bananaSPLIT/TestFiles/NYT 1994.txt

1 of 457 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times

January 2, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

POSTINGS: Housing for Low-Income Elderly;
71 Apartments in East Harlem and . . .

SECTION: Section 10; Page 1; Column 3; Real Estate Desk

LENGTH: 256 words

A 71-unit housing complex for the low-income elderly will soon be built in East Harlem as part of a special program begun by Mount Sinai Medical Center.
"It's very rare that a hospital builds low-income housing," said Laurie Anderson, a spokeswoman for the medical center. 
 Construction on a vacant lot at 309 East 118th Street is expected to begin by mid-1995 and be done in late 1996. The architects are Simmons Architects of Brooklyn.
The hospital's program, called Project Linkage, will be financed by a $5.8 million grant from the Federal Department of Housing and Urban Development.
The project, which also includes an after-school program for latch-key children, is a joint venture of Mount Sinai; the Union Settlement, an education and social service agency; the Community Association of East Harlem Triangle, a housing development and management corporation, and the Greater Emmanuel Baptist Church.
"Project Linkage grew out of a recognition that poor environmental conditions, such as substandard housing and extreme isolation, are widespread health threats to the older residents of East Harlem," said Dr. Robert N. Butler, director of Mount Sinai's International Leadership Center on Longevity and Society.
Dr. Butler is also the chairman of the hospital's Henry L. Schwartz department of geriatrics and adult development. The department, along with the New York Community Trust and the United Jewish Appeal-Federation of Jewish Philanthropies of New York Inc., conducted a study that launched the project.

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2 of 457 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times

January 2, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

POSTINGS: Housing for Low-Income Elderly;
. . . 130 on 8.5 Acres in Westfield, N.J.

SECTION: Section 10; Page 1; Column 3; Real Estate Desk

LENGTH: 253 words

Construction began last month on a 130-unit housing project for the elderly in Westfield, N.J., on a site adjacent to an existing home, Westfield Senior Citizen Housing.
Forest City Ratner Companies is the developer of the project. The architect is Swanke Hayden Connell Ltd. of Manhattan. 
 The building, which will be owned by the Westfield Senior Citizen Urban Renewal Partnership, will be on an 8.5-acre parcel in the Manor Park neighborhood. The land is owned by the town of Westfield and leased for 33 years to the partnership.
Preliminary site-clearing work began in mid-November and foundation work is currently under way. The building is scheduled to be completed by the end of this year.
The project's design includes 130 one-bedroom apartments, two community rooms for residents, and administrative offices. The construction costs are estimated at about $10 million.
Financing will be provided by Chemical Bank of New Jersey, Transamerica Occidential Life Insurance Corporation of San Francisco and the Westfield Senior Citizens Housing Corporation.
A key part of the project was the Federal Low-Income Housing Tax Credit program. Westfield received an allocation for tax credits, which are being sold to Transamerica Occidential Life Insurance Corporation for about $4.5 million.
"Even though nobody had any idea whether the tax bill containing the tax credits would pass Congress, this team pushed ahead with the planning and the paperwork," said Westfield's Mayor, Garland "Bud" Boothe.

LOAD-DATE: January 2, 1994

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3 of 457 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times

January 2, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Legal System and Protection

SECTION: Section 13LI; Page 4; Column 1; Long Island Weekly Desk

LENGTH: 377 words

DAVID THALER, Director of Adult Protective Services in Nassau County, said his agency would be working with the Nassau County Coalition Against Domestic Violence to produce videos, hold seminars and increase publicity about abuse of the elderly.
Doctors and lawyers, too, are being trained. "We have to educate doctors all the time," said Carol Pichney, supervisor of the guardianship-court liaison unit of the Suffolk County Social Services Department. "Doctors used to write that a person was incompetent without investigating further. A brand-new guardianship law went into effect in April 1993 which states that no one in New York State can ever be declared incompetent again. Doctors didn't seem to understand the legal implication, because when we take a case to court we have to have a doctor's statement. 
 "We also have to educate lawyers. With a lot of them I think nothing is a problem until someone challenges it. They must be very, very careful when dealing with elder clients and be very careful of the client's mental capacity. We will now bring lawyers into court to tell the judge exactly what happened, and we will challenge the competency of the elder person on the date the document was signed. We have been successful on many occasions, especially on having powers of attorney stricken down."
Douglas McNally, a lawyer who specializes in elder law in Northport, said: "There are many cases in which an attorney takes advantage of the older person. So it's important to make sure you have an attorney conversant in the field of elder law. All too often attorneys look at their role as just preparing the document, and their role needs to go beyond that in determining the capacity of the client. There are many things they can do like consult with the medical profession and train themselves to administer the Mini Mental Status Exam.
"If there is the slightest question, like the setting is a nursing home, or there is a history of illness I believe attorneys must check with someone. It's a very sensitive issue, of course, and one of the things the lawyers have to answer right from the outset is who they are representing. If they're representing the elderly person, they owe it to that person to be painfully objective."

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4 of 457 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times

January 2, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

PUBLIC INTEREST;
Want to Help? Where to Call.

SECTION: Section 13; Page 9; Column 1; The City Weekly Desk

LENGTH: 1835 words

There are thousands of places to volunteer in New York. What follows is a very limited listing. More possibilities are available through the Mayor's Voluntary Action Center, (212) -788-7550; the Volunteer Referral Center, (212) 889-4805; New York Cares, (212) 228-5000, or the Retired and Senior Volunteer Program (for people 55 and over), (212) 674-7787.

SOUP KITCHENS
 
CATHOLIC CENTER SOUP KITCHEN at N.Y.U., 58 Washington Square South, Manhattan, (212) 674-7236. Volunteers staff a soup kitchen on Mondays from 11:30 A.M. to 2 P.M.
CENTRAL SYNAGOGUE , 128 East 55th Street, Manhattan, (212) 838-5122. Volunteers staff a breakfast kitchen on Thursdays and Fridays. 

HOLY APOSTLE SOUP KITCHEN , 296 Ninth Avenue, Manhattan (212) 924-0167. Serves 1,000 people, Monday through Friday, 10 A.M. to 1 P.M.
YORKVILLE COMMON PANTRY , 8 East 109th Street, Manhattan, (212) 410-2264. Volunteers work in a soup kitchen three evenings a week and an all-day food pantry on Thursdays.
LOVE GOSPEL ASSEMBLY (LOVE KITCHEN) , 2315 Grand Concourse, the Bronx, (718) 295-6366. Lunches are served Monday through Friday, 11:30 A.M. to 3:30 P.M.
PART OF THE SOLUTION , 2763 Webster Avenue, the Bronx, (718) 220-4892. Volunteers do office work and help in the kitchen, serving a hot lunch seven days a week. Flexible hours.
MOUNT OLIVE HOUSE , 277-285 Eldert Street, Bushwick, Brooklyn, (718) 443-6010. Volunteers help with housekeeping and work in the kitchen for three meals a day. Flexible hours.
ST. JOHN'S BREAD AND LIFE PROGRAM , 75 Lewis Avenue, Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, (718) 455-6864. Serves breakfast and lunch to about 1,000 people. Needs volunteers to serve and clean up, weekdays from 7 A.M. to 2 P.M.
CLADDAGH INN , 73-14 Rockaway Beach Boulevard, Rockaway Beach, Queens, (718) 945-2897. Volunteers cook and serve lunches, Monday through Friday, Noon to 1:30 P.M.
 
THE ELDERLY
 
GREATER HARLEM NURSING HOME , 30 West 138th Street, Manhattan, (212) 690-7400. Volunteers visit with residents and help with various events. Flexible hours.
RETIRED AND SENIOR VOLUNTEER PROGRAM , 105 East 22d Street, Suite 401, Manhattan, (212) 674-7787. An organization of 10,000 volunteers, working largely with children and the elderly in a wide variety of activities. Places volunteers 55 and older. Flexible hours.
VILLAGE VISITING NEIGHBORS , 401 Lafayette Street, Manhattan, (212) 260-6200. Pairs volunteers with elderly people who need help shopping, visiting the doctor or simply need company.
FORT GREENE SENIOR CITIZENS COUNCIL , 966 Fulton Street, Brooklyn, (718) 638-6910. Volunteers works as guards, kitchen helpers, lead field trips and visit the sick, among other activities. Flexible hours.
THEODORE G. JACKSON SENIOR CENTER , 92-47 165th Street, Jamaica, Queens, (718) 657-6500. Volunteers work with visually impaired residents, do clerical work and serve lunche. Hours, 9:30 A.M. to 3 P.M.
SUNNYSIDE COMMUNITY SERVICES , 43-31 39th Street, Sunnyside, Queens, (718) 784-6173. Telephone reassurance, visiting, tutoring.  Flexible hours.
COMMUNITY AGENCY FOR SENIOR CITIZENS (CASC), 56 Bay Street, St. George, S.I., (718) 981-6226. Volunteers of all ages work as tutors, companions and aides to the elderly.
METROPOLITAN JEWISH GERIATRIC CENTER , (718) 851-5953.
 
CHILDREN
 
THE CHILDREN'S STOREFRONT , 70 East 129th Street, Manhattan, (212) 427-8525. Volunteers tutor, teach reading and help with academic and athletic programs at this private, tuition-free school. Flexible hours.
HARLEM DOWLING-WEST SIDE CENTER FOR CHILDREN AND FAMILY SERVICES , 2090 Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard, Manhattan, (212) 749-3656, extension 554. Volunteers work as mentors to children and families, among other activities.
MASTER ANGLERS , (718) 230-3221. Volunteers teach children from city 4-H programs about the environment through fishing. Flexible hours.
NEW YORK CITY SCHOOL VOLUNTEER PROGRAM , 443 Park Avenue South, Manhattan, (212) 213-3370. Volunteers do tutoring in reading, math and other subjects. Flexible hours; all boroughs.
URBAN YOUTH BICYCLE PROJECT , (212) 939-4005. This organization based at Harlem Hospital, uses bicycle-related projects to teach about managing in the world at large. After school and weekends.
HOMEWORK HELP , Edenwald-Gun Hill Neighborhood Center, 1150 East 229th Street, the Bronx, (718) 652-2232. Volunteers do tutoring and fund-raising.
THE MIRACLE MAKERS , 115-117 Ralph Avenue, Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, (718) 385-2848. Volunteers assist in a variety of foster-care programs. Hours, 9 A.M. to 5 P.M.
 
AIDS
 
THE ACTORS FUND AIDS INITIATIVE , 1501 Broadway, Suite 518, Manhattan, (212) 221-7300. Actors and others connected with the business do volunteer work as "angels" (doing occasional errands) and "buddies" (regularly visiting a person with AIDS).
GAY MEN'S HEALTH CRISIS (212) 337-3588. Volunteers participate in a buddy program, act as volunteer lawyers and therapists, do office work, help prepare meals and staff an AIDS hot line.
GOD'S LOVE WE DELIVER , 895 Amsterdam Avenue, Manhattan, (212) 865-6500. Volunteers help deliver meals to homebound people with AIDS in all boroughs, between 11 A.M. and 3 P.M. Kitchen shifts and office work available at all hours.
HOMELESS PWA/HIV SERVICES , 305 Seventh Avenue, Manhattan, (212) 645-3444. Volunteers secure apartments and other services for homeless people with AIDS.
THE MOMENTUM PROJECT , 19 West 36th Street, Manhattan, (212) 268-2610. Volunteers serve group meals to people with H.I.V. or AIDS in Manhattan, the Bronx and Brooklyn, collect and distribute clothing, do baking and office work. Flexible hours.
MANHATTAN CENTER FOR LIVING , 704 Broadway, Manhattan, (212) 533-3550. Office work, chiropractic work, massage and cooking for people with debilitating illnesses, including AIDS. Flexible hours.
STAND UP HARLEM , 145 West 130th Street, Manhattan, (212) 926-4072. Volunteers help with hospitality and outreach and sort donated clothing. Flexible hours.
POWARS (Pet Owners with AIDS Resource Service), P.O. Box 1116, Madison Square Station, New York, N.Y. 10159, (212) 744-0842. Volunteers in all boroughs, at all hours, do dog walking and cat sitting, escort pets to the vet and other chores.
BRONX AIDS SERVICES , 2633 Webster Avenue, South Bronx, (718) 295-5690. The organization needs volunteers for AIDS education and programs for black and Hispanic people with AIDS.
 
THE HOMELESS
 
COALITION FOR THE HOMELESS , 89 Chambers Street, Manhattan, (212) 964-5900. Volunteers help distribute hot meals, clothes and blankets, and refer homeless people to social services. Monday through Friday, 7 P.M. to 9 P.M.
GRAND CENTRAL PARTNERSHIP , 152 East 44th Street, Manhattan, (212) 818-1220, extension 38. Volunteers help in a soup kitchen, help develop job skills and perform other services at a 24-hour drop-in center.
PARTNERSHIP FOR THE HOMELESS , 305 Seventh Avenue, Manhattan, (212) 645-3444. Volunteer programs include Emergency Shelter, which provides overnight shelter, and Project Domicile, which finds apartments. Flexible hours.
BOND STREET DROP-IN CENTER , 3941 Bond Street, Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, (718) 935-0439. Volunteers work in overnight shelters, preparing meals and doing other tasks. Flexible hours.
FURNISH-A-FUTURE , 20 Jay Street, Downtown Brooklyn, (718) 875-5353. Volunteers solicit furniture donations and raise funds to help furnish apartments for the newly homeless.
 
THE DISABLED
 
MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS SOCIETY , New York City chapter, 30 West 26th Street, Manhattan, (212) 463-7787. Volunteers raise funds through mailings and events, assist in therapy, and conduct recreation programs. Flexible hours.
PUERTO RICAN FAMILY INSTITUTE , 145 West 15th Street, Manhattan, (212) 924-6320. Volunteers help raise funds and provide technical assistance and other services in clinics for the mentally ill and developmentally disabled.
SOUTHEAST BRONX RIVER NEIGHBORHOOD CENTER , 955 Tinton Avenue, the Bronx (718) 542-2727. Volunteers help in exercise, art and music programs for the mentally ill.
LEXINGTON CENTER , 30th Avenue and 75th Street, Jackson Heights, Queens, (718) 899-8800, ext. 391. Volunteers assist in classroom activities at the center's Lexington School for the Deaf, do research, participate in garden care, repair toys, and do office work. Hours, 9 A.M. to 5 P.M.
 
CULTURAL INSTITUTIONS
 
ARTISTS SPACE , 38 Greene Street, Manhattan. Volunteers work in public relations, fund raising, research and other areas. . Tuesday through Saturday, 10 A.M. to 6 P.M.
ASSOCIATION FOR HISPANIC ARTS , 173 East 116th Street, Manhattan, (212) 860-5445. Volunteers do office work and assist in fund-raising events. Flexible hours.
BUSINESS VOLUNTEERS FOR THE ARTS , 25 West 45th Street, Suite 707, Manhattan, (212) 819-9287. Volunteers work as management consultants for arts organizations. Flexible hours.
CHINATOWN HISTORY MUSEUM , 70 Mulberry Street, Manhattan, (212) 619-4785. Volunteers do office work and other jobs. Flexible hours.
THE JEWISH MUSEUM , Fifth Avenue at 92d Street, Manhattan, (212) 423-3208. Volunteers take tickets, hand out audiotapes and work at the membership desk and gift shop. Flexible hours.
EDENWALD-GUN HILL NEIGHBORHOOD CENTER , 1150 East 229th Street, the Bronx, (718) 652-2232. Volunteers are needed to help with ceramics class and other children's art programs.
THE QUEENS MUSEUM OF ART , New York City Building, Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, Flushing, Queens, (718) -592-9700, extension 67. Volunteers help with art workshops, curatorial and office tasks, and staff the gift shop. Flexible hours.
 
LANGUAGE INSTRUCTION
 
ENGLISH IN ACTION , the English-Speaking Union, 16 East 69th Street, Manhattan, (212) 879-6800.  Volunteers converse with immigrants in English.
EAST HARLEM TUTORIAL PROGRAM , 2050 Second Avenue, near 105th Street, Manhattan, (212) 831-0650. One-on-one tutoring for children. Afternoons, evenings and weekends.
LITERACY ASSISTANCE CENTER , (212) 267-6000. Referral agency for schools and community centers that offer English as a second language or basic reading and writing.
LEARNING FOR ADVANCEMENT , Mexican Consulate, 8 East 41st Street, Manhattan, (212) 689-0456, ext. 37. Instruction in English as a second language, and tips about living in New York. Volunteers are needed evenings.
THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY , 150 West 100th Street, Manhattan, (212) 932-7920. Volunteers teach a basic literacy and writing program.
HIGHBRIDGE COMMUNITY LIFE CENTER , 979 Ogden Avenue, the Bronx, (718) 681-2222. Volunteers tutor adults and children in reading and writing.
THE BROOKLYN PUBLIC LIBRARY , Grand Army Plaza branch, Prospect Park at Grand Army Plaza. (718) 780-7791. Volunteers conduct literacy programs. Flexible hours.
THE QUEENS PUBLIC LIBRARY , Steinway branch, 21-45 31st Street, Astoria. (718) 932-3239. Volunteers conduct a basic literacy program.

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LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

TYPE: List

Copyright 1994 The New York Times Company



5 of 457 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times

January 2, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

NEIGHBORHOOD REPORT: CO-OP CITY;
Apartments for Elderly Poor

BYLINE: By RAYMOND HERNANDEZ

SECTION: Section 13; Page 7; Column 5; The City Weekly Desk

LENGTH: 203 words

The Department of City Planning last week certified plans for an apartment building for the low-income elderly in Co-op City, a community with one of the highest concentrations of older people in New York City. The project now faces a lengthy public review process, including a hearing before Community Board 10 this month.
Proposed by the Metropolitan New York Coordinating Council on Jewish Poverty, the plan calls for constructing a 12-floor building with 123 apartments at 777 Co-op City Boulevard. It would provide affordable housing to individuals who earn less than $14,600 a year and couples who earn less than $16,700 a year. The project is financed by the Federal Department of Housing and Urban Development. 
 Arthur Taub, a board member of the Coordinating Council of Senior Citizens of Co-op City, said the neighborhood has a particular need for such a project because of its aging population. At the same time, he said, the neighborhood is ideal for the new residents, providing them with recreation and support through a network of clubs and centers serving the elderly.
"We're hoping to get them in here quickly," Mr. Taub said, "because they are going to be a great neighbor."
   R.H.

LOAD-DATE: January 2, 1994

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6 of 457 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times

January 2, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

PLAYING IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD: EAST HARLEM;
A Timely Look at Mayors Past

SECTION: Section 13; Page 10; Column 2; The City Weekly Desk

LENGTH: 181 words

With the arrival of a new occupant for Gracie Mansion, the Museum of the City of New York is opening an exhibition called "His Honor, The Mayor." It draws on its collection of paintings, photographs, manuscripts, costumes and objects to examine the city's political history.
New York's last British mayor, shown in an oil by John Singleton Copley, was Whitehead Hicks; appointed by the English governor in 1766, he retired and moved to Flushing when the Revolutionary War broke out. The dress coat worn by DeWitt Clinton, a three-time mayor, at the opening of the Erie Canal is on display, as is the oxblood silk smoking jacket of Fiorello LaGuardia. Not to mention the six-inch-high iron bank made in the shape of Tammany Hall's Boss Tweed, who is shown seated in a chair; when a penny is placed in his hand, it drops into a pocket and his head nods in thanks. 
 Museum of the City of New York, Fifth Avenue at 103d Street; Jan. 2 through May 22; Wednesday through Saturday 10 A.M. to 5 P.M., Sunday, 1 P.M. to 5 P.M.; $5, $3 for the elderly, $8 per family; (212) 534-1672.

LOAD-DATE: January 2, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Ben Shahn's 1934 "Parade for Repeal" at the Museum of the City of New York. (Museum of the City of New York)

Copyright 1994 The New York Times Company



7 of 457 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times

January 3, 1994, Monday, Late Edition - Final

Modern Maternity

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

LENGTH: 339 words

Several weeks ago, in London, a woman gave birth to twins. Why did this seemingly unremarkable event merit headlines? Simple. She is 59 years old.
True, her children came into this world by a somewhat circuitous route. Eggs donated by a younger woman were fertilized by the older woman's 45-year-old husband and implanted in her at a Rome fertility clinic. But in-vitro fertilization and donor eggs are, if not yet commonplace, not unusual in the wonderful new world of obstetrics. Once again, then, why the headlines? Simple. She is 59 years old. 
 Fifty-nine is, of course, a rare age to embark on motherhood. But it is not a rare age to embark on fatherhood. Fatherhood at 50-plus doesn't occasion much fuss unless the new Dad is, say, 60-plus and famous besides. Then the headlines read "What a Guy!" But this woman in England: you'd think she'd done something terrible.
"Women do not have the right to have a child." Virginia Bottomley, Britain's Minister of Health, snapped. "The child has a right to a suitable home." What makes Ms. Bottomley believe the twins won't have a suitable home? Youth is no guarantee of parenting skills: all too often the contrary is the case. And how would Ms. Bottomley define the homes in which parentless children are raised by grandmothers? Are they, ipso facto, unsuitable?
There is a strong case that Britain's National Health Service should not have to pay for in-vitro procedures in older women; such procedures, expensive and chancy at best, are even more so when the patient is post-menopausal. This new mother of twins, however, paid for her treatment herself.
Even so, finding a physician was difficult. She went to Rome because she was rebuffed by doctors in London who said she was too old for the emotional stress.
Motherhood is difficult at any age, and it's hard to imagine many women wanting to undertake it at 59. But if they do, and if they can, then why not say to them what is said to 59-year-old fathers? "Congratulations, good luck -- and good baby sitters."

