided House Republicans did not attend the budget conferences and the senior Republicans on the House and Senate budget committees late tonight refused to sign off on the new budget plan. But Senate Republican leaders said that they were prepared to move the process forward and that their refusal did not necessarily mean they would not support the plan in the Senate.
Mr. Foley and Administration officials also hinted strongly today that the Congressional tax committees would be looking at a deal that would give Republicans the cut in capital gains taxes that President Bush has long sought in exchange for an increase in the top tax rate for those with the highest incomes. Democrats have argued that a capital gains tax cut would primarily benefit high-income taxpayers and that an increase in income tax rates for taxpayers with incomes over $200,000 would be needed to keep the tax system fair.
Neither capital gains taxes nor income tax rates were altered in the original compromise. Under the new proposal, the tax-writing committees will be told to raise $134 billion in new revenue over the next five years, and will be directed to find an additional $22 billion in either increased revenue or cuts in benefit programs.
 
Interest on Both Sides
''There seems to be interest in that on both sides of the aisle,'' Mr. Foley said.
Vice President Dan Quayle, in an interview on the ABC News program ''This Week,'' said the Administration was willing to ''explore all options'' and specifically declined to rule out the possibility that the President would accept such a trade.
A poll of House Republicans taken by their leaders at a closed-door meeting today showed that a large majority favored that trade, a stunning reversal from the House Republican position of a few months ago when the party's lawmakers said they would not accept any agreement that involved an increase in income tax rates.
Under the original compromise, devised in two weeks of closed-door negotiations between top Congressional leaders and the Administration, Medicare would have been cut by $60 billion over the next five years, with half the reduction coming in Government payments to doctors and other health care providers and the other half coming through higher premiums and deductibles for the 33 million elderly Americans covered by the program.
Such increases were the biggest single objection to the plan from lawmakers in both parties.
 
SHUFFLING THE NUMBERS
 
Here are some details ofthe ocmpromise assembled by House and Sentae leaders yesterday and how it compares to the original agreement with the Bush Administration 


$	 	 
	OLD	 NEW
TOTAL SAVINGS	 	 
Total savings,5yrs	$500 billion	 $500 billion
1991 savings	 $40B	 $40B.
 	 	 
MEDICARE	 	 
 	 	 
Medicare savings	$60B	 $42B
 from providers of health care	30B	30
 from beneficiaries	30B	12
Annual deductible would rise	 	 
over 5 yrs from $75 to	 $150	100*
Monthly premium for doctor	 	 
care would rise over five years	 	 
from$28.60 to	 $54.30	$47*
 	 	 
TAX AND OTHER REVENUE INCREASES	 	 
Total over five years	134 billion	156 billion**
A Medicare Payroll tax of 1.45%	 	 
is now taken from first $51,300 of	 	 
wage-earners income. That ceiling	 	 
would rise over 5 years to	$73,000	$150,000*
 Revenue over 5 years	 13 billion	Not available
Tax on home heating oil	2 cents a gallon	No
Revenue over five years	200 million	0
Two-week waiting period for unemployment benefits	 Yes	No
Revenue over five years	$4.6 billion	0 

 
 * Informal agreement; details to be decided by committees in each house. ** Includes unspecified savings.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Graphic: ''Shuffling the Numbers'' (pg. A14)

Copyright 1990 The New York Times Company



332 of 468 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times

October 8, 1990, Monday, Late Edition - Final

Police Plan Puts Safety In Numbers

BYLINE: By RALPH BLUMENTHAL

SECTION: Section B; Page 1, Column 2; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 1409 words

A request from Mayor David N. Dinkins to his Police Commissioner two months ago seemed simple: Rather than just agreeing to hire 5,000 more police officers, as many crime-stung New Yorkers and politicians were demanding, why not survey the department to see what was really needed?
But just as painting over a chip in a wall can cause a mismatch of color that forces you to repaint the entire room, the survey request led not only to an around-the-clock crash study of the Police Department, but eventually to a mammoth anti-crime plan encompassing jails and schools and courts, all to be financed with $1.8 billion in proposed new taxes over the next four years.
As late as Sept. 30, at a meeting at Gracie Mansion to go over the final texts of the reports that were released last Tuesday, an aide said the Mayor complained, ''There's no money in here for senior citizens.'' A $3 million allocation to the Department of Aging for a Senior Citizens Safety Initiative was promptly added.
Although enactment of the entire tax package appears in grave doubt, along with other drastic fiscal measures that City Hall floated last week, the police report at the core of it has been widely hailed as a triumph, probably the most detailed analysis of the department's staffing needs in its 145-year history. 
The 535-page plan, a unit-by-unit analysis based on questionnaires sent to about 460 police subdivisions, quickly became one of the most sought-after municipal reports in recent memory. The 500 copies printed were snatched up, requiring an unusual second printing of another 500.
The plan comes, moreover, as the forerunner of an even more sweeping assessment of the department, ordered by Commissioner Lee P. Brown and due sometime next month. Together, the manpower study and the forthcoming report, Mr. Brown said in an interview last week, promise to lay out the future of policing in the city probably well into the next century.
As recalled in interviews by Mr. Brown, his First Deputy Commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, and others, the effort to produce the report by a due date of Oct. 1 began with a blithe underestimation of the Mayor's request.
In early August, Mr. Dinkins announced that he had found funds to hire an additional 1,058 police officers to combat an upsurge of violent crime, including the killing of several children in a rash of shootings. But critics of the Mayor's measured response said the city should restore the department to its historic high of 31,700 uniformed officers in 1970, from current levels of under 26,000.
 
The 5,000 Figure
Mr. Brown himself, in comments he later rued, cited a figure of 5,000 as a hiring goal, thereby giving ''a Good Housekeeping seal of approval to a number before an analysis was done,'' in the words of Lee Jones, a mayoral spokesman. But Mr. Jones said City Hall considered the press more to blame than the Commissioner.
Buffeted by the 5,000 figure, Mr. Dinkins called on Mr. Brown on Aug. 8 to examine what his real needs were. Mr. Brown, who had taken over in January, was already conducting his own assessment of where the department stood and where it was headed. He wanted to determine how best to liberate it from the tyranny of more than four million responses to 911 emergency calls a year, and turn it into a more decentralized network of neighborhood-based problem-solving units, a system known as community policing.
Mr. Brown said he thought it would not be very hard to break out staffing figures for the Mayor.
He sent to Houston for a copy of the last such report he had prepared, when he was police chief there. And he called in Mr. Kelly, a 27-year veteran of the department, to start compiling the information.
Then, Mr. Kelly said, reality hit. ''Hey, this is a major, major undertaking,'' he said he suddenly realized.
 
The Organization Chart
Over the years, the department had blossomed with sub-commands until the organization chart resembled an ancient apple tree bent double under clusters of divisions, bureaus, sections, task forces, squads and units.
Mr. Brown said they created a wall-size blowup of the chart and installed it in Mr. Kelly's office, which became ''the war room.'' They filled the room with computers and about 30 people from the department's Management Information Services Division - the study would later conclude that all 88 uniformed members of this 259-person division should be replaced by civilians - the Office of Management Planning and Analysis, and other executive and clerical staff.
There were 460 units to be surveyed, Mr. Brown said, and each unit was sent a one-page questionnaire asking it, in essence, to justify itself. Commanders had to describe their unit's mission, its current strength and its required strength, and say what other unit might take over if it no longer existed.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the survey had a 100 percent return rate.
 
Facts and Figures
Commanders had to back up their answers with facts. Mr. Brown said he kept a folder for each unit and often went back to commanders for more information, which was then keyed into the computer system.
The computer program was the Patrol Allocation Plan, devised in 1973 by the RAND Corporation. It listed four main variables for each precinct: how many radio cars the precinct had; the number of regular police beats as well as any special needs like park and embassy beats; the level of crime in the precinct; and the commander's opinion of his staffing needs.
Once all this information was assembled, the analysts could program into the computer a hypothetical goal: for example, providing enough officers so that each patrol car could spend just 60 percent of its time, rather than the current 90 percent, answering 911 calls, while insuring a maximum dispatch time of 1.5 minutes. The computer could then calculate how many officers would be required to meet that goal.
As the units' reports multiplied, Mr. Kelly, his director of special projects, Assistant Commissioner Mike Farrell, and other senior officials and their staffs began spending weekends and late nights in Mr. Kelly's office.
 
The Bottom Line
As the report was compiled, drafts were frequently delivered to Mr. Brown, who rewrote and edited parts.
Working alongside the police staff were Regina Morris, deputy director of the Mayor's Office of Operations; Katie Lapp, chief of staff and special counsel to the Deputy Mayor for Public Safety, Milton Mollen; and Michael Jacobson, deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget, all of whom worked to translate the police manpower recommendations into dollars.
Mr. Brown said he did not concern himself with the cost, nor even, he said, with the total figure of new police officers sought. ''I'm dealing unit by unit,'' he said.
In the end, the report concluded that the department needed 9,603 more police officers. Of that number, 3,063 were already in the budget, and 3,124 could be made available by eliminating and consolidating existing units and hiring more civilian workers to free officers for new duties. That left 3,416 additional police officers to be hired and somehow paid for, City Hall officials said.
 
More Work for Civilians
Among the units to be eliminated to free officers for other assignments, the report said, were the Social Club Task Force (provided its functions could be taken over by the Fire Department); the precinct school response and school liaison units; the precinct house of worship unit; the precinct special conditions unit, and the precinct warrant officers, highway safety officers and crime prevention officers.
Other units would be largely turned over to civilians, among them the police laboratory, Police Academy, ballistics unit, property clerk division, Civilian Complaint Investigative Bureau, harbor launch repair ship and aviation mechanics, and the departmental magazine.
Mr. Brown said he was especially pleased that those changes would put 75 percent of the uniformed force on patrol.
''That's higher than any other police agency in America,'' exulted the Commissioner, who holds a doctorate in criminology.
At times it seemed that the report was the hottest document in the city last week. Mr. Jones, the mayoral spokesman, said he had squirreled away a precious box of reports for elected officials. He was called to the phone and turned away for a minute. When he looked down, he said, the box had been looted.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Police Commissioner Lee P. Brown, who says the recent report and an upcoming assessment will lay out the department's future well into the next century; First Deputy Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly, who compiled information for the police report, which he called a ''major, major undertaking.'' (Photographs by The New York Times) (pg. B2)

Copyright 1990 The New York Times Company



333 of 468 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times

October 9, 1990, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

Our Towns;
Sign or Sit Out: School Drug Pact Angers Athletes

BYLINE: By MICHAEL WINERIP

SECTION: Section B; Page 1, Column 1; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 795 words

DATELINE: EAST HAMPTON, L.I.

When school started this year, Richard Cooney, the East Hampton High School athletic director, called a mandatory meeting for all athletes and parents to announce a ''new quality of life contract.'' Any athletes caught drinking, using drugs or smoking cigarettes - even in their living rooms - would agree to be suspended for 20 percent of the season. ''We'd like to see every student in this school sign,'' he said. ''I'm sure some of you aren't comfortable and we welcome a dialogue.'' Later, when asked, Mr. Cooney said that if you don't sign, you don't play.
Mr. Cooney said he was formalizing policy after 16 athletes were caught drinking at a spring party. He felt East Hampton was no worse than most suburbs. The main problem was drinking and it was time ''to stick our necks out and take a stand.'' This resort town swells to 30,000 in season. Last summer 100 were arrested for underage drinking. ''This is an alarming figure,'' he said. ''After football games, they go to the beach for a keg party. After a school play, a keg party. We're trying to get our athletes to be the best they can.'' 
Of 260 athletes, 200 signed immediately. ''Some parents felt it was illegal, looked into it and decided it wasn't,'' said Chris Sarlo, the principal. Soon all but a few had signed.
Within days, there was a keg party, and according to several students, athletes toasted the contract. ''We've looked into it,'' said Mr. Cooney. ''We don't have names of individuals. We know there's been a party each week. We know athletes were there. We don't know if they drank. We heard rumors from students.''
Two seniors, Amanda Kraus and Bridget McSweeney, refused to sign. Mr. Cooney acknowledges both are model teen-agers. Bridget lettered in three sports each year, writes for the school paper, plays alto sax and works weekends.
Amanda holds the school record for girls in the mile, was an exchange student and belongs to the Fire Department's youth corp. (''You do neat things like learn to put out propane fires.'') She helped start the Young Democrats club. (''They had Young Republicans, why not both?'') Young Democrats are currently planning a dance for the elderly.
Both girls say that they do not intend to break the rules, that they simply feel the contract is being pushed for liability purposes and is hypocritical. ''Extremely,'' says Bridget. ''Why just the athletes? Cast parties are big and even adults are involved. They're saying the rest of the kids are not to be dealt with.'' (When asked, the principal said, ''It's not clear we can do this in other areas without having a rights violation. With athletes we can make a link between the contract and safety.'') The girls felt it could not be enforced fairly. ''Either you go to a party, see kids drink and it encourages you to rat - there's a lot of competition,'' says Bridget. ''Or you see kids who drink and they're not caught. The contract's a joke.''
What would they do? ''The school means well,'' said Bridget. ''But it's a matter of values and self-control. You can't suddenly at 14 teach values. That has to be from long-term trust from parents and children. I don't think they have any right to come in on us when we're not in school.''
''It should be a matter for us, parents and the police,'' says Amanda.
Bridget held out until her first field hockey game. ''I was caught between principles, a sport and a team I care about. It was horrible. My coach said, 'I don't want you to make a decision you don't want to, but if you take your rights, I have to replace you.' ''
''My parents said, 'We'll support you but it's your battle.' They've always trusted me. We're one of these families, we always have dinner together. My parents listen. I never lie to them about parties. They said, 'Remember, you'll have to go a whole year with nothing after school.' I'd be bored out of my mind. 'And remember the kids who signed and party any way. They'll laugh all the way to the next game.''
In the end, said Bridget, ''I didn't want to sacrifice something I liked for a piece of paper.'' She signed in Mr. Cooney's office without saying a word. ''I didn't feel so hot after. I wanted to play, but I felt like I betrayed myself a little. It's much easier to give in.''
Amanda held out and missed her first meet. The day of the second meet, she went in. ''Mr. Cooney says, 'I want to talk to you.' I said, 'There's nothing to discuss.' I said, 'I'm signing this so I can run and that's it.' He said, 'I don't want you to feel that way. I said, 'You make me feel that way.' It didn't seem like a contract to me at all. A contract is two ways.''
What did Mr. Cooney think as he watched Bridget and Amanda? ''If we could somehow develop an attitude in them that would be of assistance to us.''

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1990 The New York Times Company



334 of 468 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times

October 10, 1990, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

THE BUDGET AGREEMENT;
Critically Ill Hospital Keeps Ear on U.S. Budget Talks and Eye on Creditors

BYLINE: By LISA BELKIN, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section A; Page 20, Column 1; National Desk

LENGTH: 1580 words

DATELINE: HOUSTON, Oct. 9

In the tiny West Texas town of Alpine, in a nondescript single-story building that does not even have a sign out front, the abstractions of the Washington budget battle are colliding with reality.
The building houses the Big Bend Regional Medical Center, the only hospital in a 16,000-square-mile area of southwest Texas. It has been perilously close to closing for more than a year, administrators say.
Whether the doors remain open may depend on where Congress decides to cut the Federal budget. Officials of the hospital say the reason Big Bend is $400,000 in debt and losing $1,000 a day is that Medicare and Medicaid do not reimburse it enough for patient care. About 60 percent of the hospital's patients are covered by the two health programs - Medicare for the elderly and the disabled, and Medicaid for the poor. 
The budget package defeated by the House of Representatives early Friday morning would have cut Medicare by about $60 billion nationwide, with half of that amount coming from hospitals and other health care providers, and the tottering hospital could not have absorbed its share of that blow, said Big Bend's chief administrator, Ron Ballew. The budget resolution now in the hands of Congressional committees still envisions raising about $30 billion from health care providers, although details have not been worked out.
 
'A Temporary Reprieve'
''We're already losing our shirt on Medicare patients,'' said Mr. Ballew. ''That could be enough to send us over the edge.''
That the cuts were not approved is of little comfort to Mr. Ballew, who says he believes that any eventual budget will include sharp decreases in Medicare funds. ''It's just a temporary reprieve,'' he said. ''They're going to get us eventually. They'll come up with something else, I'm sure.''
The struggling hospital, 220 miles southeast of El Paso, is one of many nationwide waiting for Congress to decide their financial future. The American Hospital Association, based in Chicago, estimates that 70 percent of hospitals that care for Medicare patients - and almost all nonprofit institutions do -are losing money on Medicare at current rates.
Those losses are in part responsible for the widespread closing of rural hospitals in recent years, according to the association, which has recorded 88 hospital closings nationwide in 1989 and 95 hospital closings in Texas from 1980 to 1989.
''It only follows that if it's bad now it will get even worse with future cuts,'' said Paul C. Rettig, executive vice president of the association, which represents 5,600 nonprofit hospitals. ''Hospitals across the country are watching Congress with bated breath.''
 
Question of Survival
Gail R. Wilensky, the administrator of the Health Care Finance Administration, which runs the Medicare and Medicaid programs, said that her agency was sympathetic to the problems of rural hospitals, but that the responsibility to save them did not rest with her agency.
''There are some rural hospitals that just have problems that no amount of Medicare payments are going to cure,'' she said. ''They need to look to see whether remaining open as a facility is the best route for that hospital.''
That is the question being asked now in Alpine. This is rugged, isolated country, where flat desert meets rolling hills and the eyeblink-size towns are about 40 miles apart. In all, 18,000 people live in the area served by Big Bend Regional, an area six times the size of the state of Rhode Island.
The average age of the population there rises every year, as young people leave for the cities and retired people take their place, attracted by the dry climate and the low cost of living there.
Alpine, which has a population of 5,400 people, was founded in the early 1880's, and this hospital building was finished in 1959. Its beige brick exterior and blue and pink tile interior have not changed much since then.
If it was to close, the next nearest hospital would be in Fort Stockton, which is 67 miles to the northeast, or in Van Horn, which is 100 miles to the northwest and whose hospital only has two doctors. Big Bend Regional has 50 beds and a staff of 70 people. Last year there were 260 babies delivered, 611 operations performed, and 2,648 emergency room cases treated.
As with many hospitals around the country, the financial problems at Big Bend Regional began in 1983 when Medicare and Medicaid introduced a system of Diagnostic Related Groups, or D.R.G.'s. Under those rules, all illnesses were listed by the Government and assigned a maximum cost, which is adjusted each year, to the hospital for treating that illness.
Under Medicare the figures were determined in Washington and adjusted by community based on the cost of living, with hospitals in rural areas receiving less for the same procedure than hospitals in urban areas. Under Medicaid, the figures were determined by each state legislature but are standard throughout the state.
Almost immediatly, hospitals and doctors complained that the proscribed payments did not meet the actual costs. When patients cannot pay the difference, the care giver is forced to absorb the loss. At Big Bend Regional, where a majority of patients are on Medicaid or Medicare, that loss can be substantial.
 
Attempts to Reduce Gap
In recent years, changes have been made to Medicare to reduce, but not eliminate, the gap between rural and urban health care providers, Dr. Wilensky said. Attempts have also been made to help struggling rural hospitals, she said, by granting even higher rates to those designated to be ''sole community providers,'' meaning that they are 35 miles or more from the nearest hospital.
But even those changes are not enough to save Big Bend Regional, administrators say.
Asked for a specific example, Dr. Clifton R. Pearce, the hospital's chief of staff, pulled the file of a woman in her 70's who was admitted to Big Bend with pneumonia last spring. Her case was further complicated by her chronic emphysema and the hypoxia, or oxygen deficiency, she quickly developed after she was admitted.
Medicare rules allowed $4,600 for the woman's treatment; $1,800 was allowed for the pneumonia and $2,800 for the complications. But the cost of the actual care, Dr. Pearce said, was $20,000, including three days on a ventilator. The woman died and her family cannot pay the outstanding balance.
The hospital's total revenue last year, including nearly a half-million dollars from county taxes, was $3 million, administrators said. They said uncollected funds from Medicare and Medicaid patients accounted for an additional $1.2 million. The hospital was also unable to collect $700,000 in outstanding bills of privately insured patients. With operating costs of $3.2 million, the hospital has been losing nearly $200,000 a year for nearly three years, the officials said.
 
Dispute Over Figures
Dr. Wilensky of the health-care agency disputed those numbers, saying the hospital had actually received $818,000 from Medicare in 1989, as against actual costs of $800,500.
Mr. Ballew responded to those figures, saying, ''I don't know where they're getting their information.'' Reached after business hours and told of Dr. Wilensky's figures, he said the hospital's auditors, based in Lubbock, could not be reached after hours for specifics, but said that his general records showed losses to Medicare and Medicaid of $1.2 million and he estimated that at least half of those losses were from Medicare.
The situation reached what Mr. Ballew describes as a crisis in April, when creditors began to cut off hospital accounts. When Mr. Ballew became interim administrator in April, the hospital owed $300,000 and had $54,000 in the bank.
Currently, it can buy some of its most vital supplies only if it pays cash in advance or upon delivery. The company that provides surgical instruments and sterile scrubs has made that demand, as have the companies that provide laboratory supplies for blood tests and the one that provides the intravenous solutions.
The pharmacy that supplies all the medications used in the hospital is owed $90,000 but has allowed Mr. Ballew to pay in installments.
The far-flung community has tried to rally round its hospital. A ''radiothon'' in May raised $30,000 in four hours. Property taxes were raised 32 percent in August. That brought the tax rate to the maximum allowed for hospital financing under state law. But the revenue increase will probably not be as dramatic as those numbers might suggest in a region where land can sell for as little as $100 an acre.
''What we need,'' Dr. Pearce said, ''is one heck of an oil well here.''
Until the gusher is found, the hospital is looking toward more conventional means. In recent months, the staff was cut to 70 people from 89, although Mr. Ballew said there was no discussion of reducing salaries of those who remain. Several Federal grants are being sought, and two have already been obtained, to pay for certain hospital programs. One wing of the three-wing building has been closed.
There is also a campaign under way to create a tri-county hospital district, in which neighboring counties would contribute some of the financing for the hospital.
In fact, the hospital recently changed its name from Brewster Community Hospital to give those neighboring counties a friendly hint. The stationery still contains the old name, however, since there is no money for new paper, envelopes and billing forms.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photos: ''We're already losing our shirt on Medicare patients,'' said Ron Ballew, chairman of the Big Bend Regional Medical Center in Alpine, Tex., which says it may have to close if Congress cuts its financing.; ''What we need,'' said Dr. Clifton R. Pearce, chief of staff, ''is one heck of an oil well here.'' (Photographs by Bruce Berman for The New York Times); map of Texas showing location of Alpine.

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October 11, 1990, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

Face Up to the Fairness Issue

BYLINE: By Jim Leach; Jim Leach, Republican of Iowa, is a member of the House Banking Committee.

SECTION: Section A; Page 25, Column 2; Editorial Desk

LENGTH: 696 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON

The American people voted in 1988 for a reduction in the rate of growth of government and taxes. They did not vote to mortgage their future to the whims of undisciplined politicians. They did not vote for ostrich politics and depression-inducing economics.
At the root of the constitutional crisis that is gripping Congress is a new ''duck test'' on fairness. While conservatives object to anything that quacks like a tax, liberals sense the outrage of the public and demand sacrifices from the wealthy in any package that cuts benefits for the poor. 
In a Congress of little leadership and less followership, the left and right are mugging the middle, raising the question whether the center can hold, whether government can govern.
Amid the questions of fairness that arose over the details of the budget package, largely overlooked were the unfair consequences that would result if Congress failed to enact a deficit reduction package.
Would it be fair, for instance, to the young of America to add $300 billion to the national debt?
Would it be fair to the elderly who would have to pay more for food and medicine because of a refusal of Congress to curb inflation?
Would it be fair to taxpayers who would have to pay more for nothing, that is, interest on the national debt?
In the savings and loan debacle, Congress learned that refusal to deal with insolvency problems early cost far more later. The same with budget deficits. The fairest budget of all would appear to be a balanced one.
Twelve-figure deficits simply have no place on the economic agenda of either a true liberal or a true conservative. Just as it is counterfeit liberalism to devalue the currency with living-for-the-moment spending, it is counterfeit conservatism to object to deficit reduction of the nature contemplated in the bipartisan package.
Ironically, by refusing to engage constructively in the budget negotiations and objecting bellicosely to the initial agreement, conservatives opted out of the governing coalition and ceded their seats at the bargaining table to their adversaries. Their ideological rejection of the initial package may have been good short-term politics, but it guaranteed the passage of a more liberal alternative, jeopardizing the Reagan revolution.
By refusing to contemplate a change in the tax code to put high-income citizens in the same tax bracket as middle-class taxpayers (breaking the so-called ''bubble''), even in exchange for capital gains reform, Congressional Republicans ignore at their peril the frustrated demands for fairer burden sharing by low- and middle-income Americans on whom they depend for support. Naively, White House operatives left the President vulnerable to the fairness challenge by standing stubbornly by the views of legislators who would not stand by the President.
Given conservative obduracy and the resulting political gridlock, the President has little choice but to seek a governing coalition with the Democrats in Congress, one in which centrist Republicans can be utilized to avoid a stampede to the left. A center-Democrat coalition has the potential to save Republicans from themselves on fairness issues, even though it could lead to a deficit package with fewer new tax deductions and slightly greater spending authorizations.
The internal priorities of a five-year, $500 billion deficit reduction package are less important than its framework. The country cannot stand the panic that would follow a significant rundown in the stock market, run-away from Treasury bills and runup of interest rates.
Deficits of the current gargantuan magnitude are sinkholes in the road to economic recovery. They jeopardize the President's program and the Presidency itself.
Credible deficit reduction can only be achieved if the politics of fear give way to the recognition that what is micro-politically jeopardizing for individual politicians is macro-economically sound for the country; if liberals develop a functioning spleen to go with their heart; if conservatives reflect a greater judgment and sense of equity to temper their convictions.
Me-generation citizens cannot afford me-generation politicians.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Drawing

TYPE: OP-ED

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October 12, 1990, Friday, Late Edition - Final

THE BUDGET BATTLE: Washington Talk;
Modifying Medicare: No Dice Once Again

BYLINE: By JASON DePARLE, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section A; Page 21, Column 6; National Desk

LENGTH: 739 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Oct. 11

Of all the fiscal powders that turned the recent budget summit to budget bomb, perhaps none proved more explosive than the plan to cut Medicare. In the resulting detritus lie lessons of budgetary politics.
President Bush and the Congressional negotiators lit the fuse when they proposed what many saw as modest increases in the amount that recipients of Medicare pay for their benefits. They sought to raise monthly premiums to $34, from $28, and to increase yearly deductibles to $150, from $75, over five years. 
''Devastating,'' said Senator John D. Rockefeller 4th, the West Virginia Democrat who heads the Senate Finance subcommittee overseeing the program.
''Chicanery,'' said Ronald Pollack of the Families USA Foundation, one of about 100 advocacy groups that banded together to help defeat the plan.
Enough of Congress agreed to send the Medicare proposals, and the rest of the summit meeting's work, into early retirement.
The more modest Medicare alterations now under discussion are almost certain to demand less from the elderly and more from the work force whose payroll taxes help support the program.
Were Yogi Berra in town, he might call the situation deja vu all over again: another demonstration of the power of entitlements for the elderly, and lobbyists for the elderly. But there are other questions. Are entitlements for the elderly affordable, as they are now run? And are they fair?
Taken together, Social Security ($264 billion) and Medicare ($114 billion) account for 28 percent of the entire $1.35 trillion Federal budget projected for 1991. Or after subtracting military spending and interest, the programs would cost more than 4 of every 10 Federal dollars.
That kind of spending cramps other social spending, leaving less to build housing, fight infant mortality, provide better schools, battle drug abuse and otherwise invest in the future.
It also raises important questions about equity between the generations. Both Social Security and Medicare offer the elderly benefits that far exceed their earlier contributions as workers, even after inflation is accounted for.
More important, in the eyes of some of the programs' critics, neither program distinguishes between those elderly who truly need the benefits and those who do not.
Many Washington analysts say the failure to make the distinction between, say, the $350-a-month pensioners in Miami Beach and the more fortunate retiree in Palm Beach is the main flaw in the programs, and the key to fixing them. But part of the problem with the summit proposal was that it, too, treated virtually all the elderly alike.
There were other options. By contrast, for instance, the budget negotiators might have assigned Medicare an actuarial value and asked recipients to pay taxes on it. Thus, only those with enough income to pay taxes would be affected. The Congressional Budget Office estimated earlier this year that $17 billion over five years could be raised this way. The budget office estimates that modest increases in the portion of Social Security subject to taxation could raise $20 billion in the same period.
But such proposals never came to the table, and it takes only a short memory to guess why. In 1988, Congress passed a bill that offered the elderly increased protection from the catastrophic costs of long-term hospitalization. It financed the expanded benefits by a surtax on the elderly, capped at $800 a year for those with incomes of more than $35,000. Led by Washington advocacy groups, the elderly raised an outcry so strong that a year later Congress repealed its own legislation by large margins.
Whenever there are efforts to modify the entitlement programs to make them less generous to the affluent, critics quickly charge that they are being gutted through ''means testing'' - being downgraded to welfare programs, some say. But it is unclear how much longer Congress can continue to provide benefits without regard for need.
Some projections show one Medicare trust fund approaching bankruptcy by the end of the decade. So today's skirmishes may be harbingers of things to come.
''We can no longer afford to treat the wealthy dowager living with an inheritance the same as we treat the little old lady on a fixed income in a cold-water flat,'' said Jack Meyer, president of New Directions for Policy, a Washington consulting organization. ''But Congress is still clinging to that outmoded idea.''

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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October 14, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Economy and Mideast Standoff Bring a Drop in Bush's Standing

BYLINE: By MICHAEL ORESKES

SECTION: Section 1; Part 1, Page 1, Column 1; National Desk

LENGTH: 1863 words

Support for President Bush's commitment of American troops in the Persian Gulf has begun to erode in recent days as Americans grow frustrated with the standoff in the desert and increasingly worried about the sagging economy at home, the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll has found.
The poll of 960 adults, conducted by telephone last week, found economic fears at their highest in a decade and Mr. Bush's overall job rating the worst of his Presidency, although it remains at a level that some recent Presidents would have coveted.
There was a dramatic defection from Mr. Bush among the nation's older citizens, those 65 years old and over, whose general economic fears have been deepened by talk from Washington of increases in taxes and Medicare premiums.
Over all, 60 percent of those surveyed said they approved of the way Mr. Bush is handling his job, down from 76 percent in a New York Times/ CBS News Poll soon after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August. Thirty percent expressed overall disapproval, up from 15 percent in August and the highest level of disapproval toward Mr. Bush so far in his Presidency. 
 
A Strong Undercurrent
Support for his handling of the Kuwait situation declined to 57 percent from the 75 percent who expressed approval soon after the invasion.
From the beginning of the gulf confrontation, analysts of public opinion noted a strong undercurrent among Americans against commitment of military power. But until now, this did not seem to undermine the overwhelming support for Mr. Bush's specific actions as Americans rallied around the President.
But in the last three weeks there has been a significant shift. In late September, 75 percent of the public told a survey conducted for Americans Talk Security, a bipartisan research group, that the United States had done the right thing by sending troops to the gulf. In the latest Times/CBS News survey, 61 percent said the United States had done the right thing. Those who said the United States should have stayed out rose to 32 percent from 20 percent.
Figures in the latest Times/CBS News survey should generally be accurate, according to statistical theory, to within three percentage points, plus or minus, of what would have been found if all adults in the country had been sought out for a survey. The margin of sampling error of the Americans Talk Security survey was also plus or minus three percentage points.
Foreign policy and the performance of the economy are generally the two key measures by which Americans judge their Presidents. Seven out of 10 Americans think the economy is getting worse, the largest number to hold such a negative view since April 1980, seven months before President Jimmy Carter lost his bid for re-election.
In the latest poll, 52 percent expressed disapproval of Mr. Bush's handling of the economy and 58 percent disapproved of his handling of the budget deficit. Analysts in both parties suggested that rising economic fears are dragging down overall support for Mr. Bush, as well as support for his most important foriegn policy commitment.
''If people start disapproving on one thing they will tend to generalize that opinion to other things,'' said Fred Steeper, a partner in Market Strategies, a Republican polling concern.
 
Budget Was Dominating News
The Times/CBS News survey was conducted Monday through Wednesday during a period when the Persian Gulf, for the first time since the Iraqi invasion, was not dominanting the news and Mr. Bush's policy in the gulf was facing little direct criticism. What was dominating the news was the great confusion and conflicting statements from Mr. Bush about exactly where he stood on taxes and the proposals Congress was wrestling with to lower the deficit.
By a majority of 54 percent to 37 percent, Americans said Mr. Bush should have shown stronger leadership in trying to settle the budget crisis.
''Obviously, the budget situation, and the news surrounding it, has not inured to the President's benefit,'' said Charles Black, who is a senior political adviser to the White House as well as chief spokesman for the Republican National Committee. ''Nevertheless, that's still a pretty high job approval rating, not far from levels he's enjoyed in the last two years, except during the first few weeks of the Persian Gulf, when he got up to levels no one could sustain for long.''
The cost of the nation's committment in the gulf was cited by several respondents who said they had shifted from approval to disapproval. ''I didn't know it was going to cost a million dollars a day,'' Jesse White, an assembly line worker for B. F. Goodrich in Tuscaloosa, Ala., said in a follow-up interview after the poll.
Those who disapprove of Mr. Bush's handling of the invasion of Kuwait split evenly between those who said they believe the United States should take stronger military action at this time and those who did not.
''If they're going to do something, I think they should get it done,'' said Tillie Daniels, 61, a Democrat from Willow Springs, Mo. ''I don't think they should prolong it and let it go on and on and on.''
Americans are becoming more pessimistic and more cynical, or realistic, about the gulf confrontation. The percent who say they believe the crisis will be resolved without fighting has fallen to 47 percent from 53 percent since August and those who believe the United States is there mainly to protect oil supplies has increased to 55 percent from 44 percent since September.
 
Most Support Commitment
While many recent reports from the gulf have emphasized the deaths of American military personnel in air crashes, 6 out of 10 surveyed said the American troop commitment is worth the cost, roughly the same proportion as supported sending them. While support for sending troops has declined, the public position on a naval blockade, a safer form of military engagement in the minds of many people, remains unchanged from a September survey by CBS News, with 6 in 10 supporting it and 3 in 10 opposed.
With 23 days until Election Day, the survey captured a considerable mood for change among Americans. A plurality favor turning the Republicans out of the White House and the Democrats out of Congress.
Mr. Bush began his Presidency with approval of about 60 percent of the public, and with most of the rest waiting to make up their minds rather than expressing disapproval.
Over the course of the next year Mr. Bush won most of the undecideds to his side. But now he is losing many of them. Approval of the job he is doing declined among every major group, from men and Democrats to Republicans and those making more than $50,000 a year. But in no case were the declines as great as among those most economically vulnerable, including those making under $15,000 annualy and, most dramaticly of all, those Americans 65 and older.
Those 65 and over, an age group which votes more heavily than any other, are now evenly divided between the 41 percent who express approval of Mr. Bush's handling of his job and the 41 percent who express disapproval. That is a sharp shift from the 70 percent of older Americans who expressed approval and the 17 percent who expressed disapproval in August.
 
'More and More Disgusted'
This dramatic shift means that 1 out of every 4 americans 65 or over, the only group of Americans with personal memories of the Depression, shifted from approval to disapproval of Mr. Bush's handling of the Presidency.
''I'm getting more and more disgusted with him,'' said Lois Kemp, 65, a lifelong Republican from Thousand Palms, Calif., said in a follow-up interview to the survey. ''I didn't think Dukakis would do a thing and I'm still glad I voted for Bush. But I'm disgusted with the budget and Medicare. He's letting his buddies off scot-free, and we poor people on Medicare are going to have to pay.''
Mr. Bush's support eroded among other age groups as well, but not nearly so dramatically. The youngest adults remain the most supportive of the President. Approval among those 18 to 29 slipped to 70 percent from 79 percent in August.
This was another example of the growing sense in American politics of a generational scism between young and old. Indeed, one young respondent to the survey, Vinny M. Boland, 31, a sign maker from Miramar, Fla., cited elder citizens as one of the ''big interests'' that he said dominate Congress.
Mr. Bush's approval remains strong by the standards of recent Presidents. Gerald Ford and Mr. Carter both fell below 60 percent approval not long after taking office - Mr. Ford within weeks and Mr. Carter within months -and never recovered.
At this point in his Presidency, Ronald Reagan had approval ratings in the low to mid-40's as the nation struggled through a recession. Mr. Black, the Republican spokesman, suggested that a budget deal would help reverse the current decline in the economy and thus shore up Mr. Bush's political weaknesses by 1992.
But others suggested that Mr. Bush lacked Mr. Reagan's resilency and core of support. ''I just loved Ronald Reagan,'' said Mabel Holton, 62, a Democrat from Philadelphia. ''Maybe it's because he was so handsome and was in the movies. It's a personality thing. Anyone who looks at Bush on television knows there's nothing warm about the man, nothing to instill confidence.''
More substantively, said Geoff Garin, a Democratic pollster, Mr. Bush will have a harder time blaming the economic downturn on Democrats the way Mr. Reagan was able to blame the recession and inflation of the early 1980's on Mr. Carter.
 
HOW THE POLL WAS CONDUCTED
The latest New York Times/CBS News Poll is based on telephone interviews conducted Oct. 8-10 with 960 adults around the United States, excluding Alaska and Hawaii.
The sample of telephone exchanges called was selected by a computer from a complete list of exchanges in the country. The exchanges were chosen so as to insure that each region of the country was represented in proportion to its population. For each exchange, the telephone numbers were formed by random digits, thus permitting access to both listed and unlisted numbers. The numbers were then screened so that only residences would be called.
The results have been weighted to take account of household size and number of residential telephone lines and to adjust for variations in the sample relating to region, race, sex, age and education.
In theory, in 19 cases out of 20 the results based on such samples will differ by no more than three percentage points in either direction from what would have been obtained by seeking out all American adults.
The percentages reported are the particular results most likely to match what would be obtained by seeking out all adult Americans. Other possible percentages are progressively less likely the more they differ from the reported results.
The potential sampling error for smaller subgroups is larger. For example, for people 65 years of age or older it is plus or minus eight percentage points.
In addition to sampling error, the practical difficulties of conducting any survey of public opinion may introduce other sources of error into the poll.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Chart: Poll of public's rating of Bush on Iraq and Kuwait, Aug. to Oct, 9-10 (pg. 1); President Bush's approval ratings on the economy, savings and loan, Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, handling of Federal deficit, foreign policy, and overall rating as President in August and in September, indicating shift; chart: poll results and approval for economic blockcade of Iraq and for sending troops to the Middle East, in September and October (Source: The New York Times/CBS News Poll) (pg. 25)

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October 14, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Q and A

BYLINE: By Terence P. Neilan

SECTION: Section 5; Page 4, Column 4; Travel Desk

LENGTH: 1080 words


Horseback Riding in Japan
Q. I will be traveling to Japan next spring and would like to do some horseback riding while I am there. Can you help? - Kathryn Kimlin, Hoboken, N.J.
A. Riding is becoming increasingly popular among the Japanese as they seek to expand their leisure time, and there are two main areas of activity: family ranches and pensions.
Many of the ranches are situated in Nasu-kogen, an area near Nikko, in the Tochigi Prefecture, some 90 miles north of Tokyo. The ranches cater mainly to beginning riders. More experienced riders might be better served at pensions, which are small Western-style inns near tourist attractions and mountain resorts. Many, particularly those in the Japan Alps in the Nagano Prefecture, offer horseback riding. Sometimes the riding facilities are attached to the pensions; at others they are separate and are reached by bus or taxi. 
Pension Bashamichi, 331 Yamanaka, Yamanakako, Minami Tsuru-gun, Yamanashi, is near Mount Fuji and offers riding at $21 for 15 minutes and $36 for 30 minutes. Accommodations are $50 a night, including breakfast and dinner. El Patio, 2305-1 Sanno, Ichinomiya, Aso-gun, Kumamoto, is near Mount Aso on Kyushu, Japan's southernmost island. It offers riding at $21 for 15 minutes; accommodations are $86 a night, also with two meals.
Ten minutes by taxi from El Patio is the Greenvalley ranch, which offers riding at $36 an hour for men and, as a sales incentive, $29 an hour for women. A 20-minute lesson is $15. A half-hour from El Patio is Jyoba Kumiai, a ranch that offers riding from May to November at $18 for 20 minutes and $21 for 25 minutes.
More information: The Japan National Tourist Organization, 630 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10111; 212-757-5640.
 
Travel for the Elderly
Q. My mother is in her 70's and is looking for tours that are reasonably priced, provide at least two meals a day, are not too strenuous and might match her with a roommate. Is she asking for the impossible? - James H. Sugarman, Singer Island, Fla.
A. At least two companies specialize in group tours for travelers who are more mature in years, designing the vacations at a more leisurely pace and paying attention to such details as whether buses have a drop-down step and whether an individual's particular medical needs can be met. In addition, tours would not be booked into a hotel with noisy video games in the lounge, long stretches of stairs or a bar that plays loud music. But both companies stress that in general what is good for travelers in their 60's is usually good for travelers in their 30's or 40's, too. This would include elevators in all hotels, a hand-hold rail in the bath and a private bath in each room.
One company, Saga Holidays, sells some 200 international and domestic tour packages, including cruises, to clients over 60 years of age. It says the average tour price is $1,200 to $2,200 but that some start as low as $750. Groups usually number from 20 to 40 people. More information: Saga International Holidays, 120 Boylston Street, Boston, Mass. 02116; 617-451-6808 or 800-343-0273.
The other company, Grand Circle Travel, offers more than 100 tours, including cruises, for travelers over the age of 50 in the United States and abroad. It also offers a free booklet, ''Going Abroad: 101 Tips for Mature Travelers.'' More information: Grand Circle Travel, 347 Congress Street, Boston, Mass. 02210.
 
Studying Abroad
Q. Could you help me obtain a list of organizations that deal with programs for study abroad? - Veronica Ramos, Edison, N.J.
A. A comprehensive reference book on the subject, called ''Vacation Study Abroad,'' is published each year and describes some 1,400 programs, about 80 percent of them in Europe. Two-thirds of the programs listed are sponsored by colleges and universities in the United States, the rest by foreign universities and language schools. The guide is published by the Institute of International Education, best known for administering the Fulbright Fellowships. Courses vary in length from 3 or 4 to 12 weeks and in a few cases run 16 weeks.
The 1991 edition of ''Vacation Study Abroad'' will be published in December or January and can be ordered from I.I.E. Books, 809 United Nations Plaza, New York, N.Y. 10017; 212-984-5412. The guide, which will cost $26.95 plus $3 postage, will also be available in many reference libraries and the offices of foreign-study advisers on college campuses. This year's edition costs $24.95. Another of the institute's publications, ''Academic Year Abroad,'' gives details of about 1,900 programs, most of them sponsored by American schools. The courses generally run from from late September to early June. Next year's edition will be published in March and will cost $31.95.
The American Institute for Foreign Study is a private organization that has been offering programs for 27 years. Next year its courses will be held in 10 countries, including China and Australia, but a special emphasis will be placed on Eastern Europe. For the first time it will be offering a program in what until the reunification of the two Germanys on Oct. 3 was East Germany. A 16-week academic year program in the German language and culture will cost $6,995, including the one-way fare from the East Coast; all meals and accommodations are with local families. A four-week summer course in the same subject will cost $2,839. Courses will be held at Humboldt University, Berlin.
The 1991-92 catalogue is available free from the American Institute for Foreign Study, 102 Greenwich Avenue, Greenwich, Conn. 06830; 203-869-9090 or 800-727-2437.
 
Paris to Nice by Train
Q. My husband and I will be flying to Paris next summer on our way to pick up a cruise ship from Nice to Venice. What is the most economical way to get to Nice from Paris by train? - Carol McAllister, New York, N.Y.
A. The Flexipass sold by French Rail would seem to suit your needs. The pass, which allows four days of unlimited second-class rail travel in any 15-day period, will cost $119 next year. By comparison, a single one-way ticket in second class from Paris to Nice costs $127 this year, and is expected to cost $146 in 1991, according to a French Rail spokesman. Seven or eight trains a day leave the Gare de Lyon in Paris for Nice every day; the trip by T.G.V. takes about seven hours. More information: French Rail Inc., 610 Fifth Avenue, Suite 501, New York, N.Y. 10020, or Rail Europe at 800-345-1990.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

TYPE: Question

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The New York Times

October 14, 1990, Sunday, National Edition

NATIONAL NOTEBOOK: Greenfield, Mass.;
20 Efficiencies For the Elderly

BYLINE: By ANNE-GERARD FLYNN

SECTION: Section 8; Page 1, Column 2; Real Estate Desk

LENGTH: 344 words

 Its 20 units brought the total number of subsidized housing units in this north western Massachusetts city of 18,000 people to 13 percent of the entire housing supply.
When the Morgan-Allen House became available, the Greenfield Housing Authority, which is considered to have one of the state's best records for developing affordable housing, bought it for $200,000. Donald S. Williams, an architect hired to convert the 19th-century home, added 5,280 square feet, doubling the size of the white-frame structure and allowing the creation of 20 efficiency apartments. 
Rents are $130 to $150 a month and residents, who began moving in last month, pay 25 percent of their net income in rent. They must earn less than $12,400 annually and be at least 62 years old or have a permanent disability.
They must also eat one meal together daily to build a sense of community, said Robert W. Johnston, who was hired as housing coordinator by the Franklin County Home Care Corporation, a nonprofit agency serving the elderly in Franklin County.
Morgan-Allen is served by local social agencies working with the state.
Surrounding smaller towns here in Franklin County have come to look upon congregate housing as an answer to the needs of the aging. Many frail old people in rural areas seeking alternatives to living alone must either move to a more urban area or into a nursing home.
"Within the next 10 to 15 years, you might see a congregate home in every town," said Sandra Lapollo, director of the senior center in the neighboring town of Shelburne Falls, where the population numbers 2,000, of whom about 20 percent are 65 or older.
Arthur F. Kimber, project manager for the executive office of Communities and Development in Boston, the state agency that finances affordable housing developments, said at least a dozen communities are now seeking state grants to build affordable housing units.
About $9 million has been allocated to build 112 units of affordable housing for elderly low-income families and special-needs individuals in rural areas.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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The New York Times

October 17, 1990, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final
Correction Appended

EATING WELL

LENGTH: 1059 words

UNTIL the 1980's, calcium was viewed as a rather pedestrian nutrient. But that all changed when health experts said eating more calcium could prevent osteoporosis, a debilitating condition resulting from a progressive loss of bone. Osteoporosis affects 25 million people in the United States, 80 percent of them women.
Interest in calcium and osteoporosis peaked in 1984 when the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., sponsored a conference on the subject. 
Calcium supplements flooded the market after experts at conference recommended that women eat more calcium. But interest later waned as researchers began to question the effectiveness of calcium supplements in warding off the inevitable bone loss that accompanies aging.
Now, interest in calcium and osteoporosis may be revived following a study done by Tufts University for the United States Department of Agriculture.
It found that calcium supplements can slow bone loss in postmenopausal women, especially in women whose diets provide less than half the Recommended Dietary Allowance. That recommendation, set by the National Academy of Sciences, calls for 800 milligrams of calcium a day for adults older than 24.
In the study, 301 postmenopausal women, none of whom were taking estrogen, were given either a placebo or one of two kinds of calcium supplement for two years.
One form, calcium carbonate, the most common supplement, slowed bone loss in the hips and wrists of most of the women. Calcium citrate malate, used to fortify orange juice, reduced bone loss in the spine as well.
''This is the first demonstration in women more than five years past menopause that you get a favorable effect of added calcium at the spine and hip,'' said Dr. Bess Dawson-Hughes, chief of the calcium and bone metabolism laboratory at the Agriculture Department's Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts. Fractures of the spine and hip are common among people with osteoporosis.
Dr. Robert Heaney, professor of internal medicine at Creighton University in Omaha, said the Tufts findings were pivotal.
''There have been some people who have been skeptical of the importance of calcium intake later in life,'' he said. ''If this kind of study doesn't put that skepticism to rest, I don't know whether anything will.''
While this latest study may provide convincing evidence that extra calcium helps prevent bone loss in older women, experts lock horns over how much calcium is needed for maximum protection and whether supplements are necessary.
The consensus at the 1984 conference was that all women should eat 1,000 to 1,500 milligrams of calcium each day - the amount in three to five eight-ounce glasses of milk.
The conference also concluded that postmenopausal women who take estrogen, a hormone that can prevent bone loss, need less calcium than those who do not. Only about 15 percent to 20 percent of postmenopausal women take estrogen.
By contrast, the Recommended Dietary Allowance for all women over age 24 is 800 milligrams, the amount in two and a half eight-ounce glasses of milk. Government surveys have found that American women, on average, consume only 500 to 600 milligrams of calcium a day.
Dr. Heaney believes that the R.D.A. for calcium should be 1,000 milligrams. But he conceded, ''If we could get all women up to even the 800 milligram R.D.A., we would be doing a lot.'' Dr. Heaney is speaking this week at a conference on osteoporosis and bone metabolism in Copenhagen.
Most nutritionists recommend that women eat plenty of calcium-rich foods, including low-fat or fat-free milk, cheese, yogurt and cottage cheese. Confirming the importance of a high-calcium diet, Dr. Daniel Baran, a researcher at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester, found earlier this year that supplementing the diets of premenopausal women with calcium-rich dairy products prevented bone loss in the spine.
In Dr. Baran's study, even premenopausal women who ate an average of 900 milligrams of calcium a day lost bone in the spine at the rate of about 1 percent a year, whereas women who ate 1,500 milligrams a day experienced no bone loss.
Commenting on Dr. Baran's study, Dr. Heaney said, ''I think there's good reason to wonder whether the current R.D.A.'s are the right figure.''
But few American women eat enough calcium-rich food to meet even the current R.D.A., and hesitate to eat more for fear of gaining weight. For many, the best way to get the 800 milligrams recommended by the National Academy of Sciences, and the only practical way for most women to get 1,500 milligrams, is to take calcium supplements.
The strongest recommendation for supplements came in the 1984 conference report. It said, ''For those unable to take 1,000 to 1,500 milligrams of calcium by diet, supplementation with calcium tablets is recommended.''
But calcium supplements are not always the answer. Dr. Ralph Shangraw, chairman of the department of pharmaceutics at the University of Maryland in Baltimore, found in 1987 that many of the calcium supplements sold were so poorly formulated that the calcium was not absorbable by the body.
Though many supplements have been improved in the last few years, there are still poor-quality products on the market, Dr. Shangraw said.
To test the quality of a calcium supplement, he recommended the following test: Place the calcium tablet in a few ounces of plain vinegar. Stir the tablet in the vinegar every few minutes. It should disintegrate or break up, but not dissolve, in 30 minutes or less. If the tablet is still in one piece after 30 minutes, try another brand, Dr. Shangraw said.
Dr. Dawson-Hughes said she hoped that because of the Tufts study, women who are five or six years past menopause will realize that it is not too late to protect their bones by eating three servings of calcium-rich food a day.
Dr. Heaney agreed. ''The important thing is not how you get your calcium,'' he said, ''but that you get it.''
But a diet low in calcium is only one reason women develop osteoporosis, he added. Other factors include smoking, lack of exercise, heredity, weight and intake of other minerals like phosphorous, fluoride and boron.
''Assuring adequate calcium won't wipe out all osteoporosis,'' Dr. Heaney said, ''but it will prevent the calcium-deficiency component of the condition.''

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

CORRECTION-DATE: October 31, 1990, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

 CORRECTION:
The Eating Well column in The Living Arts on Oct. 17, about calcium, misstated the relationship of minerals like phosphorous, fluoride and boron to the development of osteoporosis. Those minerals may have a role in preventing the condition, not developing it.

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October 17, 1990, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Hospital Cuts Aren't Hurting Care for Elderly, Study Says

BYLINE: By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN

SECTION: Section A; Page 1, Column 5; National Desk

LENGTH: 1205 words

A comprehensive national study has found that measures to limit Federal health costs have not reduced the quality of hospital care for the elderly, as many experts had feared.
Measures imposed in 1983 to shorten hospital stays for people 65 years of age and older who are insured by Medicare have not disrupted a trend of improved chances for their survival, said the study, which is being reported today in The Journal of the American Medical Association.
But the cost-cutting measures did increase the likelihood that an elderly patient would be discharged in a medically unstable condition. The percentage of such patients rose to 14.7 from 10.3 before the measures began, said the team of 19 researchers at the University of California at Los Angeles and the Rand Corporation who did the study. 
 
Survival Rates Compared
Those who were discharged in medically unstable condition were 50 percent more likely to die within 90 days than were those who were medically stable. The researchers said the rise in deaths slowed the overall improvement in survival rates, but did not reverse it.
Dr. Bruce C. Vladeck, president of the United Hospital Fund in New York City, a nonprofit research and philanthropic organization whose goal is to improve health care, said it was ''reassuring'' to find that hospital costs could be lowered without sacrificing quality. The study provided ''a more powerful methodology to pull together the bits and pieces of evidence'' that the cost-containment measures had not harmed the overall quality of care, Dr. Vladeck said in an interview.
Medicare now reimburses hospitals at a fixed amount for specific categories of illness called diagnosis-related groups, or D.R.G's, a system that the medical association has opposed. Previously, the payments were simply based on what the hospital charged.
 
Cut in Short-Term Stays
The impact has been significant. Stays in short-term hospitals were cut to 8.5 days last year compared with 10 days in 1983, according to the Health Care Financing Agency, the Federal agency that administers the Medicare program.
The study of 14,000 Medicare patients found a 1.1 percent drop in death rates for the five most serious diseases covered by Medicare in the critical 30 days after admission, when most deaths occur. The drop was from 16.5 percent to 15.7. The 180-day death rates were essentially unchanged at 29.6 percent, compared with 29 percent before the measures were imposed, the researchers said.
The study involved patients who were treated at 297 hospitals in 30 areas in five states. The patients suffered from five diseases that make up 19 percent of Medicare admissions and 32 percent of deaths within 30 days. The researchers compared representative cases of patients cared for in the same hospitals in 1981-1982 and in 1985-1986.
 
Medical Records Reviewed
Over all, the length of hospital stay declined 24 percent, to 11 days from 14.4 days The length of stay fell for each of the five diseases: 21 percent for congestive heart failure, 18 percent for heart attacks, 14 percent for pneumonia, 32 percent for strokes and 28 percent for hip fractures.
To measure the quality of care, the researchers reviewed medical records and developed statistical tools to adjust for how sick the patients were at the time of their admission. With the cooperation of Health Care Financing Agency and the hospitals, the researchers said they had successfully accessed 96 percent of the records requested.
The study showed that physicians and nurses appeared to be providing better physical examinations, diagnostic testing and treatments for elderly patients. The percentage of patients receiving poor or very poor care declined to 12 percent from 25 percent.
But poor care remained a troublesome issue. For example, 30 percent of the patients were judged to have received very poor care, and their death rate 30 days after hospital admission was almost double the 17 percent rate for those receiving very good care.
 
System Imposed by Fiat
The Government imposed D.R.G.'s not as a result of an experiment but nearly simultaneously by fiat in 1983, raising fears that the cost-cutting measures would lead to more deaths and a serious decline in quality of care.
Contrary to widespread belief, the study found no statistically significant increase in the number of patients spending prolonged periods in nursing homes after discharge.
Another surprising finding was that patients were sicker at admission than before the system was introduced. Many experts had predicted that financial incentives to cut the length of stays and substitute lower cost services would favor admission of the less seriously ill. The researchers said they presumed that the finding was the result of stringent admission reviews by professional review organizations that the Government established to monitor quality and appropriateness of care.
Patients who were discharged ''quicker and sicker'' in medically unstable conditions were more likely to die within 90 days than were those who went home in medically stable condition. Among the problems contributing to the medical instability of such patients were rapid heart beats, fast breathing rates and urinary and fecal incontinence, problems that were not present at the time of admission.
 
Lower Death Rate Likely
The senior author, Dr. Robert H. Brook, said the nature of the study did not allow his team to determine ''how many deaths could have been prevented if patients were kept in the hospital longer or if there had been better plans for their care at home.''
The researchers estimated that the 180-day death rate would have been at least an additional two-tenths of 1 percent lower by 1986 if there were no deaths because of instability and other problems at discharge.
''Learning at a hospital level what causes instability at discharge and how to reduce it should become a major joint activity of the hospital administration and medical staff,'' the researchers said.
To reduce the risk of premature death and the burden on families caring for such elderly patients at home, Dr. Brook said in an interview, Federal officials, hospital administrators and doctors need to develop plans that are as explicit for the care of patients after discharge as those made at time of admission to a hospital.
Dr. Gail Wilensky, the administrator of the Health Care Financing Agency, which paid $3.9 million for the study, wrote in an editorial that ''the reports place the burden of proof on those who doubt that we can provide better care at lower cost today.''
In another editorial James P. LoGerfo, medical director of the Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, wrote that restraint of capital improvements might have prevented hospitals from providing even better care than what was noted. But Dr. LoGerfo said the study could not answer the question because the effects may take years to detect.
Because the D.R.G. system is still in transition, Dr. Brook's team said the program needs continual monitoring to make sure future cost restraints do not have adverse effects.
''We have a long way to go to make hospital quality as good as we would like it to be,'' Dr. Brook said.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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The New York Times

October 17, 1990, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Tokyo Journal;
Tatami or Colonial, a House Is Wishful Thinking

BYLINE: By DAVID E. SANGER, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section A; Page 4, Column 3; Foreign Desk

LENGTH: 1053 words

DATELINE: TOKYO, Oct. 16

Hiroshi Akizuki, a 27-year-old computer programmer, wandered into a Queen Anne-style model house with his girlfriend the other day, peered up the giant central staircase, inspected the elegant brick fireplace in the parlor and pondered the question of whether he would ever live like this.
''It's probably impossible,'' Mr. Akizuki said, shaking his head as he stood on the stoop of the building, which would look more like home in the New Jersey suburbs than the center of Tokyo. ''The house is not so expensive, but who could afford the land underneath?''
He consoled himself with the thought that for three-quarters of a million dollars ''you don't even get a single tatami room,'' referring to the traditional straw-mat rooms found in almost every Japanese house. 
The house he was looking at, in fact, is sitting on some of the world's most expensive real estate: an entire village of oversized American- and European-style houses, complete with some suburban streets, improbably situated in a vacant railroad yard just steps from the neon and noise of Shimbashi, once this city's most famous geisha quarter.
 
'The Kids Want Western'
The idea was to fuel the huge popularity here of Western-style Colonials, ski chalets and stately English country houses - all imports, the Government notes - which Japan's nouveaux riches jam into tiny lots and fill with Jacuzzis, gold-plated faucets and computer-controlled kitchens.
But the housing display, it turns out, is teaching Tokyoites about more than just the novelty of two-by-four construction. It is also debunking one of this country's favorite myths: that the Japanese are a decidedly middle-class society, where few are much better off than their neighbors.
The only serious buyers in Shimbashi are people like Kozo Kayo, a 70-year-old retiree, who bought his land long before the Imperial Palace was worth more than the state of Florida. Now the site of his apartment building in Kawasaki is worth millions and he is preparing to sell it in order to build a ''two generation'' house.
''If it was just me, I would build something Japanese-style,'' Mr. Kayo said, wandering out of a house done half in Japanese tatami, half in automated luxury. ''But the kids want Western. And if I don't build it for them, where will they live?''
 
Building Spree by the Elderly
Mr. Kayo is one of the millions of elderly Japanese who are on a rebuilding spree. But for everyone else, the model houses in Shimbashi just drive home the fact that the possibility of home ownership seems more remote than ever.
For young couples, Tokyo's housing show is almost a cruel joke, a chance to walk wide-eyed through three-bedroom houses the way tourists in Beverly Hills gawk at the mansions of stars.
''At one time building a house was a symbol of success in life,'' Kazuro Santo, an official of the Federation of Home Construction, said recently. ''For many men, that is still the case. But now young people come to see the houses simply to serve their dreams. When they can build, no one knows.'' Once, the land crisis was Tokyo's problem, not Japan's. No longer. A recent Government survey showed that, at long last, the huge runup in the price of land in the nation's capital was finally leveling off, increasing only 10 percent last year. But in Osaka, the country's second largest hub, prices shot up 45 percent last year, and in Kyoto, the ancient capital, nearly 50 percent.
The survey suggested what many people have long suspected: The Government's much-publicized effort to put a lid on property prices - ordering banks to cut back their lending and giving Government agencies the right to reject big, speculative transactions - has largely failed. Increasingly, young house-hunters are beginning to wonder whether national leaders who talk about the ''land crisis'' as Japan's most urgent domestic issue have the incentive to solve it.
''It is difficult to believe politicians on any subject,'' said Norio Ishikawa, a 31-year-old builder trying to scratch together the money for a ''Sweden House'' he saw on display in Tokyo. ''It is impossible to believe them about land.''
More than 60 percent of Japanese families are landholders. They are also the bedrock of the Liberal Democratic Party, and few seriously believe that the party is interested in diminishing their constituents' biggest single asset.
While it is hard to find a Government official these days unwilling to issue the standard line about how skyrocketing land prices pose a grave national threat, it is harder still to find one who, in the next breath, fails to note that those property values are the foundation of Japan's booming economy.
A committee put together by the Prime Minister's office suggested that the Government adopt an official policy to put home ownership within reach of ordinary working people. That idea was greeted with silence. A Government plan to impose a tax on corporate land, especially unused tracts that could be freed up for housing developments, has met a storm of opposition from business.
 
More Disputes Taken to Court
Families themselves are increasingly doing battle. The Mainichi Shimbun, one of Japan's leading dailies, reported recently that the number of disputes over property inheritance spilling into the courts was up by more than 30 percent in the last four years. And more and more people tell polltakers that they identify themselves as members of the ''lower class'' rather than the great, undifferentiated middle in which they have long felt secure.
But if there are resentments, most Japanese are well mannered enough to keep them well hidden. The apartment renters who jam their families into tiny three-room apartments at night emerge in the morning smiling as they sweep the streets with next-door neighbors who own fairly spacious houses.
More likely than not, those homeowners are tearing down their old, drafty, wooden Japanese houses and replacing them with something in brick and stucco, often with a carport.
The other day in a quiet neighborhood in the southern part of Tokyo a middle-aged woman whose family rents a tiny apartment stood and watched as workers unloaded big kitchen cabinets for a new house under construction next door.
''Those cabinets,'' she said flatly, ''are bigger than my kitchen.''

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Prospective buyers visiting oversized American- and European-style houses built near the Shimbashi quarter in central Tokyo in response to Japan's growing infatuation with things Western. (David E. Sanger/The New York Times)

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October 17, 1990, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

BUSINESS DIGEST

SECTION: Section D; Page 1, Column 1; Financial Desk

LENGTH: 582 words

The Economy
The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences was awarded to three Americans whose pioneering work provided new tools for weighing the risks and rewards of investments.[Page D1.] Few awards will be as enthusiastically received in the profession as the award to Harry M. Markowitz, Merton H. Miller and William F. Sharpe. [D1.] 
The House voted for a new Democratic plan that would sharply raise the income taxes of the wealthy. [A1.]
A former Drexel lawyer implied that a Government witness in the Milken hearing had lied in earlier testimony. [D2.]
Measures to limit Federal health costs have not reduced the quality of hospital care for the elderly, a study has found. [A1.]
State prosecutors can bring criminal charges like murder and assault against employers for injuring employees at work, New York State's highest court ruled. [B1.]
 
 
 
Companies
Citicorp announced a 38 percent earnings decline, with strong profits in consumer banking but large losses in real estate. [D1.]
Continental and Northwest announced another round of fare increases to help offset the soaring cost of aviation fuel. [D1.]
Hanson agreed with Sir James Goldsmith to swap its 49 percent interest in Newmont Mining for Cavenham Forest Industries. [D1.]
Five top pharmaceutical companies reported strong earnings gains, with Eli Lilly up 21 percent and Merck 19 percent. [D1.]
General Electric said its net income climbed 9 percent, to $1.03 billion, from $945 million in the 1989 period. [D5.]
United Telecom reported a small drop in earnings, while GTE and Southwestern Bell did better than expected. [D5.]
Merrill Lynch reported a 12.4 percent rise in earnings but said investment banking and retail commissions had declined. [D7.]
Three large, healthy S.& L.'s said they were greatly increasing reserves for possible losses on real estate loans. [D8.]
Microsoft reported strong gains in revenues and earnings, while Lotus Development reported declining earnings. [D19.]
The top executive at The New Haven Register was dismissed by the paper's owner after he resisted new layoffs. [D19.]
Britain blocked a venture between Grand Metropolitan and Elders IXL. [D5.]
A dispute over Hydro-Quebec's expansion of generating capacity has involved New York and New England power officials. [B3.]
 
Business Technology
Researchers are reinventing software to harness the power of hundreds or even thousands of computers. [D9.]
 
 
 
Markets
Stocks fell sharply as oil prices rose. The Dow slid 35.15, to 2,381.19, recovering a few points in the final quarter-hour. [D10.]
Oil prices rose in a volatile session. Crude for November delivery gained 94 cents, to $38.89 a barrel. [D19.]
A late rally pushed up prices of Treasury securities and moved interest rates lower. [D16.]
The dollar sank, reaching new lows against the mark and tumbling against the yen. [D17.] Gold prices dropped again. [D17.]
 
 
 
Today's Columns
Gorbachev's main economic adviser offers an intriguing clue to how the ethnically diverse remnants of Stalin's empire might survive as a political union. Peter Passell: Economic Scene. [D2.]
Batterymarch Financial Management thinks this is the right time to bet as much as $1 billion on the future of emerging Soviet companies. Market Place. [D10.]
Few know his name, but his is one of the busiest voices in commercials. Advertising. [D19.]

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

TYPE: Summary

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The New York Times

October 19, 1990, Friday, Late Edition - Final

THE BUDGET BATTLE;
Political Might of Elderly Is Felt Again in Senate

BYLINE: By ROBERT PEAR, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section A; Page 20, Column 1; National Desk

LENGTH: 840 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Oct. 18

Elderly people have once again demonstrated their political power by persuading Congress to abandon proposals for sharp increases in the fees they pay for Medicare. But most of the elderly will still be obliged to pay more for their Federal health insurance coverage under legislation emerging from Capitol Hill.
There was only a brief skirmish in the long-awaited war between the generations this month. The elderly and their advocates won a swift victory, forcing Congress to scale back proposed cuts in Medicare, the health insurance program for 30 million elderly and more than 3 million disabled people. 
Senator Bob Dole of Kansas, the Republican leader, complained this week that Medicare had become untouchable. ''Somebody mentions the word 'Medicare,' it is like crying 'fire' in a crowded theater, and we did not do anything in Medicare that touched poor people,'' Mr. Dole said. ''Why should the taxpayer pay the Medicare premium of millionaires in America or those making $100,000, $200,000, $300,000, $400,000? Why not means-test Medicare?''
Mr. Dole said that ''if senior citizens understood what we were doing to their children and grandchildren,'' by increasing the burden of Federal debt, and if they could afford to pay larger premiums, ''they would do it.''
 
Premiums to Increase
Medicare beneficiaries pay premiums, now $28.60 a month, for insurance to help pay doctors' bills. The monthly premium would rise to $46.20 in 1995 under the deficit-reduction package approved Tuesday by the House of Representatives, as against $54.30 under the bipartisan budget agreement rejected by the House Oct. 5.
The rejected plan, which had been negotiated by Bush Administration officials and Congressional leaders, called for $60 billion in Medicare savings over five years, including $30 billion from beneficiaries.
By contrast, the packaged approved by the House would save Medicare $43 billion over five years and $10 billion of that would come from beneficiaries. The remainder would come from doctors, hospitals and other health-care providers.
The Senate's deficit-reduction plan would save Medicare $49 billion over five years, of which $17 billion would come from beneficiaries.
 
Elderly Seek 'Fair Share'
In interviews, elderly people said they were willing to pay their ''fair share'' to help reduce the Federal budget deficit, but most said they were being asked to pay more than a fair share.
L. Joseph Cahn of New Orleans, who is 82 years old, said ''it wouldn't bother me'' to pay a little more in Medicare premiums. He lives alone in a house that he bought 43 years ago and is in good health. He said that his income, from Social Security, a private pension and investment in Government securities, was higher than at any other time in his life. ''I am blessed,'' he said.
By contrast, Lydia B. Fischer of Miles City, Mont., who lives on $400 a month and has arthritis, emphysema, diabetes and lung cancer, said she becomes upset when she hears that Congress is ''messing with Medicare.''
Mrs. Fischer, 73, said that elderly people ''do protect Medicare and Social Security,'' but she asked, ''What else do we have to live on?''
Morris Lentchitsky, a retired 81-year-old meat cutter who lives in Brooklyn on $20,000 a year, said he could not easily pay higher Medicare premiums and deductibles because his income was fixed.
''If we have to pay more for medications, as we do, and if they take more from our Social Security checks to pay for Medicare, that's double jeopardy,'' he said.
 
Estimated 3-to-1 Spending Edge
The Government does not have a uniform system to keep track of Federal spending by the recipient's age. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that in the fiscal year 1988, the last for which complete data are available, the Government spent $301 billion for the elderly and $107 billion for various programs for families with children under 18 years old.
Social Security accounted for 54 perecent of Federal spending for the elderly while Medicare accounted for nearly 26 percent. Social Security was also the biggest single source of Federal payments to families with children, accounting for $22.8 billion in 1988.
Jeanne Scher of Marietta Ga., a former nursery school teacher who is now president of the Atlanta chapter of the Older Women's League, said: ''I would caution any young person to think about what would happen if his or her parents did not have Social Security. Many more young people would be financially responsible for the care of their parents.''
In debates over the budget, the American Association of Retired Persons has assumed a relatively low profile, allowing other lobbyists to denounce Medicare cutbacks in more strident terms.
Eugene I. Lehrmann of Madison, Wis., vice president of the 33-million member association, said: ''Older people are concerned about the Federal debt they are passing on to their children and grandchildren. We are willing to take our fair share of whatever pain is needed to reduce the budget deficit.''

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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October 19, 1990, Friday, Late Edition - Final

THE BUDGET BATTLE;
A Budget Status Report

SECTION: Section A; Page 20, Column 2; National Desk

LENGTH: 676 words


Proposals Almost Certain to Emerge From Congress
 
Cigarette Tax: Increase of 8 cents (4 cents in 1991, 4 cents in 1993), to 24 cents.
Alcohol Tax: An increase of 16 cents a six-pack, to 32 cents.
10 Percent Luxury Tax: Applies to purchase price above the following thresholds: cars, $30,000; boats, $100,000; jewelry, $5,000.
Aviation Fees: Increase in passenger ticket tax to 10 percent from 8 percent, plus increases in other fees. 
Insurance: Reduced tax breaks for insurance industry.
Social Security: State and local workers not covered by a government-sponsored retirement plan to pay into Social Security.
 
Proposals in Dispute And headed For Conference
 
Income Tax Rates: House bill would extend the 33 percent marginal tax rate to all high-income taxpayers, who now generally pay a flat rate of 28 percent. New rate would apply to all taxable income above $78,400 for those filing jointly. House would also increase alternative minimum tax to 25 percent, from 21 percent. Senate bill has no such provisions.
Millionaires: House bill would impose 10 percent surtax on all taxable income above $1 million. Senate bill has no such provision.
Indexing: House bill would freeze indexing for inflation of tax brackets and personal exemptions for one year. Senate bill has no such provision.
Deductions: Senate bill would reduce itemized deductions by 5 percent of the amount of adjusted gross income above $100,000. House has no such provision.
Gasoline: Senate bill would add 9.5 cents a gallon to the gasoline tax by Jan. 1, 1992, to a total of 18.5 cents. House bill would not raise gasoline taxes.
Alcohol: House would increase tax on a gallon of 100-proof alcohol by $1, to a total of $13.50; Senate proposes $1.20 increase. House would add 22 cents in taxes for a bottle of wine, to a total of 25 cents; the Senate proposes an increase of only 18 cents.
10 Percent Luxury Tax: House would impose tax on purchase of furs for the amount above $10,000; Senate threshhold is $5,000. House would impose tax on airplane purchase above $100,000, the Senate $250,000.
Medicare: Major differences between House and Senate bills. House would impose 1.45 percent Medicare tax on wages up to $100,000, from a cap of $51,300 currently. Senate would extend cap to $89,000. Senate would extend Medicare tax to state and local employees. House would not. House would increase Medicare deductibles and premiums on the elderly, requiring them to pay $10.1 billion in new payments over five years, and would impose $33 billion in new costs on Medicare providers. The Senate would raise Medicare costs to the elderly by $14.2 billion over five years and would raise providers' costs over the same period by $32 billion.
Energy Companies: To encourage oil exploration and drilling, Senate would provide $3.4 billion in tax breaks over five years for small companies. House has no such provisions.
Capital Gains: House would exclude 50 percent of capital gains, other than securities, from taxes up to a $200,000 lifetime limit. On the sale of securities, the House would also permit $1,000 in tax-free capital gains a year for those with taxable income under $100,000. The Senate bill has neither provision.
The Poor: The Senate bill would give a new tax credit totaling $16.8 billion over five years to help low-income workers pay for child care and to help offset higher excise taxes. The House would provide at least $11 billion for the five-year period and perhaps as much as $22 billion.
 
Proposals Eliminated From Consideration
 
Heating Oil: The budget summit proposal for a 2-cent-a-gallon gallon tax on refiners for fuel such as heating oil, gasoline and diesel fuel.
Unemployment Insurance: The budget summit proposal to delay payment of unemployment income for two weeks.
I.R.S.: The budget summit proposal to raise $9.4 billion by improving auditing and collection efforts.
Small Businesses: Most of the $12.1 billion in tax breaks for small businesses proposed by the summit negotiators.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

TYPE: List

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The New York Times

October 21, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Review/Theater Deception and Betrayal In Soviet Triangle Tale

BYLINE: By WILBORN HAMPTON

SECTION: Section 1; Part 2, Page 62, Column 3; Cultural Desk

LENGTH: 554 words

There is a surprise plot twist at the end of the first act of ''Theme and Variations,'' a play by the Soviet writer Samuil Alyoshin at the Chelsea Stage that is built solely around a faintly amusing case of mistaken identity.
This error, which goes uncorrected and undetected through much of the second act because of the lust and self-interest of the misidentified, alters the lives of all three characters in the play. Unfortunately, this unexpected turn of events comes only after a tedious introduction of the other two characters, told mostly in the exchange of a series of rather mundane letters. The story evolves out of a chance meeting between two Muscovite lawyer friends near a statue of Pushkin in Simferopol, the old Crimean city that has built a small cottage industry out of the fact that Russia's great poet once spent three weeks there on his way from St. Petersburg to somewhere else. The two men make the acquaintance of Lyuba (Kathleen McCall), a beautiful young tour guide who gives her entourage a 10-minute break to take photographs of the Pushkin statue. Dmitri (William Wise), the older lawyer, quotes Pushkin with the young woman. Igor (Ethan Phillips), the younger lawyer, tries to impress her in a more traditional way, and fails. He does, however, manage to get her home address. 
Back in Moscow, Dmitri writes to the young woman, and the rest of the first act is a recitation of their correspondence. The world of letters may be the grandfather of all literature, but, with a few exceptions, it is not a literary device that transfers successfully to the stage. Mr. Alyoshin uses it in ''Theme and Variations'' for character exposition. The trouble is that the characters these epistles expose are ordinary people living commonplace lives filled with familiar problems. Lyuba turns out to be a complainer of the ''it's always something'' school. She's bored; her husband wants her to give dinner parties to help his career; her mother-in-law is always criticizing her; she gets so angry that she slams a door. Dmitri is one of those older men who are full of understanding; he is supportive; he has an aphorism for every occasion. ''Don't slam doors,'' he advises Lyuba. ''It's not the door's fault.''
The deeper problem with the play, however, is that none of this really leads anywhere, even after the inadvertent mistake in identity leads to a second-act spiral of deception, betrayal and accusation. As an illustration of the darker side of human nature and the ironies present in the process of self-discovery, ''Theme and Variations'' has all the ingredients for a good short story.
Despite energetic and animated performances, especially by Miss McCall and Mr. Phillips, neither the cast nor Geoffrey Sherman's lively direction can overcome the mediocrity and sedentary nature of so much of the material.
Theme and Variations By Samuil Alyoshin; English translation by Michael Glenny; directed by Geoffrey Sherman; set and lighting design, Paul Wonsek; costumes, Marianne Powell Parker; sound design, Richard Rose; production stage manager, Randy Lawson. Presented by Chelsea Stage, 441 West 26th Street; Mr. Sherman, artistic director; Dara Hershman, managing director. Igor MikhailovichEthan Phillips Lyubov (Lyuba) SergeyevnaKathleen McCall Dmitri NikolayevichWilliam Wise

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Ethan Phillips and Kathleen McCall in a scene from ''Theme and Variations.'' (Gerry Goodstein/''Theme and Variations'')

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October 21, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

MIDEAST TENSION;
Thousands March in 16 Cities to Protest U.S. Intervention in Gulf

BYLINE: By EVELYN NIEVES

SECTION: Section 1; Part 1, Page 14, Column 1; Foreign Desk

LENGTH: 489 words

Thousands of people rallied in New York and 15 other American cities yesterday to protest the United States' military buildup in the Persian Gulf. It was the largest demonstration against the American presence in the gulf since President Bush first sent troops after Iraq invaded Kuwait on Aug. 2.
Similar rallies were held in other nations, including Australia, Canada, England, Italy and Panama, said rally organizers from the Manhattan-based Coalition Against the U.S. Intervention in the Middle East. 
 
'Won't Fight for Texaco'
In Manhattan, a parade of marchers six blocks long wound its way through midtown before rallying at Times Square in the late afternoon. Many chanted, ''Hell no, we won't go; we won't fight for Texaco'' or ''Money for peace, not for war.''
The police estimated the crowd at about 5,000; marchers said there were more than 25,000. The march was peaceful, with three arrests on minor charges reported.
The march included contingents representing students' groups, Vietnam veterans, senior citizens, Palestine Liberation Organization supporters, labor groups and homeless people from Manhattan's Lower East Side. There were 10 military reservists, including two who have been called for active duty and have refused to go.
Former United States Attorney General Ramsey Clark, who formed the coalition, was joined at the head of the march by Michael Moore, a documentary film maker. There were speeches before and after the march, including two by the military reservists now considered absent without leave.
Stephanie Atkinson, 23 years old, of Murphysboro, Ill,, joined the Army Reserves six years ago to pay for college, she said, and was called to active duty in Saudi Arabia last week. ''I believe in the economic sanctions and in honest negotiations, not war,'' she said. ''If I have to go to jail, I'll go.''
Organizers said they began planning for the march after a speech by Mr. Clark on Sept. 13 at Cooper Union drew 2,500 to an auditorium that seats 1,000.
Leo Brody, a retired typographer who came from Long Island with about 20 other retired men and women, said: ''Isn't this proof that the people are not 100 percent behind Bush?''
Mumtaz Hussein, a Pakistani whose mother now lives in Kuwait, said many Kuwaitis supported Iraq's invasion. ''They are happy that the oppressive regime is removed,'' he said. ''My mother's family has been there 20 years and they've had no rights there. We would be happy if the same thing happened to Saudi Arabia.''
Mr. Clark told the marchers that the turnout was ''terrific.'' ''I hope they're listening in the White House,'' he said.
In Washington, 125 people rallied at the White House to demonstrate against the deployment. The White House declined to comment on the demonstration.
The Manhattan rally was the largest. Organizers said about 1,000 marchers gathered in San Fancisco, 200 in Cleveland, 200 in Boston and 100 in Atlanta.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Demonstrators marching along Broadway to protest United States involvement in the Persian Gulf. (Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times)

Copyright 1990 The New York Times Company



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The New York Times

October 21, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Social Security Benefits to Rise by 5.4% in January

BYLINE: By ROBERT PEAR, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section 1; Part 1, Page 29, Column 1; National Desk

LENGTH: 491 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Oct. 20

Forty million Social Security recipients will get a 5.4 percent increase in benefits in January, the biggest such increase since 1982.
Under Federal law, the cost-of-living adjustment is made automatically each year. In 1991, it will cost the Government $13.5 billion. 
Money for Social Security benefits comes from the Social Security trust fund, which had assets of $163 billion at the end of 1989. The surplus in the trust fund tends to make the overall Federal deficit look smaller, as the Government generally shows spending and receipts for Social Security along with those for other programs in a single budget.
Like Social Security, several other benefit programs are indexed for inflation and linked to the Consumer Price Index. The programs include Supplemental Security Income for the aged, blind and disabled, Civil Service retirement benefits and military retirement benefits.
 
Welfare Benefits in Decline
The Congressional Budget Office says that such entitlement programs, under which payments must be made to applicants who meet criteria set by law, account for nearly half of all Federal spending, or $550 billion in a $1.2 trillion budget in the fiscal year 1990.
Some benefit programs are not tied to the Consumer Price Index. Thus, for example, the level of benefits in the main Federal-state welfare program, Aid to Families with Dependent Children, has not kept pace with inflation. In a typical state, the purchasing power of welfare benefits has declined 39 percent in the last 20 years.
For Social Security recipients the average monthly benefit, now $571, will rise to $602 in January. For an elderly couple, both receiving Social Security, the average monthly benefit will rise to $1,022 from $970.
Social Security recipients got a 4.7 percent increase in benefits last January. The increase in 1982 was 7.4 percent.
 