LOAD-DATE: January 3, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

TYPE: Editorial

Copyright 1994 The New York Times Company



8 of 457 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times

January 4, 1994, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

Frustrating Fight for Acceptance;
For Older Job Seekers, a Sad Refrain: 'I'd Love to Hire You, but You Just Won't Fit In'

BYLINE: By ESTHER B. FEIN

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

LENGTH: 1764 words

Despite a decade-long push by private and government organizations to market older people as reliable and mature workers, advocates for people 55 and older say their efforts have largely failed. They say that employers continue to view age not in terms of experience or stability but as deterioration and staleness.
People who have worked to promote the older labor force say that 10 years ago they were confident that, through intensive public relations and educational efforts, American businesses would recognize and harness what they argued are the skills of older workers. Although it is impossible to tally how much money went toward that end, people who work in the field estimated that tens of millions of dollars were spent nationwide on studies, job fairs, seminars for executives and advertising. 
 Libby Mandel is 69 years old and has been looking for a job for two years. She has taken advantage of many of these programs, going to computer classes, resume writing workshops and job fairs, and thrusting herself forward as an experienced secretary who had, for 25 years, skillfully handled the paper, telephone and student traffic at Seward Park High School in Manhattan.
"These senior programs were all supposed to show people that age doesn't matter," said Mrs. Mandel, in a voice more resigned than hopeful. "But it does. It still does. It's like a handicap. Really."
 
Anger and Frustration
 Now people running these programs, as well as older workers themselves, say they are frustrated and angry at how little headway they have made in changing attitudes and hiring practices.
To be sure, all agree, the recession has not helped. But in many cases, they say, the burden of age in the job market is as profound as those of race and gender.
The Federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act, which was enacted in 1967 and amended several times since, prohibits any form of discrimination in the workplace due to a person's age. The law now eliminates mandatory retirement ages for all but very select positions, including top-level executives.
Employers may not ask a job applicant's age or consider it when making a hiring decision, except where it is a so-called "bona fide occupational qualification." An example of that would be a job like construction, where physical strength is an issue, but even then a fit and robust older worker would be protected. The fact that a job is entry-level or that a company envisions training someone for a longterm career track would be irrelevant to the law.
But it is too often relevant to employers, complain advocates for older workers, although proving age discrimination in employment is very difficult.
People like Mrs. Mandel who have journeyed futilely about the job market say that they can actually feel themselves dissolve from vital individuals into antique stereotypes as they sit before interviewers who, careful not to run afoul of discrimination laws, try surreptitiously to find out applicants' ages and couch their biases in the most deferential terms.
"When I look at myself, I see a funny person basically, a helper; I'm enthusiastic," Mrs. Mandel said. "But when I talk to these recruiters or go on interviews, I know what they see is an old lady. They don't have to see my date of birth. They see the gray hair, they see the wrinkles, and they think, 'Old.' "
The job market, while showing some recent signs of recovery, is still a grim odyssey for most unemployed people, but it is particularly so for older people.
Statistically, the situation for older workers in the New York region is significantly worse than the country as a whole. Nationwide in 1992, about 738,000 people age 55 and older were unemployed and actively looking for jobs, a rise of about 51 percent in five years, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In the New York area, those ranks swelled nearly 2 1/2 times in the same period -- from 28,000 to 67,000 -- due, in large measure, to the corporate reorganization that took place here in the 1980's and the subsequent recession.
Still, the jobless rate for older workers -- 4.8 percent in the United States and 6.8 percent in the New York region in 1992 -- is lower than that of the general work force. But experts say those figures reflect the stability of workers who have had steady jobs and have not been forced back into the marketplace. The numbers also don't reflect older workers who, put off by dismal prospects, have stopped looking for jobs.
 
'Untapped Resource'
 There are, to be sure, some companies that have responded and have reached out to aging workers. But experts say that the "untapped resource," as one report referred to workers 55 years and older, remains largely that -- untapped.
"I wish I could say that because of all these case studies, companies are running out in droves to hire older workers," said Michael Barth, a labor economist and senior vice president for ICF, a Washington consulting firm that specializes in labor market studies. "But if anything, they are finding more ways to get rid of them and the reason is because there is a lot of pure bias, of behaving toward older workers totally in the context of their age, not their ability."
People 55 and older are increasingly looking for jobs for many reasons. People are living longer and healthier and have a desire and ability to keep active professionally for longer.
In addition, in a period of massive corporate layoffs and downsizing, older workers are frequently induced into taking early retirement, afraid that if they don't accept severance packages one year, they will be let go without any safety net the following year. But the money is usually not enough for them to live on, considering average life expectancy and a troubled economy.
 
Studies Offer Praise
 A variety of studies -- some of which surveyed human resources executives at hundreds of firms, others of which focused on particular companies -- have found that workers age 55 and older are more reliable, have lower rates of absenteeism, higher productivity and were just as easy to retrain as their younger colleagues.
But the prejudices against older workers are so ingrained, people who have studied the issue say, they defy logic and hard data.
"In the beginning, I was more optimistic that if we corrected the stereotype, if we could document productivity, that it would help change attitudes," said Karen Davis, the executive vice president of the Commonwealth Fund, a private foundation based in New York that recently completed a five-year, $4 million study of workers over 55.
"I really thought the reports would have had more of a positive impact. But we are running against the economic trends and some deep-rooted bias. I still think it may turn around, but it's clearly going to be an uphill struggle to make it happen."
At a recent job fair for older workers at the Roosevelt Hotel in Manhattan -- promisingly named "Ability is Ageless" -- participants walked from booth to booth, leaving their resumes with recruiters and commiserating with each other about the indignities of job-hunting at their age.
 
Handling the Age Question
 "I'm ashamed to admit it, but I dye my hair, like a lady, to give myself a more youthful appearance," said one man, a 62-year-old former salesman from Flushing who declined to give his name. "And I wear bright ties. They should think I'm with it, and not stuffy." He fingered a yellow swath of silk with aqua crests and sighed, "So far, it hasn't helped."
Similar laments are repeated at job fairs in other cities and at workshops and training programs designed to make aging workers more competitive. At AgeWorks, a 16-week skills-improvement course run by the New York City Department for the Aging, several women compared euphemisms for "you're too old" that they had encountered in their job quests.
"They say that you're overqualified, even if you're willing to take a lower-level job," said Sara Lerner, a former bookkeeper from Riverdale, who, like many people interviewed, would give her name, but not her age.
"That's the main one they use," said Karen Halpern, who was given early retirement recently from her job at I.B.M.
"There's also, 'I'd love to hire you, but you just won't fit in,' " said Helen Miller, of Ridgewood, Queens, who was candid about her 66 years and is looking for clerical work. "They also get around asking you your age by asking what year you graduated, or asking to see your driver's license."
If they do get hired, many older workers find that it is for a job that is far lower in pay and stature than their previous position.
For 25 years, Cecil Frazier was a chef at the Gloucester House, a pricey midtown restaurant where he was known for his lobster bisque. Now he grills burgers and fries chicken for a T.G.I. Friday's restaurant in Manhattan, and in spite of that drop in status, he is grateful.
Most of the people he worked with before the Gloucester House closed in 1992 are still looking for work, their years of experience proving no lure to potential employers. "They're working 20 years and more and can't get no jobs," said Mr. Frazier, who is 60 and searched nearly a year before finding work. "But the younger guys, now they got the jobs. They've got no experience, but they got the jobs."

 
Signs of Change
 There are some in the field who say they are optimistic that the trend is beginning to turn. But those voices are all but drowned out by the once hopeful -- and now befuddled -- advocates in the field, who say they are at a loss trying to figure out how to translate their information into jobs.
In a study issued last year, the American Association of Retired Persons and the Society for Human Resource Management surveyed about 1,000 managers in a range of businesses and found that even though "workers over the age of 50 are admired for their skills and their work habits" they are nonetheless "underutilized and undervalued."
"Everybody saw them as reliable, like a Saint Bernard," said Dr. Martin Sicker, director of Work Force Programs for A.A.R.P. "They love them, but they won't hire them and we really couldn't get at why. None of the negative stereotypes show up in the answers, but even positive stereotypes cause pigeonholing.
"They use words like 'mature' and 'dependable' but they don't look at individual skills and characters. They lump older workers together in a way that they don't younger ones, and any buzz words set off alarms for me. It does just come down to 'ageism' and we haven't found a way to crack it."

LOAD-DATE: January 4, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: When many older workers find new jobs, the positions are often lower in stature and in pay. Cecil Frazier went from a job as a chef at a pricey midtown restaurant to grilling hamburgers for a T.G.I. Friday's restaurant in Manhattan. (Angel Franco/The New York Times)
 
Chart showuing percentage of older workers in relation to the overall workforce in the US and NYC metropolitan area. (Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics) (pg. B6)

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The New York Times

January 4, 1994, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

A Place Where Mature Workers Are Invited to Check In

BYLINE: By ESTHER B. FEIN

SECTION: Section B; Page 6; Column 1; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 454 words

Hazel Rathbun talks and acts as if she were on a one-woman mission to break stereotypes about age. And in a business world that continues to shun older workers, she has found an unlikely champion: her employer.
Mrs. Rathbun, who is 73, began working six years ago as a desk clerk at the Days Inn hotel in Ledgewood, N.J. She has mastered the computerized check-in and check-out system, the fax machine and the switchboard. She stands for most of her seven-hour shifts and hardly misses a day's work.
 
Some Companies Are Eager
 Although advocates for older workers say the corporate environment is overwhelmingly inhospitable to workers over 55, the Days Inn hotel chain is one of the few businesses that has seen the advantage in welcoming them. Other companies include the Travelers Corporation, the financial service company based in Hartford; the Riese Organization, a restaurant concern in New York and Tiffany & Company. 
 About 28 percent of the 1,500 employees at Days Inn's headquarters in Parsippany, N.J., and at its reservations centers in Knoxville and Phoenix are 50 years or older.
Days Inn began seeking and hiring older people to work in its reservations centers in the mid-1980's, as a way to solve a high turnover rate. "We thought, 'Who would be an attractive alternative to the young people we had been hiring to answer the reservations lines?' " said John Russell, the president and chief operating officer of the company. "We were losing them after two or three months. And then we thought -- retirees."
Mr. Russell said overcoming sterotypes in the corporate world was often hard. "We think with our eyes instead of our minds," he said.
The Commonwealth Fund, a private, nonprofit foundation based In New York City, analyzed Days Inn's use of older workers and found that they were trained in the same two-week period as younger workers. Moreover, it found that they stayed on the job three times as long -- an average of three years compared with one year for the younger workers.
As a result, the average annual training and recruiting costs for older workers was $618 per position, compared with $1,742 for younger workers. And while older workers did take longer to handle each call, company officials said that because of their patience in assisting callers, they booked more reservations.
"They filled our needs," Mr. Russell said. "Believe me, if the results weren't there, we'd take it back the other way."
Mrs. Rathbun said she refused to accommodate the prevailing expectation that a woman of her years should act a certain, doddering way.
"I work circles around the younger ones," Mrs. Rathbun said with a sly kind of smile. "They should be happy to have me here."

LOAD-DATE: January 4, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Discouraged by the high turnover rate, managers at the Days Inn in Ledgewood, N.J., turned to older applicants and found Hazel Rathbun, 73. "I work circles around the younger ones," she said. (Norman Y. Lono for The New York Times)

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The New York Times

January 5, 1994, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

French Government Proposes Ban On Pregnancies After Menopause

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

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

LENGTH: 825 words

DATELINE: PARIS, Jan. 4

Reflecting growing European concern about the moral issues posed by reproductive technology, France's rightist Government has decided to introduce legislation banning artificial impregnation of post-menopausal women, but some critics promptly charged that it was acting too hastily.
Defending the bill, Health Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy said artificial late pregnancies were immoral as well as dangerous to the health of mother and child. He urged women not to be "egoistic" by trying to become pregnant after menopause. 
 But Elizabeth Badinter, a well-known writer, challenged the logic of a ban. "Nobody has ever banned a 20-year-old girl who is deeply neurotic, addicted to drugs or has AIDS from having a baby," she said. "Why should a woman of 60, who could be a good mother, not have the right to have a child?"
 
Legislation Likely to Be Passed
 With the conservative Government enjoying a huge majority in Parliament, the bill seems almost certain to win approval in the coming weeks, although it could be amended first.
Simone Veil, the Social Affairs Minister in France's new conservative Government, said today that she would ask the Cabinet on Wednesday to extend the bill to require that a judge give approval in every case of artificial insemination to create an embryo that has no genetic link to the parents.
"There have to be certain rules, because we could otherwise have some really bizarre situations," she said, adding that in practice, French fertility centers were following ethical rules barring artificial impregnation of post-menopausal women.
But Le Monde said pregnancies of older women were a secondary issue compared with what it said was a demand for the ability to create "the perfect child" through genetic engineering. Another Paris daily, Liberation, said the Government seemed to be acting with "suspicious haste."
The simmering debate resurfaced last month when a 59-year-old British woman gave birth to twins after having fertilized eggs implanted in her uterus by a clinic in Rome. The same clinic has reportedly given similar treatment to a 62-year-old woman who is now three months pregnant.
This brought an indignant response from Italy's Health Minister, Maria Pia Garavaglia, who proposed a law to limit artificial pregnancies. But adoption of such legislation may be delayed by general elections expected to be called in Italy this spring.
Since Christmas, the debate in Europe about so-called designer babies has been fed by a report that a British fertility clinic might implant a white woman's egg into a black woman.
In response to still another report, the British Government said today that it would prohibit the use of eggs from aborted fetuses to impregnate infertile women. Scottish researchers at Edinburgh University acknowledged this week that they had been studying a radical infertility treatment, used successfully so far in limited experiments with mice, that employs eggs from aborted fetuses. They have ceased their work on the technique, pending discussions with the Government.
 
Health Minister Defends Bill
 In France, Dr. Douste-Blazy, who is a physician, said the bill to be sent to Parliament later this month "will state clearly that medically assisted procreation techniques, particularly in-vitro insemination, will be reserved for women of childbearing age -- that is, before menopause."
In a radio interview on Monday, he said the child's welfare should be considered paramount. "What will happen when he is 15 or 20 and his mother is 80 or 85?" he asked. "That's why I think we must reserve these techniques to women of childbearing age."
In an interview with Le Parisien, the Health Minister said he personally favored still tighter controls on artificial insemination so as to exclude lesbians and widows who wish to be fertilized with the sperm of their late husbands. But he suggested that he would not seek a formal ban in such cases.
Noting that the Bible recorded many cases of elderly women giving birth, Liberation said the Government should admit uncertainty in face of scientific breakthroughs "rather than give in to either the mirages of technological imagination or the comfort of preconceived moral dogmatism."
Mrs. Badinter, whose works include the best-selling book, "XY: The Male Identity," said she recognized the perils of unlimited extension of the age of procreation. "But to limit the right of procreation seems to me to be even more dangerous," she said.
Reactions within France's medical establishment have been divided. Dr. Georges Velvet, a fertility expert, said pointedly, "No one ever asks the age of the father." But Dr. Maurize Auroux, another specialist in reproduction, said the uterus of a 60-year-old woman might be deficient in supplying blood to the embryo, impairing brain development. He added that in the case of fathers over 40, age could increase the risk of an embryo with genetic defects.

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The New York Times

January 5, 1994, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Studies Are Grim on Dialysis Outlook

BYLINE: By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN,   Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section A; Page 12; Column 4; National Desk

LENGTH: 783 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Jan. 4

A bleak long-term outlook for older patients on kidney dialysis emerges from two studies being published on Wednesday in The Journal of the American Medical Association.
The head of the National Kidney Foundation said the new findings underscored the need to improve kidney dialysis therapy because Americans have the highest death rates in the world while undergoing the treatment. 
 Medicare, the Federal health insurance plan, pays the costs of dialysis for all people in the nation who need it, and the costs of the national kidney program have far exceeded the original estimates when it began in 1972. Although the average cost of each treatment has dropped from $150 in 1973 to $115 in 1993, Medicare pays $5.5 billion a year for dialysis patients' care, more than four times the original estimates. One reason is that many more groups of patients now have dialysis than were treated in the early 1970's.
One new study found that the older a patient is when beginning dialysis, the worse the chances for survival. The study was conducted by the New York State Health Department and the State University Medical Center at Stony Brook, L.I. Researchers analyzed data from more than 90,000 patients age 55 and older who began chronic dialysis from 1982 to 1987. Such older people accounted for 52 percent of people undergoing dialysis in 1990, and the proportion is growing each year as more Americans live longer.
 
Condition Determines Outlook
 Because there are many causes of kidney failure, the study was intended to provide doctors data on specific causes to help them advise patients and their families about the statistical prospects for such care.
The most favorable outlook emerged for those with a common hereditary condition, polycystic kidney disease. After five years, 49.2 percent of those who began dialysis at age 55 to 64 were still alive, as were 14.9 percent of those 80 or older.
But the worst outlook was for diabetics, the group that comprises the largest number of people 55 and older who begin dialysis each year. After five years, 18.1 percent of diabetics age 55 to 64 when they started dialysis were still alive; among those 80 and older, the figure was 3.3 percent.
Survival rates for those with kidney damage resulting from high blood pressure and a common disease known as glomuleronephritis were regarded as intermediate. For these groups, 34 percent who began dialysis at age 55 to 64 were alive five years later, as were 6.1 percent of those 80 and older.
In a separate study by the State University of New York Health Science Center at Brooklyn, older patients told researchers that dialysis had failed to allow them to continue living as they had before the therapy began. Most patients said they spent most of their time indoors because of fatigue and weakness. Only 32 percent said they had participated in activities outside their homes other than dialysis sessions, while 78 percent had taken part in such activities before starting the therapy.
The Brooklyn team said that the "dismal outcome in functional rehabilitation" may lead many older people to withdraw from dialysis. Nationally, such passive suicide is the third most common cause of death among older dialysis patients.
The researchers drew the conclusions from interviews with 104 patients 65 or older undergoing dialysis at seven ambulatory centers in Brooklyn.
"All age groups do worse on dialysis in the United States than in other countries, and we can do a lot better than we are doing," said Dr. Neil A. Kurtzman, who heads the department of medicine at Texas Tech University in Lubbock and is president of the National Kidney Foundation.
 
Short Sessions Draw Fire
 About one in four patients on chronic dialysis die each year in the United States, while the rates are 8 percent in France and 7 percent in Japan, Dr. Kurtzman said. One explanation for the higher death rate here is that Americans who undergo the treatment are older and sicker than dialysis patients in other countries. But Dr. Kurtzman said that when age, severity of illness and other factors were taken into consideration, the American death rate fell to 14 percent, still considerably higher than that of other countries.
He said that the length of dialysis sessions was extremely important and that there was a critical link between the length of sessions and death rates. He added that more than one in two Americans have treatments that are shorter than the recommended optimum.
"Patients push the dialysis unit to shorten the dialysis time because they don't like being on the machine, but when they shorten their dialysis time they shorten their survival," Dr. Kurtzman said.

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The New York Times

January 5, 1994, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Personal Health

BYLINE: By Jane E. Brody

SECTION: Section C; Page 12; Column 1; National Desk; Health Page

LENGTH: 1098 words

ALTHOUGH winter may be the prime season for falls, among older people falling is a year-round hazard that is costly, frightening, debilitating and sometimes even life-threatening.
As people age, the risk of falling rises linearly and the risk of injury from a fall rises exponentially. One in three adults 65 or older falls each year. Among those over 75 who live independently, a quarter of the falls result in a serious injury. Falls are the immediate reason for 40 percent of all admissions to nursing homes, and they are the sixth-leading cause of death for people over 70. 
 Even when an older person who lives alone is not hurt by a fall, the resulting fright can prompt a voluntary restriction of activity and a loss of mobility, self-confidence and independence. Restricted activity also leads to a decline in physical strength, which further increases the risk of falling, as well as the chance that the next fall will result in a serious injury.
Even in a nursing home or other adult-care center, where the environment has been arranged for the safety of people with limited physical ability and agility, the risk of falling persists.
 
Why Many Falls Occur
 Researchers at the State University of New York at Buffalo studied the incidence of falls at one center that provides custodial care for relatively well elderly people. Of the 348 residents who lived in the center during a three-year period, falls were reported for 95, or 27 percent. What the researchers learned can help make living safer for those in special residences as well as for older people who live independently or in another person's home.
The researchers, Dr. Beth Erasmus Fleming and Dr. David R. Prendergast, both rehabilitation physiologists, were astonished to find that even in a center arranged with the safety of elderly residents in mind, half the falls were attributed to "environmental hazards." Elderly residents tripped over furniture, slipped on polished floors and fell over their walkers, which are designed to help the frail remain upright.
Furthermore, nearly 60 percent of the accidents occurred in the most familiar environment, the elderly person's own room, with only about 14 percent occurring in the person's bathroom and 4 percent on steps, which are generally considered the most likely places for an older person to fall.
"Clearly, aspects of the environment that appear to be safe for fully functioning individuals present hazards to an ambulatory, but frailer, older population requiring custodial care," the researchers wrote in their report, which was published last summer in The Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation.
Not surprisingly, nearly a quarter of the falls occurred at night, usually when the people had left their beds to use the toilet.
As for personal frailties, nearly a quarter of the falls were attributable to physical conditions like arthritis, loss of balance, dizziness and "collapsed" knees, the term used when a knee buckled for some reason. Many older people have poor vision or one or more chronic ailments -- like heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, Parkinson's disease or the residual effects of a stroke -- that can contribute to the risk of falling directly or indirectly, through the side effects of the drugs used to treat them. In addition, medications given to many elderly people to counter depression or insomnia can result in disorientation, grogginess or coordination difficulties that add to the risk of falling.
In another analysis, the researchers found that those who fell had significantly weaker muscles than those who did not fall. They also found that many residents for whom walkers had been prescribed did not use them because they considered them more of an impediment than an aid to mobility.
 
Preventing Falls
 Many measures to help prevent falls are easy to put into effect. To fall-proof the environment, cover floors with tacked-down carpets; keep walking areas clear of obstacles like shoes, footstools, toys and wastebaskets; avoid slippery fabric on beds, chairs and sofas; wipe up all spills on floors immediately and thoroughly; equip bathrooms with grab bars around the toilet and tub or shower; cover the floor of the tub or shower with glued-on nonslip strips; keep stairways well lit and covered with nonskid treads; mark top and bottom steps with glow-in-the-dark tape; place night lights along the route from the bed to the bathroom, and leave a light on in the bathroom during the night.
Pajamas and knee-length nightgowns, robes and coats are safer than longer ones for someone who is likely to climb stairs while wearing them. All shoes and slippers should have nonslip rubber soles, and rain and snow boots should have nonslip treads.
Symptoms like dizziness and loss of balance should be brought to a physician's attention. If the symptom is due to illness, getting proper treatment may reduce or eliminate it, and if it is due to medication, changing the dosage, administration schedule or type of drug will often help. The correction of sensory defects, like vision-impairing cataracts or hearing loss, is also helpful.
But perhaps the best way to prevent falls and fall-related injuries is to minimize the loss of muscle strength and flexibility that occur with age and infirmity and to rebuild the strength and flexibility of older people. Studies have shown that even healthy people show a significant loss of muscle strength after the age of 50, particularly in the muscles needed for climbing stairs, rising from a chair and walking.
A person is considered to run an especially high risk of repeated falls if he or she has difficulty rising from an armless chair or walking a straight line by placing one foot in front of the other, with the heel of the forward foot touching the toe of the one behind. Reduced grip strength and weakness of the muscles in the legs and around the hips are associated with falls in older people.
While many older people have taken up some form of aerobic exercise, like walking or dance therapy, to improve cardiovascular function and lift their spirits, this type of activity does little to build muscle strength. However, older people -- even those with multiple chronic ailments -- can significantly increase their mobility, strength and balance in just six weeks through physical therapy and strength training, Dr. Prendergast and his colleagues showed. Muscles are strengthened by working them against resistance, which includes activities like lifting weights or working out on Nautilus-type equipment.

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The New York Times

January 5, 1994, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Eating Well

BYLINE: By Marian Burros

SECTION: Section C; Page 4; Column 3; Living Desk

LENGTH: 1041 words

THE Food and Drug Administration is trying to come to grips with one of the most difficult public health issues: how to balance the interests of the unborn with the interests of the elderly.
The agency must decide whether to fortify the American food supply with folic acid, which helps to prevent birth defects but, at the same time, can mask pernicious anemia, a problem prevalent among the elderly. Opinions on how to proceed cover the spectrum. 
 Dr. Irwin H. Rosenberg, director of the United States Department of Agriculture's Human Nutrition Center on Aging, at Tufts University, is opposed to fortification with folic acid until more is known about the risks. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention does not think the Food and Drug Administration's plan to fortify the food supply goes far enough.
In 1991, researchers in England confirmed what had been suspected for three decades: that folic acid can help prevent such neural tube birth defects as spina bifida and anenceph aly.
Folate, the form of folic acid found in food, occurs in citrus fruits, dark, green leafy vegetables, broccoli and asparagus, dried beans and peas, peanuts, wheat germ, yeast, mung bean sprouts and liver. Americans are not especially fond of these foods and don't eat enough of them. The average American ingests only about 200 micrograms of folate a day; the level believed to prevent neural tube defects is 400 micrograms a day.
Folic acid is needed in the first weeks of pregnancy to prevent the birth defects, but because so many pregnancies in this country are unplanned, and because most Americans do not get enough folate from foods, supplementation has been recommended to all women of child-bearing age.
But many women in this country either cannot afford to take pills or are unaware of their importance. To reach those women, many health professionals as well as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the March of Dimes and the Spina Bifida Association, have urged the F.D.A. to fortify grain products with folic acid. They say this would cut the number of these birth defects in half.
In October, the F.D.A. published a proposal to enrich flour and corn grits with twice the level of folic acid that is lost in the refining process, or 240 micrograms per 100 grams (3.5 ounces). Flour is already enriched with several nutrients, like iron, which are lost when it is turned from whole wheat to white. The proposal would also require the fortification of cereals with 100 micrograms of folic acid per serving.
The Centers for Disease Control believes that flour should be enriched at a much higher level, 350 micrograms of folic per 100 grams.
Dr. Rosenberg says he is convinced that there is no good data on either the proper level of fortification to prevent birth defects or the level at which folic acid is unsafe.
From his perspective, it is important to consider the damage that too much folic acid might cause to the older population. A recent study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, showed that up to one-fifth of healthy Americans 65 to 95 years old have subtle forms of B12 deficiencies and that if the B12 deficiency is treated with folic acid, pernicious anemia may be masked. Untreated pernicious anemia can cause irreversible nerve damage.
Dr. Rosenberg believes that the questions about pernicious anemia and folic acid levels could be settled in a year of study, and he wants the F.D.A. to hold off on any decisions about fortification. "We may find that we should fortify with folic acid and with B12," he said.
Marion Nestle, chairwoman of the Department of Nutrition at New York University, is opposed to fortification on principle. "The amount recommended can easily be obtained by eating a healthy diet," she said. "There are too many uncertainties about the data base on which these decisions are being made. We are not so sure how much people are eating, and the incidence of neural tube defects is dropping. I'm not opposed at all to women of child-bearing age taking folic acid supplements."
Bonnie Liebman, director of nutrition for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a consumer advocacy group, said: "For the F.D.A. not to act on the knowledge that folic acid fortification will prevent neural tube defects is outrageous. This is a devastating and costly birth defect that is irreversible. I'd be willing to trade off a number of masked B12 deficiencies in older people for the saving of one case of neural tube defect.
"Fortifying food with folic acid is a public health approach like adding flouride to water."
Dr. Godfrey Oakley, the director of the division of birth defects and developmental disabilities at the Centers for Disease Control, has been pushing hard for fortification. He believes that the F.D.A.'s proposal doesn't add enough folic acid to wheat and corn flour.
"Adequate medical care would prevent pernicious anemia," he said.
Such opposing points of view are making it difficult for the F.D.A. to reach a conclusion, and to confuse matters further there is some evidence that folate may be useful in reducing the risk of heart disease and certain cancers.
"This is one of the tougher decisions," said Dr. David A. Kessler, Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration. "A decision to add a pharmacologically active nutrient to the food supply is very weighty. You have to get it right, and you have to get it right the first time. There is no simple answer and no simple solution is readily apparent.
"We want to make major inroads on this disease, but we don't want to harm anyone."
Some level of fortification seems likely (a final rule is expected in the next six months), and last week the F.D.A. announced that manufacturers of folic acid supplements would be allowed to include a health claim about birth defects.
Dr. Kessler said that even if foods are fortified under the current proposal, in order to reach the 400-microgram level, women of child-bearing age will still have to try to follow the dietary guidelines, eating plenty of fruits, vegetables and grains. If they don't, they will have to take a supplement.
"In the end," he said, "people are going to have to take some responsibility."

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The New York Times

January 7, 1994, Friday, Late Edition - Final

Study Shows Wider Utility for Aspirin

BYLINE: By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN,  Special to The New York Times

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

LENGTH: 1162 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Jan. 6

A large new international study has shown that women, the elderly, diabetics and those with high blood pressure should be added to the groups of patients who should be given aspirin after they have survived heart attacks or strokes to prevent the risk of recurrence.
The study greatly strengthens the evidence that aspirin is beneficial for people who are experiencing a heart attack as well as for those who have survived a heart attack or stroke. 
 Nearly everyone who is in the midst of a heart attack should take aspirin, and people who have survived a heart attack or stroke should be taking it regularly, two American researchers involved in the study, Dr. Charles H. Hennekens and Dr. Julie E. Buring of Harvard Medical School, said today.
In London, Dr. Richard Peto of Oxford University, who headed the study, reported a 25 percent reduction in the risk of another heart attack for people who had already suffered one in all the groups studied, including women, the elderly, diabetics and people with high blood pressure, The Associated Press reported. He said the study indicated that the appropriate use of aspirin could prevent 100,000 deaths each year in developed countries, including 20,000 in the United States.
Another finding of the study was that aspirin could prevent many potentially life-threatening complications from the blood clots that often form after surgery or while a patient is bedridden for long periods, said Dr. Hennekens, who is also the head of preventive medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.
Not enough data exist to recommend the use of aspirin by apparently healthy people who have not had a heart attack or stroke, Dr. Buring said. She said she was directing a study of 40,000 nurses that should provide answers about the relative benefits and hazards of such therapy, but not until its completion in several years.
Dr. Buring said many doctors thought it might be dangerous to prescribe aspirin for patients who have had a heart attack or stroke and who are elderly or have medical conditions like diabetes or high blood pressure. "But these data clearly show that there is clear, substantial benefit, regardless of your age, sex, history of high blood pressure or diabetes," Dr. Buring said.
The new study is a statistical analysis of virtually all studies ever undertaken of the use of aspirin and similar drugs for heart attacks, strokes and other circulatory disorders. The study involved an international group of more than 50 researchers and focused on 140,000 patients in 300 scientifically controlled studies. The findings will be published in the next three issues of The British Medical Journal, beginning on Saturday.
Dr. Hennekens urged the F.D.A. to revise its labeling recommendations to advise the use of aspirin in heart conditions. Last October, the F.D.A. said it was seeking public comments on a proposal for a new label that would have to be prominently displayed on nonprescription products containing aspirin. The notice would advise consumers to consult a doctor before taking aspirin for new and long-term uses.
At the time, the F.D.A. said aspirin had been shown to be effective in preventing second heart attacks and treating chest pains from unstable angina.  But it warned that aspirin use had risks, like bleeding from the stomach and intestines, and should be monitored by a doctor.
"Approved instructions and information for doctors about heart-related uses of aspirin are part of the professional labeling for aspirin, but they are not permitted on consumer labels because safe use for these conditions requires supervision by a physician," the F.D.A. said.
Today, Mike Shaffer, a spokesman for the F.D.A., said the agency had not seen the new findings. But Dr. Hennekens said a copy had been sent some time ago to an F.D.A. official.
Mr. Shaffer said that aspirin's use for heart conditions was controversial and that the drug agency was concerned about the widespread, indiscriminate use of aspirin.
But Dr. Hennekens said that at a penny a pill aspirin had "the best risk-to-benefit and cost-to-benefit" ratio of any therapy for acute heart attacks.
Aspirin has well-known side effects. Many people suffer varying degrees of bleeding from the stomach and intestines. Aspirin can also cause a stroke from bleeding into the brain. Some people have an allergy to the drug and can die suddenly if they take it.
Nevertheless, some cardiologists have suggested that even those people who have a tendency to bleed from aspirin should take it if they are in the throes of a heart attack because the benefits so greatly outweigh the risks under such circumstances, Dr. Hennekens said.
But Dr. Hennekens and others cautioned that people should consult a doctor before taking aspirin on a continuing basis for a heart or circulatory problem. The experts added that people should not regard aspirin as a substitute for taking other steps, like dietary and exercise changes, to avoid heart attacks.
 
Pooling Results
 The team that undertook the international study used a statistical technique called a meta-analysis. A meta-analysis aims at gleaning more information from existing data by pooling the results of many smaller studies and applying one or more statistical techniques. The benefits or hazards that might not be detected in small studies can be found in a meta-analysis that uses data from thousands of patients.
The meta-analysis underscoring the benefits of aspirin in heart disease is the largest study of its type , the authors said.
The Physicians' Desk Reference, a standard guide used by doctors, contains the labeling information approved by the F.D.A. for marketed drugs. For aspirin, the 1994 edition of the Physicians' Desk Reference makes no reference to its use for heart attacks in progress.
Dr. Hennekens urged the F.D.A. to approve labeling saying that every patient with an acute heart attack should take aspirin. He said that although the use of aspirin for patients with acute heart attacks had increased in recent years, to 72 percent of such patients from 40 percent, 28 percent of these patients were still not offered aspirin. That information came from a survey of hospitals in this country, he said.
The current aspirin labeling advises its use for men who have had a precursor of a stroke known as a transient ischemic attack, but not for women.  Both sexes should be included, Dr. Hennekens said.
There is no current F.D.A. recommendation for aspirin use by people who have survived a stroke. The recommendations should reflect the new findings showing clear benefits for men and women, Dr. Hennekens said.
The F.D.A. now recommends that aspirin be prescribed for patients who have survived a heart attack or suffer chest pains from a condition known as unstable angina. Dr. Hennekens said the recommendations should be broadened to include those people who had had coronary artery bypass surgery or angioplasty.

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The New York Times

January 8, 1994, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

Beliefs

BYLINE: By Peter Steinfels

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

LENGTH: 956 words

Three years ago today, the United States was a week from war with Iraq and still debating whether such a war was morally justified. At the center of that debate was the question of whether economic sanctions were the more humane way to the desired end.
A United Nations resolution authorized the use of force if Saddam Hussein had not withdrawn Iraqi forces from Kuwait by Jan. 15. Give the sanctions more time, was the cry of those opposed to military action. 
 Even today the chief argument by those who considered the Persian Gulf war unjust is that military force was not a "last resort," undertaken only after all alternatives had proved unavailing.
Throughout the 20th century, economic sanctions have been the hope of many who sought an escape from the moral impasse of warfare. "Apply this economic, peaceful, silent, deadly remedy and there will be no need for force," President Woodrow Wilson declared in his ill-fated campaign on behalf of the League of Nations after World War I.
Yet even in Wilson's day, John Foster Dulles opposed broad embargoes, spelling out his opposition in a report by the United States Committee on Economic Sanctions. Mr. Dulles, who became the Secretary of State under President Dwight D. Eisenhower, said sanctions harmed the innocent. His argument haunts discussions of economic sanctions in the case of Iraq and Haiti.
"Although sanctions have surely contributed to malnutrition in Iraq," wrote Mike Moore, the editor of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, in introducing a special November issue on sanctions, "one supposes that Saddam Hussein has never involuntarily missed a meal." The magazine, a monthly, was founded by some of the scientiests who helped develop the atomic bomb and is devoted to preventing nuclear war.
Three years ago many people, including many religious leaders, conveyed a kind of moral innocence about sanctions. Their faith in economic pressure rested less on the historical record or economic and political facts than on their opposition to the alternative, military force. Even with hindsight, only a few have granted that maybe they underestimated Mr. Hussein's indifference to his people's suffering.
But most of the same observers soon realized that sanctions did exactly what they had considered most morally reprehensible about military action: wreak injury on civilians. Sanctions, it turned out, struck more directly at civilians than did smart bombs. Sanctions even seemed to strike at precisely those civilians -- infants, children, women, the elderly -- who were most vulnerable and least responsible for the regime's political or war-making strength.
Most studies of sanctions, of which there are few, focus on their effectiveness, not their morality. One recent study of 104 cases since World War II shows that sanctions succeeded about a third of the time when the goals were modest -- to obtain the release of captives, for example, or to demand respect for human rights.
The study, undertaken by the Institute for International Economics in Washington, shows that the success rate was much lower when the goal of sanctions was a major reversal of another nation's policy, or even the removal of its government. Success in the latter cases was usually linked to covert American action or local rebellions to undermine the government.
After reviewing these findings in The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, two staff members of the Roman Catholic Bishops' Office on International Peace and Justice, Drew Christiansen and Gerard F. Powers, concluded, "We cannot presume that sanctions are an effective alternative to military force."
To mix and modify phrases from the psychologist William James and the military strategist Karl von Clausewitz, sanctions are not so much the moral equivalent of war as they are the continuation of war by other means. So is there need for a theory of just sanctions like the historical theory of a "just war." The country's Roman Catholic bishops tried to sketch something like that in one section of a major document on peacemaking they issued last November.
Referring to the suffering of "innocent people in Serbia, Haiti, Iraq, Cuba and elsewhere, the bishops said that sweeping economic sanctions are justified "only in response to aggression or grave and ongoing injustice" and only with "clear and reasonable conditions set for their removal." Embargoes should always "make provision for the fundamental needs of the civilian populations," the bishops said.
Echoing the language of the "just-war" theory, the bishops said that "the harm caused by sanctions should be proportionate to the good likely to be achieved." Sanctions should "avoid grave and irreversible harm" to civilians and therefore "should be targeted as much as possible against those directly responsible for the injustice."
"The consent to sanctions by substantial portions of the affected population is morally relevant," the bishops advised. In other words, be guided, at least in part, by what black South Africans or poor Haitians are themselves willing to undergo.
These criteria provide little more than a checklist of things to think about. The bishops admit their criteria are "tentative" and urged "much more study, reflection and public debate over the moral dimension of comprehensive sanctions."
None of this is very encouraging for those who dream of a new world order. They might, however, find one glimmer of hope in special issue of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. That is the impression that so far very little inventiveness and less willpower have gone into devising the kind of "selective sanctions" the bishops prefer, those directed against ruthless leaders and oppressive elites.

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January 9, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

CONNECTICUT GUIDE

BYLINE: By ELEANOR CHARLES 

SECTION: Section 13CN;  Page 9;  Column 1;  Connecticut Weekly Desk 

LENGTH: 985 words


REMEMBERING DOUGLASS
 Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday on Saturday was chosen as an appropriate day on which to present "Mr. Frederick Douglass," a one-man play written and performed by Fred Morsell, the noted stage and television actor. Curtain time is 8 P.M. at the Rich Forum on Atlantic Street in Stamford. 
 The piece was written about five years ago, based on Douglass' powerful speeches and on his autobiography, "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave," which he published in 1845.
Douglass' mother, who was exceptionally intelligent, was a slave, his father was white. His youth was spent in various households, some benign, others viciously disciplinarian. He escaped from servitude in 1838 at the age of 21, changing his name from Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey to Frederick Douglass, and made his way north to Massachusetts.
There and in the British Isles he became an eloquent orator and journalist for the abolitionist movement up to and throughout the Civil War, continuing as a popular speaker afterward. During the 1870's and 80's he was appointed to various diplomatic and other government posts.
Mr. Morsell received a master's degree in theater arts from Wayne State University in Detroit. His father, Dr. John A. Morsell, was Associate Executive Director to Roy Wilkins at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People from 1956 to 1974.
Tickets are priced at $15 and $25, or $7.50 for students and elderly people. For reservations, 325-4466.
 