Method Under Criticism
The indexing of Federal programs, to protect beneficiaries from inflation, been criticized by some conservatives, in both the Republican and Democratic Parties, because it tends to increase Federal spending.
But P. Royal Shipp, senior specialist on social legislation at the Congressional Research Service, said indexing was ''introduced in Social Security as a means of constraining the growth of the program.''
''The 1972-73 legislation pegging future automatic benefit increases to the Consumer Price Index was sought largely by conservatives as a means of curbing even larger ad hoc benefit increases,'' he said. ''The old ad hoc, separately enacted benefit increases of the past might have sometimes exceeded the inflation rate, but each and every increase was also accompanied by a review of its effect on the financial condition of the program.''
With automatic cost-of-living adjustments, there is no requirement for such scrutiny. But Congress can pass a law delaying or reducing a scheduled increase in benefits and has done so on occasion.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1990 The New York Times Company



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The New York Times

October 21, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Postings: Congregate Care in Jersey;
From First-Timers to Old-Timers

SECTION: Section 10; Page 1, Column 2; Real Estate Desk

LENGTH: 193 words

After decades of making a name as a builder of affordable first-home developments for young families, the K. Hovnanian Company of Red Bank, N.J., is starting a new venture aimed at the other end of the generational scale - a congregate-care rental for retirees planned for Holmdel, N.J. To be called the Heritage Club at Holmdel, the $14 millon development is planned as the first of several such rental facilities, where elderly residents would live in separate one- or two-bedroom apartments but have the option of eating communally in a central dining hall. Like others of its kind, Heritgage Club also plans a clubhouse and recreation facilities, an on-site medical staff and association with a hospital, the nearby Bay Shore Community Hospital, for more intensive care. 
In other housing projects, K. Hovnanian has usually built the development and then thrown it open for sale, often to crowds of eager buyers who camped out overnight for a place in line. The company is treading more carefully with its first congregate-care facility, however, and will not begin construction until half of the 200 units have been leased. Rents remain to be set.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Drawing: Rendering of retirement community, Heritage Club, at Holmdel, N.J. (K.G.D.R. Architects)

Copyright 1990 The New York Times Company



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The New York Times

October 21, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Hers;
An Age-Old Question

BYLINE: By Susan Jacoby; Susan Jacoby is writing a book on failure.

SECTION: Section 6; Page 28, Column 3; Magazine Desk

LENGTH: 1274 words

I am having lunch with an old friend's son, a dutiful young man paying a courtesy call en route from California to a summer vacation in Europe. He is concerned about his mother, who recently went on a liquid diet. At 5 feet 5 inches, she has dropped to under 100 pounds. ''Mom looks like a skeleton,'' he says. ''Do you suppose she has anorexia? I never heard of that happening to anyone her age.''
I offer the opinion that anorexia, while not out of the question, is highly unlikely. I tell this worried boy that his mother, who just celebrated her 50th birthday, is probably searching for a suitable style in which to grow old.
At age 45, I too have been giving a good deal of thought to styles in old ladies. Despite attitudinal changes wrought by feminism, appearance remains a far more significant concern for aging women than for men. This is not to say that men are unaffected by the physical signs of aging but that their concerns are more functional than cosmetic. 
Feminism has provided us with models of female achievement in old age, but it has not provided realistic models of aging feminine attractiveness. Magazines heap praise on Barbara Bush's cozy natural image, but the few older models in advertisements are extremely thin and don't look a day over 45. In a discussion with a magazine editor, a cosmetics company representative succinctly described her firm's position:
''We're not going to shoot ourselves in the foot by having a woman with wrinkles advertise a face cream. It's like having a blind man try to sell glasses.''
With such charming sentiments in mind, I scrutinize old women and their efforts to strike a compromise between vanity and physical reality. I rule out the exceptional woman who has been overlooked by time - that creature, blessed with a Hepburn-style (Audrey or Katharine) bone structure, who is cruelly held up by the media as a model for the average female endomorph. Among ordinary women, I have identified three distinct, albeit occasionally overlapping, styles.
 
The Old-Fashioned Old Lady
They are a vanishing breed, these women who look exactly as ladies did when I was a girl. They wear hats during the day. Even in midsummer, their legs are covered with stockings. Their feet are always properly shod in pumps. They own loose shirtwaist dresses or suits with hems an inch or two below the knee. They always put on makeup but rarely color their hair.
I admire those who have rejected the idea that the old ought to try to look as much like the young as possible. It must be a relief to adopt a sort of uniform - never again to wonder whether one's legs can stand another inch of exposure or whether one's hair color has become too flamboyant for aging skin.
No one will ever have the chance to snicker at the old-fashioned old lady for trying on a denim skirt in a trendy department at Bloomingdale's. No mutant offspring will tell her to ''act your age, Mother'' - because acting her age is what she does best.
But there is a cost attached to this immunity from criticism. In the first place, the persona of the old-fashioned old lady is physically restrictive. Her uniform is appropriate for museums, concert halls and quiet restaurants, but it will never allow her to go to a baseball game or exercise or even walk briskly down the street.
Even more important is the psychologically restrictive aspect of a consistently dignified image. One need not be fashion's slave to value the spontaneity conferred by a choice. At any age, it is fun to dress up or down, to select an image based on a transitory mood rather than some abstract notion of propriety.
One friend in her late 60's - a woman whose active professional life leaves younger colleagues gasping with exhaustion - nevertheless borders on old-fashioned old ladyhood in her appearance. Red was her favorite color when she was younger, but she has banished it from her wardrobe because some helpful acquaintance told her the color was ''too young.'' It annoys me to see this vibrant woman adopting a decorous image that doesn't suit her .
No, I don't see an old-fashioned old lady in my future.
 
The Die-Hard Fixer-Uppers
These are the women who won't give up their youth without a fight - indeed, the fight of their lives. Still fitting into the size 8 they wore at 25, they buy the same body-revealing clothes as do their younger social counterparts. Their faces generally look pinched - a telltale tightness that screams ''face lift.'' I think these women look tense because they are very, very hungry.
Fixer-uppers are dedicated to avoiding the dreaded observation, ''She's let herself go.'' Constant exercise and dieting are a way of life because only the most fortunate genetic accident enables anyone to maintain easily the same weight at 65 that she did at 25. I suspect this realization - spurred by those few extra pounds that nearly all of us begin fighting in our 40's - is what prompted my California friend to begin herliquid diet.
For the die-hard fixer-upper, exercise is not a pleasure but a calorie-burning duty. While having a drink on a shaded terrace last summer, I watched in horror as a woman who appeared to be in her mid-60's nearly collapsed from dehydration. Disdaining a golf cart on a 90-degree day, she had walked over the entire 18-hole course to begin working off five pounds gained on vacation. She explained all this to a doctor who was trying to persuade her to lie down rather than swim laps for her next body-toning activity.
If that's what it takes to avoid letting oneself go, I'd rather be chubbier and cheerier.
 
The Shameless Old Hussy
They aren't really hussies, of course. It's simply that these old women - whether fat, thin or in between - retain an aura of sensuality that probably set tongues wagging when they were younger.
It takes a great deal of courage to be a shameless old hussy because people are always telling her to cover up, go on a diet or act her age.
''Wouldn't you think they'd at least put on a T-shirt?'' one nubile teen-ager asked another as a quartet of old women, clad in skimpy bathing suits, settled in to sunbathe in a park near my home.
The women were probably in their 70's. By prevailing standards, they were all too fat to appear in public in a bathing suit; none was thin enough or unlined enough to model in ads aimed at women who weren't born yesterday.
Yet there was something extraordinarily appealing about the appearance of each woman. One had pure white waist-length hair pulled back into a ponytail. Another, the heftiest of the lot, nevertheless had the best muscle tone of anyone I have ever seen over the age of 40.
What these women had in common was a physical vigor, playfulness and lack of self-consciousness that endowed them with powerful feminine charm. They looked like the sort of women who, if they had a few extra thousand dollars, would spend the money on a trip around the world instead of a trip to the hospital for cosmetic surgery. It was easy to imagine them enjoying romantic adventures in a part of the world where sexual desire in old women (and men) is treated as a fact of life rather than a subject for ridicule.
The ebullience and self-acceptance of the shameless old hussy appeal to me more strongly than any other style of aging, yet I know there is more of the die-hard fixer-upper in me than I care to admit. I would like to wear a bathing suit at 70, but it makes my 45-year-old flesh crawl to think of teen-agers ridiculing me.
After 25 years of feminism, it is still difficult to imagine a style that allows an old woman to have fun without becoming a figure of fun.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Drawing

Copyright 1990 The New York Times Company



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The New York Times

October 21, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Visiting the Vestiges of Jewish Poland

BYLINE: By Ruth E. Gruber; Ruth E. Gruber, a former United Press International chief correspondent in Warsaw, is writing a guidebook to Jewish sites in Eastern Europe.

SECTION: Section 5; Page 8, Column 1; Travel Desk

LENGTH: 2453 words

An elderly woman, her face as brown and wrinkled as a walnut, approached us one day last June as we stood gazing at the yawning roofless wreck that was once the synagogue in Dzialoszyce, a sleepy village 30 miles or so northeast of Cracow in southern Poland.
''Do you speak Jewish?'' she asked in Polish, and mumbled a few words of Yiddish.
It's been a long time, she apologized; she's forgotten almost everything she knew of the language.
The woman came with us - three Americans and two Polish experts on synagogue architecture - as we inspected the battered masonry shell. Children lounging around a bumper car and video arcade in front of the ruin stared as we passed; a few of them joined us, too. 
Built in 1852 according to a neo-classical design by Felicjan Frankowski, the synagogue is an impressive monument to the destruction of a people.
Before the Holocaust, Dzialoszyce was a Jewish town: in 1939, 7,000 of its 10,000 inhabitants were Jews. The synagogue would have been magnificent, with its tall arched windows and sculpted outer decorations. But all that remains of a frescoed interior is a few patches of flaking blue paint.
Later, the old woman and the children escorted us beyond the edge of the village, to the site of the Jewish cemetery, destroyed by the Nazis. A simple white monument, erected Sept. 1, 1989, on the 50th anniversary of the outbreak of the war, commemorates the thousands of Jews who were slaughtered here in mass graves or deported to Nazi death camps.
''I used to work for the rabbi here before the war,'' the old woman confided. ''I will never forget what he told me. He said that when the birds go away from here, the Jews will go away too. One year, there were no birds. And after that . . .''
Some 3.5 million Jews lived in more than 3,000 separate Jewish communities in Poland before World War II, making it the richest center of Jewish life in Europe. Jews made up about 10 percent of the population; one-third of the population of Warsaw. In many small towns, like Dzialoszyce, Jews made up the great majority of inhabitants.
All this was wiped out in the Holocaust; today only a few thousand Polish citizens consider themselves to be Jewish. The intense Jewish culture as described in the familiar works of Isaac Bashevis Singer and other writers, or documented in the many photographs that have survived from that time, are history.
Throughout Poland, however, stand mute and often overwhelmingly poignant memorials to the once flourishing life that was for centuries an intimate part of Polish development: scores of synagogues that no longer serve congregations; abandoned cemeteries with no one to tend the graves.
They are places where ghosts walk and memories whisper; visiting them is an act of homage as well as discovery.
For me, their impact is even more powerful than that of the museums and monuments at Auschwitz and other death camps, where the vastness of the crimes can almost be too much, and too impersonal, for the mind to grasp. At the very least, Poland's Jewish relics serve as an important complement to the churches, castles and historic buildings more normally seen on tourist routes.
Most synagogues and other Jewish buildings - including all the famous Polish wooden synagogues, unique to the area - were destroyed by the Nazis, but about 250 synagogues still exist, in one form or another.
Only two or three of them are still used as houses of worship. Many are simply ruins. Some have been converted into warehouses, movie houses, libraries, culture centers, shops or even apartments. Only a few bear even a plaque or other marker describing their former function, but several also have been beautifully restored as museums.
More than 350 cemeteries remain, many with stones featuring intricately inscribed ritual designs. Several dozen have stones dating before 1800; the oldest grave, in Wroclaw, in southwestern Poland, dates to 1203. Some cemeteries, such as those at Rymanow, Bobowa and Lezajsk (Litzhensk in Yiddish), in southern Poland, Lublin in southeast Poland and Gora Kawaria (Ger in Yiddish), 20 miles south of Warsaw, are revered for their tombs of great sages or famous Hasidic rabbis.
In addition, besides the well-known museums or monuments at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Majdanek, Treblinka and other Nazi death camps, many towns and cities, including Warsaw, Cracow, Lodz, Bialystok, Lublin, Kazimierz Dolny and elsewhere have their own Holocaust monuments.
The memorial at Kazimierz Dolny, a lovely Renaissance town overlooking the Vistula River about 80 miles southeast of Warsaw, is particularly striking. Hundreds of broken gravestones uprooted by the Nazis have been used to build a massive wall split by a jagged crack, signifying the sudden destruction of the community. Visitors going through the crack find the few remaining tombstones standing undisturbed amid a peaceful shadowed forest that has grown up around them.
There are Jewish relics in most parts of Poland, which can easily be visited as part of general tourist itineraries. Most, however, are concentrated in the east and south - those regions that, during the 120 years when Poland was partitioned, formed part of the Russian Pale of Settlement (the only part of the Russian Empire where Jews were allowed to live) and Austrian Galicia.
Warsaw and Cracow were the main centers of Jewish settlement and culture, and retain the foremost concentrations of Jewish relics and monuments. ''Our Roots,'' a new, Warsaw-based Jewish travel agency run by an enthusiastic staff of young people, has recently published comprehensive Jewish guides to each city, which I recommend.
Warsaw's Jewish section was destroyed during the Ghetto uprising in 1943. A few traces of the old ghetto areas remain, along with striking monuments to the ghetto martyrs. Only one synagogue, the recently restored Nozyk Synagogue on Twarda Street, still exists, and it still is a house of worship. The old cemetery on Okopowa Street is fascinating. There is a Jewish museum at the Jewish Historical Institute on Tlomackie Street, and a Jewish Theater on Grzybowski Square, which stages regular performances.
In Cracow, virtually undamaged in the war, much of the old Jewish section, Kazimierz, is intact, if in poor repair. More than half a dozen synagogues are standing, including the fortress-like Old Synagogue, from the 15th and 16th centuries on Szeroka Street, which now houses a Jewish museum. At the other end of Szeroka Street is the still active, 16th-century Remuh Synagogue and the Old Cemetery, where pilgrims come to pay homage at the tomb of the 16th-century Rabbi Moses Isserles and other sages.
Much has been written lately about Polish anti-Semitism. Tourists are unlikely to run up against this, though they may find offensive graffiti or vandalism in cemeteries. There is, of course, always the possibility of running up against village louts or drunkards who may harass visitors, but most Poles will be very helpful in assisting people find out-of-the-way cemeteries or unmarked former synagogues, and many will be interested in discussing local history. Following is a brief sampling of other places of Jewish interest around Poland, a very thin skimming of the surface:
Karczew. In Mr. Singer's epic novel ''The Family Moskat,'' the protagonist, Hadassah, is killed by Nazi bombs in the first days of World War II and is buried in the Jewish cemetery in Karczew, a small town on the Vistula about 25 miles southeast of Warsaw. At that time it was in an area in which well-to-do Warsaw Jews kept summer houses. Today the cemetery is one of the most moving of Poland's abandoned Jewish graveyards. No Jews live in the town, and the cemetery is totally abandoned, the gravestones broken or eroded or tipped over and drifted over by river sand. The surface of the sand is marked by footprints of people and dogs; an eerie hush hangs over the place and even local noises - bird calls, children's voices - seem far, far, away.
Tykocin. A village in the northeast near Bialystok, formerly an important Jewish city (itself worth a visit for its old Jewish section and cemetery), its massive early Baroque synagogue built in 1642 has been restored inside and out and is used as a Jewish museum and town museum. Cantorial music plays from tapes and the restored frescoes, including wall-sized texts of Hebrew prayers, are impressive. There is also a cemetery whose stones are so eroded that many of them look like hummocks of earth.
Krynki. Hard on the Soviet border, about 30 miles east of Bialystok, Krynki is an isolated farming village that used to be a mainly Jewish town, center of a leather industry. Traces of three synagogues and its cemetery survive. One of the synagogues is the town's movie house; one is a warehouse; one, the former imposing Great Synagogue, built in 1754, is a pile of rubble in the center of town. The cemetery is spread out on a hilltop; the hundreds of eroded gravestones are overgrown by vines and weeds. Belying the peaceful scene, the foundations of a pigsty that was built by the Nazis with beautifully inscribed gravestones still exist in a nearby potato field.
Pinczow. A charming little town near Dzialoszyce in southern Poland, where local authorities hope to restore the old synagogue. It dates from the end of the 17th century and retains vestiges of important polychrome wall paintings and other decorative fragments. A plaque gives some history of the synagogue, which was used by the Nazis as a warehouse, and broken fragments of tombstones are preserved in a mosaiclike wall nearby. Pinczow has an excellent little museum in the municipal building, which devotes considerable space to local Jewish history.
Tarnow. This beautiful market town about 50 miles east of Cracow was once a bustling Hasidic center and is still a pilgrimage site for Hasidic Jews. The old Jewish quarter, near the magnificent market square, is in fine condition, with stone houses of the 16th and 17th centuries lining narrow winding streets, the main one Zydowska Street, Zydowska meaning Jewish. All that remains of the main synagogue is the central bimah, or pulpit, with four tall pillars, a typical feature of Polish masonry synagogues. These are now protected by a canopy roof and stand in a park, the grounds of which were once the body of the synagogue.
Rymanow. If one ruined Polish synagogue could stand as a monument to human barbarity, it could be the tragic ruin at Rymanow, a village in the southeast corner of Poland that, like Tarnow, was once a Hasidic center and bustling commercial town. At one time it specialized in the trade of Hungarian wine. Standing alone on the crest of a small hill, the synagogue, probably dating to the 18th century, is a massive structure that seems to have battled hard against its own destruction. Fragments of beautiful frescoes - including a lion, a tiger and a scene of the Wailing Wall - remain on its inner walls, despite exposure to the elements through shattered windows and nearly collapsed roof. The cemetery, a center for Hasidic pilgrims, is also worth visiting.
Half a century after the Holocaust, these mute stones and crumbling synagogues personalize the tragedy in an extraordinarily moving and unforgettable way, as do similar remains in Eastern and Central Europe.
They are the vestiges of a vanished civilization, what one Polish writer, Anna Kamienska, called an obstinate ''tribe of stones . . . ever marching and shouting and calling voicelessly . . . .''
 
SEEING THE SITES: A VISITOR'S GUIDE
 
Getting There
All the sites can be reached on good paved roads (though within the towns and villages there may be short stretches of dirt roads), and are most easily reached by car.
Karczew is a 45-minute drive from Warsaw, on good roads. The cemetery is reached by a dirt road.
Tykocin is two to three hours from Warsaw, off the main road to Bialystok; there is a marked turnoff about 15 miles before Bialystok.
There is a single road from Bialystok to Krynki, about a 45-minute drive; the village is at the end of the road.
Pinczow, Tarnow and Rymanow can be easily visited on a driving trip from Cracow. For Pinczow, take the E77 (also known as Route 7) from Warsaw to Cracow, turning left at Jedrzejow and right at Kije. Pinczow is about 150 miles from Warsaw and some 55 miles from Cracow. Tarnow is on Route E40, about 45 miles east of Cracow. Rymanow is about an hour's drive from Tarnow; follow the E40 from Tarnow to Pilzno, then take that road to Krosno. From there follow Route 98.
 
Places to Stay
Deluxe and first-class hotels in Warsaw include the Marriott, Victoria Inter-Continental, Holiday Inn and Forum.
Hotels in Cracow include the Forum, the Cracovia, the Holiday Inn, the refurbished old Pod Roza and the Francuski.
Major cities handy for visiting Jewish sites, including Wroclaw, Lodz (one of the largest and best-preserved cemeteries), Lublin and Nowy Sacz, have hotels run by Orbis, the national travel office, or other good hotels. In smaller towns in the south these hotels can cost as little as $22 for a double room.
For visitors to Tarnow and Rymanow, a particularly interesting place to stay is the Zamkowy Hotel in the southeastern town of Lancut, which is in a wing of the spectacular Lancut palace. The Lancut synagogue, across the street from the palace, is being restored and will be a museum.
 
Places to Eat
A pleasant place to spend an evening in Warsaw is Cafe Eilat, on Aleje Ujazdowski, two blocks from the United States Embassy. It is run by the Polish-Israeli Friendship Society.
The newly refurbished Gessler restaurant, in the Saxon Gardens off Senatorska Street, serves Polish nouvelle cuisine and offers some Jewish specialties.
Cracow has many restaurants, but one of the best places to eat is Nowina, about 10 miles south of the city. It is on the highway to Zakopane.
 
General Information
In Warsaw, the Our Roots Jewish Information and Tourist Bureau, in the Jewish Theater building at 12-16 Grzybowski Square (telephone 200556; the Warsaw area code is 22), has published guidebooks to Jewish Warsaw and Jewish Cracow. Other local Jewish guides are planned.
The staff says it will help visitors find hotel and private accommodations and English-speaking guides.
Staff members will also be able to provide information on specific cemeteries and synagogues, or provide lists of Jewish sites in various areas.
Orbis, at 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10110 (212-867-5011), puts out a brochure on Jewish Poland and can arrange tours of Jewish sites. The tourist office in Lublin, with Orbis, puts out a guide in English to Jewish sites in the Lublin area. R. G.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photos: Abandoned cemetery at Karczew, above; restoration at Warsaw's Nozyk synagogue, below left; remains of Dzialoszyce synagogue, below right. An Israeli couple visiting the site of the Treblinka death camp after seeing an ancestor's hometown on a memorial to the dead. (Photographs by Witold Szulecki for The New York Times); Map of Poland.

Copyright 1990 The New York Times Company



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The New York Times

October 21, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Private Firms Run Post Office Branches

BYLINE: By PENNY SINGER

SECTION: Section 12WC; Page 10, Column 3; Westchester Weekly Desk

LENGTH: 1159 words

DATELINE: MAMARONECK

A NAME that has instant recognition is a good recommendation for a new business. And Robert J. Grant opened a business last week with a name that has 100 percent consumer recognition.
The letters on the gray building on Post Road in Mamaroneck spell out United States Post Office.
Underneath is Mr. Grant's company name - A.S.A.P., for Answering Service, Shipping and Packing. What this means is that the building houses a new contract post office for the United States Postal Service, run by Mr. Grant's employees as they provide, as well, the services described in his firm's name. 
Contract post offices are retail establishments operated for the Postal Service by private business people, explained Elizabeth Harrison, who is the retail-marketing specialist for the Westchester field division of the Postal Service, in Elmsford.
''Contract postal units are actually adjuncts of the post office, set up to provide additional post office locations for the convenience of customers,'' she said. Some are in retail stores, some in banks and other locations. There are three more in Westchester: One at Manhattanville College in Purchase - it is across the hall from the campus bookstore and run by college employees; another is in a drugstore on Tarrytown Road in White Plains; and the third is at a counter at the Marine Midland Bank in New Rochelle.
Joyce C. Pozsar, manager of the Manhattanville book shop, said having a post office on campus ''is a win-win situation.''
''The kids look forward to mail so much that they are at the post office two and three times a day,'' Mrs. Pozsar added. ''As for the bookstores, it's a tremendous help to have a post office close by. We do a lot of mailing and we do a lot of packages. Our business has also increased because the kids come in here to buy cards and stationery. ''
''We'd like another outlet in Harts dale,'' Ms. Harrison said. ''The Harts dale post office was moved recently; not very far, but far enough to make it a little more difficult for a lot of the senior citizens who live in the four corners area to get to. They and others would welcome another post office facility in the neighborhood.''
The fee that the Postal Service pays outsiders to run the postal contract unit is negotiable, depending on the volume of postal business done.
According to the supervisor of the purchase program, Anthony Baio, the Postal Service will be opening its own retail store, called The Store of the Future, on Martine Avenue in White Plains in January. ''It will provide customers with complete postal services in addition to shirts, mugs, stamp collections and post office memorabilia,'' he said.
 
Retail Areas Are Good Sites
Retail stores in heavily trafficked areas are considered good locations for the adjunct post offices, Ms. Harrison said. ''They can be located on the premises of a delicatessen or a print shop or any other type of retail business. We do stipulate that they have adequate parking, facilities for the handicapped and that they maintain a separate counter given exclusively over to post office business.''
The new branch in Mamaroneck is on the site of what was the former Harbor Tire building on the corner of the Post Road. ''We had our eye on the site for a long time,'' Mr. Grant said. ''It was ideal because it's so highly visible and 25,000 cars pass by it every day.''
Mr. Grant and his partner, John Dionisio, who was in charge of the construction, bought the building and financed the renovation project themselves.
A year ago, they began negotiations with the Postal Service to manage a contract post office. A few months ago they signed the ''public servicecontract,'' in which they agreed, for a fee of $99 a year, to provide postal services to the public.
''Before we contacted the post office, we examined various franchise operations that offer mail services,'' Mr. Grant said. ''But we thought the post-office connection was more desirable. Post-office services we sell are at face value; we don't make a penny on them. But the post-office designation gives us credibility and it should generate a lot of traffic for us.''
 
Mail Services After Hours
Before the contract was signed, the Postal Service ran character and financial checks on the partners.
''It's to be expected,'' Mr. Grant said. ''After all, we're bonded to sell over $10,000 worth of postage stamps a day.''
Mr. Grant's outlet will provide every service found at regular post offices, with two exceptions: ''We don't handle bulk mail or set postage meters,'' Mr. Grant said.
''Our post office boxes will be accessible 24 hours a day,'' he said. ''And we can also provide a full range of postal services after normal post office hours - on weekends and holidays, for instance.''
Postmaster Stanley J. Piasta of Mamaroneck said he thought of the new outlet ''as a branch of the U.S. Postal Service.''
''What they're doing is selling our services to the public at a convenient location,'' he said. ''We hope their operation will ease some of the jams at our windows. Our relationship has developed very smoothly. Their workers have been trained in post office procedures.''
The new office has 120 mailboxes, identical to those in the post office. Initially, the Mamaroneck post office will make two pickups a day at the branch location; there will be more if needed, Mr. Piasta said. There is also an Express Mail drop box in front of the branch building.
''Of course, we're assuming that our contract with the post office will be worth much more than $99 to us,'' Mr. Grant said. ''We are a business resource and telecommunications center, and that's how we expect to earn our keep. We're hoping to use the association with the post office to help us sell our own services.''
These services include packaging, facsimile transmissions, overnight shipping, beepers, a voice mail system for $15 a month and even a complete package of office services that provides a small business ''with everything but a desk,'' said Mr. Grant, a psychologist who formerly was a counselor with Family Court.
''For $99 a month, we can give customers, like a marketing consultant who works at home or a small law firm, a complete electronic office,'' he said. ''We also have a real person who takes dictation on a word processor, a 24-hour fax machine with free incoming fax service and a courier service that even has bonded process servers.''
Two hundred telephone lines have been installed for voice mail and telephone-answering services.
Mr. Grant said he was already considering a second center somewhere else in the county.
''It's a good match,'' he said. ''The post office gets an extra branch at practically no additional cost, and the entrepreneur gets a lot of potential buyers for whatever he's selling.''
Ms. Harrison said that to obtain more information about managing a contract postal unit in the Hartsdale area, interested retailers could call her at 345-1207.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photos; John Dionisio, left, and his partner, Robert J. Grant, at A.S.A.P. in Mamaroneck. The contract post office unit, right, for the United States Postal Service opened last week (Alan Zale for The New York Times)

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October 22, 1990, Monday, Late Edition - Final

MIDEAST TENSIONS;
Heath Says Iraq's Leader Agrees To Release Some Captive Britons

SECTION: Section A; Page 10; Column 4; Foreign Desk

LENGTH: 435 words

DATELINE: BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 21 (Reuter)

Edward Heath, the former British Prime Minister, said today that President Saddam Hussein had agreed to free an unspecified number of Britons held in Iraq.
After meeting with the Iraqi leader for three hours, Mr. Heath said Mr. Hussein had given no indication that he would withdraw from Kuwait in accordance with United Nations demands but said he wanted to work for a peaceful end to the Persian Gulf crisis. 
 "The President assured me that some will be returning to Britain as a result of my visit," Heath said.
He said arrangements were being made for Britons to fly home on Tuesday, probably through Amman. His staff and Mr. Hussein were discussing lists of names but the Iraqis had sought nothing in return, he added.
Mr. Heath, Prime Minister from 1970 to 1974, arrived in Baghdad Saturday on a mission to seek freedom for sick or elderly Britons who have been prevented with other Western and Japanese men from leaving Iraq since the invasion of Kuwait on Aug. 2.
 
Many Held at Strategic Sites
 British diplomats say 53 Britons, about half of them held at strategic sites to deter attack by American-led forces in the gulf, are seriously ill or elderly.
Mr. Heath, 74 years old, created a storm in Britain last month when he urged world leaders to negotiate with Mr. Hussein to avoid war.
His trip, which ends Tuesday, has been criticized by some members of the Government of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who has contributed to the gulf buildup of troops and has taken one of the toughest lines in the West against Iraq.
Mr. Heath's talks with Mr. Hussein were attended by the Iraqi Foreign Minister, Tareq Aziz, and were the longest by any Western politician to visit Baghdad during the crisis.
"He emphasized that he wished to do everything possible through diplomatic means to achieve a peaceful solution to the present crisis," Mr. Heath said of Mr. Hussein.
"I don't quite frankly believe that enough is being done on the diplomatic front," Mr. Heath said.
 
 
U.S. FIRES WARNING SHOTS
 WASHINGTON, Oct. 21 (AP) -- An American destroyer in the Persian Gulf fired several warning shots today across the bow of an Iraqi vessel that ignored commands to stop, military officials said. They said that after the shots were fired, the destroyer and other American and Italian warships tracked the vessel as it continued to ignore the order and headed for Aden, Yemen.
A Pentagon spokesman said the American destroyer, the O'Brien, fired several shots across the bow of the ship, Al Bahar al Arabi, after it did not answer its radio and ignored commands to stop.

LOAD-DATE: October 22, 1990

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Edward Heath, left, the former British Prime Minister, meeting with President Saddam Hussein of Iraq in Baghdad yesterday in an effort to negotiate the release of foreign hostages being held in Iraq. (Iraqi News Agency via Associated Press)

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The New York Times

October 22, 1990, Monday, Late Edition - Final
Correction Appended

Fear Moves Into a Quiet Neighborhood in the Bronx

BYLINE: By EVELYN NIEVES

SECTION: Section B; Page 1; Column 2; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 1177 words

A year ago, when Mary Grace Wynn moved from downtown Manhattan to Norwood, in the north Bronx, she saw it as a safe bet. While other city neighborhoods crumbled under shootings and drug abuse, turmoil in Norwood amounted to an outcry over the city's inadvertent hacking of 67 old maple trees that lined Mosholu Parkway.
But in a six-week period, three residents of the Norwood section were killed, and in a community where there was once little crime to speak of, people now seem to speak of little else. 
 Recently, as Miss Wynn attended a candlelight prayer vigil for a slain neighbor, she talked of her adopted community with fear and crushed faith. "I'm devastated," she said. "I don't think there is any place that's safe anymore."
The first victim was Margaretha Matzdorf, 86 years old, who was found in her apartment on Aug. 16 with her throat slashed. Hughie Harley, a popular 18-year-old, was next, stabbed in the heart on Sept. 10 by a youth who demanded a dollar. Then Mary Beal, a 61-year-old widow, was reported missing on Sept. 15; three weeks later, a decapitated, dismembered body found in two bags near the Brooklyn Navy Yard was identified as hers.
"I just want to take my three kids and go away somewhere," said Jeanne Richie,president of the Parents Association at Public School 66.
Msgr. Patrick Boyle of St. Brendan's Catholic Church said the recent slayings are reverberating, "bringing other crime into prominence."
"Every day, you're hearing about street crime," he said, "like somebody's place being broken into or someone's purse getting stolen."
The result is a pall cast over this neighborhood of 15,000 households, bounded by the green expanses of Van Cortlandt Park and the New York Botanical Garden, where young Manhattanites have moved seeking calm and Irish immigrants have flocked in recent years, opening bars and restaurants and bakeries. Parents are keeping their children inside. Stoop life is disappearing.
"After 8 at night, this place becomes a ghost town," said Mickey Burke, who owns a gift shop and heads a merchants association.
People are now picking up relatives or friends from the train stations and bus stops, Ms. Wynn said. "I've never noticed that before."
Heeding the advice of Police Commissioner Lee P. Brown and Mayor David N. Dinkins, 40 residents began a citizens' patrol. Bob Byrnes, a 23-year Norwood resident, said members stand guard outside banks when elderly residents cash their checks and walk the area seven nights a week, particularly its two subway stations, Mosholu Parkway and a five-block commercial strip on Bainbridge Avenue.
 
Very Little Violent Crime
 "People have been taking tactical retreat," he said. "We hope to encourage stores to stay open and residents to come out." Last week, he said, the patrol alerted the police to three youths with baseball bats, possibly thwarting a gang fight.
Police officers in the 52d precinct, which has assigned 11 officers to foot patrol as part of Mr. Brown's anti-crime effort, said they welcomed the citizens' patrol. But they also said the three killings that have understandably shocked people have led residents to believe that Norwood is something that it is not: namely, dangerous.
"The murders happening so close together was a coincidence," said Capt. Maurice Collins. "There really isn't violent crime up there to speak of."
Through September, 21 people have been slain in the 52d Precinct, which includes the Norwood, Bedford Park, Fordham and University Heights sections of the Bronx. All the killings but the two in Norwood were drug related, said Officer Jim Livingston, a crime prevention officer. Mary Beal, who the police believe was killed by someone she knew, is counted as a homicide in the 84th Precinct in Brooklyn, where she was found.
Last year, 28 people were killed in the precinct through September, none in Norwood. But the police believe the recent slayings are not part of a trend.
There were 173 robberies, or muggings, reported in the precinct as of September. Of those, 15 were in Norwood -- far fewer than in the rest of the precinct but hardly reassuring to its residents, with an average of one every other day.
Officer Livingston said the biggest crime in Norwood is what he called stable community crime: car theft. In September, for example, the 52d precinct recorded 176 stolen cars, 91 of them in Norwood. He said that the precinct receives 25 to 30 reports of stolen or vandalized cars each day, and that most come from Norwood.
"One reason is that you got nicer cars," he said. Another, he said, is that there are several highways around Norwood. The police speculate that car thieves take the vehicles to Yonkers, five minutes away.
 
Irish Pubs Abound
 The 52d Precinct is the third busiest in the Bronx, after the 44th and 46th. It receives about 6,000 radio calls a month, only a handful of them from Norwood, Officer Livingston said.
Even the large number of bars in Norwood -- 23 pubs in four blocks -- has generated little trouble. "There are a lot of Irish bars," Officer Livingston said. "Each pub is for a different county in Ireland. People from Dublin go to one bar; people from Kerry go to another. The immigrants come here and know which bar is theirs."
Residents said scores of Irish immigrants began coming to Norwood in the early 1980's. "Three years ago, I'd show an apartment once and they would take it," said Kol Zagreda, a real-estate broker. He said they are now coming in fewer numbers.
"They go where the construction jobs are," he said. "With the canal being built between Britain and France, they're going there. Or they're going to San Francisco because of last year's earthquake."
The neighborhood has developed a Gaelic accent. Pubs feature Irish sports on their televisions. Newspapers from Ireland are sold alongside local ones. There are green signs for real-estate offices and pizzerias.
 
 Trying to Cheer Things Up
 "There aren't as many Irish here as there are in Woodlawn," said Jim Connell, district manager of Community Board 7. "But they make this a vibrant place."
The Williamsbridge Oval, a heavily used park now old and crumbling, is getting a facelift, Mr. Connell said. The area has a monthly community newspaper, The Norwood News, and will soon have a weekly, The Independent, published by The Riverdale Press, a weekly newspaper. The 204th Street-Bainbridge Avenue Merchant Association, with about 80 members, is putting up festive flags along the avenue.
"It's to cheer things up," said Mr. Burke, a block captain in the association. "There is still a sense of neighborhood here." Soil is ready for 100 new trees planned for Mosholu Parkway.
Ken Corrigan, 24, joined the citizens' patrol to help keep the neighborhood he was raised in a neighborhood. "People probably behind our backs laugh at us," he said. "It's not a bad neighborhood. But once crime starts, you got to do something before it gets worse. As we get strong, people will see a lot of things around here -- good things."

LOAD-DATE: October 22, 1990

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

CORRECTION-DATE: October 25, 1990, Monday, Late Edition - Final

 CORRECTION:
Because of an editing error, an article on Monday about crime in the Norwood section of the Bronx misstated crime figures for the first nine months of this year in the 52d Precinct. Through September, there were 1,425 robberies in the precinct.

GRAPHIC: Photos: Friends and neighbors of Mary Beal sitting with her dogs near her realty office in the Norwood section of the Bronx. The body of Mrs. Beal, a 61-year-old widow, was found earlier this month, three weeks after she disappeared. The street was under repair. (pg. B1); Bob Byrnes, left, William Byrnes, center, and Ken Corrigan, members of a citizens' patrol in the Bronx, talking on East 204th Street. Three area residents have been slain in the community in a six-week period. (pg. B3) (Jim Estrin for The New York Times)

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October 24, 1990, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

BUSINESS TECHNOLOGY;
Next: Artificial Bone To Repair Fractures

BYLINE: By EDMUND L. ANDREWS

SECTION: Section D; Page 10; Column 1; Financial Desk

LENGTH: 1548 words

After years of uncertain progress, a handful of companies are closing in on one of the most exotic goals of orthopedic surgery: artificial bone, grown from proteins in a jar.
To be sure, most of the new compounds will not be commercially available for at least five years. Even then, doctors will not be able to heal fractures overnight. But an array of new technologies could strikingly simplify the task of repairing completely broken limbs. It could also make it easier to reconstruct jaws ravaged by cancer and improve the durability of artificial knees and hips. 
 The new compounds are generally made from proteins mixed with ceramic materials that serve as a patch until new bone cells grow, or that in other cases actually stimulate the creation of bone-forming cells. The hope is that during surgery the compounds will make it possible to repair severely fractured limbs without having to transplant bone from another part of the body.
Some researchers even think it may soon be possible to heal serious fractures without surgery, simply by injecting bone-growing compounds into the injured location. "In the past, orthopedic surgery has advanced through the development of plates and screws and new alloys," said Tobin Gerhart, a professor of orthopedic surgery at the Harvard Medical School who has carried out extensive animal studies in the field. "In the future, gains will be made with biologically active materials that induce new bone formation."
The market is potentially large. Each year, more than 200,000 people in the United States receive bone grafts to repair broken limbs. Companies hope to charge $500 to $1,000 for materials in one bone repair.
The graft typically involves removing bone from the hip, in a separate surgery, and patching it onto the site of the injury. Besides being painful and expensive, the hip procedure often involves greater danger and a longer recovery time than the original injury.
Nevertheless, the rise of bone grafting during the 1980's has fueled the development of bone banks, like blood banks, with the processed bone taken from cadavers. The cadaver bone is expensive, often well over $1,000 a patient, because it must be exhaustively purified to block the transmission of infectious disease.
Another application could be hip and knee replacements, undergone by 265,000 Americans annually. Today, these artificial joints are attached to original bone with synthetic cements, but they often become loose after several years because cements do not regenerate as living bone cells do. Some companies think the new technologies may even help retard osteoporosis, which weakens bone structure in elderly people, but this is viewed as far more uncertain.
Several bone-growth technologies are competing for position. The company nearest to reaching the commercial market is Celltrix Laboratories, a subsidiary of the Collagen Corporation in Palo Alto, Calif. Collagen has already applied for marketing approval from the Food and Drug Administration for a compound that combines ceramic materials with collagen, a fibrous protein found in skin, cartilage and tendons.
 
Like a Scaffolding
 Called Collagraft, the material is designed to provide something like a scaffolding on which a person's bone cells will grow. As the ceramic materials are slowly dissolved by the body, they are replaced by natural bone.
Other biotechnology companies are experimenting with proteins that appear to activate the natural process of bone growth. The leader is Genetics Institute Inc. of Cambridge, Mass., in partnership with the Yamanouchi Pharmaceutical Company of Japan. It is testing on animals a genetically engineered human protein.
A similar protein, isolated from natural bone, is under investigation by Creative Biomolecules Inc. of Hopkinton, Mass., which has formed a partnership with the Stryker Corporation, a manufacturer of orthopedic devices. Yet another competitor is the Xoma Corporation of Berkeley, Calif., which plans to start human clinical trials in several months on a bone-growth protein isolated from calf bones.
Analysts remain cautious. Although several proteins do appear to stimulate bone growth in the laboratory, it remains unclear how effective these proteins will be in healing human injuries or what the best method of application should be.
Beyond that, new research is disclosing that some drugs already in use, like insulin growth factor, may also foster bone growth. Indeed, a collaboration between the Chiron Corporation and Ciba-Geigy Inc. has begun clinical animal trials in which insulin-like growth factor is used to treat osteoporosis. That could squeeze the ultimate market for specialized bone-growth products. "There's always a niche, but I'm becoming more doubtful that this is going to be a large market," said James McCamant, editor of the Medical Technology Stock Letter in San Francisco.
The simplest of the new compounds may be approved for commercial use in the next year. Collagen has already submitted results of human clinical studies to the F.D.A. and is awaiting approval. Its compound does not actually stimulate bone growth, but rather creates a setting in the fracture where bone growth can occur.
The material consists of two ceramic materials mixed with the protein collagen, which plays a role in bone that is analogous to the embedded steel gridwork that strengthens reinforced concrete. In the new material, collagen is purified from cowhide and combined with the ceramic to form a wet putty. The surgeon then extracts bone marrow from the patient by syringe and mixes it with the grafting material.
As with a conventional graft, the surgeon holds the broken bone together with a temporary metal plate and inserts the mixture. In effect, the collagen material gives the bone marrow cells a natural setting in which to multiply and gradually replace the ceramic material as it dissolves.
In clinical studies on 260 patients through April 1989, Collagen said, patients treated with this material fared as well as those treated with bone material removed from their hips. There have been snags, however. The F.D.A. is not yet satisfied with the results, and several months ago demanded that Collagen supply more data.
Meanwhile, the search for proteins that unlock bone growth has become intense. Early this year, researchers at Genetics Institute reported that they had induced bone formation in rats with a genetically engineered version of a human protein called Bone Morphogenetic Protein 2, or B.M.P. 2. The company is now carrying out bone repairs on dogs, sheep and other animals and expects to report results early next year.
"Based on the results of human B.M.P. 2 so far, we're confident that we can get bone formation in humans," said L. Patrick Gage, the company's executive vice president. Dr. Gerhart of the Harvard Medical School concurred. He has tested the material in sheep. "I think the stuff works," he said.
B.M.P. 2 is one of a family of bone-inducing proteins. It appears to recruit what researchers call uncommitted bone marrow cells, which can evolve into a wide variety of white and red blood cells. The bone-inducing protein causes these cells to breed bone-forming cells called osteoblasts, which then form the bone itself.
If B.M.P. 2 proves effective in human trials, it could prove easier to use than Collagen's product because it would not require doctors to obtain bone marrow from patients to foster the natural bone. Although bone marrow can be attained without surgery, the process is painful and is frequently not feasible in elderly patients whose bone marrow may have already been severely depleted.
Other rivals are following similar paths. Xoma hopes to enter human clinical trials with a Bone Morphogenetic Protein derived from calves, which will be mixed with a ceramic material. Yet another protein isolated from cows, called B.M.P. 7, is under investigation by Creative Biomolecules, which reported in August that it had stimulated the same kind of effects in rats that had been reported by Genetics Institute. Creative is now working with a genetically engineered human protein, an essential step in producing commercial volumes, and is making animal tests.
All of the bone-inducing proteins will have to be combined with some kind of carrying compounds that provide a setting for the bone growth. Materials using collagen or ceramic are possibilities, but researchers predict that the proper carrier will probably differ with each type of repair. At this point, these issues remain largely unresolved.
 
Possible Wild Card
 There is also a possible wild card in the bone race. Collagen's Celltrix unit has been pursuing a mysterious and contradictory protein called transforming growth factor-beta, or T.G.F.-B. Researchers have found that it can be a powerful stimulant to bone cells that are already present, causing them to multiply more rapidly and produce cartilage, collagen, bone and a host of other materials.
This rainbow of effects has fascinated researchers around the country, but it has also raised the danger of unwanted side effects. "The challenge is getting the proteins to behave the way we want them to," said Bruce Pharriss, chief executive of Celltrix.

LOAD-DATE: October 24, 1990

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Diagrams: "Mending Fractures With Bone-Growth Protiens"

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The New York Times

October 24, 1990, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

MIDEAST TENSIONS;
No Compromise on Kuwait, Bush Says

BYLINE: By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section A; Page 10; Column 1; Foreign Desk

LENGTH: 1141 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Oct. 23

President Bush again compared President Saddam Hussein of Iraq to Hitler today and declared that there could never be any compromise with him on Kuwait.
Speaking at a political rally in Manchester, N.H., only a day after Saudi Arabia's Defense Minister, Prince Sultan, seemed to suggest that Kuwait might be wise to cede Baghdad some disputed territory as part of an arrangment to get Iraqi troops to pull out, Mr. Bush said, "I am more determined than ever to see that this invading dictator gets out of Kuwait with no compromise of any kind whatsoever." 
 Earlier in the day, the President also used a campaign stop in Burlington, Vt., to quash any suggestions of offering the Iraqi leader a face-saving way out. The Iraqi Army's actions in Kuwait are "crimes against humanity," he said, and "there can never be compromise, any compromise, with this kind of aggression."
"It isn't oil that we're concerned about, it is aggression, and this aggression is not going to stand," he added.
Mr. Bush's efforts to drum up more public support for his decision to commit 200,000 troops to confront Iraq came as President Hussein let 14 sick and elderly Americans who had been held hostage fly to Amman, Jordan. He also indicated that some British and French hostages would soon be allowed to leave his country.
Some 1,000 Americans are still being held hostage around Iraq. Nevertheless, the Iraqi gestures suggested that Mr. Hussein might be probing more seriously for a compromise or at least looking for a way to loosen the international quarantine of his country, particularly by making overtures to France. There was no sign that the Bush Administration was directly or indirectly encouraging negotiations of any kind.
 
Saudi Preference for Compromise?
 While Bush Administration officials still publicly expressed confidence that there were no basic differences in objectives or strategies between themselves and the Saudis, some privately wondered aloud whether the historical tendency in Saudi foreign policy -- which is to compromise with or buy out enemies rather than confront them -- may be reasserting itself to some degree. That tendency was muted during the early days of the Persian Gulf crisis as the Saudis felt directly threatened by the Iraqi forces straddling the Kuwait-Saudi border.
Now that American troops are in Saudi Arabia, some Administration officials are becoming a little anxious that members of the Saudi royal family may be having second thoughts about engaging in any military operations to dislodge Iraq from Kuwait.
Such a war could spill over into their country, create such a power vacuum in Baghdad that the Saudis would find themselves with a fractured, Lebanon-like country on their border, or sow seeds of enmity against the Saudi leadership within the Arab world that could, over the long run, be as dangerous as a compromise with Baghdad.
But other officials put a more benign interpretation on the Saudi Defense Minister's remarks. They point out that the Saudi leaders are not used to having their every statement scrutinized by an international press corps based in their country and that what may have been rather vague suggestions could have been blown out of proportion. They also argue that Saudi Arabia, more than any other country, would have a great deal to fear from an Iraq that was able to make gains from its invasion of Kuwait and still have its army intact.
Nevertheless, American officials say that they have to be on guard that a negotiating bazaar could be opening in the Middle East and that if they do not move quickly to close it the Iraqi leader might be able to bite off part of Kuwait.
Asked why the President chose today to give a tough, no-compromises-welcome speech, the White House spokesman, Marlin Fitzwater, said, "He just wanted to express some pretty strong resolve in light of stories in the last few days out of Saudi Arabia."
Shortly after Mr. Bush spoke, the Saudi Ambassador to Washington, Prince Bandar bin Sultan -- Prince Sultan's son -- visited the State Department for a previously scheduled discussion with Secretary of State James A. Baker 3d. He reassured Mr. Baker that there had been no change in his Government's policy of insisting on an unconditional Iraqi withdrawal.
"My Government has not changed its position," Ambassador Bandar said. "It is like what Mark Twain said: the reports of my death are greatly exaggerated. I think that somebody took something and blew it up more than it meant."
 
A 'Parallel' With Hitler
 While the mood in some Arab quarters may be drifting toward a compromise with Baghdad, President Bush, if anything, appears to be increasingly convinced that America's role in the world, and his place in history, will depend on his ability to bring about an Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait.
At the the election rally in Burlington, Mr. Bush said: "I'm reading a book, and it's a book of history, a great, big thick history about World War II, and there's a parallel between what Hitler did to Poland and what Saddam Hussein has done to Kuwait.
"What happens in Baghdad matters in Burlington, because our concern, far beyond the price of oil, is the fate of sovereign nations and peoples. There's a moral underpinning, a strong moral underpinning to what's happened in the United Nations as we've stood up unanimously against Saddam Hussein's aggression -- a world order, free from unlawful aggression, free from violence, free from plunder."
 
FRANCE SAYS IT STANDS FIRM
 PARIS, Oct. 23 (Special to The New York Times) -- Embarrassed to be publicly wooed by President Saddam Hussein, France said today that its policy toward the Persian Gulf crisis would not be affected by a decision by the Iraqi National Assembly to release 330 French hostages being held in Iraq and Kuwait.
A spokesman for President Francois Mitterrand said France, which was Baghdad's closest Western partner until the gulf crisis erupted, would stand by United Nations resolutions demanding an immediate Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait and the release of all foreign hostages.
In a statement issued before the vote in the Iraqi National Assembly, the French Foreign Ministry said: "The taking of hostages is odious. Their release is no more than atonement for an unacceptable act. France cannot accept any negotiation on the subject."
Tonight, after Prime Minister Michel Rocard briefed members of Parliament privately on the hostage question, one conservative opposition leader, Bernard Stasi, said they had been told that France would not bargain with Iraq and considered the release of French hostages to be "a unilateral decision."
In a message to the Iraqi National Assembly on Monday, President Hussein proposed freeing French hostages as a way of reaffirming "Iraq's concern about its friendship with France."

LOAD-DATE: October 24, 1990

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: American hostages released yesterday by President Saddam Hussein preparing to go to Baghdad airport. (Associated Press)

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October 24, 1990, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Book Notes

BYLINE: Edwin McDowell

SECTION: Section C; Page 18; Column 5; Cultural Desk

LENGTH: 701 words


Small-Press Celebrity
 Nominations for the National Book Awards, announced last week, confounded many in publishing, largely because so few nominees had been brought out by the major houses. One, in fact, was published by a house whose biggest seller was 6,000 copies. That is the Dalkey Archive Press , which published a nominee for fiction, "Chromos," by Felipe Alfau.
Neither Dalkey, the Lisle, Ill., publisher, nor its 88-year-old author is used to being in such major league company. In fact, Mr. Alfau, who lives in a home for the elderly on Long Island, told his publisher he would not consent to interviews.
"We started in 1984, mostly doing reprints, but now primarily originals," said Steven Moore, an editor of the press. Dalkey modeled itself after Grove Press and New Directions, he said, small houses that published quality literature and experimental fiction.
With only three full-time employees and two part timers, Dalkey publishes about 15 hard-cover titles a year. Its biggest seller is "Wittgenstein's Mistress," by David Markson, a novel that has sold 6,000 copies.
In 1989, Dalkey reprinted Mr. Alfau's first novel, "Locos: A Comedy of Gestures." The book, completed in 1928, was finally published in a limited edition in 1936. Mr. Alfau was born in 1902 in Barcelona, Spain, and came to the United States during World War I. He wrote music criticism for a Spanish newspaper in New York, and in 1929, Doubleday published his young-adult book, "Old Tales From Spain."
Unable to support himself as a writer, Mr. Alfau became a translator at a Wall Street bank, where he remained until his retirement in 1954.  "Chromos," he told his publisher, was written at the office between translations, to pass the time. But when he could not find a publisher, he eventually lost interest in writing.
 
A Tower Bookstore

Tower Books is putting the finishing touches on the store it plans to open in Greenwich Village this week. An offshoot of Tower Records and Tower Video, the store, at 383 Lafayette Street at Fourth Street, atop the Tower Video store, is the largest of Tower's 13 bookstores and is its first bookstore in the Northeast.
Company officials say the store, which will be open from 9 A.M. to midnight daily, is already stocked with 70,000 titles (compared with 10,000 titles in the average bookstore). Nine autographing sessions are to be held during the next six weeks, beginning with Stephen King on Friday and including Jean M. Auel on Nov. 3.
 
Prompting Rumors <>
It is more than two months until publication, but "American Psycho" by Bret Easton Ellis continues to be the subject of rumors and speculation. The novel, the catalogue says, is about a young, handsome and successful Wall Street worker who "can't stop killing people -- women, men, children -- in ever more gruesome ways.".
Mr. Ellis's agent, Amanda Urban, said that when the manuscript was delivered to Simon & Schuster, "there was some feeling of revulsion on the part of some of the younger women there." But their revulsion eventually dissolved, she said, as had some of the initial revulsion to Mr. Ellis's 1985 novel, "Less Than Zero," about drugs and bisexuality on a college campus.
If some wonder why a house would publish a book that made some of its own staffers queasy, the answer is that Simon & Schuster, like many other publishers, contends that a book represents the author's expression. Moreover, Mr. Ellis's book about drugs and bisexuality was a best seller.
"It probably will upset some readers, because of its quite graphic depiction of sex and violence," said Robert Asahina, the editor of "American Psycho."
A sampling of bookstores did not turn up any that had refused to order the book. Barbara Morrow, co-owner of the Northshire Bookstore in Manchester Center, Vt., said Mr. Ellis, who graduated from Bennington College in 1986, had a following in that area.
"But I'm not going to advertise the book," she said, "or put it in the window, but I'll carry it. I don't think we could ever take the position that we wouldn't buy a book by a well-known author, regardless of subject matter, but we're taking a very low profile on 'American Psycho.' "

LOAD-DATE: October 24, 1990

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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The New York Times

October 25, 1990, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

MIDEAST TENSIONS;
A Freed British Hostage Tells of 'Sadistic Guards'

BYLINE: By SHEILA RULE, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section A; Page 12; Column 1; Foreign Desk

LENGTH: 599 words

DATELINE: LONDON, Oct. 24

A British hostage who was freed by Iraq returned home to England today after asserting that Westerners held at an armaments factory outside Baghdad rioted over mistreatment by what he called "sadistic guards."
The hostage, Jim Thomson, was among 32 sick and elderly Britons who were allowed to leave Iraq on Tuesday. Their release came after former Prime Minister Edward Heath met with the Iraqi President, Saddam Hussein, on Sunday and negotiated their freedom with Baghdad officials. 
 Shortly before leaving Baghdad, Mr. Thomson gave reporters an account of captivity that was the first to allege Iraqi mistreatment of foreigners since Baghdad moved about 700 American, British, French, German and Japanese detainees to strategic sites to deter attack by foreign forces in the Persian Gulf.
The Times of London quoted Mr. Thomson as having said that he was initially taken to a chemical weapons factory about 35 miles southwest of Baghdad, where hostages were generally well treated and received good accommodation. But on Sept. 23, he said, he was moved to "an armaments factory about the same distance from the capital which was disgusting."
 
'Down, Down Saddam!'
 "There were no toilets," said Mr. Thomson, 50 years old, who was freed because of a heart condition. "The food consisted of rice and tomato water, which we discovered we were supposed to use to help soften the stale bread we were fed. We had sadistic guards who would punch the hostages just for the sake of it, although I was never hit myself.
"Some of the Britons we referred to as sheep because they accepted this treatment, but about 15 of us -- Japanese, German, American and British -- rioted on Sept. 29, smashing all the windows, pulling down doors and a fence and chanting, 'Down, down Saddam!' "
Press reports quoted Mr. Thomson as having said the detainees who took part in the protest were forced into their rooms at gunpoint by guards. He said a French protester was put in solitary confinement after using abusive language when an Iraqi Army major asked the men why they had rioted.
"They came for me and the other ring leaders on Oct. 1," Mr. Thomson told The Times. He worked in Kuwait as general manager of a British engineering company until the Iraqi invasion on Aug. 2 and was taken to Baghdad by Iraqi forces later that month.
"But I was fortunate and instead of punishment they moved me to an atomic center where we had good food and good treatment," he said.
 
Hostages 'Want Some Action'
 Mr. Thomson told reporters that most Westerners held at installations believed that military action had to be taken against Iraq.
"They are not frightened, they just want some action," he said. "In general, the opinion of the hostages is, 'Let it happen.' "
Another hostage freed on Tuesday warned of mounting health problems among those still trapped in Iraq. The hostage, Dr. Ronald Eccles, director of the Common Cold and Nasal Research Center at the University College of Wales in Cardiff, said that strain and uncertainty were taking their toll on other captives.
Dr. Eccles, who was on a monthlong lecture tour in Iraq before being detained in August, suffers from severe arthritis. He said that stress had caused his joints to swell and that he was having difficulty walking.
"There are a lot of stress-related diseases coming out," Dr. Eccles told The Press Association, Britain's domestic news agency. "People have been developing heart trouble and diabetes. If they had any medical problems in the past, they are flaring up and are made much worse by the ordeal."

LOAD-DATE: October 25, 1990

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Mark Ward, a Marine sergeant who was among the hostages released by Iraq, drinking champagne with friends and family members after arriving last night at Kennedy International Airport in New York. (Steve Berman for The New York Times)

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October 25, 1990, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

Menopause Is Found No Bar to Pregnancy

BYLINE: By GINA KOLATA

SECTION: Section A; Page 1; Column 2; National Desk

LENGTH: 1251 words

In a remarkable advance, researchers have shown that older women who have gone through menopause can easily become pregnant using donated eggs.
The results, being published today, give women who have been considered hopelessly infertile an unexpected second chance, the researchers said. "It turned their lives around," said Dr. Mark V. Sauer of the University of Southern California, who led the group that conducted the study. 
 Dr. Sauer and his colleagues at the university reported in The New England Journal of Medicine that four of seven post-menopausal women 40 to 44 years old became pregnant and gave birth to healthy babies. One of the women gave birth to twins.
Of the three remaining women, one had a stillborn baby and is trying again, another had a miscarriage and the third, whose husband's sperm were defective, did not become pregnant, researchers said.
This is the sort of pregnancy outcome that would normally be expected in younger women with no fertility problems, Dr. Sauer said.
The eggs for the older women were donated by younger women and fertilized with sperm from the older women's husbands in the laboratory, then implanted in their wombs.
"So long as the woman is in good health, there is no reason why she shouldn't be able to do this," Dr. Sauer said. "There may be 50-year-old women who should be able to do this."
The women had gone through menopause at least two years before entering the study. There have been no detailed studies indicating how long after menopause a woman would be able to bear a child.
Doctors used donated eggs in recent years to help women in their 30's or younger who had gone through menopause prematurely. But most researchers had been reluctant to try this fertilization method in older women because they thought that after the age of 40, a woman's uterus was not as capable of sustaining a pregnancy.
Women in their 40's miscarry half of their pregnancies, Dr. Sauer said, while those in their early 30's miscarry 15 percent.
Dr. Marcia Angell, an editor at the medical journal, wrote in an accompanying editorial, "The limits on childbearing years are now anyone's guess; perhaps they will have more to do with the stamina required for labor and 2 A.M. feedings than with reproductive function."
Dr. Joseph Schulman, director of the Genetics and IVF Institute in Fairfax, Va., and a pioneer in laboratory fertilization, said the upper age limit for pregnancy was "in the 50's, certainly."
 
Latest in Series of Advances
 The findings were the latest in a series of technical advances in the last 12 years that have enabled doctors to help women have babies,
In the new study, the researchers found egg donors through word of mouth and by paying them $1,500. The donors had their ovaries stimulated with hormones so that they would produce as many eggs as possible. At the same time, the infertile women took hormones to simulate a menstrual cycle that was synchronized with the cycle of the donor. After the eggs were fertilized and implanted in the uteruses of the infertile women, the doctors gave them hormones for the first 100 days of the pregnancy to make up for hormones that their ovaries would have produced if they had not gone through menopause.
 
Eggs, Not Uteruses, Are Suspect
 To the investigators' surprise, they learned that the main reason older women have a harder time having babies is that their eggs are deteriorating, not, as had previously been assumed, that their uteruses are less capable of sustaining a pregnancy. This means, infertility experts said, that women who are in their early 40's and who are still ovulating yet who are having great difficulty getting pregnant might do better if they used eggs donated by a younger woman.
"Our feeling is that the biggest interest in these results will not be menopausal women but will be women over 40 who have failed to get pregnant with other technologies," Dr. Sauer said.
He said that without donated eggs women in their 40's have only about a 5 percent chance of becoming pregnant and maintaining the pregnancy to term, no matter what method of fertility enhancement they use.
"These women have almost a zero percent chance of having a baby," Dr. Sauer said. "They go from a zero percent chance to a chance as good as a younger woman."
 
Other Doctors Use Method
 A few other doctors, including Dr. Schulman, have quietly begun using donated eggs to help older women become pregnant, with stunning success, but have not always published their results.
Dr. David Meldrum, a clinical professor at the University of California at Los Angeles, who is past president of the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology, said that in his experience women whose only problem was that they had gone through menopause were more likely to become pregnant through the laboratory fertilization method than were younger infertile women who might have had subtle hormonal or physical problems. Dr. Sauer added that there probably is an age at which a woman's uterus is too old to sustain a pregnancy, but until researchers have much more experience with menopausal women having babies, they will not know what that age is.
But Dr. Zef Rosenwacks, who directs Cornell University's fertilization program, said that although he has used donated eggs to produce pregnancies in a few women in their 40's who have been through menopause, he would not routinely recommend the procedure.
"One has to weigh the obstetrical risk along with the technical ability to do something," Dr. Rosenwacks said. "Just because we can get a woman pregnant at almost any age does not mean that she should assume the risks. The older a woman gets, the more likely she is to have a medical problem that might interfere with a normal pregnancy." For example, she could have diabetes or heart disease.
 
Laboratory Success Rate Low
 Dr. Meldrum said that national data indicate that a woman under 40 has a 12 percent chance of having a baby when her own eggs are fertilized in the laboratory and returned to her womb while the rate drops to 4 percent after the age of 40. He said that one hypothesis is that a woman's best eggs are gone by the time she reaches that age.
"At puberty, there are 400,000 eggs in the ovary,"Dr. Meldrum said. "By age 40, there are just a few thousand left." These eggs are thought to be the worst of the group. He said that in each menstrual cycle about 1,000 eggs begin to ripen but only one matures fully and the rest die.
"It is presumed that the most sensitive and normal eggs are the ones that ripen," Dr. Meldrum said. "Gradually, the ones that are least sensitive are the ones that are left."
Dr. Sauer said that most fertilization centers had shunned older women because they might lower the clinics' success rates and make them less competitive with other centers.
Dr. Sauer said his group also focused on younger women at first to demonstrate that it could compete with other centers by publishing a high success rate. But after establishing themselves, Dr. Sauer said the researchers decided to heed the pleas of the older women, some of whom had gone through menopause while trying to have a baby.
"We said, 'Let's just do the older women. The worst that can happen is that they won't do as well,' " Dr. Sauer said. But when he offered fertilization in the laboratory with donated eggs to women who had gone through menopause, "lo and behold, they did just as well as the younger women," he said.

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October 26, 1990, Friday, Late Edition - Final

BUSINESS DIGEST

SECTION: Section D; Page 1; Column 1; Financial Desk

LENGTH: 547 words


THE BUDGET MARATHON
 Budget negotiators said they had agreed on a way to shield the elderly from a heavy burden of Medicare cost-sharing. [Page A1.]
 With the end of the ordeal in sight, bleary-eyed lawmakers tied the last knots in the package in preparation for votes today. [A20.]
 Tax specialists said the plan's purported burden on the rich is a misrepresentation. [A21.]
 The agreement might make the hard times engulfing the U.S. economy slightly harder next year, economists say. [A21.]
 
THE ECONOMY
 Airlines have begun cracking down on bargain hunters who bend rules stated on the ticket. [A1.]
 The former owner of a Texas savings institution was indicted on 37 charges involving bank fraud, misapplication of funds and conspiracy to defraud regulators. [D1.]
 A former Federal savings examiner recounted how she was harassed by superiors and ultimately dismissed for raising questions about the condition of a large S.& L. [D1.]
 The Senate Ethics Committee ordered an inquiry into the release of documents related to the Senators linked to Keating. [A24.]
 A former Drexel salesman testified that Michael Milken once told him that securities owned by the firm were sometimes secretly held by Columbia Savings. [D1.]
 
COMPANIES
 The nation's fourth-largest credit-card business was put up for sale. Its owner, MNC Financial, has heavy real estate losses. [D1.]
 Unisys reported a loss of $356.8 million and said it would eliminate 5,000 jobs. [D3.]
 American's chairman said he would have paid more than United to get Pan Am's routes between the U.S. and London. [D5.]
USAir and Delta reported large third-quarter losses, but UAL posted a healthy profit. [D6.]
 Laventhol & Horwath told its nearly 3,500 employees that they would have to take a 10 percent pay cut for three months. [D6.]
 An ad in The New York Review of Books has strained relations between Random House and Farrar, Straus. [D20.]
 The newspaper deliverers' union struck The Daily News last night, setting off a climactic labor confrontation with the management of the financially ailing paper, Other unions said they would honor the picket lines.  [A1.]
 Philips said it would slash 35,000 to 45,000 jobs to bolster profits and improve competitiveness. [D3.]
 
INTERNATIONAL
 The U.S. has proposed a relaxation of export controls on high-performance computers. [D2.]
 
MARKETS
 Oil was up sharply for the second day, continuing on an erratic path. Crude closed at $34.25, up $3.17. [D1.]
 Stocks slid in the wake of rising oil prices and renewed war jitters, with the Dow off 20.05, to 2,484.16. [D8.]
 Treasury securities prices rose slightly, and long-term interest rates dipped. [D16.]
 The dollar rebounded on world currency markets. [D17.] Gold prices continued to climb. [D17.]
 
TODAY'S COLUMNS
 Legislators who vote for the budget legislation will do so holding their noses. Leonard Silk: Economic Scene. [D2.]
 Fidelity Investments will refuse buy orders if it believes the buyers are following a market-timing service. Floyd Norris: Market Place. [D8.]
 Some of the biggest black-owned ad agencies and media companies have formed a trade organization. Advertising. [D20.]

LOAD-DATE: October 26, 1990

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October 26, 1990, Friday, Late Edition - Final

THE STRUGGLE IN CONGRESS;
Crossing the 'T' in Taxes, Lawmakers Turn Eyes to Votes on Deficit Deal

BYLINE: By DAVID E. ROSENBAUM, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section A; Page 20; Column 1; National Desk

LENGTH: 1125 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Oct. 25

With the end of the budget ordeal in sight, bleary-eyed lawmakers throughout the Capitol tied the last knots in a compromise tax and spending package today in preparation for votes Friday on the biggest deficit-reduction measure in history.
The White House gave the compromise a backhanded endorsement. Marlin Fitzwater, Mr. Bush's press secretary, said the President was satisfied with the overall measure, which is supposed to cut the deficit by $40 billion this year and $500 billion over five years. 
 But a senior White House official trying to regain the political offensive 12 days before the Congressional elections, called reporters into the Roosevelt Room to issue a broadside against Democrats for having forced the President to raise taxes. The official spoke on the condition that he not be identified.
 
Working on the Numbers
 In the Capitol, Representative Dan Rostenkowski, the Illinois Democrat who heads the Ways and Means Committee, and Senator Lloyd Bentsen of Texas, the chairman of the Finance Committeee, worked into the night to put actual numbers on the tax provisions -- how much money would have to be earned, for instance, before deductions and exemptions were reduced and what would be the precise size of the gasoline tax increase.
These last-minute adjustments are typical of major legislation and do not mean the package is in jeopardy.
Down the hall, legislators settled on Medicare benefits far more generous to the elderly than what had emerged last month from negotiations between the White House and Congressional leaders, although benefits would be reduced below the current level.
In another room, more legislators wrapped up the final aspects of child-care legislation, and elsewhere, still others worked on procedures to make it difficult to raise spending or cut taxes in the years ahead.
 
A Top Tax Rate of 31%
 The big-ticket items were basically locked up Wednesday, including these:
*A top tax rate of 31 percent, up from 28 percent now, on taxable income above about $80,000 for couples.
*Two provisions to push the tax rate of the wealthy above 31 percent on a portion of their income, even though no taxpayers will pay more than 31 percent of their total income in taxes. Itemized deductions would be lowered on incomes above about $100,000. Personal exemptions would be phased out for individuals with taxable income above $100,000 and for couples with incomes above $150,000. In addition, the alternative minimum tax would be raised to 23 percent from 21 percent for affluent taxpayers with many deductions.
*Capital gains would be taxed at a top rate of 28 percent, even for well-off taxpayers who would be paying more than 31 percent on a portion of their income.
*The gasoline tax would rise by at least 5 or 6 cents a gallon above the current 9 cents.
*The wages on which the 1.45 percent Medicare tax would be applied would rise to at least $125,000 from $51,300 now.
*New luxury taxes would be levied on expensive cars, boats, planes, furs and jewelry, and the taxes on tobacco products and alcoholic beverages would be increased substantially.
But the details were still being negotiated tonight.
The House favors a flat increase in the gasoline tax. The Senate wants an even higher tax in years to come if fuel prices fall below their current level.
 
Differences on Deductions
 The House wants to cut itemized deductions by 3 percent of total income above $100,000, or by $300 for every $10,000 of income over $100,000. The Senate would reduce deductions by 4 percent of income above $125,000.
The House would phase out personal exemptions at a rate of 2 percent for each $2,500 of income above $100,000 for single taxpayers and $150,000 for couples filing jointly. The Senate would phase them out at a 1 percent rate, meaning that the exemptions would not be completely phased out until a couple's income reached $400,000.
These disagreements did not seem likely to derail the agreement. Asked if he saw important deals coming unstuck, Representative William H. Gray 3d of Pennsylvania, the Democratic whip, said, "No snags."
 
Fragile Aspects of Accord
 Even before they were enacted, some of the basic aspects of the compromise seemed fragile.
For example, the senior White House official who offered views to reporters today said that one of the first pieces of legislation the President would offer next year would be one to cut the capital gains tax rate.
And Democrats promised that H.R. 1, the number assigned to the first bill introduced in each Congress, would be given in January to a bill to place a stiff surtax on millionaires. They were forced to drop the surtax idea this year as the price of support from President Bush and Senate Republicans.
Amid these developments, party whips and the White House were working to round up votes for the compromise.
While they would not disclose their tallies, the smiles on the faces of Democratic whips in the House and those of both parties in the Senate indicated that enough votes were available to enact the package.
President Bush had several Republicans to the White House today and, this afternoon, dispatched John H. Sununu, the White House chief of staff, and Richard G. Darman, the budget director, to Capitol Hill to meet with an assembly of all House Republicans.
 
'Backed Us in a Corner'
 Sherwood L. Boehlert, a Republican from upstate New York, said: "Darman and Sununu told us we have a basic agreement. They said it's not the best possible agreement, but the Democrats have backed us in a corner. They said we have to govern."
John R. Kasich, an Ohio Republican, said the lawmakers had also been told, however, that if they could not vote for the package, there would be "no hard feelings."
Despite the pleas from the White House, senior Republicans said they would be surprised if more than 50 of the 176 Republican representatives voted for the measure.
If there are 50 Republican votes, the votes of 167 of the 257 Democrats will be needed for passage. The House has two vacant seats.
At a meeting of the New York delegation this morning, several members, headed by Charles B. Rangel, a Democrat from Manhattan, expressed their opposition to the measure, some on the ground that it was not tough enough on the wealthy and others on the ground that they opposed all tax increases. But a solid majority of the delegation seemed likely to support the bill.
The outlook i the Senate was less clear. But the top party leaders, George J. Mitchell, Democrat of Maine, and Bob Dole, Republican of Kansas, are squarely behind the legislation.
Unlike the House, the Senate almost never rejects legislation that has the support of the bipartisan leadership.

LOAD-DATE: October 26, 1990

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Lawmakers yesterday went about the business of tying up the loose ends in the new compromise package for the budget. At one of the meetings yesterday were, from, left, Senators Bob Packwood; George J. Mitchell, majority leader; Bob Dole, minority leader, and Lloyd Bentsen. (Andrea Mohin/The New York Times)

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October 26, 1990, Friday, Late Edition - Final

THE STRUGGLE IN CONGRESS;
ELDERLY SHIELDED FROM BIG INCREASE IN MEDICARE COSTS

BYLINE: By ROBERT PEAR, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section A; Page 1; Column 1; National Desk

LENGTH: 1392 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Oct. 25

House and Senate budget negotiators said today they had agreed on how to shield the elderly from any large increase in Medicare costs, one of the last outstanding issues in the deficit-reduction package Congress and the White House have been laboring on for nearly two months.
The agreement involves only a modest increase in Medicare costs for the elderly but substantial cuts in Medicare payments to doctors and hospitals. 
 The negotiators also agreed on a significant expansion of Medicaid to cover all poor children through the age of 18 by the year 2001. Many governors have opposed Federal requirements for Medicaid expansion, fearing they would saddle the states with enormous new costs, but Congress concluded that poor children are entitled to health insurance coverage even in a time of austerity.
 
Compromise Nears Completion
 The agreements on Medicare and Medicaid came as Congressional leaders neared completion of a compromise tax-and-spending package in preparation for votes Friday on the largest deficit-reduction plan in history. [Page A20.]
At the White House, Marlin Fitzwater, the press secretary, said President Bush was satisfied with the overall measure, which is supposed to cut the deficit by $40 billion this year and $500 billion over five years. But a senior Administration official attacked the Democrats, asserting they had forced the President to raise taxes. And the White House objected unsuccessfully to "the mandatory expansion of Medicaid" to cover additional poor children.
The relatively favorable terms toward beneficiaries, particularly the elderly, in the agreements on Medicare and Medicaid were essential to win political support among Democrats, the Speaker of the House, Thomas S. Foley, said.
 
Higher Payroll Taxes
 Over all, the changes in the Medicare program would save roughly $43 billion over five years, substantially less than the $60 billion target in the budget summit agreement negotiated by White House officials and Congressional leaders at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland. But much of the extra cost would be offset by new revenues, resulting from a dramatic increase in the amount of earnings subject to the Medicare payroll tax.
Mr. Foley said the agreement would include provisions of the House-passed budget bill intended to "reduce the burden on Medicare beneficiaries." The summit agreement and a budget bill passed last week by the Senate would have required the 33 million Medicare beneficiaries to share more of the program's costs. Democrats, who often campaign as protectors of the elderly, demanded a reduction in that burden as a condition for supporting the deficit-reduction plan.
Ronald F. Pollack, executive director of Families USA, a lobby for the elderly, said, "The compromise on Medicare is beginning to look much more like the House package than the Senate package, and that is good news for Medicare beneficiaries of moderate income."
Under the tentative agreement, the monthly Medicare premium for insurance covering doctors' bills, now $28.60, would rise gradually over five years to $46.20, as provided in the House bill. The $75 Medicare deductible, which is paid once a year by users of physician services, would rise to $100 in 1991 and would stay at that level in later years. The summit plan called for further increases in the deductible, to $125 in 1992 and $150 in 1993.
 
Doctors to Get Less
 While the elderly would pay less than envisioned in the summit plan, doctors and hospitals would pay more. The new agreement would save $32 billion to $33 billion over five years by paring Medicare payments to such health-care providers, as against $30 billion envisioned in the budget summit accord.
Lawmakers and lobbyists are still fighting over details of payments to doctors and hospitals. But they said it was clear that the final bill would trim reimbursements to them in myriad ways: reducing the inflation adjustment in hospital payments, reducing the allowance for the cost of hospital equipment and construction, cutting payments to doctors for "overpriced procedures" and freezing payments for physician services other than primary care.
Authoritative studies done for the Government concluded that Medicare payments for primary care, such as routine office visits, were inexplicably low when compared with national norms for all physician services.
As an example of the payment cuts to doctors under the compromise emerging from Congress, reimbursements to radiologists would be cut 6 percent to 7 percent below the amounts they would otherwise receive for treating Medicare patients in the current fiscal year.
 
Power of the Elderly
 Gary W. Price, director of government relations at the American College of Radiology, said, "When members of Congress decided it was impossible to raise Medicare beneficiary premiums much, they looked to health-care providers for additional savings."
"Our group, with slightly more than 20,000 members, and other health-care providers do not have nearly as much influence as a group like the American Association of Retired Persons, with more than 30 million members," Mr. Price said.
House and Senate negotiators have tentatively agreed to mandate Medicaid coverage of poor children through age 18. Current law requires coverage of poor children through age 5. Starting in 1991, state Medicaid programs would have to cover poor children 8 years old and under. The pool of eligible youngsters would expand gradually over the next decade until it includes all poor children through age 18.
 
An Extraordinary Coalition
 Federal and state governments share Medicaid costs, with states paying an average of 44 percent of the total. The National Governors Association has argued against mandatory expansion of Medicaid. But an extraordinary coalition of doctors, hospitals, insurers, business groups and children's advocates lobbied for it.
"This is exciting, more than we could have hoped for, and we are very pleased," said Kay Johnson, director of health issues at the Children's Defense Fund, a private group that lobbies for assistance to children.
The House-Senate compromise on Medicaid would also permit states to cover children through the age of 5 in families that are not poor but have incomes no more than 85 percent above the official poverty level. That would permit coverage of a family of three with income up to $18,287 this year. (A family of three earning less than $9,885 in 1989 was classified as living in poverty.)
 
Fast-Growing Program
 Even with the proposed cutbacks, Medicare would remain one of the fastest-growing programs in the Federal budget for several reasons: The elderly population is growing, health care costs are rising faster than the Consumer Price Index and the volume of physician services is growing even as the Government controls prices by limiting Medicare fees to doctors.
The new budget agreement continues the trend of the last eight years toward mind-boggling complexity in the formulas used to calculate Medicare payments to doctors and hospitals. House and Senate negotiators have tentatively agreed to reduce the inflation adjustment in payments to hospitals for in-patient care by 2 percentage points this year, 1.5 points next year and 1.4 points in 1993. At the same time, they would pay hospitals only 95 percent of the recognized costs of out-patient services.
A volatile political issue, still unresolved, is how to compensate inner-city hospitals and isolated rural hospitals that have exceptionally high costs. House negotiators are fighting for $2.5 billion in extra Medicare payments to urban hospitals, while Senate negotiators want to distribute $1.4 billion to rural hospitals.
Members of Congress said they had made progress in settling disagreements between the House and the Senate over a proposd child-care program, which would provide $2.5 billion in Federal grants to the states over three years. Negotiators have agreed on who will be eligible for the program, meant to help low-income families. But they have yet to work out such details as how to expand the Federal income tax credit for low-income working families with children.
Many Democrats contend that an increase in the tax credit is essential to make the overall deficit-reduction package more progressive.

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October 26, 1990, Friday, Late Edition - Final

MIDEAST TENSIONS;
Heath Says Iraq Would Use Chemical Arsenal If Attacked

BYLINE: REUTERS

SECTION: Section A; Page 10; Column 1; Foreign Desk

LENGTH: 96 words

DATELINE: LONDON, Oct. 25

Edward Heath, the former British Prime Minister, has told colleagues that President Saddam Hussein of Iraq warned that he was prepared to use chemical weapons and mistreat hostages if attacked, Britain's national news agency reported today.
 The Press Association said Mr. Heath made the remarks while briefing members of the ruling Conservative Party on his three-hour meeting with President Hussein in Baghdad on Sunday, when he negotiated the release of sick and elderly Britons held in Iraq. 
Mr. Heath was not immediately available for comment on the report.