BIG DEEDS, SMALL DOERS
 Three stories from children's literature are incorporated into the Little Theater of the Deaf production titled "Heroes Under Five Feet," to be presented on Tuesday at 10 A.M. and again at noon at the Palace Theater in Stamford.
"Keep The Lights Burning, Abbie" by Peter and Connie Roop is based on the true story of Abbie Burgess, a young girl who, during the winter storms of 1856 kept the lighthouse lamps lit and saved many ships from disaster on the Maine coast.
A historic account of a little girl who wrote to the President is the premise of "Lincoln's Famous Beard." She thought his face was too thin and suggested growing a beard to make it look fuller.
The only fictional tale is "Brother to the Wind," which draws on African cultures and their close ties to nature as positive influences on the development of a young boy named Emeke.
Five performers make up the Little Theater of the Deaf, a division of the National Theater of the Deaf in Waterford. Four of the members are deaf, one has normal hearing. The production is designed for both hearing and deaf audiences, employing sign language, body language and the spoken word.
A warm-up before the show begins introduces the audience to signing, and after the performance the audience is invited to suggest situations that the cast acts out on stage.
Tickets at $6 may be reserved by calling 358-2305 weekdays from 9:30 to 4:30.
 
THE CHANGING LANDSCAPE
 "Toil and Plenty: Images of the Agricultural Landscape in England, 1780-1890," the new exhibition at the Yale Center for British Art, covers the century in which England gradually transformed itself from an agricultural to an industrial economy.
It will open on Saturday and remain on view through March 13, featuring 40 oils, 45 watercolors and drawings, and dozens of prints, photographs and illustrated books. Some of England's greatest artists are represented, including J. M. W. Turner, John Constable, George Stubbs, Peter DeWint and Samuel Palmer.
The show was organized by Christiana Payne, an English historian who also wrote the illustrated catalogue published by Yale University Press. The works on view have been gathered from public and private collections in Britain and the United States, with financial support by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
As the pictures in the exhibition advance through the decades, they reflect a more realistic, less idyllic view of the landscape and the farm families who tended it. Agriculture was newly seen by artists as hard work rather than an Arcadian composition. Noontime meals in the fields, informal studies of haymakers and their implements, and the dignity of the lonely farmer performing chores in winter became prime subjects.
Ms. Payne will present a lecture about the exhibition on Friday at 4 P.M., and a symposium will be held on Saturday from 10:30 to 4:30. Scholars, lecturers and professors from four British universities and from the College of William and Mary in Virginia and Indiana University in Bloomington will speak on various aspects of the exhibition's contents and the periods in which the works were created.
Gallery talks by docents will take place for the duration of the show on Thursdays at 11 and Saturdays at noon, followed by a 27-minute video.
The Center, at 1080 Chapel Street, is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 to 5, Sunday from noon to 5. Admission to the exhibition and all related events is free. For more information, 432-2850.
 
COMBINING THE ARTS
 A series of interdisciplinary programs called "Dancing Out Loud" begins in New Haven on Friday with a concert organized by the choreographer Mary R. Barnett. She has combined her own innovative dance group, called In Good Company, with a number of artists from the Northeast, weaving them into variegated whole. The performance will take place at 8 P.M. at the Educational Center for the Arts, 55 Audubon Street.
Joining her troup will be Dan Hurlin, a New York performance artist who has created, among other things, a piece called "Quintland, The Musical," about the Dionne quintuplets. Berg, Jones and Sarvis head a modern dance company based in Portland, Maine, performing works ranging from lyrical to raucous, and Alison Farrell specializes in acoustic folk music.
Tickets cost $10 and may be obtained by calling 773-1102.

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January 9, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

New Rules For Heat Eligibility

BYLINE: By ELSA BRENNER 

SECTION: Section 13WC;  Page 4;  Column 6;  Westchester Weekly Desk 

LENGTH: 756 words

NOW that the coldest winter months have arrived, the county has announced that eligible individuals may apply for financial aid to help defer some of their home-heating costs.
This year, under a 10-year-old federally financed plan known as the Home Energy Assistance Program, eligibility guidelines have been broadened so that more applicants can be helped, said Lillian Bloom, a benefits supervisor for the County Department of Social Services, which administers the heating-assistance program in Westchester. 
 Ms. Bloom said that qualified households will be able to receive $55 to $220, depending on the kind of fuel used. But because eligibility guidelines were widened this year, the amount each applicant can receive has been reduced, she explained.
Also, the Department of Social Services is urging people to apply early because funds are limited. Westchester receives about $2 million a year for the program.
At the County Office for the Aging, Diane Booker, a program administrator, said her department receives nearly 3,000 applications a year from elderly people seeking heating assistance. "The cold weather tends to bring problems to a head," she said.
One recent example was an elderly woman living in the northern part of the county with a disabled adult child who ran out of heat during last week's storm, forcing her to rely on the oven and a kerosene heater to keep warm, Ms. Booker said. When the Office for the Aging intervened and sent an oil truck to the home for an emergency delivery, the truck was unable to get through the icy rural roads leading to the home. Finally, a small van was dispatched to carry in 10 gallons of fuel oil until the roads were cleared.
"We hear stories like this all the time," Ms. Booker said. "Typically, neighbors alert us to elderly people living alone, often in a remote area, who may be too proud to ask for help. They may be low on funds, frail and frightened. Other times, we get a call from an individual saying, 'I have no oil and I'm cold.' That's when a red flag goes up for us."
In addition to helping elderly people with their heating costs, the office will send workers to a house to devise a plan for other types of assistance: for energy audits, weatherization programs and Medicaid or prescription cost assistance, for example. In many cases, Ms. Booker said, elderly clients are not aware of available programs.
Additionally, there are emergency benefits to supplement the one-time energy assistance grant.
Westchester residents living outside of Yonkers who are not receiving public assistance may apply for Home Energy Assistance funds at local Community Action Program offices or by calling Westchester Community Opportunities Program at 592-5600, extension 150.
People receiving food stamps, Aid to Dependent Children or home relief for singles are automatically considered for the program, Ms. Bloom said. If eligible, they will receive their allocation beginning at the end of this month.
Yonkers residents seeking assistance should apply by calling the Yonkers Community Action Program at 423-5905.
The telephone number for the Office for the Aging is 682-3000.
The following are guidelines, based on income, as to who is eligible to receive energy assistance if heat is not included in the rent:
One-person household, gross monthly income $1,212; two people, gross monthly income $1,586; three people, gross monthly income $1,959; four people, gross monthly income $2,332; five people, gross monthly income $2,706; six people, gross monthly income $3,079; seven people, $3,149; eight people, $3,219. For each additional person, add $70 to the gross monthly income to determine eligibility.
In the case of a heat emergency, or for further information, residents can call the Department of Social Services at 285-5534.
Here is a list of Community Action Program offices in the county that can help applicants apply for heating assistance:
In Eastchester, at 142-144 Main Street, 337-7768; in Elmsford at 2269 Saw Mill River Road, 592-5600, extension 150; in Greenburgh at 30 Manhattan Avenue, 761-6605; in Mamaroneck at 134 Center Avenue, 698-7140; in Mount Vernon at 145 West First Street, 664-8680; in New Rochelle at 95 Lincoln Avenue, 636-3050; in Ossining at 37 James Street, 762-2369; in Peekskill at 1037 Main Street, 739-1451; in Port Chester at 35 Traverse Avenue, 939-1244; in Tarrytown at 105 Wildey Street, 631-7340; in White Plains at 70 Ferris Avenue, 428-7030; and in Yonkers at 164 Ashburton Avenue, 423-5905.

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January 9, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

What They Say About 'Dixie'

BYLINE: By Drew Gilpin Faust;  Drew Gilpin Faust's books include "The Creation of Confederate Nationalism: Ideology and Identity in the Civil War South" and "Southern Stories: Slaveholders in Peace and War."

SECTION: Section 7; Page 20; Column 3; Book Review Desk

LENGTH: 1128 words


WAY UP NORTH IN DIXIE
A Black Family's Claim
to the Confederate Anthem.
By Howard L. Sacks and Judith Rose Sacks.
Illustrated. 259 pp. Washington:
Smithsonian Institution Press. $24.95. 
NOT only has blackface minstrelsy exerted "a pervasive impact on American music," as Howard L. Sacks and Judith Rose Sacks argue in "Way Up North in Dixie: A Black Family's Claim to the Confederate Anthem"; it has also served as both symbol and metaphoric expression of the complexities of American racial identity. Over the last decade, a growing body of scholarly work has debated the meaning of this extraordinarily popular 19th-century cultural phenomenon, its relation to authentic African-American musical traditions, its role in the self-definition of the white American working class that composed its chief audience, and its place in a sectional conflict that elevated the minstrel song "Dixie" into an enduring representation of a united white South.
To this discussion, the authors (he is the chairman of the department of anthropology and sociology at Kenyon College and she is an independent researcher) contribute the compelling story of the Snowdens, a family of black musicians who left a rich documentary record of their lives in Knox County, Ohio, a century ago. Combining the family's letters, scrapbooks and photographs with interviews conducted among elderly residents of present-day Knox County, the authors "endeavor to tie historical circumstances directly to the biographies of a particular family, transforming 'history' from an abstraction to lived experience."
In their vivid circumstantiality, the Snowdens' lives embody the complicated and ambiguous histories of American music and of American race relations. In an irony that crowns their exploration of intertwining black and white experience and creativity, the authors argue that the black Snowdens, not the white minstrel Dan Emmett, were the true authors of "Dixie," the song that served as an anthem of the Confederate cause and that has -- in the eyes of many 20th-century Americans -- become a symbol of persistent white racism.
In a cemetery in Mount Vernon, Ohio, a well-tended tombstone identifies "Daniel Decatur Emmett (1815-1904), whose song 'Dixie Land' inspired the courage and devotion of the Southern people and now thrills the hearts of a united nation." Just three miles away, a more obscure graveyard shelters a stone marking the graves of Ben and Lew Snowden. Its inscription says simply: "They taught 'Dixie' to Dan Emmett."
In the 1820's, Ben and Lew's parents, Ellen Cooper and Thomas Snowden, had been brought to Ohio by their masters, Marylanders migrating west with their bound black laborers. Freed by Ohio's prohibition of slavery, Cooper and Snowden married in 1834, a privilege that would have been denied them by the laws of their birthplace in the slave South. Yet even in Ohio, it was not easy to be black. The family lived in a county where in 1850 blacks made up less than one-fifth of one percent of the population and where, despite their legal freedom, the more informal power of racial prejudice still constrained their lives.
Working a family farm, the Snowdens produced seven children who survived infancy. By the 1850's, six of the children had formed a band to supplement the family income. Sophia, Elsie, Annie and Ben fiddled, while Lew played banjo and Phebe danced. On occasion, individual Snowdens also performed on dulcimer, triangle, castinets and guitar. Announced by handbill and by word of mouth, the family appeared across the rural countryside. Their repertory consisted of "the most current selections of the day," including spirituals, dance tunes and Stephen Foster melodies, but it contained neither the degrading songs in contrived Negro dialect characteristic of the minstrel stage nor the era's overtly abolitionist numbers. Performing in an overwhelmingly white environment, the Snowdens struggled at once to meet the expectations of their audience and to remain true to themselves.
The sense of self-esteem evident in their music expressed itself politically as well. When Knox County officials turned Ben and Lew Snowden away from the polls in 1870 despite the passage of the 15th Amendment earlier that same year, the brothers sued. In a telling example of the Northern failure to uphold black rights in the Reconstruction era, the Snowdens waited six years to learn that their petition had been denied and to endure the added insult of assessment for court and defendants' costs.
Although Howard and Judith Sacks offer an intriguing and textured portrait of the life of a black family in the 19th-century North, they have a more ambitious agenda. Arguing that those who have searched for black influences on minstrelsy have exclusively and mistakenly focused on the South, the authors seek to demonstrate the closely intertwined traditions of black and white music above the Mason-Dixon line. Not just showing that the Snowdens and Dan Emmett lived in the same Ohio county but documenting their interaction, the authors provide fresh and striking evidence of one specific context from which minstrelsy emerged.
BUT despite the book's assertions of the Snowdens' claim, the authorship of "Dixie" must remain in dispute, for the evidence is ultimately circumstantial. In fact, the book's depiction of the musical culture of Knox County suggests such an entanglement of black and white musical sources as nearly to undermine the notion of authorship altogether. Indeed, exactly such a communal understanding of music's origins underlay both the folk and black traditions in which the Snowden band worked. As the authors explain, we might characterize the family's "particular approach to their music . . . as guardianship rather than ownership."
In his movement from the musical environment of Knox County into the minstrel scene of the urban centers of the North, Dan Emmett came to represent a quite different commercial and capitalist ethos, one that propelled him toward claiming exclusive authorship of a song that made his individual name and career. For all its origins in black and white cross-fertilization, American popular music has rewarded the respective sources of its traditions quite differently, as Emmett's enormous success makes clear. A joke often repeated by whites in blackface on the 19th-century minstrel stage, recorded by David R. Roediger in his book "The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class," makes the point perhaps even more strongly in its honest acknowledgment of this exploitative heritage. "Why is we like a slave ship on the coast of Africa?" one minstrel asks. "Because," the other replies, "we both make money by taking off the Negroes."

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January 11, 1994, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

Supreme Court Roundup;
Review Set on Medicare At University Hospitals

BYLINE: By LINDA GREENHOUSE,  Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section A; Page 19; Column 5; National Desk

LENGTH: 1149 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Jan. 10

The Supreme Court agreed today to interpret a Federal policy aimed at curbing Medicare payments to hospitals affiliated with medical schools. The policy is intended to prevent the hospitals from using the federally financed Medicare program to cover increased expenses of running graduate teaching programs for interns and residents.
Medicare provides health insurance for the elderly and disabled. About $150 million in Medicare reimbursements are at stake in disputes between the Federal Government and some two-dozen teaching hospitals. 
 The dispute concerns both legislation and Federal regulations adopted in the mid-1980's to prevent hospitals from shifting to the Medicare program costs that had previously been borne by the medical schools with which teaching hospitals are affiliated.
 
Law on Allowable Costs
 With interns and residents providing much of the patient care in these institutions as part of their training, the line between educational expenses and the costs of patient care can be fine. In 1986, Congress tried to avoid ambiguity over allowable costs by adopting a cut-off date. This stipulated that hospitals could not claim reimbursement for any category of educational expenses that they had not claimed for the fiscal year that began on Oct. 1, 1983.
In the case before the Court, Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia, and its affiliated medical school, Thomas Jefferson University, commissioned a study in response to the law and found that they should have been claiming an additional $6 million in costs for interns and residents.
An appeal board at the Department of Health and Human Services allowed payment for the additional costs, but the Secretary's office overruled that on the ground that educational costs that the medical school had paid before 1984 could not now be shifted to the hospital for Medicare reimbursement.
The hospital appealed in Federal court, saying the costs should be allowed because the hospital's clinical training program for interns and residents was integrally related to patient care. But the Federal District Court and the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, both in Philadelphia, rejected that argument.
Another Federal appeals court, the Sixth Circuit in Cincinnati, recently took the opposite approach, ruling in a case brought by Ohio State University that clinical training expenses were reimbursable. The Government urged the Court to hear the Philadelphia case, Thomas Jefferson University v. Shalala, No. 93-120, to resolve the conflict.
There were also these developments today as the Court returned from a four-week recess:
 
Accomplice's Statement
 The Court agreed to decide whether a defendant's constitutional right to confront the witnesses against him should have barred Federal prosecutors in a cocaine-trafficking case from introducing incriminating statements made to investigators by the defendant's accomplice.
The accomplice had been stopped on a Georgia highway with more than 40 pounds of cocaine in his car. His statements to a Federal agent implicated the defendant, Fredel Williamson. The accomplice, Reginald Harris, later invoked his right against self-incrimination and refused to testify at Mr. Williamson's trial, but the judge permitted the statements to be put in evidence.
Mr. Williamson was convicted and sentenced to 27 years in prison. The United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, in Atlanta, upheld the conviction and ruled that the use of the statements did not violate the Sixth Amendment. The case is Williamson v. United States, No. 93-5256.
 
Trade Pact Challenge
 The Court declined without comment to revive a challenge to the North American Free Trade Agreement. A lawsuit last year argued that the office of the United States Trade Representative should have been required to prepare a study of the environmental impact of the trade agreement between the United States, Canada and Mexico.
Judge Charles R. Richey of Federal District Court here agreed with the environmental groups that brought the lawsuit, ordering in a ruling last June that an environmental impact statement be prepared "forthwith." His decision was overturned on procedural grounds two months later by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
When the environmental groups then appealed to the Supreme Court (Public Citizen v. United States Trade Representative, No. 93-560), the Administration told the Justices that the controversy was moot in light of the agreement's approval by Congress in November. The pact took effect on Jan. 1.
 
Reviving Fraud Suits
 The Court agreed to decide the constitutionality of a law passed by Congress in 1991 that had the effect of reviving several securities fraud suits that had been dismissed as a result of a Court ruling earlier that year.
The question in the case, First Republicbank Corporation v. Pacific Mutual Life, No. 93-609, is whether the new law violated the separation of powers by interfering with judicial judgments.
The 1991 Court decision, Lampf, Pleva v. Gilbertson, held that Federal securities fraud suits brought by private individuals must be filed within a year of discovering the alleged fraud and no more than three years after the events occurred.
Suits that did not come within the strict new time limits were dismissed, but the securities bar raised such an outcry that Congress ordered the dismissed suits reinstated as long as they would have been allowed under the old state limits. The sequence of events was highly controversial, and lower Federal courts for the last year have issued conflicting decisions on the 1991 law's constitutionality.
The case the Court accepted as a vehicle for deciding the question began as a lawsuit by purchasers of securities issued by a Texas bank. The suit was filed in March 1991, more than three years after the purchase. Texas law permits such suits to be filed within four years, but the suit was dismissed following the Court decision several months later. The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in New Orleans, ordered the suit revived under the new law, rejecting the defendants' constitutional challenges.
 
Teen-Age Abortions
 The Court declined without comment to revive a challenge to an Ohio law that requires teen-age girls to notify a parent or receive a judge's permission before getting an abortion.
The Court upheld the law in 1990. A group of abortion clinics brought the new challenge, arguing that state juvenile court judges were rejecting requests that they should have granted. The lower Federal courts in Ohio dismissed the suit without addressing the law's constitutionality. The Sixth Circuit ruled that it did not have the authority to review individual decisions by state judges. (Cleveland Surgi-Center v. Jones, No. 93-787).

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January 15, 1994, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

Damascus Journal;
Persecution Ended, Syria's Jews Stage an Exodus

BYLINE: By WILLIAM E. SCHMIDT,  Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section 1; Page 4; Column 1; Foreign Desk

LENGTH: 1256 words

DATELINE: DAMASCUS, Syria, Jan. 14

The only bakery to make Passover matzohs and cakes has closed, after its owners got exit visas and moved to Europe. The last kosher butcher shop will go this spring, one more casualty of Jewish emigration.
A few months ago, the Chief Rabbi in Damascus even discovered, to his surprise, there was no longer anyone left in Syria qualified to perform the circumcision ritual for newborn Jewish boys; he had to send to America for help. 
 After enduring years of suspicion, even persecution, and tough Government rules that restricted travel and emigration, the last remnants of a Jewish population that numbered 100,000 at the turn of century are now facing a new challenge: their own dwindling numbers. Since the Government promised to provide exit visas to all who wish to leave, Jews have been lining up to leave Syria.
 
Only Hundreds Remain
 In the last two years, nearly 3,000 of the estimated 4,000 Jews that remained in Syria in 1992 have chosen to seek a new life in America or Europe. They are leaving behind a remnant that may soon number fewer than 400, most of whom are either elderly people who believe they are too old to start over again, or well-placed business people who feel they cannot afford to leave.
With Jews in Syria unable to seek refuge or aid from Jews in neighboring Israel, with whom Syria remains technically in a state of war, their exodus may mean the disappearance of many of the ancient traditions and rituals that helped define part of Syrian cultural life since biblical times.
Few Jews now live in the city's Jewish quarter, a warren of narrow streets and ancient houses within the walls of the Old City. Nearly half of the 22 synagogues that existed just two years ago are closed, and so are many of the businesses where Jewish entrepreneuers historically held sway, including the shops in Damascus's noisy souk where Jewish artisans produced some of Syria's finest and most intricate silver handicrafts.
While there are also small Jewish populations in both Aleppo and Qameshli, an ancient Jewish community near the Turkish border, most of the roughly 1,200 Jews remaining in Syria live in Damascus.
 
Rabbi's Daughter Emigrates
 "Every day we must make new adjustments, find new ways, to deal with our shrinking numbers," said the Chief Rabbi, Ibrahim al-Hamra, whose own daughter has emigrated to America. "So little is left now, and it is very sad for me to see it go."
Would he consider leaving himself? "I am not like a doctor or an engineer or a pharmacist," Rabbi Hamra said with a small smile. "I am a rabbi, and if any Jew stays behind, so must I."
As the Government's officially designated spokesman for Syria's Jews -- his office in the sole Jewish school in Damascus is decorated with two portraits of President Hafez al-Assad -- Rabbi Hamra asserts that Jews in Syria no longer need to flee because of religious or political persecution.
"We are free to practice our religion and our culture," he said in an interview. "We can live a life of dignity." For that, he said, he prays for the good health and long life of President Assad, with whom he and other prominent Jews met in 1992 for the first time, when they were summoned for a special audience at Hanukkah.
To support his assertion, Rabbi Hamra showed a visitor a classroom where some 20 Jewish children, wearing yarmulkes, were reading from prayer books in Hebrew, receiving religious instruction. They were part of an overall enrollment of 200 Jewish pupils at the school.
According to some young Jews here, the problem these days is not the kind of harassment or surveillance their parents had to endure in the 1960's and 1970's, when many Syrians looked on Jews here as kind of Israeli fifth column. Rather it is a feeling of being left behind, a longing to once again be part of a larger Jewish family that no longer exists in Damascus.
At a clothing shop in al-Shaalan, one of Damascus's more fashionable shopping districts, a young Jew said he felt a great ambivalence about leaving.
"I have had my visa since last year, but I can't decide what to do," said the young man, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "My family has a factory here to make clothes, and I have a good life. But my brother will leave soon for Germany; my sister already lives in Brooklyn, and there aren't any Jewish girls left to marry."
Then, he was asked, why don't you use your visa and leave? He paused and looked straight at his questioner: "Let me ask you," he said. "Would it be so easy for you to leave your country?"
Murad Jajati, who is the son of Yosef Jajati, one of Damascus's most prosperous Jewish merchants, said: "I cannot complain about my conditions here. But it is difficult to watch every day as your friends and relatives leave."
 
A Population in Long Decline
 Throughout history, Syria's Jewish population has fluctuated. But during this century, it has been in a long decline. By the time the state of Israel was founded in 1948, the Jewish population in Syria had shrunk by more than half, to 50,000; in later years, as a succession of wars engulfed the region, many of those few thousand who remained came to regard themselves as hostages, denied permission to leave or even travel freely within Syria itself.
For years, American and European Jewish organizations, as well as human rights groups, protested the treatment of Syria's Jews, citing incidents in which Jews were imprisoned without trial and tortured, accused of trying to flee the country illegally.
In April 1992, in a good-will gesture after the Persian Gulf war, President Assad agreed to loosen emigration restrictions on Jews, including procedures where visas were given to every member of a family except one, making it difficult for all to leave. In the next six months, an estimated 2,600 Jews seized the chance to go.
But then about the time of the American Presidential elections, Syrian officials again slowed the flow of new exit visas to barely 10 a month. Jewish groups in the West accused Syria of using the 1,200 or so Jews still living here as a bargaining chip in Middle East talks.
Last month, when Secretary of State Warren Christopher traveled to Damascus to lay the groundwork for the meeting in Geneva between Mr. Assad and President Clinton on Sunday, the Syrian leader promised to speed up the process, and give exit visas by the end of the year to an estimated 850 Jews still waiting to leave. Syria missed that deadline, but Jewish officials here expect the process to be completed soon.
For Rabbi Hamra and others here who say they intend to remain in Syria, they are banking their hopes on the unfolding peace efforts, and an eventual settlement between Israel and Syria that might encourage Jews to return to Damascus.
"Already about 100 Jews I know have come back, some to stay, because I think they now know that life is better and simpler for them in Syria," Rabbi Hamra said. "With time, we hope more will come back."
But it depends on peace, because with peace, said the rabbi, Jews in Syria would no longer have to seek arrangements in Turkey or Morocco or America for kosher products or spiritual consolation. Syria's Jews would only have to cross the border to a place where no Syrian is now allowed to travel.
"There is an Egyptian song that begins with the line, 'Those who are closest to you are actually the farthest away,' " said Rabbi Hamra, who in his conversation never mentions Israel by name. "We ask God that some day soon, we will all be closer to each other."

LOAD-DATE: January 15, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Reading from prayer books in Hebrew, a dwindling number of Syrian Jewish children receive religious instruction from the Chief Rabbi, Ibrahim al-Hamra, at the lone Jewish school in Damascus. (George Ashi for The New York Times)
 
Graph: "Syria's Jews: Declining Numbers" shows the estimated number of Jews in Syria from 1900 to 1994 (Source: Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith)
 
Map of Syria

Copyright 1994 The New York Times Company



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The New York Times

January 16, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

In the Region/Westchester;
A Rush to Build for the County's Aging Population

BYLINE: By MARY McALEER VIZARD

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

LENGTH: 1190 words

IN recent years, the 27-year-old White Plains Hotel attracted few guests. But a developer now hopes it will appeal to a growing market as a residence for the elderly who need some help with daily chores.
In Rye, a nursing home built in 1908 is about to be transformed into an apartment building for the aged who wish to live independently, but in a structured environment. 
 Such projects, as well as total-care nursing homes, are now being planned all over the county to accommodate an increasingly aging population.
Perhaps the most popular type of housing is called "assisted living apartments," where the elderly rent units, and meals, housekeeping and other services are provided.
"There's a real market out there for assisted-living apartments," said Solomon T. Scharf, who last month bought the 105-room White Plains Hotel on South Broadway and Lyons Place, which had been foreclosed in October 1992 by The Bank of New York.
Mr. Scharf, who is president of Lloyd Equities, a development company in Manhattan, plans to convert the hotel into 284 apartments, which he said he could do by making mostly cosmetic changes, such as installing new furniture, carpeting and wallpaper.
"This hotel, like many others, has rooms with connecting doors," Mr. Scharf explained. "You can create apartments simply by opening the doors."
There will be studio, one- and two-bedroom units, all with kitchenettes, that will rent for $2,500 to $3,000 a month. The price will include three meals a day in a central dining area, housekeeping, recreation and local transportation. Amenities will include a card room, library, exercise room, an arts and crafts center and a chapel.
The plan still requires the approval of the White Plains Common Council, but there has been little opposition, Mr. Scharf said.
He said he expected to begin the renovation in the spring and phase in assisted-living residents while continuing to operate the building as a hotel. The phasing in, he said, could take as much as four years.
Mr. Scharf owns and operates the Esplanade Hotel, a 181-unit assisted-living accommodation at West End Avenue and West 74th Street in Manhattan. "With life expectancy continuing to go up, there will continue to be a need for this kind of housing in the future," he said.
That opinion is echoed by Stephen Lopez, Planning Commissioner for the town of Greenburgh, where a 160-bed nursing home is now being planned.
"There's such a variety of living arrangements for seniors now," Mr. Lopez said. "There's still a great need for total-care facilities, but there's a greater call for more intermediate care for seniors who aren't fully capable of taking care of themselves, yet don't need to be in an institution."
One ambitious project involves the $60 million expansion of the Osborn Retirement Community, now under way between Theall and Boston Post Roads in Rye. It will involve an 84-bed skilled-nursing facility and 188 independent-living residences, including 148 one- and two-bedroom apartments in three buildings, and 20 two-family homes, each with 1,638 square feet of living space.
THE community, on a 56-acre campus, already has a 125-bed retirement residence for men women in a 186,000-square-foot Georgian building opened in 1908 for women only. The building will be converted into 65 one-bedroom independent-living rental apartments and 40 assisted-living units.
The original building, which already has dining rooms, parlors and a 200-seat theater, will also be equipped with a fitness center, and another building will be constructed to house an indoor pool and a spa.
Fees for all the various housing options have not yet been approved, according to Mark R. Zwerger, chief executive officer of the Osborn Retirement Community, who has submitted an offering plan to the New York State Attorney General.
Mr. Zwerger said a one-time refundable entrance fee would be charged in addition to a monthly service fee for the 188 new independent-living units. "Our entrance fees will be comparable to the prices of similar sized condominiums," said Mr. Zwerger. "But residents won't own their units. They will be owned by the Osborn."
When the resident dies, or if he or she moves, the entrance fee will be refunded to the estate or the individual, he explained.
Each resident will get a package designed to accommodate individual preferences, Mr. Zwerger said. "If they want, three meals a day will be provided, as will housekeeping services and recreation."
Mr. Zwerger said that market research showed that the needs of the elderly were changing. "They wanted larger personal accommodations," he said.
The other major impetus for the expansion, Mr. Zwerger said, was economic. "We needed more people living on the campus to make it economically viable. We couldn't continue to make it with the 125 people we have now," he said.
The first stage of construction, which will begin in the fall, will involve 13 of the two-family homes and the first of the three apartment buildings, the new 84-bed nursing home and the new indoor pool.
Another complex looking to expand its services is the 127-year-old Wartburg Home at East Lincoln and Bradley Avenues in Mount Vernon. The home, which now has 240 elderly people on its 35-acre campus, plans to build a new 160-bed nursing home and create 44 assisted-living units in a building that now houses 90 people. In addition, an auditorium will be transformed into an adult day-care center accommodating 100 people.
WHEN the new building opens early next year, the complex will accommodate a total of 240 nursing-home residents and an overall population of 370, said the Rev. Glenn C. Stone, spokesman for the Wartburg Home, which is affiliated with the Lutheran Church.
In the Town of Greenburgh, a 160-bed nursing home has been proposed by the Hebrew Hospital Foundation, a not-for-profit organization that now operates a 480-bed home in Co-op City, in the Bronx. The site plan for the four-wing, 85,000-square-foot home to be built on just under 60 acres on Grassland Roads at Stephens Lane is before the Town Planning Board.
At one time, the property was to be used for a one-family-home development that fell victim to the downturn in the real estate market.
Many people in town are happy that the land will now be used for a nursing home, since it will preserve more open space.
"The building itself will take up a very small percentage of the property," said Mr. Lopez, the Town Planning Commissioner. "The rest will be used for sitting areas and about half of the property is steep slopes."
Mr. Scharf, the owner of the White Plains Hotel, believes that the trend toward converting old projects and buildings into residences for the elderly will continue for some time.
He cites statistics that show that, in the next decade, the number of people 65 years of age or older nationwide will grow by 3.3 million, to 34.87 million people.
"And with good medicine, a lot of these people will be healthy and want a wide variety of housing options," he said. "Nursing homes and living with relatives are not the answer for everyone."

LOAD-DATE: January 19, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photos; Plans for Osborn Retirement Community in Rye include renovating 1908 building, top, and adding 20 two-family houses, left. (Photographs by Susan Harris for The New York Times)

Copyright 1994 The New York Times Company



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The New York Times

January 16, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Changing the Nature of Retiree Homes

BYLINE: By TOM TOOLEN 

SECTION: Section 13NJ;  Page 13;  Column 1;  New Jersey Weekly Desk 

LENGTH: 1169 words

SOLOMON EISENROD has seen a lot of changes in his long career as a real estate developer, but none so striking as the way older Americans are turning the once sedentary retirement years into a period of vigorous activity.
Mr. Eisenrod knows what he is talking about. At age 85, he has followed the shift of living patterns for older people for more than three decades as the developer of two of New Jersey's largest communities for people 55 and over -- Rossmoor and Clearbrook, both in Monroe Township. 
 All told, Mr. Eisenrod and his partners have built more than 4,000 adult homes at the two communities, with more to come. He is also a developer of the Ponds, another adult community, which will open soon next to the two other communities.
Mr. Eisenrod said the changes in the way retired people are living have been significant.
 
Skiing and Snorkeling at 80
 "Today, older people don't think -- as they once did -- that when they reach 60 or 65 years old they must trade in their active lives for a rocking chair; that is a myth of the past," he said. Mr. Eisenrod said he knew people who "ski and snorkel at age 80 and work longer days than their contemporaries, most of whom are 30 to 40 years younger."
Most of the residents of the adult communities work at least part time, he said.
Mr. Eisenrod does more than that. He puts in a full five-day week as chairman at the Manhattan office of the American Revenue Corporation, which has real estate holdings in several states. He often visits his New Jersey properties and enjoys talking to the residents.
"I can identify with the people out there, with their problems and their goals," he said, "because they are my goals, too -- namely to stay healthy, active and to be a vital force who can help family and friends by sharing knowledge learned over the years."
Each adult community was a product of its time, Mr. Eisenrod said. At Rossmoor, which opened in the 1960's, he said, the people who bought houses chose more sedentary activities like arts and crafts, and many of them were fully retired.
"They did not need as much recreational facilities, although those amenities have been added over the years as the residents have changed at Rossmoor," Mr. Eisenrod said.
At the time Rossmoor was being built, most people did not know about the concept of retirement communities, Mr. Eisenrod said. "I must admit that I hardly knew where Monroe Township was myself," he said. "It was all farmland then."
 
A Significant Change
 In just 10 years, when Mr. Eisenrod became a backer of Clearbrook, there had been a major shift in how the elderly were living.
The community's residents have a nine-hole golf course, tennis courts, two outdoor swimming pools and a fully equipped clubhouse with exercise and fitness rooms.
Clearbrook, like Rossmoor a 2,000-home community has more than 3,000 residents. It recently sold its last house.
Shirley and Henry Zager, formerly of Fair Lawn, recently bought a two-bedroom house there. They are clearly impressed with the activities in their new community.
"There is a special television channel which covers the activities," Mrs. Zager said. "My husband and I watch it all the time and are amazed by all the activities offered. We can't wait to get involved."
Mr. Eisenrod, who is also a lawyer, became involved in housing for older people when he met Ross Cortese, the founder of Rossmoor. It was then called Rossmoor Leisureworld and was being developed by Mr. Cortese on farmland off Exit 8A of the New Jersey Turnpike.
"Ross wanted to move to California, so he sold the property to us," Mr. Eisenrod said, referring to himself and his partners. "I could see the possibilities of such a development, and the land was literally dirt cheap in those days. Plus, in the 60's not many developers were involved in senior communities, and I saw a future in them."
 
A Pioneer State
 New Jersey was a pioneer state for the construction of housing for the elderly, Mr. Eisenrod said, because of its nearness to New York and its easy access to the New Jersey Turnpike and major highways. "It only takes a little over an hour to get to Monroe Township from midtown Manhattan," Mr. Eisenrod said, "and that's what makes the development very valuable."
Mr. Eisenrod's mild demeanor is in contrast with the flamboyance of many other real estate developers. Perhaps that is because of his upbringing.
"I remember growing up in a tenement on the Lower East Side, so I keep things in perspective," Mr. Eisenrod said. "I suppose we would be considered poor -- we had a bathroom in the hall that all the families had to share -- but all I can remember is how happy and united we always seemed to be in those days."
While he likes to reminisce, Mr. Eisenrod is very much a man of the present. He and his partners are focused on the Ponds, which is being built on a 42-acre tract across the road from Clearbrook. The initial construction includes 237 one-story homes, which are detached or in sets of twos and threes, and a 22,000-square-foot clubhouse. The two-bedroom, two-bath homes will be priced from $135,000 to $197,000.
Mr. Eisenrod said the key selling point to all the homes was the wealth of activities available to residents. But he said the members of a new generation of older people are also aware of environmental and other issues, and they will not live in developments that damage wide areas of the surrounding countryside.
"That is why we have set aside 19 acres at the Ponds to remain in wetlands and woodlands forever," he said.
 
A Varied Career
 Mr. Eisenrod, the son of immigrant parents from Poland, started out his career as a lawyer. He graduated at 21 from the first graduating class at St. John's University Law School in 1929. Later, he stopped practicing law and bought a Providence, R.I., manufacturing plant during World War II. The company had gone bankrupt, and Mr. Eisenrod turned it around. He has become a specialist in rejuvenating bankrupt companies.
Mr. Eisenrod and his wife, the former Sally Winston, who was a professional singer, have a daughter, Nancy Hartwell, who lives in Phoenix, and a son, Michael, who is a sales executive in his father's business.
In 1967, the elder Mr. Eisenrod began developing homes in Florida. He has built more than 2,000 units and 27 holes of golf courses in Boca Raton. He continues to develop property in Florida and Virginia.
He is an active partner in Clearbrook Partners, developers of the Ponds and Clearbrook. His partners are Kenneth A. Simons and Leonard Kohl, developers in the tristate area and members of the Bronfman family of the United States and Canada, who have large real estate holdings.
Mr. Eisenrod supervises a staff of two dozen at the American Revenue office on Madison Avenue, only a few blocks from the place he began his career as a lawyer more than 60 years earlier. Defining his role, he said, "I make the decisions, good or bad, and I get the blame or the credit."

LOAD-DATE: January 19, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Solomon Eisenrod, chairman of the American Revenue Corporation, with real estate holdings in several states. (William E. Sauro/The New York Times)

Copyright 1994 The New York Times Company



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The New York Times

January 16, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

What Happens to People When Temperature Plunges

BYLINE: By GINA KOLATA 

SECTION: Section 1;  Page 26;  Column 1;  Metropolitan Desk 

LENGTH: 953 words

From studies in Europe, where people shivered through bitter winters without central heating, from studies of soldiers exposed to the rawest elements and of volunteers immersed in cold water, and from animal studies that investigated the limits of cold tolerance, scientists have pieced together a coherent picture of what happens when people get very, very cold.
The body has two principal ways to keep warm when the weather is cold, experts said: by generating heat through normal biochemical reactions in the muscles and through insulation by fat. 
 If the muscles cannot generate enough heat and the fat insulation is insufficient to keep what heat there is from draining away, the body's reaction is to try to preserve the heat it generates. Most body heat is lost through the skin, whose large surface area drains heat away from the blood into the cold air. To prevent this heat loss, the body shunts blood away from the skin, with the result that you feel cold.
But both of these normal ways of staying warm can be problematical for older people, and even young and healthy people can fall victim to the cold if they do not take proper precautions, experts said.
 
Risks for Older People
 The amount of time it takes before people suffer serious complications from the cold varies depending on how old they are, how muscular they are, how cold it is outside and whether they are wet as well as cold, experts said. But, one said, it can take as little as an hour for people to get into real trouble if they are wet and the temperature is about zero degrees.
Older people are at a substantial disadvantage in the cold because they have less muscle mass, said Dr. Jordan Tobin, chief of the applied physiology section at the National Institute on Aging in Baltimore. Dr. Tobin said people lose 20 to 30 percent of their muscle mass as they age, making it much harder for them to generate enough heat to keep warm.
In addition, Dr. Tobin said, older people often take medicines that make them less able than younger people to shunt blood away from their skin. For example, drugs like alpha and beta blockers for high blood pressure, that act by inhibiting blood-vessel constriction.
Alcohol also can impair blood shunting, in older and younger people, because it dilates blood vessels.
 
Signs of Hypothermia
 When the body's heat-generating and heat-conserving mechanisms fail, hypothermia can set in. Dr. Murray Hamlet, director of research plans and operations at the Army's Research Institute of Environmental Medicine in Natick, Mass., said that the first signs of hypothermia tended to occur when the body's core temperature, or temperature inside the body, falls from 98.6 to about 94 degrees. People start to stumble and they have slurred speech and a faraway gaze, Dr. Hamlet said.
As the body gets colder, the heart and brain falter. The heartbeat slows and its rhythm becomes erratic. As the brain fails to function, a person goes into a coma. Death usually occurs from a heart arrythmia, Dr. Tobin said.
Dr. Hamlet said that the coldest anyone had been and still survived was 58.8 degrees. "That was a 9-year-old boy in Milwaukee, Wis., a few years ago," he said. But, he added, there are many cases of people whose core temperatures got into the low 60's and who lived.
People who are near hypothermia should be given warm fluids, Dr. Hamlet said. When the body shunts blood to the internal organs, the extra blood in the blood vessels of these internal organs increases the blood pressure. In an attempt to reduce the blood pressure again, the body tries to drain excess fluids, with the result that people urinate and can become dehydrated.
Cold can also injure body tissue. When a person's feet are cold and wet, for example, the body releases histamines, immune-system hormones that constrict blood vessels in the feet in an attempt to conserve heat. The histamines, however, make the feet swollen and tender, a condition known as chilblains. If the cold continues, top layers of the skin, deprived of blood, can blacken and die, Dr. Hamlet said. The dead skin falls off without leaving a scar, he added, but the pain caused by this condition, called pernio, can last a lifetime.
 