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October 27, 1990, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

NEWS SUMMARY

SECTION: Section 1; Page 2; Column 5; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 1196 words


International 2-5
Israel's report on the shooting deaths of 21 Palestinians in Jerusalem criticized senior Israeli police commanders for being unprepared but concluded that the police who fired the shots were blameless. Page 1
Excerpts from the Israeli commission's report 5
Saudi Arabia remains committed against Iraq, King Fahd said, ordering an end to further conciliatory-sounding remarks to Iraq like those made earlier this week by his brother, the Defense Minister. 4
Secretary of State James Baker will go to Saudi Arabia soon to counter Saddam Hussein's efforts to split the coalition confronting Iraq and to coordinate with the Saudis the next steps in resolving the crisis. 4
A warning of a terrorist attack against a passenger ship in the eastern Mediterranean was issued by the State Department. The warning was unusually explicit. 4
 A new Security Council resolution declaring Iraq responsible for financial losses caused by the invasion and ordering governments to present evidence of war crimes moved close to approval. 5
Pamphlet tells American soldiers what to say and not say 4
Pakistan's election was mostly fair, and any irregularities that did occur did not significantly affect the outcome, an international observer delegation said. 3
East German Communist officials illegally transferred $70 million to Moscow, former party leaders admitted. Two officials were arrested in connection with the incident. 3
President Gorbachev visited Spain on the first of a series of trips abroad aimed at drumming up Western support for his program of economic and political change. 3
Konin Journal: Poland's uncharted campaign trail 2
 
 National 6-10, 24
New standards for health insurance purchased by 23 million elderly Americans to supplement coverage provided through Medicare were established by House and Senate negotiators. 1
News analysis: The tax compromise seems at first glance to revive the comatose tax shelter industry, but experts say it will make it more difficult to exploit tax gimmicks. 1
The budget deal fell short of its goal of reducing the Federal deficit by $500 billion over five years. As votes on the plan neared, lawmakers found the deal would cut $490 billion. 8
The budget deficit was $220.4 billion for 1990, just under the record of $221.2 billion in 1986, the Treasury Department announced. The deficit was 45 percent higher than in 1989. 8
Now President Bush hits the trail "Harry Truman-style" 9
A tentative child care measure was approved by House and Senate negotiators. The plan would provide grants to states to subsidize care programs and extend tax credits for low-income families with children. 10
The 101st Congress lurches toward adjourment -- in a hurry 9
Major legislation moves ahead in both houses of Congress 9
An agreement on aviation legislation was reached by White House and Congressional negotiators that would eliminate most of the airlines' noisier passenger jets from the skies by the turn of the century. 1
 Pilots who flew jet while intoxicated are sentenced to prison 6
Mayor Marion Barry was sentenced by a Federal judge to six months in prison and a year on probation for his conviction on a misdemeanor charge of possessing cocaine. 1
The Minnesota gubernatorial race took a strange twist when the Republican candidate, Jon Grunseth, called a news conference to announce his withdrawal amid charges of sexual misdeeds, then changed his mind. 6
A repair job on the Hubble telescope by space shuttle astronauts is being considered by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, which faces pressure from astronomers to fix the $1.5 billion telescope. 7
Scientists say they have grown hair in a test tube 24
 
Regional 25-28
The Daily News struggled to publish as it began dismissing the members of nine unions that decided to strike. An army of nonunion writers, editors, pressmen and drivers was flown in from across the country. 1
News analysis: The Daily News had been hoping for and perhaps even trying to provoke a strike that the paper's labor leaders had sought desparately to avoid. 1
Daily News reporters caught between labor and management 26
Layoffs of up to 35,000 workers could be needed if the city keeps its commitment for a 5.5 percent raise for teachers and gives anything comparable to other workers, the Dinkins administration warned. 1
The Board of Education agreed to cut the full $94 million from its budget, as requested by Mayor Dinkins. School officials have said the cuts could mean hundreds of layoffs and reductions of some programs. 25
After spending $1 million, Governor Cuomo still has $5 million 27 The Dime Savings Bank reports loss and suspends dividends 31
A dress code at a Brooklyn school received a hearty endorsement from the people it affects the most: the students. Frank Mickens, the principal at Boys and Girls High School, wants all boys to wear ties. 25
C. Vernon Mason's request to be defendant's lawyer is rejected 27
Hempstead High School was closed because of a botched asbestos-removal program. Students in the Long Island school district have been forced to attend split sessions in the district's middle school. 25
The race for Jim Florio's old seat in New Jersey's First Congressional District ought to belong to Bob Andrews, the Democrat, but his opponent, Dan Mangini, is gaining ground by running against Mr. Florio. 25
Census workers to revisit homes falsely counted in New Jersey 27
Karpov has advantage as seventh game of match adjourns 28
 
Business Digest 31
 
Arts/Entertainment
"Godfather III" produces unrest 11
Jersey Symphony trims season 11
Theater: "Polygraph" 12
Film: "Graveyard Shift" 12
Music: "Un Ballo in Maschera" 11
An anniversary for de Larrocha 13
Italian contemporary festival 15
Clurman's New York Concert Singers 15
10,000 Maniacs retrospective 17
Roy Hargrove, jazz trumpeter 17
Dance: Rebecca Kelly troupe 14
JoAnn Fregalette Jansen 14
Books: Poetry by William Jay Smith and James Dickey 16
 
Consumer's World 48
How to pay the bills when you can't
The storm over check printing
Coping with lighting for safety
 
Obituaries
William S. Paley, ex-chairman of CBS Inc.  1
Major (Mule) Holley, bassist 28
Joseph Johnson, headed endowment for peace research 28
 
Sports
Basketball: Coleman passes physical 45
Knicks need consistency from Wilkins 45
Boxing: "Other guy" now champion 43
Column: Anderson on the fight 43
Football: Castoffs find home with Giants 43
Hofstra a Division III terror 45
Hockey: Gretzky gets 2,000th point 43
Horse Racing: Gorgeous scratched 43
 
Editorials/Letters/Op-Ed
Editorials 22
Escalation, 1990 style
Cleaner air, at last
AIDS, abortion and fairness
N.Y. elections bury democracy
Letters 22
Russell Baker: Ethicizationism 23
Flora Lewis: Two big cities 23
Beatriz Manz: In Guatemala, no one is safe 23
Josh Zinner: Not even Guatemala's children are safe 23
Peter D. Salins: New York City will rise again 23

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October 27, 1990, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

Business Digest

SECTION: Section 1; Page 31; Column 1; Financial Desk

LENGTH: 586 words


The Budget Marathon
Budget negotiators agreed to set tough new standards for private health insurance policies purchased by 23 million elderly Americans to supplement Medicare coverage. [Page 1.]
 On first glance, the budget package's tax changes might seem a throwback to the days of tax shelters and abuses. But experts say the spirit of the 1986 tax overhaul is intact. News Analysis. [1.]
 As they approached final votes on a huge tax and spending plan that would affect the pocketbooks of nearly all Americans, lawmakers found themselves $10 billion short of their goal. [8.]
 The Treasury Department made it official: the budget deficit surged to a near-record $220.4 billion. [8.]
 
 The Economy
 Banking companies continue to be mauled in the financial markets as investors worry about rising losses on real estate. [33.]
 Legislation to eliminate most of the noisier passenger jets from the nation's skies by the turn of the century was agreed to by Congressional leaders and the Administration. [1.]
 The presentation of evidence in the Milken hearing apparently neared a close, with defense lawyers filing their last affidavit. [33.]
 
 Companies
 Aetna Life said it would eliminate 2,600 jobs as part of a program of broad changes. The announcement is a sign of continuing problems in the industry. [31.]
 Dime Savings Bank posted a loss and suspended dividends on its common stock. It said rising losses on residential real estate loans had led to a loss of $153.6 million in the quarter. [31.]
 Cummins Engine reported a loss of $33.7 million, citing a decline in demand for truck engines. [31.]
 Macy told its investors it might sell a bigger stake in the debt-laden company than it had previously sold to other investors. [31.]
 Slap bracelets, like other fads, are almost certainly doomed to a short life. But Main Street Toy is riding the rocket. [31.]
 Officers of Coated Sales, a New Jersey textile company, were charged with bilking lenders and shareholders. [33.]
 Chevron said its profit fell 3.4 percent, citing higher crude prices and one-time charges for environmental programs. [32.]
 The Daily News began dismissing most of its 2,400 unionized workers and then struggled to publish without them. [1.]
 Two former Northwest Air pilots were sentenced to prison for flying a passenger jet while intoxicated. [6.]
 Henley Group said it might sell its entire 4.2 percent stake in Wheelabrator. [33.]
 
 Markets
Stocks dropped sharply, with traders citing growing concerns about banks. The Dow slid 48.02, to 2,436.14. [31.]
 Oil prices seesawed, closing $1.24 a barrel lower, at $33.01, after a rally based on war fears ran out of steam. [32.]
 The Treasury's delayed auction of one-year bills was greeted with strong demand, which caused the average discount rate on the $10.13 billion issue to drop to its lowest level in 2 1/2 years. [34.]
 The dollar ended mixed in quiet trading. Gold prices slipped overseas, and the decline accelerated in U.S. trading. [39.]
 In a late selloff, soybean futures prices tumbled below $6 a bushel to a two-and-a-half-month low. [39.]
 
 Today's Columns
 The complexity of the tax package could force many well-off taxpayers to scrutinize almost every facet of their finances for possible savings. Your Money. [32.]
 A U.S. chemical company wants to export a food idea: a cheaper way to produce a popular Oriental noodle. Patents. [32.]

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October 27, 1990, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

THE STRUGGLE IN CONGRESS;
HEALTH INSURERS FACE TIGHT RULES IN COVERING AGED

BYLINE: By ROBERT PEAR, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section 1; Page 1; Column 6; National Desk

LENGTH: 1220 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Oct. 26

As they worked toward a final compromise on the 1991 budget, House and Senate negotiators agreed today to set tough new Federal standards for private health insurance policies purchased by 23 million elderly Americans to supplement coverage provided by the Government through Medicare.
The legislation, long sought by large numbers of the nation's elderly, would add another strand to the network of Federal programs for the aged by protecting them from buying unnecessary coverage. 
 Under the bill, either the Federal Government or the national organization of state insurance commissioners would develop 10 model private health insurance policies offering "a core group of basic benefits."
 
10 Models Would Be Offered
 These 10 policies would replace the thousands now sold to elderly people in the private market. A private insurer offering coverage to supplement Medicare would have to use one of the 10 models.
The Bush Administration has opposed such direct Federal regulation of these supplemental policies, which are commonly referred to as Medigap.
But the measure's chief proponents, Representative Ron Wyden of Oregon and Senator Tom Daschle of South Dakota, both Democrats, have succeeded in getting it attached to the budget bill that is only now emerging from Congress after months of arduous negotiation. As a result, the President's approval is virtually assured.
As another part of the budget bill, the negotiators also agreed today to require prescription drug manufacturers to give discounts to states that buy drugs for poor people on Medicaid.
 
'Best Price' Provision
 Under this provision, estimated to save the Government $1.9 billion over five years, drug makers would eventually have to give Medicaid the "best price" they offer to private purchasers like hospitals, pharmacies and group health plans. The bill, which the Administration supports, specifies minimum discounts of 12.5 percent.
The actions came as the budget negotiators, working on a package intended to save $500 billion over five years, found that they were $10 billion short of that goal. But they pressed ahead, in an atmosphere that was largely partisan. [Page 8.]
The new protection that would be extended to the elderly is intended to spare them from paying for duplicative health insurance. At present, many of the aged often buy more than one policy. Congressional investigators have found cases in which an elderly person bought more than 15 policies in three years.
"More than 20 million seniors spend more than $15 billion a year on Medigap insurance policies," Mr. Wyden, the bill's chief supporter in the House, said in an interview. "Many have been ripped off, and many are being cheated out of their limited, fixed incomes. The new Federal standards should bring about a dramatic change in private health insurance, reducing confusion among the elderly and increasing price competition among insurers."
The bill is particularly needed, Mr. Wyden said, because the Government's plans for cost-cutting changes in Medicare will increase confusion about the scope of its benefits.
 
Administration's Stance
 The Bush Administration has opposed direct Federal regulation of individual Medigap policies, and the insurance industry has expressed concern that such standards might unduly restrict consumers' "freedom of choice."
Gail R. Wilensky, head of the Federal Health Care Financing Administration, which administers Medicare, acknowledged today that private policies were often confusing but said that for the Federal Government to designate a small number of policies that could be sold would be "condescending and paternalistic."
"There is a less coercive way to fix the problem," by requiring insurers to disclose clearly all information related to a policy's benefits, Dr. Wilensky said. Only if that approach did not work should the Government consider requiring a standard package of benefits, she said.
 
Reaction of Insurers
 The insurance industry itself, however, has grown less resistant to the idea in recent months as it became increasingly apparent that Congress would impose it.
Indeed, after the negotiators reached their decision today, Linda S. Jenckes, vice president of the Health Insurance Association of America, said that the use of standard language in Medigap policies would benefit consumers and that the industry welcomed efforts to eliminate the sale of duplicate policies.
But Mrs. Jenckes said that many insurers objected to another provision in the bill, a requirement that insurers pay Medigap benefits equal to at least 65 cents of every dollar they receive in premiums from the holders of such policies. Mrs. Jenckes said it would be more appropriate for the states, which have historically had a stronger role in regulating the insurance industry, to set such "loss ratios."
 
Role for the States
 Under the measure, insurance agents would generally be forbidden to sell a Medigap policy to a person who already had one, unless the person certified in writing that he or she would drop the initial policy.
Anyone who issued or sold a Medigap policy in violation of the Federal standards could be fined $25,000 or imprisoned for five years.
The bill would invite the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, an organization of state officials, to identify the 10 standard packages of benefits. If the association failed to act within nine months, the Federal Government would establish the 10 packages.
Congressional aides said the bare-bones model policies would cover the deductible paid by beneficiaries for in-patient hospital care, now $592; the beneficiaries' 20 percent share of doctors' bills, and the charges for a skilled nursing home, now $74 a day after the first 20 days.
The National Association of Insurance Commissioners or the Federal Government would also prescribe "uniform language and definitions" for benefits and a "uniform format" to be used in policies. The standard format would make it easier for elderly people and their relatives to compare policies, prices and benefits.
The provision for 10 model policies, instead of just one, is intended to allow some tailoring to individual needs among the millions of Medicare beneficiaries.
 
The Discount-Drug Bill
 As for the measure on discount drugs, it would require drug makers to eventually give Medicaid the "best price" they offer to private purchasers like hospitals, pharmacies and group health plans. The bill specifies minimum discounts of 12.5 percent in each of the next two years and 15 percent in later years.
At present, drug companies are not required to give such discounts.
Medicaid accounts for about 13 percent of drug purchases in the domestic pharmaceutical market.
Gerald J. Mossinghaff, president of the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association, reacted to the drug-discount bill by saying, "The industry favors a free market system and has not supported Government-imposed rebates and discounts."
Jeffrey L. Trewhitt, a spokesman for the association, said that drug prices "reflect the very high cost of research and development." Moreover, he said, Medicaid beneficiaries have derived immense therapeutic benefits from such drugs, reducing the need for hospitalization and surgery.

LOAD-DATE: October 27, 1990

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photos: Senator Tom Daschle is a sponsor of the insurance legislation. (Paul Conklin); (pg. 1); Representative Newt Gingrich, left, House minority whip, and an aide, Ray LaHood, as they walked to a Republican tax strategy meeting. (Andrea Mohin/The New York Times); "Many have been ripped off," Representative Ron Wyden said of the elderly who buy Medigap insurance. He is the sponsor of the bill in the House. (The New York Times)
 
Graphic: "How Social Security Could Change" shows deductions for selected years under existing law, and how deductions would change under a provision of the emerging budget package. (Source: House Ways and Means Committee) (pg. 9)

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The New York Times

October 28, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

When the Retarded Grow Old -- A special report.
As the Retarded Live Longer, Anxiety Grips Aging Parents

BYLINE: By TAMAR LEWIN

SECTION: Section 1; Part 1; Page 1; Column 2; National Desk

LENGTH: 2908 words

Every afternoon at 3, Marie Covello waits for the van that brings her severely retarded 31-year-old son home from his day program. She takes John's hand to help him up the stairs of their Verona, N.J., house, pats his red hair into place, gives him a glass of water, reminds him to go to the bathroom and settles him in front of the television.
And in the back of her mind, as in those of thousands of other aging parents of retarded children, Mrs. Covello, who is 73, wonders how long she and her 75-year-old husband, Vince, will be able to take care of Johnny -- and what will happen to him when they cannot. 
 "Sometimes when I'm bathing Johnny and he gets ornery I think, 'God, give me the strength,' because it's hard now that I'm older, and my patience sometimes runs out," said Mrs. Covello. "I don't want to leave the problem for my other children, so we began trying to find a group home for Johnny about six years ago, but we're still on the waiting list. I worry about getting Johnny settled somewhere before something happens to me."
 
Their Own Old Age
 Many parents of retarded children never expected to face that worry. But unlike most retarded people born only a generation earlier, Johnny Covello and others of his age will probably outlive their parents. In many cases, because of improved living conditions and medical advance, they will reach their own old age.
As a result, their parents are now facing wrenching decisions about whether to place their offspring in group homes, ask other sons or daughters to take responsibility for the retarded siblings -- or simply hold on and hope that when an emergency arises, the retarded offspring will not be shunted into a large state institution for want of a better opening.
Experts in the field say there are now at least 200,000 retarded people over 60 in the United States.
While there have always been some elderly retarded people, tucked away in state hospitals or living with families, this generation of retarded adults poses a host of new policy challenges, both because of their increased longevity and because they are far more likely to be living in the community.
Social service agencies around the country are rethinking their programs with an eye to meeting the special needs of people who are not only retarded but also elderly. And policy makers say the agencies have to start planning for the huge influx of retarded baby-boomers living with aging parents.
 
Better Medical Care
 The advances in longevity have been especially dramatic for those with Down syndrome, the leading known cause of retardation. In the 1940's, Down syndrome babies had a life expectancy of only 12 years. But now, most are living well into their 50's, as a result of better living conditions and better medical care.
In 1953, when Roma Dale Allen's fourth child, Jane, was born with Down syndrome, her doctor in Magee, Miss., told her to expect Jane to die in early childhood.
"The pediatrician told me to take her home and love her, because she wouldn't live long," said Mrs. Allen, now 72. "She had two attacks of pneumonia when she was little, and I didn't think she'd make it. I certainly didn't think Jane would ever be 37 years old."
But she is alive and well, and although people with Down syndrome still age and die prematurely, often developing Alzheimer's disease in their late 40's, Mrs. Allen expects Jane to outlive her.
 
Changes in a Generation
 "I feel like I have 10 good years left, but I guess she'll probably live longer," said Mrs. Allen. "I don't know if that's a blessing or not. She took it hard when her daddy died, and I don't know what she'd do if anything happened to me."
Most people with other forms of retardation, except those so profoundly retarded that they cannot walk or feed themselves, now live close to normal life spans.
"With most retarded people, it's not any major medical advance that's leading to their living longer, just the same kinds of changes that have led to longer life spans for the general population," said Marsha Seltzer, a University of Wisconsin professor who studies aging and retardation. Dr. Seltzer was formerly with the School of Social Work at Boston University.
For some, improved living conditions have made the difference: "A generation ago, a lot of retarded people were thrown into institutions where they may have had their teeth pulled and not been fed properly, so they did not have a long life expectancy," she said.
Today, the ranks of retarded people over 60 are growing rapidly.
 
'At the Vanguard'
 Matthew Janicki of the New York State Office of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disability, said: "For every one developmentally disabled person that we know of who is older and getting services, there will be three or four needing those services in 15 years. We're just at the vanguard of figuring out how to serve aging people with retardation."
Over the last two decades, thousands of retarded people have been moved out of large state institutions and into small group homes -- or in some cases foster homes or supervised apartments -- where their lives are closer to normal. While no one knows how many people are on waiting lists nationwide or in what regions the lists are longer, there is a clear consensus that the waiting lists for group homes are growing far faster than the number of new beds.
Most group homes have only small staffs during the day, since the residents either go to sheltered workshops, where they perform routine work for low pay, or, if they are more severely retarded, spend much of their time at day centers.
As these people age, many new questions are arising: Should sheltered workshops provide for retirement, and pay pensions? Should group homes have more daytime staff so that older residents who want to stop working can stay home? Can retarded older people be integrated into existing programs for senior citizens?
And most pressing for families like the Covellos, will enough group homes be built -- given budget constraints and the not-in-my-backyard syndrome that greets many proposals -- to accommodate the thousands of retarded adults now living with aging parents?
 
Planning
Looking Ahead Can Be Draining
 For many families, planning for permanent care of a retarded adult is emotionally draining, forcing them to confront their own mortality and the family strains inherent in leaving their other children responsibility for the retarded sibling.
"Most of them don't begin to plan the care for their child after their death until they are in their 60's or 70's, and even then they may be reluctant to put the plan into operation," said Timothy Brubaker, director of the Family and Child Studies Center at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. "A lot of the mothers who have cared for their children at home feel that no one else will care as well."
A look of pain crosses Mrs. Covello's face when she describes how the neighborhood children fear John and go across the street to avoid him. Still, she says, giving up his care will be hard.
"My other kids have gone off, but because of John I've never had that empty-house feeling," she said. "Johnny sets the table for us, and he's good company. We never wanted to put him in an institution. Even at a good place, you don't know if they'll notice when someone is thirsty, and give him a glass of water. But I know it's time to be planning for his future."
 
On the Waiting List
 She also knows that it may be many more years on a waiting list before a place at a good group home opens up.
"We're adding more than a hundred people a year to the waiting list even though we've doubled the number of people we serve in the last three years," said Terry Allen Pearl, executive director of the Chimes Inc., a Maryland agency that provides services for the retarded. The agency, which opened only 12 new beds last year, gets 13 applications a month. "We're seeing a lot more two-generation geriatric families, with a very old parent and a retarded child who is old himself," Mr. Pearl said.
Jerry Maurer, director of residential services at the Association for the Help of Retarded Children in New York City, says he has families who have been on a waiting list for more than 10 years.
"We're adding hundreds of new names a year," he said. "And the list doesn't move much, because we're only opening about 20 new beds a year, and of the 240 beds we have, the attrition is only one or two a year."
 
Some Become Emergencies
 Furthermore, the few new beds tend to go to retarded adults who have been institutionalized for most of their lives or who get emergency priority when their parents become ill or die.
"Most states are building community residences only at a rate to accommodate the retarded people being deinstitutionalized, and many are under court order to do so," said Robert Bruininks, a professor at the University of Minnesota who is president of the American Association on Mental Retardation. "So there's a tension, almost everywhere, between the people in institutions and the parents caring for retarded children at home."
Although there are a few homes for the retarded that charge $30,000 a year or more, the vast majority of group homes do not charge the families. Instead, they depend on a combination of state and Federal support, including the basic $386-a-month Federal Supplemental Security Income that most retarded people receive and, in most states, an extra allowance.
For families like the Covellos, who kept their retarded babies at home in an era when most doctors said they should be in institutions, it seems a cruel irony that their children might have a better chance of placement in a group home if they had been institutionalized all along.
 
A Harsh Reward
 "We saved the state a lot of money by keeping Johnny home all these years, and it doesn't seem right that the families who put their children in institutions have priority," she said. "Between my four kids, I've been taking care of children for 48 years, and the most time I've had off was one week. Now I'm being penalized, instead of rewarded, for all that work."
Mrs. Covello says her worst fear is that she may die or become incapacitated before the family finds John another place to live. That specter took on new immediacy this month after she passed out briefly in the bathroom and her husband went to pieces.
"He panics too easily," she said. "I'm not sure he could handle Johnny without me."
Mrs. Covello says she does not want to saddle her three older children with John's lifelong care. "Johnny is my problem, and you never really know how your daughter's husband or your son's wife would feel about taking care of him," she said. "They'd do it if they had to. But they have their own kids, and they're so busy with the soccer and the baseball . . . A permanent thing wouldn't be fair to them."
 
Coping
Some Siblings Shoulder Burdens
 According to a study of 450 families by Dr. Seltzer of the University of Wisconsin and the study's co-author, Dr. Marty Krauss of the Heller School at Brandeis University, 80 percent of the retarded adults who have siblings get at least some help from them. About 60 percent of the families said that a sibling would supervise the retarded person's care if the parents could no longer provide it.
Hugh Carl McLellan of Durant, Miss., has been responsible for his 67-year old sister, Mary Elizabeth, for more than 20 years. Mary Elizabeth was born with normal intelligence, but when she was 3 she got colitis, accompanied by a 106-degree fever that raged for several days, causing permanent brain damage. Their brother, the third child in the family, was paralyzed at birth.
"I was the only one who turned out halfway able to take care of myself, so I think, Lord, you have been good to me," said Mr. McLellan, who is 58. "For years after my parents died, it was like having two families. I'd stop in twice a day to see Mary Elizabeth and my brother. After he died, she wasn't safe there by herself."
Mary Elizabeth lived with Mr. McLellan's family briefly, but it did not work out, because no one was home in the day to look after her. Mr. McLellan's wife, a social worker, ultimately found a residential program for Mary Elizabeth.
"We go visit, and I feel so relieved that there is someone looking after her and making her life enjoyable," he said.
 
Burdens Are Expected
 Some siblings of retarded adults say they always expected the responsibility.
"It's been understood for 15 years that I would be the one to take on my sister when my parents can't, because my brother would never take her on," said a 48-year-old Southern California professor, who asked not to be identified."My wife understands, and I'm going to do it, whatever it takes, but I'm hoping it will be a couple years off, since I have two teen-age children, and they're very embarrassed about their aunt."
Most parents of retarded adults say they do not want or expect their other children to take full charge of the retarded sibling.
"We have never, ever wanted to involve our other kids in this," said Florence Whalen, the Mayor of Oconomowoc, Wis. She is the mother of four grown sons, including Patrick, a severely retarded 35-year old who lives with Mrs. Whalen and her husband, Richard. "Patrick is very close with his brother Michael, who is 14 months younger, and while we have never discussed it, I'm sure that in an emergency Michael would take Patrick in. But Patrick is ours, and it is not our desire that he be foisted on the others."
 
Changing
Policies Evolve As Ranks Grow

The needs of aging residents are already forcing changes at some of the earliest group homes, like Fineson House on East 16th Street in Manhattan, which opened in 1970 for 21 retarded adults, mostly in their 30's and 40's. All but three of the original residents are still there. This month, the two oldest turned 72.
Ilka Hall, the manager, said that, with older residents, she has had to keep the house warmer, make the lighting brighter and expand the schedule of nurse visits from one day a week to three.
Most group homes around the country are on the threshold of similar changes: "Of the people in our metropolitan Baltimore residences, we already have 20 percent who are 55 or over, and in five years it will be more than 50 percent," said Mr. Pearl.
One big issue yet to be resolved is whether, and how, older retarded people working in sheltered workshops will be able to retire. Katie Greenblatt, one of the 72-year olds at Fineson House, has been working in one sheltered workshop or another for 33 years, putting together lipstick assortments one month and Halloween kits the next, earning about $25 a week. Like virtually every other sheltered workshop employee in the nation, she has neither a pension nor a retirement plan.
 
Will Keep Working
 "I'm going to keep working, because you don't get paid if you don't work," said Ms. Greenblatt. "If someone paid me $25 a week to go to a senior center, that sounds like fun. I could draw. I could play bingo. I could do anything. But it won't happen. You don't get money for nothing."
Several advocacy groups are trying to address that problem, by creating a modest retirement allowance that would replace the workshop paycheck.
The new concern about retirement marks the maturation of a movement that began 40 years ago with the founding of the Association for Retarded Children, by a group of parents seeking appropriate schooling for their retarded children. As those children grew up, the group's advocacy extended to employment opportunities. And now, as the Association for Retarded Citizens, it runs the gamut from childhood to old age.
"The whole issue of aging has just come up, because there are so many more people with retardation living in the community, employed in these sheltered programs," said Sharon Davis, director of research at the association. "We're all thinking, don't they get to retire like everybody else?"
 
Nothing Is Simple
 But providing for retirement is not simple. For one thing, most retarded people depend on their Supplemental Security Income, which they would lose, under current law, if they accumulated more than $2,000 in a pension account. And most existing programs for the elderly have not traditionally welcomed retarded older people.
Until an agreement last year between the Administration on Aging and the Administration on Developmental Disabilities -- both part of the United States Department of Health and Human Services -- it was not even clear that older people with retardation were entitled to the same government services as other older Americans. Many states are now beginning to coordinate their services for the aging with their services for the retarded, so that an elderly retarded person with special needs may be able to get a double schedule of caseworker visits, half paid for by each agency.
A few senior centers have opened their doors to people with retardation, among them, the Prescott Adult Day Health Center in Prescott, Ariz., where five of the 25 participants each day are people with retardation.
"It's been easier than I expected," said Susan Rheem, the director of the center. "It seems that when you have people struggling with Alzheimer's disease and strokes, being retarded doesn't look so different anymore."

LOAD-DATE: October 28, 1990

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photos: Roma Dale Allen, 72 years old, putting a newly-bought comb in her 37- year-old daughter Jane's hair at a crafts fair in Magee, Miss. (Hubert Worley Jr. for The New York Times) (pg. 1); Vince and Marie Covello, both in their 70's, playing a game with their severely retarded son, John, 31 years old. "I worry about getting Johnny settled somewhere before something happens to me," Mrs. Covello said.  (Frank C. Dougherty for The New York Times) (pg. 32)

TYPE: A Special Report

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The New York Times

October 28, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

THE STRUGGLE IN CONGRESS;
Most in U.S. Will Feel Effect Of Shift in Spending Priorities

BYLINE: By ROBERT PEAR, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section 1; Part 1; Page 1; Column 4; National Desk

LENGTH: 1692 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Oct. 27

The deficit-reduction bill passed today by Congress will touch almost everyone in the United States, from young children to frail elderly people, as well as farmers, bankers, college students, war veterans and foreign tourists visiting this country.
The bill has been promoted as a way to help save nearly $500 billion over five years, but it is also a grand statement of social policy and political priorities. [Chart of provisions, page 26.] 
 The measure, which includes higher taxes and spending cuts, is notable for its relative generosity to poor children, who will benefit from $18 billion in new tax credits for low-income families over the next five years and from an expansion in health insurance coverage for such families under Medicaid.
 
Better News for the Elderly
 Elderly people also fared much better than they might have expected, based on proposals that emerged from negotiations between Congressional leaders and Bush Administration officials just four weeks ago.
Cutbacks in Medicare, the Federal health insurance program for the elderly and disabled, would save $42.5 billion over five years under the final compromise. This is much less than the $60 billion envisioned in the budget agreement reached at the earlier negotiations, at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland.
The bill would provide a tax credit to help small businesses pay for elevators or other structural changes needed to comply with a new law that bans discrimination against people with disabilities. It also permits states to cover home care for low-income elderly disabled people under Medicaid, on the assumption that such care will cost less than nursing home care.
At the same time, Congress is imposing a new "luxury tax" on expensive cars, airplanes, yachts and furs. In addition, after 10 years of lobbying by the Reagan and Bush Administrations, Congress agreed to impose a fee on owners of recreational boats, on the theory that they benefit from Coast Guard services and thus should bear some of the costs.
Michael G. Sciulla, vice president of the Boat Owners Association of the United States, who has fought such fees for a decade, said today: "Congress was hungry for revenues of any kind, without regard for the merits of the issue. This fee will hit as many as 3 million Americans who own modest-size boats, 16 to 20 feet in length, and that certainly is no yacht."
 
Votes End Lengthy Sessions
 The House approved the bill, the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1990, at 6:58 A.M. The Senate passed the measure this evening.
Despite the effort to trim the deficit, Estimates by the Office of Management and Budget suggest that Representative Tom DeLay, Republican of Texas, was right in his prediction today in the House that it would be higher in this fiscal year, which began Oct. 1, than in the year just ended, when it was $220.4 billion. The cost of the savings and loan debacle is responsible for much of the rise.
Here is a summary of changes that would be made under the legislation. In Congressional parlance, savings represent reductions from the amounts theoretically needed to continue Federal programs at current levels. Outlays for a particular program often increase even though lawmakers say they have saved money by trimming benefits or charging higher fees.
AGRICULTURE.  Farm programs, long resistant to the budget-cutters' scalpel, would be trimmed sharply. The Government would pay lower crop subsidies to growers of wheat, feed grains, cotton and rice, and it would charge a "service fee" to dairy farmers for the dairy price-support program. The Government would also charge small fees when making payments to support commodity prices.
Two Federal lending agencies, the Farmers Home Administration and the Rural Electrification Administration, would reduce their direct loans and increase the use of loan guarantees. Such guarantees are less expensive because the Treasury pays out money only when borrowers default.
The savings would total $1.6 billion in the current fiscal year and $14.9 billion over five years.
VETERANS.  Congress has adamantly opposed White House efforts to cut
 veterans' benefits, but fiscal realities caught up with it this year, and lawmakers began to snip away at programs that benefit veterans.
The bill eliminates the presumption that veterans who served in wartime are totally disabled, and therefore eligible for veterans' pensions, at the age of 65. The Government will increase fees for home mortgages made or insured by the Department of Veterans Affairs and will charge a $2 fee on prescription drugs for certain outpatients at veterans' hospitals.
Overall, changes in veterans' programs save $621 million this year and $3.7 billion over five years.
 CHILD CARE.  The Government has earmarked $732 million this year and>
 slightly larger amounts in later years for grants to the states to help pay for child care. The formula for distributing the money takes account of the number of children under the age of 5 and the number receiving assistance through the school lunch program.
Potentially more significant is Congress's decision to expand the existing Federal tax credit for low-income working families with children. The maximum credit will be increased, and families with more children can get larger credits. Expansion of this tax break would cost the Government $12 billion over five years.
Congress also decided to establish a tax credit for the costs of premiums on private health insurance that covers children in low-income families. Preliminary estimates suggested this provision could cost $5 billion over five years.
 BANKS.  Lawmakers found they could reduce the deficit while shoring up the Federal fund that insures bank deposits. Federal regulators will be able to increase premiums paid by banks and savings and loan associations for deposit insurance. Premiums for commercial banks, now 12 cents for each $100 of deposits, would rise to 19.5 cents in January 1991 and 23 cents in January 1992. This is expected to save $1.1 billion this year and $9 billion over five years.
 HOUSING.  The Government would charge higher premiums for mortgage insurance offered by the Federal Housing Administration. It would also increase the maximum amount eligible for such insurance, to $124,875, so the Government would insure more loans and collect more premiums. It is estimated that these and other changes in the agency will save $609 million this year and $3.6 billion over five years.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency could also raise flood insurance premiums to bring in an additional $224 million over five years.
 EDUCATION.  The Government would no longer guarantee loans to students attending certain colleges or trade schools with high default rates -- in excess of 35 percent in 1991 or 1992 and 30 percent in later years.
The restriction could affect 1,000 of the 7,000 schools in which students receive guaranteed loans. Most would be trade schools, which teach auto repair, truck driving and other such skills.
There would be a 30-day delay in disbursement of guaranteed loans to those entering colleges and trade schools next year.
Savings are not expected in the current fiscal year, but would total $1.7 billion over five years.
 LABOR.  The maximum civil penalty that could be imposed by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration for a willful violation of Federal law would rise to $70,000 from $10,000.
The maximum that can be imposed by the Federal Mine Safety and Health Administration would rise to $50,000 from $10,000.
The flat premium paid by employers for Federal insurance of pension benefits would rise to $19 for each participant in a pension plan from $16.
The increases are expected to generate $232 million this year and $1.8 billion over five years.
HEALTH.  Elderly people won their battle against a large increase in what they pay for health insurance under Medicare. The premium for insurance covering doctors' bills, now $28.60 a month, would rise gradually over five years to $46.20. The $75 Medicare deductible, paid once a year by users of physician services, would rise to $100 next year and would stay at that level.
Workers help finance hospital care for Medicare beneficiaries through their payroll taxes. The Government expects to collect $26.9 billion in additional revenue over five years as a result of increasing the amount of earnings subject to the Medicare payroll tax. The first $51,300 of a worker's earnings is now subject to such tax. The amount will increase next year to $125,000.
Medicare beneficiaries would contribute $10.1 billion to deficit reduction over five years. But doctors, hospitals and other health-care providers would contribute $32.4 billion. The Government will change its reimbursement formulas to insure that hospitals are paid slightly less than they would otherwise get for treating Medicare patients, buying medical equipment and educating medical students. It will also cut payments to doctors for "overpriced procedures."
Medicaid will be expanded to cover all poor children through the age of 18 by the year 2001. State Medicaid programs will have to pay monthly Medicare premiums for poor elderly people. In 1993 and 1994, they will also have to pay premiums for elderly people who are not poor, but are within 10 percent of the official poverty level. An elderly couple with income less than $7,501 was classified as poor last year.
To help pay for the expansion of benefits to poor people, Medicaid will pay less for prescription drugs and will require drug makers to offer discounts.
 FEES.  The Government will create a fee of $1 for each passenger on foreign airlines and cruise ships arriving in the United States. Such fees would generate $78 million over five years to pay for the United States Travel and Tourism Administration, a part of the Commerce Department.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Environmental Protection Agency and Federal Railroad Administration, which enforces rail safety rules, will create user fees. These are expected to bring in $1.9 billion over five years.

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LENGTH: 823 words


International 3-19
 A new initiative toward peace and a settlement of the Persian Gulf crisis is being undertaken by the Soviet Union. A ranking Soviet official went to Baghdad at the invitation of President Saddam Hussein. Page 1
Iraq's plan to ration gasoline was a maneuver to persuade Baghdad's enemies to postpone any attack on Iraqi forces occupying Kuwait, several oil industry officials and military affairs experts said. 10
Gorbachev hints Iraq may be reconsidering its position 10
U.S. says it sent no signals to expel Lebanese general 12
The epidemic of AIDS in Africa is raising new questions about women's roles and rights before the law and in their families. Social workers say the disease has in many ways had a disproportionate impact on Africa's already disadvantaged women. 16
Liberia guerrillas refuse to sign accord at talks 17
Ivory Coast faces first free elections today 18
Four nations to send truce force to Rwanda 11
Hundreds of dead and dying dolphins are washing ashore in Spain, Franceand Italy, victims of a virus that some scientists believe is linked to the heavy pollution of the western Mediterranean. 3
Vatican synod reaffirms celibacy for priests 19
Rise in cost of gasoline sets off protests in Hungary 14
Soviet woman fights for a home for those labeled defective 14
Soviet coal miners set up independent union 14
Secret-police scandals outlive East Germany 14
Women's group seeks environmental role 16
Delay in trial of war crimes suspect has French astir 16
A U.S. Special Service officer in El Salvador has told the F.B.I. he knew in advance of plans to kill six Jesuit priests, although he has since retracted that testimony. 9
Peru's leader proposes a market to fight coca 12
After six years, Labor is voted out in New Zealand 18
Bhutto looks to provincial elections 5
Beijing condemns pornography as subversive 6
 
 National 22-32
Congress approved the budget bill, the biggest deficit reduction legislation in history, and prepared to adjourn, just 10 days before the mid-term election. President Bush is expected to sign the measure. 1
The new deficit reduction bill will touch almost everyone in the nation, from children to the elderly as well as farmers, bankers, college students, war veterans and foreign tourists. 1
Most incumbents will be re-elected in the Nov. 6 balloting across the nation, despite all the signs of anger among voters. They will win either because they are unopposed or because they face opponents so underfinanced as to be out of contention.  1
14 of 15 Jersey lawmakers reject budget plan26
Lawmakers agree to curb exploration for offshore oil 28
Ambitious air pollution bill sent to White House 28
Market forces seen as backbone of new Bush energy policy 28
Retarded people are living longer as a result of medical advances. But the new generation of people who are both retarded and elderly is posing a host of policy challenges and adding more worry to their aging parents. 1
The Scholastic Aptitude Test, a collage entrance exam that is a rite ofpassage for many high school students, faces potentially major revision in the wake of criticism about its validity and perceptions of ethnic and sex bias. 22
For police, a delicate job of reordering priorities 22
A.C.L.U. says violations pervading foster care system 22
Hatteras Island to rely on ferries up to six months 22
The threat of a strike rises at Chrysler 23
 
 Regional 33-36
Some strikers at The Daily News will be permitted to reclaim their jobs if they cross picket lines tomorrow, management officials announced. The offer came on the second full day of the bitter strike. 1
The strike underscores new realities for labor and management in New York City, which has long been considered one of the nation's last big union towns, labor experts say. 33
The stalled New York City labor talks are being heightened by the union leaders' growing mistrust in the claims being made about the city's financial plight. 33
Government computer files open to public, court rules 37
A major spill in the Hudson River was caused by a large barge that struck a reef and spewed 163,800 gallons of kerosene into the water 15 miles south of Poughkeepsie. 34
New York Lieut. Gov. Stan Lundine is running hard, with his eyes more on the election of 1994 than the one in two weeks. This is his best chance to become better known before a possible race to succeed Mario Cuomo. 35 D'Amato explains shift on bias bill 34
Defeat certain, Kasparov resigns the seventh game 36
 
Obituaries
William S. Paley, ex-chairman of CBS Inc.  39
Elliott Roosevelt, World War II general and an author 38
Xavier Cugat, bandleader 38
 
Arts/Reviews 60, 62
 
 Campus Life 45-49
 
Fashion 54-55
 
 Life Style 50
 
 Pastimes 61-63
 
 Weddings 56-60

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IDEAS & TRENDS;
Giving Older Women A Shot at Motherhood

BYLINE: By GINA KOLATA

SECTION: Section 4; Page 4; Column 1; Week In Review Desk

LENGTH: 816 words

EVERY infertility clinic routinely comes across desperate couples who spend years and their last dollars trying to have a baby. But with the publication of a paper last week saying that the seemingly natural termination of the baby chase -- menopause -- is no longer a barrier, doctors and women have to ask when, if ever, they should give up.
Doctors have found that women who have gone through menopause and are willing to accept egg donations from younger women can easily become pregnant. For some couples, the decision on when to stop trying to have a baby will depend only on their willingness to put up with the emotional and physical trauma and the onerous expense of infertility treatments. 
 "A lot of these women don't know when to quit," said Dr. Mark V. Sauer, an infertility expert at the University of Southern California who published the findings on pregnancy after menopause in The New England Journal of Medicine. He said that he fears his report "will be, for a lot of people, another alternative to exploit and lose money on."
Dr. Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Minnesota, said: "Each individual woman is going to have to say, as men already have to say, 'I know what I could do, but I'm not going to do it anymore.'
"It does not make sense to say that there is some natural point beyond which it is too late or immoral to become a parent. Men have become parents in their 70's and no one has blinked an eye at that. I see no ethical reason for taking a different attitude toward women."
Dr. Sauer said it costs about $10,000 for each attempt to have a baby after menopause. The cost includes $1,500 paid to the egg donor as well as the normal costs of in vitro fertilization, the process in which eggs are fertilized in the laboratory with the husband's sperm, then inserted into the woman's uterus. The menopausal women also had to take hormones to prepare their uteruses for the reception of the embryo and to help sustain it for the first 100 days of pregnancy.
One woman in Dr. Sauer's study had tried to become pregnant for a decade. "She went all over the country," he said, and finally, to her dismay, passed through menopause. When Dr. Sauer offered her eggs donated by a younger woman, she readily agreed and became pregnant. The baby was born dead, for no apparent reason, but now at the age of 43 she is trying again.
"I think there are people who will literally go through their life span or literally go through their bank account in order to have their desire for a pregnancy fulfilled," Dr. Caplan, the bioethicist, said. "We see it all the time at our in vitro fertilization program here."
Dr. Joseph Schulman, director of the Genetics and IVF Institute in Fairfax, Va., said he suspects that with the publicity over pregnancy after menopause, many women who had given up on their baby quest when they stopped ovulating will now appear at fertility centers asking for help. He said no one knows how long women now have after the start of menopause to try to become pregnant.
"You have to worry about the stresses on a woman who is, let's say, 60 years old," he said. "She is likely to have major medical concerns going through pregnancy and labor, quite apart from the social issue of having a 60-year-old woman giving birth." So far, doctors have had little experience with such problems since only a handful of women have actually had babies after menopause.
Dr. Schulman also cautioned that many menopausal women will find that it is not easy to find eggs. "They will discover that there are only a limited number of donors," he said.
But Dr. Sauer said he has had surprising luck finding donors. Some, he said, were nurses or technicians who work with him and were touched by the plight of infertile couples.
Although infertility experts say there eventually comes a time when it may be best to call it quits, every doctor seems to know of a case when, to the surprise of everyone concerned, even a seemingly hopeless quest had a happy ending.
Jackie Wolfe, who lives in Hillsborough, N.C., had one of the most dismal histories of trying to become pregnant that her doctors had ever heard. She began trying when she was 21, had surgery 12 times for endometriosis, a condition in which pieces of the uterus lining migrate outside of the uterus, sometimes clogging the fallopian tubes.  When in vitro fertilization began to be offered at Duke University, she jumped at the chance.
Ms. Wolfe's attempts went on for 19 years. Asked how she could continue with the expensive, emotionally draining effort, she replied, "You get hooked on it after a while." Finally, her doctor at Duke suggested that her eggs might be defective and that she might find another woman to donate eggs. An acquaintance agreed and at last Ms. Wolfe became pregnant. Last year, she gave birth to twins, at age 40.

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The Russian Character

BYLINE: By Hedrick Smith; Hedrick Smith has been both Moscow and Washington bureau chief for The New York Times. This article is adapted from "The New Russians," to be published by Random House in December.

SECTION: Section 6; Page 31; Column 3; Magazine Desk

LENGTH: 4906 words

One Saturday evening, when I was working late, alone, in a Moscow office, I heard a knock at the door. I couldn't imagine who it might be.
It was after 10, and even when I had come in at around 6 the building had been so deserted that I could hear my footsteps echoing in the corridor. The dezhurnaya, an elderly Russian woman working as the 24-hour watchman, had had to unlock the front door for me. She had emerged from the dezhurnaya's room, no bigger than a closet, in which was crammed a cot, small desk, clothes hooks, a hot plate. Each day, a different dezhurnaya was on duty; I'd never seen this one before. 
 In Moscow, unexpected knocks at the door can bear ill tidings. I wondered who would be interrupting me at that hour in a locked office in a locked building.
When I opened the door, there stood the dezhurnaya, a rather tall woman in her 60's, erect and businesslike. I asked if there were some problem.
"No problem," she said and paused. "You've been working hard for a long time. You must be hungry. Would you like me to fix you a cup of tea?"
I was startled, not only because she and I were total strangers, but also because I have encountered many a dezhurnaya, and most have the mentality of a sentry -- gruff, suspicious of aliens, protective of turf and accustomed to reducing human commerce to the inspection of a permit. I mumbled something like: "It's really not necessary. I hadn't realized it had gotten so late. I'll be leaving soon."
I was deep into my work again and had almost forgotten her when she returned, not just with a cup of tea but with a whole tray of things: a large mug of tea, four small open-faced sandwiches, bologna topped by a slice of cucumber, a packet of tasty Polish biscuits. She said in clear but unpracticed English: "I put some strawberry preserves in your tea. We do it that way. Is that right? Is that how you say it, 'strawberry preserves'?"
Understanding that she must have sacrificed part of her own nighttime rations, I thanked her, invited her to sit down and said her English was quite correct. Not wanting to intrude, she stood by the doorway of our inner office as we talked.
I learned that she was a retired teacher, supplementing her tiny pension. When I told her my name and asked hers, she said, "My name is Anna Ivanovna." Only then did we shake hands, as properly acquainted. In return for her generosity, I gave her a book and some magazines to practice her English, and after that, when I saw her, we would swap stories, comments, little gifts.
That first late-night encounter illustrates an endearing quality of Russians: their extraordinarily warm hospitality, their love of bestowing gifts on each other and on people whom they choose to befriend. To American travelers who have found Russians on the street to be brusque and impersonal, who have found Soviet officials to be cold and rigid and Soviet waiters exasperating in their imperious and surly indifference, this generous side of the Russian character often comes as a surprise.
But the Russian character is made up of both coldness and warmth. And it is the complexity of this character that complicates President Mikhail S. Gorbachev's drive to set up a law-governed state and plays havoc with even the most basic -- and often faltering -- steps that he is taking to raise the Soviet economy out of its morass. So, Gorbachev may have won the Nobel Peace Prize for his foreign policy, but at home his most fundamental problem is motivating his own people.

While the kind-hearted impulses of Russians and most other Soviet nationalities make private life tolerable, other less charitable qualities in the Russian character tend to make public life intractable and pose formidable obstacles to reform: their escapism, their impracticality, their lackadaisical attitude toward work and their vicious envy of people who try to get ahead.
Westerners know, because Gorbachev has made it an issue, that an entrenched bureaucracy of party and Government officials -- 18 million strong by Gorbachev's count -- has been blocking and sabotaging many reforms, clinging to power and privilege. What is far less understood in the West is that the mind-set of ordinary people is an equally forbidding obstacle to reform.
For the flip side of Russian generosity and sentimentality is Russian irresponsibility and impracticality.
"Russian mentality is not based on common sense," said the writer Tatyana Tolstaya. "It has nothing to do with common sense. Our thinking is not orderly, logical. In Western culture, European culture maybe, emotion is considered to be on a lower level than reason. But in Russia, no. It is bad to be rational, to be smart, clever, intelligent and so on. And to be emotional, warm, lovable, maybe spiritual, in the full meaning of that word -- that is good."
"It is the Russian soul," the poet Andrei Voznesensky said one afternoon as we sat on a park bench. "In Russia, I think we have a love of literature, a so-called spiritual life. We can talk all day and all night long about all kinds of questions, immortal questions. That is the Russian style of thinking.
"I want our economy to be the same as in the West. I want our people to have a good quality of life, a good level, the same as in America, and technology as in Japan and America. But I am afraid to lose this Russian part of our soul, to lose our love of literature and . . . how to put it . . . our impractical character. Maybe too lazy, it is a minus, but it is a plus, too."
In this view, Russians are prone to escapism, whether it be the "lazy, dreamy" philosophizing of the intelligentsia, as Tolstaya put it, or the brutal, often self-destructive mass alcoholism of workers and peasants.

The system itself not only encourages, but nourishes, such behavior. The grim shortage of goods sends Russians seeking instant gratification. Why, if the future offers little hope, plan for the long term?  Why not blow a month's salary on a birthday party?
Over the decades, the Soviet system has turned out regiments of result-oriented engineers, who now fill echelons of the Soviet Government and Communist Party, running city councils and party organizations at all levels. Yet even allowing for this group, who could roughly be compared to Western businessmen, Russians are not a career-driven people; their primary touchstones are not success, getting ahead, making deals, accumulating material possessions.
It is paradoxical that this should be so, given the relentless Soviet propaganda urging work and discipline as national values. But industriousness, discipline, efficiency do not rank high with most citizens.
Years ago, I remember a Government economist describing where work stands on the Russian scale of values. "A man can be a good worker, but work is just a thing," he told me. "What really matters is his spirit, his relationship to others. If he is too scrupulous, too cold, people will dislike him. We have a word for that, it's sukhovaty -- dryish -- but sukhoi -- dry -- is even worse. And finally sukhar -- dry like a bread crust, no human touch at all -- that is the worst."
Such admiration for human warmth is appealing, but Russians tend to slip over the line, turning commendable traits into a justification for avoiding responsibility and initiative, for a slack attitude toward work. If America is dominated by workaholic "Type A's," the Soviet Union is mired in hard-to-motivate "Type B's."
Economists and political thinkers blame the Stalinist command economy and rigid central control for molding an obedient, passive labor force that is plagued by heavy absenteeism, idleness on the job, poor-quality work, low morale and serious alcoholism.
"Apathy, indifference, pilfering and a lack of respect for honest work have become rampant," said the reform economist Nikolai P. Shmel yov, "as has aggressive envy of those who earn a lot, even if they earn it honestly."
Gorbachev and his predecessor, Yuri V. Andropov, both recognized the slack Soviet work ethic as a national Achilles' heel, and they attacked it the moment they took office. Each began his tenure with a loudly trumpeted campaign to tighten work discipline, as well as to fight the indolent torpor of the Soviet working class and its companion disease, mass alcoholism. Andropov, the former K.G.B. chief, closed down liquor stores during working hours and even had his police agents chase workers out of the banyas, the communal Russian baths, notorious hideouts for workers playing hooky. In the banyas, people not only bathe, they also drink beer and eat salted fish and play cards or just while away the hours talking.
Soviet workers themselves have a saying that expresses their open cynicism: "They pretend to pay us and we pretend to work." Russians often make up for poor pay by stealing from the state. The common saying is "What belongs to everyone, belongs to no one, so why shouldn't it be mine?"
Pilfering is on a grand scale. Underground industries have operated on millions of rubles of pirated textile goods, entire warehouses of construction materials and equipment, fresh fruits and vegetables, lockers of meat.
People love to swap jokes about such shenanigans. One of my favorite anecdotes is about a worker who leaves his factory one afternoon with a wheelbarrow, covered with a piece of cloth. The guard at the gate, checking against thievery, lifts the cloth, looks underneath it and, finding the wheelbarrow empty, waves the worker on. The next day, the worker shows up again with a wheelbarrow covered with a cloth. Again the guard checks. Nothing underneath the cloth, so he lets the worker pass. A third day, it happens again -- the wheelbarrow is still empty.
Finally, the guard bursts out, in utter frustration: "Look, comrade, you must be stealing something. What is it?"
"Wheelbarrows," the worker replies.

Cynicism -- and sheer fakery -- pervade the system. Industrial managers and local party officials constantly deceive higher-ups about levels of output. When Gorbachev came into power, it was clear that practically everyone from the bottom up was cooking the books. In Uzbekistan, for example, investigators found that every year the entire republic had reported to Moscow one million tons of phantom cotton harvest; they covered the lie up with considerable bribery to keep officials quiet.
Perestroika, the restructuring of the nation, often gets lip service and a wry laugh. In one current joke, a man is demonstrating to another the meaning of perestroika. The first man has two pails. One pail is empty and the other is full of potatoes. He pours the potatoes from one pail into the other, very satisfied with what he is doing.
"But nothing has changed," objects the second man.
"Ah, yes," agrees the first, "but think what a noise it creates."

"People are looking for some external transformation to take place under perestroika, but perestroika is first of all internal," my friend Vladimir Pozner, the television commentator, remarked to me. "Perestroika has to happen in the mind. For it to work, people's outlooks have to change, and that happens as society changes. It's a push-pull, gradual process. It cannot be decreed."
Old habits die hard, even among supposedly reform-minded intellectuals. One morning I visited Vladimir Yadov, director of the Institute of Sociology in Moscow. The place was almost deserted, and as I sat down to talk with Yadov, I commented on the absence of people on a normal workday.
"This is what my driver calls 'bath day.' " He grinned, assuming I knew that people hid from work in the baths. "No one is around our institute except the director and a few of my assistants. Everyone else is away. No one is at work. Theoretically, this is library day, when they are all supposed to be at the library." He shrugged, assuming I understood that this was fiction. "Do you remember what Maxim Gorky told Lenin when Lenin asked Gorky why he did not want to come back from living abroad to work in Russia?  Gorky told Lenin, 'You know, Vladimir Ilyich, at home in Russia they all go around and shake each other's hands and talk all the time and swap anecdotes. No one really works.' Well, that's how it is here on 'bath day.' They all go around and shake each others' hands and swap anecdotes."

OCCASIONALLY, I RAN into middle-aged officials and intellectuals who had begun to think that the casual Soviet attitude toward work took root during their youth, especially among the educated middle class, which allowed its children to develop an easy dependence on their parents.
Russians are soft on their children, spoiling them, trying to protect them from hardship; they keep them living at home after university and often support them financially during those years. The contrast with American young people is so striking that Soviet writers and journalists, reporting on travels across America, have been moved to send home detailed descriptions of the summer jobs taken by American college students.
Soviet parents are both horrified and impressed to read about how middle-class American young people take jobs waiting on table, pumping gasoline, baby-sitting, digging ditches, serving fast food. They are horrified that well-heeled American parents coldly force their children to work to make money. To many Russians, that smacks of exploiting child labor. But they are impressed that American teen-agers show so much initiative and self-reliance.
On an all-day car trip through the farming regions of Yaroslavl province, a senior provincial party official named Igor Beshev fired questions at me about the jobs my children had taken and how I had persuaded them to go out and work.
His 20-year-old son was a university student, but he had never had a job. Like other Soviet young people, he had taken part in various work projects organized by the Komsomol, the youth wing of the Communist Party. Those activities, however, were not a step toward financial self-sufficiency.
"He's dependent on me," Beshev said. "He never earns any money. Of course, I expect he will have a good career when he finishes university. But I do not think he knows how to take care of himself. I'm trying to get him to find some job. But that's a big change, and it's very hard for him, for all of us."
Dependence on parents is a prelude to dependence on the state, which the Soviet system encourages. After graduation, university students are assigned jobs under raspradeleniye -- literally, the "distribution" -- which they must accept as a way of paying back the state for their education. Often, out of inertia or limited possibilities, they stick with those assigned jobs for many years, sometimes for the rest of their lives. In the countryside, villages are like old-fashioned company towns, dominated by the local state or collective farm. The individual fits into the local hierarchy, which both supports him and checks his initiative.
Dependence is also nurtured by subsidies for the essentials of living -- housing, food, health care, education. Soviet apartments are spartan and dreary by Western standards, but they are cheap. The rent for a one-room apartment can be as little as 15 rubles a month. Even a good-sized apartment of three rooms may be no more than 25 or 30 rubles a month, two or three days' pay. Health care is poor, but it's free -- except for the bribes that people have to pay to get service. Education, even at the university level, is free. The staples of the diet -- bread, milk, potatoes, cheese -- are all subsidized, this year at a cost of about 96 billion rubles, about $155 billion.
The majority of Soviet workers clamor for greater efficiency, for more consumer goods, but they react violently to any proposal that could mean floating prices and an end to subsidies on consumer essentials. That is a potent deterrent to Gorbachev as he struggles with decisions on a free market; each time, he has backed off or watered down his plans as public complaints grew. His caution is in dramatic contrast to the boldness of the new Polish leaders, who have plunged headlong into free-market reforms, allowing price inflation.
"The Poles prefer high prices to empty counters," commented Nikolai Petrakov, Gorbachev's personal economic adviser. "In this country, all the opinion polls show quite the opposite. People accept rationing coupons and standing in line -- especially during work time -- but not price increases."
"We all shout in unison -- including those who otherwise favor the market: 'Do not touch prices!' " observed a reform-minded economist, Otto Latsis. "This is the kind of 'market' we have imagined. Like a rose without thorns."

SOVIETS ALSO HAVE a widespread aversion to risk-taking. As a people, they are cautious and conservative. The specter of unemployment is terrifying, and Soviet society has little experience or infrastructure for dealing with it. By Government estimates, roughly three million people were thrown out of work from 1985 to 1989, and about 15 million more jobs will be eliminated by the end of the century. New jobs are developing in other sectors, including private enterprise hiding behind the euphemistic title of "cooperatives" -- that is, group-owned businesses. The more daring workers, especially younger people, are giving this sector a try.
But most Soviet workers are reluctant to take the plunge. They would rather settle for a meager wage and miserable living standards -- and continue to complain about these shortcomings -- than quit their jobs and take the chance of shifting to a cooperative with an uncertain future.
"The masses expect change to come from the top," my friend Andrei Smirnov, the film maker, remarked over dinner one night. "They do not understand that real democracy, or real changes in the economy, must come from below. They resist the idea that we must change ourselves."
The habit of dependence on the state exists at all levels of Soviet society. Smirnov, head of the film makers' union for two critical years of adjustment in the late 1980's, described his union as a microcosm of Soviet responses to greater economic freedom.
"Everyone was enthusiastic about overthrowing the old dictatorial system," Smirnov said, "but our directors and producers are fearful of the new system of competition. If we have a choice between the free market and a guaranteed salary, the majority will pick a guaranteed salary. Those who can't compete on the market are unhappy at the prospect of being unemployed. Others who are more talented are unhappy because they think that studio directors will pick friends and favorites to make films, not the qualified people. They want the union to protect them and to go after the studio directors. The really good ones, who can work well in any situation, are unhappy with our poor technology and the bad system of financing in the country."
Rair Simonyan, head of industrial management at Moscow's prestigious Institute of International Relations and World Economics, reported similar reactions among industrial managers and even among his own efficiency experts.
"Everybody can tell you about the necessity for change, but when it relates to them, it's different," he told me. "I had trouble with my own people. Everybody said we need radical reforms. The first thing I tried to do was to cut our staff -- 60 researchers is too many. But people were upset. They told me, 'You can't arrange these jobs purely on the basis of efficiency. You have to balance efficiency and social security. You cannot fire a man in his 50's with no job prospects or a woman with two children.' Even our industrial managers -- to whom we are trying to give more autonomy from the state to decide their own production -- they want the old system of being guaranteed their supplies. Often they will tell us, 'We need 100 percent state orders, so we will have no problem with material supplies.' "

ALEKSANDR N. YAKOVLEV, who has long been Gorbachev's closest ally in the leadership, is an even more radical proponent of reform than Gorbachev. For him, psychological dependence on state paternalism leads to mass inertia, a Soviet habit of mind he calls the "most debilitating obstacle" to reform.
"Society is accustomed to freeloading, and not only in the material sense," Yakovlev explained during a long conversation one afternoon. "A person wants to be sure he'll get paid, even if he doesn't work. But also in politics, he wants to be sure that he'll be given instructions, orders, that people will explain, will show him what to do. In every sphere, this is a society of freeloading, of freeloading socialism.
"If we don't break through that, if a person doesn't accept some inner freedom and initiative and responsibility, if there is no self-governance in society in outlying districts, then nothing will happen."
"That means people taking real responsibility themselves," I interjected.
"And people don't feel like taking responsibility," he shot back. "Let someone else answer, but not me. That's also freeloading. And it has eaten into our pores and our life."
For the great mass of Soviet people, the years of unrelieved struggle against shortages of the most elementary of human needs have bred habits and attitudes that go against the grain of reform. Illicit profiteering is as pervasive as crab grass in a summer lawn; it's an almost universal defense mechanism that has been operating sub rosa for many years. Think of the worker stealing wheelbarrows and multiply him by a million. The pilfering causes many, even though they regularly benefit from underhanded dealings, to look on anyone who makes a profit as an illicit operator.
Beyond that, the competitive combat of daily shopping has fed a mean-spirited streak in the Soviet soul. For if Russians are justly known for their warmth within a trusted circle, and for their hospitality toward guests, they often show a churlish spite toward people outside their circle. The natural breeding ground for this attitude is the floating anger engendered by wretched circumstances. Russians are long-suffering people who can bear misery, so long as they see that others are sharing it. But let someone become better off -- even if it is through his own honest labor -- and the collective jealousy can be fierce.
Traveling around the country, I came to see the great mass of Soviet people as protagonists in what I call the culture of envy -- corrosive animosity that took root under the czars in the deep-seated collectivism in Russian life and then was accentuated by Leninist ideology. Now, it has turned rancid under the misery of everyday living.
The Soviet ruling class, with cushy cars, clinics and country homes, is a natural enough target for the wrath of the little people. But what is ominous for Gorbachev's reforms is that this free-floating anger of the rank and file often settles on anyone who rises above the crowd. This hostility is a serious danger to the new entrepreneurs Gorbachev is trying to nurture. It is a deterrent to modest initiative among ordinary people in factories or on farms. It freezes the vast majority into the immobility of conforming to group attitudes.
From Valentin Bereshkov, a former Soviet diplomat, I heard of a farmer outside of Moscow whose horse and few cows were set free and whose barn was set afire by neighboring farm workers jealous of his modest prosperity. The Soviet press is full of stories about attacks on privately owned cooperative restaurants and other small service shops by people who resent seeing others do well. In debates at the Supreme Soviet, the most passionate arguments involve accusations that the free market will enable speculators to get rich by exploiting the working class.
Such antagonisms, of course, bear witness to the powerful influence of decades of Leninist indoctrination. For great masses of Soviet people, capitalism is still a dirty word; the fact that someone earns more, gets more is a violation of the egalitarian ideal of socialism. Tens of millions of citizens deeply mistrust the market, fearing they will be cheated and outsmarted. They see the profit motive as immoral. After all, in 1918 Lenin wrote: "We consider the land to be common property. But if I take a piece . . . for myself, cultivate twice as much grain as I need and sell the excess at a profit . . . am I really behaving like a Communist? No. I am behaving like an exploiter, like a proprietor."
But there is more than ideology at work here. There are class and collective instincts, born in the countryside of prerevolutionary Russia, embedded in the peasant psyche and often carried from the farm to the factory when peasants have migrated to the cities. This hostility toward those who rise above the herd reflects the collective ethic of the obshchina, the commune of villagers who in czarist times lived in a small huddle of homes, close by each other, not, as in the United States, in single homesteads dotted independently across the open plains. After serfdom was abolished in 1861, the peasantry banded together, working the land together. The peasant commune apportioned to each family strips of land to work, in different fields, some near the village, some off by the forest, distributed so that each family was assigned some good land and some not-so-good land. The obshchina decided when they would all plant, when they would all harvest and often how they would all work the fields. The villagers shared the bad weather. They planted the same crops. They grew accustomed to a common fate. And they reacted warily against anyone who tried to advance beyond his peers.

IN MY TRAVELS, VILLAGERS often told me: Remember, the tallest blade of grass is the first to be cut down by the scythe. Lesson: Do not try to stand above the crowd, the collective.
Felicity Barringer, a former New York Times correspondent in Moscow, made the shrewd observation that "in America, it's a sin to be a loser, but if there's one sin in Soviet society, it's being a winner."
Dmitri Zakharov, anchor of the Friday night television show "Vzglyad," said: "In the West, if an American sees someone on TV with a shiny new car, he will think, 'Oh, maybe I can get that someday for myself.' But if a Russian sees that, he will think, 'This bastard with his car. I would like to kill him for living better than I do.' When Russians see a cooperative where people make a lot of money, they ask angrily, 'Why do those people make so much money?' Instead of making an effort to raise their own incomes, they want to close down the cooperative."
Anatoly A. Sobchak, the Mayor of Leningrad, told me: "Our people cannot endure seeing someone else earn more than they do. Our people want equal distribution of money, whether that means wealth or poverty. They are so jealous of other people that they want others to be worse off, if need be, to keep things equal. We have a story: God comes to a lucky Russian peasant one day and offers him any wish in the world. The peasant is excited and starts dreaming his fantasies. 'Just remember,' God says, 'whatever you choose, I will do twice as much for your neighbor as I do for you.' The peasant is stumped because he cannot bear to think of his neighbor being so much better off than he is, no matter how well off he becomes. Finally, he gets an idea and he tells God, 'Strike out one of my eyes and take out both eyes of my neighbor.'
"Changing that psychology is the hardest part of our economic reform. That psychology of intolerance toward others who make more money, no matter why, no matter whether they work harder, longer or better -- that psychology is blocking economic reform."
Commenting on this problem, Vlad Pozner put a new twist on something I had noticed among Russians: the built-in caution of their daily greeting. "When two Americans meet, they ask each other, 'How are things?' and they tell each other, 'Fine,' " Pozner said. "An American will say 'fine' even if his mother died yesterday.
"By contrast, when two Soviets meet and ask each other how they are, they will say, 'Normal,' or 'So-so.' Even if things are good -- especially if things are good! You don't want to tempt the devil. You don't want people to think things are great. Because they might be envious. And if they're envious, there's no telling what they might do."
This urge for leveling the fate of all, for sharing misfortune and spreading misery is what Nikolai Shmelyov, the radical economic reformer, has called the syndrome of "equal poverty for all."
"The blind, burning envy of your neighbor's success has become the most powerful brake on the ideas and practice of perestroika," Shmelyov told the Congress of People's Deputies in March. "Until we at least damp down this envy, the success of perestroika will always be in jeopardy."
Gorbachev himself has picked up this theme. Last April, he upbraided Soviet workers for lacking "a sense of responsibility" and for resisting wage reforms that would reward good work. Specifically, he warned that the culture of envy would snuff out any spark of initiative and daring and would cripple hopes of real economic progress.
"If we do not break out of this foolish system of wage leveling," he declared, "we will ruin everything that's alive in our people. We shall suffocate."

LOAD-DATE: October 28, 1990

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Cover photo: A pro-democracy rally in Moscow. (Alexandra Avakian/Woodfin Camp); Photos: After the parts run out and the assembly line shuts down, it's break time at an auto factory. (Robert Wallis/Sipa); Long lines, surly service and short supplies can turn daily shopping into competitive combat. (Victor Laski/Sipa); All smiles at a party, owners of cooperatives in Ulyanovsk, Lenin's birthplace, have formed a support group to help others start similar ventures. (Peter Marlow/Magnum); Lenin's legacy of subsidies is hard for the Soviet people to overcome. It is far easier to take down a banner. Waiting to buy their own television sets, customers give the once-over to someone who already has. (Christopher Morris/Black Star); Subsidies make Soviet housing cheap, though it is overcrowded and dreary by Western standards. (Nikolai Ignatiev/Network)

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October 28, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Castro Was a Hothead

BYLINE: By Adam B. Ulam; Adam B. Ulam is the director of the Russian Research Center at Harvard University.

SECTION: Section 7; Page 13; Column 1; Book Review Desk

LENGTH: 1197 words


KHRUSHCHEV REMEMBERS
The Glasnost Tapes.
Edited and translated by Jerrold L. Schecter
with Vyacheslav V. Luchkov.
Foreword by Strobe Talbott.
Illustrated. 219 pp. Boston:
Little, Brown & Company. $19.95. 
 HE had dominated the Soviet Union for more than 10 years, and the world scene reverberated to his ebullient and impetuous personality. At times he seemed to be initiating a far-reaching detente with the West, but his occasional bluff and bluster would evoke the specter of a nuclear war. And then on Oct. 14, 1964, came a communique: the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union "acceded to the plea of N. S. Khrushchev" that he be released as First Secretary and Prime Minister. The man who had shaken the world with his threats and designs became overnight an obscure emeritus.
We now know he had been the victim of a palace coup: his Politburo (then called Presidium) colleagues, exasperated by his constant improvisations and his garrulity about Stalin's crimes, had plotted for a long time to get rid of him. With Nikita Khrushchev gone, the Soviet system lapsed for 20 years into an oligarchic bureaucracy, only to experience with the coming of perestroika a much more severe shock.
In his retirement, under virtual house arrest, Khrushchev busied himself with recording his recollections and reflections. Smuggled abroad, portions of "Khrushchev Remembers" appeared in the West in 1970 and 1974; "The Glasnost Tapes," the third installment, contains those fragments that the deceased leader's family had felt could not be published -- until the coming of glasnost. (The current volume has been lucidly translated by Jerrold L. Schecter, the former Moscow bureau chief of Time magazine, and Vyache slav V. Luchkov, an independent scholar.)
Quite often a note of deep depression steals into the reminiscences. Khrushchev survived his fall by seven years, and what he saw of the Brezhnev times -- now quite justifiably dubbed "stagnation" -- he did not like. "What kind of socialism is that," he writes, "when you have to keep people in chains?" And there is an underlying feeling of bitterness, passing occasionally into despair, of a man whose entire life had been politics and the exercise of power. "I want to die. It is so dull . . . for me to live in my situation."
A mood like that is not very conducive to accuracy and objectivity. Unlike other retired politicians, Khrushchev did not have at his disposal a staff of secretaries and research assistants -- only the devoted help of his son, Sergei. And, of course, he had no access to official documents and archives. So it is no wonder that occasionally the memory of the septuagenarian retiree falters. For example, in describing a state dinner in Moscow in 1945, he confuses the Labor Party politician Aneurin Bevan with Britain's then Foreign Minister, Ernest Bevin.
All the more troublesome, since it touches on Communist affairs during his ascendancy, is his reference to the Communist Parties' conference in 1957 in Moscow. On that occasion the assembled delegates of all the ruling parties, except for that of Yugoslavia, subscribed to a declaration of principles. As Khrushchev tells it, the Chinese (their delegation was headed by Mao Zedong himself), already in an anti-Moscow mood, encouraged the Yugoslavs not to sign. In fact, the picture was quite different. Marshal Tito and his party, for Mao, were at the time beyond the pale; the Chinese would not hold confidential talks with those they considered "revisionists," or renegades.
And so one cannot accept uncritically even Khrushchev's version of an event so central to his period of leadership as the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. Essentially, he repeats the official Soviet explanation of an affair that probably brought the United States and Russia closer than ever to a nuclear confrontation: the Kremlin planned to place medium- and intermediate-range nuclear rockets in Cuba to defend the island from an anticipated American invasion. The only new detail in the memoir is an allegation that after Washington discovered the installation and President John F. Kennedy imposed a blockade, Fidel Castro demanded that "we should launch a preemptive strike against the United States."
One cannot help wondering whether Khrushchev remembers correctly the whole involved business. Was the Castro regime in itself of such value to the Kremlin that for its sake Khrushchev would have been ready to risk a nuclear holocaust? Or were the missiles meant to be a bargaining chip to secure much more vital interests of the Soviet Union, such as the settlement of the German problem? Would Castro, even if he was a "hotheaded man," as Khrushchev describes him, have suggested a step that would have brought American retaliation -- the obliteration not only of his regime but of most of the population of the island?
Speaking of revelations and nuclear weapons, there is a curious passage in the book where the author refers to Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were executed in this country in 1953 for espionage. "I heard from both Stalin and Molotov," Khrushchev writes, "that the Rosenbergs provided very significant help in accelerating the production of our atomic bomb." This is rather surprising, since the consensus in the Western scientific community has been that, contrasted with the information supplied by Klaus Fuchs, the data passed on by the Rosenbergs had not been of crucial importance in speeding up the Soviet nuclear arms program.
The main motif in this new book, as in the two preceding volumes, is Khrushchev's struggle -- alas, at times inconsistent and self-defeating -- to reform Soviet domestic and foreign policies in the direction of greater liberalism at home and detente with the West abroad. As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn lamented, "He never carried anything to its conclusion -- least of all the fight for freedom."
Still, the man who first, though gingerly and incompletely, revealed to the Soviet people the story of Stalin's crimes and who genuinely wanted to reform his sorely tried society deserves not only sympathy but more attention. To a man of his generation, that of the Bolshevik Revolution, it would have been inconceivable and impermissible to go as far as Mikhail Gorbachev has -- to the point where ideology has eroded and the Communist Party has become a shambles. But in many ways Khrushchev had prepared the ground for perestroika. His successors were never able to suppress completely the dissent that, after a long winter, flowered into glasnost.
It is natural that much of the book is devoted to Stalin, and while it throws little new light on that horrifying personality, it helps explain the hypnotic power he exercised over his entourage and, in a way, over the whole society. In a sense it was the ghost of Stalin that helped defeat the living politician in 1964. It is only in the last few years that what might be called the revolution of common sense has eliminated Stalinism from the Soviet body politic. And for all his sins of omission and commission, Nikita Khrushchev has the historical merit of having been the pioneer of that revolution.

NAME: Nikita S. Krushchev

LOAD-DATE: October 28, 1990

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Drawing: Nikita S. Krushchev (Darren Ching)

TYPE: Review

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October 29, 1990, Monday, Late Edition - Final
Correction Appended

CONGRESS ADJOURNS;
Elderly Would Benefit From Curbs on Sale of Overlapping Health Insurance

BYLINE: By MILT FREUDENHEIM

SECTION: Section B; Page 9; Column 1; National Desk

LENGTH: 839 words

The tough new Federal standards for private health insurance that Congress approved Friday would prohibit the sale of overlapping health insurance to people like Grace and John Kossow, an elderly California couple who were persuaded to buy 29 policies in a 30-month period and billed for $22,011 in first-year premiums, or more than twice the couple's annual income.
"We told Jerry Brecht, the salesman, that we were not interested," Mrs. Kossow, who is 86 years old, said in a telephone interview from her home in Watsonville, near Santa Cruz. "But before he left, we had five policies. He kept coming back, and he could always explain why we could take more." Mrs. Kossow said they have let all the policies lapse. 
 The new Federal standards were added to the 1991 budget bill, which President Bush has said he would sign. They are intended to protect 23 million elderly and disabled Americans, who spent $15 billion last year for insurance known as Medigap policies. Medigap helps with costs not covered by Federal Medicare like the first day of hospital charges and prescription drugs.
The law would prohibit the sale of more than one Medigap policy to an individual. Consumer advocates and insurance industry spokesmen say a single Medigap policy is adequate for most people. The new law would also prohibit selling Medigap policies to the three million low-income elderly people covered by Medicaid.
 
Surge in Sales
 Sales of Medigap policies surged after Congress repealed a law last November that would have expanded Medicare coverage for high-cost catastrophic illnesses.
The new Federal law would extend to all states the insurance standards that are already enforced, in varying degrees, in a few states like California, Minnesota, Wisconsin and New York.
In one recent civil case, the Standard Life and Accident Insurance Company of Oklahoma City was fined $150,000 earlier this month in the California Superior Court in Santa Cruz. Don Gartner, an assistant district attorney in Santa Cruz, said the company, a unit of the American National Insurance Company of Galveston, Tex., had encouraged its agents to "conceal a form of life insurance in the Medigap policies it was selling." He said that the life insurance was not subject to profit ceilings, which most states have required for Medigap.
A study for Congress by the General Accounting Office listed deficiencies in some existing Medigap policies: "They provide narrow coverage, pay fixed dollar benefit levels without protection against inflation, are conditioned on confinement in a hospital or contracting the specified disease."
 
A 92-Year-Old Woman's Case
 The Senate Committee on aging cited the case of a 92-year-old Riverside, Calif., woman as an example of misleading sales pitches. The committee said an agent had persuaded the woman, whom it did identify, to buy eight policies, including three from Standard Life. But when she needed assistance with walking and other care at home, the committee said the insurance agent told her that the policy would not pay for the kind of help she needed. "I can't understand why he didn't know that when he sold me the policy," she told the committee.
Under the new law, the 50 state insurance Commissioners would have nine months to draft 10 model Medigap policies. "Every insurer would have to offer a core package of standardized benefits," said Representative Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat and a sponsor of the legislation.
The bill would also authorize $10 million to encourage states to establish networks of elderly volunteers to provide free counseling on Medicare issues. Bonnie Burns, a Medicare specialist with California's Health Insurance and Advocacy Program, HICAP, said counselors had helped to assemble the facts in civil damage lawsuits against Medigap insurance salespeople. She said that in one case the Bedrossian Insurance Agency Inc., based in San Jose, agreed last year to pay $200,000 in damages and court costs.
 
Review Is Scheduled
 Carole Olson Gates, a staff lawyer with the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, said state officials and private insurers would review the new regulations on Tuesday in Chicago. She said that the associaiton had been discussing Medigap standards since March.
Carl Schramm, president of the Health Insurance Association of America, an insurers group in Washington, said the bill was "a good compromise" because it would would give the initial responsibility to the states, "with Federal regulation down the road, if they do not act."
Consumer advocates welcomed the Congressional action. Gail Shearer, a Washington policy analyst with Consumers Union, an advocacy group, said the law would "help people who turn 65 and are faced with very confusing choices among hundreds of Medigap policies."
James P. Firman, president of the United Seniors Health Cooperative, an advocacy group in Washington, said insurers would have to ask prospective customers whether they already had Medigap policies.

LOAD-DATE: October 29, 1990

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

CORRECTION-DATE: October 30, 1990, Monday, Late Edition - Final

 CORRECTION:
Because of an editing error, an article yesterday about new Federal standards for health insurance for the elderly referred incorrectly in some editions to the timing of Congress's repeal of the law that expanded Medicare coverage for catastrophic illnesses. It was repealed in November 1989, not this year.

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October 30, 1990, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

Experts Disagree on Effects of Medicare Reduction

BYLINE: By MILT FREUDENHEIM

SECTION: Section A; Page 22; Column 1; National Desk

LENGTH: 581 words

Hospital executives said yesterday that the cuts in Medicare payments to hospitals and doctors in the 1991 budget bill may lower the quality of medical care for patients. But Bush Administration officials said the $34 billion in savings would be achieved mainly by eliminating wasteful practices by hospitals and cutting payments for hundreds of medical procedures that they say are overpriced.
Payments to hospitals would be reduced by $16.8 billion over five years under the terms of the bill, which President Bush has said he will sign. Physicians would lose $9.5 billion. About $6 billion would come from requiring private employers to pick up more of the costs of elderly and disabled employees and retirees eligible for Medicare. Reductions in other areas, like payments to clinical laboratories and for dialysis treatment, account for the rest. 
 The people who benefit from Medicare will have to pay $10 billion more in monthly premiums for physicians and deductible payments, for a total savings of $44 billion in spending.
 
Some Hospitals Fare Better
 But the budget softens the cuts for "teaching hospitals" that educate doctors, as well as for those that care for large numbers of poor people and those in rural areas.
The cuts will hit hardest at city and suburban hospitals that serve middle-class patients, said Michael D. Bromberg, a spokesman for investor-owned chains. "The people who suffer will be the patients," said Mr. Bromberg, the executive director of the Federation of American Health Systems. "There will be less money for new technology and staff. Hospitals may have to reduce some services."
But Gail R. Wilensky, who heads the Administration's Medicare program, said the cuts "should not be regarded as drastic."
Congressional aides said $11.3 billion, the largest part of the savings on hospitals, would come by reducing annual increases in payments so they do not keep up with inflation.
The bill would also reduce by $4 billion the Medicare payments to hospitals for capital spending, such as for new equipment and buildings.
But Congress left $1 billion extra to ease the cuts for 1,537 hospitals that have more than their share of uninsured patients unable to pay for their care. Hundreds of rural hospitals would also get a $1 billion break over the five years. And teaching hospitals would not be charged $485 million in assessments for earlier overpayments.
Doctors would lose $3 billion in annual increases tied to inflation; $2.5 billion in reduced payments on 1,400 procedures like cataract operations that are considered overpriced; $1.5 billion in reduced payments to radiologists, anesthesiologists and pathologists; $880 million in reduced payments to new doctors and for surgical assistants, and $725 million in payments made for interpreting simple electrocardiogram tests.
Some private employers were concerned that hospitals and doctors would try to make up their losses by raising fees to private insurers.
Donald Young, executive director of a Congressional advisory committee on hospital payments, said patient care may suffer from the budget cuts. But he said hospitals had been raising their Medicare charges by 4 percent to 5 percent beyond inflation, mainly by charging for "more tests, more surgery, more procedures per patient." He said savings may come by doing fewer tests on a patient who may be routinely checked with blood tests, X-rays, magnetic resonance imaging and computerized scans.

LOAD-DATE: October 30, 1990

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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The New York Times

October 30, 1990, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

Experts Vary on Impact Of Plan to Trim Deficit

BYLINE: Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section A; Page 23; Column 1; National Desk

LENGTH: 670 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Oct. 29

Will the five-year deficit-reducing package of nearly $500 billion of spending cuts and tax increases voted by Congress on Sauturday help or hurt the economy?
 
Robert M. Solow, Nobel laureate, Massachusetts Institute of Technology:
The short-run impact of this package is almost certainly contractionary. It almost certainly adds to the 1989 impulse toward recession in the economy. It is very unlikely that the Fed will act fully and quickly enough to offset the contraction. I would not be able in five years to point to anything good from the agreement, the one exception being unless the package should induce the Fed and the world to allow substantially lower real interest rates. The longer-run impact over five to 10 years is probably favorable because then we could get more long-run growth, more investment in social infrastructure, more plant and equipment spending, more spending on research and development and a more skilled labor force.
 
Isabel V. Sawhill, senior fellow at the Urban Institute:
It will be good for the economy because it will untie Alan Greenspan's hands at the Fed to lower interest rates, and will have positive effects on the financial markets, and long-term rates hopefully will come down. The package buries "voodoo economics." Instead of assuming that we have to have low tax rates as a sure-fire tonic for the economy, it recognizes that big deficits are a greater threat than higher taxes. But it doesn't do much to control the growth in spending on the elderly, one of largest and fastest growting components of the budget. Social Security benefits weren't touched. Medicare benefits were only nicked. Medicare and Social Security represent 46 percent of domestic spending and slated to grow to 54 percent by the year 2000. There's also no effort to address the social deficit.
 
Sar Levitan, director of the Center for Social Policy at George Washington University:
For the short run, I don't think it will have much of an impact, particularly if the Fed follows it up with a mild reduction in interest rates. For the five-year period, it is more fiction than reality, because we can't project for five years from now, particularly since a recession may be looming on the horizon. To a large extent it is just a hope that we will reduce the budget deficit by $490 billion. Also, the projected deficits for the next five years will far exceed the $500 billion reduction that Congress has just voted. In case of recession or economic downturn, every 1 percent increase in unemployment will raise the deficit by another $40 billion. The average increase in each postwar recession was a 2 1/2 percent rise in unemployment. That would mean that if we have an average recession, the Fed budget deficit might actually increase by $100 billion. We don't know yet what will happen to the financial system in a recession.
 
John H. Makin, director of fiscal policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute:
The economy is weak and getting weaker. It is a modest package of deficit reduction. Everybody is celebrating because we're taking what we can get in these things. The previous largest was $25 billion after the 1987 stock market crash. This is of comparable scale. We are already so close to a recession that it's not worth arguing about. This is a very gentle tap further into a recession.
 
Alice M. Rivlin, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution:
The good things are: one, that it happened; two, that it's a five-year agreement, and three, that it is real. It is not smoke and mirrors. I also think it's about the right size for now. It's as big as they should have done, given the state of economy, though not enough for the long run. I don't think there will be any impetus for doing more next year, in what looks to be a fairly weak economy. Maybe in two or three years we will have courage to come back and say we have to do more. Forty billion dollars in the first year is in the small change of a $5 trillion economy.

LOAD-DATE: October 30, 1990

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


GRAPHIC: 
Photos: Robert M. Solow, Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Nobel laureate. - Said the Fed was unlikely to act "fully and quickly enought" to offset the forces of contraction.; Alice M. Rivlin, A senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a policy organization - "Maybe in two or three years we will have the courage to come back and say we have to do more." (Photographs by The New York Times)

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October 30, 1990, Monday, Late Edition - Final

Corrections

SECTION: Section A; Page 3; Column 1; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 52 words

Because of an editing error, an article yesterday about new Federal standards for health insurance for the elderly referred incorrectly in some editions to the timing of Congress's repeal of the law that expanded Medicare coverage for catastrophic illnesses. It was repealed in November 1989, not this year.

LOAD-DATE: October 30, 1990

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

TYPE: Correction

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October 30, 1990, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

China Puzzle: Why a Panel Doesn't Meet

BYLINE: By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section A; Page 7; Column 1; Foreign Desk

LENGTH: 899 words

DATELINE: BEIJING, Oct. 29

In a famous Sherlock Holmes case, the key clue was a dog that did not bark. These days, sleuths who follow China are focusing on a similar indication that something is amiss: the clue this time is the Central Committee that does not meet.
The evidence is mostly circumstantial, but it points to significant disputes among China's top leaders. The jostling seems to be about power, succession and the political and economic directions the nation will take in the 1990's. 
 The hardest of the hard-liners in the Government seem to have gained influence in the last few months, but are unable to win a consensus for the changes they want in personnel and policies, Chinese officials and foreign diplomats say.
Thus the stalemate continues at the pinnacle of the leadership, and the Communist Party Central Committee is unable to meet and ratify the changes or the five-year plan that is to begin in January.
The Central Committee meeting was expected to convene in September or October, but a Politburo member recently told a Japanese visitor that it would not meet even in November. Prime Minister Li Peng said today that the committee would meet before the end of the year, so December seems to be the current target.
 
'Fighting Among Themselves'
 "During the Asian Games, the leaders concentrated on the games and there was some cooperation and unity," said a Chinese with close ties to senior officials. The Asian Games, a miniature Olympics, ended on Oct. 7.
"But now they're fighting among themselves to get their way on a whole range of issues, and until they reach some agreement, the Central Committee can't meet."
A Western diplomat was blunter, saying, "We think it's a battle."
The traditionalists have been able to score some gains because the pivot of the political system, Deng Xiaoping, appears to have withdrawn from daily involvement in political affairs. Mr. Deng appears to be staying at home and enjoying an apolitical life as patriarch of a family of 16 living together in one courtyard.
Mr. Deng, who is 86 years old, has not been seen in public since July -- a gap that normally results in rumors that he is seriously ill. But these days, Mr. Deng is said to be in satisfactory condition, and his youngest son, Deng Zhifang, is planning a trip to the United States, which also suggests that his father is getting along.
The octogenarian hard-liners -- whose patriarch is Chen Yun, an 85-year-old who has not been seen in public in more than a year -- are said to be pushing for a major promotion for Deng Liqun, 75, a retired head of the Communist Party Propaganda Department.
 
Guidance to Journalists
 Some party elders are also ignoring their lack of formal positions and are quietly issuing hard-line instructions on whatever catches their attention. Deng Liqun, for example, is believed to be meeting with newspaper editors and advising them on what to write.
Former President Li Xiannian, 81, was recently outraged to read in a news summary that the city of Shenyang in northeastern China was planning to sell stakes in several dozen companies to foreigners. A Chinese with high-level associations said Mr. Li scrawled "reckless" on the report and issued instructions that the sale be halted.
The octogenarians have also curbed the influence of Li Ruihuan, who is a protege of Deng Xiaoping. Mr. Li appeared in July to win a turf battle with the traditionalists over control of the Culture Ministry.
Mr. Li's victory immediately rippled throughout the Government: At the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, hard-liners became much more friendly to the scholars, whom they were subjecting to grueling Communist Party study sessions.
But in August, the group of octogenarians began to complain that Mr. Li was making statements that went beyond the party line. Deng Xiaoping did not come to his defense, and Mr. Li's influence has diminished.
 
Centralized Planning Continues
 Another sign of hard-liner dominance is the five-year plan, drafts of which have circulated among senior officials. Economists and others who have seen it say that it includes general calls for further reform, but that as it stands, it is primarily a document of central planning.
But if the reformists are lying low these days, they have not given up the battle. At the end of last month, the leaders of China's provinces were summoned to Beijing to study and approve an outline of the five-year plan. Instead, the governors rebelled, a major embarrassment to Prime Minister Li, and refused to approve the plan.
According to accounts by knowledgeable Chinese, the governors complained that the draft transferred too much power and wealth from the provinces to the central Government. Some governors, including Ye Xuanping of Guangdong province, dared to interrupt Prime Minister Li, and the meeting reportedly ended in tumult. Now the draft is being re-examined and is expected to be modified after negotiations with the governors.
The one item on the Central Committee's agenda that has already been agreed upon, Chinese officials and diplomats say, is the fate of the ousted Communist Party leader, Zhao Ziyang. Mr. Zhao was formally dismissed from all his posts in June 1989 and has been under investigation since. But the leadership is now believed to have agreed to end the investigation and allowed him to remain in the party.

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October 31, 1990, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

POOR FAMILIES GAIN UNDER TAX ACCORD

BYLINE: By JASON DePARLE, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section A; Page 20; Column 1; National Desk

LENGTH: 1001 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Oct. 30

The budget agreement produced after months of bitter dispute did not exactly rob from the rich, but it did give to the poor, through both tax cuts and program expansions. In fact, it made the poor the only income class in America predicted to have more money and services with the deficit-reduction package than they would have had without it.
But the plan does not treat all poor people alike. The biggest winners are working poor families with children, who will benefit from substantial increases in the cash rebates provided by various tax credits. 
 Beyond tax policy, the plan provides money for new child care programs and a major expansion of Medicaid, both of which will benefit the working poor the most. In addition, the plan provides some new health benefits to the elderly poor. And other pieces of recent legislation, like the expansion of the Head Start program, provide good news for all poor families with children.
The plan also increases taxes on alcohol, tobacco and gasoline, but the rebates to working poor families with children will usually more than compensate them for those increases. Other types of poor people, including welfare recipients who do not work, individuals without children, and the elderly, are likely to lose ground under the budget agreement, through higher excise taxes.
 
Political Perspective
 How significant is the package in terms of antipoverty policy? The answer varies widely with one's political perspective.
"Conservatives on the Hill think that this is the initiation of major new spending programs for the poor, whereas liberals see them as only modest gains in programs that are still underfunded," said Doug Besharov, an analyst with the American Enterprise Institute. "Personally, I think when the dust settles people will agree: This was a very good year for poor people."
Most analysts agree that the budget plan will do little to shorten the gap between rich and poor that grew increasingly large throughout the 1980's. That gap was largely the result of changes in pretax income in which the rich saw their income soar while the poor saw their's stagnate or drop.
But the new budget plan does partly reverse the tax policies that, by cutting taxes on the rich while increasing them on the poor, had further increased the gap. "At least the government is no longer a co-conspirator in producing greater inequality," said Isabel Sawhill, an economist at the Urban Institute.
 
Significant Contributions
 One of the most significant questions about the budget agreement is the extent to which it advances what has become a bipartisan goal: to make work a more rewarding option for poor people.
The early consensus is that the plan makes significant contributions in this area, in two ways. Expanded tax credits place more cash in the hands of the working poor, providing, in effect, an increased wage subsidy. And expanded child care and Medicaid programs will help reduce the additional expenses that poor people often incur when leaving welfare for the world of work.
The budget agreement will gradually expand Medicaid so that it will cover all children who fall below the poverty line. Current law provides the health insurance mostly to families on welfare, creating a incentive for many not to work.
 
Big Gain for Working Poor
 While for many working poor families, the changes will still not be enough to lift them above the poverty line, most analysts agree they are a major move in that direction. "The working poor were made better off by this agreement than by any other piece of legislation passed in the 1980's," said an economist with the House Ways and Means Committee.
The earned income tax credit, which now provides a 14-cent a dollar rebate on the first $6,810, will be expanded next year to 16.7 cents for families with one child and 17.3 cents for families with two or more children.
The rebate stays steady for families who earn from $6,810 to $10,730 and begins to decline after that, phasing out for families that earn more than $20,262. Those brackets are adjusted each year for inflation.
In other words, the maximum rebate, which is now $953, will rise to $1,137 for families with one child and $1,178 for families with two or more. By 1994, the rate will rise to 23 cents and 25 cents respectively, or an increase to $1,566 and $1,702.
In addition, the budget agreement provides two other tax credits, a 6-cent-a-dollar credit for the first $6,810 earned for families that buy health insurance and a 5-cent credit on the same amount for those with infants less than a year old. Taken together, these tax credits could provide an additional $749 a year.
All together, by 1994, the maximum tax credit provided to a family of working poor would rise to $2,451 from $953, an increase of 250 percent. But only a small proportion would receive the maximum. Most families receive their rebates when they file their tax returns.
 
Some Gains to Be Lost
 But some of this gain will be lost as the poor, like everyone else, pay more in taxes on alcohol, gasoline and tobacco.
"For some working families, the combined changes are significant," said Robert Greenstein, executive director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a research and advocacy group. He said the changes reflect the "growing understanding that there is a large working poor population in America and we need to do more for them."
Under the budget plan, however, other poor families will not fare as well. The budget office estimates that the poorest one-fifth of American families, on the average, pay $60 a year more in taxes on alcohol, tobacco, and gasoline. For working families with children, that increase will be more than offset by an average gain of $171 in tax credits, but for them only.
Others will lose slightly. Families in the poorest one-fifth headed by an elderly person, for instance, are expected to wind up with $36 a year less in net income, according to the budget office.

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November 1, 1990, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

Japan Report On Affluence

BYLINE: REUTERS

SECTION: Section D; Page 8; Column 3; Financial Desk

LENGTH: 211 words

DATELINE: TOKYO, Oct. 31

Technology has improved Japan's standard of living vastly since World War II, but most Japanese do not feel affluent, a Government agency said on Tuesday.
"Electrical appliances, clothing, brand-name products and food are abundant at home, but Japanese lack a feeling of affluence once they step outside the home," the Economic Planning Agency said in its annual report on Japan's standard of living. 
 Technological innovation since the end of World War II has brought economic success, higher productivity and wages, and increased consumer purchasing power, but Japan has pursued economic success without regard for the environment, housing conditions or the well-being of the average consumer, the report said.
"The real meaning of affluence is being questioned," the report said. "Elderly people are very much dissatisfied with the quality of welfare."
Most Japanese want improved roads, better welfare for the aged and more sites for sports and recreation, it said. It also criticized high land prices as an example of how economic growth had failed to benefit the average Japanese.
The paper said the Government should help companies develop technology to meet consumer needs and find ways to assess the impact of technology on the environment.

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November 2, 1990, Friday, Late Edition - Final

Alzheimer's Disease Rate Up

BYLINE: AP

SECTION: Section A; Page 17; Column 1; National Desk

LENGTH: 308 words

DATELINE: ATLANTA, Nov. 1

The rate of Americans dying from Alzheimer's disease increased tenfold in the 1980's, but heightened awareness may have led doctors to diagnose it more often than in the past, Federal health officials said today.
The Centers for Disease Control said in its weekly report that 11,311 people died from Alzheimer's disease in 1987. In 1979, the first year of a study by the health agency, 857 deaths were attributed to the disease. 
 For the entire 1979-87 period, Alzheimer's disease was listed as the underlying cause of death for 46,202 people in the United States.
Dr. Richard Sun, medical epidemiologist in the agency's Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, said there was no definitive study available on whether the incidence of Alzheimer's disease increased in that period.
 
Increased Awareness Cited
 Because the nation's population is getting older, he said, it is likely that the rate of Alzheimer's disease is rising. But he added that increased awareness probably played a role in the increased death rate.
"It's a little difficult to believe that the number of people with Alzheimer's disease could increase 950 percent in eight years," said Dr. Sun, whose office helped compile the report. "Our general feeling is heightened awareness was a little more important" in explaining the sharp rise in the death rate than such an increase in actual incidence.
He said that in some cases, doctors may have changed a diagnosis from senility to Alzheimer's.
Alzheimer's disease, which usually afflicts elderly people and is characterized by progressive mental deterioration, was first recognized in the early 1900's. But awareness of the disease was fairly limited until the 1970's, when doctors "realized that Alzheimer disease was a specific disease, and not a normal process of aging," Dr. Sun said.

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November 2, 1990, Friday, Late Edition - Final

Our Towns;
Forgotten Homes For Mentally Ill: A Sister's Tale

BYLINE: By MICHAEL WINERIP

SECTION: Section B; Page 1; Column 1; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 781 words

DATELINE: BRIDGEPORT, CONN.

In the spring of 1988, Katina Zachmanoglou, a New York City actress, was helping her schizophrenic sister, Faye, look for a place to live. Faye was well enough to be out of a state hospital and in a community residence. The State Mental Health Department placed the sister in a family-care home, a boarding house licensed for up to six mentally ill people.
"We were told these homes provide a healthy family atmosphere," said Ms. Zachmanoglou. She soon got a far different view of the home, run by Vela Gaines. "Mrs. Gaines threw away Faye's entire library," said Ms. Zachmanoglou. Residents reported that Mrs. Gaines hit them and had them wash their toothbrushes in the toilet. 
 Later it would come out that Mrs. Gaines's license had been revoked in 1987, a year before the state placed Faye there.
Next, the state placed Faye in a home run by Mildred Jack. By then, her sister was making her own inspections. "On May 7 we personally witnessed the following," she wrote. "Senior citizens locked out of the house; a broken window; no food in the residents' refrigerator; knobs removed from the gas stove rendering it inoperable, no toilet paper or soap."
Later it would come out that complaints about Mrs. Jack's home dated to 1981.
Next, the state placed Faye in Barbara Hudson's home. The actress says she found the same "appalling slumlike conditions." Faye's room, she said, "had garbage in the drawers." Later it would come out that Mrs. Hudson had repeatedly refused to allow inspectors in; as early as 1981, a case worker had recommended revoking her license.
Three homes were all Faye could take. She was rehospitalized. And that began her sister's quest to change what she had seen. With her mother, Maria, she collected documents, badgered officials, spending thousands of dollars and hours. "I was somewhat skeptical at first," said State Senator A. Cynthia Matthews, co-chair woman of the Legis lature's Public Health Committee.  "But they had the te nacity and stubbor ness to bring it to our attention."
Since the Zach manoglous began, the state has revoked one home's license and is seeking to close three others, including Mrs. Hudson's and Mrs. Jack's. Mrs. Hudson would not comment. Mrs. Jack's lawyer, Robert Lesser, called the charges "petty," saying she runs a good home and never abused anyone. Mrs. Gaines applied to be relicensed and was rejected. "They couldn't prove I was abusing patients," she said. "The state's reason was residents were not comfortable in my home."
Family-care homes were first opened in the 1970's as state mental hospitals were being emptied. Owners are not required to be professionally trained, and the state pays $682 a month for each resident. In the last decade these homes have generally been supplanted by group homes that have trained staff and cost about three times as much to run.
Of Connecticut's 1,700 community residence beds, 82 are family-care beds. "They were pretty much forgotten until the Zachmanoglous," said Senator Matthews, who is studying whether to eliminate the homes.
Often the poorest and elderly were referred to the homes. They were more likely to accept conditions a middle-class person like Ms. Zachmanoglou would not.
For anyone paying attention, there was plenty of warning. A governor's task force in 1983 pointed out that no agency took responsiblity for the homes. The Mental Health Department assigned patients there; the Department of Health inspected and licensed them. Even after Mrs. Gaines's license was removed by Health, Mental Health sent people.
A year-old report by the Auditor of Public Accounts noted that inspectors were often denied access. There was no penalty for this, the report said, just a violation letter. Inspections didn't seem to have much effect. "We noted the same violatons being cited year after year," the audit said.
Most troublesome, Ms. Zachmanoglou said, is that when she complained to people like Roger Adams, a director of the Greater Bridgeport Community Mental Health Center, she was treated like she was seeing things. "He never said, 'You're right.' His reaction made me feel no one had complained." (Later, through Freedom of Information requests, she would find a letter written by Mr. Adams in 1986 with the same complaints she'd made. Mr. Adams would not comment.)
Ms. Zachmanoglou said the turning point came in December, when 10 years' worth of inspection reports arrived by mail. "It was unbelievable what had been going on." Last week, she took them to Mrs. Jack's hearing. "Have a packet of interesting documents," she said, as she went from reporter to reporter.
Tuesday: A family-care home, close up.

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The New York Times

November 3, 1990, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

Encephalitis Death Toll Rises to 5 in Florida

BYLINE: AP

SECTION: Section 1; Page 26; Column 5; National Desk

LENGTH: 236 words

DATELINE: TALLAHASSEE, Fla., Nov. 2

Two more elderly people have died of St. Louis encephalitis, bringing to five the number of those killed by the disease in the three months since the beginning of an outbreak that has spread to 23 counties throughout Florida.
The latest fatalities were reported Thursday by the state's Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services. The victims were identified as an 89-year-old woman in Lee County, who died Thursday, and a 78-year-old man in Sarasota, who died Wednesday.
In addition to the five confirmed encephalitis fatalities, a death in Martin County has been linked to the disease. Officials are awaiting final test results in that case.
St. Louis encephalitis, so called because it was as a result of a 1933 outbreak in St. Louis that scientists learned it was spread by the bite of mosquitoes, is a flu-like illness that can progress to fatal brain inflammation.
Outbreaks have occurred at various times throughout North America. In Florida, there are usually one to three cases a year, as against the 79 cases reported around the state in the current outbreak.
Since the virus for St. Louis encephalitis is carried by a mosquito species that bites at dusk, health officials are recommending that people stay inside from an hour before sunset to two or three hours afterward. If they have to go outside, they should wear long pants and sleeves and use insect repellant, the officials say.

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November 4, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Getting Away From a Getaway

BYLINE: By NICHOLAS FOX WEBER; NICHOLAS FOX WEBER is the author of "Eminent Moderns," to be published by Knopf next fall.

SECTION: Section 5; Page 41; Column 1; Travel Desk

LENGTH: 1263 words

IT was only hours after we reached nature camp in Maine that my college roommate, Sandy, and I realized we were in trouble. On paper, the camp had read like the ideal vacation, the perfect antidote to a grueling year of memorizing dates in darkened lecture rooms. But only hours after stepping on the barren island, we realized our mistake.
Our duffels were packed with two weeks worth of gear and we had paid the bill in advance, but we wondered how we would get through even the first night. We were seized by the sensation that overcomes most travelers at least once in a lifetime: We had to get out of there. 
 I maintain that the problem was the bird walk. We spent most of it not looking at birds but sitting on a rock, listening to two rather elderly women, neighbors from Garden City, L.I., arguing during a rest stop. Mrs. X claimed that by hanging bird feeders in her backyard Mrs. Y had fed the birds so well that they had stopped eating insects altogether; now the mosquitoes were destroying the X family's cookouts. The issue of bird feeders intrigued our instructor as well. So went the afternoon.
For Sandy, however, the crisis was dinner. He had imagined native greens out of the woods, fresh mussels pulled off the rocks, exotic berries. Nothing had prepared him for the unidentifiable fish fillets swimming in margarine and paprika, throwing off the same smell that once made him sick in a junior high school cafeteria in Great Neck. And, like me, he had pictured us surrounded mainly by our contemporaries, most of all by women resembling nymphs and mermaids. We had not gone into the wilds to spend time with people quite so much like our old scoutmasters.
We had to escape. But how? There was no telephone on the island. We knew there was a small office at the dock from which we had sailed to the island -- we had all been given the phone number to leave with our families in case of emergency -- but we had no excuse to go there. Once a day the supply boat would take our mail, but that was it.
We wrote a hasty letter to my sister. Would she telegraph the office with a message that gave us clear and just reason to leave, but -- on the outside chance that things had improved -- did not absolutely require us to do so?
For two days, we waited and evaluated. But the outlook was grim. During the mineral walk we again sat on the rocks for the entire outing, while our lecturer expounded on "minerals in the home"; there was a lot of talk about gold-plated faucets and silver service. The last straw may have been an electronic wildflower identification game that served as after-dinner entertainment: connecting the wires between the pictures and their correct names to make a little red light go on. Ten more days of this would make the college grind look good by comparison.
The next morning, a dour-faced director came up to me and told me about the cable.  Uncle Bartleby was on his deathbed; Aunt Wilhelmina was asking for us.  The supply boat rushed us back to the mainland and freedom.
 I am not the first person to use the telegram technique for easing such a departure. My wife, Katharine's, grandmother tells a story about the time she employed the same device as a house guest on Long Island in the 1920's. Scheduled for a four-day stay, she and Katharine's grandfather had discovered on the day of their arrival that everyone else intended to play bridge -- morning, noon and night. The couple, however, did not even know what "trump" meant. Katharine's grandfather, claiming he was taking his constitutional, walked to town, phoned his office, and requested a telegram about a business crisis. But then her grandmother blew it.  When the doorbell rang just as everyone was assembling for cocktails, she blurted, "That must be our telegram!" They didn't even wait for dinner before departing.
Often the best way to beat a hasty retreat is simply to be direct. How well Katharine and I remember our visit some 15 years ago to the Garden Hotel in the Italian resort of Sorrento. In the guidebook it had sounded like the romantic hideaway of our dreams, especially since our dreams only allowed a budget of $25 a day. When we checked in during the afternoon, the room was dark and damp, but surely it would be fine at night.
 Then we went for a swim and quickly discovered that just off the hotel's small gravel beach raw sewage was being dumped into the Bay of Naples. We headed back to the room for a long shower. The floor of the shower, however, was contiguous with the floor of the bathroom and the bedroom; moreover, there was no drain. Both rooms flooded.
I asked at the desk that the room be mopped while we had dinner in the hotel restaurant. It was there that I knew that it was time to throw in the towel, and not just on the bedroom floor. As Katharine attempted to eat the only gluey spaghetti we have ever had in Italy, she gave me a look I have come to know well: "You can pretend everything is all right if you want, but I am miserable, and there's no more getting around it."
When we returned to the room, it hadn't been mopped. We packed and went to the desk, where we told the clerk we would pay for dinner, but not a lira more.  By the time we had finished our litany of grievances, he didn't even argue. By midnight we were swimming in the pool at a resort near Positano; not only did we have to leave the hotel, but we also had to get out of town entirely.
When both members of a traveling couple feel the urge to leave, the rapport can help make up for the misery of a wasted trip.  Such was the case with friends who hired an overnight babysitter for the very first time so that they could spend their anniversary in a Vermont inn known for its French chef and the scenic views from its rooms. It was funny when the duckling was stringy on the outside and still frozen at the bone, but the humor had worn off when the lemon mousse tasted like detergent. There was no way that they were going to spend the night in their room overlooking the village gas station. At 11 P.M. they started back to Connecticut, and although they didn't get home until 5 A.M. and gave the babysitter such a fright that she never worked for them again, they never doubted the wisdom of their decision.
Then again, sometimes you decide to stick it out when you should have beat it. Katharine and I once rented a house in Tortola, in the British Virgin Islands, that looked like something out of a glossy magazine. But elegant though the flowering hedges and stucco walls may have appeared in photographs, for a family with children aged eight months and two years, the reality was something else. With one child crawling and the other toddling, we were ill-advised to stay in a place with an unguarded 50-foot drop to the sea. Delicate antique wooden side chairs that looked elegant on a quarry tile floor, tended to skid and overturn under a toddler's weight.  When Katharine told the housekeeper about the rat that had run up her arm from a bowl of mangoes, the woman only laughed and said she had been telling the house's owners about the rats for years. Then the teen-age babysitter we had brought along fell in love with the lifeguard at the local beach club; her attention span shrank to nonexistent.
On our third evening there, after the children were safely asleep six feet away from us, Katharine gave me her look. I asked what she wanted out of the holiday. "For all of us to survive," she answered. That we did, but just barely. Sometimes bailing out is the best policy.

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November 4, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

New Designs Bring New Independence for Disabled People

BYLINE: By CAROLYN BATTISTA

SECTION: Section 12; Page 29; Column 1; Connecticut Weekly Desk

LENGTH: 855 words

SLEEK racing vehicles, contemporary flatware and colorful plastic forms are among the 45 objects in the current exhibit at Artspace in New Haven, "Designs For Independent Living." The display shows that items intended to aid disabled and elderly people can be highly attractive.
"This exhibit not only addresses the needs of the disabled but gives some beautiful answers and solutions to those needs," said the executive director of Artspace, Barbara Webster. 
 These artful solutions include racing wheelchairs with aircraft-steel tubing; a rocking knife designed for one-handed cutting; red, blue and yellow forms made to help disabled children gain balance, and a newspaper holder with graceful, spreading arms of laminated beechwood.
"What's great is the awareness that these things are needed, and they can also be beautiful," said Susan Daniel, chairwoman of Artspace's visual-arts committee, which helped to bring the exhibit from the Museum of Modern Art.
Cara McCarty, an associate curator at the Manhattan museum, said, "Good design is really important, because it helps to break down artificial distinctions that we have established." She prepared a catalogue for the exhibit that cites the contemporary emphasis on designing environments that help integrate disabled people into the community and enable them to live as independently as possible.
 
'Focus on the Person'
 The catalogue notes that clumsy, makeshift designs can make disabled people feel inadequate and can cause them to be seen as different and unapproachable. Well-designed products work efficiently and unobtrusively, said Ms. McCarty, adding, "They let others focus on the person, not the equipment."
The museum catalogue says that by the year 2030, one out of five Americans will be at least 65 years old, facing the diminished physical capacities that accompany aging.
The objects in the exhibition are the work of industrial designers in America and abroad. To develop these products, the designers collaborated with disabled people and medical professionals. "A lot of innovative people and careful observers" have helped such work, said Dr. Gary Friedlaender, who is chairman of the department of orthopedics and rehabilitation at the Yale School of Medicine.
Ms. Daniel said the designers' efforts also included the use of contemporary styling, interesting materials, pleasing colors and good craftsmanship.
Artspace, incorporated as a nonprofit organization in 1984, moved in July into new quarters on Audubon Street, including a brightly lighted gallery. Ms. Webster said she hopes the current exhibit will draw new visitors.
"We're really trying to enlarge our audience and to serve as many aspects of this community as there are," she said. She called the current exhibit a way to welcome disabled visitors, "to encourage them to come, to show them that we're accessible in every way, not just physically."
 
'It's Delightful'
 Noting that many people who attended the exhibit's opening celebration were in wheelchairs, Ms. Webster said she hopes they will return "to see fine art."
She said that visitors without disabilities have responded positively to the exhibit, in which many objects are displayed on wall-mounted platforms of bright yellow or floor platforms of rich orange.
"It's colorful, it's delightful," she said. "I could just tell that's how people perceived it." Ms. Webster and Ms. Daniel made their way around the gallery recently to point out the items, including those that could serve anybody.
"I could use that carton opener," said Ms. Daniel, pointing to a device of beechwood and steel. Many kitchen items displayed, including a Swedish cutting board with a clamp, resemble the merchandise of stylish kitchenware shops.
Ms. Daniel also noted a plate with a raised edge to give a person with use of only one hand a surface to push against. "My dad used a plate like that after he had a stroke," she said. "It's such a simple concept, yet it makes all the difference."
Also on view are easy-to-hold objects (like a thick-stemmed wine goblet, a pen with gentle ridges and handily shaped flatware), along with trim-looking tongs, fasteners, canes and crutches.
The wheelchairs on display feature light-weight tubing, clean lines and strong colors, like black, purple and red. Ms. Daniel pointed out the use of nylon and cotton -- "not horrible brown vinyl" -- for the chairs' seats and pockets.
Two of the chairs are racing models from Hall's Wheels of Cambridge, Mass. "We try to design very concise, very esthetically pleasing wheelchairs for sports," said Robert Hall, who runs the company.
His models for wheelchair athletes feature front ends and steering systems that allow high-level competition, he said. Sports wheelchairs, he said, have changed people's perception of ordinary wheelchairs, which are now seen less as chairs and more as "vehicles of motion."
"Designs for Independent Living" will be at Artspace, 70 Audubon Street, New Haven, through Nov. 21. Gallery hours are 11 A.M. to 5 P.M., Tuesday through Saturday. Admission is free.

LOAD-DATE: November 4, 1990

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: A newspaper holder, left, a prosthesis, above, a Champion 3000 wheelchair, top right, and a pen: "Designs for Independent Living" exhibition, New Haven.
 (Photographs from the Museum of Modern Art)

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The New York Times

November 6, 1990, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

Business and Health;
Big Costs Imposed On Drug Makers

BYLINE: By Milt Freudenheim

SECTION: Section D; Page 2; Column 1; Financial Desk

LENGTH: 784 words

CHANGES that Congress has voted in the Federal-state Medicaid programs for
 the indigent are expected to cost pharmaceutical manufacturers at least $3.4 billion over five years in rebates on prescription drug prices.
The 1991 budget calls for $1.9 billion in Federal savings on Medicaid drugs and would lead to reductions of $1.5 billion in spending by the states for drugs. 
 Until recently Medicaid programs had to reimburse pharmacies on full list price for most prescription drugs under patent protection -- an estimated $4.7 billion this year. Last spring, however, Merck & Company, the largest pharmaceutical company, began offering price-cutting deals, and some companies followed. The companies hoped to head off restrictions proposed by Senator David Pryor, Democrat of Arkansas, who heads the Committee on Aging, and which were later taken up by White House budget cutters.
But most drug companies did not accept the idea, and the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association, a trade group, protested again last week that legislating rebates is "inconsistent with free market principles." Nevertheless, in all-night negotiations of the Senate Finance Committee, the Aging Committee, the House Energy and Commerce Committee and the Office of Management and Budget, the drug makers were hit even harder than the Bush Administration had intended. Congress stiffened the bill, partly to get money for new Medicaid programs for poor children and for elderly and disabled people.
The rebates would start slowly, costing only about $91 million in the first year, but surging to more than $1 billion a year in 1994 and 1995, theCongressional Budget Office estimates.
For makers of brand-name drugs who rebuffed all Medicaid demands for concessions, the law requires rebates of at least 12.5 percent of the average manufacturer's price in the first two years. Those companies that had granted deep discounts to veterans' hospitals and other high-volume customers would have to do the same for Medicaid, with a 25 percent limit at first. In October 1992, the minimum would become 15 percent, and the drug makers would have to give Medicaid the best price that they give to any customer, which in some cases would mean cuts of 40 percent or more.
Charles A. Sanders, chief executive of the American unit of Glaxo Holdings P.L.C., one of the largest drug makers, said some companies might be unfairly penalized. "Companies that have traditionally given discounts to charitable hospitals and the Veterans Administration will now have to pay greater discounts than companies that historically didn't give discounts," he said. He would not discuss Glaxo discounts.
The makers of lower-priced generic drugs, which do not have patent protection and have longmade discount deals with Medicaid, would have to give rebates of at least 10 percent for three years and 11 percent thereafter.
The drug makers would not be allowed to raise prices to Medicaid faster than the rise in the Consumer Price Index. "In the last 10 years, the price of prescription drugs has increased three times as fast as general inflation," Senator Pryor said. "I think this measure was long overdue."
The drug makers did get one concession: the restrictions that kept Medicaid patients in some states from getting the most expensive drugs were eased on the ground that the poor and the elderly should not be limited to "second-class medicine."
In the recent company deals, Medicaid programs had to make room for the excluded drugs. Merck, for example, offered 10 percent cuts if most Merck products were approved. John L. Zabriskie Jr., president of Merck Sharp & Dohme, a Merck unit, said that his company's program, which 38 states have accepted, was intended "to insure that Medicaid patients have the same access to important medicines as the general public."
The budget bill would prevent states from excluding a product outright. But states can still require advance approval for certain drugs.
Congressional aides said existing programs like Merck's would remain in effect until they are due for renewal. Then the companies would have to meet the minimum rebates in the bill, which securities analysts said could slow earnings growth.
Hemant K. Shah, an independent analyst in Warren, N.J., said companies like American Home Products, Eli Lilly, SmithKline Beecham and Upjohn have "above-average business with Medicaid and give above-average discounts to V.A. hospitals." He said that because the manufacturers' costs would not change, the rebates would come out of profits. "The most negative result is that the Federal Government is now directly involved in paying for pharmaceuticals," Mr. Shah said.

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November 6, 1990, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

More Preventive Care Sought for Older People

BYLINE: By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN

SECTION: Section C; Page 10; Column 3; Science Desk

LENGTH: 683 words

INCREASED efforts to promote health and prevent disease should be aimed at people 50 and older, the National Academy of Sciences said in a report yesterday.
Most such efforts have been aimed at younger people, but an increasing body of scientific knowledge has shown that preventive programs also benefit those 50 and older, the academy's Institute of Medicine said. 
 The academy urged that the traditional goals of health be broadened beyond curing and preventing disease to include preventing the ill from becoming disabled and helping the disabled cope with and prevent further disability.
Misplaced pessimism about aging has led to a widespread belief that growing old means frailty, sickness and a loss of vitality, the report said. Contrary to a prevailing assumption that older people are a burden to the state, the report said, "many older individuals lead satisfying lives and maintain their health well beyond society's expectations."
People 65 years and older make up the fastest-growing segment of the American population. Although benefits of health promotion among the elderly have been documented, the academy urged further research because of the scarcity of data related specifically to avoiding disability in the elderly.
 
13 Risk Factors
 The authors of the report, headed by Dr. Robert L. Berg of Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester and Dr. Joseph S. Cassells of the Institute of Medicine, studied 13 risk factors such as misuse of medications, falls and social isolation that affect large numbers of elderly people and for which remedial interventions are available. Each risk factor may touch off a train of events leading to disability.
Misuse of prescription and over-the-counter drugs was called a major problem among the elderly, often leading to life-threatening and disabling complications.
The academy urged older people to learn more about the drugs they take, the dangers of taking more than one medication, and the early clues to a possible adverse reaction to a drug.
"Physicians are not as proficient as they might be in optimal prescribing for the elderly," the report said. To improve such care, the academy urged doctors to periodically review all drugs taken by elderly patients. In prescribing such drugs, the academy said doctors should consider lowering the amount according to the age of the patient and the body makeup.
Too often, the report said, the amount of drug prescribed for an elderly patient was inappropriately based on an extrapolation from studies in younger people. It called for more studies of the effects of drugs on the elderly. Among its other recommendations were these:
Infections. All people over the age of 50 should be immunized against influenza and pneumococcal pneumonia.
Osteoporosis. More than one million fractures each year are attributed to osteoporosis, a disease of unknown cause that leads to the loss of bone substance. Research is needed to improve fracture rehabilitation programs and to evaluate estrogen replacement therapy, calcium supplements and exercise in preventing bone loss from osteoporosis.
Falls. Falls are a major cause of death and disability among the elderly. A hip fracture is the most devastating hazard of a fall. About 50 percent of elderly people who were able to walk before suffering a hip fracture were unable to walk independently afterward. The report called for research to determine ways to prevent fractures and to develop energy-absorbing surfaces and protective clothing for elderly people who are at high risk of suffering fractures.
Nutrition. Doctors should periodically assess the diet and nutritional status of elderly patients. Research is also needed to assess the minimal daily nutrient and energy requirements of the elderly.
Depression. Despite the availability of new drugs to improve treatment of depression, only a small percentage of elderly people who are depressed are receiving adequate treatment.
Cancer screening. Studies show that screening for cancer is at least as effective in people 50 to 80 years old as it is in younger people.

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November 7, 1990, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

The 1990 Elections: The Message - Vermont;
Socialist Ex-Mayor Elected to House

SECTION: Section B; Page 6; Column 4; National Desk

LENGTH: 448 words

DATELINE: BURLINGTON, Vt., Nov. 6

Bernard Sanders declared victory tonight in his race for the House of Representatives and put "the millionaires and the multinational corporations" on notice that he would be going to Washington.
Mr. Sanders, the first politically independent candidate to go to Congress in 40 years, claimed the victory, not for himself, he said, but for the people. A former Mayor of Burlington and a socialist, he campaigned on higher taxes for the wealthy and for large corporations. 
 "What we need is a mass movement of tens of millions of people prepared to say that we want national health care, that we want the millionaires and multinational corporations who are not paying their fair share to pay their fair share," he said. "We want money going to environmental and educational programs. We want no more Star Wars or Stealth bombers."
 
'What an Effort'
 With less than half the vote counted, Mr. Sanders's lead was so convincing that his opponent, the incumbent, Representative Peter Smith, a Republican, conceded the election just after 10 P.M.
"My God, what an effort you've put in," Mr. Smith said to his staff and to the volunteers who filled his campaign headquarters tonight in Montpelier.
The last legislator with no major party affiliation to serve in the House was Vito Marcantonio of New York, who was elected to six terms, from 1938 to 1950.
Mr. Sanders's contest with Mr. Smith was remarkably similar to the 1988 Congressional race, with one important exception. In that race, a Democratic candidate, Paul Poirier, won a large chunk of votes that might otherwise have gone to Mr. Sanders.
In this election, Dolores Sandoval, the Democratic candidate, was not supported by any of the state's major Democratic figures, including the Governor, Madeleine Kunin, and she did not make a dent in Mr. Sanders's tally.
 
Strong Start for Incumbent
 The Congressional campaign began in earnest after the primary in September, when Mr. Smith easily turned back a challenge from Timothy Philbin, a conservative Republican.
Mr. Smith's liberal voting record after two years in Congress and his endorsements by a number of national environmental and education groups were expected to stand him in good stead with many Vermont residents. Public polls gave him a clear lead in the race.
But his troubles apparently began last month with his vote in favor of the first deficit-reduction package that would have increased Medicare payments by patients and raised taxes on gasoline and home-heating oil. That gave Mr. Sanders the chance to portray Mr. Smith as insensitive to the working poor and the elderly, constituencies that Mr. Sanders has long claimed as his own.

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November 10, 1990, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

Law Seeks to Eliminate Abuses in Medigap Sales

BYLINE: By LEONARD SLOANE

SECTION: Section 1; Page 28; Column 1; Style Desk; CONSUMER'S WORLD

LENGTH: 1116 words

As part of last month's deficit-reduction agreement Congress took strong action to reform the laws governing Medigap insurance. As a result, elderly consumers receiving Medicare benefits will be assured of tougher standards and simplified rules when they buy this type of insurance.
Medigap is formally known as Medicare supplementary insurance, since its purpose is to plug the gaps in the Federal health-insurance program for people 65 years old or older.  Medigap insurance, purchased by individuals, is intended to reimburse them for out-of-pocket medical and hospital expenses. Policies with premiums totaling more than $15 billion were sold in 1989 to 21.5 million people, almost four times the value sold just 12 years earlier.
 
Elimination of Abuses Sought
 Yet although insurance companies have long offered a variety of Medigap policies, many of these companies have been accused in Congressional hearings of abusive marketing.  It is these abuses the new law is meant to eliminate. 
 The National Association of Insurance Commissioners is to develop 10 model policies offering varying benefits, and each Medigap insurer must offer one or more of these policies.  Another change forbids insurance agents to sell a Medigap policy to anyone who already has one, unless the policy holder states in writing an intention to drop the first policy.
"This law signals that Congress is going to be much more hard-nosed about some of the questionable consumer practices," said Representative Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, a sponsor of the legislation. "It's finally going to be possible for people to make informed choices without being some kind of legal wizard."
Gail Shearer, the policy-analysis manager of Consumers Union, the publisher of Consumer Reports magazine, said: "This is very beneficial to senior citizens. It is going to lead to increased price competition, decreased confusion and greater access to information."
Like other forms of insurance, Medigap insurance is primarily regulated by the states. The Federal Government first entered this area in 1980, when a law commonly referred to as the Baucus Amendment set up Federal standards for benefits. But the standards were voluntary and many companies did not meet them.
In contrast, the new law sets mandatory standards, including these:
*Insurance companies must offer a core policy and up to nine other policies; because the formats will be the same or similiar from company to company, consumers will be able to make comparisons easily. The policies, which have not yet been drafted, will probably range from the basic policy covering the 20 percent of physicians' fees not paid by Medicare to a comprehensive policy covering prescription drugs, private-duty nursing, hospitalization in foreign countries or other more costly features.
*Counseling programs will be provided by local Social Security offices, offering an objective source of information on health insurance. The law authorized $10 million for establishing Medigap counseling services.
*Medigap policies cannot be sold to elderly people who receive Medicaid, which covers all health-care costs.
*Insurance companies will be required to increase the percentage of total premiums that they pay out in benefits, which is known in the industry as the loss ratio. Not only is that percentage to rise to 65 from 60 for policies sold to individuals, but an enforcement mechanism is also to be created to assure that companies obey the law.
*Medicare beneficiaries will have six months from the date of their 65th birthday to buy Medigap policies without passing a medical examination. In addition, those who buy policies during this "window" cannot be charged higher premiums just because of this provision.
"This gives the consumer a lot of choice, while giving the insurance company the flexibility to design different plans," said William F. Matusz, the vice president for underwriting of the Prudential Insurance Company of America. "Now we have to wait to see how the smoke clears."
While the Government's Medigap legislation provides many new protections, the United Seniors Health Cooperative, an advocacy group in Washington, believes that it still contains a number of flaws.
For example, even though counseling has been authorized, Congress has yet to appropriate the $10 million to pay for it. And although a duplication of policies has been prohibited, this provision is not retroactive, so people already holding more than one Medigap policy will not be able to ask for a refund.
 
The General View Is Positive
 In addition, said Peter J. Strauss, a New York lawyer who specializes in legal issues affecting the elderly: "There are some situations where the ban on duplication may have a slightly negative effect. Some people may want to buy a policy at a nominal cost and also have a second one just to cover private-duty nursing."
But most specialists in this field see the overall effect of the new law as positive for the average Medicare recipient. "It adds stability to the Medicare program," said Martha A. McSteen, the president of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, a nonprofit advocacy group in Washington. "But we'll be watching to make sure people understand their rights."
 
READER'S GUIDE TO MEDIGAP POLICIES
 In choosing Medigap coverage, consumers should read and compare carefully the policies offered by different insurance companies.
First, learn exactly what is covered by Medicare, the Federal health insurance program for the elderly, since Medigap insurance works in tandem with Medicare. Then, based on your individual medical history and expenses, decide what services you would like a private supplementary policy to pay for.
The model regulation on Medigap proposed this year by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners lists certain standards for all such policies. Here are some of them:
*An insurance company may not cancel or refuse to continue an individual policy for any reason other than nonpayment or misrepresentation.
*Policies should state specifically whether they cover many important items like nursing-home costs, home health-care visits beyond Medicare coverage, and dental care.
*When people consider changing Medigap policies, a statement has to be given them by the new insurance company or its agent saying that the new policy "materially improves" the existing coverage. This is meant to prevent high-pressure sales tactics that induce someone to switch coverage for no good reason.
The model would also require insurers to file rates and supporting documents annually with state insurance commissioners.

LOAD-DATE: November 10, 1990

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Graphic: "Rising Revenues" shows Medigap insurance sales -- premiums and number of insured, 1982-1990 (1990, projected) (Source: American Association of Retired Persons)

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November 10, 1990, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

Doctors Urge Public to Heed Dangers of Flu

BYLINE: AP

SECTION: Section 1; Page 24; Column 1; National Desk

LENGTH: 523 words

DATELINE: CHICAGO, Nov. 9

Dismissing influenza as an inevitable risk of winter could be a fatal mistake, doctors say, warning that flu kills an average of 20,000 Americans a year.
"The reason people die from the flu is it hits the body so hard," Dr. John D. Nicolas, a clinical medicine instructor at Northwestern University and head of a seminar on prevention of colds and flu, said here Thursday.
Dr. Walter Gunn, an epidemiologist at the Federal Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, said that "the most common misconception" about flu is "it's not serious."
Most who succumb are the elderly or people with chronic health problems. They should be vaccinated now to be ready for the flu season, usually beginning in December, the doctors said. In some years flu claims twice the annual rate of 20,000.
 
Holiday Increases Risk
 "Because of people getting together for the Thanksgiving holiday, traveling from other places, spending a few days together inside the house, that's a perfect environment for spreading the virus around," said Mary Huck, spokeswoman for the Illinois Department of Public Health.
Flu, or influenza, is spread by virus-infected droplets coughed or sneezed into the air. Victims develop fever, headache, muscle ache and fatigue.
The vaccine is effective in 70 percent to 90 percent of people under the age of 65 and about half the people over 65, Dr. Gunn said. It can protect 85 percent of the elderly from dying of flu or its complications because its symptoms will be milder even if they catch it after getting the vaccine, he added.
Only 30 percent to 40 percent of high-risk people get immunized, Dr. Gunn said.
The vaccine protects against the three strains of flu that the health authorities believe will be the most prevalent. It changes every year and the vaccine is good for one year.
This year's strains are A Shanghai, A Taiwan and B Yamagata, Dr. Gunn said. The names are the same as the strains covered by last year's vaccine, but this year's A Shanghai is a slightly different subtype, he said.
 
Who Should Be Vaccinated
 The Centers for Disease Control recommends flu vaccination for these groups of people:
*Everybody over 65.
*Anyone from 6 months to 65 years of age who has chronic heart or lung problems, all nursing home residents and people under regular medical care for diabetes, kidney ailments, compromised immunity (including infection with the virus that causes AIDS) or inherited blood disorders like sickle cell anemia.
*Children under 18 receiving long-term aspirin therapy for arthritis of similar conditions. This recommendation is based on the rare but known link in children between aspirin, influenza and the development of Reye's syndrome, which can be fatal or cause permanent brain damage.
*Doctors, nurses and others who deal with people in high-risk groups, employees in nursing homes and chronic health-care centers, providers of home care and household members of high-risk people.
The centers said those who should avoid the vaccination include anyone allergic to eggs, because the vaccine is grown in chicken eggs, and anyone with a fever, until it subsides.

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November 11, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

WESTCHESTER GUIDE

BYLINE: Eleanor Charles

SECTION: Section 12WC; Page 10; Column 5; Westchester Weekly Desk

LENGTH: 1190 words


TRACY IS ON HIS WAY
 He was originally called "Plainclothes Tracy," but the fearless detective with the razor sharp profile and snap-brim fedora was renamed "Dick Tracy" when his creator, Chester Gould, sold the comic strip to the Chicago Tribune-Daily News Syndicate in 1931. The rest, as they say, is history, and it will be re-told in a comprehensive Dick Tracy Exhibition opening today through Feb. 24 at the Museum of Cartoon Art in Rye Brook.
 On loan from Matt Masterson, a pre-eminent Dick Tracy collector and old friend of the late Mr. Gould, are more than 80 of the original strip drawings. In them are at least 100 of the familiar characters with grotesque faces and names to match. They include Flattop, Pruneface, Measles, Gargles and Itchy, among others. Their fame and influence as mirrors of the American crime scene became so pervasive that Gould was pressured by his editors to tone down his depictions of torture, murder and depravity during the decade preceding his retirement in 1977.
 In addition to the artwork there will be a display of Dick Tracy toys, comic books, premiums, movie posters, dolls, figurines, games, puzzles, detective kits, trading cards and wrist radios -- all acquired by Larry Doucet and Bill Crouch, co-authors of a publication called "The Authorized Guide to Dick Tracy Collectibles." The two men will be guest speakers on Dec. 2 at 2 P.M.
 The museum, on Comly Avenue, one mile south of the King Street Exit of the Hutchinson River Parkway, is open Tuesdays through Fridays from 10 A.M. to 4 P.M., and Sundays from 1 to 5 P.M. Admission is $3 for adults; $2 for students and the elderly; and $1 for children. For more information, call 939-0234.
 
THE SCAPEGOAT
 A book by Aranka Siegal for young people, "Upon the Head of the Goat: A Childhood in Hungary, 1939-1944," won the Newbery Honor Book Award in 1982. Its contents provide the basis for her talk, "Learning Not to Scapegoat," to be delivered at a luncheon meeting of the Scarsdale Congregational Church Guild at noon Tuesday.
 In her book, published in Manhattan by Farrar, Straus, Giroux, Ms. Siegal recounted her experiences from the age of 13, when she was rounded up with her sister by the Nazis, separated permanently from the rest of her family and deported first to Auschwitz and then to Bergen-Belsen concentration camps. The two girls were rescued by the Swedish Red Cross and they emigrated to the United States in 1948.
 A passion for literature that led to her career as a writer was instilled when Ms. Siegal was 12 years old and the Nazi-controlled Hungarian Government banned Jewish children from attending the public schools. She compensated as much as she could by reading every book her family owned or that she could get otherwise.
 Now a Westchester mother of two grown children, she continues to write about children who must come to terms with their prejudices and understand the meaning of scapegoating. Admission to the luncheon is $3. Call 723-0430 or 723-2111 for reservations.
 
INSULATING TIPS
 Mildew, peeling paint, drafts and high heating and air-conditioning bills can all be signs of poor insulation and poor air circulation, which the Cornell Cooperative Extension of Westchester County can help eliminate.
 In two seminars this week, James McCarty, housing specialist in the department of design and environmental analysis at Cornell University, will discuss the theoretical aspects of the problem, the development of various products to assist homeowners and proper installation techniques that will insure long-term solutions.
 The first session is scheduled on Wednesday at 7:30 P.M. at 214 Central Avenue, White Plains. Call 682-3074 for reservations or more information. A second identical seminar will be held Thursday at 7:30 P.M. at Guideposts in Carmel. The phone number there is 628-0454. Admission to either program is $3.
 
THE NEWEST MUSEUM
 Can seven plugged-in television sets make a robot in the shape of a man? Yes, they can, and Nam June Paik made one this year. The piece is among more than 100 objects, paintings, sculptures, photographs, pieces of folk art and decorative art on display in "The Technological Muse," an exhibition opening today at 2 P.M. in the new Katonah Museum of Art.
 This inaugural show at 22 Jay Street, marks the former Katonah Gallery's move from its quarters in the village library to its own building, designed by Edward Larrabee Barnes. The 37-year-old institution will not keep a permanent collection, but will mount five major exhibitions a year.
 A sampling of the extraordinary range of material in the new show, spanning 150 years in all media, includes photographs of the Civil War; "Arms Chair," an upholstered easy chair by Paul Ludick decorated with a fringe of revolvers; a four-foot cadmium-yellow icebag by Claes Oldenburg; paintings by Winslow Homer; a 1915 piece by Marcel Duchamp called "Large Glass or the Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors Even" in oils and wire on glass; and a 1906 "Little Nemo" newspaper cartoon strip by Winsor McCay.
 Every Sunday at 3:30 P.M. one of the artists featured in the exhibition will give a talk. Joseph Maresca is today's speaker. The museum is open free of charge Tuesdays through Fridays from 1 to 5 P.M., Saturdays from 10 A.M. to 5 P.M. and Sundays from 1 to 5 P.M. Docent tours are conducted at 2:30 P.M. Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. Call 232-9555 for more information.
 
TRADING WITH ISRAEL
 "How to Succeed in Business With Israel" is the subject of a forum to be held from 8:30 A.M. to 2 P.M. Tuesday at the White Plains Hotel. Organized by the World Trade Club of Westchester, the Westchester County Office of Economic Development and the United States-Israel Economic Forum, the program will provide nuts and bolts advice from senior executives, government officials and legal experts on how to conduct trade with Israel.
 Among the speakers and panelists are Edward J. Borrazzo, president of Loral International of Yonkers; Shimon Bartzill, first vice president of Bank Leumi Trust Company of New York; Meir Buber, Consul and Trade Commissioner to the United States Trade Center of Israel, and Joseph E. Schoonmaker, vice president of Chase Manhattan Bank. Cheri Laustaunau, director of the Israel Information Center of the United States Department of Commerce, will deliver the keynote address.
 A $50 fee includes program materials, light breakfast and lunch. For reservations or more information, call 948-6444.
 
TAX STRATEGIES
 Julian Block will conduct a three-session course on "Saving Money: Tax Strategies for 1990" at the Center for Continuing Education in Mamaroneck High School, on Palmer Avenue from 8 to 10 P.M. Mondays beginning tomorrow.
 Mr. Block is a tax expert and author of several books on tax preparation. He has taught tax planning at the university level and he manages to reduce complicated tax laws into understandable language. (He has no connection with the H&R Block tax-preparation company.)
Tuition is $45, or $24.50 for people older than 65. Call 698-9126 to register or get more information.

LOAD-DATE: November 11, 1990

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: A segment of the "Dick Tracy" comic strip (Tribune Media Services Inc.)

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November 11, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final
Correction Appended

Social Events

BYLINE: By Thomas W. Ennis

SECTION: Section 1; Part 2; Page 62; Column 3; Society Desk

LENGTH: 1312 words


Writers Read From Works
Nov. 12 -- Maya Angelou, Laurie Colwin, Garrison Keillor, Calvin Trillin and Tom Wolfe are scheduled to read from their works starting at 8 P.M. at Symphony Space, Broadway at 95th Street. The benefit, sponsored by the Publishers Publicity Association, will help the Goddard-Riverside community center help the homeless.  Tickets, $25; $75 for reserved seats and an invitation to a reception following the readings; $250 includes dinner with the writers before the readings, from (212) 873-6600.
 
 A Bachelors' Ball
Nov. 12 -- Fifty-two bachelors between the ages of 24 and 50, all successful in their professions, will be honored at a black-tie buffet dinner and dance at 8:30 P.M. in the Rainbow Room to raise funds for the National Glaucoma Trust. Tickets, $125, from (212) 757-7880.
 
 Famous Doodlers Auction
Nov. 12 -- The New Dramatists 1990-91 season of readings and workshops is to benefit from an auction of doodles by Robert De Niro, Meryl Streep, Lillian Gish, Helen Hayes, Beverly Sills and other notables at the Russian Tea Room starting at 6:30 P.M. The auction will start at 7:30. Cocktails from an open bar and Russian Tea Room specialties. Tickets, $65, from (212) 757-6960.
 
Party for Citymeals
 Nov. 13 -- The Citymeals Professional Alliance is holding a dance in the indoor courtyard of the World Financial Center for Citymeals on Wheels, which -- with the cooperation of the New York City Department for the Aging -- provides meals for homebound elderly people. Nine restaurants in the Financial Center will provide food for the party. Cocktails at 6:30 P.M. Tickets, $60, from (212) 577-7324.
 
Briefly Noted:
 Nov. 13 -- The National Urban League's 34th annual Equal Opportunity Day dinner, the league's major fund-raiser, at the New York Hilton and Towers, will honor August A. Busch 3d, chairman and president of the Anheuser-Busch Companies, and Earl G. Graves, publisher of Black Enterprise magazine. The party starts at 6 P.M. Tickets, $350, from (212) 310-9045.
 Nov. 13 -- Phoenix House, a nonprofit drug abuse services agency, will honor Burt Tanksy, the president of Saks Fifth Avenue, in a "Salute to Fashion" dinner and dance benefit for Phoenix House that will also celebrate "lives renewed." Music by the Peter Duchin orchestra, songs by Barbara Cook. Dinner and dancing after a cocktail reception at 6:30 P.M. Black tie. Tickets, $500, from (212) 997-0100.
 Nov. 14 -- Biomedical research at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine will benefit from a dinner and dance at the Marriott Marquis at which Stephen B. Siegel, president of Chubb Realty, will receive the Einstein Humanitarian Award. Cocktails at 6 P.M., dinner at 7. Black tie. Tickets, $500, from (212) 430-4238.
 Nov. 14 -- The junior committee of the Alzheimer's Association is holding its annual benefit with a cocktail party at 7 P.M. at the Grolier Club restaurant, 11 East 36th Street. Tickets, $55 in advance, $65 at the door, from (212) 983-0700.
Nov. 14 -- The Greater New York Chapter of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation is holding a "culinary gala" at the Rainbow Room at which Andre Rene, the Rainbow Room's executive chef and other New York chefs, will prepare dinner. Reception at 6 P.M., dinner at 7. There will be a live auction of vacation trips and a silent auction of restaurant dinners. Tickets, $500, from (212) 986-8783.
Nov. 14 -- The Partnership for the Homeless annual awards dinner at the Union League Club, Park Avenue at 37th Street, will honor Diandra Douglas, a film producer at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Peter F. Vallone, the majority leader of the New York City Council. Cocktails at 7 P.M. will precede the dinner and dance. Black tie. Tickets, $500 and $1,000, from (212) 735-0744.
 Nov. 14 -- About 30 community projects of the Junior League of New York will benefit from the Golden Tree Christmas shops at the league's headquarters, 130 East 80th Street. The shops, open from 11 A.M. to 4:30 P.M., will also be open Thursday. Admission, $5 during the days, $10 in the evenings, at the door.
 Nov. 15 -- The opening night of the Limon Dance Company's three-night run of the Jose Limon ballet Missa Brevis at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, Amsterdam Avenue and 112th Street, will benefit the Jose Limon Foundation. Tickets, $75, include a champagne reception after the 8 P.M. performance, from (212) 777-3353.
 Nov. 15 -- Claire Bloom will present a dramatic adaptation of Henry James's ghost story "The Turn of the Screw" to help raise money for the renovation of the Hunter College Playhouse. The solo performance at the 92d Street Y, Lexington Avenue and 92d Street, will start at 8 P.M. Tickets, $25; $125 includes the performance followed by dessert and coffee, and $250 includes cocktails and a buffet before the performance and dessert and coffee after, from (212) 772-4085.
Nov. 15 -- The Citizen Exchange Council, which sponsors the exchange of high school and university students and people in the arts between the United States and the Soviet Union, is holding a benefit at the Waldorf-Astoria. Cocktails at 6:30 P.M., dinner at 7:30. Black tie. Tickets, $400, from (212) 643-1985.
 Nov. 16 -- A concert of songs by Joan Baez, Cherish the Ladies, Geoff Muldaur, Maria Muldaur and James Taylor at 7:30 P.M. at the Beacon Theater, Broadway and 74th Street, is to raise money for the Yorkville Common Pantry, which provides meals for about 1,500 homeless and elderly people weekly. Tickets, $35, from (212) 947-5850 or (201) 343-4200; $250, includes the concert and a champagne reception next door at Roxy's restaurant, which the performers are to attend, from (212) 496-7070.
Nov. 16 -- The Paper Bag Players' sixth annual benefit at 6 P.M. at the Equitable Center, 787 Seventh Avenue at 51st Street, will help support the program of weekday performances the troupe will give at New York City Public Schools this winter. The troupe will present a preview of its new production, "When My Cousins Slept Over," at the benefit. There will also be music, food and gifts for children. Tickets, $75 for children; $150, $250 and $500 for adults, from (212) 362-0431.
Nov. 16 -- A dinner and dance for the Staten Island Institute of Arts and Sciences, and its Museum of Staten Island in St. George, will be held at 7 P.M. at the Monte Bianco restaurant at 2131 Hylan Boulevard, near Midland Avenue, in Grant City. There will be a lottery prize of $5,000. Tickets, $125, from (718) 727-1135.
 Nov. 17 -- Mandy Patinkin will entertain at the Samuel Waxman Cancer Research Foundation's 15th anniversary dance at the Plaza. Cocktails at 7 P.M., dinner at 8. Black tie. Tickets, $1,500 a couple, from (212) 369-2652.
 Nov. 17 -- The Detective Keith L. Williams Scholarship Fund will benefit from a dinner and dance at 8 P.M. at Regency House, 175-02 Jamaica Avenue in Jamaica, Queens. The scholarship was established in memory of Mr. Williams, a resident of Jamaica, who was shot and killed while on duty a year ago. Joyce Dinkins will speak. Tickets, $40, from (718) 657-8247.
 Nov. 17 -- The Doug Elkins Dance Company is giving a cocktail party, and another on Sunday, to raise money for the troupe at the Sutton Gym, 440 Lafayette Street, near Astor Place. The troupe will perform some of its new dances. The party starts at 7:30 P.M. Tickets, $19.90, from (718) 782-1627.
 Nov. 18 -- The International Center of Photography's education and exhibition programs will benefit from a dinner and dance and a raffle of photographs by Chuck Close, Horst, Andre Kertesz, Bruce Weber, William Wegman and others, at the center's midtown exhibition space, 1133 Avenue of the Americas at 43d Street. A champagne reception starts at 6 P.M. Tickets, $75 for the raffle and dessert and dancing only; $350 includes the reception and buffet dinner, from (212) 860-1481.

LOAD-DATE: November 11, 1990

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

CORRECTION-DATE: November 13, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

 CORRECTION:
The Social Events column on Sunday gave an incorrect address for the annual benefit of the junior committee of the Alzheimer's Association, to be held tomorrow at 7 P.M. It will be at the Grolier Club, 29 East 32d Street. Information: (212) 983-0700.

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November 11, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Editorial Notebook;
Dirty Political Ads, Reconsidered

BYLINE: By BRENT STAPLES

SECTION: Section 4; Page 16; Column 1; Editorial Desk

LENGTH: 532 words

Filthy campaigning can be fatal to politicians who practice it. This notion has been more a prayer than an axiom. Then came Minnesota.
Senator Rudy Boschwitz, a Republican, began his race for a third term with a lead called "insurmountable" and $7 million to keep it that way. But on Election Day he surrendered his seat to Paul Wellstone, a jocular, frizzy-haired professor, who had a green-and-white campaign bus, but only a fraction of Mr. Boschwitz's bankroll and name recognition. 
 Mr. Boschwitz, judging from responses to poll questions, had seemed exempt from the anti-incumbent sentiment that narrowed some margins of victory elsewhere. Nor did he seem affected by the storm over the sexual misconduct of a Republican gubernatorial candidate. It is more plausible that Senator Boschwitz lost because of his own toxic political endgame.
Minnesota newspapers appropriately scourged the ads that Mr. Boschwitz ran late in the campaign. One spot fabricated a "Wellstone Budget" that supposedly would double the taxes of everyone who earned more than $20,000. Another ad meant to frighten the elderly falsely claimed that Mr. Wellstone, who favors national health insurance, would abolish Medicare. A radio broadcast to rural Minnesotans said he advocated abortions in the ninth month at taxpayer expense -- a potent lie borrowed from North Carolina, where Senator Jesse Helms applied it against Harvey Gantt.
The Boschwitz campaign's single most self-destructive move may have been its Nov. 1 appeal to "Our Friends in the Minnesota Jewish Community." Both Mr. Boschwitz and Mr. Wellstone are Jews. But a campaign letter from the Boschwitz campaign criticized Mr. Wellstone for raising his children as "non-Jews" and for having "no connection" with the Jewish community. It also charged that Mr. Wellstone was too close to Jesse Jackson, and, by fantastic extension, to the Rev. Louis Farrakhan and Yasir Arafat. The Star Tribune denounced this, on Election Day, as "The Lowest Political Blow of Them All."
Mr. Wellstone's campaign ads were clean, and funny, extraordinary political comedy. They stayed clear of personality, and focused on Mr. Boschwitz's record and on the issues, including his reputation as a prolific raiser of campaign funds.
In one of the best spots, "Fast-Paced Paul," Mr. Wellstone satirized Mr. Boschwitz's millions superbly. Warning the viewer that he has to move fast for lack of cash, Mr. Wellstone dashes through the state, pausing for a second or two with his family, then his house, then a farm, delivering breathless statements as he goes. In another, "Looking for Rudy," based on the film "Roger and Me," he searches Mr. Boschwitz's offices in vain, seeking a debate. On the screen, chagrined Boschwitz campaign workers stand by awkwardly as the little professor chats and smiles, and leaves his own campaign literature. He takes a Boschwitz pen because, he explains, the Wellstone campaign is about broke. Two other spots showed only Mr. Wellstone's portrait being splattered with mud.
Mr. Boschwitz's nine-point lead evaporated in the last few days. His loss offers a welcome cautionary tale for those who campaign in the sewer.

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November 11, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Greenwich Village Honors a Model Officer

BYLINE: By MARVINE HOWE

SECTION: Section 1; Part 1; Page 34; Column 4; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 585 words

For 19 years, James R. Fleming was the kind of policeman that the Police Commissioner now wants to be the model for New York City patrol officers.
Patrolling the streets and parks of Greenwich Village, he came to know the people who lived there and to understand their concerns. And that brought him their respect and helped him in his work: making drug arrests, helping the homeless and ushering children across busy streets, residents and fellow officers say.
"He has the respect of everybody," said Meredith Boyce, who has worked in Greenwich Village civic groups. "He got the derelicts to clean up the parks and even saved animals, but he was also the tough cop." 
 On Friday night, senior police officials joined block association leaders, business owners, university representatives and ordinary citizens to pay tribute to Officer Fleming, who recently retired from the force at age 53 after suffering a stroke. The event was held at New York University Law School on Washington Square South, but the atmosphere was like that of a family get-together.
 
'Dedicated Sevice'
 It was the first time the community had paid such an honor to a police officer.
"Jimbo's life was community policing," said Richard Kaye, chairman of the Sixth Precinct Community Council, using the officer's nickname. On behalf of the council, Mr. Kaye presented Mr. Fleming a plaque for his "22 years of dedicated service to the New York Police Department and the Greenwich Village community."
Inspector Elson Gelfand, a former Sixth Precinct commander and now commander of the 11th Division in Brooklyn South, said, "Jimbo represents what Commissioner Lee Brown wants in his expanded Community Patrol Officer Program -- the traditional, likeable street cop."
Isabella Cunningham, 85, of Minetta Lane, said she had come to the party because "he's the cop who used to help little children and older people across the street."
 
'I'm Not Going Anywhere'
 Mr. Fleming was also given a State Assembly proclamation citing him as as an "outstanding citizen." Throughout the 90 minute-ceremony, the burly Mr. Fleming, wearing a jaunty white carnation, stood silent, shifting from one leg to the other. Finally, when asked to speak, he blurted out: "I'm not going anywhere. I'm going to join the Auxiliary Police and stay in the Village."
Later, in an interview, Mr. Fleming, a native of Staten Island, said he had had "a good, rounded career." Besides his work with the homeless, there were many rescues from the Hudson and fires and more than 1,000 arrests and 1,000 assists "from homicides to the disorderly."
Charles V. Campisi, current commander of the Sixth Precinct, said Mr. Fleming was extremely effective in community relations. "People would come to him with their problems and alert him to drug dealing and he would make good quality arrests," he said.
"Everybody on Horatio Street will miss you," Reggie FitzGerald told Mr. Fleming. "You kept the drugs out."
On behalf of faculty and staff of New York University, Tom Fluellen presented Mr.Fleming with a school T-shirt and thanks for "your efforts to keep Washington Square Park a safe place to visit."
Pat Dawson, founder of the Leroy Street Block Association and the Village Residents Against Drugs recounted how Officer Fleming used to take the homeless to shelters and buy them coffee and breakfast. But at the same time, she said, when the hard-core drug dealers saw him, they would say 'Good evening Mr. Fleming' and get out.

NAME: James R. Fleming

LOAD-DATE: November 11, 1990

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: James R. Fleming, who retired after 19 years as a police officer in the Greenwich Village area, was honored Friday at New York University Law School. (Jack Manning/The New York Times)

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November 13, 1990, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

THE DOCTOR'S WORLD;
Syphilis Fools a New Generation

BYLINE: By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN, M.D.

SECTION: Section C; Page 3; Column 4; Science Desk

LENGTH: 1158 words

SYPHILIS, which is known as the great imitator because it mimics so many other diseases, is making its strongest comeback in 40 years in the United States. And it is fooling a generation of doctors who have rarely, if ever, seen a case.
Many doctors are scurrying to textbooks and flocking to lectures to learn about the unusual ways the bacterial infection can damage organs at any age, from newborns to the elderly. 
 Specialists from pediatricians to pathologists have mistaken the sores of syphilis for cancers, abscesses, hemorrhoids, hernias and other conditions. Pediatricians have mistaken the sniffles than can result at birth from congenital syphilis for the flu. Other doctors have also mistaken different forms of syphilis for dizziness from Meniere's disease and multiple sclerosis.
Dr. William Schaffner 2d, who heads the department of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University, described a case that mystified several specialists in Nashville.
A young man with a painless sore on his penis went to a doctor who, believing the man had cancer, took a biopsy that he sent to a pathologist for identification under the microscope. The pathologist was stumped and he sent the biopsy to a colleague: he diagnosed syphilis.
Syphilis is caused by Treponema pallidum, a spiral-shaped bacterium known as a spirochete. The microbe is most commonly spread by sexual contact, and the disease appears in three stages.
The first stage is characterized by a painless sore, a primary chancre, that usually appears 21 days after exposure. The edges of the sore are hard, like cartilage, and can appear anywhere there has been sexual contact, such as the penis, vagina, cervix, tongue and anus.
Untreated syphilitic sores disappear after two to six weeks. From six to eight weeks later, the spirochete spreads silently through the blood to cause the second stage. It often appears as a rash that may be accompanied by swollen lymph nodes throughout the body, a sore throat, weight loss, malaise, headache and loss of hair. The second stage of syphilis can also damage the eye, liver, kidney and other organs.
If untreated, the second stage of syphilis heals within two to six weeks. Then years to decades later it can damage the heart, aorta, bones and cause paralysis and dementia.
The symptoms from syphilis not only are transient but can vary greatly, which explains its reputation as the great imitator. And if a doctor misses the early stages, Dr. Schaffner said, "the patient becomes a biological time bomb waiting to develop tertiary syphilis."
Syphilis can also harm newborn babies through transmission of the spirochete from the mother to the fetus in pregnancy. A baby born with syphilis often has a runny nose and can have a rash and other symptoms that resemble an adult's secondary stage. Congenital syphilis can cause deafness, anemia and permament damage to the bones, liver and teeth.
But prompt and adequate treatment of the syphilitic mother with antibiotics usually prevents damage to the unborn baby, and treatment of an infant with syphilis generally prevents permanent damage.
Dr. Harold Neu said the infectious disease team he heads at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in New York had recently found a number of mothers whose blood tests showed no evidence of syphilis yet who gave birth to babies with the disease.
The doctors found that the mothers had such a heavy infection that standard testing methods were unable to detect it. The problem was solved by modifying the laboratory technique, Dr. Neu said.
New cases of syphilis are at the highest level since 1949.
Dr. Willard Cates Jr., an expert at the Federal Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, said the centers expected about 50,000 cases to be reported in 1990, as against 41,942 in 1949. The reporting of syphilis is the most reliable of all the sexually transmitted diseases.
The surging number of cases reflects social and economic factors like changing sexual habits; drug abuse, particularly trading sex for crack; rising rates of pregnancy among teen-agers who do not use contraceptives to protect against infection and declining support for public health services, which has limited tracing some cases.
Some epidemics occur because a microbe develops resistance to antibiotics, but the spirochete that causes syphilis is still killed by penicillin, the drug that has been used to treat it since World War II.
In New York State, "a booming syphilis epidemic" is occurring, says Dr. David Axelrod, the Health Commissioner. Testing for syphilis of all patients 15 to 45 years old who are admitted to hospitals and treated in emergency rooms is the current standard of medical care, Dr. Axelrod said. This practice was dropped in the years when the number of syphilis cases reached record lows. No other state has adopted a similar measure, though pregnant women are often tested in other states.
The surge is primarily among black and Hispanic heterosexual men and women in cities. A primary factor is the trading of sex for drugs. Women who give birth to babies with syphilis are more likely to have used crack while pregnant and less likely to have received prenatal care.
Health officials are also deeply concerned about the links between syphilis and AIDS. The open sores of syphilis are belived to make it easier for the AIDS virus to enter the body.
A rule among public health workers in past years was to not let the sun set on an untreated case of syphilis. But that goal is now often impossible because budget cuts have strapped the public clinics where most syphilis and other sexually transmitted diseases are diagnosed.
"What happens is that clinics become backed up at 11 A.M. when they used to take new patients until 4 P.M. and some clinics have to stop accepting new patients before noon because they cannot handle the load," said Dr. King K. Holmes of the University of Washington in Seattle, an expert on sexually transmitted diseases.
The delays translate into additional cases of syphilis because untreated patients pass the infection on to sex partners and babies. Health workers who trace sexual contacts of syphilis patients have found that about one of two people named as contacts are also infected.
Until the recent resurgence, syphilis was not a research priority, said Dr. Edward W. Hook 3d, an expert in sexually transmitted diseases at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. "It was a hard organism to work with, time consuming, expensive, and people viewed it as a minor and declining problem," Dr. Hook said. "Now we find ourselves knowing so little about it."
Health workers cannot be blamed for ailments of patients who do not come for care, but Dr. Laurene Mascola of the Los Angeles County Health Department said that if she were a lawyer, she "would put society and health departments on trial for allowing the escalation of congenital syphilis cases in the era of penicillin."

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November 14, 1990, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Credit Agency Urges Mayor To Ready More Budget Cuts

BYLINE: By TODD S. PURDUM

SECTION: Section B; Page 4; Column 5; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 784 words

A major Wall Street credit rating agency warned yesterday that New York City may have to make deeper service cuts than envisioned in even the worst scenario Mayor David N. Dinkins outlined last week to keep its current budget balanced in the face of a soft economy.
In a statement on the Mayor's budget plan, the Standard & Poor's Corporation said plans to leave more than 5,000 jobs unfilled and to reduce programs in many agencies might not be enough to close a budget gap for the current fiscal year. Mr. Dinkins estimates the gap at $388 million, but the rating agency said it would probably grow. 
 Last week, Mr. Dinkins released not only his plans for closing the $388 million gap, but $40 million in additional cuts that might be needed if economic conditions worsen.
The contingency plan calls for closing six fire companies, in addition to the two already planned to close; reducing the number of garbage pickups in some neighborhoods; cutting financing for senior citizens' centers; delaying bridge inspections and repairs, and delaying maintenance at parks, playgrounds and beaches.
 
A Shared Concern
 But in his statement yesterday, Hyman C. Grossman, a managing director at Standard & Poor's, said even those plans might not be enough. Asked whether his comment was simply a statement of fact or a warning, Mr. Grossman said, "A little of both."
"I expect the revenue estimates to get worse over the coming months," he added. "I'm suggesting that when the city says the '91 gap has been closed, I think it's premature to say that. I mean, it's closed as of today, but I don't expect it to stay closed. They've prepared for, hopefully, most of the contingencies, but I'm saying they may need to do a little more."
A spokesman for Mr. Dinkins, Leland T. Jones, said, "The concern they're expressing is a concern that we share." He said that the Mayor had included the contingency plan because conditions might worsen, and that Mr. Dinkins was prepared to do whatever was necessary to keep the budget balanced, and close an estimated gap of more than $1.6 billion for the fiscal year that starts on July 1.
Mr. Grossman's statement praised the city's prudence in addressing its fiscal problems. Last month, in a sign of concern, the agency placed the city's bonds on a "credit watch," warning that it might lower the credit rating, and thus force the city to pay a higher interest rate on bonds.
 
Are New Programs Worthwhile?
 Since October, when the city disclosed its deteriorating fiscal situation, the prices of New York City's bonds have fallen, and yields, or return to investors, have risen significantly -- about seven-tenths of a percent more than the premium they already traded at over bonds of other agencies with similar credit ratings. On Monday, a typical long-term city bond was trading to yield 8.50 percent.
Though Standard & Poor's has rated New York City bonds at A- since 1987, traders say the bonds are trading as if they had been downgraded to BBB, the lowest investment-grade rating given by the agency.
Since Mr. Dinkins released his revised financial plan on Thursday, trading in New York City bonds has been light, and the yields had changed little. Analysts said that suggested that the market had already taken into account the bad news.
Also yesterday, the executive director of the State Financial Control Board, a watchdog agency, said that with such vital services as sanitation and education facing reductions, the city might want to reconsider a number of smaller agencies and programs that he called "sacred cows."
Among the agencies cited by the director, Allen J. Proctor, were the Campaign Finance Board, which provides partial matching public funds to candidates for city office who agree to abide by limits on contributions and spending; a new Independent Budget Office, created under the City Charter to provide elected officials and the public with information to challenge the official budget estimates, and new city planners to be hired under the charter.
Mr. Proctor said he was not proposing the elimination of such programs, which typically cost a few million dollars each, or telling the administration what to do, but only suggesting that there should be debate over whether the city could afford them now.
"All I am saying is we are now at a point where the budget director's instructions to agencies are going to lead to reductions in major agencies providing vital services," he said. "And when you look at where the growth is, it's in some of these charter-mandated programs. And while they seemed very worthwhile two years ago, are they as worthwhile as reductions in the other agencies."

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November 14, 1990, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Maurice H. Berins, Executive, 82

BYLINE: AP

SECTION: Section B; Page 9; Column 1; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 131 words

DATELINE: HARTFORD, Nov. 12

Maurice H. Berins, a retired department store executive who worked in behalf of Hartford's senior citizens and other charitable causes, died on Friday at Hartford Hospital. He was 82 years old and lived in West Hartford.
Mr. Berins retired in 1970 as a senior vice president at G. Fox & Company. He founded the Seniors Job Bank in 1974, was a co-founder of the Senior Renewal Club of Greater Hartford Community College and was founding executive director of the Greater Hartford Civic and Arts Festival. He was a former president of Mount Sinai Hospital and a director of the United Way.
He is survived by his wife, the former Esther Meyers; a daughter, Ruth Collier of Oakland, Calif.; two sisters, Ethel Heimov and Esther Cohen, both of West Hartford, and two grandchildren.

LOAD-DATE: November 14, 1990

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TYPE: Obituary (Obit)

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November 15, 1990, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

Breast Cancer: New Trends On Age and Family History

SECTION: Section B; Page 17; Column 2; National Desk; Health

LENGTH: 467 words

A history of breast cancer in a woman's immediate family increases her risk of developing the disease, but the extra risk diminishes with age and vanishes by the time she is 60 years old, three researchers say.
The researchers, Dr. David I. Roseman, Dr. Albert K. Straus and Dr. William Shorey of Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center in Chicago, compared the family medical histories of 9,000 women who had breast cancer, benign breast disease or no incidence of breast disease. 
 They found that the extra risk was highest for women who were 30 to 34 and whose mother, sister, grandmother or aunt had had breast cancer. These women were nearly four times as likely to get breast cancer as women of that age without a family history of the disease.
The risk declined slightly until the age of 45, then rose for women aged 45 to 54, who were more than twice as likely to get breast cancer as women of that age without a family history of the disease. After 60, the risk was nearly the same for all women, whether or not they had relatives who had breast cancer.
 
Other Factors Come Into Play
 According to the American Cancer Society, 1 woman in 10 will eventually contract the disease, the most common life-threatening cancer and the second leading cause of cancer deaths in American women, behind lung cancer.
The study was reported earlier this year in The Archives of Internal Medicine. The researchers said it was unclear why family history ceased affecting a woman's risk of contracting breast cancer after the age of 60. Perhaps, they suggested, the genetic mechanism behind breast disease comes into play early in life; by 60, factors like past childbearing (which diminishes the risk of breast cancer) and diet supersede any genetic predisposition.
Dr. Shorey, who works at Rush's comprehensive breast cancer center, cautioned against assuming "that women in their 70's and 80's can't develop cancer" just because the link to family history decreases with age. The American Cancer Society says 65-to-70-year-olds make up the largest group of new breast cancer cases being reported.
Dr. Shorey emphasized the importance of yearly mammograms for older women. Under current guidelines, women 40 to 49 years old are urged to have a mammogram every year or two, and women 50 and older are advised to have one a year.
But younger women with a family history of breast cancer should have regular breast examinations, including a mammogram if an abnormality is found, Dr. Shorey said.
Younger women have generally been advised to avoid mammograms because of the risk from radiation, but he said that danger was "pretty much limited to repetitive mammograms in women in their 20's and 30's." No matter what the woman's age, he went on, "a lump should not be dismissed."

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November 17, 1990, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

Darman Says Bush Is Exploring Shift in Benefits

BYLINE: By DAVID E. ROSENBAUM, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section 1; Page 12; Column 3; National Desk

LENGTH: 855 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Nov. 16

Richard G. Darman, the budget director, said today that the Bush Administration was exploring ways to shift Government benefits from the wealthy and middle class and concentrate them more on the poor.
In his first public appearance since the end of this fall's budget ordeal, Mr. Darman said the new budget procedures gave the Administration and Congress a fresh opportunity to focus on principles and "basic policy analysis" rather than merely on "near-term cash flow." 
 Social Security, the Government's biggest benefit program, will be exempt from the examination of how programs affect people at various income levels, Mr. Darman said. But he suggested that Medicare and agriculture subsidies, among others, might be targets for benefit redistribution.
 