Cases for Amputation
 After a much longer time with cold wet feet, generally days, the areas of dead tissue expand and the condition becomes known as trench foot, which can require amputation, Dr. Hamlet said. In fact, he said, 175 Argentine troops in the Falklands war had amputations of all or parts of their feet because of trench foot. He said he did not know how many British troops required amputations but said that the British reported that trench foot was their leading medical problem in that war.
Frostbite, another injury that affects only small parts of the body, occurs when exposed tissue freezes. The white patches that skiers and others have seen on their noses or ears often is frostnip, Dr. Hamlet said, explaining that frostnip is a superficial injury. But, he said, "when the freezing goes deeper, you get in trouble." The frozen tissue dies and falls off, he explained. "You can lose the tips of your toes or portions of your toes and fingers. You can lose the fat pad on your nose and you can lose your ears or portions of them."
The key to avoiding these injuries, Dr. Hamlet said, is to be aware. "Never accept numbness in your extremities," he said. "That's the key."
For old people, cold can be a problem even indoors, Dr. Tobin said. The room temperature should be at least 68 degrees, and if people feel cold they should put on another sweater or blanket. When the weather gets cold, he said, it is not the time "to try and save on your heating bills."

LOAD-DATE: January 19, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1994 The New York Times Company



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The New York Times

January 19, 1994, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

THE EARTHQUAKE: The Apartments;
With 16th Body Found, Grim Vigil Is Complete

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

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

LENGTH: 923 words

DATELINE: LOS ANGELES, Jan. 18

Most of them were elderly, and from the windows of their apartments, they liked to watch the bubbling stream in the courtyard and listen to its soothing whisper.
One was a retired plumber, a man so proud of his craft that he showed off his ancient union card whenever a maintenance man came around, and then tipped for the work. 
 Two were twins, women in their 70's, who greeted neighbors with the same refrain, "It's a beautiful day for shopping," rain or shine.
Another resident belonged to a barbershop quartet, a gregarious man with a baritone voice and a special fondness for "My Wild Irish Rose."
Survivors of the crumbled Northridge Meadows apartments stood outside the building today and looked around for these familiar faces. But they did not see them.
Rescuers removed a 16th body from the wreckage today and called a halt to the search of the imploded complex, where a first-floor ceiling of the wood and stucco building collapsed Monday and left only a crawl space of 18 inches in some places.
 
'No Other Victims'
 This was the place where Monday's earthquake, which registered 6.6 on the Richter scale of ground motion, took its greatest toll. And all of those who died in Northridge Meadows lived on the first floor, which was destroyed in a matter of seconds when the quake struck at 4:31 A.M. on Monday.
"We are confident there are no other victims in this building," said Keno De Varney, a battalion chief with the Los Angeles County Fire Department.
Most of the dead were elderly people, who lived on the first floor so they would not have to climb stairs. But the victims also included a teen-age boy and a man in his 20's.
The last victim, who was found early this morning by searchers using fiber-optic cameras, was described only as a middle-aged man who lived in apartment 10-A. In all, the dead included nine women and seven men.
After somehow escaping the rubble on Monday morning, Hyan Sook Lee stood in the midst of screaming sirens, waiting for her husband, Phil Soom, and their 14-year-old son, Howard, who was home from boarding school, to emerge, too. She stood beside an oak tree, waiting, watching, hoping.
Four hours later, a paramedic told her, "The boy is dead." She sobbed and shook with grief. And then came word of the final painful loss: her husband had also been killed.
 
An Anxious Wait
 In all, about 30 people were rescued from the apartment wreckage, according to officials. And some onlookers at the complex here in the San Fernando Valley, about 20 miles northwest of downtown, whose friends or relatives had not been found at shelters or hospitals, paced nervously on Reseda Street.  Above all, they hoped to learn that their loved ones had been among those saved.
"I'm looking for my wife's uncle," said Mike Karian, exhausted after a night without any sleep or any word.
Across the street from the tan-stucco ruins, Anat Laskier, a 35-year-old Hebrew teacher who lived in the complex, stood in a daze, clutching the hand of her 7-year-old daughter, who kept asking, "Mommy, those people died?"
Vanessa Owen peered at the gaping opening where a wall had been, and recalled an elderly neighbor. "I can see her smiling," she said. "I can't believe she's gone."
Francisco Pichreo, who knew some of the missing, began to speak and then fought back tears, shaking his head to say that he could not say anything.
Gustavo Garcia, a 27-year-old cook, whose boss, a restaurant manager, lived in the building, stood with arms folded, a look of defiant optimism in his eyes.
"I still hoping," he said. "He's my friend."
Jim Jordan, a former maintenance worker in the apartments, stared at the wreckage, where the roof of a three-story structure was now only two stories off the ground.
"There were some awfully nice people in there," said Mr. Jordan, 40. "I remember they always wanted to be able to hear the sound of the stream in the courtyard. It made it so peaceful."
 
A Helping Hand
 "A lot of them didn't get out much," he added. "And when you came to the door, you were treated like some long lost relative. They wanted you to sit down and talk. They wanted you to have a cookie."
Marco Palaez, a 33-year-old warehouse worker who wore a Desert Storm T-shirt, said that after the quake, he emerged from his second-floor apartment to hear screams and cries for help in the darkness.
"One guy was pushing his hand through the window," Mr. Palaez said. "I grabbed it and said, 'You're going to be all right man."
Reseda Street, usually a busy thoroughfare, was clogged with emergency vehicles. A National Guardsmen in camouflage fatigues stood brandishing a rifle, warning anyone from venturing too close.
A closed Chinese carry-out restaurant stood next to the apartment. Across the way was a closed Post Office. And a few blocks away, some students at California State University at Northridge, driven from their dormitories by the quake, were camping on a soccer field.
"We talk a lot in school about the homeless," said Maria Velasquez, who spent the night under a blanket and the stars. "It was all so abstract. But now I don't know where I'm going to stay myself."
Some of the survivors of the apartment complex's collapse were sent to a Red Cross shelter at nearby Birmingham High School, where people from throughout the San Fernando Valley who had lost their homes sat at cafeteria tables, waiting and worrying.
"We couldn't even find our hearing aides," said 79-year-old Bea Taylor, who sat alongside her 82-year-old husband, Clarence.

LOAD-DATE: January 19, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Tigran Daniyelyan, left, with a friend, salvaged a television from his Northridge Meadows apartment. (Agence France-Presse)

Copyright 1994 The New York Times Company



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The New York Times

January 23, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

CONNECTICUT GUIDE

BYLINE: By ELEANOR CHARLES

SECTION: Section 13CN; Page 19; Column 1; Connecticut Weekly Desk

LENGTH: 1031 words


BOLD BALLET
Premieres of ballets on the exploratory edge of dance will make up the Hartford Ballet program at The Bushnell in Hartford on Friday and Saturday at 8 P.M. 
 Kirk Peterson, the company's artistic director, has choreographed two of the pieces. "Ballades," a work for 13 dancers set to the music of Chopin, evokes a variety of moods in three parts based on the times of day: Midday, Dusk and Midnight. Five dancers are involved in "A Quicker Blood," Mr. Peterson's second work, an energetic piece inspired by the music of Hungary.
Morton Subotnick's "The Keys to Songs" provides the musical background to "Glass," choreographed by Monica Levy; and the final piece created by Choo-San Goh is titled "Birds of Paradise," accompanied by Alberto Ginastera's "Harp Concerto." It was staged by Janek Schergen, official interpreter of Goh's works, and the director of a dance foundation established in Goh's name after his death in 1987.
Tickets priced from $9.50 to $37.50 may be ordered by calling the Bushnell box office, 246-6807, or any Ticketmaster. Discounts are available to students and people 65 and older.
 
MEMORIALIZING JAZZ
 An installation by Stan Douglas, a Canadian artist, will be on view today through May 1 at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, and will no doubt provoke discussion.
It consists of two large video projections appearing simultaneously on an eight-foot screen in a darkened room. Commissioned in 1992 by the Pompidou Center in Paris, the work, titled "Hors-champs," memorializes a type of music known as free jazz, an improvisational form favored by expatriate black Americans in France in the late 60's and early 70's associated with the Communist movement there.
George Lewis, trombonist, Douglas Ewart, saxophonist, Kent Carter on bass and Oliver Johnson on drums are presented in black-and-white projections reminiscent of French documentary television of the period. The accompanying tapes play music including gospel, a 1965 work by Albert Ayler, fanfares and "La Marseillaise."
Andrea Miller-Keller, curator of contemporary art at the museum, will give a gallery talk on the installation on Tuesday at noon. The talk is free with museum admission of $5 for adults, $2 for students and elderly people. Children are admitted free and admission is free to everyone on Thursdays, and from 11 to 1 on Saturdays. The museum is open Tuesday through Sunday from 11 to 5. Call 278-2670 for more information.
 
HOPI CULTURE, ART
 The culture of the Hopi Indians will be the subject of a colloquium at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History in New Haven, scheduled from 10 A.M. to 4 P.M. on Saturday, with a film presentation on Sunday at 2 P.M.
A professor of anthropology at Yale and a curator at the Peabody, Michael D. Coe, will introduce the event on Saturday with an overview, "Hopi Traditions in a Changing World." Speakers throughout the day include Lydia L. Wyckoff, a curator of Native American Art at the Philbrook Museum of Art in Tulsa, Okla., and guest curator of the Peabody's current exhibition, "Design and World View: The Politics of Hopi Ceramics."
The director of the Hopi Cultural Preservation Office, Leigh Jenkins, will talk about "Anglo Exploitation and Hopi Factionalism" from his viewpoint as an insider; and a Hopi craftsman, M. Jenkins, will discuss the function and significance of pottery in the Hopi home. The making and marketing of Hopi pottery will be the topic of a talk by a prize-winning Hopi potter, Karen Kahe Charles.
A panel discussion involving all the speakers and demonstrations of coiled clay pot making, weaving and other Hopi crafts will fill the afternoon.
"Imagining Indians," Sunday's 90-minute film by a Hopi cinematographer, Victor Masayesva Jr., takes issue with commercial films dealing with Indian issues, including "Dances With Wolves."
The Peabody is located at 170 Whitney Avenue and admission to the colloquium events is free with museum admission of $4 for adults, $3 for people 65 and older, $2.50 for children 3 to 15. For more information call the InfoTape, 432-5050.
 
ALL ABOUT BETTE
 During a New York hotel strike in 1985, arrangements were made by a friend for Bette Davis to spend the night in the Weston home of Elizabeth Fuller. She stayed for a month, taking every opportunity between drags on her ever-present cigarette to criticize the house, the food and the decor, her hostess said.
But Ms. Fuller, a longtime fan of the actress, said she was awed, and disregarded the streams of invectives, basking instead in the mere presence of her idol.
Her month in the country with the screen star later inspired her to write a play called "Me and Jezebel," which she has performed in Westport and elsewhere in Connecticut as a one-woman show. A revival to be presented on Friday and Saturday at 8 P.M. in the Westport Arts Center has Randy Allen rather than Ms. Fuller portraying Miss Davis.
Mr. Allen's one-man shows in which he impersonates Bette Davis, Judy Garland, Liza Minnelli, Carol Channing, Marilyn Monroe and other female stars have been frequently shown on television.
Tickets are $10 and $15. Call 226-1806 for reservations or more information.
 
DANCE WINNERS
 Gus Solomons Jr., director of the Solomons Dance Company in New York City, was the judge in the Juror's Choice Dance Competition of New Dance New Haven 1993. Performances of the winning works will be given on Saturday at 5 P.M. and Sunday at 3 P.M. at Artspace, 70 Audubon Street, New Haven.
Mitzi Adams provided three works, titled "Sideshow," "Colors May Bleed" and "Judy's Nails," and Leslie Prodis choreographed a work whose title had not been confirmed. Performers in the Adams pieces will be Mindi McAlister, Paul Dennis and Penelope Wyler.
Willie Feuer and Susan Matheke are the choreographers for "Again Winter" and "Looking for Your Glasses." They will perform in "Again Winter," along with Sandra Kopell, Marianne Banar Fountain, Charlotte Gram and Tom Haskell.
A reception will follow the Saturday performance, for which tickets will be $30. Sunday tickets are $10. Call 772-2377 for reservations or more information.
   ELEANOR CHARLES

LOAD-DATE: January 23, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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The New York Times

January 23, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

TRAVEL ADVISORY: HOTELS;
Getting the Best Price

SECTION: Section 5; Page 3; Column 4; Travel Desk

LENGTH: 115 words

Though they don't always trumpet it, many hotel chains offer discounts, upgrades and other perks. One way to learn about deals is to call the hotel chain's 800 number. Or you can consult a new 40-page booklet, "The Hotel/Motel $ pecial Program and Di$ count Guide," that lists bargain offerings at more than 100 chains. Children accompanied by parents stay free of charge at Hampton Inns, for example. And at most Best Inns of America, local phone calls and evening coffee are free. Senior citizens, meanwhile, can get discounts almost anywhere -- although age requirements vary. 
 The guide costs $5.95, plus $1 postage, from Pilot Books, 103 Cooper Street, Babylon, N.Y. 11702.

LOAD-DATE: January 23, 1994

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January 23, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

THE NIGHT;
Scenes From a Sandbar

BYLINE: By Bob Morris

SECTION: Section 9; Page 3; Column 1; Styles of The Times

LENGTH: 1021 words

DATELINE: MIAMI BEACH, Jan. 21

This billion-dollar sandbar can appreciate a gold-digging seductress, and last Saturday night Eartha Kitt was working that side of her psyche for all it was worth.
For her final concert in the Naya Performing Arts Series, the limber diva slunk onto the stage of the Colony Theater in a tight money-green sequined gown that was breathtaking -- literally, by the looks of it. She dished in French. She sneered in Spanish. She flirted in Turkish. And in a nod to her role as Catwoman on "Batman" in the 60's, she let loose with a spine-straightening "meow." 
 "Go, girl!" a fan shouted as the orchestra vamped and she slowly sat down on a divan.
"Don't rush me," she growled back. With almost every song in her multilingual repertory about sex or money (or both), her performance sounded like one long, loud gimme that was both primal and Continental.
The instant the concert was over, however, Ms. Kitt, who was born in poverty, retired her venal outer diva for the more socially conscious diva within. And as she often does when she's asked (and sometimes when she isn't), she broke into her extensive repertory of political commentary.
"One of the problems with this country is that we're wasting the elderly," she said, having observed the youth-obsessed scene in Miami Beach. "Our old people have nothing to do and no reason for living. But nature wastes nothing, so why isn't their knowledge recycled into the children? To me, there's nothing more wonderful than an old person who loves children and wants to teach them."
Recalling a recent visit to New Zealand, where she witnessed Maori elders teaching in the schools, Ms. Kitt was inspired to expound on indigenous peoples. "In Australia, I'm always with the Aborigines, fighting for their land rights," she said. "It's just like here with the Indians. I'm part Cherokee, and what the Europeans did to my people -- uch! They gave us blankets and smallpox."
In 1968, at the peak of her career, she found herself holding forth against the Vietnam War in front of Lady Bird Johnson at a White House lunch. She was blacklisted as an entertainer in this country for years after that.
"A lot of politicians still ask for my opinions," Ms. Kitt said. "Ask me to lunch and I'll tell you what's going on in the world." Most likely, the meal would include courses on civil rights, sustainable agriculture and health care.
"I'm thinking of starting a camp in the Catskills with city kids growing their own food," she said. "We could get retired farmers to pass on their knowledge. You have to keep people involved! And don't ask the government to help in any fashion! Just do it and stop complaining about what the government isn't doing and start asking why we aren't doing things for ourselves."
Her daughter, Kitt Shapiro, 32, who is also her manager, was leaning against a mirror, marveling at her mother's energy. "She took three aerobics classes today," Ms. Shapiro said. "I took one. Then I took a nap."
 
Two Wigs, One Physics Lesson
 Tara Solomon, South Beach's youthful high priestess of party culture who writes her weekly "Queen of the Night" column for The Miami Herald using the royal "we," has the highest hairdo in town.
"I enhance my own hair with two wigs for extra height," Ms. Solomon said on Tuesday at her weekly "Martini Club" cocktail party, which is held at Allioli, a restaurant on Ocean Drive.
"I can get it on my head in about five minutes. That's important, because, as a working journalist, I have to get dressed fast. It's instant glamour, and it's very easy."
Usually, anyway.
"It did get stuck in my sunroof once," she said. "It became like Velcro, and I couldn't turn my head while I was trying to change lanes and I ended up bumping into another car."
Instant glamour can be dangerous.
 
Field Trip to Study the Natives
 Culture Clash, a three-man Hispanic comedy troupe from Los Angeles that has been on PBS, MTV and HBO, was in town to research a theatrical portrait of the city. Commissioned by the Miami Light Project, a local arts organization, it will be based on interviews with everyone from hipster Cubanos to farm workers, gospel singers, gay couples and hurricane survivors.
Over dinner on Tuesday, the trio, who'd already spent time with local Haitians and Bahamians, was scrutinizing Rhoda Levitt, the president of the Miami City Ballet. "I don't know what to say," Mrs. Levitt said.
"I wouldn't worry about it," said Richard Montoya, who was taking notes while his colleagues, Ric Salinas and Herbert Siguenza, looked at a Polaroid picture of Mrs. Levitt as if it were rare documentation of a tribeswoman from an uncharted island.
Mrs. Levitt then talked about Miami's exoticism, which fascinated the trio. "Santeria, voodoo, all that stuff's so everyday," she said. "I thought it would be really different for you to be with me, a nice middle-class Jewish lady."
Mr. Montoya put his arm around her. "I'm actually a Jewish boy trapped in a Santeria body," he said. "You should have seen my bar mitzvah."
 
Dull Is Just Fine, Thank You
 South Beach was far quieter this week than it seemed a year ago. It was so quiet that you could hear the squeaking wheelchairs of elderly men as they wheeled home from end-of-Sabbath services at the dilapidated Congregation Beth Jacob, just a block from the slickly renovated Pommier Models building. So quiet that on Tuesday night, you could hear the Century Hotel's music blasting onto the street as it tried to pull in diners with the go-go dancers it had imposed on its otherwise stark decor. So quiet that on Ocean Drive, with its hotels and cafes lit up and looking like a row of stood-up homecoming queens on prom night, you could hear the guard in front of Gianni Versace's empty villa yawning.
By Wednesday, you could almost hear all the arrogant young waiters with better careers pending practice being nice to the bigshots who'd be arriving for the National Association of Television Program Executives convention. One thing you couldn't hear, despite the cool weather and clouds, were people wishing they were in New York or Los Angeles.

LOAD-DATE: January 23, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Eartha Kitt, in white and seated in booth, is entertained at a dinner after her show. (Sharon Gurman Socol for The New York Times)

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The New York Times

January 26, 1994, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Milk Helps to Combat Bone Loss From Coffee

SECTION: Section C; Page 12; Column 4; National Desk; Health Page

LENGTH: 479 words

WOMEN who drink at least one glass of milk each day throughout their adult lives can largely counter the bone-thinning effects of a lifetime of coffee drinking, according to a new study of 980 women past menopause.
The study, conducted by Dr. Elizabeth Barrett-Connor and colleagues at the University of California at San Diego, showed that in women who do not drink milk, a lifetime habit of drinking as little as two cups a day of coffee containing caffeine results in a significant decline in bone density as they get older. 
 Such a decline, the hallmark of osteoporosis, which is epidemic among older women, can place them at risk of suffering debilitating and sometimes life-threatening fractures. Previous studies involving many thousands of women have linked coffee drinking to an increased risk of hip fractures.
The new finding, published in today's issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association, also strongly suggests that increasing calcium intake through supplements in middle age or beyond is not adequate to offset the bone loss induced by a lifetime of coffee drinking. Rather, it appears that the effects of coffee drinking on bone must be countered by appropriate calcium intake throughout life.
Because relatively few women in the study consumed only decaffeinated coffee, the researchers were unable to say whether the bone effects they observed were a result of coffee itself or the caffeine in coffee. Most of the participants who consumed decaffeinated coffee had been or were currently also regular consumers of coffee containing caffeine.
The researchers emphasized that their finding did not mean that a single glass of milk each day was sufficient to protect one's bones. Eight ounces of milk supplies only about one-third of the daily recommended intake of calcium for adults. Nor does the study provide guidance as to how much milk might be needed to counter the bone loss caused by coffee intake well above two cups a day. In general the researchers found that the more coffee women drank, the less milk they consumed.
The study was done by asking the participants to recall their coffee- and milk-drinking habits throughout their adult lives. No assessment was made of other caffeine-containing beverages, like tea or soft drinks, that the women might have consumed; nor did the study consider other dietary sources of calcium or the milk they might have added to their coffee.
The study did not consider the effects coffee might have on bone-thinning in men, who are less susceptible to osteoporosis than are women.
The research is part of a continuing assessment of heart and other chronic diseases in the upper-middle-class community of Rancho Bernardo, Calif., supported by the National Institute on Aging. The coffee study was partly financed by an unrestricted grant from the National Coffee Association.