Question of Politics in Plan
 Democrats scored heavily in the battle over the budget by portraying President Bush and his fellow Republicans as patrons of the wealthy and themselves as the defenders of the more ordinary Americans.
The policy benefits aside, the Administration might see a chance to regain lost political ground by proposing to limit, for instance, Government expenditures on medical care for affluent retirees or crop-support payments to big farmers and to use the resources instead on health care for poor children in rural areas.
Democrats, who depend on political support from the elderly and farmers, could be expected to oppose such changes, and that would expose them, the theory goes, as guardians of special interests. But such a strategy could backfire. In the past, Republicans in Congress have fought changes in Medicare benefits every bit as vigorously as have Democrats.
Mr. Darman said that the matter was still being explored and that it would be weeks before the Administration's economic and budget policy for next year was developed.
Mr. Darman made these remarks in answer to questions after addressing the Council for Excellence in Government, a nonpartisan organization of former senior Government officials.
 
Making Use of Word Flair
 Unlike the didactic ones he has given occasionally during his years in the Bush and Ronald Reagan Administrations, the speech was notable mostly because Mr. Darman exercised his flair for metaphors and word-coinage. He entitled the address "Neo-neo-ism: Reflections on Hubble-ism, Rationalism and the Pursuit of Excellence (After the Fiscal Follies)."
"Neo-neo-ism" is the term he gave to politicians' search for a "bold new program" to meet every situation. "Hubble-ism," a reference to the orbiting space telescope that is malfunctioning because it was not properly tested, is the budget director's word for the political propensity to conclude that "if an idea is good enough for a few and large enough to label, it is ready to be launched at full scale."
Last year, in a widely publicized speech, Mr. Darman spoke against "now-now-ism," the tendency toward self-indulgence in the 1980's. And in an introduction to President Bush's budget this year, he played with words and metaphors again, describing the Federal budget as "the ultimate Cookie Monster," because it had the same huge appetite for consumption as the character on the children's television program "Sesame Street."
In those cases and others, Mr. Darman used his word games to take the hard edge off of serious and controversial points. Today's speech had no sharp corners to begin with. His main points were that the budget law he helped drive to enactment last month would lead to deficit reduction and that the new rules putting ceilings on spending and requiring pay-as-you-go provisions in new legislation would lead Congress and the President to focus more on how to use available resources.
He chided Democrats for standing for little more than "anti-millionaire-ism," a reference to Democratic support for legislation that would place a surtax on incomes of more than $1 million.
 
Conservative Republicans Angry
 And he raised the ire of some conservative Republicans by making light of "the new paradigm," the phrase that wing of the Republican Party uses to describe an approach to meeting social problems that emphasizes individual choice, such as giving parents the capacity to select which public schools their children go to.
"The effete might debate whether the new paradigm is, perhaps, enigmatically paradigmatic," Mr. Darman said. "At the same time, in the real world, others might simply dismiss it by picking up the refrain, 'Hey, brother, can you paradigm."'
Mr. Darman has become the scourge of the conservatives, who believe he was responsible for persuading President Bush to change his mind about raising taxes, and, however jesting Mr. Darman meant it, some took offense.
Burton Yale Pines, senior vice president of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative research institute based in Washington, said Mr. Darman had become a liability and should resign.
And James P. Pinkerton, deputy assistant to President Bush for policy planning, said sardonically, "After the success of the budget deal, it's good to see Dick returning to the dialogue of ideas."

LOAD-DATE: November 17, 1990

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Richard G. Darman, the budget director, who spoke yesterday in Washington to the Council for Excellence in Government. (Jose R. Lopez/The New York Times)

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November 18, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Darmakusuma Ie, Ophthalmologist, Weds Ms. Greenberg, a Social Worker

SECTION: Section 1; Part 2; Page 73; Column 1; Society Desk

LENGTH: 194 words

Elizabeth Rachel Greenberg, a daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Joshua F. Greenberg of Scarsdale, N.Y., was married yesterday in Tarrytown, N.Y., to Dr. Darmakusuma Ie, the son of Dr. and Mrs. Njoek San Ie of Plantation, Fla. Justice Martin H. Rettinger of State Supreme Court in Manhattan officiated at Abigail Kirsch at Tappan Hill.
Mrs. Ie is a psychiatric social worker at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center in New York. A graduate of Simmons College, she has a master's degree in social work from New York University. Her father is a partner in the New York law firm of Kaye, Scholer, Fierman, Hays & Handler. Her mother, Dr. Reva Greenberg, is the director of education at Mainstream, the Retirement Institute of Westchester Community College in Valhalla, N.Y., which develops education programs for elderly people.
The bridegroom is a resident in ophthalmology at Manhattan Eye, Ear & Throat Hospital. A cum laude graduate of Harvard University, he has a medical degree from Tulane University. His father is an associate in the South Florida Pathologists Group in Plantation, and the director of laboratories at the Universal Medical Center in Sunrise, Fla.

LOAD-DATE: November 20, 1990

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Elizabeth Ie (Lew Appel)

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The New York Times

November 18, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Gail Dratch Wed to David Michaels

SECTION: Section 1; Part 2; Page 69; Column 1; Society Desk

LENGTH: 220 words

Gail Deborah Dratch, the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Joseph B. Dratch of Chevy Chase, Md., was married last evening to Dr. David Morris Michaels, the son of Ruth Gruber of New York, and the late Philip H. Michaels. Rabbi Tzvi H. Porath performed the ceremony at Adas Israel Congregation in Washington.
The bride, 33 years old, is keeping her name. A graduate of Hampshire College, she is the director of political action for the National Council of Senior Citizens in Washington. Her parents own the Claire Dratch women's clothing stores in Washington and Bethesda, Md.
The bridegroom, 36, is an associate professor of community health and social medicine at the City University of New York Medical School. A cum laude graduate of City College, he has a master's degree in epidemiology and a Ph. D. in socio-medical sciences from Columbia University. Before recently joining the C.U.N.Y. faculty, he was the director of the division of public health in the department of epidemiology and social medicine at Montefiore Medical Center and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. His mother is an author and lecturer and was a correspondent in the Soviet Union and the Middle East for The New York Herald Tribune. His father was a lawyer and a vice president of Sachs Quality Stores, furniture retailers in New York.

LOAD-DATE: November 20, 1990

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The New York Times

November 18, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Whither China? Back to the Era of 'Comrade'

BYLINE: By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section 1; Part 1; Page 23; Column 1; Foreign Desk

LENGTH: 677 words

DATELINE: BEIJING, Nov. 17

Fighting the linguistic fashion of the last decade, China's hard-line rulers are dusting off the revolutionary expression "comrade" and encouraging its use instead of more bourgeois salutations.
A few days ago, the national television news switched its opening from "viewers, hello," to "comrades, hello." That raised eyebrows and lowered spirits in a nation where such matters can be important hints of the prevailing political winds, and on Friday the greeting was adjusted to a compromise version, "viewers, comrades, hello." "This is not compulsory, but it is hoped that people will use 'comrade' as often as possible, not as in the past when 'comrade' was nearly forgotten as a greeting," said a spokeman for Beijing Television Station. 
 He said the television stations had recently received a directive "from above" on the use of comrade. In accordance with the directive, which was read aloud to the journalists, the salutation comrade will be used in broadcasts to the domestic audience, but not in programs that are directed primarily to foreigners or overseas Chinese.
The policy of encouraging comrade seems to reflect concern among the hard-liners that in the last 18 months they have succeeded in seizing the redoubts of Government but have been unable to restore Communist values to the society. Dissatisfied with merely controlling the ministries, they also wish to shape society and even the way people talk to each other.
" 'Comrade' is a greeting attained by the life and blood of the revolutionary martyrs," People's Daily declared two weeks ago, in calling for its return. "We must not foresake it for something else."
In another sign of the hard-liners' anxiety about Western influences on society, People's Daily lately has also inveighed against the proliferation of foreign words in the Chinese language. A commentator protested that direct translation of foreign phrases like "flea market" left people puzzled and was unnecessary when Chinese has perfectly good terms -- like "used goods market" -- that mean the same thing.
Many elderly Communists have been offended that their revolutonary traditions, like greeting people as comrade, are now looked down on as old-fashioned, while young people delight in wearing T-shirts with English lettering (some of it nonsensical) and in tossing occasional English words into their conversations. Conversations among young people, for example, often end with "bye, bye."
The word comrade -- "tongzhi" inChinese -- gained wide currency after the 1949 Communist revolution as an expression of China's ideal of a society in which everyone was on equal footing. Other salutations faded from use, and soon comrade was virtually the only way to hail a person on the street.
But in the 1980's, comrade gradually fell from use. Some older people still use it, because it feels comfortable to them, like the Mao jackets they wear in preference to Western clothing.
But younger people prefer traditional Chinese salutations, which to them have a cosmopolitan ring because they are used by the wealthy Hong Kong and Taiwan Chinese who come visiting. "Miss" is much more likely to elicit a smile from a woman than is "comrade," while for men, "shifu," approximately translatable as "master," is common. Older peopleare hailed with, "old Granny" or "old Grandpa."
"Most people don't like to use 'comrade,' for two reasons," said a Government researcher. "First, it's inappropriate for me to hail a stranger that way, because he isn't my comrade. Second, it has a political edge to it, and triggers leftist associations from the Cultural Revolution and before."
Television stations have been particularly vulnerable to political pressures lately. Indeed, the two most prominent news anchors at the time of the 1989 crackdown -- Xue Fei and Du Xian -- were both promptly removed from the air and have yet to reappear. Mr. Xue mumbled the lines glorifying the killings, making it obvious he disagreed with what was happening, while Ms. Du wore black as a sign of mourning for those killed.

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The New York Times

November 18, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

CASSVILLE JOURNAL;
Despite Debt and Apathetic Youth, Little Russia Still Lives

BYLINE: By BARBARA STURKEN

SECTION: Section 12NJ; Page 2; Column 1; New Jersey Weekly Desk

LENGTH: 1233 words

DATELINE: CASSVILLE

 AT Bab's Gift Shop, where a visitor can buy Soviet-made chocolates, amber necklaces and painted wooden eggs, the aging Russian emigres were talking of President Mikhail S. Gorbachev and his Nobel Peace Prize.
"We're seeing real freedom and democracy over there," said Rehim Babaoglu, the shopkeeper and an immigrant in 1951 from the Soviet Union. "In my time, people could not even dream about it." Because of Mr. Gorbachev's policies, he said, he was recently able to speak by phone to a relative in the Soviet Union whom he had not heard from since the 1950's. 
 Wasil Michalap, a Russian World War II veteran who now lives in East Brunswick, was less impressed by the Soviet President's accomplishments. "He will get $700,000, Mr. Gorbachev, but where is the meat, where is the bread?" Mr. Michalap said.
Aside from a few exchanges like these, the extraordinary events sweeping Eastern Europe have hardly made a ripple here in this ethnic enclave known as Little Russia.
Like the old Communist order in the motherland, this once proud community is on the wane. And as their native land gropes toward a free market, the shareholders of Russian descent who manage the Rova Farm Resort are suffering the headaches of a capitalist society: budget deficits, soaring insurance costs and an apathetic younger generation.
 Fifty years ago, Rova was a thriving 1,400-acre retreat in the Pine Barrens for Russian immigrants who wanted to escape dingy urban dwellings and to preserve their language and cultural traditions. Many of their children and grandchildren, however, lost interest. Now, all that is left are about 40 acres and a Russian-style restaurant, a cluster of pastel cottages and a deserted lakeside pavilion, boarded up because it would cost too much to insure.
 
Land Sold Off in Stages
 The land was sold off in stages, starting in the 60's, and the last big 50-acre parcel went two years ago. The remaining active members are considering whether it is even worth staying open and incurring more debts.
Mr. Michalap, Rova's vice president, said he favored demolishing the pavilion, once the scene of much Russian dancing and singing, and selling off the motel-like group of cottages. Then the Rova resort would be just a restaurant and social club for elderly immigrants, some of whom live at the nearby Pushkin Memorial Home.
But enthusiasm for this solution is not shared by all. Another faction opposes any more land sales, believing they would destroy what remains of Rova. And there is now a move afoot to create a cultural center.
"We're a cultural anachronism," said Nick Zill, a former president of the Rova Farm corporation and a shareholder who lives in nearby Brick Town. "Now we just attract old people and a few curiosity seekers."
Sounding like any other businessman perusing a balance sheet, Mr. Zill said: "Basically we can't meet expenses. Our payroll is in excess of $1,000 a week; then we pay $40,000 a year in taxes, and the same amount for insurance. The basic nut is beyond our capacity to carry on the basis of current revenues. Rova Farm exists only because of shareholder interest, no matter how apathetically it is displayed."
If the dilapidated pavilion, its roof sagging and walls covered with graffiti, is a symbol of Rova's decline, the adjacent Russian Orthodox Church of St. Vladimir suggests better times. Built in 1938 on land given by the Rova organization, the church is not officially connected to Rova, but its presence seems to hold the place together. Its gold onion dome and colorful exterior mosaics inevitably cause passing motorists to slow down. Nearby are another church, St. Mary's, and a large cemetery, whose headstones bear distinctive Russian names.
Sunday services still bring worshipers to Rova, and Tuesdays also draw shoppers to a weekly flea market in the parking lot in front of the church. Vendors from neighboring towns hawk assorted wares, from cast-off clothes and furniture to fresh produce from local farms; the fees they pay to Rova have helped stem the flow of red ink.
Another source of income is the restaurant, which also acts as the center for what remains of Rova's cultural life. It is in a plain wooden hall surrounded by a wide veranda where Russians stand around talking in their native language. There is a modest dining room decorated by balalaikas, where patrons can consume $1.75 bowls of borscht or platters of chicken Kiev for $6.95.
Yuri Matyukhin, a young chef, presides over the cuisine at Rova. He came to the United States from the Soviet Union a little more than a year ago, a visa obtained through the help of his sister-in-law in Philadelphia. A former cook for the Soviet army, he lives with his wife in one of the little cabins across the street.
But they are exceptions. In a lament undoubtedly sounded at dozens of similar ethnic centers around the country, Mr. Michalap said, "The young people don't care about Rova."
Gus Koladko, a longtime Cassville resident who camed to Rova during his youth, sums up the lack of interest shown by the younger generation. "Why would they be interested?" he said. "There is nothing for young people to do here around here."
There was plenty to do here during Rova's heyday, when busloads of city dwellers arrived every weekend. Rova was founded in 1934 with a land grant from Chester Fedor, an immigrant who rose from turkey farmer to wealthy real-estate developer. Its location put it within easy reach of New Jersey's urban centers, Philadelphia and New York.
At its peak, the complex included a children's camp and school, a library, the lakeside pavilion and motels and cabins for rent. Russians flocking to the area settled down; some built houses or vacation cottages. There was also a park honoring the Russian poet Pushkin, whose statue still stands.
At one time the Russian-American population in Cassville and nearby Lakewood and Howell exceeded 20,000, and Rova alone had about 8,000. The current number of Russians living close to Rova is now estimated at 300, but the corporation has 5,000 shareholders spread out around the country, many of them descendants of the original Rova settlers.
"We had a thriving outdoor life," Mr. Zill said. "We had boating, and sailing, swimming." But sailing and swimming were banned years ago because of a lawsuit brought by an injured swimmer that could have wiped out the organization, Mr. Zill said.
 
Opposed to Theme Park
 "We don't have anyone to carry on the management of Rova Farm" is how Mr. Zill summed up the problem. He is opposed to bringing in a professional manager and turning Rova into a touristy Russian theme park. "That would just commercialize it," he said.
 There are still some optimists at Rova. "Oh, they always say that it is going to go down the drain," said Vivian Butler, who has worked as a secretary for Rova for eight years. "But I don't think it will." In fact, Rova's demise has been predicted on several occasions, and in the late 70's things got so bad that a tax lien was put on the corporation.
But positive signs are there, too. In the last year or two the number of visitors from the Soviet Union has grown. And recently a Leningrad television crew arranged to come to Rova to film a segment about Russian immigrant life in the United States. "We might not be a success," Mr. Michalap said, "but we are still here."

LOAD-DATE: November 20, 1990

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Avely Krivoff outside the Russian Orthodox Church of St. Vladimir in Cassville, where a once thriving 1,400-acre retreat for Russian immigrants is on the wane. (Eddie Hausner/The New York Times)

Copyright 1990 The New York Times Company



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The New York Times

November 19, 1990, Monday, Late Edition - Final

Charities Face Large Losses In Failed Bank

BYLINE: By STEPHANIE STROM

SECTION: Section B; Page 1; Column 5; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 1011 words

Charitable organizations that maintained more than one account in the failed Freedom National Bank stand to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars that they had thought was protected by Federal deposit insurance.
Officials of the community services organizations, which provide day care, programs for the elderly, foster care, housing and assistance to crime victims, had been under the impression that as long as each account was under the $100,000 limit for Federal insurance, they would be able to recover all their funds after the bank's failure. But last week they began to learn otherwise. 
The Fort Greene Senior Citizens Council in Brooklyn, for example, had $350,000 in 24 checking accounts at the bank, which is based in Harlem. But the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation reimbursed it for only $100,000.
"That was not our understanding of the insurance program at all," said Sam Pinn, the council's chairman. "Obviously, we would not have left ourselves vulnerable."
 
Appeal by Abrams
 He added that the council also placed the money in separate accounts because of requirements from public and private agencies that finance some of its programs.
Although most of the charitable organizations maintained accounts less than the Federal Government's $100,000 insurance limit, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which is managing the reimbursement of depositors at the bank, considers the multiple accounts of a single depositor as a single account.
The New York State Attorney General, Robert Abrams, who learned of the situation late on Friday, has appealed to L. William Seidman, the F.D.I.C. chairman, for a more lenient interpretation of the deposit insurance regulations.
Mr. Seidman said in an interview yesterday that the deposit insurance applies to aggregate deposits, not individual ones, and that the agency would apply the regulations to Freedom's depositors.
"If all of the accounts were in one name and there was no indication that they belonged to other people and they were over $100,000 total, it applies the same to everyone," he said. But he added that a final decision would not be made until Mr. Abrams's letter had been reviewed.
In the largest bailout of an insolvent bank, the $4.5 billion Government takeover of Continental Illinois National Bank and Trust Company in 1984, the F.D.I.C. did insure all deposits.
Because of the size of Continental Illinois, its failure would have had such a severe impact on the financial system that it would have cost the Government much more than the $4.5 billion it spent to bail the bank out, Mr. Seidman said. "We have to use the least costly method of dealing with failures," he said.
If the F.D.I.C. had found a buyer for Freedom or had been able to establish a merger with another bank, no depositors would lose money because the new bank would take responsibility for the deposits. "It's a rare situation," he said of Freedom, "but it can happen under the present rules."
Many of the charitable groups had deposited in Freedom, a black-owned bank, as a way of supporting economic independence in the black community, but they had distributed their money in several accounts either to take advantage of the Federal insurance or because they were required to by their financing sources.
In a letter to Mr. Seidman, the Attorney General noted: "In many instances these not-for-profits have maintained multiple accounts because they are required by their governmental or private funding sources to segregate and hold these monies in trust for restricted charitable purposes."
 
Losses May Exceed $1 Million
 In an interview yesterday, Mr. Abrams said, "Based on the preliminary information, we could be talking about many hundreds of thousands of dollars, maybe even more than $1 million, and we're just talking about the Brooklyn area."
Mr. Pinn, of the Fort Greene Senior Citizens Council, said that because of the losses, the council would be unable to pay the teachers, social workers and vendors that supply services to its programs. Among the services the council provides are meals for almost 8,000 elderly people each day and day-care centers that care for more than 200 children from low-income families.
The council will have to shut down four programs before Thanksgiving if the Federal Government does not refund the money, he said.
Mr. Abrams said he did not know whether any churches, several of which held multiple accounts at the bank, were affected.
"At this point it's hard to say," he said. "The initial indications are that this could involve a very significant number of organizations."
 
Interpreting the Rules
 Mr. Abrams said he had heard that one community service organization in Brooklyn had lost more than $700,000.
In his letter to Mr. Seidman, Mr. Abrams asked the F.D.I.C. to consider community groups as trustees or agents for the various charities and community services they fund instead of as single depositors.
He said Federal regulations could be interpreted to make a distinction for a single trustee managing funds for several charities or community service programs. "We think they should look at the beneficiaries of the account as individual entities, not only the trustee or the name on the account," he said.
Alan Aviles, an aide to Mr. Abrams, said the regulations already distinguish between formal trusts and individual depositors. He said the F.D.I.C. considers the beneficiaries of a trust, not the trustee, when applying the deposit insurance limit.
The Fort Greene Senior Citizens Council has already submitted contracts to support the argument that it is merely a custodian for funds used by many different agencies.
The losses by charities at Freedom came to light during a hearing on Friday on issues affecting the elderly in minority communities, held by Assemblyman Arthur O. Eve, Democrat of Buffalo. Mr. Eve said several executives of nonprofit organizations that serve the elderly canceled their testimony because their programs were affected by the bank's failure.

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LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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The New York Times

November 20, 1990, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

Orphans Return to a City They Left on Sad Trains

BYLINE: By THOMAS MORGAN

SECTION: Section B; Page 3; Column 1; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 977 words

When she remembers the Empire State Building, Alice Ayler, a 71-year-old psychologist from Oklahoma City, thinks about tears she shed 62 years ago. That was the day smiling, benevolent agents of the Children's Aid Society met her at the construction site of the skyscraper, and separated her from the three younger brothers she had been raising alone in New York.
Arthur Smith, 72, a Trenton businessman, wants to know who was the woman who left him unattended, but well-dressed, in a wicker basket in the women's wear department of the old Gimbels department store in Manhattan some 72 years ago. 
 Mr. Smith and Mrs. Ayler were among more than 100,000 orphaned or abandoned children from New York who were sent west by the Children's Aid Society and the New York Foundling Hospital as participants in a social experiment called the Orphan Train Movement, a forerunner of today's heavily burdened foster-care system.
Today, Mrs. Ayler, Mr. Smith and several hundred other Orphan Train children, all elderly, from Minnesota to Texas, will attend their first gathering in New York, a four-day meeting at the Penta Hotel in Manhattan, in an emotional search for their early roots. For many of them, the memories are bittersweet, and the assembly is a homecoming.
 
'Please Don't Go Away'
 "The separation from my brothers was probably the worst time of my life," said Mrs. Ayler, who was later reunited with her surviving siblings. "Toots was my nickname, and when the agents took them away, the twins, who were 3 years old, cried, " 'Toot-toot, please don't go away.' "
Memories, particular odors, trees, scraps of old photographs, even chunks of concrete -- this is the grist that survivors say they use in a relentless search for records or evidence that can give them a clue to who they are and where they began.
"I have mixed emotions about coming back," said Lorraine Williams of Temple Hills, Md., who left New York City on the orphan train bound for Kirksville, Mo., 66 years ago. She and her husband, a retired Air Force pilot, are coming to the reunion by train.
"I will look outside the train, at the roadside, and I think I will have flashbacks," Mrs. Williams said. "I'll remember myself as a little girl in the white dress with blue embroidery at the bottom and around the neck, headed for Kirksville with nothing but a change of underwear and a sandwich in a brown paper bag."
 
A Discredited Policy
 Mrs. Williams and many others consider themselves survivors of a policy that has been somewhat discredited. Dr. James Shenton, professor of history at Columbia University, said that social service experts now first try to help children find stable homes in their own environment rather than sending them away to a totally foreign one.
But during the time of the orphan trains, from 1853 to 1929, only orphanages or asylums offered care for children, and there were often too few of them.
During those 76 years, tens of thousands of New York City children roomed the streets uncared for, left to feed and clothe themselves. They became bootblacks and newspaper boys, streetwalkers and domestics. They were often illiterate, and they were often considered a menace to society.
New York City reeled unprepared from a rapid influx of European immigrants. The Irish, Germans, Italians, Jews and Slavs, among others, found new homes in overcrowded neighborhoods, particularly on the Lower East Side, and even newer dangers.
Sanitation was nonexistent and diseases like typhoid, cholera and influenza took thousands of lives. "Often, whole families were wiped out and the occasional kid left surviving was left pretty much on his own," Dr. Shenton said.
 
Surviving on the Streets
 Sometimes wearing rags and in poor health, the children of the streets slept in doorways, in hay barges, under stairways, anywhere they could, officials with the Children's Aid Society said.
"The immigrant groups had not established the kind of networks to pass children around in an extended family system," Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York, an expert on urban issues, said in a interview. "People feared these new immigrants and their children. They feared they would rise up and vote, uneducated."
For Charles Loring Brace, a wealthy minister and a founder of the Children's Aid Society, the notion of putting children who had done no wrong into any institution was anathema. His solution was to send the children to America's farmlands.
The notion was to match them with good homes and foster parents, who often became adoptive parents, said Philip Coltoff, executive director of the society. Hard work for the children was a part of the bargain. As often as possible, siblings would be placed in homes near each other.
Lee Nailling, of Atlanta, Tex., remembers being in a group of children taken off the orphan train in Clarksville, Tex., and the anguish he felt at being separated from his brother.
 
'Sort of Like Buying a Cow'
 "We were lined up in an auditorium or church," Mr. Nailling remembers, "and people would stare at us, sort of like buying a cow."
"We were sent down to this part of the world as child labor because the farm people needed help in the fields," he said. "The people would come up and feel your muscles to see if you were healthy."
Amid the stories the survivors hope to tell this week at the reunion are lessons of survival and self-reliance they hope to pass on to children living in foster care today.
"I don't care how good the country was or how good people are, you want to know who you were and to find out that you were not so bad," said Mrs. Ayler, who talks to children's groups about her experiences.
"I cannot help what my mother or father did," she said. "What matters is what I do. I tell children you can survive if somebody gives you a reason to."

LOAD-DATE: November 20, 1990

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photos: More than 100,000 orphaned or abandoned children from New York were sent west, like those above in 1900, by the Children's Aid Society and the New York Foundling Hospital in a social experiment called the Orphan Train Movement. Several hundred of them will reunite today. (Kansas State Historical Society via Associated Press); Chaperones from the Children's Aid Society with a group of children bound for the West in 1909. (The Lebanon (Mo.) Daily Record)

Copyright 1990 The New York Times Company



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The New York Times

November 21, 1990, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Bill Would Give Unwed Couples Equal Benefits

BYLINE: By FELICIA R. LEE

SECTION: Section B; Page 2; Column 6; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 438 words

Unmarried domestic partners would be protected against discrimination and would be able to document their relationship officially under a bill that went before the New York City Council yesterday.
The proposed law would, for example, expand health benefits to the unmarried partners of city employees. It would also extend municipal hospital benefits and prison visitation rights to such couples and would apply to city-owned housing and shelters. Both heterosexual and homosexual couples would be covered. 
 Though some other cities have enlarged the concept of what constitutes a family, turning the bill into law in New York could be arduous.
The City Council insists that it has no jurisdiction in the matter. Although the bill went to the Council's General Welfare Committee yesterday, a Council spokeswoman said there would be no hearings because the proposed legislation was pre-empted by state laws governing marital rights.
 
'Would Be Unconstitutional'
 "The state has done so much legislation in this area," said the spokeswoman, Peg Breen. "It would be unconstitutional for us to consider it. We cannot change or modify state law."
But the bill's sponsor, Councilwoman Carolyn Maloney, said the Council had the power to enact it because it pertained only to city policies and city employees. She said she would request a hearing after the bill had been in committee for 30 days.
Groups saying they represented gay rights advocates and elderly and disabled people, among others, praised the bill.
"This bill is a universal one," Ms. Maloney said. "It benefits senior citizens, people with physical disabilities, unmarried heterosexual couples, gay men, lesbians and those who are economically disadvantaged. It's time we realized that these nontraditional families contribute just as much to our society as everybody else."
 
Formidable Hurdles Remain
 Under the bill, an unmarried domestic partnership could be established by giving a statement to a county clerk, who would file it and give the partners a certificate. Or a couple could have the statement notarized. To qualify, a couple would have to be unrelated, both unmarried, and at least 18 years old.
To become law, the bill must be approved by the Council committee, passed by the full Council and signed by Mayor David N. Dinkins. The Mayor supports the concept of unmarried domestic partnerships, a spokesman said yesterday, but he would have to study the bill before assessing its impact on city policies.
The cost of extending benefits under the measure are estimated to be between $30 million and $60 million a year.

LOAD-DATE: November 21, 1990

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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The New York Times

November 21, 1990, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

The Honesty Gap on Medigap: Closed

SECTION: Section A; Page 22; Column 1; Editorial Desk

LENGTH: 439 words

More than 20 million elderly Americans buy medical insurance to pay bills that Medicare doesn't cover. "Medigap" it's called, and it's wise protection against catastrophic illness that can bankrupt even wealthy families. In fact, Medigap is such a good idea that many families are talked into buying two, three or more different policies.
What do they get from the extra policies?  Absolutely nothing -- which is why Congress stepped in, as part of the budget bill, to clean up the mess. The reforms will provide welcome protection for retirees whose fear and misunderstanding make them easy marks for unethical insurance peddlers. 
 Elderly families on Medicare are liable for deductibles, coinsurance and the costs of catastrophic illness that exceed Medicare's tight limits on hospital and physician reimbursements. Medigap policies cover some of these costs. And the policies include a dizzying array of exclusions, limitations and conditions. The policies, not standardized, are hard to understand and virtually impossible to compare.
Fearful of financial ruin and ignorant of Medigap provisions, the elderly have acted desperately. Nearly a third, according to Consumers Union, have bought redundant coverage, spending hundreds and even thousands of dollars on policies they do not need and cannot use. Lacking proper counseling, these elderly people have fallen prey to unprincipled insurance agents.
At the instigation of Representative Ron Wyden of Oregon and Senator Thomas Daschle of South Dakota, Congress has now passed ambitious reform. The new law forbids the sale of a Medigap policy to anyone who already owns one, unless the policyholder signs an intention to drop the first policy.
The law calls for the creation of 10 standard policies to replace the thousands of alternatives now sold so that policyholders can more easily compare one with another. The bill also forbids the sale of Medigap to individuals on Medicaid, which covers all health-care costs of the poor.
The most important part of the legislation may be none of these new regulations. It authorizes $10 million for setting up counseling programs at local Social Security offices. Armed with information and impartial guidance, the elderly would no longer be easily exploited.
There is a danger that the new law will prove overly restrictive, stifling legitimate competition. Congress might have put more money into counseling and studied the results before resorting to new regulations. Even so, the new law is a triumph. For elderly Americans to spend meager incomes on redundant Medigap policies is an outrage about to disappear.

LOAD-DATE: November 21, 1990

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

TYPE: Editorial

Copyright 1990 The New York Times Company



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The New York Times

November 22, 1990, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

Leaders of New Jersey Tax Rebellion Take Aim at Legislature

BYLINE: By JOSEPH F. SULLIVAN, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section B; Page 6; Column 1; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 1423 words

DATELINE: NEWARK, Nov. 21

Two weeks after New Jersey voters almost unseated Senator Bill Bradley and frightened several Democratic Congressmen in a flush of anti-tax fervor, the leaders of a citizen group that helped nurture that anger are savoring their success and planning their next campaign.
Widely expected to win comfortably, Mr. Bradley was nearly upset by a Republican newcomer, Christine Todd Whitman, who skillfully tapped the voters' anger. Now, the citizens' group, Hands Across New Jersey, believes it can turn that public mistrust of government into a major issue that the candidates for all 120 seats in the State Legislature will have to address in next year's elections. 
 "We were able to channel a political storm this year," said Janet Coates of Ewing Township, who, with her husband, Tom, was among the seven people who formed Hands Across New Jersey to battle Gov. Jim Florio's $2.8 billion program of higher sales and income taxes. "And all legislators who fail to heed the message we were bringing will be blown out next year by a hurricane."
 
Recall Power Sought
 Leaders of the organization, which now has coordinators in all 21 counties and a list of 2,000 volunteers, say they will work with other taxpayer and public-interest groups to try to force repeal of the taxes, even in the face of predictions of widening budget problems. And they plan to demand that candidates for the Legislature embrace proposals to allow the public to place binding questions on the ballot and to recall elected officials.
But there are signs that the anti-tax forces will not have the stage to themselves next year and that organized support for the Governor's tax and school aid programs is on the way.
Urban mayors who met during the State League of Municipalities convention in Atlantic City last week say they intend to begin educating their residents to the property tax relief benefits in the package, and this week leaders of several groups representing the elderly met to announce their support of the Governor.
"I deplore the political bashing of Governor Florio's efforts to improve the welfare of the people of New Jersey," said Peter Shields, founder of the New Jersey Leadership Council on Aging.
 
The Imponderables Cited
 Political experts say it is too soon to tell if the new anti-tax groups will play as important a role in next year's elections as they did this year.
"Whenever the public believes government is not paying attention to its pocketbook, groups such as Hands Across New Jersey tend to rise up in anger," said Richard Roper, director of the Council on New Jersey Affairs at Princeton University.
But, he added, in the months ahead "all kinds of things can happen, including a war in the Middle East, that will alter the political terrain here in New Jersey and in every other state."
"We'll just have to wait and see how things play out," he said.
A black organization rebuked Hands Across New Jersey for opposing a proposal on the Nov. 6 ballot that would have provided $135 million in loans and grants for affordable housing programs. The measure lost by 66,000 votes, while the voters approved two gambling proposals -- to allow horse racing on Sundays and to permit Atlantic City casinos to take bets on horse races.
The chairman of the New Jersey Black Issues Convention, Councilman Donald Tucker of Newark, called the defeat of the housing proposal a "misguided campaign" that helped to deny the homeless and minority residents needed housing assistance.
Leaders of Hands Across New Jersey said they were opposed to the financing mechanism in the housing plan because it could have led to higher property taxes. They said they would support a bill recently introduced in the Legislature to salvage the housing program.
 
Better Organization Planned
 John Budzash, a letter carrier from Howell Township, became the driving force behind the creation of Hands Across New Jersey when he called into a radio program that was encouraging people to air their feelings about Governor Florio's tax plan. Mr. Budzash got in touch with Pat Ralston, a title searcher from Belmar, who also had called the station.
Ms. Ralston, who said the group raised and spent about $20,000 this year, chiefly on telephone bills, said discussions were under way to form a political action committee to undertake a more sophisticated fund-raising effort and to devise more effective campaign techniques next year.
"Up to now we've received everything from 25-cent postage stamps to donations in all amounts up to $100," she said.
With Democrats controlling both houses of the Legislature, Republican Party leaders like Assemblyman Robert D. Franks of New Providence, the state chairman, say they stand to benefit next year from the campaigns by the new grass-roots organization and other special-interest groups that have been in the field for years.
 
Republicans Cautioned
 But leaders of the taxpayer groups say the Republicans will be making a mistake if they take their support for granted, and at least one Republican lawmaker believes it would be foolish to count the votes of angry taxpayers too soon.
"There is a lot of negative feeling out there, but that doesn't mean they want to anoint us," said Senator William L. Gormley of Margate.
"Republicans think they have backers now, but they're wrong," Mr. Budzash said. "What we want is accountability by all of our elected officials."
For this reason, Hands Across New Jersey and the United Taxpayers of New Jersey, formed in 1977 to protest enactment of the state income tax, are supporting a legislative agenda that calls for laws granting voters the right to place binding public questions on the ballot and the right to recall elected officials, including the governor and members of the Legislature.
They also want limits on terms of office for the Legislature, and this month a new organization that calls itself Revolt announced that it had been formed to push for such limits. Tom Blomquist of Brick Township, a retired captain in the Coast Guard and state coordinator of the new group, said it would join with the two taxpayer organizations and the New Jersey Conservative Caucus to insure that the issue plays an important role in next year's election.
 
Bill Seeks Legislature Limits
 The Assembly minority leader, Chuck Haytaian, Republican of Independence Township and one of the strongest critics of the Governor's new tax and school-aid plans, became the first lawmaker to endorse limits on terms in the Legislature. He introduced a bill on Monday to limit a State Assembly member to six consecutive two-year terms and a state senator to four consecutive terms. However, Mr. Haytaian had no co-sponsors and could not predict whether the bill wouild attract much support among his colleagues.
Samuel Perelli, president of the United Taxpayers of New Jersey, said: "We've been fighting for a voter initiative package for 15 years, and we needed a giant sledgehammer in the past to get people's attention. But now it is a demand that the lawmakers won't be able to ignore."
Mr. Perelli recalled that he thought an initiative and referendum law would pass in 1985, when it had the support of Gov. Thomas H. Kean and was part of the Republican Party platform. But he said some lawmakers who pledged their support backed down when the bill came up for a vote.
"They lied," he said,"but this time we're not taking anything for granted."
 
Signature Campaign Continues
 Mrs. Coates said that Hands Across New Jersey had collected 800,000 signatures supporting repeal of the Florio tax package and was collecting more.
Mr. Budzash said the organization was sticking to its demand for repeal, even in the face of reports by State Treasurer Douglas C. Berman and others in the Legislature that the state faced a $600 million revenue shortfall in this fiscal year and $800 million in fiscal 1992.
"It just shows that enacting new taxes doesn't help the economy," Mr. Budzash said. "It hurts it."
Hands Across New Jersey attracted the support of the Coalition of New Jersey Sportsmen, who were angered by Mr. Florio's success in enacting a law banning the sale or possession of semi-automatic rifles, and the tax group also received some advice on campaign strategy from Richard J. Feldman, a former lobbyist for the National Rifle Association. However, Mrs. Coates said the relationship of her organization with other groups and individuals "is one of mutual respect, but we design our own campaigns."

LOAD-DATE: November 22, 1990

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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The New York Times

November 24, 1990, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

Bluffton Journal;
Solitary Old Oystermen's Vanishing Way of Life

BYLINE: By RONALD SMOTHERS, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section 1; Page 8; Column 3; National Desk

LENGTH: 1001 words

DATELINE: BLUFFTON, S.C.

Like a tired old man rising haltingly from his chair, the oystering season got off to a slow start in this Low Country town on the South Carolina coast. But that was all right for Nathaniel Brown, who at 80 years old still goes out picking oysters and who could use a little more time to get going himself.
The oystering business, like Mr. Brown, is showing signs of age and decline here. Each day, Mr. Brown goes to work with a group of oyster pickers for the Bluffton Oyster Company. The average age of the group is over 65. 
 It is a far cry from those days when the river work provided a way of life for the Gullah people, who were once slaves on the plantations that dotted the region's coastal barrier islands. After the Civil War, they were essentially left with just two choices, Mr. Brown said: farming the land or drawing sustenance from the teeming rivers and salt marshes along the coast.
But with development and other changes along the coast in the last two decades, new opportunities have opened for the Gullahs, who developed a distinct culture and dialect during nearly a century of isolation in remote coastal areas. They can now make a living in ways less arduous than the back-breaking and solitary work involved in hammering loose shellfish from the jagged oyster rakes that rise out of secluded mud flats at low tide,
It might seem that these should be excellent times for oystering here. The waters around Bluffton and off the South Carolina coast are exceptionally clean, and there is an abundance of shellfish just waiting to be picked.
But social forces are at work in the shrinking of the oyster industry. The elderly men who gather the shellfish are the products of a different age, when few opportunities were open to blacks.
"There was a time when there wasn't another thing I could do but oystering or farming," Mr. Brown said.
Today, while many of their elders continue to do the only kind of work they have ever known, younger members of the Gullah people are finding jobs associated with the growing tourist and construction industries in places like Hilton Head and Daufuskie Island. And many are going on to college and leaving the region.
Younger people, working in the constuction trade or in tourism can bring in up to $700 for a 40-hour week, almost twice as much as oystermen who must put in a 60-hour week and who are more at the mercy of the vagaries of nature.
Back in the 1930's, there were nearly 25 oyster-shucking houses and packing plants along the state's coastal plain. Now there are only three, and oystering is a $2 million-a-year business involving about 800 people. That compares with well over four times that number of workers 60 years ago.
"There wasn't nothing nice, or as you might say romantic, about oystering," Mr. Brown said recently as he unloaded a day's pickings at the dock of the Bluffton Oyster Company with a group of men all 60 or older. "But it was part of a way of life here. I doubt that you will see another generation of oystermen and I guess we are a disappearing breed. I don't have to do it. I do it because I want to, and it keeps me busy since I retired."
The oyster season here opened Oct. 1 as the weather cooled. But then heavy rains hit the region, dumping runoff into the marshy, coastal estuaries, and state health officials grew fearful of pollution. They closed the season on Oct. 12 and only reopened it at the end of October when they were sure the water had cleansed itself.
Michael Reeves, owner of the Bluffton Oyster Company complains that the closure was unnecessary and that it delayed the start of a seasonal business that was limping along anyway. Normally in late October, he said, his shucking room would be filled with two dozen women standing at the white tile tables shucking oysters.
Mr. Reeves, who bought the oyster company in 1985, said he had tried a number of measures to reattract local labor to the oyster-picking business.
For example, he will finance at low-interest rates any oyster picker to outfit himself with a flat-bottomed bateau and an engine, an investment of about $2,500. He has also increased the amount he pays to the shuckers, who are mostly women. They now receive $13 a gallon, almost twice as much as they received in the 1980's. A good shucker, he said, can now earn as much as $8 an hour.
Sam Bennett, who is 67, has been picking oysters all of his life. A shy man, Mr. Bennett said he likes the solitary life of oystering out on the mud flats with only the herons, cormorants, pelicans and an occasional snake for company.
"It's solitary all right, but as long as you work, you don't get too lonely," he said.
On a recent day, Mr. Bennett poled his boat in from a morning of working a mud flat up one of the hundreds of little creeks that meander off the May River. When the tide goes out, exposing the oyster-clotted mud flats along the creeks, Mr. Bennett sets about his work, carrying a hammer to dislodge the clumped shellfish.
"The picking was pretty good today," he said as he quit picking early to pole back to the docks of the Bluffton Oyster Company. "We didn't have such a good tide today, so I couldn't put in five or six hours out here. But I did all right."
Heading in, he spotted Mr. Brown. Coming in from another direction was another elderly black man, Joseph Young, who is 76 and has been oystering on the river as long as Mr. Bennett can remember.
At the dock Mr. Reeves winched the nets full of the men's pickings for the day onto the dock where they were hosed down and bagged in burlap bushel bags until they weighed about 55 pounds each. At $14 a bushel, Mr. Bennett's short day meant he had made $72. Mr. Young and Mr. Brown each made more than $100.
"I work when I want to work in this," Mr. Brown said. "I wouldn't want my grandson doing this. No, sir. That's why I'm helping support him while he's in college. This whole business is disappearing, but I'll be back out here tomorrow."

LOAD-DATE: November 24, 1990

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: An oyster picker at work in Bluffton, S.C. Oystering, a way of life for the area's freed slaves, is being supplanted by more modern pursuits. (Paul Suszynski for The New York Times)

Copyright 1990 The New York Times Company



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The New York Times

November 25, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

THE VIEW FROM: WATERBURY;
Century-Old Store Wraps Its Wares In Lots of Tradition

BYLINE: By CHARLOTTE LIBOV

SECTION: Section 12CN; Page 2; Column 1; Connecticut Weekly Desk

LENGTH: 1221 words

THE Christmas-shopping season is gathering steam at the Howland-Hughes department store, but no closed-circuit televisions blare the praises of the latest in jeans; no glittery, floor-to-ceiling displays of wrapped boxes crowd the floor, and no slinky saleswomen are positioned by the escalators to spritz shoppers with the season's designer fragrance.
 In fact, Howland-Hughes has no escalators. But it has Alma Symmons, one of the elevator operators at the store in Waterbury. She greets each customer with a sing-song "Floor, please?" Then she pulls back the lever to shut the door and delivers the customers to their floors. 
 Henry Paine, 40 years old, the store's president and one of its owners, said he is aware that many shoppers who pack the malls may never have seen an elevator operator. But, to him, this is no reason to change things. The 100-year-old store, he said, lives by the motto "the new Howland-Hughes is the old Howland-Hughes."
 Competition from sprawling shopping complexes has forced the closing of other downtown department stores, like the venerable Sage Allen in Hartford, which shut its doors in August. Just days after Sage Allen closed, Mr. Paine said, Howland-Hughes held "a little news conference, to assure people we weren't going out of business."
 
Old Wooden Cases
 At Howland-Hughes, old-fashioned lighting fixtures hang from the walls, which are painted a lackluster pale green. The walls are lined with old wooden display cases. Paintings of vintage Waterbury scenes, including horse-drawn trolleys and carousels, hang on the first floor. The paintings had been gathering dust in storage until Mr. Paine recently brought them downstairs for display.
"We're especially proud that we're a full-service department store," said Mr. Paine. "We have public restrooms, people pay their utility bills here, they come here for breakfast."
The store includes two restaurants, a beauty parlor and displays of clothing that ranges from $1 stockings to $450 leather coats. The prices are comparable to those at other department store's. Customers can buy Boy Scout and Girl Scout uniforms and hand-knit items made by Waterbury's elderly residents, who receive the profits.
But much of Howland-Hughes's stock is the hard-to-find item that customers have come to rely on the store for. Many of these are found in the third-floor housewares department. Along with trendy items like automatic breadmakers and pasta machines, the department stocks things like hand-cranked food mills, flour sifters, cork-bottom caps for soda bottles and the pressure-cooker gasket that Mr. Paine recently shipped to a former customer now living in Vermont.
Howland-Hughes originally opened as a dry-goods store during a March snowstorm in 1890. The owners, Adam Reid and George Hughes, started with 12 clerks and $50 in cash. In those days, men's shirts sold for 47 cents and infant dresses ranged from 25 cents to $4.50, according to an old newspaper advertisement.
A fire gutted the store in 1902, and it reopened a year later, this time as a full-service department store with 60 clerks.
 
Hired Over Lemonade
 Mr. Reid's interest in the store was eventually bought out by investors including John G. Howland, a former shoe salesman,
"It was at this time that my grandfather became involved," said Mr. Paine. His grandfather, Ralph H. Paine, was working part-time as a census taker in Vermont and visited Mr. Howland at his family's farm there. "After two or three glasses of lemonade, Mr. Howland offered my granddad a job."
Dedication to the store seems to come with the job. In the 1970's, Ralph Paine, then in his 80's, died shortly after he collapsed after helping a customer carry a chair out of the store. His son, R. Morris Paine, died of heart failure in June, at the age of 75, "after logging in the day's sales figures," said Henry Paine.
Mr. Paine came to work as a teen-ager in the store's toy department, he said, "and I've worked probably in every department except women's foundations."
Many of the store's 160 employees have decades of experience. Lee Donnarumna, the sportswear buyer, has logged a half-century in the retailing business.
Whenever he can, Mr. Paine said, he hires retirees, like Tracy Breen, who ran his own department store in Naugatuck. Howland-Hughes's hat and wig department is presided over by Hope Kukanskis, an elegantly dressed woman who is a retired nurse. She said she is especially concerned about helping fit chemotherapy patients with wigs to hide their hair loss, a problem she has experienced herself.
The staff's loyalty cannot be duplicated, said Mr. Paine. He said that that Leonard Gerardi, the store's longest-serving employee, with 47 years' service, recently called from his hospital room "to say he thinks he's sold a bedroom set."
Among the store's traditions is Church Day, the first Monday in November, when 10 percent of a sale is donated to the church of the customer's choice. The store annually fills its display windows with students' artwork, said Mr. Paine, who credits his father and grandfather for establishing the store's philosophy.
Last March, when the store celebrated its 100th anniversary, was a perfect example, he said.
"If you're a store, your 100th anniversary has to be the biggest opportunity to make money," Mr. Paine said. "We didn't do it on purpose. What Dad said last March is that, 'O.K., for a whole week, we'll give 10 percent off to the customer and an additional 10 percent off to the charity of your choice.' That in a word tells you what Howland-Hughes is all about."
And the customers say they love it. As Mr. Paine walks through the store, he is greeted by name. Customers often trail him, getting his assurance once again that he has no plans to close the store.
Anna Witkoski said she drives to shop and eat lunch at Howland-Hughes at least few times a month.
"I've been coming here 40 or 50 years," she said. "It's just a relaxed atmosphere. You can take your time and browse. And if you can't find something anywhere else, you'll find it here."
 
'Part of the Furniture'
 Another customer, Nancy Joska, said: "I love it here, because it's old fashioned. It's like part of New England. It's rustic, the employees are very courteous. I feel like I've become part of the furniture here."
Lorraine Richmond said her family has been shopping at Howland-Hughes for four generations. "I come down here every day," she said. "It's wonderful to see it hasn't changed."
Nancy Berube, 38, is one of store's younger shoppers, but she brings her friends from Torrington to see "an old-fashioned department store," she said. "I've been coming here since I was a little kid."
This Christmas, there will be some innovations at Howland-Hughes. Mr. Paine and some of his staff members are building an old-fashioned Santa's toyshop, complete with a talking reindeer named Donner. Mr. Paine said he will share the duty of staffing the reindeer's controls. "This is something my Dad always wanted to do," he said.
With the new Christmas display, Mr. Paine seems to be trying to let everyone know that Howland-Hughes is heading confidently into its second century.
"At the age of 100, you're almost become a legend," he said, "and momentum like that is hard to stop."

LOAD-DATE: November 25, 1990

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Henry Paine, above, president and one of the owners of Howland-Hughes, left, in Waterbury. Below, customer trying on hats in store's hat and wig department.  (Photographs by Steve Miller for The New York Times)

Copyright 1990 The New York Times Company



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The New York Times

November 25, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

GOVERNMENT AIMS AT A HEART TEST TO TRIM EXPENSES

BYLINE: By MILT FREUDENHEIM

SECTION: Section 1; Part 1; Page 1; Column 6; National Desk

LENGTH: 1448 words

Since the early 1900's, physicians have relied on a brief test called an electrocardiogram to measure the heart's impulses and alert them to signs of problems. And insurers and patients have usually paid whatever the doctor charged for the test.
Now the Government, trying to slow the growth of medical costs to help balance the Federal budget, has decided that physicians are charging too much for the electrocardiogram and 1,400 other procedures they perform on the elderly and disabled patients insured by the Federal Medicare program. 
 It plans to save $725 million over four years by trimming about 40 percent from payments for this heart test. Many heart specialists and spokesmen for other medical specialties are angry, and say they hope to persuade Congress to change the law before it goes into effect.
 
Battle on Many Fronts
 The battle is a prime example of many being fought between the people who pay for medical care and those who provide it. Medicare has already sharply reduced its payments to doctors for cataract surgery, reading X-rays and other diagnostic tests, and is planning further cuts in many other procedures. At issue in these cases is whether doctors have raised their fees too high, well aware that payment will come in most cases not from the patient but from the Government or a faceless private insurer with seemingly deep pockets.
In challenging the payments for electrocardiograms, the Government's rationale is simple, said Tom Scully, associate director of the Office of Management and Budget: "Should doctors get paid an additional $20 to $30 for reading an electrocardiogram, which normally takes an average of 30 seconds to 60 seconds to read, when they are already being paid" for doing the tests and for interpreting other tests in the price of an office visit? In an electrocardiogram, wires placed on the chest and limbs pick up patterns of electricity generated by the heart, which are recorded on a paper chart.
 
'Potentially Harmful'
 Physicians argue that reading an electrocardiogram can be important in life-and-death situations, requires specialized knowledge and should be paid for accordingly. They also say their charges for electrocardiograms partly compensate for inadequate Medicare payments for the office visit.
"The law is potentially harmful to the patient and unfair to the physician," said Dr. Adolph M. Hutter, a heart specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital and vice president of the American College of Cardiology. Reducing payments "will be a tremendous financial disincentive" for doctors to perform an electrocardiogram, which could mean that an important diagnosis might be missed, he said.
Medicare paid doctors $470 million for 29 million electrocardiograms that the Government classified as routine in 1988, the latest year for which statistics are available. The expenditure caught the attention of Congressional and White House negotiators last month as they searched for items to trim in the 1991 budget. Some negotiators -- it cannot be determined exactly who, since no one is now willing to accept responsibility -- suggested that savings could be realized by eliminating payments to doctors for interpreting the routine electrocardiograms.
Currently, Medicare pays an average of $20 for doing a routine electrocardiogram and an average of $12.50 more for interpreting the test. Some doctors may have been charging an additional amount to the patient. Medicare also pays $25 for the office visit during which the test was administered. (Electrocardiograms given to patients admitted to a hospital are paid for under different rules.)
 
Assertions of Overpricing
 "There is no doubt that the electrocardiogram tests were overpriced," said Dr. John M. Eisenberg, an internist and professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania who is a member of a Congressional advisory commission on payments to physicians. "A modestly trained person can perform an electrocardiogram and provide it to the physician for interpretation. And the equipment is relatively inexpensive." The equipment typically costs $2,000 to $15,000, depending on how sophisticated it is.
Dr. Eisenberg said if a physician is uncertain about how to interpret a test, the results can be sent electronically to a hospital or specialist for a quick review. Specialists themselves can then bill Medicare.
William Hsiao, a medical economist at the Harvard School of Public Health who has directed Federally financed studies of Medicare payments, found that a typical office visit to an internist required four times as much time and six times as much mental effort, clinical judgment and technical skillas taking and interpreting a routine electrocardiogram. Yet Medicare currently pays an average of only $25 for the typical office visit, and $34 for a typical electrocardiogram.
Fearful of Budget Squeeze
Recognizing that problem, Medicare expects to pay about one-third more for each office visit under fee schedules that go into effect in 1992. But many physicians wonder whether they will ever see those increases, given the budget squeeze.
In the search for budget cuts last month, the House voted to eliminate the Medicare payment for interpreting routine electrocardiograms. But Senate Finance Committee staff members noted that there had been little chance to consult with doctors and health economists. So the reductions were put off at least until January 1992 to allow time for further study.
Under the budget agreement signed by President Bush, Medicare will still pay physicians for administering the routine electrocardiogram. And the program will still pay for the interpretations of tests classified as more complex, like electrocardiograms during exercise on a treadmill.
"The fight will be over which electrocardiograms are, by definition, non-routine," said Gail R. Wilensky, who heads the Government agency that operates Medicare.
What Is Routine?
Indeed, some doctors argue that hardly any electrocardiogram for a Medicare patient should be classified as routine. "Very few electrocardiograms are done as a routine," said Dr. Glen F. Auckerman, the president of the American Academy of Family Physicians. He said his patients in rural Jackson Center, Ohio, are often people "who come in complaining of chest pains and passing-out spells, or emergency rescue squad patients."
Budget negotiators estimated that the cuts in payments for electrocardiograms would yield only half the potential savings because some doctors would compensate by increasing other charges. "Physicians have become very sophisicated in figuring out how to get paid," said Representative Pete Stark, a California Democrat who is chairman of the Ways and Means subcommittee on health. "It is always a close call: 'Is this a routine or complex procedure?' "
The agreed-upon savings on electrocardiograms of $725 million over four years would be part of $9 billion to be subtracted from Medicare payments to doctors in the budget law. All told, Medicare payments are to be cut by $34 billion over five years, with most of the rest coming from payments to hospitals. The program will get $10 billion more from increases in premiums and deductions paid by people receiving Medicare. (Working people will pay $26 billion in added payroll taxes.)
 
Doctors Are Critical
 Spokesmen for doctors criticized the cuts. "Every time you take more money out of the system it means you can provide less services," said Dr. James S. Todd, executive vice president of the American Medical Association.
While Medicare paid for 29 million routine electrocardiograms and 3 million classified as complex, about 136 million more were given to patients covered by other insurance programs or paying out of their own pockets. While doctors often try to make up for Medicare cuts by charging their other patients more, private insurers often fight back by following Medicare's example in how much they will pay. As a result, many private insurers will probably lower their payments for electrocardiograms, adding to the financial pressure on the doctor.
The Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, for example, pays separately for electrocardiogram interpretations, but some insurers like Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas already do not allow such charges.
No one seems ready to take responsibility for the electrocardiogram cuts. Mr. Scully, the White House budget negotiator, said the idea had come from the House Ways and Means Committee. Committee members said that was not so.
"This proposal did not come from Congress," Representative Stark said. "It came from the Administration."

LOAD-DATE: November 25, 1990

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Chart: Amount Medicare currently pays for electrocardiograms and office visits (Source: Harvard University study for Federal Health Care Financing Administration) (pg. 32)

Copyright 1990 The New York Times Company



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The New York Times

November 26, 1990, Monday, Late Edition - Final

Less Visible but Heavier Burdens As AIDS Attacks People Over 50

BYLINE: By NADINE BROZAN

SECTION: Section A; Page 1; Column 5; National Desk

LENGTH: 1914 words

Hidden for years by secrecy, shame and in some cases the assumption that their symptoms were simply those of aging, a growing number of older people are emerging as victims of AIDS.
AIDS now occurs far more frequently in people over the age of 50 -- classified as older by those who treat and study AIDS -- than among children under the age of 13. 
 According to the most recent data from the Federal Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, there have been 15,696 cases reported in people over 50 as against 2,686 in children under 13. Older people account for 10 percent of the more than 150,000 AIDS cases reported to the Government.
 
Realization of Danger
 "This topic is one that a year ago no one was talking about, and now it has come of age," said Len McNally, program officer for the New York Community Trust, which finances AIDS programs, and former director of the Village Nursing Home AIDS program in Greenwich Village.
 Although Federal statistics show that the majority of people over 50 who have AIDS are homosexual or bisexual men who contracted the disease through sexual intercourse, about 17 percent of the victims came in contact with the virus through tainted blood transfusions before routine screening began in 1985. Because older people are more likely to undergo surgery, they were more susceptible than younger people to AIDS transmission through blood transfusions.
Although little research has been done on AIDS among older people, experts say the prevalence of the disease among them raises a number of challenges, medically and socially. From a medical standpoint there are signs that the disease progresses through an older body faster, and that it causes more severe afflictions. There is also the risk of delayed diagnosis because many of the initial symptoms of acquired immune deficiency syndrome, like muscle weakness or forgetfulness, are hallmarks of aging.
"Every ache, I wonder if it's AIDS or aging," said Patrick Moriarty, a 58-year-old social worker in Manhattan, who was diagnosed with AIDS-related complex in 1987.
Socially, AIDS is an added burden among people who came of age before the sexual permissiveness of the 1960's. "If the stigma is hard for the young to bear, it is 10 times worse for the elderly," said Richenda Kramer, a caseworker with the Community Agency for Senior Citizens on Staten Island. "So they sometimes tell their neighbors and friends they have something else, cancer or an operation."
 
'A Far Wider Problem'
 Ms. Kramer and other social workers who regularly come into contact with older people said the numbers given by the Federal Government probably understate the extent of those with AIDS. During routine evaluations, she recently identified eight older people with AIDS. "If I picked up eight people on Staten Island through casual conversations about medications or symptoms, then I decided this must be a far wider problem than we know," she said.
Ms. Kramer, who brings meals to homebound AIDS patients for an organzation called God's Love We Deliver and who is a volunteer with the Gay Men's Health Crisis, was a speaker at a conference held last month by the New York City Department for the Aging.
The conference was entitled "Older People and HIV/AIDS Issues: How Can We Help?" and drew an overflow crowd. It was viewed as an indicationof the new attention being given to older people with AIDS. There are other signals too, like a new effort at sex education in senior citizens centers around New York City, discussion groups for older AIDS patients, and a proliferation of articles in geriatrics publications.
But such efforts tend to be concentrated in New York and remain the exception. In most parts of the country, there seem to be few attempts to reach older people with AIDS. In particular, there has been little medical research to determine if the virus runs its course differently in an older body than in a younger one and how it interacts with the normal infirmities of age.
 
Some Dates Can Be Pinpointed
 Some experts say the disease progresses more rapidly in older people, and that for them its symptoms may be more severe. Dr. William Adler, chief of the National Institute on Aging's clinical immunology section, said, "The development of AIDS in older people who contracted it through blood transfusions seems to occur almost twice as fast as it does in children getting transfusions."
It is impossible, he said, to compare how long different age groups survive when the disease was acquired through sexual contact or intravenous drug use, but in cases involving transfusions, the date of exposure can be pinpointed, "and when we compare children with older people, the older people developed infections that moved more swiftly and were more severe. Patients who are over 60 tend to survive less than two years from the time they are infected, whereas children who contract it in utero survive about five years, and those who get it from blood products, from five to seven years."
Once older people develop the illness, they are less able to fight off the opportunistic infections that come with loss of immunity. "In the normal aging process, people develop a defective T-cell function," Dr. Adler said, referring to the cells of the immune system that are the primary defense against virus infections, "and that is exactly what happens in AIDS. So in the older people you have two things occurring, a natural age-related loss of T-cell function plus the loss through AIDS. It's like throwing gasoline on a fire. As a result, the system breaks down faster."
 
Drug Interaction a Problem
 Dr. Adler has been studying the progression of the disease in people over 60 at the Johns Hopkins Clinic for HIV Infected Individuals, which has treated 45 patients 60 or older in the last three years. Among other things, he and his colleagues have found that it is more difficult to treat older patients because of the likelihood that they were already taking other medications.
"So you have the problem of powerful drugs with powerful side effects," he said, "which may interact with what they are already taking, and which may adversely affect the conditions for which they were taking those other drugs."
But Dr. Adler's work is being replicated in few places, and doctors and social service providers say more intensive research on AIDS among older people is needed. They note, for instance, that with the help of life-extending drugs like AZT, more and more people are expected to survive into later years.
As Dr. David Rose, director of the Mount Sinai AIDS Center in Manhattan, put it, "I have lots of patients in the 40- to 50-year age range, and I intend to keep them alive."
Questions about the social and emotional problems of older AIDS patients remain unanswered as well. "We have little pieces of information, but the picture that we get is extremely fragmented," said Dr. Joseph Catania, senior scientist with the Center for AIDS Prevention Studies at the University of California at San Francisco. "For example, no one has ever done a study taking a representative sample of older people to determine what the sexual behavior has been."
 
Older Women Vulnerable
 In some cases, patients who contracted AIDS through transfusions unknowingly pass it on to spouses through sexual intercourse.
Older women may be more susceptible than their younger counterparts, Dr. Catania said. "There is a tiny bit of evidence that shows that sexual transmission is more efficient in older people," she said. "Older women experience vaginal changes postmenopausally, some developing fissures in the vaginal wall that may become sites for infection."
Mr. McNally of the New York Community Trust said: "We would like to think that grandmother, 70 years old, is home free, but that may not necessarily be so. If a couple is monogamous and still sexually active, and one member had a blood transfusion six years ago, they would still be at risk."
But efforts to educate the elderly about precautions are rare. "We talk about safe sex in the schools but not amoung our seniors, and that is baced on erroneous assumptions," said Arlene Kochman, program director of Senior Action in a Gay Environment, which is commonly known as SAGE.
Since September, her organization has been under contract to the New York City Human Resources Administration to conduct weekly training sessions in 28 senior citizens centers. "I give them a small lecture on AIDS, and we talk about sexual activity and transmission," Ms. Kochman said. "I always take along a supply of condoms, and I have yet to bring any home."
 
Mistaken for Alzheimer's
 Older people with AIDS face a daunting series of obstacles, starting with the presumption that they are not sexually active, that keeps doctors from suspecting AIDS. Because many of the symptoms -- fatigue, muscle weakness, rashes, coughs, forgetfulness and dementia -- resemble classic markers of aging, doctors tends to dismiss complaints. Frequently, AIDS or its precursor is diagnosed as Alzheimer's disease.
"Symptoms that jump out at you in the young, a very high fever, a terrible cough, do not do so in the aged," said Dr. Wayne C. McCormick, an internist and geriatrician who runs a longterm care unit at Harborview Medicial Center in Seattle. Dr. McCormick said he had cared for at least two dozen older AIDS patients in the last few years.
Once AIDS is diagnosed, there are the social and emotional problems facing older patients.
Karen Solomon, director of support services for Body Positive, a self-help organization in New York City, remembers how her mother felt after she contracted AIDS through a blood transfusion during cancer surgery.
"Let's tell people I have cancer," her mother would say. "If they think I have cancer, they will feel sorry for me and be there. If they know it's AIDS, they won't want to do their laundry next to me." Ms. Solomon's mother died of AIDS in 1987 at the age of 63.
 
Captives of Their Times
 No generation feels the stigma of AIDS more deeply than the one raised to consider homosexuality immoral and unnatural. "We were very repressed sexually," Mr. Moriarty said. "The church saw us as sinners, the legal system as criminals, the medical profession as sick. Some of that has changed, some barriers are still up there, but we still feel self-hatred, self-imposed homophobia."
Sidney Morris, a playwright who is HIV positive, said, "We came of age in the 1940's and 1950's, when gay men could go to jail for years for making an approach to the wrong person." Explaining that his speech at the conference was the first time he had publicly spoken about "what it means to be an elderly HIV person," he said: "I am confused by what has happened to my body. I am embarrassed about it. My disease annnounces to everyone that I engaged in anal intercourse. Maybe at 61 I should just lie down and quit complaining."
He said he had considered suicide when he learned four months ago that he would have to take AZT but rejected the idea. "I have written a musical called 'We've Got Today,' which opens Dec. 11 at the Wings Theater, 154 Christopher Street, so how can I end my life now?" he said, adding that the medication has improved his condition.
"When you see that patient with a disfigured face, remember that he may have been a model or an actor. Inside the elderly like me might be a little boy who is absolutley terrified."

LOAD-DATE: November 26, 1990

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: "Every ache, I wonder if it's AIDS or aging," said Patrick Moriarty, a 58-year-old social worker, who has AIDS-related complex. (Sara Krulwich/The New York Times); Graph: Total number of AIDS cases diagnosed in the U.S. by age at time of diagnosis (Source: Centers for Disease Control) (pg. A16)

Copyright 1990 The New York Times Company



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The New York Times

November 27, 1990, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

1918 Gift Yields Home for Elderly Retarded

BYLINE: AP

SECTION: Section A; Page 20; Column 5; National Desk

LENGTH: 148 words

DATELINE: PITTSBURGH, Nov. 26

A $2,200 gift by a poet 72 years ago has swelled nearly a hundredfold and will be used to establish a group home for elderly retarded people.
Henry C. Burns, who was a childless widower when he died in 1918, left $2,207.21 in trust along with a collection of his poetry and prose. He directed that the trust be used to pay for housing for the elderly retarded once it reached $175,000.
The account, held at Pittsburgh National Bank, now stands at almost $215,000, bank officials said.
The money will go to Allegheny County, which began searching for a site this month.
Mr. Burns's will instructed that copies of a collection of his poems and prose writings be kept at the home "for general use and reading."
But residents of the home will not be able to read the books. Bank officials do not know what happened to the volumes, which were last referred to in records in March 1924.

LOAD-DATE: November 27, 1990

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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The New York Times

November 28, 1990, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final
Correction Appended

Study Links Estrogen to Cancer, but Risk Is Slight

BYLINE: By GINA KOLATA

SECTION: Section A; Page 18; Column 4; National Desk

LENGTH: 820 words

The largest study of its kind ever conducted has found that women who take estrogen after menopause run an increased risk of developing breast cancer.
But experts said the findings did not mean that post-menopausal women should stop taking estrogen. The benefits of the drug are great, they said, and the increased risk of breast cancer is relatively small. 
 The researchers, led by Dr. Graham A. Colditz of Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, also found that a year after women stop taking the female sex hormones, the eadditional risk of breast cancer subsides.
Epidemiologists and experts on breast cancer said the new study was notable because of its size and design. "This is a very important study," said Dr. Malcolm Pike, an epidemiologist at the University of Southern California who has studied the link between estrogen and breast cancer.
 
Some Benefits and Risks
 Cancer researchers have spent years trying to clarify the risks women may face when they take estrogen after menopause. The hormone can prevent a dangerous loss of calcium from bones that occurs when the body's estrogen production falls at menopause. Estrogen may also prevent heart disease, the leading killer of older women.
Studies have shown that estrogen can cause cancer of the uterus, a relatively rare and much less dangerous cancer. Far more troubling were studies suggesting that taking estrogen might also contribute to breast cancer, a major cause of death in women.
The researchers followed 121,700 female nurses for 10 years, recording whether the women took estrogen after menopause and, if so, for how long.
They found that women taking estrogen were 30 to 40 percent more likely to develop breast cancer than those who did not take the hormone. But this risk is considered small; it is only about half the risk a woman faces if her mother had breast cancer.
 
Reducing Heart Disease
 Although women should know about the effects of estrogen, "the benefits almost certainly outweigh the cost in terms of risk," said Dr. I. Bruce Henderson, a cancer researcher at Harvard Medical School.
For example, he said, if a woman has osteoporosis, a bone disease associated with a loss of calcium, she should be given estrogen. And it "unequivocally" helps women who suffer hot flashes with menopause, he said.
While it has not been fully established how much estrogen helps to reduce heart disease, Dr. Henderson said, "the evidence is growing steadily" that the hormone is beneficial.
Dr. Henderson analyzed 24 previous studies that sought to determine whether the use of estrogen increased the risk of breast cancer. The results have been mixed and most studies have had some drawbacks, he said. Most questioned women after they had been diagnosed with breast cancer and compared their answers to those of women who did not have breast cancer. Such studies are often criticized because the women with cancer may be more likely to recall taking estrogen as they seek to determine why they got the disease.
 
Growth of Breast Tissue
 But many researchers are highly suspicious of estrogen because the idea that it causes cancer fits into their notion of how breast cancers grow.
Epidemiologists have noted that almost anything that increases a woman's exposure to estrogen increases her chances of getting breast cancer. The younger a girl is when she starts to menstruate, the greater her chances of developing breast cancer when she is older. The older a woman is when she stops menstruating, the greater her likelihood of developing breast cancer.
In addition, biologists have found that estrogen stimulates the growth of breast tissue. Many breast cancer cells are actually fueled by estrogen. The cancer cells have proteins protruding from them that latch onto estrogen and use the hormone to stimulate their growth.
 
Effects Last for a Year
 Dr. Colditz said the only surprising finding in his study is that the effects of estrogen go away a year after a woman stops taking the hormone. Previous studies may have failed to notice this, he said, because they did not specifically assess how much time had elapsed between the use of estrogen and the development of the cancer.
"What we can say pretty confidently is that the effects of estrogen on inducing breast cancer are almost certainly real and they are almost certainly small," Dr. Henderson said.
Dr. Pike said women would have to weigh the evidence themselves, but noted that studies in Los Angeles showed that, on the whole, "women on long-term estrogen therapy live four years longer than women who don't take estrogen."
Dr. Louise Brinton, who is chief of environmental studies at the National Cancer Institue in Bethesda, Md., said, "It is clear the benefits of estrogen outweigh the risks."
But, he added, "It's kind of hard to juggle these things, particularly for a woman who has a major fear of breast cancer."

LOAD-DATE: November 29, 1990

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

CORRECTION-DATE: November 29, 1990, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

 CORRECTION:
An article yesterday about a study of estrogen and breast cancer omitted the name of the medical journal that reported the research. It is The Journal of the American Medical Association. The article also misidentified a cancer researcher at Harvard Medical School. He is Dr. I. Craig Henderson. Because of an editing error, the article referred incorrectly to an epidemiologist at the National Cancer Institute. The epidemiologist is a woman, Dr. Louise Brinton.

Copyright 1990 The New York Times Company



414 of 468 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times

November 29, 1990, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

Personal Health

BYLINE: By Jane E. Brody

SECTION: Section B; Page 17; Column 1; National Desk; Health Page

LENGTH: 1139 words

While city streets are rife with hazards for the elderly -- from uneven sidewalks to drivers who race through intersections and muggers who prey on the frail and weak -- most older people eel safe in their own homes.
But accident statistics belie this sense of security. Fully 40 percent of deaths because of injuries to people 65 years old and over occur from accidents at home.
 
The Problem
As people age, changes in sensory and physical functions increase their vulnerability to accidental injury. Typical changes may include diminished visual acuity, depth perception, hearing and odor perception; a faltering sense of balance and increased susceptibility to dizziness; decreased agility and strength, and slower movements and reflexes.
Together with more fragile bones, vulnerable joints and impairments caused by medications and chronic ailments, these changes mean older people are more likely to suffer serious disability and even death from accidents.
With winter approaching, the hazards in the home often multiply. People spend more time indoors, and there are fewer hours of daylight as well as an increase in the use of heating devices.
There is no better time than now to do a home-safety check and make changes in living areas occupied by older people.
The Hartford Insurance Group, a subsidiary of the ITT Corporation, recently built a model home with safety improvements, most of which cost well under $100. The company also produced a booklet including 120 suggested safety measures, listing their approximate costs and offering one or more sources that sell recommended items. The booklet, "How to Modify a Home to Accommodate the Needs of an Older Adult," is available from the Hartford Insurance Group, Hartford Plaza, Hartford, Conn. 06115.
 
Steps to a Safer Home
One way to help safeguard the home for the elderly is to make it easier to see and hear. An 80-year-old needs two to three times more illumination than a teen-ager. Place lamps and overhead lights to eliminate shadows. Overhead lighting, operated by switches at top and bottom, is especially important in stairways.
Bulbs of 100 to 200 watts should be used for close work and taking medication. Install fluorescent lights in the kitchen over the sink, stove and work counters.
Night lights should be strategically placed to insure safe trips to the bathroom and kitchen in the night. Also helpful is an entryway light that turns itself on when it starts to get dark, and an emergency light that goes on automatically if electrical power is lost.
Avoid carpets with complex patterns. Use light-colored dishes on darker table coverings or placemats and choose countertop and furniture colors that contrast with the flooring. If floor heights change between rooms, use contrasting floor colors. Secure textured tape in a contrasting color to the edge of each step.
To counter hearing losses, reduce echoes and noise with carpeting, window fabrics, upholstered furniture and acoustical tiles on walls and ceilings. Install a volume adjuster or amplifier on the telephone and provide a cordless headset for watching television.
Another way for the elderly to make the home safer is to counter their lost agility and strength. Replace cylindrical glasses and delicate cups with large-handled mugs. Install handrails from top to bottom on both sides of stairwells, and curve the railings away from the stairs at the bottom to provide a tactile clue to the last step.
Install lever-type handles on kitchen and bathroom faucets and C-shaped pulls on drawers and cabinets. Place cabinets so that the top shelf is easily reached without climbing. In closets, use multilevel shelves and hanging bars to make clothing items more accessible.
The elderly should also take precautions to prevent fires and burns. Appliances that heat up, like irons, space heaters and toasters, should be equipped with an automatic shutoff. (One can be installed if the appliance lacks it.) Use heat-sensitive decals on appliances that say "Stop Hot" when the item is on and use a bathtub thermometer that warns if the water is too hot.
A stove top with staggered burners eliminates the need to reach over hot pots and burners. A stock pot with a deep strainer basket (spaghetti cooker) eliminates the need to empty large pots of boiling water.
A small fire extinguisher should hang in the kitchen, and all occupants should know how to use it without having to stop to read the instructions. And, of course, there should be at least one operating smoke detector on every floor, especially in or near the bedrooms.
Never work around the stove or fireplace in loose-fitting clothing that could accidentally ignite. If a room's electrical outlet capacity has to be increased, use a UL-listed outlet extender that has a circuit breaker.
If an older person sleeps on an upper floor, install a fire escape.
Set the water heater to a nonscalding temperature (120 degrees or lower). Install an adapter under the sink that automatically mixes hot and cold water to a pre-set temperature that prevents scalding. An anti-scald safety valve that reduces the flow of water if it gets too hot can be installed on shower heads and faucets.
The elderly should also make an extra effort to prevent falls. It does not take much to break the bones of most older people, so avoiding falls is of utmost importance. In addition to the stairway safety measures discussed earlier, never leave objects on the steps or the landings.
Avoid placing low-lying furniture like coffee tables, hassocks and stools where the pieces might be tripped over. And if furniture is rearranged, make sure the older person is made familiar with the new setting. Place furniture to steer people around structural hazards like low ceilings or open stairwells.
It is best to cover wood and tile floors with wall-to-wall carpeting with a low pile, or use rubberized tiles that are not waxed. If rugs are used their edges should be fixed to the floor with double-sided rug tape. Do not use scatter rugs. Be sure that all electric cords are placed behind furniture or along the bottom of the wall where they cannot be tripped over.
Use nonskid stick-on decals in the tub and shower or a good rubber mat with strong suction cups.
Mount grab bars in the bathroom, especially next to the toilet and around the tub or shower. Place a shower stool in the tub and attach a hand-held shower hose for sit-down bathing.
If you are taking medication that can cause dizziness, be especially careful when you stand up, particularly when arising from sleep, after eating or getting out of the tub.
In addition to the Hartford booklet, literature on home safety is available from the American Association of Retired Persons, Fulfillment, 1909 K Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20049.

LOAD-DATE: November 29, 1990

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Drawing

Copyright 1990 The New York Times Company



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The New York Times

November 29, 1990, Thursday, Late Edition - Final
Correction Appended

When the Need to Help Won't Take Early Retirement

BYLINE: By PATRICIA LEIGH BROWN

SECTION: Section C; Page 1; Column 5; Home Desk

LENGTH: 1471 words

DATELINE: ASHEVILLE, N.C.

GEORGE KREIDLER, 71 years old, drives a Chevy Cavalier with "A Touch of Class" on his license plate. "You have to have verve," he said.
A former linebacker for the Green Bay Packers with the shoulders to prove it, Mr. Kreidler retired six years ago after 31 years supervising the construction of oil refineries and chemical and nuclear-power plants for the Bechtel Corporation. 
 At age 65, after living all over the country and raising "five girls, one boy and a dog," he settled in Asheville. He now plays a lot of golf and bridge, but his daily routine also includes supervising house construction for the nonprofit Habitat for Humanity, singing with a group of troubadours composed of "16 men and one lovely lady," and taking part in a program at the North Carolina Center for Creative Retirement, in which he is the mentor to a young university athlete.
Founded in 1987, the center, which is on the campus of the University of North Carolina in the gentle furrows of the Blue Ridge mountains, represents the "institutionalizing of an informal trend," said its director, Ronald J. Manheimer. In contrast to a more hedonistic, leisure-oriented view of retirement, the center, which is part of the university, is combining volunteerism and community service with the national movement toward retirement-age learning.
"We're looking at new roles older people are playing and new norms of what it means to be an older person," said the 47-year-old Dr. Manheimer, a philosophy professor by training whose unglamorous campus office is down the hall from the wildlife parasitology laboratory.
Many who have flocked to Asheville represent a new breed of active, independent retiree, for whom a need to help society at large is as important as personal enrichment. " 'Creative retirement' is obviously a catchy phrase," said 61-year-old Charles E. Lilien, a retired foreign service officer and former managing director of First Boston International, now active with the center.
But he added, "As a concept it's useful, because through the center we have an institutional home, an entity that serves as an armature, like a sculptor uses."
While some of its concepts might not be new, the center's comprehensive approach has attracted the attention of many educators and gerontologists. Participants, who number around 2,000 a year and find out about the center mostly by word of mouth, take part in activities that include a College for Seniors; programs that provide mentors for young people; a "leadership for seniors" program that enlists retirees to tutor elementary and high school students; off-campus reading discussion groups, and an annual Senior Wellness Day offering everything from health screening to mall-walking.
Participants share a commitment to social responsibility and the idea that older students "can also be leaders," Dr. Manheimer said. Most of the current crop moved to the region before the center's founding. Although many had audited courses and had volunteered for civic causes, "finding the paths to these roles isn't always easy," he said.
Mr. Kreidler, for example, said the opportunity to counsel a young college athlete about his academic performance and career direction "just tickled me."
"If I've helped some young fellow get associated in life," he said, "I've made my life more full."
"We knew about beer and women," he added, referring to his own college days. "There were many times if someone had squared me up I would have gotten more out of college."
The center's existence reflects broad social and demographic trends, said Harry Moody, the deputy director of the Brookdale Center on Aging at Hunter College in New York. "The notion of creative retirement is bubbling up from the grass roots," he said. "Many options held out to older people view life as a big playpen, but the unfortunate truth is they don't necessarily inspire a purpose in life."
Cathy Ventura-Merkel, a senior education specialist for the American Association of Retired Persons, said older people are increasingly interested in "sharing their wisdom, not retiring from life."
There are more retirees nowadays, and they are better educated: the older population is healthier, the number of people taking early retirement is rising, and their median educational level is going up -- to 12.1 years in 1988, as against 8.7 years in 1970. In 1989, people reaching age 65 could expect to live an average of 17 years longer. The numbers will reach an apex between the years 2010 and 2030, when members of the baby-boom generation turn 65, Ms. Ventura-Merkel said.
Until fairly recently in history, retirement was considered a "brief period of life that only a fraction of the population would experience," said Ken Dychtwald, the chairman and chief executive of Agewave Inc., a market research and consulting concern in Emeryville, Calif. But now, older Americans can expect to spend 20 to 25 percent of their lives retired.
Among the first generation of long-lived retirees, this period was symbolized by leisure, by verdant freshly mowed communities that suggested, Mr. Dychtwald said, "recreationland instead of Disneyland." But values are being reappraised, he said: "The new vision of retirement intermingles work, play, learning and service."
That intermingling was on display in Asheville during a cookie and decaffeinated-coffee break in a bioethics class at the College for Seniors in Owen Hall, when the students -- among them an auto dealer, a nurse, a chemist, an English teacher, three physicists, two doctors, an insurance executive and two clergymen, all retired -- began a noisy debate over whether there should be a market in human body parts.
College classes are taught and attended by the retirees, who pay a fee of $80 a semester. The College for Seniors is one of the center's approaches to what Dr. Manheimer called "imaginative pathfinding." There are more than 130 such institutes for retirement-age students across the country.
The morning also saw 19-year-old Paige McKenzie -- a Phil Collins fan and physics major -- huddled over a spectrometer with her 66-year-old mentor, Edward Schurtz, who has a predilection for baggy sweatshirts, bridge games and classical music.
Miss McKenzie was not sure at first what to make of her older tutor, a retired Du Pont chemical engineer with a Ph.D. degree. And he was not sure what to make of her, since "when I went to school you didn't find young women majoring in physics."
But this "intergenerational research team," as the school calls it, has a dual mission. Mr. Schurtz is getting back into scientific research, while Miss McKenzie gets the benefit of his years at Du Pont and the message, he said, that "she's not alone."
The center operates on a yearly budget of $300,000 to $400,000, about a third of it from the state and the rest from grants and membership fees.  Currently it is wrestling with several problems, like how to keep the retirees involved in the program as they age and lose some mobility. There is also the question of how to reach out to the region's rural, less-affluent and less-educated population. This year the center sponsored a conference about how similar programs might be set up elsewhere.
The center's founding was an acknowledgement of the significant economic and social contributions of the region's relatively privileged retired "amenity migrants," who have long been drawn to western North Carolina's climate, mountains and cultural milieu. The new immigrants are well educated and affluent, spending an average of $16,791 a year in routine purchases and doing volunteer work for an average of 7.4 hours a week, according to a recent study by the center financed by the Appalachian Regional Commission, an economic-development agency.
The volunteerism is not solely altruistic. Evelyn Smith, 64, taught kindergarten and nursery school in private schools in Montgomery County in Maryland for 20 years. She said that when she was approached by center volunteers about tutoring at a public school in Asheville, William Randolph Elementary, she was prompted to do it "because I'm concerned about inequality in our schools."
But there were other motivations. "It makes me feel youthful," she said of helping 7-year-old Kita Banner with her reading. "I'm not doing it to be goody two-shoes."
"Teaching is something I know I can do," she added. "It's nice to be able to do the thing you're good at."
Long on life experience, center participants like Mrs. Smith seem attuned to what makes their generation special. When asked his qualifications for tutoring grade-school students, Marcus D. Beck, who taught school for 21 years after working as a locomotive engineer, listed his job experience on the application. Then he added a P.S.:
"I have my act together."

LOAD-DATE: November 29, 1990

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

CORRECTION-DATE: December 4, 1990, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

 CORRECTION:
An article in The Home Section on Thursday about the North Carolina Center for Creative Retirement referred incorrectly to a participant, George Kreidler. He was a blocking back for the Green Bay Packers in the 1940 exhibition season, and later played with the team's farm club. He was not a linebacker.

GRAPHIC: Photos: Evelyn Smith, a volunteer with the North Carolina Center for Creative Retirement, working with Kita Banner at the William Randolph Elementary School in Asheville. (pg. C1); Edward Schurtz with Paige McKenzie, a college sophomore, at a spectrometer.; Dr. Ronald J. Manheimer, director of the Center for Creative Retirement.; Dr. Melvin Hetland tutoring Michael Wilcox at William Randolph Elementary. (pg. C12) (Photographs by Benjamin Porter for The New York Times)

Copyright 1990 The New York Times Company



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The New York Times

December 1, 1990, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

F.D.A. Seeks Labeling That Would List Effects Of Drugs on the Elderly

BYLINE: By LEONARD SLOANE

SECTION: Section 1; Page 50; Column 1; Style Desk; Consumer's World Page

LENGTH: 723 words

The elderly often react differently to medication than younger people, but drug companies are not required to spell out these differences. If a new proposal by the Food and Drug Administration is approved, however, the dangers will be made known to doctors and pharmacists.
The agency, which approves the sale and use of all prescription drugs in the United States, issued a guideline last March strongly encouraging drug manufacturers to evaluate the effects of new drugs on people over 65. Under the new proposal, such information would also appear on the package insert that must accompany pharmaceuticals and usually is printed in the Physicians Desk Reference. In addition, if no information is available on how a drug affects the elderly, that would have to be stated. 
 The package insert already includes information on precautions and adverse reactions to the general population. But adding the information on geriatric use would not be of much use to older consumers unless it is available in a way that they can understand, experts say.
 
Little Data Is Clear
 Ninety-seven percent of all materials on drugs written for patients cannot be understood by the average consumer, according to Dorothy L. Smith, president of the Consumer Health Information Corporation, a company in McLean, Va., that specializes in patient education.
"My concern is that there is more than just handing out a list of tips to patients," she said. "I think that elderly persons need practical and concise instructions in language they can understand."
Daniel Thursz, president of the National Council on the Aging, said that although the F.D.A. proposal was useful, it did not go far enough. "If the information is in 4-point type on a leaflet nobody can read packed into the container, that's not going to be very effective," he said.
Among the actions Mr. Thursz said were necessary but not part of the F.D.A. proposal was making labels on drug bottles easier to read. "Most older people have vision problems and can get confused about their various prescription drugs," he said.
People over 65 make up only about 12 percent of the United States population, but they consume more than 30 percent of prescription drugs and 40 percent of nonprescription medicine. About 95 percent of older adults take medicine without supervision and 86 percent of this age group have one or more chronic disorders.
"There are many, many examples in which age itself should influence how you use a particular drug," said Dr. Robert Temple, a director of drug evaluation at the F.D.A. "With old people, start low and go slow is not bad advice unless you have other information."
Drugs for the kidneys or the liver are among those that usually are prescribed with lower dosages for the elderly because the organs lose of their function with age.
"The reality is that there is a large number of drugs on which we need information on geriatric dosage," said Philip P. Gerbino, president of the American Pharmaceutical Association, the national professional association of pharmacists. "We're still not there yet."
When improper drug use is minimized, expensive treatment and hospital-care costs can sometimes be avoided. For example, taking warfarin, a blood thinner, at the same time as aspirin can cause life-threatening bleeding in the elderly, said Dr. Smith of the Consumer Health Information Corporation.
So, physicians and pharmacists generally support the idea of providing the elderly with more information on the drugs they use. Dr. Raymond Scalettar, a Washington internist who is a trustee of the American Medical Association, said the information the F.D.A. proposal would provide "will serve as a flag and a warning to check the specific information when prescribing medication."
Dr. John F. Beary 3d, a senior vice president of the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association, said, "The more you can do to make the explosion of knowledge about drugs and the elderly useful, the better doctors are going to be able to treat their patients."
Comments on the new proposal may be sent until Dec. 31 to the Food and Drug Administration, Room 4-62, 5600 Fishers Lane, Rockville, Md. 20857. After the agency issues its final ruling, drug producers will have a year to comply by updating the labels of their prescription products.

LOAD-DATE: December 1, 1990

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Many elderly people take multiple medications, and booklets like this allow them and their doctors and pharmacists to keep track.
 
Graphic: Warning for the Elderly
 
Here are some commonlty used prescription drugs that can have side effects that afflict the elderly, according to Dr. Lawrence Scharer, chairman of the Committee on Retired Persons and the Aging of the New York State Soceity of Internal Medicine.


 	 	 
PURPOSE	DRUG TYPE	BRAND NAMES
 	 	 
Tranquilizer	Benzodiazepines	Valium
Heart regulator	Digitalis	Lanoxin
Thyroid regulator	Thyroxine	Synthroid
Sleeping pill	Barbituates	Seconal
Diuretic	Thiasides	Hydrodiuril

 
Some Questions to Ask
 
The elderly often suffer from a variety of ailments, and commonly used drugs can interact badly, with severe side effects. While all patients who take prescription drugs should be wary, it is especially important for the elderly to ask specific questions. Here are some recommended by the National Council on the Aging and the National Council on Patient information and Education.
 
For the Doctor:
 
What foods, drinks and other medications or activites should I avoid?
What are the side effects and what do I do if they occur?
 
For the Pharmacist:
 
Is there anything in my medication history that could cause problems if I take this?

Copyright 1990 The New York Times Company



417 of 468 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times

December 2, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Talking: Age Limits;
Condos Face Loss Of Control

BYLINE: By ANDREE BROOKS

SECTION: Section 10; Page 5; Column 1; Real Estate Desk

LENGTH: 1121 words

THE combined impact of the Federal Fair Housing Amendments Act of 1988 and the fluid patterns of contemporary family life are eroding the ability of dozens of the country's 26,000 age-restricted condominiums to maintain those restrictions.
The act, intended to protect young families with children and others from housing discrimination, has provisions permitting exemptions for age-restricted communities. But gaining an exemption is proving too tough for most. 
 "Its a mess," said Michael J. Brudny, a lawyer in Tampa, Fla., who has written on the topic and is lobbying to help save these associations from the effect of the growing numbers of legal and regulatory challenges.
 In the meantime, many are being advised by their lawyers to remove any mention of age restrictions from their documents or face costly suits. Even those that choose to hold onto an age-restricted status by carefully complying with all the new Federal requirements may find it hard to do.
 In an age-restricted condominium, a buyer must reach a certain age -- say, 45 years -- before being allowed to purchase a unit. Such communities have flourished in New Jersey, Connecticut, Florida, California and Arizona. Virtually all exclude children, the intent being to let older adults live in tranquility, although children can normally stay over as guests for a few weeks or so.
 Until recently, courts have tended to uphold these restrictions on residency. However, the passage of the Fair Housing Amendments Act, which tightened the rules that allow age-restricted condominiums to remain exempt from discrimination charges, has been changing that. "We find that less than 25 percent of these associations qualify for exemption," said Gary Poliakoff, a Fort Lauderdale, Fla., lawyer specializing in condominiums.
 To qualify, a condominium must pass a triple test: 80 percent of its occupants (and at least one per unit) must be 55 or older; it must provide facilities or services specifically designed for older people, and it must publish and adhere to policies that show a clear intent to provide housing for people over 55.
 The Department of Housing and Urban Development, which administers the act, is having difficulty granting any age-restricted condominium permanent exemption status, since the prevailing age of the residents and the nature of the programs are in constant flux, making them eligible one year and perhaps ineligible the next.
 In just the last few months, Mr. Brudny noted, suits have been filed in Orlando, Fla., by a local real estate agency and residents of the seven single-family retirement subdivisions in Williamsburg, just south of Orlando, with a total of more than 2,500 homes. The agency and the residents insist that the right to rent or sell their units is being unfairly curtailed because the communities, fearful of losing their age-restricted status, adopted new restrictions.
"There's a big rental market out here that comes from the workers at Sea World," Mr. Brudny said, "and the residents don't want to lose out." Early in November, H.U.D. denied the subdivisions their age-restricted status.
Some 50 board members of the seven homeowner associations have been personally sued for damages, noted Mr. Brudny, and this could result in a signficant personal financial loss since some associations did not cover their boards for this type of liability.
 Elsewhere, associations intent upon safeguarding their age-restricted status are finding that the wording in their documents spelling out the specifics of the age restrictions may be inadequate. Unless that wording is modified -- which is not easy, since this normally needs the approval two-thirds of the unit owners -- lawyers are warning that the demographic make-up of the complex could tilt to a point where it would not qualify for exemption under the new Federal law.
 Life-style changes include the increasing number of older residents who choose to live with younger partners to whom they are not married and the growing practice of having a child live part of the week with one parent and part with another, thus being neither a guest nor a permanent resident of either household.
SADOW LAKE VILLAGE, a 952-unit age-restricted condominium in Middletown, N.J., was recently embroiled in this sort of dispute. It involved Phillip Zampella, a 56-year-old unit owner, and Pamela King, his 46-year-old companion. When Ms. King moved in, she brought along her 12-year-old daughter, who lived in the unit part of each week.
 Arguments hinged on what constituted an eligible under-age live-in companion as defined by the documents (the association insisted it was limited to someone like a nurse or a domestic). Also, what type of living arrangements separated a bona fide guest from a permanent resident. The association lost, and both Ms. King and her daughter were permitted to remain.
 George Nowack Jr., an Atlanta lawyer specializing in condominiums, warns associations that before threatening to sue any resident for violating an age-restricted convenant, the board should have its lawyer determine whether the association can meet the three-part test. "Otherwise you could get cited by H.U.D. for discrimination and face a fine up to $100,000," he said. The association may also need to clarify the way it defines its age restrictions.
 Any unit owner who is asked to remove an under-age violator, said Mr. Nowack, may file a discrimination complaint with the local H.U.D. office rather than go to court. There is no charge and H.U.D. officials say they have processed more than 300 such complaints since the law was passed. Most were settled before they came up for official review, said Frank Keating, H.U.D.'s general counsel.
 An association may also decide not to pursue the fight, especially if it might fail the exemption test. Instead, it could vote to lift all age restrictions, as happened at Heritage Cove, a 104-unit condominium in Essex, Conn., when such a fight seemed imminent last year. "It would have cost a fortune to comply," said Bob Stannard, on-site manager.
 The move may not radically change the composition of the complex. Managers note that younger families usually prefer to live nearpeople like themselves. Moreover, some communities and their facilities are not suitable for young families.
 If the two-thirds-majority vote needed to overturn the age-restriction cannot be obtained and the condominium cannot pass the three-part test, lawyers recommend that the board approve a motion stating that the restrictions will not be enforced. Then the motion should be filed with the land records. "Otherwise," warned Mr. Nowack, "the association could still be vulnerable to fines."

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December 2, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Tenafly Journal;
Raising Money Themselves, the Elderly Expand Their Center

BYLINE: By JAY ROMANO

SECTION: Section 12NJ; Page 2; Column 1; New Jersey Weekly Desk

LENGTH: 1176 words

DATELINE: TENAFLY

ARRIVING with pitchers of punch and cartons of chocolate chip cookies, more than 250 elderly residents of Tenafly gathered recently for an afternoon of songs, speeches and a liberal amount of well-deserved mutual appreciation.
Filling every available seat and lining the side and rear walls of the Tenafly Senior Center here, the crowd robustly applauded as organizers officially dedicated the center's 1,500-square-foot addition. 
 Though the fanfare might have seemed exaggerated for such a minor municipal improvement, this particular project was unusual in that the money used to build the addition was raised by the members of the center itself.
"They took the bull by the horns," said Mayor Richard K. Van Nostrand. "They needed more space, but when they came to the Council for the money, we just didn't have it to give to them. So they went out and raised it themselves."
Using a smorgasbord of techniques, the members of the center pooled their talents and their energies. Over three years they raised $120,000 in cash and then were awarded a $70,000 Federal Housing and Urban Development grant for a kicker.
 
'A Grass-Roots Effort'
 "This was a grass-roots effort," said Gay Schenck, director of the 14-year-old center.  "You're always hearing so much negative news about people being short of money.  Well, these senior citizens went out and raised $120,000 on their own. We think it's a major achievement."
When the group was originally formed, Ms. Schenck said, it held meetings and activities at the Tenafly Elks lodge in town. Then, as membership increased, the Tenafly Board of Education donated two portable classrooms that were bolted together to form offices and an activities room. A few years later, she said, a third classroom was added.
But even that was not enough to accommodate the growing number of the borough's elderly people who were using the center.
Alice M. McNeil, the center's full-time volunteer office manager, explained what it had been like.
"When you have a French class and a beading class side by side, neither can concentrate," said Mrs. McNeil, 75 years old.  "And then when the tap-dancers come in, there's just too much confusion."
As a result, she said, the members decided that they were going to build a permanent addition to the three classrooms. All that remained was to figure out a way to raise the funds, Mrs. McNeil said.
The fund-raising committee, however, was not so naive as to think that it could just walk into Borough Hall and come out with a commitment for a new building.
"We knew they really weren't in a position to give any money to us," Mrs. McNeil said.  "But they did give us their mailing list."
The list, it seems, became the crucial element of the fund-raising effort; the list contained the names and addresses of all the borough's property owners.
With that list, the group had what it needed to start a direct-mail campaign that could make many Madison Avenue advertising executives sit up and take notice.
"We sent out about 5,000 letters and we got donations back from almost 900 people," Mrs. McNeil said.
Among direct-mail solicitors, a 2 percent response rate is often considered a success; a 20 percent response is considered nothing less than a miracle.
"We put the money into C.D.'s so we would get a good rate of interest," Mrs. McNeil added.
At least part of the reason for the success of the mailing was a personal touch that the members had added on their own, said Toussia Pines, 73, a founder of the center.
As the mailing was being prepared, she said, members would go through the list looking for names they recognized. When they found one, they would add a handwritten note of their own saying how much the donation would mean to the residents of Tenafly and to the people who used the center.
"It was tremendously hard work," Mrs. Pines said. "But it was really very gratifying."
And successful. Some of the donations that came back were in the thousands of dollars.
"There were several significant donors," Mrs. Pines said, declining to be more specific.
But even a group of overachieving elderly residents couldn't raise all the money needed with just a direct-mail campaign.
"We had a big three-day bazaar," Mrs. McNeil said. "People had given us real good items, a lot of antiques."
Mrs. McNeil said that some of the antiques were so valuable, however, that they were later sold at auction rather than at the bazaar.
In addition to the bazaar, she said, the fund-raising committee also held a "Night of Stars" that attracted some well-known professional performers and included some lesser known but equally entertaining local acts.
<> <> "Our Mayor played the piano," Mrs. McNeil said. "He came dressed as Liberace, candelabra and all."
While the committee was hard at work soliciting donations, Ann Bucher, 61, was busy cajoling the Department of Housing and Urban Development to contribute its share as well.
"They were very cooperative," Mrs. Bucher said, referring to H.U.D. employees in the Hackensack office, where the group filed its application for a grant.
Mrs. Bucher did not seem particularly surprised that the group's application made its way through the oftencumbersome grant review process so quickly, or that the original request for $70,000 was approved.
"We filled out the application, it was signed by the Mayor and we sent it in," she said.
The payoff for the group's three years of hard work came just a few weeks ago when the center addition was officially dedicated.  Hundreds of Tenafly's elderly turned out for the event, which was held in the center's activities room. Bright sunlight arched through the skylights of the new addition, making the room, and the spirits of those in attendance, almost luminous.
Organizers spoke of the hard work and dedication of the fund-raising committee and all the members who were involved in the drive. Plaques were presented, gifts were given and an inspirational invocation was delivered by the Rev. Robert W. Wolfe of Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church.
 
Melodies, Cookies and Punch
 After the official portion of the dedication ceremony, the Tenafly Tenetones, a group of 15 of the borough's most melodious elderly residents, entertained the gathering with a spirited performance. Cookies and punch immediately followed.
"It's beautiful, isn't it?" said Iafet Roveta, 78, a Tenafly resident since 1935. "I never came here too often, but I think that now I will."
Mr. Roveta's wife, Rose, said she participated in the fund-raising effort by baking cakes for the three-day bazaar. "We all wanted it so badly," Mrs. Roveta said of the new addition.
The couple were soon approached by a beaming Tenafly Tenetone, Norma Tobin.
"I used to baby-sit for her," the 91-year-old Mrs. Tobin said of the 79-year-old Mrs. Roveta. Unlike Mrs. Roveta, however, Mrs. Tobin is not a native of Tenafly.
"I only came here in 1902," she said, as she continued her tour of the new center.
"This is wonderful," she said, disappearing into the crowd.

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GRAPHIC: Photo: David Eifleor, foreground, and Larry Wertheimer during an art class at the Tenafly Senior Center. Helping the two was Ruth Rieber, an instructor. Last month the center dedicated a 1,500-square-foot addition. (John Sotomayor/The New York Times)

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The New York Times

December 2, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

A Tradition of Generosity: Remember the Neediest Cases Fund;
Soup Kitchen Dishes Out Survival

BYLINE: By JONATHAN RABINOVITZ

SECTION: Section 1; Part 2; Page 85; Column 2; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 1037 words

In many respects, it is just another cafeteria, like the thousands in elementary schools and colleges across the country that serve Mediterranean split pea casserole, chili macaroni and stewed prunes.
But in this one the diners leave old suitcases, backpacks and garbage bags full of belongings in a small pile by the entrance. They walk by a police officer who checks the line for crack dealers and known troublemakers. And once inside, they seldom take off their coats, scarves and hats, preferring to wolf down the food and leave quickly so that others can take their chairs. 
 On a typical winter day, 950 of them will pass through the doors of the Holy Apostles Soup Kitchen and be fed a hot meal. It is known variously as the four-star restaurant of the streets, the McDonald's of the homeless or simply the best free lunch in town.
Every weekday, starting at about 10:30 A.M., hundreds of men and a few women -- the homeless, the elderly, the mentally ill and the hustlers -- join a line that stretches around the corner of West 28th Street and Ninth Avenue. Many have not eaten since lunch at the kitchen the day before.
All are welcomed.
 
'We Don't Discriminate'
 "We don't serve soup, despite the name," said James T. Novack, the volunteer coordinator and a member of the Retired Senior Volunteer Program. "We try to make a first-class meal, and it's open to anyone who's willing to stand in line for an hour. We don't discriminate."
In his eight years at the kitchen, he has seen the clientele get younger and has seen more women come in. He has noticed that the diners are more angry, frustrated and psychologically ill.
"Some of them curse me," he said, but he added that others, who had survived with his help, had hugged him and blessed him.
Mr. Novack is one of dozens of volunteers who keep the soup kitchen operating. About half the food is provided free by government programs, the remainder is purchased with the help of private donations from parihioners and others.
 
Relying on Volunteers
 It is perhaps the biggest soup kitchen in the city, with a $1 million budget and an eight-person staff. But it relies on the volunteers to dish out the meals, monitor the lines, make the coffee and clean the trays.
According to Mr. Novack, more than 4,000 hours of this work are provided by the Retired Senior Volunteer Program, a branch of the Community Service Society of New York. "It could not run without that help," he said.
The Community Service Society's volunteer program, which received $506,390 from The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund this year, has 10,000 people working at projects throughout the city, whether it be delivering meals to elderly shut-ins or playing with underprivileged children at day-care centers.
On Wednesday afternoon, Mr. Novack carried a tray for 73-year-old Cyrene Taylor, who cannot walk without crutches. She was in the hospital earlier this year with blood clots in both her legs, and now she also suffers from arthritis. She comes to the soup kitchen five days a week, and Mr. Novack and the others always help her to a chair.
"He's such a gentleman, isn't he?" she said, after he had seated her. "These people have nursed me back to health."
 
Conversation With a Pear
 Although she had been an art teacher for most of her life, she said that it was now impossible to cook for herself, let alone stand for more than a half-hour.
At the other end of the table, Ramon Garcia, 33, was talking with his pear. "He's my new friend, he's my new friend," he sang quietly to himself, and patted the piece of fruit as if it was his baby.
Another diner, Juan Velazquez, a 44-year-old who has struggled with heroin addiction, watched all the activity around him at the table and shook his head. "I'm getting old, and I'm tired of this," he said. "It used to be only bums in here. Now it's all these crazy people."
Another man, who did not want to give his name, disagreed. "Some of the guys here have lost their jobs," he said. He had been a cook in an Italian restaurant, and he had been laid off three months ago. His unemployment checks had stopped recently, leaving him without any welfare benefits and without any food.
The soup kitchen has 69 seats, and for two hours on Wednesday, there was rarely a vacancy. When a person stood up to leave, one of the six people who were standing in the aisles quickly grabbed the free chair.
Volunteers made their way through the chaos and gridlock to deliver refills of coffee and to bring more sugar, refilling empty containers every five minutes.
Meanwhile, the assembly line of volunteer servers kept slapping down more pieces of turkey bologna with poultry gravy, baked potatoes, green beans, bread and pears.
At the 10 tables, the homeless diners made sure that no tray left the table with any food on it.
"Hey, you going to eat that apple?" someone called out.
"No, I don't have any teeth. Take it," was the reply.
At one table sat Robert Gideon, a 36-year-old homeless man, slight and frail. His gray and red argyle sweater was worn and tattered, his sneakers had holes, and his right hand had an open two-inch gash -- a knife wound, he said. The night before, muggers had taken his winter jacket and had sliced him when he tried to resist, he said.
Mr. Gideon trembled as he spoke about how he had become homeless four years ago. The problem was alcohol, he said, and "it was destined to happen."
He talked about his world falling apart when some teen-agers poured gasoline on his 8-year-old son and set the boy on fire. There was a 24-day "visit" to the psychiatric ward at Harlem Hospital as well as stays at other mental institutions. The diagnosis was alcoholism and "maniac" depression, he said.
"I'm not blaming anyone but myself, but it's difficult," he said.
Across from Mr. Gideon was Susan A., a 33-year-old woman with platinum blond hair, a black miniskirt, a black vinyl jacket and black-and-blue marks on her neck. She cheerfully said that she and her husband had just come from their methadone treatment program and that they relied on the kitchen for their daily meal.
"Eat this once a day, and you know you're not going to die," she said.

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December 2, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

A Tradition of Generosity: Remember the Neediest Cases Fund;
Jewish Agency Strives to Aid Elderly at Home

BYLINE: By CLIFFORD J. LEVY

SECTION: Section 1; Part 2; Page 85; Column 1; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 643 words

For almost 50 years, 93-year-old Frieda Roos has lived in a small apartment on a tree-lined street in Forest Hills, Queens.
Her health has deteriorated in recent years, and she has no relatives to whom she can turn for help. But she draws solace from the memories evoked by her apartment, where the furnishings have changed little since she and her husband arrived in the United States as Holocaust survivors. 
 "I would die if I had to leave," she said recently as she sat in her living room, her hand resting on a small table that displayed a photograph of her husband, Frederick, who died 18 years ago. "This is my home. This is everything to me."
Mrs. Roos has been able to remain in her apartment because she receives 24-hour care from an aide provided by Selfhelp, an agency sponsored by the United Jewish Appeal-Federation of Jewish Philanthropies of New York, one of the chrities assisted by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund.
 
Preventing Suffering
 The alternative for Mrs. Roos, who suffers from poor hearing and has trouble walking, would be to enter a nursing home, a move she said she could not bear.
"Selfhelp ends up being the relative Mrs. Roos doesn't have, the support system that she doesn't have," said Janet King, who heads the agency's home-care program.
Home care is just one of the services offered by the agency to people who otherwise would face confinement to hospitals or nursing homes, said Stephen D. Solender, executive vice president of the UJA-Federation.
Selfhelp also builds housing for the elderly and people with AIDS, finds apartments for others it cannot house and sends psychological counselors -- some of whom specialize in helping Holocaust survivors -- to homes.
Mr. Solender said that government and social service organizations now know they cannot ignore preventive services.
"We're seeing very much the impact of a decade, the 1980's, that did not give enough attention to prevention," he said, pointing to the homeless population as an example.
If charities can intervene before a situation becomes desperate, he said, they can prevent suffering and save money as well.
"The difference is financial, because it will cost more for her to be institutionalized 24 hours a day," he said of Mrs. Roos. "And it will cause psychological damage, because she'll feel very confined and less adequate, and she'll be cut off from society."
 
'We're Doing Triage'
 Mr. Solender said that the United Jewish Appeal-Federation, which serves more than two million people in the New York metropolitan region through its 130 agencies, would like to expand its preventive programs.
But, he said, as the economy has declined, it has had to devote more resources to helping people already in serious trouble.
"It's one of the most unfortunate aspects of the current situation," he said. "People are so short of funds that we're spending all of our money on treatment -- we're doing triage."
Mr. Solender said he feared that the United Jewish Appeal-Federation, which received about $850,000 from The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund last year, will see a drop in contributions this year.
"I'm worried that passion fatigue is developing in New York -- that we're just tired and we're becoming immune and isolated emotionally from the suffering of the people on the streets," he said.
For Frieda Roos, the United Jewish Appeal-Federation has filled a void that developed after her husband died.
Mrs. Roos calls Zuline Alston, 63, the aide who lives with her, her "companion," and the two enjoy their time together: taking walks, watching television, visiting neighbors.
"This way, she won't be alone," Ms. Alston said. "She's seems a little frightened to be alone. For me, she's like my own family."
"We work together," Mrs. Roos said. "She is wonderful to me, like a daughter."

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December 2, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

How Needs, and Market, For Care Have Changed

BYLINE: By TAMAR LEWIN

SECTION: Section 1; Part 1; Page 36; Column 1; National Desk

LENGTH: 485 words

When continuing-care complexes first became popular 20 years ago, most were run by nonprofit groups, and required that residents pay a large entrance fee, ranging from $30,000 to $100,000 or more, plus a flat monthly fee, in return for guaranteed lifetime nursing care.
Nationwide, there are now more than 700 such communities, with 210,000 residents, according to the American Association of Homes for the Aged, a Washington-based trade group for the nonprofit communities. 
 But over the last five years, as developers have grown interested in the growing population of wealthy elderly people, most of the new complexes being built have been profit-making enterprises, charging no entrance fee but operating on a pay-as-you-go basis. Thus, people who require nursing care pay much higher monthly fees than those who need little assistance.
 
Going After the Market
 "There's a definite trend toward for-profit communities, but most developers are nervous about managing health-care costs, so their model is pay as you go," said Deborah Cloud, a spokeswoman for the American Assocation of Homes for the Aging. "And most of them are going after the upper-income end of the retirement market."
Many of the new profit-making communities under construction by hotel chains, nursing home operators and real estate developers are luxury rental complexes, some structured as condominiums, with residents owning their apartments.
In some big cities, similar services are available to poor, older people in a handful of government-subsidized housing complexes, designed to prevent the elderly from being shunted to nursing homes just because they can neither manage housekeeping on their own nor afford a housekeeper.
There are many variations on the continuing-care theme: some communities guarantee nursing care on the premises, while others say informally that residents will get priority for nursing home beds over outsiders. Still others have links with independent nursing homes nearby, or require residents to purchase long-term-care insurance to cover nursing costs.
 
Spurred by Demographics
 No one knows how many continuing-care complexes there are, how many are being built -- or even all the different models that are being tried. But real estate developers, gerontologists and social workers agree that such communities are growing rapidly.
"On the developers' side, what's pushing it is a combination of awareness of the demographics of an older society, and the fact that real estate people have been pushed out of so many other areas of development, like shopping centers, that are overbuilt," said Paul Gordon, a San Francisco lawyer who represents retirement communities. "And on the consumer side, you have more people who are realizing that this can be a desirable life style, that they can get the services they need without going to the dreaded old folks' home."

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December 2, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

As Alertness Outlives Vigor, New Kinds of Care for the Old

BYLINE: By TAMAR LEWIN

SECTION: Section 1; Part 1; Page 1; Column 1; National Desk

LENGTH: 1900 words

The morning Peggy Scotch was to leave her daughter's house and move into the two-room suite where she plans to spend the rest of her life, she fumbled the battery from her hearing aid, dropped it on the floor and began to weep.
For the past week, Mrs. Scotch, who is 85, widowed and arthritic, had been determinedly upbeat about her move, declaring herself delighted with the decor and service at the New Jersey retirement complex she had chosen. 
 But the broken hearing aid was the last straw, crystalizing fears she had been trying to suppress. "I was far away from the people who fix my earphone," she said. "I thought I should have my head examined for making this move. I was scared in a way I've never been scared. It was such an unknown quantity, and I didn't know anyone there."
Such moves, and such fears, have become more common as older Americans, unable to manage housekeeping on their own, but not ready for a nursing home, turn increasingly to complexes offering a new way of life to the old and infirm, with private rooms or suites, three restaurant-style meals a day, activities, maid service and access to nursing care for those whose health declines.
 
The Sadder Stage
 While many of these continuing-care communities promote their elegant lobbies and good food, to people like Mrs. Scotch they represent a second, sadder stage of retirement after failing health prevents them from enjoying the active retirement life they chose when they first stopped working.
Mrs. Scotch and her husband, Maurice, who together practiced law in Union Township, N.J., retired 20 years ago to the poolside warmth of Florida. But when her husband died two years ago, Mrs. Scotch's children began pleading with her to move back north. This fall, after a broken leg left her dependent on a walker, Mrs. Scotch gave in to their wishes and decided to move to The Atrium in Allendale.
Also living there is Rose Edelman, who led a lively retirement in Puerto Rico until her husband, Hyman, suffered a stroke and needed nursing care. Mr. Edelman lives in the nursing home part of the complex, while Mrs. Edelman lives in a suite at the other end of the building.
"I haven't come to terms with living like this yet," said Mrs. Edelman, who has Parkinson's disease. "I hope I do. I'm more reconciled than I was, but I still do wake up in the middle of the night wondering what I'm doing here. Yet I can't think of a nicer place to end up. It's right for me now, because I have nowhere else to go, and I can be close to my husband here."
 
 Levels of Care Depend on Health
 The Allendale complex, like most others, offers three levels of care. They are "independent living," where Mrs. Scotch and Mrs. Edelman live, which costs about $2,000 a month for a studio; "assisted living," for those who need help dressing or getting out of bed, which costs $2,400, and the nursing home, for those who become incontinent or demented or, like Mr. Edelman, need rehabilitation from a health crisis, which costs $3,000.
Continuing-care complexes attract the more elderly people; nationwide, the average age of new residents is 79. Most residents are women, most are widowed, and most have never before made a move without their spouses. And like Mrs. Scotch and Mrs. Edelman, most have adult children who worried about their parents' living arrangements, and helped select the new residence.
"After Dad died, it was really hard for us not to be close enough to be of any real help to Mom," said Mrs. Scotch's daughter, Barbara Schreiber, who wearied of traveling to Florida every few months. "So we mentioned, for the 48th time, or was it the 73d, that maybe she should think about moving back north."
Mrs. Schreiber and her brother, who lives in Vermont, left the decision to their mother. But in some cases, admissions directors at the complexes say, children become so upset about their parent's isolation or reclusiveness that they almost bully the parent into moving.
"The hardest transitions tend to be people who believe that families should always live together, that their children have dumped them here and they don't really belong," said Barbara McVeigh, who handles admissions at The Atrium. "Even in the best of circumstances, it usually takes a couple weeks before people begin to feel comfortable. Most of them eventually come to feel that this is the right place for them."
But even those who are happiest to move may have mixed feelings about living so closely with strangers, relinquishing responsibility, however onerous, for running a household and coming to terms with an old age in which they feel diminished by dependency.
"Sometimes I wonder what I'm doing here, surrounded by so many people who are old and sick, but then I remember that I'm not so young and I'm not so well, and I know of no viable alternative," said Mrs. Scotch. "I couldn't market and cook and clean by myself. The only possibility would be having a full-time housekeeper on top of me all day long in an apartment, and that would be very lonely and sad. I don't want to be a burden on my children."
Experts say continuing-care complexes will never attract the majority of older people. In a study by the American Association of Retired Persons, 86 percent of people 55 and over said they wanted to to stay in their own homes in old age. And even most people 85 and over -- a particularly fast-growing segment of the population -- still do live in their own homes, often getting intensive home care to cope with their frailty and health problems.
 
Coming Back North, This Time to Stay
 Mrs. Scotch came north in October to visit her daughter in New City, N.Y., and find a retirement home nearby. There were not many alternatives, since some institutions exclude people with walkers and others have long waiting lists. Mrs. Scotch's daughter and son-in-law had already visited The Atrium, and when Mrs. Scotch saw it, she decided immediately that it was what she wanted.
"It has a beauty parlor, and a bank branch and it is all in very good taste," she said."I decided on the spur of a spur of a moment. I didn't look at the nursing home part, and that was not part of my decision, but I guess in the back of my mind I thought it was a good thing to have there under the same roof."
Still, Mrs. Scotch awoke at 4 A.M. the day she was to move in, and calmed herself by doing crossword puzzles. Her daughter and son-in-law drove her to The Atrium at 10:30. All three were heartened when another resident, carrying a crossword puzzle book, greeted Mrs. Scotch, telling her she was going to love the place.
But the best surprise came a day later, when Mrs. Scotch walked into the dining room and saw Syd Zuckerman, a woman with whom she had been friendly in Florida 15 years earlier, when both still had their husbands. It was a great joy to both, especially since neither had found a soulmate at their assigned dining tables. After a few days, hey were able to arrange to sit together at meals.
"We could talk all day just catching up," said Mrs. Scotch, a tiny woman with the white curls and warm smiles of a storybook grandmother and a thoroughly modern intelligence.
Social contact at meals is a big draw of continuing-care complexes, especially for those with limited mobility. And even complexes where residents have their own kitchens usually require that some meals each day be taken in the communal dining room.
But unwanted social contact can be trying, forcing interaction with those who are slightly senile, overly talkative, querulous or simply incompatible. A tablemate who hums, curses or complains -- or repeatedly appears at the door uninvited -- can become almost unbearable.
"It's like an army barrack or college dormitory, where the constant interaction with people whom you did not select can be like a pressure sore," said Rose Dobrof, executive director of Hunter College's Brookdale Center on Aging. "Because of the constant proximity, some people are afraid to make close friendships, for fear that it won't work out, and they'll be stuck."
That worry has made Mrs. Scotch cautious: "I would love to find another kindred spirit, but I don't want to be impetuous," she said. "I don't want to start a friendship, make a mistake, and not be able to get out gracefully. So I'm trying to make haste slowly."
 
New Friendships In a New World
 Mrs. Scotch said she was looking forward to going on the daily outings but could not do so until her leg healed. But she does go to the word-game session. She singled out a candidate for friendship when there was talk of starting a book group, and she noticed that one of the women from the word games seemed interested.
Among the widows, there is surprisingly little conversation about husbands, a great deal about long-dead parents and even more about children: "Something happens, and all the children have all of a sudden become saints," said Mrs. Edelman, dryly. "I guess that's old age."
Each retirement community is a self-contained world, with some residents who build new friendships, some who rarely leave their rooms, and others who alienate everyone by constant boasting about their past. Most residents leave the premises only for rare visits to a relative's home or group outings to a shopping mall or museum.
Such outings can be a real relief for older people who were almost shut-ins on their own. Mrs. Scotch, for example, never drove, and her husband, who had heart disease, stopped driving two years before his death. Sometimes, she said, friends hesitated to invite her out because of the difficulty of the travel arrangements.
For many older residents, there is great relief in having a call bell in the bathroom, a nurse on the premises, a hot meal in the dining room and a maid. But there is also a bittersweet loss of control over basic daily chores.
"I was a good cook, and I still look at recipes, and then I think, what am I doing, I'm not going to be cooking any more," said Mrs. Scotch.
 
Praying the Money Doesn't Die First
 Rarely discussed, but often present, is a fear of outliving one's money, a fear that is likely to intensify as the industry switches increasingly to pay-as-you-go complexes like The Atrium, and away from nonprofit communities charging a large entry fee to cushion future costs. While all the complexes screen applicants' health and finances, it is unclear what will happen when their projections are wrong and residents live longer, and need more care, than their resources can cover.
At the family-owned Allendale complex, Ms. McVeigh said, the owners have absorbed the costs rather than turning a resident out, in the few cases where the question arose. But directors of most nonprofit complexes express skepticism that in difficult economic times, complexes run by large corporations for profit will make the same decision.
Even for the most affluent elderly, it is hard to adjust to a future less full than the past.
"I used to go walking at night in the first snow, and the stars would come out, and I would say to my husband that it's just like diamonds; I never thought I'd be left a widow," Mrs. Scotch said. "Sometimes you feel as if you're not whole, because you are so dependent on other people. But I'm not in a hovel, I'm not beholden to anybody, and I think I've made the right choice moving here."

LOAD-DATE: December 3, 1990

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Peggy Scotch, center, as she was introduced to her new home, The Atrium in Allendale, N.J., by Michael D. Giancarlo, vice president of the community. With her were her daughter and son-in-law, Barbara and Jack Schreiber. At left was Dr. Hector Giancarlo, the owner. (Eddie Hausner/The New York Times)

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The New York Times

December 2, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

NEWS SUMMARY

SECTION: Section 1; Part 1; Page 2; Column 5; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 826 words


International 3-29
Iraq agreed to meet with the U.S. for talks aimed at averting war over Kuwait. The Iraqi statement came a day after President Bush offered to meet in Washington with the Iraqi Foreign Minister and to send Secretary of State Baker to Baghdad. Page 1
President Bush's surprise offer was designed to convince Americans that he is doing everything possible to avert a war as well as to make one last effort to persuade Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait. 1
U.S. rejects Iraqi effort to include Palestinians 18
Bush's overture is welcomed by Egypt and the P.LO.  18
New Kuwait refugees tell of Iraqi killings and rapes 19
President Mikhail Gorbachev of the Soviet Union has ordered the creation of worker vigilante committees with unusual powers to monitor the food industry and punish those involved in theft and speculation. 1
Germans will once again cast ballots as a united nation, concluding an extraordinary passage that began over 12 months ago when the Berlin wall abruptly fell open. The elections are for a new Parliament that will include East Germans. 22
Honecker's arrest sought on shoot-to-kill order 23
Walesa and Tyminski clash in joint TV news conference 24
 A party beneath the English Channel was held when British and French construction workers met for the breakthrough of the 31-mile-long tunnel that now connects England to the European continent. 16
Tunnel drilling, old as Babylon, becomes much safer 16
Chinese grave's secret: a famed runner rests here 3
Japan stands firm on ban of rice imports 9
Did gangs benefit from papal visit?  4
Karpov and Kasparov adjourn in 16th game 50
Chad's President fled the country after a series of rebel victories, and guerrillas marched later into the capital, diplomats said. The President and other Government members sought refuge in Cameroon. 3
A shantytown of 30,000 bulldozed in Nairobi 14
Despite change, South Africa detentions remain 12
Officials in Cuba seem to be on the defensive 25
 
 National 30-43
Federal unemployment insurance, the main Government program to ease the pain of recession, is less effective than it used to be, largely because of reluctance to raise the taxes that would have sustained it. 1
Reporter's notebook: Five Senators have it all on paper 31
More and more elderly Americans not ready for nursing homes are moving to complexes that offer private suites, maid service and nursing care for those who need it. But for many, the move represents a second, sadder stage of retirement. 1
How needs, and market, for care have changed 36
They live outdoors on cotton mats and hang their mail in the wind for days before opening it. The dozen families in a Texas town are among a growing number of people who find themselves extraordinarily sensitive to chemicals of all forms. 1 A fight to save the Chesapeake Bay from pollution and overfishing is showing signs of progress, environmentalists and government officials say. But they warn that unless new steps are taken soon, that fight could be lost. 30
Illegal immigrants from El Salvador are being offered a hand of welcome, though an ambiguous one. A new law offers them safe haven if they report themselves to the Government, and at the end of 18 months, they return to their illegal status. 30
New clues on Vermont's most famous citizen 37
Convict in home custody is charged in a killing 41
Drying lake yields a California town 43
Shuttle to provide new look at the universe 40
Philadelphia Journal: Amid bad news, an accent on the good 30
 
 Regional 44-56
The New York Post has rebounded from near failure, largely because nearly a quarter of a million additional readers have picked up The Post during the Daily News strike. Advertisers have followed them. 44
Speedometers for subway trains? Transit officials plan to install them this spring in an effort to speed up trains. Operators, who now rely on instinct, would be able to drive closer to the maximum safe speed. 44
Japanese see opportunities in U.S. sludge 51
Would Japanese import save an oyster industry?  55
"More brooms, more bags, more people" vs. litter 44
Accord reached on curbing oil spills in harbor 56
A murder trial airing on cable TV has both riveted and repulsed the city of Rochester, New York. Day by day, residents follow the proceedings against an accused serial killer who has claimed responsibility for the deaths of 10 women. 46
Students' statements to be challenged in sex case 54
A bank clerk is killed by armed robbers near a Queens bar 46 New York weighs more tennis space 45
Obituaries
Norman Cousins, edited the Saturday Review 52
David A. Morse, ex-acting Labor Secretary 52
Vijay Lakshmi Pandit, politician and Nehru's sister 53
Neediest Cases 85
Arts/Reviews 82-83
Campus Life 59-68
Fashion 74, 76
Life Style 70
Pastimes 84, 86
Weddings 77-82

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The New York Times

December 2, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Again, Age Beats Youth

BYLINE: By Richard D. Lamm; Richard D. Lamm, former Governor of Colorado, is a professor of public policy at the University of Denver.

SECTION: Section 4; Page 19; Column 1; Editorial Desk

LENGTH: 576 words

DATELINE: DENVER

Progressivity in taxation the idea that those who earn more should pay more of the costs of government -- is an old idea that has found new vigor.
The Congress, insistent on taxing the rich, has just passed a budget that gives approximately 60 percent of our Federal social spending to just 12 percent of our citizens: Americans over 65. Yet, the elderly have the highest disposable income and the lowest rates of poverty of any group in America. They own one-third of all household assets and 40 percent of all financial assets. 
 Poverty in America is more likely to wear diapers than a hearing aid. Nevertheless, Congress in 1987 spent $10,010 per capita on the elderly and only $854 per child. We may want to tax the rich, but we also distribute our Federal largesse not on the basis of who needs it but on who has the political power. There's little question that the elderly are the most politically powerful group in America. It's highly questionable whether they are the most deserving.
To be sure, there are many poor Americans over 65, and I'm very proud that my Democratic Party pioneered Social Security and Medicare, which were invaluable in lifting many of the elderly out of poverty. But today there are many retirees receiving overgenerous Federal transfer payments who just don't need them.  For example, through Medicare we are paying the health costs of hundreds of thousands of elderly millionaires, while 20 percent of America's kids don't have all their vaccinations and 600,000 American women give birth every year without adequate or any prenatal care. We have recently amended Medicare to pay for heart transplants, yet 31 million Americans go without health insurance. We have a life expectancy rate of 80 years, the highest in the world, yet we rank 18th in infant mortality.
Even programs designed specifically for the poor are being slanted toward the elderly. Medicaid, a program aimed originally at poor women and children, today devotes 27.6 percent of its funds to long-term care for the elderly. While this money does go toward the poor elderly, it is nevertheless symbolic of how our limited resources are being taken away from the majority of the population. Public policy should transfer money from the rich to the poor, not from the young to the old.
We have created an excessive sense of entitlement in the elderly, and they are vociferous in defending and enlarging their benefits. Our political establishment, supposedly trained to meet new needs with new spending, finds it impossible to reallocate existing spending. But there is not enough new wealth being created to solve all our new challenges. New needs, to some degree, will have to come from reallocated resources.
In short, we cannot make fiscal sense of our future without eventually taking on entitlements for the elderly. Moreover, if we are to leave a sustainable nation for our children, we have to spend more money on the next generation and less money on the last one. It is not good public policy to transfer Federal monies to the millionaire elderly while less than 30 percent of our children in need have access to Headstart programs.
If we are going to initiate a luxury tax, why don't we further tax Social Security and Medicare for those seniors who are in the high income brackets? If we are going to tax the rich, we should at the very least have the backbone to look at "progressivity" on the spending side of government.

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The New York Times

December 3, 1990, Monday, Late Edition - Final

After Seeming So Nice, She's Indicted for Fraud

BYLINE: By TIM GOLDEN

SECTION: Section B; Page 1; Column 2; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 933 words

To her friends at St. Mary's Roman Catholic Church, Rose Penza was a model of modern-woman success in the Bronx: She worked as a certified public accountant at a Fifth Avenue concern, attended law school at night and went to Mass each morning on her way into the office.
So when Mrs. Penza offered to help invest her friends' savings in securities funds brokered by her company, prosecutors said that over more than 20 years her friends entrusted her with at least half a million dollars. No one suspected something might be wrong until two years ago, when Mrs. Penza and her husband were purportedly transferred by her company to West Palm Beach, Fla. 
 It turned out that Rose Penza was not a C.P.A. but the office secretary, had never gone to law school and had moved to Florida not for business but to retire. As for the money, the so-called investors are still waiting to learn what happened to it.
 
'Frail Little Elderly Lady'
 Mrs. Penza, 64 years old, was indicted by a Bronx grand jury Oct. 6 on charges of grand larceny and fraud. She was also charged with 110 counts of criminal possession of a forged instrument -- one for each of the checks she took in or wrote out as dividends, her old friends said, to keep the deal alive.
At a hearing on Friday in State Supreme Court, Mrs. Penza did not enter a plea and her arraignment was postponed. Her lawyer, Paul Victor, said she was not psychologicallycompetent to stand trial.
"She's a tiny frail little elderly lady, a regular little munchkin," Mr. Victor, one of the borough's more politically powerful lawyers, said in a interview. "I really don't think that she can participate in her defense."
"She was perfectly sane when she took the money," insisted Mary McCarney, a homebound widow of 77 who befriended Mrs. Penza more than 30 years ago and ultimately gave her about $29,000.
Mr. Victor declined to discuss the case, and Mrs. Penza insisted that the money would eventually be paid back. Reached by telephone yesterday in Florida, she chatted animatedly about her legal problems while her husband, Joseph, pleaded in the background for her to hang up.
As she has told her former friends for months, Mrs. Penza said that she was merely a go-between, that men she could not name at her old accounting concern were holding the money, and that they would probably give it back this week.
"My guys in New York, they promised me they'd get me out of this," she said. "Maybe this week. They promised. But they promised a lot of times."
Mrs. Penza, who is free on $75,000 bail, said that she felt bad about what had happened, and that the criminal proceedings had made her feel worse.
"It really knocked me for a loop," she said. "I just stay indoors and go to my three or four psychiatrists." Mrs. Penza added that she had re cently spent 18 days under psychiatric care at a local hospital.
Morris Z. Ottenstein, founder of the M. Z. Ottenstein accounting concern where Mrs. Penza worked, said from his home in Brooklyn that he had been unaware of her dealings. "She was no C.P.A.," he said. "We never made any investments for anybody."
Those who gave Mrs. Penza money say the weirdness of her homespun scheme was surpassed by its complexity.
Ronald Galdieri, who married Mrs. Penza's goddaughter and said he had uncovered the scheme, dated her first victim to 1960. That man's claims, like those of at least two people in Westchester County, are part of continuing investigations that prosecutors have said could raise their calculation of Mrs. Penza's receipts to $700,000.
As told by a half-dozen old friends, stories of Mrs. Penza always began with descriptions of what a nice person she had seemed.
"She was a personality, kid, put it that way," Mary Sturner, 76, said yesterday when reached at a church card party. "Everybody at St. Mary's was crazy about her."
 
More Than $100,000
 She organized parishoners' trips to the Caribbean and Europe and did friends' income taxes free. After claiming to have passed the bar examination, she drafted a will for Mr. Galdieri's mother-in-law.
Mrs. McCarney, Mrs. Sturner and several others first heard about the so-called securities funds Mrs. Penza was selling after their husbands died. Emptying retirement accounts, some of them invested more than $100,000.
"She told me it would be secure," Mrs. Sturner said. "She said we could always get it back, but then when you asked, she could always fend you off."
Mrs. Penza described the funds as tax-free municipal bonds handled by M. Z. Ottenstein as an agent for the Bank of New York. She provided receipts and occasional statements on Ottenstein letterhead, and, when her friends needed money, cashier's checks from the Bank of New York. She sometimes took her friends to fancy lunches "on Mr. Ottenstein."
 
'Can't Trust People Anymore'
 But after Mr. Galdieri tired of delays last year in getting his money back, he found out that something was amiss: She no longer worked for Mr. Ottenstein, he was told, and had never handled securities in the first place.
Finally, Mr. Galdieri went to the authorities. They tracked Mrs. Penza -- who said she was on a business trip -- to Kennedy International Airport. She was arrested there, as she returned from a vacation in Italy.
"You save all your life for your retirement and all your sweat and tears go into it. I can't trust people anymore," said Anita Galdieri, Mr. Galdieri's mother, who said she gave Mrs. Penza her life savings. "There was no reason to disbelieve her in any shape, manner or form, because everyone knew her for so long."

LOAD-DATE: December 3, 1990

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Rose Penza, with black bag, on vacation in Italy with some of the friends who say they gave her about half a million dollars to invest. She has been indicted on charges of grand larceny and fraud.

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December 4, 1990, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

Business and Health;
The Squeeze On Drugstores

BYLINE: By Milt Freudenheim

SECTION: Section D; Page 2; Column 1; Financial Desk

LENGTH: 772 words

ALTHOUGH few doctors make house calls, many drugstores still deliver prescriptions to the homes of elderly customers. Scrambling to retain customer loyalty in the highly competitive retail pharmacy business, many drugstores specialize in advice and services. Eighty-five percent have also purchased computer systems that cost $10,000 and up, and some even have satellite links to keep supplies and insurers' payments flowing.
The McKesson Corporation's PCS pharmacy card unit, for example, operates a national electronic claims-processing network. An identification card with a magnetic stripe is passed like a credit card through a $200 device, which quickly tells the druggist what the customer's health plan pays for. The bill goes electronically to a data processing center in Scottsdale, Ariz., which pays the pharmacies every two weeks. 
 Prompt payment is vital to the nation's 55,000 pharmacies, for their pretax profit margins have fallen to 3 percent from 5.5 percent in the 1960's. Pharmacists are being squeezed by insurers, which increasingly insist on price discounts. Insurer guidelines on prescribing drugs are followed by about 22 percent of all office-based doctors, and the number is growing, said John Schaetzl, vice president of Scott-Levin Associates, a consulting firm in Newtown, Pa., that surveys physicians.
As retailing categories overlap and blur, retail druggists have had to compete with big discount chains like K Mart and Wal-Mart Stores, each with 1,000 or more pharmacies; mail-order pharmacy services, and supermarket chains, which are accustomed to even lower profit margins, based onmoving products off the shelf faster than drugstores do. And in the front of their stores, the druggists compete with the health and beauty aids sections of groceries, convenience stores, variety stores and specialty discount stores.
But the pharmacy business can also be difficult for such competitors. Joseph Thomas 3d, an economist at Purdue University, said the expenses in operating a pharmacy "are very different from operating a grocery." He added, "You need pharmacists, people with knowledge and time, willing to answer questions about over-the-counter products." A sign in the West Main Pharmacy, an independent store in Penns Grove, N.J., says, "Please ask our pharmacists questions before you purchase over-the-counter drugs."
"We foresee gross margins in the pharmacy business continuing to drop," said David D. Bernauer, vice president and treasurer of the Walgreen Company, which is based in Deerfield, Ill. "The bottom line to the whole thing is: Who can most efficiently distribute that prescription to the customer?" Walgreen stores, which deal with 800 insurance plans, are linked by satellite to a computer center in Mount Prospect, Ill. "In five seconds, we check the patient's eligibility and other parameters like which drugs are covered, the number of days' supply, whether generics are mandatory," he said. "The system greatly reduces the percentage of rejects and dishonored claims and the cost of shipping paperwork." Sales at Walgreen's 1,575 stores are growing by 20 percent annually, reflecting rising drug prices and the addition of 110 stores this year, Mr. Bernauer said.
To compete with the chains, independents like the West Main Pharmacy work on customer service. "We can't always match the dollar figure," said Louis A. Mitchell, the owner, who is in the store daily from 9 A.M. to 9 P.M. "My main concern is that the patient has to be satisfied that what they are doing is based on good sound advice."
Don Moore, an independent pharmacist who is president of the Moore Drugstore in Kokomo, Ind., maintains a staff nurse for consultations.
"All retail drugstores, whether they are independent or chains, are being squeezed much more today," said David Malmberg, vice president for strategic planning with McKesson's wholesale unit, the nation's largest drug wholesaler.
Insurers that pay most of the cost of drugs directly to the store may account for 75 percent of the prescription business by the end of the decade, said Robert J. Mandelbaum, a pharmacist who is a vice president of the 1,136-store Revco chain, based in Twinsburg, Ohio. Revco is adding patient counseling areas to its stores.
Some druggists are developing niche markets like joint ventures with hospitals to supply equipment for home health care. And Fay's, based in Liverpool, N.Y., which has 185 drugstores, is opening free-standing operations just to supply nursing homes. "They are a large growth end of our prescription business," said Henry A. Panasci, Fay's chairman.

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December 4, 1990, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

Business Digest

SECTION: Section D; Page 1; Column 1; Financial Desk

LENGTH: 539 words


Airline in Trouble
Continental Airlines filed for bankruptcy protection after months of struggling with a financial squeeze from its huge debt and the soaring cost of jet fuel. [Page A1.]
The nation's fifth-largest airline is taking great pains to assure customers and travel agents that it will remain in the air. [D8.]
The combination of high fuel costs and low fares will severely damage other airlines if it persists through the winter. [D9.]
 
Companies
NCR's stock jumped 43.6 percent as investors responded to the $90-a-share offer from A.T.& T. [D1.]
Bergdorf Goodman named a new vice chairman, Burton Tansky, the president of Saks Fifth Avenue. [D1.]
Sears, Roebuck & Company has a new headache: a big shareholder, a California state pension fund, is upset. [D3.]
Lockheed rejected a buyout proposal from Harold Simmons, the Dallas investor, because the plan involved too much debt. [D4.]
New publishers were named for Vogue, Vanity Fair and Conde Nast's Traveler. [D18.]
 
 The Economy
An economic index compiled by purchasing managers fell to its weakest level since November 1982. [D1.]
The Supreme Court gave employers a victory by ruling that lawsuits accusing companies of firing workers to evade pension obligations come under Federal, not state law. [D1.]
Record spending on public works lifted construction spending for the first time since July. [D5.]
Engineers at the Brookhaven National Laboratory are working to pack more circuits onto computer chips. They are hoping to take the initiative back from Japanese manufacturers. [C1.]
 
International
Trade negotiators grew increasingly pessimistic about the global trade talks. [D1.] The United States is seeking to build regional cooperation in the Western hemisphere. [D7.]
Bush announced approval of the sale of a supercomputer to Brazil on his trip to Latin America, as officials worried about the attempted military coup in Argentina. [A14.]
Vietnam has come up with a plan to end decades of poverty, cut inflation and increase exports. [A7.]
A Sunday newspaper in Britain folded just 14 months after its debut in the market that many say is still too crowded. [D6.]
 
Markets
Stock prices continued to advance, led by A.T.& T.'s bid for NCR. The Dow gained 5.94, to 2,565.59. [D10.]
Treasury securities rose, pushed higher by foreign buying in overnight trading. [D16.]
Oil finished 30 cents higher after traders felt that hopes for peace in the Persian Gulf were fading. [D2.]
The dollar rose sharply on reports of intervention to halt the currency's fall. [D17.] Soybeans rose to a five-week high. [D17.]
 
Today's Columns
The retail pharmacy business is so competitive that many drugstores still deliver prescriptions to the homes of elderly customers. Milt Freudenheim: Business and Health. [D2.]
Western Union's offer to buy back bonds initially cheered investors, but many may not be able to get the full 50 cents for each dollar of their holdings. Market Place. [D10.]
L.A. Gear is expected to be ready to hire an advertising agency. To date, the nation's third-largest athletic shoe maker has created its own ads. Advertising. [D19.]

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The New York Times

December 5, 1990, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Young Voices Give Lift to Concert at Center for the Elderly

SECTION: Section B; Page 3; Column 1; Metropolitan Desk

LOAD-DATE: December 5, 1990

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Students from Intermediate School 229 in the Bronx and residents of the Daughters of Jacob Geriatric Center at rehearsal at the center at 1160 Teller Avenue. Voices of young and old will join in a concert, "Show Tunes of Yesterday and Today," to be presented at the center and the school. (Jim Estrin for The New York Times)

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The New York Times

December 6, 1990, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

Wuhan Journal;
At 102, He's Back in School, With Many Like Him

BYLINE: By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section A; Page 4; Column 3; Foreign Desk

LENGTH: 977 words

DATELINE: WUHAN, China

Qian Likun is a model university student, the kind of diligent scholar-athlete who joins in foot races, excels in his studies and is never distracted by a woman's short skirt.
Mr. Qian is also five times older than most university students. He is 102 years old, and while ordinary students study the Boxer Rebellion of 1900 and the fall of the Ching Dynasty in 1911, Mr. Qian has no such problem: he remembers them. 
 The University for the Aged, where Mr. Qian studies, has 8,000 students here in Wuhan, a major city on the Yangtze River of central China. Founded five years ago, it is part of a network of more than 800 such institutions for the elderly in China, all founded in the last eight years.
China has traditionally revered the aged, and this nation's programs for the elderly are very impressive for a developing country. Some Chinese villages have a special "house for the aged," where senior citizens can live if they have no children to depend on, and most cities have a range of physical fitness, entertainment and educational programs for retired citizens.
 
Questions for the U.S.
 One question that Chinese often ask Americans is why families sometimes put their parents in institutions, why such a rich country cannot do more for its elderly. The questions include a hint of reproach, but mostly wonder at the breach of filial piety.
"We want to help the elderly help themselves, so that they can reduce their dependence on their families and on society," said Lu Jianye, the vice president of the Wuhan University for the Aged. "We also want to help them increase their contribution to society, and to develop hobbies such as art, calligraphy or even massage, so that they can enjoy their later years."
The university here, which charges tuition of less than $5 a term, offers courses in 123 subjects. These include painting, disco dancing, calligraphy, bridge, cooking, English, literature and health care for the elderly.
 
Canes Beside the Chairs
 Most people in Wuhan are literate, but the university also arranges classes in some neighborhoods to teach reading and writing to the elderly, mostly women who never went to school.
China, with a population of 1.1 billion, has some 115 million people over the retirement age, which is normally 60 for men and 55 for women. The proportion of the aged will rise sharply in coming decades as baby boom generations grow older and family planning policies reduce the number of young people.
On a recent visit, the classrooms of the Wuhan University for the Aged were full of animated students, some with canes beside their chairs, enthusiastically commenting on each other's paintings, reciting standard phrases of English and dissecting ancient poetry.
"We don't want to get senile," said Yan Bin, a 56-year-old woman who retired recently as a professional singer. She was sitting around a table with three partners, working on her skills at bridge, the card game favored by Deng Xiaoping and countless other elderly Chinese.
"I never studied bridge before," said Mu Youqing, a silver-haired woman of 64 years who is a retired doctor. "But it's very highbrow and cultured, and it has a long history in China."
 
A Boost for the Brains
 The baby of the foursome, 56-year-old Shao Kanfu, a lean, tall man who retired early, added, "I wanted to look after my health and give my brains a boost."
Most elderly people in China live with their children, and often they are responsible for caring for their grandchildren. So the University for the Aged holds classes in the midmorning and again in the early afternoon, when the students' children are at work and their grandchildren are at school.
In addition, because some of the old people cannot get around easily, the university has set up 13 branches around the city in residential areas. The university depends for money on tuition fees and also on generous grants from the city government. The faculty consists mostly of professors at nearby universities who are delighted to moonlight for a small fee.
"The teaching level isn't as high as at a regular university, and we don't go into as much depth as we would with younger students," said Zhou Wu, a junior high school instructor who teaches Chinese literature on the side at a branch campus of the University for the Aged. "But some of the older folks bring a good deal of enthusiasm as well as diverse experience to the classroom, so it's often more interesting to teach them than to teach my regular students."
 
Along for the 'Fun Run'
 One of Mr. Zhou's most diligent students is Mr. Qian, the 102-year-old. A retired agricultural researcher, Mr. Qian diligently prepares for each class session and offers some pointed views.
"This poem isn't very good by Tang Dynasty standards," he said the other day as Mr. Zhou dissected a poem on the blackboard. "But it's better than anything we have today."
Mr. Qian manages to walk to the class on his own, and he hears and sees well enough to follow the teacher most of the time. The first class he took was on health care for the elderly, and he says he found it very useful in looking after his wife, who died a few months ago at the age of 100, and his daughter, who is 81 years old and in fading health.
When the university held a "fun run" this spring, some 300 old people ran about 2.3 miles to complete the race. Mr. Qian was ong them, but the university staff acknowledges that his pace was more of a hobble than a jog.
A lover of traditional poetry, Mr. Qian scarcely paused when asked for a few lines of his favorite poem. The room fell silent as he recited from memory this ancient Chinese poem:
 The clouds are wispy this morning, the breeze is light.
 As I pass the pond, I see flowers and willow trees.
 The passers-by don't know the joy in my heart.
 I'm like a kid at play.

LOAD-DATE: December 6, 1990

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Qian Likun, left, who is 102 years old, is a star student at the University for the Aged in Wuhan, a city on the Yangtze River in central China. (Nicholas D. Kristof/The New York Times)

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December 6, 1990, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

Court Extends 'Family' Rule To Rent-Stabilized Units

BYLINE: By DENNIS HEVESI

SECTION: Section B; Page 3; Column 5; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 617 words

A landmark ruling that protects the remaining member of an unmarried couple from being evicted from a rent-controlled apartment if one partner dies or moves was extended by a New York State appeals court on Tuesday to cover all of the one million rent-stabilized apartments in the state.
"It's a huge victory for over one million rent-regulated tenants across the state," said Alan Hamerman, a spokesman for the State Commissioner of Housing and Community Renewal, Angelo J. Aponte. 
 The rules will insure, for the first time, Mr. Hamerman continued, that elderly people, gay couples and others sharing apartments "receive the full blanket of protection as set forth in the rent laws."
 
'A More Realistic' View
 The unanimous ruling by four judges in the Appellate Division of the State Supreme Court -- First Department, which covers Manhattan and the Bronx, overturned an injunction issued by a court in Albany in November 1989. The lower court had barred the state housing agency from putting into effect new regulations extending what is known as the Braschi decision from rent-controlled to rent-stabilized apartments. The injunction had been sought by the Rent Stabilization Association, an organization representing landlords.
In the Braschi case -- brought by the surviving member of a gay couple in Manhattan -- the state's highest court, the Court of Appeals, said in July 1989: "We conclude that the term family," as used in laws governing the state's estimated 160,000 rent-controlled apartments, "should not be rigidly restricted to those people who have formalized their relationship by obtaining, for instance, a marriage certificate or an adoption order."
"In the context of eviction," the ruling added, "a more realistic, and certainly equally valid, view of a family includes two adult lifetime partners whose relationship is long term and characterized by an emotional and financial commitment and interdependence." Gay-rights advocates have hailed that decision as a step toward legalization of their relationships.
 
An Appeal Is Planned
 In its ruling on Tuesday, the Appellate Division said, "Since the new regulations incorporate the Braschi definition of 'family' into the existing scheme, they do not conflict with Real Property Law."
It also said, "By responding to the continuing shortage of low- and middle-income housing units available, the rise in instances of individuals 'doubling up' and tenants being forced into a homeless situation due to unaffordable rents, the regulations clearly comport with the broad mandate provided the Division of Housing and Community Renewal by the Legislature to 'protect tenants and the public interest.' "
William Rubenstein, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's lesbian and gay-rights project, which was a party to the case, said: "These state regulations are really the first we know of in the country in which a statewide authority has defined family in a such broad, meaningful and realistic manner, including the recognition of lesbian and gay families. The fact that these regulations have withstood judicial scrutiny is an important milestone."
The president of the Rent Stabilization Association, John Gilbert, said he was "disappointed but not surprised" by the ruling.
"We will appeal," Mr. Gilbert said.
But the state's highest court does not necessarily have to hear an appeal. Mr. Gilbert, however, said he thought it would. "The Court of Appeals has always held sacred the fact that a lease is a contract," he said. "In Braschi, it was a rent-controlled situation, and there was no lease. But this is a rent-stabilized situation, and you've got a lease between two people."

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December 6, 1990, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

Using a Saxophone Opera to Recount Black Culture

BYLINE: By PETER WATROUS

SECTION: Section C; Page 17; Column 2; Cultural Desk

LENGTH: 1081 words

When Julius Hemphill's "Long Tongues: A Saxophone Opera" hits the stage at the Apollo Theater tonight it will bring together dancers, singers, a saxophone choir, some rappers, a 14-piece orchestra, films and projected stills. It's also bringing to the stage an armful of ambition; the opera attempts to tell the story of the changes in black culture from the 1940's to the present by way of music.
The story is about an encounter between "the Professor," an aging street person played by Thomas Young, and two young hip-hop musicians. Through a series of flashbacks the Professor takes the two young men back into his own personal history as an emcee and custodian of the Crystal Caverns, once Washington's most prominent black club. Not only does the show delve into the relationship between black music and culture, but in the characters of the two hip-hop musicians, it also attempts to illustrate the alienation and lack of historical knowledge amoung young black people. And throughout, the opera investigates the status of the club as a magnet for cultural invention. In a way, the show starts where the Broadway hit "Black and Blue," which stops in the 1930's, leaves off. 
 "The Crystal Caverns was like most clubs of the time," Mr. Hemphill said during a telephone conversation this week, "in that it presented a wide variety of performances, and they had an interaction between music and dance and other forms of entertainment that have become compart mentalized today. The vitality that has influenced American music and culture was developed in these pockets of creativity, in local clubs like that. All the developments in the black community have come from places like that, from blues to be-bop to hip-hop." Mr. Hemphill, a saxophonist and founding member of the World Saxophone Quartet, wrote all the music for the show.
 
Image Has Suffered
 For the director, Judith Jackson, the piece has a larger importance. "It's very important that you keep track of your history, where elders tell their own version of where they came from to younger people," Ms. Jackson said this week by telephone. "The link in the black community was broken by welfare programs, integration, shattered families, and we've been getting a bad image of ourselves as blacks from the television and film industry.
"So in a way, we're trying to reach young black men, who are getting a picture of themselves recently as a lost cause," she said. "By linking hip- hoppers to be-boppers, we're trying to re-establish historical continuity. We want young kids to see that if they go out and bop some old woman over the head, that old woman is more than just an old woman, she's somebody's mother, grandmother, ultimately connected to them, and what she did in her past has affected our future."
"Long Tongues" comes out of Mr. Hemphill's collaboration with W. A. Brower and Malinke Robert Elliott, each a writer and actor. Mr. Hemp hill, a Texan and a founding member of the Black Artist Group in St. Louis during the 1960's, has always been involved in projects that go beyond the narrow confines of performed jazz. The show has been evolving; the writer and critic Greg Tate of The Village Voice and the writer Suzanne Miles helped write some of the libretto, and Ms. Jackson was brought in several months ago to pull all the loose ends together.
 
A Reading of Society
 "We started with a show called 'Ralph Ellison's Long Tongue,' " said Mr. Hemphill. "I developed that title because the material I used from 'The Invisible Man' gave a broad and penetrating reading of society. When I was a kid, I heard the phrase 'laying a tongue on somebody,' which meant that an elder had given an upstart a good dose of wisdom. I translated that idea into the versatility of the saxophone, and its endless ability to dispense wisdom."
The show is filled with music, dance and highly stylized narrative. In one combative scene between "Prof" and the hip-hop kids (played by Mark and Scott Batson, two young jazz musicians from Washington who also rap), the Professor rhymes in hipster slang while the two brothers chant hip-hop threats and insults back at him. The rhythm section, off-stage right, shifts from straight-ahead jazz for the be-bop talk to funk patterns for the rapping.
In other places, Mr. Hemphill's stunningly lush saxophone writing -- and extraordinary solos by the other saxophonists -- is shown off by the saxophone sextet, a group that includes Mr. Hemphill, his longtime associate Marty Ehrlich, Andrew White (who was in the house band at the real Crystal Caverns, which was renamed the Bohemian Caverns in the 1960's), Carl Grubbs, James Carter and Kenny Grubbs.
Other scenes feature dance routines (choreographed by Marilyn Worrell and Ajax Joe Drayton) that capture the liquid grace of big-band and rhythm-and-blues dancing from the 1940's through the early 1960's. The dancer C. Scoby Stroman performs, and expressionistic avant-garde jazz from the 1960's is played as a tribute to the giants of the period, including John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Eric Dolphy and others, who passed through the club.
 
Sum of Many Parts
 And all the while, photographs of musicians, politicians and other icons for blacks hover in the background, showing the change in time. The past and the present are linked, and the hip-hoppers, who had felt alienated from their own culture, come slowly to understand that they too are part of a tradition.
And that tradition included entertainment. Shake dancers appear, as do a big band and a tap dancer. The Prof emphasizes community over selfishness. Underscored is the idea that the club itself changes only superficially in its cultural role, even though the world outside is changing radically. The stills in the background change, and a film of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s march on Washington is projected, but the club remains a cultural center.
"We weren't trying to actually reproduce what went on literally," said Mr. Hemphill. "There isn't a floor-show episode. But we've tried to take elements of it all and make it larger. The march on Washington is part of it. We're just trying to show how entertainment and culture and politics are related, and how the saxophone has played a pivotal part in it all."
"Long Tongues: A Saxophone Opera" is playing tonight and tomorrow night at 8 o'clock at the Apollo Theater, 253 West 125th Street. Information: (212) 749-5838. Tickets are $25 and $18.

LOAD-DATE: December 6, 1990

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Dancers, singers, rappers and a saxophone choir performing in "Long Tongues: A Saxophone Opera," which attempts to tell the story of the changes in black culture since the 1940's. (Rick Friedman for The New York Times)

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December 9, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

CONNECTICUT GUIDE

BYLINE: By Eleanor Charles

SECTION: Section 12CN; Page 30; Column 4; Connecticut Weekly Desk

LENGTH: 1140 words


MODERN DANCE
 Re-creations of some pioneering American choreography may be seen in two New Haven performances of "Homage to Doris Humphrey and Charles Weidman" at 3 and 8 P.M. on Saturday in the Educational Center for the Arts, 55 Audubon Street.
 Ernestine Stodelle, director of the Silo Concert Dancers of Connecticut and a former member of the Humphrey-Weidman Company, has reconstructed the Humphrey pieces, and Deborah Carr, head of the Deborah Carr Theater Dance Ensemble in Manhattan, is responsible for the Weidman works.
 From 1928 to 1945, the Humphrey-Weidman team was a dominant force in the development of modern dance. Among the works to be presented on Saturday are Weidman's "Christmas Oratorio," and the Humphrey-Weidman duet "Patetico."
 Tickets are $10 and $15, $7 and $10 for children and the elderly. Call 772-2377 for reservations.
 
TROLLEY RIDES
 Santa will be on hand to greet visitors and accompany them on half-hour electric trolley rides today, Saturday and next Sunday at the Shore Line Trolley Museum in East Haven. The first trip departs at 11 A.M. and the last at 5 P.M., meandering through a lighted strip of countryside in heated, antique trolley cars, decorated for the holidays, with a gift for every child aboard.
 A sound and light show, "The Birth of the Trolley Era," is presented inside the trolley barn, along with a large Lionel train layout and refreshments. Tickets are $4, $3 for the elderly and $2 for children from 2 to 11. The museum is at 17 River Street. For more information call 467-6927.
 
THREE-PART MESSIAH
 The original three-part "Messiah" of Handel will be performed for the 17th consecutive year at 4 P.M. today in the Darien High School Auditorium under the direction of Keith Shawgo Jr. The work has become such an institution in the town that a Messiah Performance Foundation was formed to handle the administration of the 140-voice chorus, full orchestra and soloists, as new members join, and some retire, each year.
 This season's soloists are Ellen Cody, soprano; Lucia Monahan, mezzo-soprano; Peter Cody, tenor, and Dennis Maxfield, bass. There is no charge for admission, but donations are welcomed. The high school is near Exit 10 of Interstate 95. Turn right off the eastbound exit, or left from the westbound side, and proceed to the end of the Noroton Avenue Extension. For more information, call 655-8162 or 655-8157.
 
OLD-TIME CHRISTMAS
 The Butler-McCook Homestead in Hartford will be open from noon to 4 P.M. today, displaying all the accouterments of an old-fashioned Christmas while the Hartford Chorale serenades visitors with a repertoire of carols.
 Replicating the traditions of the family that once lived there, a plain paper-covered wooden box contains the tree, just like the box used by the McCooks from 1875 to 1927 -- a formidable example of New England thrift. Under the box, a sheet is spread to protect the carpet, and the tree is decorated with well-worn ornaments that the family preserved for years.
 The display has evolved from notations in 19th-century diaries and from early photographs and includes Christmas stockings in graduated sizes, filled and laid out in the dining room.
 Admission is $2, $1 for children. The house, one of eight historic homes owned and maintained by the Antiquarian and Landmarks Society, is at 396 Main Street. The phone number is 247-8996.
 
GUATEMALAN EXCURSION
 When Dr. Nicholas Sullivan participated in an expedition to the Alta Verapaz section of Guatemala, sponsored by the National Geographic Society, he and his colleagues were surprised to learn that the Quiche Indians, who live on a remote limestone plateau, still practice ancient rituals in caves that resemble early Mayan temples.
 As president of the Explorers Club and a former president of the National Speleological Society, Dr. Sullivan has explored caves all over the world. He will give a slide talk about his adventures and discoveries on Thursday at 8 P.M. at the Greenwich Arts Center, 299 Greenwich Avenue. Admission will be $4 at the door.
 The program is sponsored by the Archeological Associates of Greenwich. For more information call 661-4654.
 
NEW LIFE, OLD BARN
 Lots of people talk about leaving the urban rat race and making a new life in an old country barn, and some of them have done it, including Skitch and Ruth Henderson. Their home -- the Silo at 44 Upland Road in New Milford, a 200-acre former farm, where they live and work producing art and craft shows, managing a cooking school, entertaining in style and maintaining Mr. Henderson's music studio -- is a special delight at Christmas time.
 A 23-foot decorated tree and a selection of gifts and edibles are for sale, as well as a new cookbook called "Ruth and Skitch Henderson's Seasons in the Country," which the proprietors wrote with with Judith Blahnik. It contains photographs by Lans Christensen and a foreword by one of the Silo's eminent cooking teachers, Jacques Pepin.
 Mrs. Henderson will autograph copies of the book from 11 A.M. to 1 P.M. today, Saturday and next Sunday; from 5 to 9 P.M. on Tuesday; from 5 to 8 P.M. on Dec. 20 and 21, and from noon to 4 P.M. on Dec. 23. Call 355-0300 for more information.
 
SEPHARDIC TRADITION
 The Voice of the Turtle is a music ensemble that specializes in works from the Sephardic tradition, performing on a wide array of instruments from the Near and Middle East and from Medieval and Renaissance Europe. They will give a concert on Thursday at 8 P.M. in the Charter Oak Cultural Center at 21 Charter Oak Avenue, Hartford.
 The works are sung in original Judeo-Spanish and Hebrew and other linguistic variations that evolved among Spanish Jews who migrated to Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Italy and Turkey. Tickets are $14, $7 for students. Call 249-1207 for reservations.
 
WINTER SOLSTICE
 Back in the 1890's, it was not unusual for holiday travelers who were stranded by snowstorms at New Haven's railroad station to keep their spirits up with singing, dancing and storytelling. That happy spirit is the basis for "Take Joy!," a winter solstice revelry scheduled at 2 and 7 P.M. on Saturday and 5 P.M. next Sunday in Sprague Hall on the Yale Campus at College Street.
 Among those participating in this interpretation of an impromptu turn-of-the-century entertainment are the New Haven Morris Dancers and Sword Team, the New Haven Country Dancers, the Elm City Vintage Dancers, a group of Sacred Harp singers, a troupe of mummers, and the Brass Ring Quintet.
 Music by Stephen Foster, Charles Ives and other American composers will underscore the nostalgia, and the audience is expected to participate, as it does each year, in the dancing and singing. Tickets are $8, $5 for children and the elderly. Call 497-9052 for more information.

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December 9, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

A Heritage of Giving: Remember the Neediest Cases Fund;
Proud but Suddenly Poor, Elderly Reach Out for Help

BYLINE: By MARVINE HOWE

SECTION: Section 1; Part 2; Page 86; Column 1; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 988 words

Two months after Esther S., a former accountant and grade-school teacher, came to New York City from the Soviet Union last year, she found herself homeless and contemplating suicide. Lilian F., who lived a privileged life on the Upper East Side for many years, found herself penniless and almost homeless after the death of her husband.
Like countless other elderly men and women who face economic setbacks, failing health and family problems each year, Esther and Lilian reluctantly set aside their pride and turned to charities for assistance. 
 It was an emotionally wrenching step.
"I always used to have my own piece of bread," Esther said through an interpreter. "Here I am at 69, in a strange country with a strange language, where everything is different, abandoned by my daughter, and I still don't know why."
Lilian, describing how she felt about having to ask for help, said: "It was horrendous. It was like I wanted to jump out of the window."
In New York City today, an increasing number of elderly residents find themselves ineligible for government assistance but "still too poor to make it on their own," said Prema Mathai-Davis, the city's Commissioner for the Aging. For many of them, she added, the only option is a private social-service agency.
 
Arguments About Money
 When Esther arrived in this country from her native town in the western Ukraine, she moved in with her daughter and grandchildren in a two-bedroom apartment in Forest Hills.
"Everything was perfect for the first two months," Esther recalled.
She helped with the cleaning and other household chores, tutored her 13-year-old granddaughter in mathematics, and made embroidered items that she sold to supplement the family's income. But there were arguments, mostly about money.
Earlier this year she fell ill with digestive problems and was hospitalized for 10 days.
When she returned to her daughter's apartment, she said, the atmosphere was different. There were arguments that she said were initiated by her daughter's boyfriend over such questions as whether she ate too much of the family's food.
Finally, she said, her daughter kicked her out.
 
A Place to Live
 "It was a cold, rainy day, the end of March," Esther recalled. "For a moment there in the street I got the idea it would be good to be hit by a car."
But a 90-year-old Russian woman passing by convinced Esther to move in with her for a few days. Then Esther got a temporary job as a live-in babysitter on Long Island.
As that job was about to end last May, Esther contacted the Metropolitan New York Coordination Council on Jewish Poverty. The council, which maintains an emergency housing fund with Neediest Cases Fund contributions it receives from the United Jewish Appeal-Federation of Jewish Philanthropies, got Esther a room in a private shelter and is paying her rent.
"Esther could have gone to a city shelter, but I don't think she would have survived," said Peter Fine, director of special projects for the council.
 
Doing Things for Friends
 At Respite House, on Manhattan's Lower East Side, Esther is one of 14 residents, who are assisted by two full-time social workers.
A petite woman with white hair, dark, questioning eyes, and a strong, husky voice, Esther is the kind of person who needs to be doing things for others. These days she spends most of her time in her room doing needlework, embroidery or alterations for her new friends in the shelter.
At other times, Esther, who knows almost no English, can be found sitting in the smoking corner of the shelter's lounge, conversing in Yiddish with several other residents or in Romanian with a couple who live in the building.
 
Losing Everything
 Further uptown, Lilian lives near Beekman Place, surrounded by the bric-a-brac of better days: Thai prints, Italian Renaissance pottery, an onyx table and crystal figurines.
A native New Yorker, Lilian has youthful skin and a youthful figure that belie her 74 years.
She was married to the senior partner in a Wall Street brokerage and had everything: a 6 1/2-room apartment in a building on East 57th Street, two Cadillacs and yearly trips around the world.
Then, in 1973, her husband died and the bottom fell out of her world. Soon after his death, the firm went out of business.
Lilian lost her apartment and rented a one-bedroom apartment near Beekman Place for herself and her son, who is developmentally disabled.
"I sold the stocks, the antiques, the furniture, the silverware and most of my jewelry, one piece at a time," she recalled.
 
Son Out of Work
 She now lives on Social Security, no longer entertains or goes to the theater and has taken "little jobs," with the Board of Elections and the Census Bureau. But the rent has more than doubled in the last year and there is nothing more to sell, "just bric-a-brac," she said.
Her 54-year-old son has been out of work for more than two years, and their financial situation continued to deteriorate. So did their relationship: Her son refused to leave when she tried to evict him. So the two of them continued to argue.
"I just couldn't manage anymore and needed help," she said in an interview.
 