LOAD-DATE: February 4, 1994

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January 28, 1994, Friday, Late Edition - Final

Critic's Notebook;
Sundance: Some Surprises Amid the Frivolity

BYLINE: By CARYN JAMES,  Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section C; Page 7; Column 1; Weekend Desk

LENGTH: 1248 words

DATELINE: PARK CITY, Utah, Jan. 27

Just when you think the show-biz mania at the Sundance Film Festival can't get more intense, when it seems that every other person on Main Street is carrying a cellular phone, the atmosphere turns loopier. Now people are making their cellular power calls from their seats in the movie theaters. "I will talk to them," a young woman promised her office minutes before a 9:30 screening the other morning. "I'll deal with it." The problem had to do with underlings who were letting too many rotten scripts move up the chain.
It's easy to roll your eyes at this behavior, and there has been more of it since the Hollywood contingent arrived in a swarm on Wednesday, midway through this 10-day festival. But it's also easy to sympathize with the poor readers who can't tell a good script from a bad. One of the most revealing, eloquent and well-received films at the festival, a documentary about two elderly women called "Martha and Ethel," still sounds awful on paper. 
 The film, by Jyll Johnstone and Barbara Ettinger, is about the two nannies who raised them. Martha, a German refugee, worked for the Johnstones for 30 years, then retired to an apartment in Queens. Ethel, a black woman who brought up the Ettinger children, still lives with Mrs. Ettinger. This idea sounded so bad on paper that the film makers applied for more than 50 grants to help with the budget and were turned down every time.
But what sounds like a narrow view of a privileged world is ambitious and emotionally deep. An affectionate portrait of two completely different women -- the stern, well-meaning Martha and the loving, self-assured Ethel -- it deftly becomes a history of social change over 40 years, and a meditation on motherhood and family. Martha and Ethel themselves, interviewed in their late 80's, are such rich screen presences that one viewer asked, in a question-and-answer session with the film makers here: "Does Ethel have an agent yet?"
Ms. Johnstone, a former actress, and Ms. Ettinger, a former photographer, may be first-time film makers, but they are not naifs. They were smart enough to get good advice. "Everyone said if we were going to Sundance we should get a publicist because we don't know anything about the business," Ms. Johnstone said. There is no better Sundance tone: new but learning fast, and adjusting to a dream ending. Just before the film arrived at the festival, Sony Pictures Classics bought it, and will open it in theaters later this year. The only problem with the film is its title, which brings to mind Lucy and Ethel. Martha and Ethel have their comic moments, but they are far less familiar.
Among the best films at this festival, many come from unexpected sources. "The Last Supper," the short that precedes "Martha and Ethel," is the mordant story of a little girl who pilfers a forbidden object from her neighbor's refrigerator and shrewdly uses it to scare off her mother's boyfriend. It is directed with flair and authority by Daryl Hannah, of "Splash" and tabloid fame.
The dramatic competition was once the most talked-about part of the Sundance festival. No more. A glance at some of the titles suggests why. How can you tell "Fun" from "Fresh" from "Floundering"? What's the difference between "Risk" and "Grief"? Try to remember that "Blessing" is about a dysfunctional farm family, "Spanking the Monkey" about incest, and "Clean, Shaven" about a schizophrenic wanted for murder. Not that they aren't sincere. It's just that so many seem familiar; so many are part art, part Oprah.
"Fun," the story of two abused teen-age girls who meet, find that they are soulmates, and murder an old woman as a lark, plays like a high-school version of "Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer." The direction, by Rafal Zielinski, grabs viewers. The performances by the young women (Renee Humphrey and Alicia Witt) are viscerally strong. But the shallow psychology of "Fun" is finally as disturbing as its technique is powerful.
The extremely violent "Clean, Shaven," deserves its reputation as the hardest film at the festival to sit through (though you could argue for hours about whether it is more gruesome than "Reservoir Dogs," which was shown here two years ago). When the writer and director, Lodge H. Kerrigan, assumes the persepective of his schizophrenic character -- with buzzing noises replacing most of the dialogue -- the film is impressive. When he leaves that character and follows the detective on the case, the film's awkwardness is painful. This is the kind of portentous film in which the camera shows a close-up of milk being poured into a cup of coffee, followed by a close-up of sugar being poured into the cup of coffee.
"Clerks" is one of the few films in the competition that won't send viewers out of the theater in tears or with their stomachs churning, which is only part of the reason for its popularity here. It is also extremely funny and unpretentious. This film comes with such a pre-packaged Sundance story that the background almost works against it. The writer and director, Kevin Smith, is a 23-year-old clerk in a New Jersey convenience store, who insists he is going back to work there on Monday. Really.
He shot this black-and-white film for just over $27,000. It is the meandering, irreverent story of a convenience-store clerk named Dante and his friend Randel, who works in the video store next door. They are having a bad day; creating a disaster at a funeral home is not even the worst of it.
The film maker already seems in control of his camera and his material. The acting (some by amateurs) is much more natural and convincing than in most no-budget films. "Clerks" has been invited to the New Directors/New Films festival at the Museum of Modern Art this spring, which is a good indication that if you want to buy milk from Kevin Smith you better move fast.
Because many of the dramatic-competition films are fledgling and uneven, the talked-about films here are often in the documentary competition or out-of-competition programs.
"Cronos," a Mexican film by a first-time director, Guillermo del Toro, is the stylishly told story of an accidental vampire and the search for eternal life. It has strong cult-film possibilities and will be released in April by October Films.
"Naked in New York" is a first film with unusual panache. Eric Stoltz gives an engaging performance as a 25-year-old playwright as muddled as any early Woody Allen character. The director, Dan Algrant, was a student of Martin Scorsese at Columbia University. Mr. Scorsese, the film's executive producer, and Frederick Zollo, its producer, helped fill the movie with cameos that make it seem like a junior New York version of "The Player" (released by the same company, Fine Line). The cameos by Richard Price, Ariel Dorfman, William Styron, Eric Bogosian and others are fun but overdone. No first director should seem that well connected; it could distract attention from his own comic flair.
The film also includes a small acting role by the great director Arthur Penn, who is coincidentally the subject of a tribute at the festival this year. For all its show-business slickness, sometimes there is an air of purity at Sundance. Mr. Penn, whose films include "Bonnie and Clyde" and "Little Big Man," is regarded here with great warmth and a touch of awe. Ordinary fans and many film makers turned up to hear a casual "Conversation With Arthur Penn." There was not a cellular phone evident in the room.

LOAD-DATE: January 28, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photos: Martha Kniefel, left, and Ethel Edwards in a scene from Barbara Ettinger and Jyll Johnstone's film "Martha and Ethel." (Stephanie Berger/Sony Classics Pictures); Renee Humphrey, left, and Alicia Witt in Rafal Zielinski's film "Fun." (Rafal Zielinski)

TYPE: Review

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The New York Times

January 30, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

POSTINGS: 199-Bed Bronx Nursing Home;
St. Barnabas Expands

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

LENGTH: 181 words

A $35 million, 199-bed, seven-story nursing home specializing in the care of patients with AIDS or tuberculosis, as well as of elderly people requiring long-term care, is to open on March 1 in the Bronx.
The St. Barnabas Nursing Home, on the campus of St. Barnabas Hospital at East 183d Street and Third Avenue, is connected to the fourth floor of the hospital by an enclosed bridge. 
 Dr. Ronald Gade, president of St. Barnabas, said the second through fourth floors, with 100 beds, would be used by AIDS and tuberculosis patients. The top three floors are to be used for geriatric care. Each floor is to have a dining room and a recreation room with television.
An adult day-care program is to be established in the nursing home for residents of the neighborhood who lack a source of primary care.
The building was designed by Perkins Geddis Eastman Architects and Davis, Brody and Associates.
St. Barnabas is a 458-bed voluntary acute-care teaching hospital affiliated with the New York College of Osteopathic Medicine and the New York Hospital/Cornell Medical Center.

LOAD-DATE: January 30, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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The New York Times

January 30, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Conversations/Patrick T. Murphy;
A Defender of Chicago's Children Refuses to Be Polite About Abuse

BYLINE: By SUSAN CHIRA

SECTION: Section 4; Page 7; Column 1; Week in Review Desk

LENGTH: 1230 words

DATELINE: CHICAGO

IT is impossible in this city to be neutral about Patrick T. Murphy. Call him a passionate and dedicated children's advocate, who arrives at his office every morning by 5:30 A.M. to call, write, yell, swear and sue anyone from incompetent bureaucrats to abusive parents. Or call him a polarizing figure whose yen for confrontation and intemperate grandstanding sometimes prolong the very cases he is working to resolve.
He is so driven by outrage that he dismisses diplomacy as a tactic of those who would sacrifice children's best interests. "Our job is to confront people on behalf of my clients," he said. "My clients are not the type you negotiate on behalf of because they're getting screwed. And if you stick them with D.C.F.S. [the state Department of Children and Family Services], it gets even worse. Will the kid go through 12 foster homes? Get beat up and maybe raped?" 
 Mr. Murphy, the Cook County Public Guardian, represents abused and neglected children, as well as senile or disabled elderly people. The 54-year-old lawyer made headlines last month when he argued, on behalf of a nine-month-old fetus, that a mother should be ordered to have a Caesarean because doctors believed the fetus was being deprived of oxygen and otherwise would die or suffer brain damage. The court ruled against him, and the baby was born alive in a normal delivery.
The case was actually a departure for Mr. Murphy, whose daily bread is the thousands of children caught in the morass of the child welfare system, failed just as badly by the people who are supposed to help them as they have been failed by their parents.
He has repeatedly sued the state's child welfare agency, winning more than $1 million on charges that children have been attacked while in the state's emergency shelters, that the agency arbitrarily divides siblings when it places them in foster homes, and that it keeps children with parents who torture or rape them. He won a landmark fathers' rights case, Stanley v. Illinois, in the United States Supreme Court in 1972.
Over the years, he has kept up with some of the children he championed -- one of them still sends him Father's Day cards. But time has taught him to curb his expectations. "What you learn is that you're not going to save anyone's life," he said. "You're not going to make vast changes. But if you can stop the downward slide . . ."
 
Liberal 'Failures'
 He talks in a staccato burst of words, with generous sprinklings of profanity and scorn for those he sees as villains. Consumed by the brutalities he encounters every day, he has no time for niceties. When a reporter suggested meeting for breakfast, he said he'd rather just talk at the office.
There, sitting in front of a wall of photographs, caricatures and awards, he held forth on how conditions for poor children have steadily deteriorated in his nearly 30 years of work. He started his career as a state's attorney in 1964, but grew discouraged and opted for the Peace Corps. In 1967, he began working as a legal services lawyer. He was appointed public guardian in 1978, responsible at first for helping elderly people who were being abused by their relatives or in state institutions and later, in 1987, for neglected or abused children.
When he started out more than 25 years ago, there were about 4,000 abuse and neglect cases in juvenile court a year. Now there are more than 30,000. "I'm on my third generation of welfare families since 1967," he said. "The programs we developed to cure the problem made it worse. Liberals are afraid to come to grips with their failures. We cannot give people money and services without demanding something in return."
This is the crux of his current crusade, an attack on family preservation programs. These programs, the darling of some social welfare agencies, provide such services as transportation and intensive social work to families in danger of having children removed. Mr. Murphy derides this as protecting abusive parents from the state, rather than children from abusive parents.
Whenever possible, Mr. Murphy said, children and parents should stay together; it is just that the state often does such a bad job of screening. "Take the depressed parent who wakes up at 25 with four kids," he said. "The crack vials are up to the ceiling. The kids are filthy. There are rats, cats, elephants in the place. Everyone at school makes fun of the kids because they stink. But the kids down deep love that mother." She is not an abuser and might be helped by intervention.
But his critics say that he tends to divide the world into bad mothers and good kids, and sees his job as keeping them apart.
He is ever ready with grisly stories. There is the mother who did not vaccinate her child for measles. The child lost three fingers and his eyesight. She never visited him in the hospital. Or the mother who visited her children six times in a year, ostensibly because she had to change buses three times to get to their foster home. "Most parents would climb over a mountain of glass barefoot to see their kids," he said. "Talk about a patriarchal racist attitude. The mentality is 'these people,' meaning in Chicago black people, are like children. We know what's best for them. We accept less from them. We expect less of their children."
 
Defending a Fetus
He broke off to answer a call from his wife, who put his two sons on the phone for his daily before-school chat. "How's my boy?" he said. "What are you doing after school today? Don't forget to exercise. O.K., kid. How's my boy? You have any tests today? Science? Good luck." He leaves before they wake up so that he can put in a 12-hour day and still get home for dinner.
To his adversaries, Mr. Murphy's blunt talk is sometimes offensive. In October, a coalition of private child welfare agencies called on Cook County's Chief Judge to reprimand him for his language during a fight over a bill to curb family preservation programs. He is unapologetic about accusations that he used an obscenity during a conversation with a Catholic Charities bureaucrat. "This wasn't Mother Teresa I was talking to," he said. "I also called them vultures and whores. My language probably isn't the best. But this is an industry. They shouldn't hide behind religion."
Mr. Murphy says he usually regrets it when he is not belligerent enough. This fall he went along with a state agency's recommendation to return a 3-year-old boy to an abusive mother. She later hanged the child.
When he agreed to be the court-appointed lawyer for the fetus in the Caesarean case, feminists attacked him for interfering with a mother's right to control her own body. If he had won, they argued, anti-abortion groups might claim the right to represent younger fetuses and sue to prevent abortions.
"I do agree with the people who argued there is a slippery down slide to the case," he said, "but does the mother have the right to abuse the child in the womb? My initial reaction was to refuse the appointment. But when I started to think about it, we see hundreds of cases in a year with kids coming in heroin- or coke-addicted because moms were taking drugs."
Criticism mostly seems to stiffen his resolve. "My feeling is I'm going to do what I'm going to do," he said, visibly impatient to get back to work. "If you don't like it, you can fire me tomorrow."

LOAD-DATE: January 30, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Patrick T. Murphy in his Chicago office. (Ralf-Finn Hestoft/Saba for The New York Times)

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The New York Times

January 30, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

TRAVEL ADVISORY;
Recalling a World's Fair

SECTION: Section 5; Page 3; Column 5; Travel Desk

LENGTH: 261 words

A century ago, more than 200 structures were built in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park for the California Midwinter International Exposition, which drew 1.5 million visitors in just over five months. After the event, one building was allowed to remain, eventually becoming the M. H. de Young Memorial Museum, which is celebrating the fair's centennial with a special exhibition scheduled to open Jan. 27.
In the midst of a severe recession in 1894, the world's fair was orchestrated by the museum's namesake, M. H. de Young, who was inspired by the gargantuan World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago the year before. The San Francisco and Chicago expositions were among the few world's fairs to turn a profit since the tradition began in London in 1851. 
 On view at the museum through April 17 will be objects from its charter collection, including Greek, Egyptian and Roman antiquities, wood carvings from the South Sea Islands, 19th-century ladies' fans, bronzes by Troubetzkoy and Makovsky's painting "The Russian Bride's Attire." In addition to banners, medals and other memorabilia, some 40 folio-sized photographs of the fair taken by the exposition photographer Isaiah West Taber will be on display.
The museum is open Wednesday through Sunday, 10 A.M. to 5 P.M. On the first Wednesday of every month, the museum remains open until 8:45 P.M. Admission is $5, $3 for senior citizens and children 12 to 17, and free for 11 and under. Information: M. H. de Young Memorial Museum, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, Calif. 94118, (415) 863-3330.

LOAD-DATE: January 30, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: The Grand Court, San Francisco, 1894. (The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco

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The New York Times

January 30, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Tapping Home Equity to Cushion Old Age