Rebuilding Self-Esteem
 Lilian turned to the Jewish Association for Services for the Aged, a social-service agency, which also receives Neediest Cases funds through the United Jewish Appeal-Federation of Jewish Philanthropies. The agency is providing Lilian with a rent supplement until she can find permanent affordable housing.
"I'm trying to help Lilian cope with the terrible assault on her self-esteem," said Doris Solomon, the social worker who now meets regularly with Lilian and her son.
Ms. Solomon has also helped Lilian's son get into a state job training program.
"JASA has been a big help, helping with the rent and easing the tension with my son," Lilian said. "But life is not the way it used to be."

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December 9, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Awaiting the Call of the Big Leagues, Young Socialites Party on Their Own

BYLINE: By GEORGIA DULLEA

SECTION: Section 1; Part 2; Page 68; Column 1; Style Desk; Lifestyle Page

LENGTH: 915 words

On the charity circuit, they are the not-ready-for-prime-time players. They have the evening clothes, the social connections and the philanthropic impulses. But they are not old enough or rich enough for serious galas at $500 to $1,000 a ticket and so, increasingly, they are running benefits on their own, on the cheap.
The juniors, as they are called, have a certain style. No gilded hotel ballrooms for them -- clubs are less expensive, more lively venues. No sit-down dinners -- only old people need to sit down. No society orchestras -- a deejay will do. And forget the fancy decorations -- the crowd is decorative enough. 
 The top ticket price for a junior party is $150, with many events around $100. Guests are mostly in their 20's and 30's, although some powers behind the benefits are in their 40's and musing about moving into the big time.
 
Reluctant Graduates

 
 Alfred (Chappy) Morris, who at 40 still gets invitations to debutante parties and bachelor balls, recently graduated to the list for $1,000 benefits. "I guess that's one way to tell you're a senior," he said.
He and other leaders of the Lobby Gallery Associates of the Whitney Museum have been pondering their status. One of them, Christine Mortimer Biddle, said, "With the economy, a lot of juniors can't afford to be seniors and yet they still want to support the charities."
Invitations to junior parties sometimes list members of the younger generations of old society families like the Rockefellers and the Phippses. But the names of fashion models, designers and musicians also draw juniors. And they love titles, no matter how questionable the lineage.
"You'll find a lot of committees headed by His Royal Highness So-and-So or Princess Whoever," said Polly Onet, who handles junior benefits for Gustavus Ober Associates, a public relations concern.
For Ms. Onet and other juniors, charity parties have become the place "to make connections, professional and social," she said. "With everything that's happening -- crime, AIDS -- people are leery about going to night clubs and staying out till 2 in the morning. They want to dress up, go out at a civil hour and, for $75 or so, meet attractive people."
 
Repaying Debts

 
 Juniors without the time or space to entertain at home pay back social debts with benefit tickets. "They'll buy a $1,000 table, invite 12 friends and that's their entertainment for the year," Ms. Onet said. "It's for a good cause and it's tax deductible."
Anyone who has done time on the charity circuit can remember when juniors amounted to "window dressing," as Lewis Ufland put it. He and other charity-event planners would set aside junior tables for committee members' children because "older people love to look at young people." "In the past, juniors were not treated as grown-ups," Mr. Ufland said. "Now they're doing their own parties and they're being taken seriously."
Juniors emerged as a fund-raising force in the mid-1980's when charity balls blazed and waves of young people got rich on Wall Street. As the decade ended, virtually every cause from the New York Public Library to the Guardian Angels had a cadre of young supporters.
 
'A Tough Year'

 
 Like seniors, juniors are scrambling these days to attract corporate donors and underwriters while holding the line on ticket prices. As Tav Berry, head of the junior committee of the Girl Scouts Council of Greater New York, put it: "Everybody's having a tough year. Asking $300 a couple is not the easiest sell."
Juniors do not deliver the big bucks as seniors do. Juniors' benefits that raise $30,000 are considered blockbusters. Charities see junior committees not only as fund-raising groups but also as training grounds for the next generation of Pat Buckleys and Nan Kempners.
"They have to start somewhere, " said Joanne de Guardiola, chairwomen of the Associates of Memorial Sloan-Kettering.
Mark Gilbertson, chairman of the Winter Ball at the Museum of the City of New York, said his group was grooming "future leaders of the museum, trustees and donors." He added, "A lot of people are from old New York families."
People from new New York families are on the Boys Harbor junior committee, though. For example, a co-chairwoman is Odette Cabrera, whose parents were born in the Dominican Republic and who attended prep school on scholarship.
Her group raised $25,000 at a recent $40-a-ticket black-tie benefit. "We could have charged $100," Ms. Carera said. "But we kept it low so everyone could join in, not just the elite and the affluent."
 
To Some, Older Is Better

 
 Not all juniors stick to their own circuit. Christopher Mason, the songwriter who twits both generations at society parties, prefers going to senior parties and paying junior prices.
He was among a throng of young people who paid $125-a-ticket to dance at a recent Metropolitan Museum of Art benefit after the $900 crowd had had dinner. "Frankly I find it much more interesting to have a good mix of the ages," he said. "I always liked being around old people, anyway."
Junior parties may be "tiresome even though one's getting a deliciously cheaper ticket," he said, adding that one cannot very well social-climb among one's peers.
"All of the juniors at the museum were zeroing in on people like Ivana and Nan Kempner, " Mr. Mason said. "Pat Buckley was surrounded by adoring young men. It was a very funny sight seeing the juniors and the older group mix."

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LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photos: At Museum of City of New York party last week, Nina Tower, left, Betty Lindeman and Averell Mortimer; Christine Hearst and Bob Arnot were among the juniors at Thursday's party at the Union Club for the Girls Scouts. (Photographs by Bill Cunningham)

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December 9, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Sunday Outing;
A Town Tailor-Made For Holiday Shopping

BYLINE: Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section 1; Part 2; Page 70; Column 1; Style Desk; Lifestyle Page

LENGTH: 815 words

DATELINE: CHESTER, Conn.

This snug town, which curves along Pattaconk Brook and the Connecticut River, resembles a typically timeless New England community in many respects. It has a village green, a white clapboard church and plenty of historical buildings.
But it also has a vigorous and savvy business community that has decided to market the town's charm to holiday shoppers weary of crowded suburban malls and big-city department stores. Twenty-five small shops are packed almost unobtrusively into a three-block area in Chester, about 120 miles north of Manhattan in southeastern Connecticut. 
 Christmas, it's fair to say, is a big deal here.
"There are a lot of things to value in small-town living," said Cynthia Keller, an owner of Restaurant du Village, one of six restaurants in the center of Chester. "We're just showing that a small town can offer a lot of variety and unique items that you aren't going to find in a mall."
The merchants of Chester, which was a thriving mill town in the 17th and 18th centuries, have always spruced up the town and their shops during the holiday season. Indeed, with its array of crafts and antiques shops, Chester seems tailor-made for holiday shopping if rustic, simple, old-fashioned goods will fill the bill.
 
Demonstrations and Performances
 But this year, the merchants went a step further and organized a four-day Christmas celebration, which ends today. Carolers and Santa Claus will be on hand, and a variety of displays, demonstrations and performances -- basket weaving, cooking, baking and storytelling among them -- will be taking place in the stores. But after this weekend, the seasonal celebration will continue in other ways.
Next weekend, for example, the touring National Theater of the Deaf, which is based in Chester, will stage performances of Dylan Thomas's "A Child's Christmas in Wales." The shows will be held on Wednesday through Saturday, Dec. 12-15, in the Chester Meeting House, a 197-year-old building on the village green. On Wednesday and Thursday, the play will be performed with a triple bill by the Perfect Puppet Company. All performances will be in sign language and spoken English. Admission is $3 on Wednesday and Thursday, and on Friday and Saturday, $9 for adults, $5 for children 11 years old and younger and for the elderly age 65 and older. For show times: (203) 526-4971; telecommunication device for the deaf: (203) 526-4974.
The shops will remain open, of course, throughout the holiday season. Typical Sunday hours are 10 A.M. to early evening during the holiday season. "We've got enough shops and restaurants to keep shoppers happy and well fed all day," Ms. Keller said.
When visitors tire of shopping, they can take a five-minute ferry ride across the Connecticut River to the even smaller community of Hadlyme, which is basically a boat landing with a couple of old houses nearby. The ferry has been operating continuously since 1769, and even in colder weather, the ride is pleasant, scenic and inexpensive ($1 per car and driver, plus 25 cents for each additional passenger).
The ferry, which has a two-car capacity, runs daily, if sporadically, from 7 A.M. to 6:45 P.M.
Just two miles from the ferry landing in Hadlyme is Gillette Castle State Park, which has hiking trails, picnic grounds and excellent vistas of the river and surrounding countryside. And, as the name suggests, it has a wood and granite castle, which was once owned by Charles Gillette, who became famous playing Sherlock Holmes on the stage in the early 1900's. Mr. Gillette lived in the castle from 1919 to 1937.
The park is open daily from dawn to dusk, with no admission charge. The castle is open only on weekends, from 10 A.M. to 4 P.M. Admission is $2 for adults and $1 for children ages 6 to 11.
 
Through East Haddam
 Rather than taking the ferry back to Chester, a short drive will lead visitors through another small town, East Haddam, which has fewer shops than Chester but is home to the well-known Goodspeed Opera House, a prime theater for Broadway tryouts and other productions.
The current offering is "Bells Are Ringing," with book and lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green and music by Jule Styne. It runs through Sunday, Dec. 16. Performances are at 2:30 P.M. and 8 P.M. Wednesday, 8 P.M. Thursday and Friday, 5 P.M. and 9 P.M. Saturday and 2 P.M. and 6 P.M. Sunday. Admission is $25.50 on Wednesday and Thursday and $26.50 the rest of the week.
The opera house, a Victorian building dating from 1876, overlooks the Connecticut River and a narrow drawbridge, which leads back to Chester.

 
 
Getting There
 From Manhattan, take Interstate 95, the New England Thruway, north through the Bronx, Westchester and Connecticut to Exit 69. Chester is about six miles north of this exit. Take Route 9 north to Exit 6, and then head eastward on Route 148 to the center of Chester.

LOAD-DATE: December 9, 1990

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photos: Jerry Beaumier hanging a red and gold bow at his specialty-food shop. Some of the stores along Chester's Main Street, known as a mecca for old-fashioned holiday shopping. (Photographs by Stephen Castagneto for The New York Times)

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December 9, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

If You're Thinking of Living in: Chelsea

BYLINE: By TED KENNEY

SECTION: Section 10; Page 7; Column 1; Real Estate Desk

LENGTH: 1514 words

"CHELSEA is a patchwork quilt," Peter Obletz, chairman of Community Board 4, said recently about the eclectic West Side neighborhood. "On any block you may find a luxury condominium, a factory making belt buckles, an auto-repair shop, a lovely town house, or public housing."
While brokers dispute whether residential real estate prices in Chelsea have fallen more than in other parts of Manhattan, most agree that sales are in a slump. 
 Co-op prices at the Towers at London Terrace, part of a 14-building complex in a block bounded by West 23d and 24th Streets and Ninth and 10th Avenues, have dropped 25 percent in the last several months, said Patrisha Kay, its marketing director. Renovated studios now sell for $75,000, she said, and the sponsor offers financing.
Though some neighborhood residents are relieved that the clatter of construction and renovation has quieted, many said it would take more than a hot real estate market to seriously diminish the community's tolerance and spirit.
"It's a very stable, safe community that continues to look back on its roots and really has a sense of mission and philosophy," said Angelo Casillo, principal of Public School 11, at 320 West 21st Street.
Even when it was a tough maritime neighborhood, Chelsea had a reputation for working for the common good. The Hudson Guild, one of the city's oldest settlement houses, began in 1895 to provide education and health care for residents. Its offices now are in a New York City Housing Authority project on West 26th Street, one of three in the area with a total of more than 2,000 units.
 Over the years, Chelsea absorbed Irish, Italian, black and Hispanic newcomers. It has long had a considerable gay population, said Mr. Obletz, the community board chairman, and the elderly, too, are a visible part of the population. Around three-quarters of the residents of the 2,820-unit Penn Station South, a moderate-income housing cooperative, are elderly, said David L. Smith, the co-op board's president.
But high-rise buildings are scarce. "Mostly, what is available in Chelsea, except along 23d Street, is smaller buildings -- brownstone apartments, scads of them," said Clark P. Halstead Jr., president of the Halstead Property Company.  Town house co-ops in the Chelsea Historic District, noted, among other things, for its Greek Revival Cushman Row at 406-18 West 20th Street, cost about $225,000 for a one-bedroom and $350,000 for a two-bedroom.  Most of the Greek Revival and Italianate houses were built between 1835 and 1860.
Town houses sell for $950,000 to $1.6 million, said Gloria Johnson, sales director at Wells & Gay-Stribling & Associates. Commercial lofts are also available as finished or raw space.
Brownstone rents average $1,100 for a one-bedroom and $2,500 for a two-bedroom, brokers said. At the new 12-story-plus-penthouses, 68-unit Crossroads, on West 23d Street between Avenue of the Americas and Seventh Avenue, rents range from $990 for a studio, about $1,500 for the four one-bedroom penthouses and $2,000 for a two-bedroom.
Ms. Johnson said there are about 650 condominiums in the area in 15 buildings, among them the recently completed 157-unit Grand Chelsea on Eighth Avenue between 16th and 17th Street, where one-bedrooms are priced at about $170,000 to $190,000.
At the London Terrace complex, four corner towers containing 670 co-ops comprise the Towers at London Terrace, while the 1,000 rent-regulated apartments in the 10 middle buildings are called London Terrace Gardens. There are also some market-rate units, with one-bedrooms renting for about $1,700 a month, said Andrew Hoffman, general manager of Clarendon Management Corporation, the complex's managing agent.
Night life has flourished in Chelsea, which has a concentration of performance spaces, including the Joyce Theater on Eighth Avenue at 19th Street. Two cinemas on West 23d Street contain a total of 12 screens.
SOME residents are stunned that strips like Eighth Avenue south of 23d Street can support so many eating establishments. "Every place you go, there's a restaurant," said 76-year-old Fritzie Kort, who has lived in Chelsea for 47 years.
Among the restaurants that have survived for years south of 23d Street are the glitzy Empire Diner and Chelsea Commons and Chelsea Central, all on 10th Avenue; the Old Homestead Steak House, on Ninth Avenue (where a Kobe steak goes for $100), and Harvey's Chelsea, on West 18th Street. Among newer restaurants on Eighth Avenue are Twigs, Rogers & Barbero, Miss Ruby's and, for jazz, the Cajun. On Seventh Avenue, there are the Blue Hen and Claire.
Parents new to Chelsea are not sending their children to public schools in great numbers yet, Mr. Casillo said. At the k-6 P.S. 11, 49 percent of students scored at or above grade level on citywide reading tests in 1989. At P.S. 33, at 281 Ninth Avenue, 38.5 percent of pupils scored at or above grade level.
Mr. Casillo insists that "you can't judge a school by its test scores." He takes parents on tours of P.S. 11, stressing its program for gifted and talented students and its enrichment programs in computer skills and science and art.
The neighborhood is served by the Bayard Rustin High School for the Humanities, specializing in liberal arts, as well as the Fashion Industries High School, just a couple of blocks from the Fashion Institute of Technology, and Intermediate School 70.
The private Corlears School, at 324 West 15th Street, has 161 students in pre-kindergartenthrough fourth grade. The neighborhood has three Roman Catholic elementary schools -- St. Francis Xavier, Guardian Angel and St. Columbia -- and two high schools, St. Michael's for girls, at 425 West 25th Street, and Xavier for boys, at 30 West 16th Street.
A retired British military officer, Capt. Thomas Clarke, bestowed the name Chelsea on his estate in 1750, after the Thames-side village of Chelsea, now part of London. In the early 1800's, his grandson, Clement Clarke Moore, a theologian and author of "A Visit From St. Nicholas," reluctantly began subdividing the estate for housing. He donated the land for St. Peter's Episcopal Church and the General Theological Seminary. The seminary stands on a block bounded by Ninth and 10th Avenues and 20th and 21st Streets; the church is on 20th Street between Eighth and Ninth Avenues.
Today Chelsea is far larger than Clarke's estate. North of 23d Street, it tends to be industrial and commercial, including the city's flower market around Avenue of the Americas and West 28th Street and the fur district along Seventh Avenue between 27th and 30th Streets.
Many Chelsea residents are pressing for adoption of a community board proposal to limit the height of new buildings near the historic district, said Mr. Obletz, the board chairman. But pressure for development is strong in the 34th Street corridor, where the developer Harry Macklowe plans a 550,000-square-foot office tower between West 33d and 34th Streets and Eighth and Ninth Avenues.
Community leaders also foresee changes on Avenue of the Americas from 24th to 30th Street because of a proposal by the Department of City Planning to allow residences along the strip, now zoned for high-density commercial and industrial use.
CHELSEA is starved for parks, but the State Department of Transportation's preliminary plans for rebuilding the West Side Highway call for a 37-foot-wide strip of walkway, bicycle path and grass on the west side of the highway, and for rebuilding Thomas Smith Park, at the foot of West 23d Street.
Grander plans have been put forth by the West Side Waterfront Panel, created by the city and state to study how to best develop the Hudson waterfront. The panel has proposed a $500 million esplanade with the Chelsea Waterfront Park, an eight-acre park with two recreation piers jutting into the river, as its centerpiece. If it is financed, the park would open to neighborhood residents a waterfront that is now "pretty dismal," said the panel's executive director, Betsy Haggerty.
 
GAZETTEER
 
Population: 52,000 (1990 estimate).
 
Median household income: $25,000 (1990 estimate).
 
Median price of a one-bedroom co-op: $185,000.
 
Median price of a one-bedroom condominium: $199,500.
 
Median one-bedroom rent:$1,000.
 
Transportation: A, B, C, D, E, F, L, Q, R, 1, 2, 3 and 9 subway lines and buses on 34th, 23d and 14th Streets and on all avenues but 11th and 12th.
 
Government: Councilwoman Carol Greitzer, Democrat.
 
Arts Citadel: Over the years, artists and writers have made their home at the Chelsea Hotel, at 222 West 23d Street. Among them have been playwrights Eugene O'Neill and Arthur Miller; composers Virgil Thomson and Aaron Copland; painters Jackson Pollack and Larry Rivers (who still maintains a suite there); and writers Samuel Clemens, Brendan Behan and Thomas Wolfe. Though the 106-year-old Chelsea became a hotel in 1905, most residents are permanent. Some 40 rooms available for shorter stays range in price from $75 a night for a single to $250 for a suite.

LOAD-DATE: December 9, 1990

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Cushman Row houses on 20th Street in Chelsea Historic District. (Eddie Hausner/The New York Times)
 
Map of Chelsea district in Manhattan

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December 11, 1990, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

Weicker Nominates 3 For Social-Service Jobs

BYLINE: By KIRK JOHNSON, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section B; Page 4; Column 1; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 545 words

DATELINE: HARTFORD, Dec. 10

Governor-elect Lowell P. Weicker Jr. announced three more nominations for his emerging independent administration today, including a Democrat to head the Department of Aging, a Republican to be in charge of economic development and a private businessman to oversee public housing.
The nominations, which must be approved by the Democrat-controlled General Assembly, are Mr. Weicker's first in the areas of social policy. The nominees gave little indication yesterday of their positions on major issues facing the state, and Mr. Weicker stressed even as the group was introduced at a State Capitol news conference that there would be little money in the deficit-ridden state budget for expensive new initiatives. 
 The nominees are State Representative Edith G. Prague as Commissioner of Aging, Joseph J. McGee as Commissioner of Economic Development and Henry S. Scherer Jr. as Commissioner of Housing.
Mr. Weicker, a former Republican, will take office next month as Connecticut's first independent governor since the 1850's. He has already nominated two Democrats to the top posts in his budget office and two Republicans to be his chiefs of staff.
 
A Diverse Group
 He said that all three nominees introduced today were longtime personal friends, but that they had little else common. "What stands out in this group is that it's very diverse," he said, adding that "since we don't have money, we need creativity and we need brains."
Mrs. Prague, a 65-year-old Democrat from Columbia, was among the first members of the General Assembly to endorse Mr. Weicker for governor earlier this year.
Mr. McGee, 44, is a Republican bank executive from Fairfield who briefly ran for governor himself earlier this year. He served as staff director in the 1970's for United States Representative Stewart B. McKinney, Republican of Fairfield.
Mr. Scherer, 59, is the chief executive of an East Hartford company that makes reinforced steel. He met Mr. Weicker in the early 1950's when they both attended Yale University. Of the three nominees, only Mr. Scherer, a registered Republican, said he would join A Connecticut Party, the party Mr. Weicker organized this spring around his candidacy.
 
Problems Ahead
 If approved by the General Assembly, the three commissioners will face daunting challenges, ranging from the state's slumping economy, which has battered cities like Bridgeport and Hartford, to the rising price of heating oil, which has affected thousands of elderly residents on fixed incomes.
Public housing, clustered in the state's poor cities, is also becoming a burden on local budgets in some communities. Hartford's City Manager, Eugene Shipman, suggested recently that the city's public housing projects be razed and new public housing distributed equally in rich and poor communities.
Asked about Mr. Shipman's proposal, Mr. Scherer said he needed to familiarize himself more with the issues. Mrs. Prague said she had avoided thinking about the grim realities she will face if appointed.
"I'm so excited today, I don't want to get depressed thinking about that," she said.
Mr. McGee said the focus of his agency would be "jobs, jobs, jobs," to help combat the recession that he said had already begun in Connecticut.

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December 11, 1990, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

Sharp Rise in Brain Cancer Rates Found Among Americans Under 45

BYLINE: By NATALIE ANGIER

SECTION: Section C; Page 3; Column 1; Science Desk

LENGTH: 749 words

BRAIN cancer rates are climbing steeply in the United States among people under the age of 45, according to a new study.
Other recent reports have shown a sharp rise in brain tumor deaths among the elderly, particularly those over 70. But the new findings are the first to report a statistically significant increase in new cases of brain tumors among younger people. 
 The study, which will appear next week in The American Journal of Industrial Medicine, is an analysis of epidemiological data from tumor registry centers around the nation. It concludes that the number of new cases of brain tumors in younger people has been mounting at a rate of about 2 percent a year from 1973 to 1986, the last year for which data are available.
Although brain cancer remains quite rare, the incidence jumped from around 2.2 new cases for every 100,000 people in 1973, to 3.1 cases per 100,000 people 13 years later, the study reported.
But other researchers attribute much if not all of any apparent rise to improved diagnosis, rather than to a genuine surge in the number of cases.  Since the 1970's, the introduction of CAT scans and other advanced imaging devices have made it far easier for physicians to detect brain tumors at the earliest stages.
 
Debate Over Findings
 "What is being proposed as a change in frequency is simply an improvement in diagnostic methods," said Dr. Leonard T. Kurland, an epidemiologist and neurologist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.
But Dr. Devra Lee Davis, scholar in residence at the National Research Council in Washington and the lead author of the new report, insists that the rise is too great to be dismissed as the byproduct of improved diagnosis, although she said that she did not know why brain cancer was increasing among younger people. She noted that other researchers had implicated electromagnetic radiation as a possible cause of brain tumors, but the theory is fiercely disputed.
Dr. Davis said her immediate concern was to sound the alarm about the increase.  The latest paper arrives on the heels of a new volume that Dr. Davis helped edit and that is being published this week by the New York Academy of Science, "Trends in Cancer Mortality in Industrial Countries." The book is a compilation of epidemiological studies of cancer rates throughout the industrialized world. The studies jointly conclude that the incidence of many cancers is mounting in this country, Europe and Japan, especially among people over 55. Spurring the upward trend, the book says, are rising rates of tumors of the brain, breast, kidney, bone marrow, skin and lymphatic system.
Many of the results from the new volume were announced last summer in the journal Lancet and elsewhere.  But the book offers several new and provocative details about a few of the cancer trends, and some researchers praised it for its attempt to synthesize disparate threads of epidemiological data.
"Davis pulled together a lot of interesting work and very bright people to present a convincing mosaic," said Dr. Philip J. Landrigan, chairman of community medicine and director of environmental and occupational medicine at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York. "Now we have to get out there and do studies to figure out what's going on."
But other epidemiologists questioned the book's statistical methods.
Dr. Richard Peto, a renowned epidemiologist at Oxford University, said that beyond a spectacular rise in lung cancer deaths, there was no generalized increase in cancer mortality rates. "Some are going up and some are going down," he said. "The analysis as I see it in nonrespiratory cancer deaths is reassuring over all rather than alarming."
Among some of the new disclosures in the book is that far more men than women are dying from melanoma.The result is surprising because, at least in the United States, dermatologists worry that young women are at high risk of contracting the cancer as a result of excessive sunbathing.
Dr. Davis said that in all industrialized countries studied, the death rate for men was 40 percent greater than for women. She suggests that one explanation for the discrepancy is that men are more likely to be exposed to hazards in the work place. She specifically cited polychlorinated biphenyls, chemicals in electrical equipment that some scientists suspect may cause cancer.
But other researchers argue that the link between the chemical and melanoma -- or any other disease -- has not been proved.

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December 11, 1990, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

Topics of The Times;
A Seat on the Aisle

SECTION: Section A; Page 26; Column 1; Editorial Desk

LENGTH: 209 words

A New Yorker who has often compared living in this city to performing in an endless Hitchcock thriller boarded a downtown Manhattan bus one recent night. She took the window seat in the first row; the next passenger took the aisle seat beside her.
Directly behind them sat an elderly, simply dressed woman in an aisle seat. A young woman got on, said "Excuse me" to the elderly woman and tried to squeeze past into the empty window seat. The old woman wouldn't budge, and the young woman, who was pregnant, walked to the back of the bus.
"Why should I be nice to her?" the elderly woman said to herself, within earshot of those in the seat ahead. "Why shouldn't I just push her face in?" Her voice was low and her diction elegant, which made what she was saying all the more unnerving.
At the next stop, another woman got on. She, too, muttered a polite "Excuse me." Again the old woman didn't budge. "One more person tries to bother me," she said, "and I swear I'll take this city apart."
By now the bus was nearing 34th Street. "Why is it," the elderly woman said, "the devil had to take hold when I was only two blocks from my destination?" She stood up and got off. The two people in the first row exhaled. Satan's captive was out of sight.

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TYPE: Editorial

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December 12, 1990, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

The Old Soldiers of Moscow's Shopping Wars

BYLINE: By FRANCIS X. CLINES, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section A; Page 1; Column 2; Foreign Desk

LENGTH: 946 words

DATELINE: MOSCOW, Dec. 11

The pushing and scouting and conniving and shouting art of being old in the Soviet Union is Raisa Glotova's second career, a time in her life more brassy than golden.
In the perverse Soviet economy, grandparents like Mrs. Glotova are the valued time brokers who come out of theoretical retirement each day to do the family's heavy waiting on the store lines and the occasional heavy lifting when there is something to buy at the end of the line. 
 Mrs. Glotova pulled into town at 5 A.M. after her usual two-hour commute and by lunchtime had two bags full, hitched across her shoulders like a yoke, to tote back to the city of Voskresensk to improve the lives of her children's children: Mitya, Maksim, Lyonya, Oksana and Ruslan. By her description, they waited like open-mouthed fledglings back in the three-generational apartment nest.
"I cannot manage adequately because I had a proper upbringing and never learned to curse," she said after caroming out of a milk store on Tverskaya Street, the recently renamed stretch of Gorky Street, where word of mouth about this week's rarity, butter, had attracted a full complement of Moscow's hunters and foragers.
"To be retired in other countries means using your money to go and rest," said Mrs. Glotova, her smile gritty under a wool cap and a charming fringe of bright, bottle-red hair. "Here we have another occupation."
Those who generalize about the lack of individual initiative in this country should get caught in more Moscow food lines and be cut off at the knees by some of the most clever old movers and shakers in the world. Crane about to find what is the source of that sudden sharp nudge and someone, often a veteran gray head, squirms a place or two ahead, ignoring the mass injustice of it all for the family's greater good.
 
Cruelty, Respect, Pride
 All about the city today, the elderly waited in flocks, flitting to where food was rumored to be, pushing in for their fair share. The scenes were often cruel, with the tiniest old babushkas nudged aside. But there was an occasional demand from someone younger to honor that old one there amid the crush.
In either case, there were glints of pride as the pensioners made their familiar rounds.
"As long as my legs hold out, I need to help my grandchildren," said Galya Rizvanova, a small woman scuttling about in search of a promising wait.
A gray-haired man who identified himself as Grandpa Aleksandr said as he braved the odd mix of clerks' ennui and shoppers' frenzy at Detsky Mir, the main children's department store, "It keeps us young."
"I'm 77 and my hands do not work so well now, and maybe I will not see better times in my life, but I have real values," he said, beaming that he had salvaged a few toys from the crush for his grandchildren.
"It is the simple experience of life," he explained, when asked where elderly Soviet citizens get their patience and cunning for their task as critical family providers.
 
At the End, Desperation
 Other old people were studies in gray desperation as they found they could not deliver this day.
"My grandaughter needs a little dress, but I could not find any," said Anna Istomina, who said she found it not at all unusual to take an all-night train ride from Siberia for her mission. "I will sleep tonight in the railway station and go home. You know, we pensioners are very good people, although we may not look so good."
Her eyes were deep with gloom amid a store crowd that was a tide of needs, quickly flooding about the few available goods, settling or not upon one mediocre bit of plenty, perhaps, then ebbing in retreat.
"What can I tell my grandaughter?" Mrs. Istomina asked. "I must tell her there was nothing."
 
Hero? No, 'an Idiot'
 Ivan Letyok, a war veteran whose worn army medals bobbed on his jacket lapel said as he slowly walked with his cane in search of a bicycle for his grandson: "I am no hero. I am an idiot."
"I have to have a small bike," he kept repeating, despairing that the old war veterans' privileges were being forgotten along with their war. "Everyone i know died in the 30's," he said, referring to the loss of personal contacts that any Soviet shopper needs to have a chance at obtaining scarce goods.
Mrs. Rizvanova, a retired 73-year-old garbage collector, said: "There is no special skill to this. You just stand in line and wait, and if they do not have it when it is your turn, you come back the next day. And you come back the day after that. Maybe you will find it."
Another old woman, a wizened optimist with two empty shopping bags at hand as she shouldered through another day of waiting, said, "We are the best at this."
 
Thoughts of Abundance
 Nostalgia is one good on hand for the older waiting shoppers.
"When I was a young girl we had everything, everything, all on display," Mrs. Rizanova said, squinting her eyes at this memory amid nearly empty stock cases.
The strategic-minded Mrs. Glotova hefted her two full bags securely as if they contained the very time itself that she must daily spend on the lines. She said, "People pretend to forget their place and move ahead of me and of course I shout."
"I shop seven days a week," she said, smiling in the street cold at the very question of somehow behaving otherwise. "They depend on me," she said tersely of her grandchildren and their working parents.
She conceded that brutish young men shouting for her to stand aside easily seize the vanguard in daily injustices on the lines. But that clearly was not the final point for her.
"I shout back at them," she said, smiling at her own liveliness. "I shout: 'I was here first!' "

LOAD-DATE: December 12, 1990

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Soviet grandparents serve as families' foragers for scarce supplies. Raisa Glotova filled her sacks on a recent foray to Moscow shops. (Alessandra Scanziani for The New York Times)

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December 12, 1990, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Many Donate to the Neediest In Spite of Their Own Needs

BYLINE: By JONATHAN RABINOVITZ

SECTION: Section B; Page 2; Column 5; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 409 words

The elderly, the sick and the poor not only benefit from The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund, they also contribute to it.
These donors often send in checks of $5 or $10, mention the physical or economic difficulties that they face and then apologize that they cannnot give more. Many of them remember past travails and write about how they wish to help others through similar hard times. 
 "Soup for lunch was no fun, but I was more generous then," wrote one contributor, Leslie A. Abreo. "Now I dine modestly better but have become stingier. Your drive made me think again." She enclosed a check for $25.
Another letter was simply signed, "From a cancer patient." The donor said that she felt fortunate to be alive and wanted to share her good fortune through a $10 contribution.
 
'A Little to Everybody'
 One donor, Susan London, whose income dropped after two eye operations, sent $20. "I wish I could send more," she said. "But I think it's important to give something."
Attached to George Ginsberg's $3 contribution was a typewritten note, all in capital letters: "Sorry I can not send more. I only have my Social Security. I am 91 years old. I want to help. I must spread my contributions to help a little to everybody."
Mr. Ginsberg, a retired industrial photographer, said in a telephone interview that he lived in Newark on a monthly income of $625, his Social Security check. He explained that for years he had managed to find a "little extra" for the Neediest Cases.
"I don't need any luxuries," he said. "I can always find an extra dollar to give to somebody who can use it. I personally feel much more gratified when I've done a little something, though I can't do much, you understand."
Mr. Ginsberg, like dozens of other contributors to the Neediest Cases, said that he supported the fund because the money goes to a variety of people and groups, regardless of race, religion, sex or age. And he said that he could empathize with all of these people who receive aid, because they all are struggling with poverty.
The 79th annual appeal for the Neediest Cases began last month and has raised $1,499,536.05. The New York Times pays for the overhead of the campaign and the proceeds go to seven charities. All of the money is to be used for direct aid to the sick and the needy.
 
Previously recorded .... $1,442,117.55
Recorded yesterday ...........57,418.50
 
Total ................ $ 1,499,536.05

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December 12, 1990, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

NEWS SUMMARY

SECTION: Section A; Page 2; Column 5; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 1204 words


INTERNATIONAL A3-19
More hostages left Iraq and Kuwait but only one American emerged from hiding in Kuwait to board one of the three Boeing 707's sent there for what had been described as a final evacuation effort. Page A1
News analysis: Bush was determined not to repeat mistakes A19
Security Council will meet to put more pressure on Iraq A18
France sends another 4,000 troops to the gulf A18
Keeper of Baghdad's synagogue tells of Hussein's tolerance A19
President Bush met Yitzhak Shamir to smooth over American-Israeli differences, but the meeting ended with signs of the same tensions that have recently irritated relations. A19
Editor of Dead Sea Scrolls fired because of remarks on Jews A14
Is Lebanon on its way to recovery? After 15 years of civil war that left 150,000 people dead, Beirut has shaken off the rule of various militias and reunited under a legitimate Government and national army. A1
Elderly citizens in the Soviet Union have taken over a vital family task: waiting in store lines and hauling shopping bags when there is some- thing to buy. "We are the best at this," an old woman said. A1
South Korea held talks with Moscow that Korean officials said could lead to several billion dollars in trade, investment and aid for the Soviet Union in the next five years. A3
 Baker urges the Soviet Union to speed up economic changes A9
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn rejects Russian literary prize A10
The Communist Party of Albania, which has held uncontested power for 46 years, endorsed the creation of independent political parties and shook up its own top eschelon. A3
Hamburg Journal: A countess braves the ghosts of Prussia A4
Factional violence in Natal Province, overshadowed by a recent wave of clashes in black townships near Johannesburg, is continuing, and many people fear the strife, fueled by the new clashes, will worsen. A7
Many Bangladeshis fear civil strife after the abrupt resignation of President H. M. Ershad last week. As politicians struggle to fill the vacuum, the country appears headed toward economic and political turmoil. A15
Colombian troops reach guerrillas' base in the Andes A12
 
NATIONAL A20-24, B9-13
President Bush will seek a limit on the term of members of Congress, John Sununu said. Passage of such an amendment is unlikely, but Mr. Bush has thrown his support behind an idea that is popular among voters. A1
Washington at Work: A loyal and powerful White House counsel B12
A meeting of Republican governors concluded with governors saying that the party, still bruised from November's elections, had to address core economic and tax issues to avoid bigger problems in 1992. B9
Judge limits Government's infiltration of religious groups A24
Shuttle lands in good shape, but NASA says puzzles remain B12
Banks are incorrectly billing people who bought their homes with adjustable-rate mortgages because of errors in calculating interest rates, a report says. Some are paying too much; others too little. A1
F.D.I.C. will probably lose $4 billion this year D1
 A banking aide to Senator Cranston testified that she did not warn him against dealing closely with Charles Keating and that she considered his demands no different from those of other constituents. B10
Insurers for small employers indicted for fraud A20
Doctors are given millions by drug companies B13
I.B.M. will build child-care centers at five locations near its offices and plants around the country. It joins an increasing number of corporations frustrated by the shortage of good child care for their employees. A20
The report of a rape struck fear on the George Washington University campus. But the day after the story appeared in a student newspaper, the source of information about the attack said she had made it up. A21
Collision in dense fog kills 15 and injures 51 in Tennessee A20
Four die as balloon crashes in downtown Columbus B12
Navajo Nation Journal: A gulf prayer is nearly silenced A20
 
REGIONAL B1-8
John Gotti was arrested again on Federal racketeering charges. Law-enforcement officials have three times tried and failed to convict Mr. Gotti, who they say is the reputed boss of the Gambino family. A1
 The jury in the second jogger trial convicted Kevin Richardson, 16, of attempted murder and rape but convicted Kharey Wise, 18, only of sexual abuse and assault. A1
A juror says Kharey Wise's "remorse" helped him B6
Mel Miller and an aide were indicted on fraud charges that involved the buying and selling of co-ops in New York City. Mr. Miller, the Speaker of the State Assembly, said he intended to remain in his post. B3
New York City must cut more jobs to help close a $250 million budget gap in the current fiscal year, the Dinkins administration said. As many as 10,000 jobs would be lost. B1
The Daily News will keep publishing as long as it shows progress in overcoming the seven-week-old strike, itspublisher, James Hoge, said after a meeting of the board of The News's parent, the Tribune Company. B1 Employee unions say Cuomo is exploiting Daily News strike B8
The strike by sanitation workers is the latest shock wave from New York City's decision to more than double the price it charges private haulers to dump trash at the Fresh Kills landfill in Staten Island. B1
Man in the news: N.Y.U.'s new president, L. Jay Oliva B2
Trumps get their divorce; next question is who gets what B3
New construction at Newark Airport has been proposed by the Florio Administration. The projects, which would cost $1.7 billion, include a rail connection between the airport and Newark. B1
Ruling in New Jersey on evidence of intoxication B3
Neediest Cases B2
 
BUSINESS DIGEST D1
 
Education Page B14
The U.S. Department of Education has decided to begin prohibiting colleges and universities that receive Federal funds from offering scholarships especially for members of minorities.  A1
 
The Living Section
Food
Drinks for holiday tables C1
No schmaltz? No way.  C1
Eating Well C3
Microwave Cooking C4
European-style spirits C6
Living
Pay phones for the deaf C1
Metropolitan Diary C2
Store scuttles a dream C8
 
 Arts/Entertainment
Checking in with Hunter Thompson C15
Film: "Havana" C15
"The Sheltering Sky" C15
Music: The Pop Life C14
Richard Goode in piano recital C16
Word and Image: Ismail Kadare's "Broken April" C21
 
Sports
Basketball: Knicks win first for MacLeod D21
Column: Vecsey on N.B.A. old- timers D21
Football: Parcells heading back to work D21
Hockey: Islanders edge Devils D21
 
Obituaries
William A. Owens, a folklorist, author and professor D18
George Peter Stavropoulos, fashion designer D19
Armand Hammer, entrepreneur D20
 
Editorials/Letters/Op-Ed
Editorials A22
How to put space in its place
Budget cuts: real and right
Capitalist in the Kremlin
Topics: What Regan raised
Letters A22
Flora Lewis: After five years A23
Tom Wicker: Who's a partisan?  A23
Karel Von Wolferen: Why militarism still haunts Japan A23
Monroe Price: Cityspire -- music at its peak A23

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December 12, 1990, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

How a Great Store Stole a Customer's Secret Treasure

BYLINE: By JOAN COOK

SECTION: Section C; Page 8; Column 3; Living Desk

LENGTH: 712 words

FOR months I have lived in a secret world, wedded to a Tiffany credit of $112 and change. Catalogue follows catalogue in the mail, and I savor the options each page presents, browsing among jewels, household accessories and other gewgaws, trying to decide on my secret, selfish Christmas gift.
The windfall is the aftermath of a visit by friends from abroad. In parting, they thoughtfully presented me with a stylish stamp box, unaware that I already had one that had belonged to my grandmother and that I treasure. Thus the return and the credit, which I assumed could only be reclaimed on the premises. 
 That assumption is crucial, as is the amount of the credit, which establishes boundaries on what might otherwise be a preposterous, larger-than-life fantasy like that of the elderly Englishwoman who went around the world visiting all the exotic places she had longed to see using credit cards for currency. By paying off one with another, she kept her own version of the pyramid scheme afloat until well into her 90's, when she died happy owing a bundle of uncollectible bills.
Each month a creamy white envelope reminds me of my obligation to spend. The bill reads reassuringly: "Your account indicates a credit balance. No remittance is necessary," a subtle way of telling you that the money is burdening the store.
I have toyed with the crystal champagne bucket with scroll handles, which at $50 permits me to add four champagne flutes at $48 for the dining room sideboard. On the other hand, a dinner party for six could be preceded by a holiday nip from the 12-ounce double old-fashioned glasses at $13 a pop. I know, I know, six glasses at $13 apiece comes to $78, so I should order eight. My dinner table only seats six comfortably.
Faced with this dazzling variety of choices, I considered having my ears pierced -- an idea I have entertained off and on over the last 20 years or so -- and filling the spaces with those rosy-white cultured pearls, the ones with posts of 14-karat gold.
A phone call scuttled that one.
Even with a little help from the piggy bank, cultured pearls were clearly beyond the confines of $112.
Paloma Picasso does a heart pin in sterling silver for $95, which, taking into account the 8.25 percent sales tax, would do it. Ditto the silver "Love and Kisses" brooch, also at $95. The problem is that I am partial to gold, which Ms. Picasso's designs also come in but with considerably higher price tags.
Alternately I lingered over the "swirl" ring in sterling silver with 18-karat gold accents for $100, or the "hook and eye" bracelet in the same combination at $110. But would the gold accent be enough to take the curse off the sterling silver?
I could impress my friends with the "Ornament With Bow" greeting cards engraved on ecru folders (a box of 25 cards and envelopes is $62), and still have enough left for the sterling silver diamond-textured retractable ball point purse pen at $32. On second thought, 25 cards wouldn't be enough for the Christmas list, and as for those friends in need of being impressed, if any there be, the quicker they are winnowed out, the better.
Each time I wandered through the pages, I was stopped by the 3 1/4-inch-high quartz desk clock in black nickel. The more I studied it, the more ideal it seemed for the empty spot left by the French enamel clock my mother gave me long ago and that I, in turn, passed on to my son and his wife when they fancied it. Moreover the desk clock was a Tiffany exclusive, a clincher if ever I saw one.
It was at that point that my eye fell on the back of the store's monthly missive, where the fine print lies.
Under the heading "credit balances," in small, neat type, the catalogue said: "Any balance will be refunded after six months unless used. For an immediate refund write us at the address listed in the 'send inquiries' section on the front of this bill."
Tiffany, how could you? A few, ill-considered words and my Christmas fantasy is forever dashed on the hard rocks of reality. How can I become the proud owner of an exclusive Tiffany timepiece when the family exchequer shows a raft of bills crying to be settled, ranging from the required-by-law chimney extension to a needed pump replacement?
Dear Santa Claus. . . .

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December 13, 1990, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

JAKARTA JOURNAL;
Echoes From Past Rattle Suharto's 'New Order'

BYLINE: By STEVEN ERLANGER, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section A; Page 4; Column 3; Foreign Desk

LENGTH: 901 words

DATELINE: JAKARTA, Indonesia

They are getting to be old men now and remain a marginal elite. But their voices and views still count for something, like a small claim of conscience, and their calls for more democracy and respect for human rights in Indonesia have a wider echo than before.
From time to time now, as Indonesia experiments with more "openness" and the rules of censorship and self-censorship grow more vague, their names even appear in the press. 
 They are the members and associates of the Movement of the Petition of 50, some of the few open dissenters to the development of President Suharto's New Order. Most broke with Mr. Suharto 10 years ago, when they signed a Statement of Concern about autocratic and antidemocratic tendencies they felt were distorting the promise of his Government.
Their complaints were not allowed to be published, said Slamet Bratanata, one of their leaders and a former Minister of Mines. They could not get passports, their telephones were tapped and few would dare to do business with them.
 
The Criticism Mounts
 But many were crucial to the Indonesian revolution against Dutch rule, the establishment of an independent nation and the formation of Mr. Suharto's New Order. So like fallen angels, they were tolerated by the authorities, even patronized, since they never represented much of an active threat to the Government. And many turned to opposition only after they themselves had been outmaneuvered or had fallen from grace.
But 25 years after Mr. Suharto emerged from the chaos of a 1965 coup attempt against President Sukarno and the purging of the Indonesian Communist Party, when about half a million people were killed, criticism of his long period in power and of his family's wide business interests is becoming more widespread, especially among students and the military. Many would prefer Mr. Suharto to retire in 1993 at the end of his fifth term.
As a way of answering and co-opting some of that criticism, President Suharto has himself called for more openness and debate. The press is somewhat freer, and as a result the voices of these men, like Mr. Bratanata, former Gov. Ali Sadikin of Jakarta and two retired generals, A. H. Nasution and H. R. Dharsono, are being listened to with more care, and their call for Mr. Suharto to step down has not gone unnoticed.
 They are not democrats, exactly, but harken back to the principles of the 1945 revolution they feel has been betrayed.
 
'25 Years Is Too Long'
 "After 1965-66, which was like our Hiroshima, the whole nation was paralyzed," Mr. Bratanata said in an interview. "We all felt we should relinquish some of our freedoms and liberties for stability, to build up the country. But 25 years is too long. And even if we agreed with all the policies of the Government, in order to preserve the achievements of the New Order, we wish there was more democracy and less stealing."
"I'm not for democracy as just a chance to talk or to have openness," Mr. Bratanata, 62 years old, said bluntly. "I'm for democracy as an effective control on the Government."
There is a "saturation point," with too many "abuses of office, nepotism and corruption," he said. "The real danger is not Suharto, but the example of Suharto, which permeates everywhere."
While his talk is unusually forceful in this deferential, hierarchical nation, he is admired by others who have suffered more.
General Dharsono, for instance, who was released from prison in September after serving more than five years for "subversion," said of Mr. Bratanata and the signers of the Petition of 50, "They have opened the eyes of those who don't want to know the real situation."
 
Emotional Welcome by Students
 Students lined up before dawn, some of them weeping, to greet the general, now 65, on his release. He was an ally of President Suharto against the Communists in 1965. But he has always favored some form of opposition, and is widely admired for having defended student demonstrators in Bandung in 1978, for which he was removed from a plush job. After a four-month trial in 1986, he was found guilty on charges that he had somehow helped incite Muslim rioting at Tanjung Priok in 1984.
While Indonesians watch to see what General Dharsono will do now, his former superior, General Nasution, once Defense Minister and army commander, has lost none of his own candor.
Now 72, he was a close but critical ally of President Sukarno in the revolution, favoring a professional, impartial army. He was one of the seven top generals marked for killing on the night of the coup attempt, Sept. 30, 1965, and was the only one to escape, jumping over his garden wall. But his 5-year-old daughter was shot and died a few days later.
The general quietly showed a visitor the frame of the doorway where the bullet stopped. "I often think that if I had talked to them, I would already be in my grave," he said.
"Our system is not open," he said. "It works behind the screens. It depends on circumstances, not constitutional procedures."
"For me, that is the biggest problem -- not the man Suharto, but the political system, which is not yet a constitutional one."
But however dim the future, he said, "change is coming, and no one can stop it." And where will that leave the opposition? General Nasution looked up, surprised. "I'm not in the opposition," he said. "I'm a general committed to the Constitution."

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GRAPHIC: Photo: Students wearing T-shirts honoring retired Gen. H. R. Dharsono joined others who lined up in Jakarta to greet him in September as he was released from prison after serving more than five years for "subversion." (Steven Erlanger/The New York Times)

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December 13, 1990, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

Mobile Homes? Think Of Them as Beach Houses

BYLINE: By JO GIESE, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section C; Page 1; Column 1; Home Desk

LENGTH: 1475 words

DATELINE: MALIBU, Calif., Dec. 12

From their wraparound redwood deck, Sally and Ron Zamarin have a clear view of the white water at Zuma Beach directly below, the dolphins out in the Pacific and even the West Channel Islands. Nestled in a private, gated 93-acre community, the Zamarins' new home is a cocoon of seafoam green with three bedrooms, three bathrooms, a walk-in wine cellar, skylights and Mexican tile floors.
In Malibu, it might be just another beach house, except that it happens to be a triple-wide mobile home, model year 1970. 
 A year ago the Zamarins paid $250,000 for their mobile home in the Point Dume Club, a mobile-home park in the lap of Malibu luxury. It was the highest price ever paid at the park, said Bill Wood, the park's manager. The Zamarins said they were paying even more than that to renovate it.
Some of the 297 homes of this quiet, well-manicured community, where the black asphalt is so smooth it would make a perfect roller-skating surface (if roller-skating were allowed), look like the mobile homes in any other trailer park. But many do not, sometimes because of elaborate renovations, sometimes because the carport houses a Mercedes, a Maserati or a Rolls-Royce.
"This place is the best-kept secret in town," said Jim Baltutis. He has what he calls a "killer" view of the Santa Monica Mountains from the second-story deck of his mobile home, which, as a single-wide unit (12 feet wide by 60 feet long) is one of the park's smallest.
Mr. Baltutis, who is 24 years old and manages a rock band, is part of an influx of young people to Point Dume (pronounced du-MAY) in the last two years. Before then, they would not have looked twice at the 20-year-old park, since it was limited to people 45 years of age and older and considered a retirement community. Things changed in March 1989 when the park opened its doors to people of all ages to avoid meeting new, more stringent Federal regulations on limiting mobile-home parks to older adults.
Partly as a result, mobile homes that would sell for $30,000 to $60,000 elsewhere go for $100,000 to $250,000 here, said Mr. Wood, whose office in the clubhouse looks out on an immaculately landscaped pool and Jacuzzi.
In addition to the cost of the mobile home, residents lease the ground it rests on. The fee -- $650 to $1,300 a month -- is based on whether the site has a view of the Santa Monica Mountains or the Pacific Ocean. These ground-rent leases run five years.
The Point Dume Club may be the ultimate expression of the old real-estate adage, "location, location, location."
"A mobile home is a mobile home whether it's in Victorville or Redwood City," said Mr. Wood, who has worked in mobile-home parks in less glamorous places. "But the fact that you're in Malibu, no question about it, this is the upper-class mobile home park in California."
In this celebrity-studded area, entertainers like Johnny Carson and Martin Sheen have multimillion-dollar estates, condominiums start at $195,000 and the smallest house goes for $500,000.
The Point Dume Club, on the other hand, allows Californians to live near the beach in Malibu for much, much less, said Jack Evans, who walks his Lhasa apso, Buddy, near the thick rows of lush ferns that line the driveway of the double-wide unit that he shares with his wife, Deirdre.
Upscale mobile home parks appear to be peculiar to California.
"Treasure Island in South Laguna Beach is the one other oceanfront mobile-home park more costly than the Point Dume Club, where rents go up to $2,500 a month," said William T. Dawson, a mobile-home-park developer based in California. "I know of no other places in the United States where this condition exists. It's an aberration here in California.
"For anyone to be able to enjoy an oceanfront residence for under a million dollars, that's a bargain," Mr. Dawson added.
Like the Evanses, the Zamarins have long wanted to live near the beach. The couple, who are in their mid-50's, decided to move after their four children left home.
Although their 2,700-square-foot mobile home is the largest unit at the Point Dume Club, it would easily fit on the tennis court of the property in Encino they recently sold, said Mrs. Zamarin. She admitted that she probably cares too much about what other people think and still chokes on the term "mobile home park"; she prefers to say that she lives in a beach house.
But living in a mobile-home park does not appear to bother her relatives. Last year, after the Zamarins bought their mobile home, which has an enormous magnolia tree out front, Mr. Zamarin's sister, Peggy Khoury, and her husband, Joseph, also bought in the park. They were also joined by the sisters' recently widowed mother, Margaret Zamarin, whose triple-wide unit was big enough to seat 26 relatives and friends for Thanksgiving dinner last month.
Just up the hill and around the bend from the Zamarins the other day, painters were recently brushing a final coat of white paint on the thick stucco walls in Susan Cotton's mobile home.
Ms. Cotton, a former actress who now designs homes (this is her first mobile one, however), has spent close to $200,000 turning a 1972 24-foot-wide unit into a 1,800-square-foot Cape Cod cottage, making her home a little larger than the average home in the park, which is about 1,300 square feet.
Ms. Cotton and her contractor, Tim Lankford, have rounded corners and plastered the walls, and added a white Gaggenau stove and a Sub-zero refrigerator. Although Ms. Cotton's friends with big houses in Beverly Hills think her mobile home is quaint, she intends to make this her permanent residence.
"It's safe and friendly," she said. "It has the feeling of a little community."
For Mark and Josephine Madison, who have a 3-year-old daughter, the appeal of the park was less crime and less congestion than they faced in their old neighborhood in North Hollywood.
Last summer, the Madisons bought their first home, a double-wide fixer-upper for $120,000. They have spent the last six months remodeling the mobile home, which was completely gutted, and have yet to move in. Mr. Madison, who is 6 feet 2 inches tall, recently stood in the empty space where the shower will be, demonstrating that they need a bigger shower stall or he will hit his elbows on the glass.
One thing that disturbs some residents is the size of ground-rent increases. "When we moved in we paid $160 a month rent," said Paul Pierce, 80; he and his wife, Mary, were the first residents when the park opened in 1969. "Ours is now up to $1,000."
As he flipped through a scrapbook of clippings from the days when he was one of Los Angeles's first helicopter traffic reporters, he noted that "a lot of wealthy people are moving in and some old-timers are having to move out." About half of the mobile homes are occupied by people who moved in before the Point Dume Club lifted its age requirement.
Mr. Evans, who said he wished he owned his home site, asserted that when his rent, now $750, reaches $1,000, he will consider leaving. But Mr. Evans, who has lived at the park for 10 years, said it would be hard to give up the swimming pool, which is kept at 80 degrees year-round, and the small-town feeling of the pancake (and Bloody Mary) breakfasts that are held a few times a year.
While his double-wide unit has more than doubled in value from the $72,000 it cost 10 years ago, he said that other types of property had shown greater appreciation. For example, the ocean-view condominiums just outside the park gates were $150,000 10 years ago and now cost more than $500,000.
There have always been some people who used their mobile home in the park as a second house at the beach. Carl Scott, a senior vice president of artist relations at Warner Brothers Records who works with singers like Madonna, Prince, and K. D. Lang, said that the unit he bought for $71,000 two years ago meant the only way he could afford a getaway at the beach. His primary residence in Pasadena is a carriage house on what was once Gen. George S. Patton's estate.
Mr. Scott has spent about $20,000 to upgrade his mobile home. He added a wraparound deck, large windows for more striking views of the ocean, white Berber carpet and drywall where there once was vinyl. "It's very open, like being in a loft," he said.
In the hope of trading up, Mr. Scott has just put his mobile home on the market for $225,000, more than three times what he paid for it. He intends to take the profits and buy a duplex on the beach below.
"I'm going to miss the place a lot," Mr. Scott said. "I really love it, except in a storm or earthquake. Then it feels like you're in a can. In a recent small earthquake, it rattled, banged, squeaked, rumbled. Then you knew you were in a mobile home."
"But," he added quickly, "I never called it a mobile home. I always called it a cottage."

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LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photos: Palm trees and elaborately renovated mobile homes flank the main street of the Point Dume Club in Malibu. (Bart Bartholomew for The New York Times) (pg. C1); Residents of the Point Dume Club have views of the Pacific Ocean or the Santa Monica Mountains; With landscaping and extensive renovations -- inside and out -- some residences no longer resemble mobile homes; Susan Cotton has spent about $200,000 turning her 1972 double-wide mobile home into a Cape Cod cottage.; Mark and Josephine Madison, with their daughter, Samantha, on the deck of their double-wide fixer-upper; Sally Zamarin has added kitchen cabinets with glass doors in her triple-wide mobile home, the park's largest unit. (pg. C10) (Photographs by Bart Bartholomew for The New York Times)

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December 16, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

For Many, Neediest Cases Fund Is a Chance to Hope Again;
Finding Quiet Home for a Broken Heart

BYLINE: By DANIELLE M. DELINCE

SECTION: Section 1; Part 2; Page 82; Column 1; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 912 words

Like many emigrants who flee their homelands in search of economic, political and religious freedom in the United States, Andres D. left the Dominican Republic 27 years ago for greater opportunities.
He settled in the Bronx, then later moved to Staten Island. For many years he worked as a welder and a janitor at an apartment building in the Bronx, providing for his wife, Eduarda, and their four children. He saw his children through high school and college: One is now an engineer, one is a minister, another is a bank manager and the fourth is an accountant for the city. Family and faith were the underpinnings of his life. 
 But in January, Eduarda died after a long illness and -- after 60 years of marriage -- Andres found himself lonely and depressed. He moved in with a daughter who lives in the Bronx with her husband and adult sons.
 
'I Did Not Know What to Do'
 The crowded house, with loud merengue, jazz and rock music constantly blaring, proved to be too unsettling for 88-year-old Andres, who had become accustomed to solitude in his former home. He stopped eating and "would not touch anything in the refrigerator," his daughter, Rosa, the bank manager, said in a recent interview.
"My dad really needed to be with people of his age," she added. "He was very attached to his memories and I did not know what to do."
Rosa sought help from her employer, who knew about a housing program for the elderly that was operated by the Community Service Society, the nonprofit agency that has been an advocate for New York City's poor since 1847. It is one of seven charities that receive contributions from The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund.
Through its Enriched Housing Program, which has been in operation since 1979, the society provides housing and housekeeping assistance for people over 65 who -- like Andres -- are capable of living on their own.
The housing program is but one of many projects of the society, which shifted its focus in the early 1980's to address issues of homelessness, health and education as services declined and the demands for them became greater.
But "the most important element of the society's work is its academic approach to the basic problems of the poor," said Dwight Langhum, the society's director of special projects,
 
Soup Kitchens and Reading Help
 It publishes periodic reports on conditions that affect the poor and proposes solutions to government and private social service agencies. It also promotes participation in elections and in the last two years has registered some 135,000 voters.
Through its Retired Senior Volunteer Program, some 10,000 volunteers work in soup kitchens, teach adults to read, and assist in museums, libraries and schools.
The Society, which has an operating budget of $14 million, received $1.7 million from the Neediest Cases Fund's last campaign.
Five months ago, Andres became one of its thousands of beneficiaries when he was placed in a one-bedroom apartment in the Randall-Balcom housing project in the Throgs Neck section of the Bronx. Designed for the elderly, the three adjoining red-brick buildings are home to several hundred men and women who find comfort in helping each other. Andres is one of 10 residents who are being assisted through the Society's housing program.
Each day about 9 A.M. a social worker, Idesia Bastos, calls to check on him. And two or three times a week a housekeeper does his shopping, making sure he has at least a three-day supply of food. She also cleans the apartment and does the laundry. Just as importantly, though, Mrs. Bastos and the housekeeper provide a bit of companionship.
 
'They Take Good Care of Me'
 "This is a cheaper and more pleasant alternative to a nursing home," Mrs. Bastos said.
Mrs. Bastos tries to make the residents' apartments as homey as possible -- she bought white lace curtains for Andres's living room and bedroom -- and she tries to make their holidays brighter. She has promised Christmas presents for Andres and his neighbors.
"They take good care of me," he said through an interpreter. He even acknowledged that he had gained a few pounds.
Andres, a shy, private man, lives in his apartment surrounded by symbols of his faith -- a blue-and-white wall-hanging in his bedroom proclaims "Mi Corazon Pertenece A Cristo" (My heart belongs to God) -- and photographs of his family, including his nine grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. But most of all, there are memories of his beloved Eduarda.
He brightens as he talks of their 60 years together and reverently looks at a small black-and-white photograph of them that was taken on their 25th wedding anniversary.
In his bedroom is a wooden plaque given to him and Eduarda by their children for their 50th wedding anniversary 10 years ago.
A tidy man, Andres gets up every morning about 7, makes his bed, prepares his breakfast, watches the news on television and waits for his daily calls.
At midday he goes to an adjacent building to have lunch with the other residents. As the only man in a crowd of ladies, Andres gets a lot of attention. But he does not say much because he speaks very little English and, he said, "I am embarrassed by my accent."
Andres often walks to a neighborhood grocery store for milk or bread and takes frequent walks in a nearby park.
In many ways Andres seems very content with his current life. Still, Mrs. Bastos said, she often finds him weeping silently.

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December 16, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Shopping Across the Russia-Estonia Border

BYLINE: By HENRY KAMM, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section 1; Part 1; Page 14; Column 1; Foreign Desk

LENGTH: 664 words

DATELINE: NARVA, Estonia, Dec. 9

The bridge across the Narva River, guarded by medieval fortresses built by Estonia on this bank and by the czars on the other, links this industrial town to its twin of Ivangorod and marks the border between Estonia and Russia.
It is the bond also between this town of shortages and high prices and its far poorer Russian neighbor, where store shelves are virtually bare. 
 A 37-year-old metalworker, his fur cap pulled deep over his face against a freezing rain outside, turned from the counter of Ivangorod's biggest food store with nothing but a chunk of margarine and a bag of colored candy in his shopping basket. He prepared to continue his quest for food wherever he could find it.
"I do the shopping, because when my wife does it she gets too upset and nervous," he said.
He said he had obtained his meager purchases on his November ration coupons, which the saleswoman had clipped off his card after much discussion. "Because in November there wasn't even this to be had," the man said, nodding toward his nearly empty basket.Old people are even worse off, he said, because their pensions make them dependent on what they can buy at the low-priced state stores in the Russian federation without recourse to the better-supplied Estonian stores.
The man said he would be happy to live in Estonia, where he works, if that republic achieves its goal of independence. "But maybe Russia will get independence, too," he added. "Maybe it will even have a revolution."
Pointing again at his basket, he said, "I don't know how Gorbachev lives, but I know our Communists here don't live like this."
The manager at the store's single checkout counter, asked whether she would take time to talk about the troubles of her work, replied: "What problem? We have so many."
Shoppers go back and forth across the bridge, she said, although Estonia in October proclaimed an "economic frontier" around its territory to prevent a drain on its resources.
Much more is available on the Estonian side, but prices here have tripled since October. This has caused residents from here to shop for food in Ivangorod to save a ruble or two.
This morning what they found in the Russian town were dusty jars of pickles, tiny brown-flecked apples, small turnips and black radishes that went soft waiting for customers, as well as small, fresh herrings. Maybe bigger fish have stopped swimming in the Gulf of Finland and the Baltic Sea afew miles away, the manager said.
Of course she would like to live in Estonia if it regains its independence, the woman said, "but the Estonians don't like us Russians." However accurate this generalization may be in the rest of Estonia, it applies fully in this northeastern region, where Russians have almost completely supplanted the original population.
In this grievously polluted region -- where large deposits of oil shale are mined and burned to supply electricity or are converted into fertilizer, solvents and other chemicals -- masses of Russian workers were settled after World War II, when Moscow re-established its 1940 annexation of Estonia.
This was done for exclusively demographic reasons, to Russify a strategic region, said Prof. Endel Lipmaa, a nuclear physicist and chemist, who is alsoMinister in the non-Communist government that is negotiating with Moscow to achieve Estonia's independence. He said the chemical industry was not only severely polluting but also uneconomic, costing more than it produces.
In the republic as a whole, Estonians outnumber Russians by about 60 to 40 percent of the population of 1.6 million, but this area is more than 90 percent Russian.
As a result of this imbalance, the Russian-controlled Narva municipal administration is ignoring the "economic frontier" and does not interfere with cross-border traffic.
"Of course they come over here to shop," said a Russian saleswoman in Narva's biggest food store. "What does it matter if prices are higher? At least here you can buy something."

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December 17, 1990, Monday, Late Edition - Final

Standing Alone, With Help From Neediest Cases Fund

BYLINE: By JONATHAN RABINOVITZ

SECTION: Section B; Page 11; Column 2; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 587 words

Marion B. said yesterday morning that her multiple sclerosis was no big deal and that she could take care of herself -- "just fine, thank you" -- on her own.
"I can't jump up and down the steps," said the 78-year-old woman, who did not want to give her last name. "But I don't have constant pain. My hands work fine. It's my feet that don't work. Actually they work, but they work sporadically. 
 "It's this walker I have," she added. "I hate to shlep it around."
She lay on her king-size bed, dressed in gray slacks, pink socks, a striped T-shirt, moccasins and a black tam-o'-shanter with a red pompon. Her walker stood a few feet away, and a swimsuit and bathing cap were draped over it.
 
Swims and Plays Piano
 Although Marion has trouble walking, she manages to go swimming three days a week in a special program for the elderly and disabled. There is a piano in her living room that she said she plays "badly." And her one-room apartment in Larchmont, N.Y., is decorated with rugs, pillows and blankets that she has woven and sewn herself.
For 16 years, since she was divorced, Marion, a retired interior decorator, has lived alone, and she cherishes her home. Despite the degenerative disease that has made it hard for her to talk and caused numbness in her feet, she has continued to keep her own place. But in recent years -- since breaking her hip in 1986 -- it has become difficult for her to maintain her independence.
Through the help of the Westchester Jewish Community Services, with money from The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund, Marion has been able to continue to live by herself. Meals are delivered to her daily. A homemaker visits regularly to help her bathe and take care of other personal needs. And a caseworker has made sure that she receives health and social services benefits that allow her to keep the apartment.
Marion is one of hundreds of people -- elderly and young -- who have received aid from the Neediest Cases. The 79th annual appeal began last month, and all the proceeds go to seven charities. The New York Times pays for the overhead of the campaign.
For Marion, the assistance she received from the Westchester Jewish Community Services, an agency of the United Jewish Appeal-Federation of Jewish Philanthropies of New York, has probably kept her from having to move to a nursing home.
 
Each Step a Struggle
 Marion said in an interview yesterday that she can still get around on her own. But when she got up to walk, each step was a struggle. A short trip to the bathroom took her several minutes. Her back was hunched as she walked. She had to use both arms to lean against a bedside table, a wall and a doorknob to support herself. Afterward, she collapsed onto the bed.
Marion said that she fell last week and bruised her back, but that it was not serious. She said her doctor told her that she was still "healthy as a horse" and that she should not let one fall stop her.
"The best bet is for me to keep moving myself," she said. "I don't want my muscles to atrophy, so I'm going to keep walking until I die."
The Westchester agency has been a source of support, she said, but ultimately she has made it on her own.
She stuttered slightly as she summed up her situation: "They were always present when I needed them. But the one who makes the difference is yourself. You have to get up and move."
 
Previously recorded .... $1,632,329.87
Recorded yesterday ...........27,154.55
 
Total ....................$1,659,484.42

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December 18, 1990, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

Wide Errors Found In Drug Histories

BYLINE: By The Associated Press

SECTION: Section C; Page 2; Column 5; Science Desk

LENGTH: 593 words

HOSPITAL records erred 60 percent of the time in listing important medications that patients older than 65 were taking when admitted, raising a risk of serious treatment errors, a study has found.
Such recording mistakes mean patients may not get drugs they need in the hospital, or they may get unneeded drugs that cause harmful side effects, said the researcher, Dr. Mark Beers of the University of California at Los Angeles. 
 The study appears in the November issue of the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.
The study involved 122 randomly chosen patients at two hospitals. Their average age was 77, and all were older than 65.
 
Over-the-Counter Drugs
 At least one error occurred in 60 percent of records when analysis was restricted to medications excluding over-the-counter drugs, cold medicines and medications applied on the skin, Dr. Beers said. Three or more errors occurred in 18 percent of the records.
When the other drugs were included, 83 percent of records contained at least one error, the study found.
Dr. Beers recommended that people of any age carry an updated list of current medications, including the name of each drug, the dosage strength and how often they take it.
He also recommended that patients older than 65 be asked a second time about their current medication use a day or so after admission, by a nurse or pharmacist who can devote 15 or 20 minutes to a thorough interview.
 
Diabetes Drug Omitted
 Dr. Beers cited the case of a patient whose records failed to note she was taking an oral diabetes medication. He said the drug was not continued in the hospital until he pointed out the error.
Another patient was given a blood-thinning drug because his record said he was on the medication, when in fact the treatment had been stopped months before, Dr. Beers said. The error created a needless risk of bleeding, he said.
"We found some really clinically very important problems here" that could lead to complications, prolonged hospital stays and perhaps even death, he said.
"I expected to find some errors, but the number of people involved and the quantity of errors and the kinds of drugs involved were much greater, much more serious than I had speculated," Dr. Beers said.
The 60 percent error rate is high enough that "I think every patient and every doctor would agree that's scary," commented Dr. Jerry Avorn of Harvard University Medical School, an authority on medication use by the elderly.
While most such mistakes will not cause any trouble, the high frequency means "it's just a matter of time and the law of probability that some unpleasant clinical outcome is going to occur," he said.
 Part of the problem is that "physicians are not as preoccupied as we should be with taking a medication history," Dr. Avorn said. Another factor is that sick or injured patients are often unable to give a comprehensive list of their medications, both doctors said.
 
Older People Take More Drugs
 The study focused on older people because they tend to use more medications than younger people, to change prescriptions more frequently and to be more vulnerable to side effects, Dr. Beers said.
Researchers checked records written by doctors at the time of admission, and then carefully interviewed the patients within two days of admission to get their own list of medications for comparison.
For "important" medications, records for 52 percent of all patients omitted at least one drug and records for 22 percent listed a drug that the patient was not actually taking.

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December 19, 1990, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Review/Dance;
The Tap Fraternity Honors a Master

BYLINE: By ANNA KISSELGOFF

SECTION: Section C; Page 16; Column 4; Cultural Desk

LENGTH: 804 words

Some of the best dancing in the world nowadays comes from American tap-dancers; young and old, they proved the point fittingly in an extraordinary concert on Monday night that was a tribute to one of their own.
Steve Condos, who died at the age of 71 on Sept. 16 immediately after performing at the International Dance Biennial in Lyons, France, was, many recalled at the Village Gate, a master among masters of the form. His thoroughly individual style kept him, unlike most tap artists, firmly rooted in place while he poured out a virtuosic torrent of ultraclear sound. It was percussion whose rhythmic complexity was impossible to imitate, as Gregory Hines remarked ruefully before his own performance in the Gate's packed basement cafe. 
 A few minutes later, Mr. Hines invited the teen-age Savion Glover up to the tiny stage for a traditional challenge dance. To see these two contemporary stylists, whose star projection has contributed to tap's new popularity, engage in a genuine dialogue is to see the form go forward. Slyly trying to trip each other up by inserting an extra rhythmic phrase, each going one better with a thundering outburst or throwing in a novelty or two, both raced finally to the finish. Playing senior citizen, Mr. Hines bit the dust, miming collapse and a cramp in his leg -- and got up to give his nonchalant opponent a bear hug.
Nobody lost, of course. The special quality of tap, which has been staging a slow comeback for 20 years, is the fraternal feeling among its performers, which others in the dance world have lost.
It was no surprise that this gathering, presided over by Lorraine Condos, Mr. Condos's wife, and Charles (Honi) Coles, was marked by a special warmth and that Mr. Condos's own generosity as a teacher and human being was constantly recalled. His versatility was remembered by jazz musicians with whom he collaborated as a drummer, and his film work was recalled with a clip from "Bella," in which he acted with Sally de Mey, who was also present.
The concert, which started the Steve Condos Scholarship and Emergency Fund, brought together a remarkable range of artists, from veteran hoofers like Chuck Green, whose light, skimming subtle footwork is as astonishing as ever, to the latest of young sensations, Marshall Davis Jr., a 14-year-old from Florida who danced with an unusual blend of live-wire energy and suavity.
Anita Feldman then danced on an amplified platform, dodging the long drumsticks of Gary Schall for an exercise in two-voiced percussion. Buster Brown accented his oldtime wide-ranging bent-knee bravura with scurries and stamps. Ira Bernstein, a definite innovator, threw clog-dance steps into his variety-packed phrases, which began with an amble and whipped into a jiving finish.
Dianne Walker's second solo was especially eloquent. "I miss Steve; I loved him," she said before tapping lightly into a flowing rivulet of sound. It was a composition of whole cloth, with the artist submerging herself in what she wanted to say and emerging all the more expressive for it.
LaVaughn Robinson and Germaine Ingram's fast unison work has to be seen to be believed. Mr. Coles's sophisticated banter introduced a change of pace with Jackie Paris, whose scat singing glowed with the hot intensity of a bygone era.
Mrs. Condos then presented film clips of Mr. Condos. A contemporary music video showed his performing recently with the Rager pop group, which played onstage (Chad Rager, Bob Murnahan, Doug Hall, Tim Davis). The Jim Roberts Trio collaborated -- for that is the word when improvisation is involved -- with the dancers.
The novelty act was certainly a long-haired saxophone player from Boston named Shoe Horn, who has enough breath to tap at the same time and later patter through a "rap tap." Jay Corre, an old friend of Mr. Condos, was content to prove himself as the fine saxophonist he is.
Lon Chaney, another veteran whose massive build belies the lightness of his feet, gave his all before Mr. Green came on with a baseball jacket that said, "Explore, Challenge the Frontier." Right. Attempts in that direction came from Lynn Dally, with a modern-dance tinge, and from Brenda Bufalino, in a snake-hipped contemporary style, and her American Tap Dance Orchestra, vibrant and elegant in white tie and tails (Barbara Duffy, Neil Applebaum, Robin Tribble, Margaret Morrison, Tony Waag).
Sarah Petronio danced with her daughter, Lila, before Jimmy Slyde and David Gilmore burst on the stage with contrasting but equally inventive fireworks.
Mrs. Condos and Mr. Coles called for a communal shim sham, in which the performers were joined by some members of the audience, including the 76-year-old Frankie Manning, the champion swing dancer. Mr. Condos and his artistry could not have been better celebrated.

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December 21, 1990, Friday, Late Edition - Final

U.S. Acts to Force Private Insurers To Pay on Claims Before Medicare

BYLINE: By ROBERT PEAR, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section A; Page 1; Column 4; National Desk

LENGTH: 1415 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Dec. 20

In an effort to shift Federal costs to private health insurers, the Bush Administration is proposing new measures to compel Medicare beneficiaries to file claims with any private insurers before the Government pays anything for services provided by doctors or hospitals.
That is what they are supposed to do under current law. But in practice, as a result of either fraud or error, Medicare pays many claims that have already been paid by private insurers or should have been. Several million of the 30 million elderly people enrolled in Medicare are also employed and have private health insurance through their employers. 
 To guarantee that people with both Medicare and private health insurance use the private coverage first, the Office of Management and Budget wants to create a giant computer clearinghouse with information on the health insurance coverage of all Americans. Before paying claims for Medicare, Medicaid or veterans' health benefits, the Government would check the computer to see if a person had private health insurance to cover any of the cost.
 
Projection of Annual Savings
 The proposal, intended to save $600 million to $1 billion a year, is one of many approved by the budget office this week for inclusion in President Bush's 1992 budget, to be proposed to Congress in early February.
Confidential budget documents show that the budget office, headed by Richard G. Darman, is proposing a wide range of cutbacks and savings in Medicare and Medicaid beyond those recently approved by Congress in a five-year deficit-reduction plan. The proposals are estimated to save $2.9 billion in 1992 and $19.6 billion over five years. There is no indication of how Mr. Bush would use the savings.
Under current law, Medicare is not supposed to pay for an item or service if payment "has been or could be made" under an employer's group health plan, under workers' compensation or under an auto insurance policy.
Medicare claim forms ask patients if they have private health insurance. Patients, doctors and hospitals are supposed to file claims first with private insurers, using Medicare as a secondary source to help pay medical bills not covered by an employer's health plan.
In practice, however, patients often fail to disclose their private insurance, so Medicare erroneously pays some claims already paid by private insurers or it pays claims that should be paid by private insurers and then never collects reimbursements. Under the new plan, the Government would save what the private insurers pay.
Under Federal law, employers with 20 or more employees must offer workers and their spouses 65 years old and over the same health insurance benefits offered to younger workers and spouses. So private insurers could not simply refuse to insure elderly workers if the Government established the clearinghouse.
The proposal would not affect private health insurance sold as a supplement to Medicare. Such Medigap policies pay for goods and services not covered by Medicare.
Insurers say they often have no clear idea of who is covered under a large group insurance plan until claims are filed. Some insurers warn that they would have to increase premiums generally if they are forced by the Government to absorb additional costs for elderly people enrolled in Medicare. But the Republican staff of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations issued a report in July describing "instances of fraud and abuse," where insurers knowingly evaded their responsibility to pay medical bills of older workers enrolled in Medicare. In discussing fraud, investigators have mainly focused on the private insurers rather than the beneficiaries.
 
Erosion of Original Promise Seen
 The requirements that private insurers pay claims before Medicare have been adopted piecemeal over the last decade. Carl J. Schramm, president of the Health Insurance Association of America, which represents commercial insurance companies, denounced the trend as "a profound and fundamental erosion of Medicare's original promise, made in 1965, to cover the health-care costs of the aged."
Alan K. Richards, assistant Washington counsel for the association, said of the latest proposal: "It's immensely difficult to keep up to date on the health insurance status of employees and their dependents. I don't think the Government comprehends how difficult it would be to set up and operate a clearinghouse like this. It would be very convenient for the Government to have such information, but it would impose an unbelievable burden on private insurance companies and employers."
The latest proposal reflects the fact that people have been delaying retirement beyond the age of 65 and their numbers are expected to increase in the 1990's. Such people can qualify for Medicare even if their Social Security benefits are reduced or eliminated because of their earnings.
Under the budget office proposal, employers would be required to report information on the health insurance coverage of employees and their dependents as part of the W-2 form filed annually with the Government.
"Failure to report these data would carry the same liabilities as failing to report tax information," says the official description of the proposed "Clearinghouse on Third-Party Liability." The penalty for failing to file tax information ranges from $15 to $50 for each W-2 form, with a maximum of $250,000 for one employer.
 
Billing by Clearinghouse
 The President's budget includes $5 million to establish the insurance clearinghouse. The budget office said "the clearinghouse will be located centrally" in the Department of Health and Human Services. But it would bill private insurers for health care provided, under other Federal programs, to military personnel, veterans, Civil Service employees and American Indians.
In September, Senator William V. Roth Jr., Republican of Delaware, proposed creation of a Federal data bank like the one now envisioned by the White House. Gail R. Wilensky, head of the Federal Health Care Financing Administration, which runs Medicare and Medicaid, said she supported the idea.
The budget office is also proposing $10 billion of cuts over five years in Medicare payments to teaching hospitals. That proposal is sure to anger Representative Dan Rostenkowski, who presides over the Medicare budget as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. Mr. Rostenkowski, an Illinois Democrat, has been a strong supporter of teaching hospitals and sits on the board of one, Mercy Hospital and Medical Center, run by the Sisters of Mercy in Chicago.
The budget documents show vividly how the Office of Management and Budget now dominates the formulation of domestic policy in the executive branch of the Government. They also show that lawmakers who thought they would have a respite from budget battles over Medicare and Medicaid were profoundly mistaken.
 
Other Budget Proposals
 These are some of the other proposals from the budget office:
*Hospitals and nursing homes would be required to pay "user fees" to cover the cost of annual inspections for compliance with Federal health and safety standards.
*Doctors would be charged a $1 fee for each Medicare claim filed on paper. The purpose is to encourage doctors to file claims electronically, by computer.
*There would be an across-the-board cut of 5 percent in Medicare payments to physicians under a new fee schedule. This would save $4.8 billion over five years.
The budget office said the insurance clearinghouse would hire private collection agencies to "recover amounts due the U.S. Government on a contingency fee basis." The collection agencies would try to collect money from private insurers and, in some instances, from employers.
Insurance executives said they doubted that the Government could manage the clearinghouse with any degree of efficiency.
Philip Briggs, vice chairman of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, said that private insurers were willing to pay the medical bills of people covered by their policies. But he said he did not know if a national clearinghouse was feasible.
Under current law, Medicare pays health-care costs of elderly workers only to the extent they are not covered by the employer's health plan. Medicare is the primary health insurer for retirees still covered by their employers. But if a retiree has a working spouse, the retiree must use the spouse's private health insurance before filing claims with Medicare.

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December 23, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Tales Told by a Monopod

BYLINE: By Hilma Wolitzer; Hilma Wolitzer's most recent novels are "Silver" and "In the Palomar Arms."

SECTION: Section 7; Page 6; Column 1; Book Review Desk

LENGTH: 953 words


HUNTING THE WILD PINEAPPLE
By Thea Astley.
175 pp. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. $19.95. 
 THE prolific Australian novelist Thea Astley employs the device of a sole narrator for this arresting collection of short fiction. He's an outspoken one-legged ironist, a middle-aged man named Leverson who refers to himself as a "monopod self-pitier" and a "people-freak." But it is really the verdant landscape of Queensland and Ms. Astley's own quirky vision that link and inform the diverse stories in "Hunting the Wild Pineapple."
Not that Leverson intrudes. The opening story, "North: Some Compass Readings: Eden," reveals the wry irreverence that colors the entire volume. "My parents," he tells us, "were a pair of sad marital misfits bound together by the tragedy of me." Leverson won't be conned by false sentiment, and when he meets a young woman on a train he resists her dogged proselyt izing with typical candor and black wit. When she insists, "Jesus wants you," he answers, without hesitation, "Not with my overdraft." And when she dismisses the fact of his amputated leg (lost "mundanely" in a car accident) by assuring him that he'll be whole again in the next life, he cries: "You mean I'll get it back? But it won't fit!" He finally succeeds in offending her, but never the reader.
There's compassion at work in these stories, too, but it's compassion with a decided edge. One both pities and disdains the beleaguered mother in "Write Me, Son, Write Me," who says to her promiscuous daughter: "Love isn't something you toss around like garbage. Love, love hurts." In this collection, mothers, for the most part, fail profoundly in their maternal striving. Leverson's own, for instance, resorts to the pseudo sciences to help change his luck, and she craves his worldly success more for her gratification than for his. Another, elderly mother, who makes a memorable cameo appearance in "A Man Who Is Tired of Swiper's Creek Is Tired of Life," is abandoned by her six grown children, who send her to a remote home for the aged. But when Leverson presses her for the details of the past that have led her to this sorry fate, they seem to have vanished in the extremity of the moment.
Actually, it's not just mothers but women in general who don't fare very well in Thea Astley's dark assessment of the world. In "A Northern Belle" -- a tougher, Australian variation of "Driving Miss Daisy" -- a young girl named Clarice is told by her mother that she "was once attacked by a sexually maddened blackfellow," which means that Clarice must keep all men at a distance. Suppressing her natural curiosity and desire, Clarice preserves her sexual self until she's no longer in demand. Eventually, she's reduced to complete social isolation and becomes dependent upon the considerable kindness of an elderly black gardener. In "Ladies Need Only Apply," the will of another fiercely independent woman is finally crushed by loneliness and carnal need. And at the end of "The Curate Breaker," one of the most powerful stories in the collection, the curate's wife is utterly humiliated by her husband for the crime of knocking on his office door and interrupting "the work of God."
But the lives of Ms. Astley's men aren't exactly sunny, either. As evidence, there's Leverson's sustained cynicism, and the insanely bitter conflict between the Roman Catholic priest and the Anglican canon in "The Curate Breaker." Like her women, Ms. Astley's men are all too susceptible to "the gobbledy-gook of sad little human rivalries setting flesh aquake."
When Leverson confides, in the title story, "I'm interested in the violence of quick friendships," he might well be describing the startling impact of these stories. I can't help thinking that Flannery O'Connor would have liked them, with their skewed language, oddball characters and deadly humor. They may not be as shapely or as redemptive as hers, but they're strongly regional and, in their own way, quite spiritual.
In the final story, Leverson says: "Birth, marriage, death, re-birth. They're the only neat endings, traditional culminations for living -- for books, even -- and what bogus back-watering punctuation they are! Living is serial, an unending accretion of alternatives." None of the stories in "Hunting the Wild Pineapple" has the usual tidy sense of closure. They all simply stop, leaving their characters stranded in the wilderness of their lives, and the reader at stark attention.
 
 
 
HUMANS CAN'T DO WITHOUT TEARS
 The wicker lamp-shade is alive with moths, one huge and orange and beautiful as a butterfly in this small golden room, with outside the starting steady hatchet of the rain. Nothing is as horrible as spring and balmy days that make me wretched with their cloudlessness. They animate some fearful antithesis in me so that, missing the heavy noise of river water fifty pounding feet below, I find everything dried up. Especially tears. Humans can't do without those. Again last summer during the monsoons there was one night in the violence of rain when . . . I switched on all lights, made coffee endlessly, and watched branches rioting outside glass, while between heart-beats and purist sips I pretended courage. . . .
This should really be a separate state. A separate country?
Once in Fixer's cabin, one hour, one year, Fixer and I worked out the new coat of arms -- a beer can rampant on a social security form couchant. Do we make it different, the people up here? Fixer and I sit and muse on his tree-mullioned veranda, and if we don't sort it out today there's always tomorrow or next week or next month. There's next year, for that matter. I like it here.
From "Hunting the Wild Pineapple."

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December 24, 1990, Monday, Late Edition - Final

Intruder at Home for Aged Beats Six Elderly Residents

BYLINE: AP

SECTION: Section 1; Page 10; Column 5; National Desk

LENGTH: 83 words

DATELINE: DALLAS, Dec. 23

A man carrying a Bible and a length of pipe broke into a home for elderly Jews on Saturday and attacked six residents, but officials discounted bigotry as a motive.
Two of the six people attacked were hospitalized with concussions after the man beat them with the pipe, a hospital spokeswoman said.
The police said the assailant made no anti-Semitic comments in the attack, and a local Jewish leader said the man simply appeared to be deranged.
The injured included one man and five women.

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December 24, 1990, Monday, Late Edition - Final

New York City Churches Urgently Need Repairs

BYLINE: By ARI L. GOLDMAN

SECTION: Section 1; Page 26; Column 1; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 1015 words

New Yorkers, who have received word in recent days that the city's bridges are in serious disrepair, should take a good look at their landmark churches as they gather for Christmas services.
Here are scenes from some of New York City's historic places of worship: 
 * The great rose window at the 126-year-old St. Elias Byzantine Catholic Church in the Greenpoint section of Brooklyn has been replaced by plywood. Had it not been removed, engineers said the window would have fallen into the street below.
* The limestone stoops that lead to the Gothic doors of the 88-year-old St. James Presbyterian Church in Harlem are cracked, chipped and in danger of collapse from the vibration of subway trains below.
* Chunks of masonry have been falling off Madison Avenue's Church of the Incarnation, built in 1864. Officials at the church, which is at the corner of 35th Street, have put up scaffolding and mesh netting to protect passers-by.
 
Other Needs Take Priority
 These three churches are among the lucky ones. In the days before Christmas, they were among 14 churches statewide given grants of $3,000 to $8,500 from the Sacred Sites and Properties Fund of the New York Landmarks Conservancy. The conservancy, a private, nonprofit organization, has been donating money since 1986 to landmark churches, synagogues, meeting houses and religious burial grounds that are in need of repair and restoration.
Deferred maintenance, the bane of the city's bridges, has left churches' bell towers and cupolas, columns and arches, spires and stained-glass treasures in awful and sometimes dangerous disrepair. Other needs have always seemed to take priority: keeping open the soup kitchen, paying the gas and electric bills, buying new hymnals or opening a shelter for the homeless.
"Twenty years ago I thought, 'Let's feed the hungry, let's care for the children,' " said the Rev. Lenton Gunn Jr., pastor of St. James at the corner of 141st Street and St. Nicholas Avenue in Harlem. "I was not so wrapped up in brick and mortar. But today I've come to the conclusion that if the steps fall down, if the roof caves in, you won't have a place for the senior citizens to meet or the children to play."
 
'Carries a Lot of Prestige'
 A $7,500 grant from the conservancy will cover less than a quarter of the $34,000 cost of rebuilding the limestone steps, the pastor said, and an even smaller portion of the $300,000 the church hopes to raise for other repairs. But Dr. Gunn and other ministers said that the conservancy grants were important for several reasons.
"It's not going to make us or break us," the Rev. J. Douglas Ousley, rector of Church of the Incarnation, said of the $5,000 his church received for brownstone renovation. "But this grant carries a lot of prestige. People will look at it and say, 'This church must know what it's doing.' " His congregation is contemplating a $1 million restoration.
Impressing the right people is important because many of the traditional financing souces have dried up. Millions that had been available for historic preservation of landmarks, including churches, through the New York State Environmental Quality Bond Act of 1986 have been used up and New York voters rejected a similar bond act last November. Many Federal landmark financing programs have ended. Churches have increasingly turned to their own members and friends and to private foundations.
Edward T. Mohylowski, director of the sacred sites program for the landmarks conservancy, said that the number of applications had been growing steadily since the fund began operating four years ago. "Many of the buildings are failing," he said. "And there are fewer places to turn for help."
 
'We Have to Conform to the Rules'
 The lack of public money has left many of the ministers disappointed. Msgr. Raymond Misulich of Brooklyn's St. Elias noted that churches often had landmark status, and all the responsibily that entails, imposed upon them by government agencies, like the National Park Service or the New York City Landmarks Commission.
"In everything we do, we have to conform to the rules of the landmarks commission," said Monsignor Misulich, whose church is in the Greenpoint Historic District. Without the landmark rules, the restoration of his church might be less faithful to its 19th- century Ruskinian Gothic architecture but much cheaper, he said.
At least one church spent the grant from the conservancy even before the notice of approval arrrived. The 87-year-old Holy Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church, at 65th Street and Central Park West, was so fearful of damage to its Gothic steeple that it went ahead with the project before the financing was fully in place. Stephen M. Endress, the operations manager of the church, said that several years ago the congregation chose the steeple as its new symbol. "Soon after that we found that our logo was in trouble."
Mr. Mohylowski said that in the present climate of few governmental resources and many demands placed on the churches, his organization was helping to "break down the misunderstanding between the religious community and the preservation community."
The sacred sites program, initiated with support from the J. M. Kaplan Fund, has awarded more than $775,000 to 165 religious institutions throughout the state since 1986. In addition to the four New York City churches mentioned above, two others in the city that received grants before Christmas were: Judson Memorial Church, 55 Washington Square South (built in 1892), and St. Martin's Episcopal Church at Lenox Avenue and 122d Street (built in 1888).
Others around the state that received grants in the latest round were: Trinity Episcopal Church, Roslyn (1906); United Church of Christ at Wadhams, Wadhams (1837); Perry City Friends Church, Perry City (1850); New Hempstead Presbyerian Church, New City (1827); St. James A.M.E. Zion Church, Ithaca (1836); St. Thomas Episcopal Church, Hamilton (1847); Unitarian Universalist Church of Buffalo, Buffalo (1904), and First Baptist Church, Saratoga Springs (1851).

LOAD-DATE: December 24, 1990

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photos: The Judson Memorial Church at 55 Washington Square South in Manhattan, built in 1892, is in need of repair. Like 14 other churches around the state, it has received a grant of $3,000 to $8,500 from the Sacred Sites and Properties Fund of the New York Landmarks Conservancy; The limestone stoops at the 88-year-old St. James Presbyterian Church at 141st Street and St. Nicholas Avenue in Harlem are in danger of collapse from the vibration of subway trains below. Repairs will be paid for in part by a grant from a nonprofit organization that has been donating money since 1986 to landmark churches and synagogues. (Photographs by Jack Manning/The New York Times)

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December 26, 1990, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

I.R.S. Says Many Retirees May Use a Simpler Tax Form

BYLINE: By PHILIP SHABECOFF, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section D; Page 1; Column 1; Financial Desk

LENGTH: 895 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Dec. 25

The Internal Revenue Service, an unlikely source of holiday cheer, has announced that millions of older Americans will now be able to switch to a simpler income tax form.
The I.R.S. said Monday that income earned from pensions, annuities, individual retirement accounts and taxable Social Security benefits may now be declared on the relatively short and simple 1040A tax form. Previously, such income had to be reported on the longer, more complex 1040 form. 
 Arthur Altman, director of the tax forms and publications division of the I.R.S., said that as many as 4.5 million Americans, most of them retired, would be able to file the shorter form. He noted that not only was the form simpler, but also that it was printed in larger type and, therefore, easier to read.
Patricia Hoath, a senior program specialist with Tax-Aide, a volunteer program that provides free tax advice to retirees, said it might take a while for people to learn that they could use the easier form. But, she said, "Once the transition period is over, this will be helpful to older people."
This year, packages containing the tax forms and instructions from the I.R.S. will begin to appear in mailboxes on Dec. 28. In recent years, the forms had arrived on the day after Christmas.
 Mr. Altman said that Fred T. Goldberg Jr., the Commissioner of Internal Revenue, had decided that it was not in keeping with the spirit of the season to have tax packages arrive in the mail the day after Christmas, and so directed that the mailing be delayed for two days.
About 97 million tax packages will be sent out this year. In addition, 11 million postcards, instead of the full package of tax forms and instructions, will be sent to people who filed farm or business returns last year. The presumption is that these businesses use professional preparers and do not need the package, although they can get one on request. Last year, the I.R.S. saved $1 million by sending out postcards in place of the full packages.
The service expects that about 113 million tax returns will be filed for 1990.
As for the new tax year, beginning on Jan. 1, employers must resume deductions for Social Security taxes for workers who had paid the maximum tax before the end of the year. The Social Security withholding in 1991 will be 6.2 percent on wages up to $53,400, an increase from the maximum taxable wage base of $51,300 in 1990. This withholding covers retirement, disability and survivor benefits.
In a change from last year, 1.45 percent of all wages up to $125,000 will be withheld in 1991 for Medicare insurance. In 1990, Medicare payments were included in the overall Social Security payments up to $51,300.
Employers are required to match the entire 7.65 percent payroll withholding for Social Security and Medicare benefits.
 
Personal Deduction Rises
 Mr. Altman of the I.R.S. noted that reporting requirements were virtually unchanged for 1990 from 1989. Most of the changes Congress made in the tax code in 1990 will take effect with 1991 earnings and will affect returns filed starting in 1992.
One of the few changes for 1990 filings is that the personal deductions for taxpayers and their dependents will rise to $2,050, from $2,000, as an adjustment for inflation.
Another change will reduce the amount that may be deducted for interest from personal loans, like car loans and credit card accounts. Last year 20 percent of such interest could be deducted from tax payments, but this year only 10 percent may be deducted.
Mr. Altman said he hoped taxpayers would use the prepared label sent along with the tax forms, which he says contains information that helps the I.R.S. tax processors complete their work on individual tax forms more quickly and accurately.
Based on experience, the I.R.S. expects to make refunds averaging $900 to more than 70 percent of taxpayers. Errors in filing tend to delay the refunds by several weeks, he said.
 Henry Holmes, a spokesman for the agency, said returns prepared by accountants or other professionals tended, not surprisingly, to have a lower error rate than those filled out by the taxpayers themselves. Of 54.5 million returns prepared by professionals last year, about three million were found to contain errors, while of 57.5 million returns prepared by taxpayers, 7.3 million had at least one error.
One of the most common mistakes, Mr. Holmes said, is to state incorrectly one's filing status -- whether or not the filer is the head of a household. Many single people fail to identify themselves as heads of households even though they may have children or other dependents.
Another frequent error is made by people who fail to claim deductions for which they are entitled or who incorrectly compute those deductions. For example, people do not claim deductions for all of their children or do not identify dependents like elderly parents. People who are blind or have some other disability that makes them eligible for a deduction, in addition to the standard deduction, often fail to claim it, Mr. Holmes said.
There are also problems with the returns of low-income taxpayers who file incorrectly for earned income credits on their taxes, Mr. Holmes said.
These errors are usually caught during the processing of tax forms, he added, but they slow the operation, costing the Government and the taxpayers money.

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December 26, 1990, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

BUSINESS DIGEST

SECTION: Section D; Page 1; Column 1; Financial Desk

LENGTH: 634 words

The Economy
 
 An overhaul of the banking system faces political opposition. Although many of the country's prominent banks are losing money and some are threatened with failure, the chances of sweeping changes in banking regulations are considered to have only a 50-50 chance of success. [Page A1.]
 
 Profits at many big oil companies will surge this quarter with the price of crude oil and natural gas rising sharply while fewer companies are expected to report big write-offs to cover a variety of items for costs like environmental expenses. [D1.]
 
 Many older Americans will be able to use simpler tax forms since the I.R.S. decided that income from pensions, annuities and individual retirement accounts, as well as Social Security benefits, may be declared on the short 1040A form. [D1.]
 
 California wine makers are increasingly interested in exports. The domestic market is growing weaker, but countries that historically consume wine but make little of their own, like Britain, Canada and Switzerland, are attractive markets. [D1.]
 
 Many manufacturers are having difficulties passing along higher costs to their customers. Unable to raise prices, manufacturers in the steel, tire, chemical and machine tool industries, are finding their profits are being squeezed and they are cutting back on plans to modernize and hire additional employees. Economists say the situation is a hallmark of recession. [D1.]
 
 Bank certificates of deposit and money market account yields have fallen for the 10th consecutive week amid expectations that large banks will soon cut their prime lending rates. [D10.]
 
 International
 
 China is expected to have the second-largest trade surplus with the United States next year. The growing surplus is emerging as an important irritant in relations between the countries, since the Bush Administration and some in Congress say China's trade gains are a result of unfair practices. [A1.]
Companies
 
 Trans World Airlines' chairman complained that the company's attempt to merge with Pan American could be destroyed by Pan Am's efforts to sell the shuttle serving Boston, New York and Washington. Pan Am was reported to be discussing a possible sale of the shuttle to Northwest Airlines. [D1.]
 
 American Airlines is accusing its pilots of protesting stalled contract talks by staging a sickout during one of the busiest travel times of the year. [A25.]
 
 Business Technology
 
 A small group of companies has profited by taking advantage of tax incentives offered by the Federal Government a decade ago to companies that gather natural gas from coal deposits. An estimated 500 billion cubic feet of natural gas recovered from coal deposits flowed into the pipelines in 1990, about 3 percent of the natural gas consumed in the United States this year. [D3.]
Today's Columns
 
 Skeptics wonder if food shipments to the Soviets make sense. Such emergency shipments are defended as a gesture of political support for President Gorbachev, but they may be used to undermine a healthy movement toward decentralization. Peter Passell: Economic Scene. [D2.]
 
 Justin Industries is fighting a tender offer to buy the company at a substantial premium. The company, a small conglomerate based in Fort Worth whose biggest interests are in boots and bricks, is emphasizing that the deal is not feasible because it relies on the sale of "junk bonds." Floyd Norris: Market Place. [D4.]
 
 The Ad Council began its first new public service campaign in six years aimed at preventing drunken driving. The campaign also adopts a new strategy calculated to help people overcome the embarrassment of interceding with friends who have had one drink too many. Kim Foltz: Advertising. [D10.]

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December 26, 1990, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Books of The Times;
A Japanese Novella Pivots on a Cat

BYLINE: By HERBERT MITGANG

SECTION: Section C; Page 30; Column 1; Cultural Desk

LENGTH: 888 words


A Cat, a Man and Two Women
By Jun'ichiro Tanizaki
Translated by Paul McCarthy. 164 pages.
Kodansha International . $18.95.
The theme of this tantalizing Japanese novella is simple: Who gets the family cat in a divorce? If this were a trendy American novel, the fight would be over divvying up costly possessions -- the second home in the Hamptons, the Mercedes instead of the BMW, the large-screen television. And so on until the divorcing characters are pickled in fame in the aspic gossip columns of the tabloids. 
 But in "A Cat, a Man and Two Women" by Jun'ichiro Tanizaki, the tortoise-shell cat named Lily is more than a clever, appealing domestic animal. She serves as the deus ex machina for a story about marriages, what is expected of a first wife and the excuses made for the second wife, the attitudes that prevail in a male-ruled society, the methods used by women to plot behind the scenes and sometimes get their way, the customs of the country.
It's easy to see why Tanizaki (1886-1965) is recognized as one of Japan's most popular writers in this century. In this and his other books, he pulls aside the shoji that screens Japanese home life to eavesdrop on what people are really saying and thinking behind their polite facades. And sexuality and dominance are never far below the surface of Tanizaki's stories, but without the subtlety of novelists from Yasunari Kawabata, the only Japanese Nobel laureate in literature, to the best-selling modern writer Haruki Murakami.
Among his major novels are "Some Prefer Nettles," an autobiographical story based on his relationship with his first wife; "The Makioka Sisters," about the effort to find a husband for one of the sisters; "Diary of a Mad Old Man," about a man sexually obsessed with his daughter-in-law, and "A Fool's Love," about masochism and a man's attempt to Westernize a young bar hostess who reminds him of the American movie star Mary Pickford. "A Fool's Love" has just been reissued as "Naomi," the name of the hostess, by North Point Press.
The cat seems to be the most sensible and least devious character in "A Cat, a Man and Two Women," which is lucidly translated by Paul McCarthy from the Japanese. Lily has a gentle, appealing gaze. She has had her kittens and is now something of a senior citizen in the household, content to stroke and be stroked by her master without making too many demands.
The master takes a different approach from most people to cats in general: "When he heard people with no knowledge of a cat's character saying that cats were not as loving as dogs, that they were cold and selfish, he always thought to himself how impossible it was to understand the charm and lovableness of a cat if one had not, like him, spent many years living alone with one. The reason was that all cats are to some extent shy creatures: they won't show affection or seek it from their owners in front of a third person but tend rather to be oddly standoffish."
Lily becomes the center of what amounts to a custody fight after Wife No. 1 has been divorced. The cat lives with her master, his mother and his young second wife. His mother had persuaded him to divorce his wife and marry for wealth the second time. The master is a typical Tanizaki hero, ineffectual and self-indulgent, who seems to come alive only in the company of his cat. In this home-bound atmosphere, the feckless master is all-important. His mother and Wives No. 1 and 2 all struggle to gain his attention. But his attention is focused on Lily, who is his closest companion and nighttime bedmate.
Wife No. 1 enlists the help of Wife No. 2 to get Lily. Her argument is that she gave up her husband, her house and her happiness; couldn't she at least have the cat as a consolation? "Well, he got rid of nasty old me and has started a new life with you, the girl he loves," Wife No. 1 secretly writes to her successor. "As long as it was me he was with, he needed Lily. But why should he now? Isn't she just a bother to have around? Or could it be that even now, without her, there'd be something missing? And does that mean that he looks on you, like me, as something a little lower than a cat?"
It's a tricky and persuasive argument. Lily is returned to Wife No. 1. Naturally, the master longs for her. Quietly, not in the presence of his ex-wife, he visits Lily. He beckons to her but she does not respond, being a cat with more lives than one. He discovers that his ex-wife lavishes more attention on Lily than his present wife did. And he wonders to himself why he seems to miss his cat more than he does any of the three women, and what this tells him about his own life.
Two short stories flesh out the book. "The Little Kingdom" describes the shifting relationship between a poor schoolteacher and one of his pupils, who is determined to dominate the class and his schoolmates with the power of money. The author may have been trying to make a larger statement about influence and greed, but the story is too obvious. "Professor Rado" is more in the arena of the author's main fictional interest -- human behavior. Here, an esteemed professor is discovered by a reporter to live another life in the sexual underworld. But "A Cat, a Man and Two Women" is a tour de force. It can serve as catnip for Tanizaki's major novels.

LOAD-DATE: December 26, 1990

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GRAPHIC: Photo: Junichiro Tanizaki (Kodansha)

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December 27, 1990, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

Personal Health

BYLINE: BY Jane E. Brody

SECTION: Section B; Page 9; Column 1; National Desk; Health Page

LENGTH: 1191 words

Each year 28,000 people over the age of 65 succumb not to disease or disability but to the cold. Thousands actually die of the cold in their own homes, the victims of hypothermia, a lethal drop in body temperature.
Outdoor temperatures do not have to be below freezing. Even in relatively mild cold weather, when temperatures are in the 60's, the body temperature of an older person can drop dangerously low. And as fuel prices rise in response to the confrontation in the Persian Gulf, many elderly people who try to save money by lowering their thermostats may raise their risk of developing hypothermia at home, especially while they sleep. 
 Most hypothermia deaths are preventable, and since about 80 percent of them occur among people over 65, this high-risk group can greatly benefit from an understanding of the problem and some simple precautions. Yet, the American Association of Retired Persons reports, studies show that only one older person in 10 is aware of the dangers of hypothermia.
 
 What Is Hypothermia?
 Hypothermia, a life-threatening drop in the body's internal temperature below 95 degrees Fahrenheit, results from a loss of body heat faster than it can be replaced. As people get older, their ability to generate body heat in response to the cold declines because their heart rate slows, their blood vessels do not contract as well and they lose muscle tone (which generates heat) and body fat (which conserves heat and supplies body fuel).
An older person exposed to severe cold can experience a lethal drop in body temperature rather quickly. Even prolonged exposure to a temperature of 60 or 65 degrees may also result in hypothermia if an older person's body is not adequately protected.
The risk of developing hypothermia is increased by certain disorders common among the elderly as well as by a number of medications. The risk is high among people with underactive thyroids, or hypothyroidism, those with limited mobility resulting from conditions like stroke, severe arthritis or Parkinson's disease, and those with conditions like diabetes, heart disease or Sjogren's syndrome that can seriously impair circulation.
Medications that raise susceptibility to hypothermia include various drugs used to treat anxiety, depression or nausea and even some over-the-counter remedies for the common cold. Among the most dangerous are chlorpromazine and other phenothiazines, barbiturates, tricyclic antidepressants, benzodiazepines and reserpine. The self-administered drug alcohol is also a hazard because it dilates peripheral blood vessels and thus counters the body's mechanism for conserving heat.
Older people may not realize they are cold and therefore fail to take adequate steps to stay warm, even as others around them may shiver and put on extra clothing.
 
Detection and Treatment
 Recognizing the signs of hypothermia can be a challenge because symptoms frequently mimic those of other health problems common among the elderly. Manifestations of hypothermia are often mistaken for psychological problems.
A person suffering from hypothermia may appear confused, disoriented, uncoordinated, unresponsive, uncooperative, sluggish or drowsy. Speech may be slurred, breathing slow and shallow and the pulse slow and weak. The person may shiver uncontrollably. Muscles may be stiff and the skin may appear pale and puffy with large, irregular blue or pink spots.
The most reliable way to diagnosis hypothermia is to take the person's temperature. Unfortunately, most household thermometers do not give readings below 94 degrees Fahrenheit, but it is reasonable to suspect hypothermia if the mercury does not rise above 94. If no thermometer is available, place the back of your hand against the bare abdomen. If it is noticeably cold, hypothermia is likely.
A person with hypothermia should be treated as a medical emergency and should be immediately taken to a hospital. Rewarming must be done slowly -- often from the inside out -- by professionals. Rapid rewarming is dangerous because it may dilate blood vessels near the skin, further lowering blood pressure and possibly sending more cold blood to the body's core.
Hypothermia will not go away by itself, so however mild the condition, the person should immediately be examined by a doctor. Failure to reverse hypothermia can lead to permanent damage to the brain, heart and other vital organs.
While awaiting medical assistance, handle the person gently, since a cold heart is a weak one. The American Osteopathic Association suggests that if it is not possible to move the victim indoors, try to insulate the person from the wind and the ground with blankets or newspapers.
Remove wet clothing and, if possible, replace it with dry garments. Otherwise cover the victim's body and head with plastic, a raincoat or any other impervious material to prevent further heat loss. You can also lie down next to the person to provide heat from your own body.
Do not pile heavy layers on top of the person or rub cold limbs in an effort to warm them. If the person is unconscious, do not raise the feet; that will send cold blood rushing to vital organs and further decrease core temperature. Check for a pulse and breathing; if one or both is absent, start cardiopulmonary resuscitation or rescue breathing.
A person who is conscious and not vomiting or coughing can be offered warm, nonalcoholic beverages. Otherwise, give nothing by mouth.
 
Preventing Hypothermia
 Organizations that serve the elderly, including the National Institute on Aging, urge all elderly people to adopt these preventive measures:
*Keep room temperatures at 70 degrees or higher. If you cannot afford to heat your entire dwelling to that level, warm at least two rooms, including the bedroom, and stay in them most of the time.
*Always wear enough clothing -- indoors and out, awake and asleep. Sweaters (wool is warmest), robes, thick socks and a cap can be worn indoors in cold weather. Outdoors in cold or cool weather wear layers, which trap warm air and conserve body heat better. Start with long underwear, tops and bottoms. Cover the head and ears, wear waterproof boots and a water-resistant outer garment in wet or snowy weather and wear wind-resistant coats.
*Be sure to have enough blankets on the bed. Socks and a nightcap and perhaps long underwear will help keep a person warm while sleeping. If possible, use flannel sheets and place a wool or sheepskin mattress cover beneath them.
*Avoid prolonged exposure to the cold, but if it is necessary to be outdoors for long periods, try to stay in the sun.
*If living alone, ask friends, neighbors or relatives to look in once or twice a day. It is especially wise for them to check frequently during a cold spell and after a particularly cold night.
Finally, avoid more than moderate consumption of alcohol, and avoid alcohol near bedtime. Ask a doctor whether any of the medications being taken are among those that increase the risk of hypothermia. Perhaps an alternative might be prescribed, but if not, be very careful about following the above precautions.

LOAD-DATE: December 27, 1990

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GRAPHIC: Table: "Life-Threatening Cold" lists some cold weather risk factors for older people.

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December 27, 1990, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

U.S. Recalls Franks Sold at New York Store

BYLINE: AP

SECTION: Section A; Page 17; Column 1; National Desk

LENGTH: 235 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Dec. 26

Citing a threat of food poisoning, the Agriculture Department said today that it had ordered the recall of 502 pounds of kosher frankfurters sold by a retail store in the New York suburb of Monsey, in Rockland County.
Department officials said their inspectors had discovered bacterial contamination of the frankfurters during a routine import re-inspection in Buffalo. They said the Monsey store, The Meat Showcase, was cooperating in the recall of the product, Continental Strictly Kosher Beef Frankfurters, which are made in Montreal. 
 The Meat Showcase is the only store in the United States that has received the product, said the department's Food Safety and Inspection Service.
The 14-ounce packages are labeled "Product of Canada" and bear the crown inspection seal of Canada. They also bear the mark "Establishment Number 472" and have no sell-by date.
No illnesses have been reported, said Ronald J. Prucha, associate administrator of the inspection service. He said consumers should return the franks to the place of purchase.
The department said the suspected bacteria could cause listeriosis, which was described as "a rare but potentially serious disease."
Listeriosis is generally believed to pose "little risk" for healthy people, the department said, adding that the most vulnerable are those with weakened immune systems, including infants, the elderly and the chronically ill.

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December 27, 1990, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

CURRENTS;
A Shower For Elderly Or Disabled

BYLINE: By Elaine Louie

SECTION: Section C; Page 3; Column 6; Home Desk

LENGTH: 165 words

LASCO Bathware, which is based in Anaheim, Calif., has introduced a barrier-free, wheelchair-accessible shower for the elderly and disabled.
"As the aged population has increased, we have gotten more requests for this kind of shower," said Karen Nardiello, marketing services administrator for the company. The Vitality shower is part of Lasco's Freedom Line.
The shower has a folding stainless steel and plastic seat, grab bars and a shower head that can slide on a 24-inch rail.
The shower head, which has a 69-inch flexible metal hose, is detachable. There are two soap shelves in each rear corner and a wide shelf on the rear wall.
The unit, which is made of molded fiberglass-reinforced polyester, is 77 inches high, 45 5/8 inches wide and 50 1/8 inches deep. It comes in white but can be ordered to match other bathroom fixtures.
The stall is $2,400 and an optional ramp is $200. For information on local distributors, call (800) 877-2005. Delivery is six to eight weeks.

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The New York Times

December 28, 1990, Friday, Late Edition - Final

Helped by Fund for Neediest, Thankful Woman Sends Gift

BYLINE: By JONATHAN RABINOVITZ

SECTION: Section B; Page 3; Column 5; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 599 words

Susan N. Faulkner remembers when her arms became so swollen and painful that she could no longer push a vacuum cleaner. She was having trouble walking, had lost her job as a secretary and feared that she could no longer afford her apartment. It did not appear that she could continue to live on her own.
Ms. Faulkner, then 62 years old, had seen hard times before. She fled Nazi Germany as a teen-ager, later watched her husband die from multiple sclerosis and then worked her way through a doctoral program in English at the age of 52. But never had she felt so helpless.
That was seven years ago. 
 This month Ms. Faulkner wrote a $25 check to The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund in appreciation for all this country has given her. And the money she sent is a small payback for the new home she has received with the help of the fund and the charities it supports.
 
'Just Wanted to Share'
 "These last few years my life has been secure -- I don't have to worry about making the rent any more," Ms. Faulkner said in a telephone interview yesterday. "I worked extremely hard here, and this country gave me the chance to reach my potential. I just wanted to share my good fortune."
She now lives on her own in a 14th-floor studio apartment with a view of the Manhattan skyline. She is one of about 800 people who rent units in four buildings for the elderly operated by Selfhelp Community Services in Bayside and Flushing, Queens. The agency offers its tenants subsidized rents, low-cost housekeeping, counseling, social activities and other services.
Selfhelp, an agency of the United Jewish Appeal-Federation of Jewish Philanthropies of New York, receives money from the Neediest Cases Fund. The 79th annual appeal for the Neediest Cases began last month, and the proceeds are distributed to seven charities. The New York Times pays the drive's overhead costs.
Ms. Faulkner has given to the Neediest Cases on a number of occasions, but she said there was a time when it was impossible for her to give. In the late 1970's, she said, she began suffering intense pain from a connective tissue disease that is similar to lupus.
 
A Desire to Help Others
 "I would read the Neediest Cases stories about the people who needed help, and my heart would break," she said. "I'd wish that I could send them $100, and there was nothing I could do."
Her health has continued to deteriorate, and she now suffers from a kidney disorder that requires dialysis three times a week. But in her new apartment, she said, she can survive on her income of about $600 a month from Social Security and $600 from a pension from Germany. And this year she was able to save enough to contribute to the fund and to several other charities.
The 69-year-old woman, talked yesterday with the air of a professor about classical music and 17th-century English literature. The walls of her apartment are lined with hundreds of books and dozens of records (her favorites are Handel and Mozart). There is a word processor and a German typewriter.
Ms. Faulkner said that her future remains unclear, and she dreads the thought of eventually being in a wheelchair.
But she continues to live each day to the fullest.
She recently splurged on tickets for the operas that will be playing at Lincoln Center this spring, even though it is difficult for her to walk more than a block or so.
"It will be a tiresome trip," she said, "but I'm looking forward to it."
 
Previously recorded .... $2,503,684.52
Recorded yesterday ...........56,074.00
 
Total ................ $ 2,559,758.52

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December 28, 1990, Friday, Late Edition - Final

Quincy Journal;
Thou Shalt Not Curse In Town of Presidents

BYLINE: By FOX BUTTERFIELD, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section A; Page 14; Column 5; National Desk

LENGTH: 704 words

DATELINE: QUINCY, Mass., Dec. 27

This is a city that prides it self on being the home of two Presidents, John Adams and his son John Quincy Adams, and a signer of the Declaration of Independence, John Hancock. It is also a city whose City Council recently voted to ban swearing in public places.
The ordinance, passed 6 to 2 on Dec. 17, is intended to help control rowdy teen-agers in Quincy's historic center and to help a new city program attract tourists. 
 "We are trying to send a message to the people of Quincy that we are upset by the language people have to hear," said Theodore DeCristofaro, president of the City Council. Mr. DeCristofaro worked for 25 years for the National Park Service in charge of maintenance at the house where John Adams and John Quincy Adams lived, not far from downtown.
Mr. DeCristofaro says the new law, passed with little debate, has widespread support. But it has prompted concern by the American Civil Liberties Union, some Quincy residents and the minister of the church where John Adams, John Quincy Adams and their families worshipped.
"John Adams probably would have thought this was very silly, an infringement on citizens' unalienable rights," said the Rev. Sheldon W. Bennett, minister of the United First Parish Church, a Unitarian church established in 1639.
The church sits at a busy intersection in downtown Quincy, only yards from a large concrete bus and subway station of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority. The station is the main transportation center for the suburban area south of Boston, known as the South Shore, and is a gathering place for young people.
It is the behavior of these youths that has alarmed Mr. DeCristofaro as well as Quincy's Mayor, James A. Sheets, who sponsored the ordinance.
"We are beginning to emphasize in a meaningful way the historical aspect of Quincy," Mr. Sheets said. In fact, the city is negotiating with the National Park Service to create a National Heritage Park in Quincy and is studying ways to attract more tourists.
"But right across the street from the church is the M.B.T.A. station, and frankly, it can be a nuisance, with drinking, drugs and the language they use," Mr. Sheets said. He added that he had witnessed the problem often, because his office in City Hall is next door to the station, and he has watched as groups of teen-age boys shouted obscenities at elderly women.
"We know what goes on in the real world, and we are not trying to legislate morality," Mr. Sheets said. "But we have to be concerned about the rights of families to come into downtown without being harassed by bad language."
The new ordinance specifies that "no person shall accost or annoy persons or disturb the peace or loiter or address another person with profane or obscene language" in any publicly owned place. Violators can be fined $100.
The police have not yet been asked to enforce the law, and no date has been set, Mr. Sheets said. "But we will do it when we have to," he said.
Lawrence O'Donnell, a prominent criminal lawyer whose office is near the transit station, thinks the new law is "totally absurd and ridiculous."
"It opens the City Council and the Mayor to ridicule," he said, "worrying about things like this with the problems we have in 1990."
"I'll probably get a life sentence, because I don't survive a day without indulging in profanity," Mr. O'Donnell said. Moreover, he added, "The police enforcing the ordinance probably teach the kids that language."
John Roberts, the executive director of the Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, said that if the ordinance was enforced and someone brought him a case, "We'd challenge it."
The language of the law is vague in describing profanity and obscenity, Mr. Roberts said, and the United States Supreme Court has struck down other local attempts to bar obscenity and profanity. In addition, he said, the Court has rejected a number of anti-loitering laws for infringing on the right to associate.
At the transit station itself, most teen-agers said they had not heard of the new law. But one 12-year-old girl, who would give only her first name, Lauren, said: "I think it's stupid. It is like, you know, the First Amendment, freedom of speech."

LOAD-DATE: December 28, 1990

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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The New York Times

December 28, 1990, Friday, Late Edition - Final

HEALTH SECRETARY REJECTS DEMANDS ON SPENDING CUTS

BYLINE: By ROBERT PEAR, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section A; Page 1; Column 1; National Desk

LENGTH: 1263 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Dec. 27

Dr. Louis W. Sullivan, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, has complained that cuts in his budget request demanded by Richard G. Darman, the White House budget director, would harm services to 50 million Americans who benefit from Social Security, Medicare and other Federal health programs.
In a confidential letter, Dr. Sullivan also complained that Mr. Darman was interfering too much in the operation and management of the giant Department of Health and Human Services, which accounts for 35 percent of all Federal spending. 
 Dr. Sullivan asserted that Mr. Darman's budget proposals would delay payment of Medicare benefits to the elderly and Social Security benefits for disabled people, provide too little money for prenatal care and restrict health care for members of minority groups and low-income people.
 
Effect on Programs
 He also said that the Darman proposals would cut Medicare payments to teaching hospitals in inner-city neighborhoods and make it more difficult for elderly people to get information over the telephone about Social Security.
Dr. Sullivan's comments came in response to Mr. Darman's preliminary decisions on the 1992 budget, which President Bush will submit to Congress in early February 1991. A copy of Dr. Sullivan's letter, sent to Mr. Darman on Friday, was obtained today from a budget expert who said he regarded many of Mr. Darman's proposals as misguided.
In a personal declaration of independence, Dr. Sullivan wrote, "We intend to treat any detailed directions and requirements" in the proposal as advisory only. To underline his point, he said, "Specific staffing levels and management arrangements must be left to responsible policy officials and program administrations" in the department, and must not be dictated by Mr. Darman's office.
 
Decisions Are Being Appealed
 Some similar decisions by Mr. Darman have been appealed by other Cabinet officers, but Dr. Sullivan's protest is the strongest so far and has proved the most difficult to resolve, Administration officials said.  Aides to Mr. Darman declined to discuss details of Dr. Sullivan's letter, but they said they believed that all disagreements could be resolved amicably.
Mr. Darman and John H. Sununu, the White House chief of staff, have said that many executive agency officials do not understand the severity of the limits on domestic spending that were imposed by Congress in the budget bill passed in October.
Mr. Darman's preliminary decisions on the budget for the fiscal year 1992, which begins Oct. 1, 1991, were distributed last week to all agencies.
Dr. Sullivan's letter did not specify the total amount of money involved in his disputes with Mr. Darman. But he did request particular amounts for certain programs, and the requests taken together would cost several billion dollars. In the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, the agency spent $439 billion, while the Federal Government as a whole spent $1.25 trillion.
Dr. Sullivan said the Social Security and Medicare trust funds were "solvent and serving their clients daily." But he said, "The means of providing those benefits are seriously threatened by the level of resources for their administration" suggested by the Office of Management and Budget.
 
Statutory Deadlines Imperiled
 He further warned: "Our ability to respond to the needs of 50 million aged and disabled beneficiaries will be seriously eroded. Social Security Administration will experience systemwide backlogs which will be especially apparent in such high-visibility areas as disability claims, where processing times will grow by one-third and appeals will take a month longer to review. Medicare providers and beneficiaries will soon notice the deterioration in service delivery, as fiscal year 1991 Medicare claims processing times grow to 50 days, well in excess of statutory payment deadlines."
In other words, he said, elderly and disabled people, doctors and hospitals would have to wait longer for Government payments they are entitled to receive.
Dr. Sullivan said, "The outlook for fiscal year 1992 is even more bleak." At the level of resources provided by Mr. Darman, he said, "Social Security Administration will see the backlogs of disability claims double, increasing from three to six months."
More than half of all callers to the agency's toll-free telephone number would get a busy signal on some days, he said.
Mr. Darman's budget allowance would force the Health Care Financing Administration, which operates Medicare, to reduce its 3,000-member staff by 22 percent, Dr. Sullivan said, and the average time for handling Medicare claims "would increase to 80 days."
 
A Plea for More Money
 In his letter, Dr. Sullivan pleaded with Mr. Darman for more money to combat "disgracefully high rates" of infant mortality.
In addition, the Secretary said, "we are deeply concerned about the scope and content of the proposed reductions in spending for Medicare benefits," especially Mr. Darman's proposal to cut Medicare payments to teaching hospitals. Many of those hospitals are in inner-city neighborhoods.
Dr. Sullivan also requested additional funds for the Food and Drug Administration, saying the growth of its staff had not kept pace with the explosive growth in new uses of medical technology.
"Excluding staff associated with new problems arising during the 1980's -- for example, AIDS and generic drugs -- F.D.A. staff actually decreased by 16 percent between fiscal year 1980 and fiscal year 1991," Dr. Sullivan said.
He said he was seeking $785 million for the food and drug agency, which has a budget of $690 million and a staff of 8,000 people in the current fiscal year. The Government could raise $220 million if it required drug companies to pay "user fees" for F.D.A. services, he said.
 
A Question of Trust
 Dr. Sullivan's letter only hints at a problem pervading the executive branch: Officials at the Department of Health and Human Services and other agencies said they did not completely trust Mr. Darman when he told them that no extra money was available for domestic programs in the coming year. They have no way of independently verifying his account until the President's budget for all agencies is issued in February.
To help offset the costs of his own proposals, Dr. Sullivan suggested cutting the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program, to $468 million, and he said such aid should be concentrated in Northeastern states, where low-income residents are most likely to use fuel oil to heat their homes.
For the current fiscal year, Congress provided $1.4 billion, plus a contingency fund of $200 million. The money is now available to low-income people in all states.
Dr. Sullivan affirmed his support for proposals to charge "application and user fees" to people who enlist the help of the Federal Government in collecting child support payments.
He objected to Mr. Darman's proposal to take away the department's responsibility for assistance to homeless people who are mentally ill or who abuse alcohol and drugs. Mr. Darman wanted to transfer the responsibility to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, but Dr. Sullivan said his department had more expertise in serving such people.
Dr. Sullivan's letter shows how the Government must now make choices among groups of needy people. To get $42 million for homeless people with the most severe problems, he said, "we would eliminate the Emergency Community Services Homeless Assistance Program," which helps poor people find and keep shelter.

LOAD-DATE: December 28, 1990

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photos: Richard G. Darman, the White House budget director. His preliminary decisions on the 1992 budget were distributed to Federal agencies last week.; Dr. Louis W. Sullivan, Secretary of Health and Human Services, said that budget cuts would hurt 50 million Americans who benefit from Federal health programs. (Photographs by Associated Press) (pg. A18)

Copyright 1990 The New York Times Company



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The New York Times

December 29, 1990, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

When a Check Deposits Itself

BYLINE: By LEONARD SLOANE

SECTION: Section 1; Page 46; Column 1; Style Desk; Consumer's World Page

LENGTH: 1139 words

Increasingly, Americans are turning to direct deposits of their salaries, dividends, interest, pensions and Social Security payments. Many who were wary at first and uncomfortable with having money appear in their accounts without a check passing through their hands have grown accustomed to the convenience.
Some corporations encourage their employees and retirees to participate because it eliminates the time and expense of preparing checks. And millions agree because they don't have to trudge to a bank with their checks, and deposits are made regularly even when they are away from work or ill. 
 Still, there are shadows in this happy picture.
Some banks, savings and loan associations and credit unions bar withdrawals of directly deposited money from automatic tellers on the date of payment because the money is not posted until later in the day.
There is little participation by people with low incomes, who rely so much on each paycheck that they do not want to risk computer errors. And some people refuse to participate because they do not want their spouses to know how much money they earn.
 
Delays Cited
 "While the Government and the financial-services industry tout direct deposit as a virtually trouble-free payments mechanism, we fear such observations are overly simplistic and do not take into consideration all of the problems consumers are experiencing," said William Kent Brunette, legislative representative of the American Association of Retired Persons. He said many direct-deposit recipients "are experiencing significant delays in receiving their funds, particularly when they switch banks or their bank changes hands."
About 100,000 corporations in the United States now offer such electronic transfers to their employees, double the number that did so three years ago. About 17 percent of the workers in private industry now participate in direct-deposit plans, up from 12 percent in 1989, according to the National Automated Clearinghouse Association. And financial institutions say direct deposits of Social Security payments, private pensions and corporate dividends are rising.
 
Some Remain Adamant
 But some people still won't use direct-deposit services. Specialists in the field say many older Americans, for whom direct depositing was designed, are especially reluctant. On payment days, bankers are not surprised to be deluged with visits and telephone calls from the elderly asking if deposits were made on schedule.
Linda Golodner, executive director of the National Consumers League, said: "Some people feel more comfortable having a piece of paper in hand and taking it to the bank. It's also a social experience for seniors who feel uncomfortable with electronic methods."
But 20 million corporate employees feel comfortable enough with the procedure to have signed up for direct depositing of their paychecks. And the use of direct deposits for other purposes is steadily advancing.
The clearinghouse association, which represents 15,000 financial organizations that handle virtually all direct-deposit payments, said the major advantages are convenience, safety and, in some cases, increased interest.
"Direct deposit eliminates the need for people to make special arrangements to deposit their checks," said Elliott C. McEntee, president of the association. "Checks are never lost or stolen because payments are made electronically."
"Some banks give you a break on the pricing of accounts if you have direct deposit," said Louise Roseman, assistant director of Federal Reserve Bank operations of the Federal Reserve System. "Their either offer lower-cost or free checking accounts because they know these are more stable deposits and you become more of a loyal customer."
 
Money Without Waiting
 Direct deposits were started in 1976 when the Government offered people collecting Social Security the option of receiving monthly payments without waiting for a check in the mail.  Today, about half of all such recipients have chosen direct depositing for their Social Security checks; new recipients are automatically put into the direct-deposit cycle unless they ask not to be. Over the last decade, thousands of corporations and state and local governments adopted direct depositing for payrolls and urged employees to participate.
The Control Data Corporation, which processes payrolls for 20,000 companies, said 11,000 of those companies offer the service and 33 percent of their employees participate.  Most companies offering direct deposits promote the practice as an employee benefit.
"Employees know with absolute certainty that the money will be in their accounts," said David Smay, assistant treasurer of the Chevron Corporation, more than 60 percent of whose employees have chosen direct depositing. "We've had remarkable error-free success," he said.
Propopents of direct depositing are seeking to enlist more payers and recipients of corporate dividends and other money not connected to payrolls, a market of almost a billion payments a year. Norwest Bank Minnesota, which handles stock transfer services for companies, said 8 percent of its client companies have started to offer direct depositing of dividends to stockholders over the last year.
"The idea is starting to catch on," said Rodney D. Johnson, a vice president. "It's much more reliable than the mail and payments are clearing one to two days sooner."
"Our goal is to put anything we can on direct deposit," said Kathleen Hagan, manager of cash management of the Home Life Insurance Company, which already follows the practice for retirement pensions and life insurance benefits. "I have a long list of projects."

 
 
IF THE DEPOSIT ISN'T SO DIRECT
 What if a direct deposit never appears in your bank account? Peggy Miller, legislative representative of the Consumer Federation of America, offered this advice:
Get in touch immediately with the company or government agency that issued the check and report the problem, then go to the bank involved to fill out the necessary forms.
"Keep the names of all people in the bank and at the company you talk to, as well as the numbers accompanying any forms," Ms. Miller said.
She said it was the consumer's responsibility to make sure the direct deposit has actually been made. The consumer must bear in mind, she said, that by the time the problem arises, any number of checks may bounce.
Some banks charge as much as $20 for each bad check, for which the depositor may be liable. This can add up to a substantial sum in penalties, in addition to dunning and a damaged credit rating.
Ms. Miller also suggested finding out if there is a glitch that could make the problem arise again.  As soon as a bank statement arrives, she said, the consumer should make sureeach deposit is credited.

LOAD-DATE: December 29, 1990

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photos: Suzanne Isaac, Chevron Corporation management secretary, fills out direct-deposit form with David Smay, assistant Chevron treasurer (Fred Mertz for The New York Times); Banks say depositors have access to their money sooner.

Copyright 1990 The New York Times Company



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The New York Times

December 30, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

80's Legacy: States and Cities in Need

BYLINE: By MICHAEL deCOURCY HINDS with ERIK ECKHOLM

SECTION: Section 1; Part 1; Page 1; Column 1;
States In Distress: The Seeds of Fiscal Calamity/A special report National Desk

LENGTH: 3264 words

All across America, state and city governments have been stricken by financial crises that were not even imagined a year ago.
More than half are facing serious financial shortfalls, and many are considering Draconian measures, including huge layoffs of public employees and major cutbacks in social services and public works. Some states, like Connecticut and Rhode Island, must find a way to cut their budgets by 20 percent in the next few months. 
 Making up for the cash shortage with tax increases may be political suicide for the public official who suggests it. Memories are all too fresh of the beating incumbent governors and legislators suffered in the November elections as voters registered their anger over rising taxes and reduced services.
 
'Unprecedented Cutback'
 "The fiscal plight seems to be worse than at any time during my memory," said Henry Aaron, director of economic studies at the Brookings Institution, a research organization based in Washington. "I think you would have to go back to the Great Depression to find similar anguish, in terms of the number of states that are facing an unprecedented cutback in service or significant increases in taxes."
The immediate cause of the crisis is the nation's economic downturn, which has drastically cut into tax revenues. But the seeds were sown over the last decade or so, and what public officials are now facing is the collision of several long-term trends, including these:
*Starting in Jimmy Carter's Administration and accelerating under President Ronald Reagan's "New Federalism," the Federal Government has shifted a heavy financial burden to the states and cities, cutting and eliminating Federal grants for housing, education, mass transportation and public works projects. In the late 1970's, Washington provided 25 percent of state and local budgets. It now provides 17 percent.
*The public is increasingly resistant to new or higher taxes, partly because they believe government is not wisely spending the money. In the November elections, voters in two states, Nevada and Oregon, approved initiatives to limit tax increases or roll back taxes. In other states voters showed their displeasure by ousting officials who raised taxes. Altogether 14 governors' offices changed political parties in the upheaval against the old order.
*The pressures to spend are enormous. They range from the public's demand for better schools and harsher punishment of criminals to an increased number of elderly people who need help with nursing home costs. For instance, Medicaid, the health program primarily for the poor and disabled, now accounts for 12 percent of state spending; 20 years ago it was 3 percent.
 
 Growing Responsibilities
 In many cases the pressure to spend comes from the Federal Government itself. The growing body of Federal rules and regulations often place new responsibilities on states and cities without providing sufficient money to carry them out. And the situation is unlikely to improve soon because the budget compromise worked out this fall by Congress and President Bush provides some added money for domestic programs this year but freezes domestic spending for the next two years and restricts its growth for two years after that.
Sometimes the pressure comes from the courts, which have forced states to build new prisons to ease overcrowding or to make costly changes in education programs.
Unlike the Federal Government, which can and does operate at a deficit, all states but one -- Vermont -- are legally bound to have balanced budgets. So, their options are limited to raising taxes or reducing spending.
Experts say many states will be forced to raise taxes in the next year or two. And some predict that the electoral drubbing many governors suffered in November will turn out to have been but a preview of 1992.
 
 'End of Their Political Careers'
 "Our Federal politics are gridlocked, and governors have become the ones who have to have the courage to put their necks out," said Daniel M. Sprague, executive director of the Council of State Governments, an organization of state officials that is based in Lexington, Ky.
"Unfortunately, for a number of governors who raised taxes, that has been the end of their political careers," he added, referring in particular to William A. O'Neill of Connecticut and Michael S. Dukakis of Massachusetts, who both decided not to run for re-election this year.
Although the converging trends have produced a crisis atmosphere in governors' offices and state legislatures, they spell special disaster for poverty-stricken inner cities, said Richard P. Nathan, director of the Rockefeller Institute of Government at the State University of New York at Albany. Worsening economic prospects, especially in the Northeast, a tapering off of state aid coming after a sharp drop in Federal aid and a "hardening and concentration" of social problems like drugs, crime, poverty, homelessness and AIDS mean "a new crunch time for cities," he said.
 
 The States
Most Ambitious Fall the Hardest

Twenty-seven states are being forced to reduce spending below what they had planned this fiscal year to head off a deficit, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. They are eliminating programs, freezing hiring, laying off employees, raising college tuitions, increasing fees and fines, using up savings and doing almost anything to avoid raising taxes. The Northeast is hurting most: New York State is laying off 10,000 employees, Massachusetts has already laid off 1,700 and Connecticut, one of the handful of states that do not have an income tax, may impose one, something once considered unthinkable there.
In Rhode Island, Governor-elect Bruce G. Sundlun, a Democrat, predicted "a major downsizing in government." After he takes office in January, he said, he will have to make spending cuts of about 20 percent of the state budget to balance the books by June 30, the end of the fiscal year. New taxes are not an option, he said. Last year, Gov. Edward D. DiPrete, a Republican, added $200 million in taxes, and political analysts say that was a major reason he lost his bid for re-election by a resounding 3-to-1 ratio.
Rhode Island's financial experience is fairly typical of about one-third of the states, many of them in the Northeast, a region that had rapid growth in the 1980's, said Marcia A. Howard, research director of the National Association of State Budget Officers, which is based in Washington. These states were able to cut taxes, start new programs and put aside some money in the decade's strongest economic years, 1984 through 1988. The other two-thirds of the states, Ms. Howard said, saw relatively little or slow growth during the 1980's. Now the economy has pulled the rug out from under both groups of states, and the ones that started the most ambitious social programs are now falling the hardest.
Massachusetts, for instance, set up its own universal health care program two years ago, but now that the financial crisis has hit, Governor-elect William F. Weld, a Republican, has vowed to repeal parts of the program.
Some of today's problems have shallow roots. Uncertainties about how people and companies would react to the Federal Tax Reform of 1986, which eliminated many tax deductions, made it difficult for states to forecast revenue. Several, including New York, California and Massachusetts, were overly optimistic. In addition, economic forecasters did not predict that the Northeast would be on the leading edge of the recession, causing serious budget miscalculations in the region.
The states having the least trouble balancing their budgets this year are primarily those in the West with growing populations and energy-rich states that are benefiting from the rise in oil prices since the Persian Gulf crisis began, as well as slow-growth states like Arkansas and West Virginia that for years have tried to keep a tight rein on expenditures.
Ms. Howard of the National Association of State Budget Officers said that even without a recession, widespread fiscal problems were inevitable, paricularly because of spending on health care and prisons. "These problems are cascading on the states," she said.
Medicaid, the shared Federal-state program covering medical costs of the poor, and, increasingly, nursing home costs of the middle class, has become one of the states' biggest budget headaches. That is because of the aging of the population and the increasing number of middle-class elderly people who have exhausted their savings or transferred their assets to their children and are now dependent on Medicaid for nursing home care.
"Medicaid is becoming the Pac-Man of state government, eating up every dollar," said Ray Scheppach, executive director of the National Governor's Association.
Some experts argue that when the current economic downturn is over, state and local revenue is likely to pick up briskly enough to relieve the pressure. Others doubt it.
"The tax bases are going to grow more slowly in the 1990's than they did in the 1980's," said Steven D. Gold, director of the Center for the Study of the States at the State University of New York at Albany, citing projections of slower economic growth in the years ahead in many regions.
 
 The Cities
Major Burdens, Limited Options

In more than half the nation's cities, spending is outpacing revenue this year, largely because of declining economic conditions, loss of Federal and state aid and state prohibitions on increasing local taxes, the National League of Cities said.
Philadelphia, which has already cut $65 million from social service programs this year, may not be able to pay its 25,000 workers their full pay after Jan. 4 and may soon be insolvent. New York and Washington each plan to lay off thousands of city workers and teachers. Los Angeles and Louisville, Ky., have already closed neighborhood health centers.
And New Orleans dealt with an expected $42 million deficit in 1991, in part by budgeting only enough money to run its criminal justice system and neighborhood health clinics for just six months in the hope that the state will make up the difference. But Louisiana's Governor, Buddy Roemer, said, "We can't spend the money we don't have."
The plight of cities is raising old questions about shared responsibility. "The cities have a disproportionate burden to carry, and nobody wants to talk about it," said Alair A. Townsend, who directed New York City's budget office under former Mayor Edward I. Koch. "New York or Chicago or Philadelphia cannot solve these problems on their own."
One problem for New York, Philadelphia, New Orleans and many other financially troubled cities is a limited taxing authority. New Orleans, for example, collected enough money through its sales and property taxes to deal with social problems when Federal and state governments shouldered 50 percent of the city's budget two decades ago. But now that Federal and state aid has fallen to 15 percent of its budget, the city's taxes do not bring in enough money to cope.
"Pressure from suburbanites is part of the reason we can't have a wage tax or a gas tax, and the legislature just prohibited us from having an inheritance tax," said Mayor Sidney J. Barthelemy of New Orleans.
He went on, "People can't constantly tell us to stand on our own two feet if they keep cutting our legs off."
 
 The U.S. Government
The Shift In Responsibilities

Financial distress is focusing attention on a historic shift over the last decade in Federal relations with the states and cities. Federal grants, which blossomed during the Depression and President Lyndon B. Johnson's "Great Society," peaked in the late 1970's as the Federal deficit began to mount. Under President Reagan, Federal aid declined and more responsibility was transferred to the states.
As Federal grants waned, the share of total state and local spending paid for by Washingon declined from a peak of 25 percent in the late 1970's to 17 percent now. Cities lost much more than the states as programs like revenue sharing and aid for low-income housing were cut. Nor was there as much assistance as the cities and states needed to attack new problems like homelessness and AIDS.
While Federal aid to state and local governments has declined, Federal assistance to individuals has steadily climbed. The individual payments that pass through state budgets are mostly poverty-related money like Medicaid and welfare. The Federal Government pays more than half the cost of Medicaid and Aid to Families with Dependent Children, and the entire cost of food stamps. In addition, the Federal Government directly pays the elderly and others through Social Security and Medicare.
From 1984 to 1988, the strong economy helped state and local governments raise the money to continue programs that had lost Federal support. But now as the economy sours, states are saddled with heavier social responsibilities and few options to pay for them.
"We don't have New Federalism, we have New Feudalism, where every community fends for itself with a hodgepodge of responsibilities and taxing powers," said George Sternlieb, an urban specialist and professor emeritus of public policy at Rutgers University.
Optimists view the financial distress as a chance to cut the fat from government.
"There's no question that the Federal cutbacks are part of the problem. or the opportunity, depending on your perspective," said Richard S. Williamson, who was a special assistant to President Reagan for intergovernmental relations and promoted the idea of transferring more reponsibility to the states.
"There are those of us who feel you get better decision making when both funding and execution are closer to local levels," he said. "If my name were Florio, and I had to increase taxes, I'd probably disagree with that."
He was referring to Gov. Jim Florio of New Jersey. Although Mr. Florio was not up for re-election last month, another New Jersey Democrat, Senator Bill Bradley, was. Mr. Bradley, who was expected to win re-election easily, barely squeaked into office as voters expressed their displeasure with tax increases pushed through the State Legislature by Mr. Florio earlier in the year.
Mr. Florio blames President Reagan for making it difficult for governors and mayors to govern. "Folks have become very skeptical, if not cynical, about government because President Reagan convinced people that you never need to make any tough decisions," he said.
Governor Roemer of Louisiana, also a Democrat, agreed. "I think the question of Federal responsibility needs to be discussed candidly with the American people," he said. "It might be that the government closest to the people works best, and federalism, in shifting to the states more responsibility is the best thing if done carefully. But the price tag, the purpose, the goals, the methodology, all need to be discussed."
Having less money to distribute has not stopped Congress from trying to set local priorities, often necessitating large expenditures. The states say they are being forced to take on responsibilities without the ability to pay for them.
"The Federal-state story is mandates," said Gerald H. Miller, executive director of the National Association of State Budget Officers. "The Federal Register averages 200 pages a day, and much of that is for new mandates and rules," he said. These range from rules on major national goals, like whether poor children should receive welfare, to less weighty matters. One proposed rule, fiercely opposed by governors as setting a new standard for Government meddling, tells states how they can spend interest income from fees they charge for fishing and hunting licenses.
Gov. John D. Ashcroft of Missouri, a Republican who is the National Governor's Association's spokesman on Federal policy, said, "The most pernicious part about it is that when the Federal Government wants to expand a program, the Government funds its share of the program by borrowing and printing money, while the states have to come up with real money by forfeiting other things we'd much rather do."
The major destabilizing force in Missouri's budget, he said, was $143 million needed to finance additional Medicaid costs , which were mandated by Congress. The new rules extend care for more poor children, pregnant women and elderly people.
But as that example shows, Federal mandates can involve goals with which most would agree.
Defenders of the expanded Medicaid coverage like Representative Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California, an architect of the program, agree that Medicaid is becoming unwieldy and is overburdening the states. But he argues that without broader restructuring of the nation's health system, Medicaid is the only available vehicle to meet crucial goals. "I think the Federal Government has a responsibility to be sure we provide prenatal care for low-income women and to make sure poor children have health care available," he said.
Governors also contend that the Federal Government, while saying the states should take on more responsibility, is hampering their ability to raise revenue. The new Federal taxes on gasoline, alcohol and tobacco are expected to decrease demand slightly for these products and thereby reduce state revenue from existing taxes on those products. In addition, the new Federal taxes make it harder politically for states to tax those items.
 
The Outlook
Who Should Take Which Roles?

More than just balanced budgets are at stake. Alice Rivlin of the Brookings Institution who formerly headed the Congressional Budget Office, argues that states must take the lead in some areas. "Infrastructure must be modernized," she said. "school systems dramatically improved and public services, from child development to adult retraining, made dramatically more effective."
She added, "These are the kinds of programs that work best when well adapted to local conditions and local people."
In turn, she said, the Federal Government should take more responsibility for programs like Medicaid and welfare, which can be fairly addressed only on a national scale.
There is surprising agreement among many liberals and conservatives that the Federal Government, with its unsurpassed ability to raise and redistribute money, should take special responsibility for welfare measures and leave service programs to the states. The main disagreement comes on the levels of services to be offered.
"Intellectually, I have no problem with federalizing programs like Medicaid," said Mr. Williamson, the former Reagan adviser. His fear is practical. "Politically, it's hard for me to see how in the process you won't end up ratcheting the coverage up in a fiscally irresponsible manner."
New roles for the states would mean more taxes. And Mr. Gold, the expert on state governments, is optimistic about the ability of the states to find the needed income, albeit at the cost of spilled political blood.
"If the governors are smart, they will present clearly the budgetary implications of not raising taxes," Mr. Gold said.
"They will be able to convince legislatures that there is no practical way to avoid raising taxes without spending cuts that are unthinkable."
"When the dust settles there will be many big tax increases in 1991," he predicted. "This will lead to a strong backlash in 1992."
"It's going to be real uncomfortable in state capitals," Mr. Gold said.

LOAD-DATE: December 30, 1990

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photos: U.S. Presidents: Kennedy (The New York Times); Johnson (Yoichi R. Okamoto); Nixon (United Press International); Ford (George Tames/The New York Times); Carter (Teresa Zabala/The New York Times); Reagan (United Press International); and Bush (Jose R. Lopez/The New York Times) (pg. 16).
 
Graphs: "Heavier Burden for the States," showing state and local spending, federal contribution to state and local spending, 1960-1989 (Source: Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations) (pg. 1)
 
"The Changing of Federal Aid," tracking Medicaid, other welfare to individuals, revenue sharing, all other aid, 1960-1990 (1990, estimate) (Source: Rockefeller Institute of Government) (pg. 16)
 
"The Federal Contribution Fades," tracking state and local spending and federal contribution, 1960-1989 (Source: Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations)
 
"How the States Spend Their Money," detailing how states spend per $100 of personal income, in 1979 and 1989 (Source: Center for the Study of the States) (pg. 17)
 
"The Growth in Taxes," tracking all taxes, as a percentage of total personal income, 1962-1988 (Source: Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations) (pg. 17)
 
Table: "The State of the States," detailing the difference between each state's original projected revenue for the fiscal year 1991 and the amount collected as of Dec. 15, and whether the state is currently or is about to cut its spending. (Source: National Conference fo State Legislatures) (pg. 17)
 
Map: U.S. indicating which state's revenues will exceed estimate, which are on target, which are 0.1 to 2.5%, 2.6 to 5.0% or more than 5% under estimate.

TYPE: A Special Report

Copyright 1990 The New York Times Company



466 of 468 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times

December 30, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

The T-Shirt Industry Sweats It Out

BYLINE: By ISADORE BARMASH

SECTION: Section 3; Page 6; Column 1; Financial Desk

LENGTH: 1304 words

Their appeal transcends income, education and taste. While other fashions have come and gone, the lowly T-shirt keeps selling. But even this garment's sales may be vulnerable to a recession. Indeed, a surge in domestic capacity and the flow of imports have made T-shirt marketing a sweaty contact sport. Analysts are expecting cutbacks in domestic T-shirt output to continue in 1991.
"The T-shirt market this year is soft due to too much capacity and the erosion in general economic conditions," said Robert Blanchard, president of the National Knitwear Manufacturers Association, of Morristown, N.J. "Retailers knew that they can always get the supply they need and are controlling their inventories." 
 Because T-shirts are relatively cheap and readily available in a wide range of styles and designs, they appeal to many different people. For example, wearing a T-shirt is a way to assert one's identity or or back up a boast, whether it be about surviving the New York Marathon, visiting Dolly Parton's Dollywood in Tennessee or proclaiming an allegiance to Calvin Klein. "Over the last five years, demand for T-shirts has been very strong," said Deborah Bronston, apparel analyst for Prudential-Bache Securities Inc., in New York City.
Meeting the demand can yield stunning profit margins. Start with a simple white cotton or cotton-polyester shirt, dye it in the factory or run it through a screen or thermal printing machine. With little added expense, a basic $3-wholesale shirt can emerge as a garment that sells for several times more.
This year, about a billion T-shirts have been made for the United States market, or four for every back. Domestic mills produced about 609 million outerwear-style T- shirts and produced another 300 million meant to be worn as underwear. About 108 million shirts have been imported.
T-shirts are the only clothing sold not just in stores, but also on the street, in gasoline stations, bowling alleys, movie theaters and zoos. A single shirt can fetch as little as $5 or as much as $150 when sold in boutiques. Even better, in Manhattan's Times Square, three shirts can sell for as low as $10.
Large makers like Fruit of the Loom Inc. and the Hanes division of Sara Lee Corporation, together account for more than 50 percent of the domestic outerwear T-shirt market, with Fruit of the Loom having a somewhat higher share than Hanes. But retailers buy only about 15 percent of their shirts directly from the manufacturers. The rest filter through wholesalers who either print T-shirts themselves or sell to independent, entrepreneurial style printers.
Some executives and analysts forecast continuing strong sales. Millions of young and older Americans constantly add to their T-shirt wardrobes -- attesting to the enduring American passion for the casual. "T-shirts and jeans naturally go together, since each seems to be just right for the other," observed Richard Ruster, the president of the Tee Corporation of America, a producer and importer in New York City. "They're the leisure wear for the 1990's."
Few fashions are so adaptable. What began as outerwear for the fitness craze has become an all-purpose garment for the home and many work places. Indeed, the greatest growth in T-shirt sales has been in outerwear. Jack Hershlag, executive director of the National Association of Men's Sportswear Buyers, speaks of "the two worlds of T-shirts."
One, he said, is the world of fashion T-shirts, proprietary creations marketed by companies or designers, usually as part of coordinated wardrobes. The other includes the blank shirts that are printed with cartoon characters, team names, product logos, special events, political slogans and jokes. "Bart Simpson is probably outselling any other cartoon character," Mr. Hershlag said. "It's a case of the product creating its own market, and the more bright ideas there are, the bigger the market will be."
Some analysts say that fashion and novelty will continue to fill T-shirts and T-shirt demand. "Even though some see an oversupply, I see a continuing, solid trend because of the tie-ins with popular movies or television shows," said Arthur Britten, a New York retailing and apparel consultant. "The 'Dick Tracy' and now 'The Simpsons' shirts have had sales in the millions."
As demand grew in the late 1980's, factories expanded more than 10 percent a year but still ran at capacity. Domestic outerwear production boomed from 382 million shirts in 1986 to 648 million in 1989. Output fell closer to 600 million this year as the manufacturers, fearing oversupply, cut back.
Importers have had to retreat as well. The biggest source of imported T-shirts is Pakistan, followed by China, Hong Kong and the Philippines. While the foreign flow increased from 14.9 percent of the outerwear market in 1986 to 18.2 percent in 1989, it has slowed this year, dropping an estimated 6 to 8 percent through June, Mr. Blanchard said.
Domestic T-shirt makers have depended on automation to fend off the imports that have inundated many other types of apparel companies. T-shirts are made from knit jersey, either an all-cotton or polyester blend, by high-speed knitting machines that, in a plant with 500 employees, turn out 17 million shirts a year. But lower fiber costs help keep the price of imported shirts a dollar or two below the cost of domestic products.
Some American companies are trying to compete by shifting their production overseas. Mr. Ruster said that imports are more likely to thrive in 1991 than domestic production. His three-year-old T-shirt company produces all its garments from abroad. Foreign makers often pay more for import rights -- which, under national quotas, can be bought and traded -- than for actual shirt production. In Mr. Ruster's view, "That shows the demand still exists for the import."
For manufacturers like Mr. Ruster, T-shirts will never go out of style. "It's still a very hot business," he said. "The T-shirt business is at its peak and everyone still wants to be in it."
 
 
 
DESIGNER T-SHIRTS' TRUE WORTH
 Nobody would price a Claude Monet painting by totaling the value of its canvas, pigment, frame and labor, as well as the retail markup. Likewise, the Monets of the fashion world insist that standard accounting fails to capture their creations' true worth. Far from treating T-shirts as designer doodlings, clever retailers promote them as essential elements in wardrobes.
Earlier this year, at the Claude Montana boutique in Beverly Hills, Calif., $150 bought a white T-shirt with a big M on the front. However, the French designer will no longer produce these shirts, because, as the boutique manager said, "We do not renew last season's styles."
Those in the business stress that the finished masterpiece justifies a shirt's high price. "The designer who decides to do a T-shirt will design it totally, from the fabric, construction, shape and trim," said Jack Hershlag, of the National Association of Men's Sportswear Buyers. "Basic T-shirts are mass-produced and chopped out in standard shapes. But the designer might want his creation longer, shorter, fuller or deeper, or with a higher neck."
Not that this effort is always evident. "You are paying for the designer's name, which is usually on it, and for the pleasure of the reaction you get," Mr. Hershlag said. "It's a matter of fashion appeal and probably snob appeal. Is it better made? Yes, but probably not much more than the best-made, moderate-priced T-shirt."
Mr. Hershlag said that consumers will never tire of letting designers advertise on their chests. "Not one bit," he said. "People want that name on their jeans or their T-shirts. Manufacturers are falling all over themselves to get the permission of designers to use their names on the products they make."

LOAD-DATE: February 3, 1991

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Richard Ruster, a T-shirt maker. (Sara Krulwich/The New York Times)

Copyright 1990 The New York Times Company



467 of 468 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times

December 30, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Stress Points in the State Budgets

SECTION: Section 1; Part 1; Page 16; Column 1; National Desk

LENGTH: 1145 words


MEDICAID
 The fastest growing state expense is Medicaid, the joint Federal-state program to provide health care to the poor and disabled and, increasingly, costly nursing-home care for the middle-class elderly. The Federal Government sets general guidelines and pays 56 percent of the costs on average, the states the rest.
 Costs are zooming, with no end in sight. Medicaid took 3 percent of state spending in 1970, but 12 percent of state spending in 1990. Medicaid outlays have been climbing by 12 to 15 percent a year and in 1990 by an astonishing 18 percent, far above the inflation rate.
 The growth reflects many factors: a general rise in medical costs, federally mandated expansion of eligible groups, an increase in the number of poor people who qualify as the economy slows and pressure to raise the low fees that are paid doctors and hospitals. One major driving force is the aging of the population. Already, nursing home care and related expenses, mainly for the elderly, take half of Medicaid funds. These include both poor people and middle-income people who have seen their assets drained by nursing-home costs or have transferred their assets. Unless a new way is devised to support long-term care needs, Medicaid costs will climb relentlessly.
 The governors have condemned Congressional expansions oof coverage and other rules, which require them to come up with ever greater matching money. But defenders of these mandates say that improved coverage of poor children and pregnant women is an important social goal that can only be met through Medicaid until broader national reforms of health care are achieved.
 
WELFARE
 Welfare, while still a major item in state and local budgets, has accounted for a smaller share of spending over the last two decades, in part because the real value of benefits has shrunk. The Federal government pays an average of 55 percent of the costs of Aid to Families with Dependent Children, the major nonmedical program; states, which have discretion in setting benefit levels, pay the rst. The Federal Government pays the entire cost of food stamps.
 A.F.D.C. began in 1935 but was limited until the 1960's when court decisions required states to cover families who met Federal eligibility requirements. The welfare rolls increased steadily, from 3 million recipients in 1960 to 11.4 million in 1975. In 1981, President Ronald Reagan tightened eligibility requirements, which reduced the number of beneficiaries, mostly the working poor, by 8 percent. Enrollment crept up and has jumped with the recession, but remains close to the 1981 level of 11.2 million recipients.
 While states vary widely in their benefit levels, from 1970 to 1990 the average monthly grant per recipient grew from $183 to $383. But this was far below the inflation rate, and purchasing power delcined by 39 percent. Total A.F.D.C. payments in 1989 were $17.5 billion.
 Food stamps made up for part of the loss, but the average decline in purchasing power of the combined benefits over the two decades was still 19 percent. Federal spending on food stamps in 1990 was about $15 billion, providing an average montly benefit of $59 to 19.9 million people including all A.F.D.C. recipients.
 Financial woes have undercut the ability of states to reform their welfare programs. States have come up with enough matching money to qualify for only 65 percent of the $800 milion in Federal money to pursue welfare reforms.
 
 PRISONS
 Spending on corrections - prison building and maintenance, parole and related costs - has nearly doubled during the past decade. The cost has been almost entirely borne by state and local governments, which spend $17.9 billion in 1988, for example, while the Federal Government spent only $1.1 billion.
 Corrections, the biggest criminal justice expense after police costs, represents only 3.5 percent of state spending on average, but in some states with ambitious prison building programs, like Michigan, it now absorbs over 7 percent of the budget. And though it takes a relatively small bite, corrections spending has grown at an average annual rate of 13 percent since 1986, absorbing much of the growth in state revenues.
 The flurry of prison building is less a reflection of rising crime than of changing public responses to it. From 1976 to 1985, according to a Federal study, the number of reported crimes actually declined 2 percent, though the number of reported violent crimes rose 19 percent. But there has been a shift in public attitudes away from rehabilitation toward punishment, an increase in mandatory sentences and a broadening of the definition of criminal activity to include such things as drunk driving and possession of weapons. Even as the prison population jumped, court cases forced many state and local governments to construct new prisons to relieve crowding.
 The nation's overcrowded prisons and jails hold over one million inmates and the population is increasing at the rate of 2.650 per week, or enough to fill five average-sized prisons. Financial crises are forcing many states to search for alternatives to imprisonment, and new construction may taper off. But the prison expansion will have an expensive legacy: Housing inmates in new prisons costs up to $25,000 a year.
 
 EDUCATION
 Education is the biggest item in the budget of every state, typically accounting for one of every three dollars flowing out of state treasuries. Over the last decade, as states sought to improve education and direct more money to poorer districts, state and local spending on elementary and secondary schools more than doubled, to $187 billion in 1990 from $89 billion in 1980. Federal aid, at $13 billion in 1990, accounts for only a small fraction of school money.
 The launching of Sputnik by the Soviet Union in 1957 prompted Congress to invest in the teaching of math, science and foreign languages, and in the 1960's Washington increased support for disadvantaged and handicapped students. By 1980 the Federal share of school spending reached 9.2 percent, but during the 1980's it fell to 6.3 percent.
 While local governments have traditionally borne the costs of schooling, usually based on property taxes, over the last two decades the state governments have taken on a greater burden, with the state share of total spending rising to 50 percent in 1990, from 40 percent in 1970. Three major forces were at work. Lawsuits have challenged the primary reliance on the property tax, arguing that this discriminated against districts with low property values. Many states have responded by increasing aid to local districts. Second, in the 1980's, states tried to make up for declining Federal assistance.
 More significantly, states have recently accelerated their efforts to improve schools, raising curriculum standards and teacher salaries.
 

LOAD-DATE: February 10, 1991

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


GRAPHIC: 
Graphs showing increases and decreases in medicaid, welfare, prison and education spending by local, state and federal governments, 1960 - 1990

Copyright 1990 The New York Times Company



468 of 468 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times

December 30, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Does Community Policing Work?;
Efficient, Cooperative

BYLINE: By Herman Goldstein; Herman Goldstein, professor of law at the University of Wisconsin, is author of "Problem-Oriented Policing."

SECTION: Section 4; Page 11; Column 2; Editorial Desk

LENGTH: 1082 words

DATELINE: MADISON, Wis.

If New York and other cities want to succeed in aggressive campaigns to reclaim the streets for all citizens, they must make the most of a relatively new idea: community policing. This concept, also known as neighborhood policing, empowers the police to do more than just make arrests.
Officers are permanently assigned to one neighborhood so they can get to know the people living and working in it. They tackle problems once deemed unimportant: noise complaints, trespassing, teen-agers' hullabaloo. The public is given easy access to them through storefront stations and officers' telephone numbers at work, not the impersonal and frequently busy 911. 
 Community policing, which is expensive, cannot replace traditional investigations into such violent crimes as homicide, armed robbery and sexual assault. But by emphasizing crime prevention, it can improve a neighborhood's quality of life, an urgent issue in America's cities.
New York's 1,457-member Community Patrol Officer Program (called CPOP), which such evaluators as New York's Vera Institute of Justice considers promising, is staffed by special units. In other cities, the entire force does community policing.
Some programs are ambitious and far-reaching. Others are narrow and superficial. They are little more than public-relations efforts such as police athletic leagues and foot patrols intended to evoke nostalgic recollections of the friendly cop on the beat. These shallow efforts threaten the movement's credibility.
In the most advanced neighborhood programs, the police systematically identify and analyze particular crimes such as theft from cars and robbery of the elderly, and develop tailored responses. This fine-tuning approach, specifically labeled problem-oriented policing, is best exemplified by New York City; Baltimore County, Md.; San Diego, Calif.; Tulsa, Okla.; Newport News, Va., and Edmonton, Alberta.
The CPOP program began in June 1984, and within about a year it began making its mark: Vincent Esposito, a CPOP officer assigned to the 72d Precinct in Brooklyn, N.Y., foiled drug dealing in Rainbow Park, on Sixth Avenue. First, he arrested drug dealers, but that time-consuming process hardly stopped the traffic. After gaining the trust of elderly residents in neighboring apartment houses, he got them to telephone him confidentially and tell him where dealers were stashing drugs. He entered the park, ignored the dealers and seized the drugs. The dealers, suffering heavy losses, soon gave up and went away, and the park was restored to young mothers and elderly residents of the neighborhood.
Baltimore County's COPE (Citizen Oriented Police Enforcement) unit, begun in 1981, has reduced crime and repeated calls for police assistance and residents' fear in apartment complexes beset by burglaries, drug-dealing, vandalism, petty theft and conflicts among residents. It has done so by working with management to make repairs, improve lighting, modify areas where intruders could hide, and improve the appearance of buildings. It has organized tenants, mediated disputes between tenants and between tenants and management and made sure both sides honor leases. It has involved the fire, building inspection, zoning and health departments, and has connected residents with social services.
The police traditionally deal with the public the way many parents treat their children. Armed with authority, they have cultivated an omnipotent air, hoping the threat of arrest and punishment would keep things under control. Their bluff has been called. In many inner cities, they cannot control violence, curb disorder and reduce fear simply by a show of authority and the implicit threats that go with it.
Yet, large segments of the public have not yet acknowledged these limitations. They prefer old-fashioned approaches: a greater police presence, more arrests, more prosecutions -- even though investing more and more resources in such methods does not reduce street crime and violence. This is wasteful. It ignores everything learned about the complexity of policing in recent decades, and caters to the notion that more officers mean less crime. That sounds good, but it's not necessarily so.
Community policing discards the assumption that only criminal-law enforcement defines the police's social role and priorities. It recognizes that officers face an incredible range of knotty problems and that the law is but one means for engaging them.
Today, there are not enough officers to protect the public properly. Consider New York's Police Department, staffed by 26,992 officers of all ranks. Allow for days off, vacations, sick leave, court appearances, administrative support and supervision, and important special assignments such as investigative and organized-crime units. Apportion the remaining officers to cover the three daily shifts. Spread that number on the streets of five boroughs.
No more than 3,000 officers are on patrol on any shift to protect the lives and property of 7.5 million residents of widely varied cultural, educational and economic backgrounds in a volatile city. Would adding 2,000, 4,000, 6,000 officers dramatically reduce the crisis of the streets? I doubt it.
Besides being spread so thin, the police are preoccupied with responding to 911 calls, not all of which merit their attention. While foot and motorized patrols may reduce fear, researchers question whether they significantly reduce street crime.
Generally, officers lack legal authority to deal with many offensive street situations: harassment by panhandlers, disorderly behavior by the homeless. When they have proper authority, they must depend on the criminal justice system to enforce it. However, the overwhelmed courts can handle only the most serious offenders. Thus, traditional policing makes no sense in certain situations.
When officers arrange for the quick removal of abandoned cars and the speedy demolition or repair of abandoned buildings -- "quality of life" issues that can affect self-respect and crime rates -- they are not doing "soft social work," as critics charge.
Such community policing can succeed only by cultivating a neighborhood's respect and trust -- a tall order given the tensions between the police and certain ethnic groups. Alone, it cannot overcome such endemic problems as racial tensions. It is, at best, a holding operation to keep the peace until national social forces and political will address the underlying problems.

LOAD-DATE: December 30, 1990

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo of police officers.

TYPE: Op-Ed

Copyright 1990 The New York Times Company