BYLINE: By PETER PASSELL

SECTION: Section 10; Page 1; Column 4; Real Estate Desk

LENGTH: 2581 words

BERNICE STUART, a Minneapolis suburbanite, worked hard most of her life and still didn't know how she was going to make ends meet when she retired in 1988 at the age of 73. Widowed when her only child was just a year old, Mrs. Stuart "didn't owe anybody a dime" and had managed to put aside savings in an I.R.A. But the retirement money all went to nurse her mother through a final illness, leaving her with little apart from Social Security.
"The handwriting was on the wall," Mrs. Stuart recalls: She would have to sell her three-bedroom house and move into an apartment that lacked space to put up her beloved nieces and nephews. 
 But the story has a happy ending. In 1991 she obtained through a local mortgage broker a $40,000 line of credit, which she uses to cover property taxes and insurance along with the unexpected expenses that wreak havoc on the budgets of those living on modest fixed incomes.
Like the home-equity loans taken out by millions of other Americans, this line of credit was backed by the value of a house. But there is one big difference: Mrs. Stuart is not obligated to pay back a dime until she moves.
Mrs. Stuart is one of a few thousand Americans who have borrowed through an insured "reverse mortgage," the broad term for a loan agreement that gives the elderly a way to tap the equity in their houses without worrying that the sheriff will show up some day with an eviction notice.
Reverse mortages have had a hard start, never quite making the widely anticipated splash. That may be about to change, however, as more lenders enter the field and terms become more flexible. At the moment, it is possible to find a reverse-mortgage lender in all but a handful of states. Anyone who is over the age of 62 and owes little or nothing on his or her home is eligible.
But if reverse mortgages are as good as they sound -- if they are indeed the best thing to happen to older homeowning Americans since the invention of the early-bird special -- why have so few people made use of them? And if reverse mortgages represent a lucrative and nearly virgin trillion-dollar market for lenders, why has the otherwise go-go financial-services industry generally ignored them?
One reason is that the terms of a reverse mortgage are harder to understand than those of a conventional loan. And in many cases they may simply be beyond the comprehension of the older retirees in the best position to make use of them.
"It is very expensive to identify and gain the confidence of customers," says William Texido, president of the San Francisco-based Providential Corporation, which is one of the very few specialized lenders that makes reverse-mortgage loans without financial backing from the Federal Government.
Another is that an insured reverse mortgage is neither a straightforward loan agreement backed by real estate nor a simple life insurance policy or annuity funded with cash. This means that both banks and insurance companies have to stretch their expertise beyond traditional boundaries to design and market the product, an exercise that is bound to be expensive and risky for the pioneers.
"Everyone is waiting for everyone else," laments Mr. Texido.
By the same token, reverse-mortgage loans raise eyebrows at government agencies that were caught looking the other way when savings and loans collapsed in the late 80's.
"There is folklore that some banks tried to get into the market but were turned down by their regulators because banks are prohibited from underwriting life insurance," notes David S. Bizer, formerly an economist with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
This dam may be about to burst, however. Congress has expanded the number of reverse mortgages it is prepared to have the F.H.A. guarantee, and several private financial institutions are now taking a fresh look at their own prospects.
Equally important, suggests Ken Scholen, head of the nonprofit National Center for Home Equity Conversion, lenders in the Federal program are making good use of their limited experience, learning to write reverse-mortgage agreements at lower costs and offering the more flexible terms that borrowers seem to crave.
THE idea of allowing house-rich, cash-poor older Americans to have their cake and eat it too is not new. The first reverse-mortgage loan was made in 1961 by a little savings and loan in Portland, Me. And just two years later the State of Oregon began allowing the elderly to defer property-tax payments, using public-employee retirement funds to finance the loans.
But the market has sputtered and popped ever since, with a handful of private companies leaving most of the action to state and local agencies that make loans to needy homeowning elderly people solely to cover property taxes and critical repairs. As of 1991, 143,000 of these public-sector loans had been made -- a seemingly impressive number until it is realized that the total amount of housing equity encumbered by the loans was just $720 million.
Much of what is still the infant reverse-mortgage market dates from 1989, when the first were made under a Federal pilot program that insured their repayment. To date some 5,500 of these Home Equity Conservation Mortgages, with a maximum value of $560 million, have been created, and the Federal Housing Administration has been authorized to guarantee a total of 25,000 through September 1995.
The nuts and bolts of the federally insured program are relatively simple. Banks, savings and loans, mortgage brokers and other finance companies make the loans, just as they offer F.H.A.-insured conventional mortgages.
To get past the preliminaries, applicants must agree to accept mortgage counseling from a federally approved counselor -- typically a nonprofit social service agency specializing in housing and/or the elderly.
"We encourage them to bring a friend, attorney, child, someone who will help them make the decision," says Carol Greifer, the head of Counseling for Home Equity Conversion, a state-financed service for Nassau County.
This protects the borrower: "Seniors are vulnerable," Mrs. Greifer emphasizes. It also shields the lender from later claims of fraud by disappointed heirs.
Houses of any value can be used as loan collateral. But the amount of equity backing a reverse mortgage is limited to the maximum the Federal Housing Administration can insure, locality by locality. This maximum ranges from $67,500 in most rural areas to $151,725 in the highest-cost housing markets. And the largest lump sum that can actually be borrowed is considerably less than this maximum claim against equity since the debt keeps rising as interest accumulates until the borrower leaves the house.
The interest terms on F.H.A.-insured reverse mortgages are negotiated between the lender and borrower. Only adjustable-rate mortgages linked to United States Treasury rates are currently available, however. This is about the same rate as on a conventional self-liquidating mortgage.
Once in place, an F.H.A.-insured reverse mortgage can be tapped in a host of ways. The simplest, and probably the most popular, is a line of credit like the one created for Mrs. Stuart. Alternatively, a borrower can opt for a monthly payment for a fixed term -- say 10 years. Or the borrower can choose the "tenure" option, which sets a fixed monthly payment as long as the borrower occupies the home.
F.H.A.-insured reverse mortgages are flexible. For a minimal fee, the borrower can change from one option to another. It is even possible to mix and match, combining a line of credit with a regular monthly term or tenure payment. And in no circumstance is repayment due before the departure of the resident. That guarantee applies to couples as well as to individuals.
Perhaps this all sounds too good to be true, And for some potential borrowers it is. One catch is that equity spent is equity spent.
"I tell them you can only go to the well once," says Mrs. Greifer.
AFTER the borrower moves or dies, the accumulated debt -- the lender's cash outlays, plus interest, insurance and any deferred mortgage closing fees -- comes due. Thus someone counting on home equity to cover, say, nursing-home costs of a spouse or to finance the education of a grandchild must choose among priorities. If the owner dies, the estate sells the house and must pay the money owed to the lender before distributing whatever remains to the heirs.
By the same token, it should not be forgotten that lenders are in the reverse-mortgage business to make a profit and the F.H.A.'s insurance program is meant to be self-financing. Thus borrowers must expect to pay a hefty origination fee ("points"), closing costs and the mortgage-insurance premium, along with interest.
Mr. Scholen of the National Center for Home Equity Conversion notes that these costs are generally no greater than those associated with a conventional F.H.A.-insured home mortgage. But many people who borrow against their homes don't need insurance to get a mortgage on good terms. And even at the F.H.A.'s standard rates, the insurance premiums are not trivial: A flat 2 percent of the maximum claim amount is charged when the mortgage is granted, along with another half-percent annually on the loan balance. Neither, of course, is actually collected until the entire loan is due.
A third, not-so-obvious drawback to F.H.A.-insured reverse mortgages is the cap on the maximum claim amount. For those with houses appraised at less than the F.H.A. maximums, this does not matter. But in other, not-so-rare circumstances, the cap can pinch -- especially where the borrower is still relatively young.
Take the hypothetical case of a 65-year-old with a very valuable house, who is nonetheless limited by F.H.A. rules to a maximum claim amount of $151,725. If he (more typically, she) wants to draw a regular sum as long as he stays in the house, the fixed monthly payment, at rates authorized by the F.H.A., will be just $402. A 75-year-old would collect more, receiving $584 a month because he has a shorter life expectancy. But only a relatively old borrower could cash in quickly: an 80-year-old with the same amount of housing equity would receive $723 a month.
THE typically modest payout on federally insured reverse mortgages goes a long way toward explaining the lure of privately insured ones. Robert and Mary Wilson of Ventura, Calif., for example, "had enough to get along" from savings and Social Security.
But in 1991 they opted to borrow against the $225,000 in equity on their house, making it possible for them to receive $927 a month from Providential as long as either of them lived there. The $927 figure was based on Mrs. Wilson's age, 74. If she had been as old as her husband (85) they could have borrowed considerably more.
Thus far, Providential makes loans only in California, where housing prices are exceptionally high and the property tax laws give homeowners enormous incentives to borrow against their equity rather than selling. Moreover, limited access to capital has prevented the company from marketing more aggressively: Through 1992, the company issued just a shade more than 1,000 reverse mortgages, virtually all of which were "tenure" mortgages with lifetime monthly payouts.
Both the availability and flexibility of reverse mortgages are likely to improve, however, and soon, predicts Mr. Scholen. For one thing, mortgage brokers are beginning to think of F.H.A.-insured mortgages as a serious source of profit. Several are offering reverse mortgages in several states, thereby cutting costs and gaining experience in marketing. Among them are Directors Mortgage of Riverside, Calif., ARCS Mortgage of Calabasas, Calif., Amerifirst Mortgage of Hempstead, L.I., and International Mortgage of Owings Mills, Md.
For another, new players are arriving on the scene with competitive privately insured products. Two lenders, Transamerica HomeFirst of San Francisco and Freedom Home Equity Partners of Irvine, Calif., are offering reverse mortgages in several states. And a third, the giant Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) is widely expected to issue its own next year.
Fannie Mae already plays an important, if passive, role in reverse mortgages, buying all the F.H.A.-insured mortgages issued by banks and brokers. But the more active role it is contemplating could prove the breakthrough Mr. Scholen has been waiting for.
WHILE Fannie Mae will not confirm it, there is little doubt that its reverse mortgage would carry a considerably higher insurance cap than the F.H.A. limit. Nor is there much doubt that the giant mortgage broker and investor would be able to match the flexibility of the F.H.A. product, providing lines of credit as well as term and tenure mortgages.
What's more, Fannie Mae has a wide network of banks and other financial agents that are eager to serve as its retailers. And last but not least, Fannie Mae has deep pockets.
"It wouldn't be difficult to fund very large numbers" of reverse mortgages, says Larry Dale, executive director of Fannie Mae's Housing Impact Division.
Oddly, perhaps, the question about reverse mortgages that has gotten the least attention is whether easy access to reverse mortgages is a good thing -- whether reverse mortgages serve broader social interests.
At first look, the answer seems an obvious yes. Society's welfare, after all, is the sum of individuals' interests. And "in a well-planned world," notes Paul Samuelson, the Nobel-prize winning economist, "a lot of people would like to die exactly broke."
But on second look, the answer is more elusive. Americans already save far less than their counterparts in Europe and Asia. If what Mr. Samuelson calls the "inadvertent savings" of the elderly were sharply reduced, the national savings rate would be even lower.
What's good for the elderly may not be good for their grandchildren.
 
 
 
HELPFUL NUMBERS
 Following are sources of further information on reverse mortgages:
 
NEW YORK
Federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, Mortgage Credit Unit (for names of all certified counseling agencies in New York providing reverse-mortgage counseling): (212) 264-0871,
 
 LONG ISLAND
Family Service Association of Nassau County, (516) 485-5600.
Suffolk County Department of the Aging, Julia Titus, (516) 853-3626.
 
 CONNECTICUT
Federal Department of Housing and Urban Development: (203) 240-4582.
Consumer Credit Counseling Service of Connecticut, (203) 233-4471.
 
 NEW JERSEY
Federal Department of Housing and Urban Development: (201) 622-7900, ext. 3417
David M. Stephens, Community Outreach Coordinator, Urban League of Essex County, N.J., (201) 746-7725.
The Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) supplies an information pamphlet on F.H.A.-insured reverse mortgages and a list of F.H.A.-insured lenders. There is no charge. Call (800) 7-FANNIE.
The American Association of Retired Persons offers an extensive list of reverse-mortgage lenders (including privately insured lenders), along with agencies in many states that provide counseling services to prospective borrowers. Call (202) 434-6030
The National Center for Home Equity Conversion publishes an easily understood nuts-and-bolts guide to reverse mortgages called "Retirement Income on the House" It costs $24.95. Write National Center for Home Equity Conversion, 7373 147th St. West, Suite 115, Apple Valley, Minn. 55124.

LOAD-DATE: January 30, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photos: A Retiree Taps The Value of Her Home -- Bernice Stuart at home in Minneapolis. She has been able to use the equity on her three-bedroom house by taking out a $40,000 reverse mortgage in the form of a $40,000 line of credit. (Steve Woit for The New York Times)(pg. 1); Carol Greifer counsels reverse-mortgage seekers in Nassau County. (William E. Sauro/The New York Times)(pg. 8)
 
Chart: "How a Reverse Mortgage Works" lists how a reverse mortgage works. (pg. 1)

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January 30, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final
Correction Appended

Tenant Rift Roils Calm In Gramercy

BYLINE: By SHAWN G. KENNEDY

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

LENGTH: 724 words

Gramercy Park, an oasis of privilege and pride on Manhattan's East Side, has been long cherished for its beauty and serenity.
 But behind the stately facade of 15 Gramercy Park South the atmosphere is anything but serene: a long dispute between factions at the National Arts Club has landed in court. Seven club members who occupy stunning duplex apartments in the club's studio building are facing eviction. 
The club was founded in 1898 by Stanford White, Henry Clay Frick and other distinguished New Yorkers, to support and encourage artists and artistic endeavors.
 The residents facing eviction contend in court papers that the move is retaliation for their opposition to the club's position in a rent-stabilization case. In that case, the club sought to exempt the building's 37 apartments from rent-stabilization rules, and the lawsuit says tenants who objected are now being told to leave. Some tenants are also part of a group of members suing in court to have club financial records and the membership list opened.
 
Disloyalty Alleged
 The club president, O. Aldon James Jr., will not say exactly why these tenants, who do not have leases, are being evicted, and he declined to be interviewed for attribution. But correspondence from him to members indicates that he found the challenge on rent regulation a particularly egregious display of disloyalty. Moreover, the club administration has asserted in court that if the tenants get rent-stabilization protection, a successful rent-overcharge complaint or other claim could ruin the 96-year-old club.
 Unlike most landlord-tenant disputes, which usually center on rent matters or conduct, the issue here is not whether the tenants have been responsible. Now the court, in this case New York State Supreme Court, is being asked to decide which aspects of the New York State real property law take precedent in this matter.
 Lawyers for the National Arts Club hold that the club, as the landlord, has the right to terminate month-to-month tenancies with 30 days' notice, without giving reason. The plaintiffs' lawyers have argued that another section of property law prohibits landlords from evicting tenants in retaliation for "good faith" complaints to proper authorities concerning their tenancies.
 
Formal Tie Sought
 "We are only trying to formalize our right to keep our apartments," said William Mayer, a 68-year-old composer who has lived in Studio House, as the residence is known, with his wife, Meredith, for more than 20 years. In a court affidavit, Mr. Mayer says that most of the tenants facing eviction are senior citizens and that one is undergoing chemotherapy.
 At stake are coveted quarters indeed. Many club apartments are duplexes with soaring two-story living rooms and bedrooms off second-level mezzanines. Most have at least one fireplace and some have eat-in kitchens.
 By Gramercy Park standards, rents on some units are modest. The Mayers, for example, pay $1,385 for a two-bedroom apartment. But one resident threatened with eviction is paying nearly $3,200 a month for a large one-bedroom apartment.
 
Battle Began in '83
 The current unpleasantness started in 1983, when a judge hearing a rent dispute with a former tenant ruled that the apartments were protected by rent stabilization rules. These state-mandated rules cover such things as the amount landlords can increase rents, and building maintenance standards. In 1989 the club went back to court to challenge that decision.
 "That made us nervous," said Tony Zwicker, an arts book dealer who has lived in the club residence for 30 years.
 The court referred the matter to the state Division of Housing and Community Renewal, which ruled in the club's favor in December 1991 on the grounds that it was a charitable and educational institution and that residency in its apartments was open only to club members.
 Some tenants decided to sign new nonstabilized leases offered by the club, but others, including the Mayers and Ms. Zwicker, pressed on with their rent status case with the state agency and then in Supreme Court. On Dec. 10, a judge dismissed the cases, and within a week the club served the plaintiffs with eviction notices. On Thursday, lawyers for five of the tenants filed in Supreme Court to have the evictions stopped.

LOAD-DATE: March 29, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

CORRECTION-DATE: March 18, 1994, Friday

 CORRECTION:
An article on Jan. 30 about the National Arts Club and a dispute among tenants at the club's building on Gramercy Park misidentified the club's founder. According to the Na tional Cyclopaedia of American Bi ography, the club was proposed and founded by Charles de Kay, a poet and the literary and art critic for The New York Times, not by Stan ford White and Henry Clay Frick. A descendant of Mr. de Kay telephoned The Times shortly after the article was published, but the correction was delayed because of the writer's four-week absence and because of communication lapses between the writer and editors.

GRAPHIC: Photo: The studio area of the apartment at the National Arts Club rented by William and Meredith Mayer for more than 20 years. They and other tenants are fighting eviction from their apartments. (Jack Manning/The New York Times)

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January 31, 1994, Monday, Late Edition - Final

Hillary Clinton Rebuffs Pessimists on Health Plan

BYLINE: By ADAM CLYMER,  Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section A; Page 12; Column 3; National Desk

LENGTH: 1048 words

DATELINE: LAS VEGAS, Nev., Jan. 29

Is there enough passion and political skill behind President Clinton's health care plan to get it, or something close to it, passed? In the nation's capital, there are doubts.
But the plan's hard-traveling champion, Hillary Rodham Clinton, argues that the uncertainty is baseless. "It has impassioned constituencies, especially in specific parts of the program," she said, citing the enthusiasm of older Americans for the plan's prescription drug benefits, or organizations concerned with children for the promise of care for the young. 
 "There is a lot of passion out there, and it's going to be important to get it focused and directed," Mrs. Clinton said in an interview here on Friday after a day of touring an AIDS ward at the University Medical Center and sparring with doctors at a public forum. While acknowledging that some promised political help from business and other groups has not yet been produced, she insisted that in 1994 it would appear. "When we focus on something, it gets done," she said.
When it comes to passing bills, pain staking policy design, which the Clinton plan has in spades, pales in significance compared to the right combination of fervor and skill. The last time Congress was faced with enacting vast social change, it took the bravery of civil rights demonstrators and the brutality of Birmingham to get the lawmakers' attention, plus the persuasive skills of President Lyndon B. Johnson and his aide, Lawrence L. O'Brien Jr., to win passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
 
Are the Clintons Enough?
 But ever since Mr. Clinton proposed the health plan with a speech on Sept. 23, it has seemed that his oratory and the salesmanship of Mrs. Clinton are the main engines of change, and allies and potential allies on Capitol Hill worry they are not enough.
One major concern of supporters has been that some outside groups, which the Administration wooed as it drew up the plan, have offered only qualified support, or seemed to want still more favorable treatment. Big business, for example, was given the expensive promise that its medical costs for early retirees would be picked up by the Government, and yet the National Association of Manufacturers remains neutral.
Mrs. Clinton said that was to be expected. But she predicted that now that the plan was actually before Congress, many groups would swing in behind it. "I think you are going to see a lot of strong support, and a lot of effective arguing in favor of the President's plan, from these groups that we have worked with all this year," she said.
On the question of potential compromises with other plans, Mrs. Clinton deferred to Congress. She would not say just how strict was the definition of permanent universal health insurance, without which the President has threatened to veto any bill. She would not say, for example, whether full coverage could be delayed beyond their target date of 1998, or achieved with a slimmer benefits package, or with a lower employer's share of the cost than the 80 percent they urged.
"I think all of the details about how to achieve real, guaranteed private health insurance for every American, with comprehensive benefits that are affordable, is now in the Congressional process, and there may be all kinds of ways to get there," she said.
"But we are going to see how this process unfolds. And we are not ready to claim that any one particular way is better or worse. We want to see what emerges from the committees that are looking at proposals, and see how they come up with achieving the President's bottom line."
 
Avoiding Specifics
 Mrs. Clinton emphasized her hope that the Administration and Congress could create "a bill that will command support across party lines, that takes health care reform out of partisan bickering."
She avoided particular options. "It is difficult in a vacuum to talk about what might or might not work," she said. "We believe we put together a consistent, coherent financing package."
And other plans must be subjected to the same scrutiny -- from the Congressional Budget Office, the Administration and outside analysts -- that the Clinton plan has faced, she said, "before we even have a clue as to whether any of these other approaches are worth talking about or not."
She said now that health care "is on the front burner for the President and the whole White House," the Administration would be able to concentrate its energies, using people who had worked on other issues last year. But, she complained, "I don't think there has ever been a White House that is stretched as thin on as many important matters facing the country as this one."
Some commitments to senators and representatives, like delivering lists of small-business owners in their states and districts who support requiring employers to pay for insurance, may not have yet been fulfilled, she acknowledged.
But, she said, "when we focus on something, it gets done, and it's going to get done about health care, and all of the political work and the organizational work that we know has to be part of making the President's policy come alive and be presented effectively is going to get done."
Mrs. Clinton conceded that the President's plan was at a disadvantage because its complexity made it "very hard to describe easily." She said the task of selling was much easier both for advocates of the Canadian-style single-payer system, in which all health costs are covered by the Government, and "for defenders of the status quo, who feel passionate about taking care of themselves, and the piece of the health care system that has been their domain."
She cited some supporters of different approaches, like Senator John H. Chafee, Republican of Rhode Island, and backers of the single-payer system like Representative Pete Stark, Democrat of California, as being members of Congress who are "passionate about health care."
The others she put in that category were Senators John D. Rockefeller 4th of West Virginia, Tom Daschle of South Dakota and Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and Representatives John D. Dingell of Michigan and Benjamin L. Cardin of Maryland, all Democrats and co-sponsors of the Clinton bill. Mr. Stark is also a reluctant co-sponsor, one who has criticized the Clinton plan.

LOAD-DATE: January 31, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: "There is a lot of passion out there, and it's going to be important to get it focused and directed," Hillary Rodham Clinton said of the Americans she described as enthusiastic about the health proposal. President and Mrs. Clinton held a dinner yesterday for the nation's governors. (Associated Press)

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The New York Times

February 3, 1994, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

Scam Artists Turning Cold Into Profits

BYLINE: By JOHN T. McQUISTON,  Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section B; Page 5; Column 6; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 635 words

DATELINE: MINEOLA, L.I., Feb. 2

With icy Arctic air threatening to make this one of the coldest winters on record, state consumer protection officials warned today that a variety of scam artists were at work, including bogus oil-burner repairmen who prey on the elderly.
In the last few weeks, officials said, several young men posing as oil company repairmen have approached elderly homeowners on Long Island, entered their basements, taken apart their heating-oil burners and demanded cash in advance for unnecessary repairs. 
 The bogus repairmen have also been helping themselves to pocketbooks, loose cash and other items in the homes of their victims, all of whom are 80 years old or older, said Richard M. Kessel, executive director of the New York State Consumer Protection Board.
"These men are predators, preying on innocent consumers, and they seem to have a special affinity for senior citizens," Mr. Kessel said.
 
Call Dealer First, State Says
 "If someone at the door says they have come to service your heating system, we recommend that you don't open your door unless you call up your oil dealer and confirm the repairs are legitimate," he said.
Mr. Kessel said the scheme was this winter's worst example of unscrupulous people's taking advantage of customers as a result of the cold weather. He said his office was also checking on complaints about price gouging for rock salt and antifreeze, and excessive charges by plumbers to repair frozen or burst pipes.
In Connecticut, consumer protection officials said they had been flooded this winter by complaints from automobile owners whose car batteries failed and who were then told by mechanics that they needed to replace not only the battery but several other parts.
Despite such complaints, customers are receiving a break in one area. A generous supply of home heating oil has served to keep prices relatively steady, said Kevin Rooney, executive director of the Oil Heat Institute of Long Island.
 
Oil Supply Is No Problem
 He said this was the case throughout the New York metropolitan area, where the price of fuel delivered by a full-service dealer has remained at $1.14 a gallon.
"Even with the increase in demand, the supply has never been a problem," he said. "And if you look at the entire heating season, we tend to forget the fact that October, November and early December were actually warmer than normal."
And since more people are staying at home keeping warm by the radiator, there are fewer drivers on the road. As a result, the American Automobile Association reports a lower demand for gasoline. This in turn has driven gasoline prices down.
The association says prices for self-serve regular unleaded gasoline averaged $1.06 a gallon nationwide on January 19, compared with $1.10 a gallon a year ago. The auto club says that when inflation is taken into account, gasoline has not been this cheap in 20 years.
 
Flowing From Siberia
 Winter, however, is far from over, and the colder-than-average weather is expected to continue through February, said Lee Grenci, a meteorologist at Pennsylvania State University. "And February is traditionally a fairly active month."
"Right now, the pattern still continues to be air flowing from Siberia, across the North Pole and Canada and into the continental United States," Mr. Grenci said.
"We expect to experience another big blast of Arctic air beginning in the middle of next week, and it could rival the last record outbreak," he said.
This morning's lows ranged from 3 degrees Fahrenheit in White Plains to 17 degrees at La Guardia Airport.
Mr. Grenci said that the figures were not yet in for January, but that preliminary indications were that when temperatures and snowfall were combined, "it may rank as one of the coldest, if not the worst January on record."

LOAD-DATE: February 3, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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The New York Times

February 5, 1994, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

METRO DIGEST

SECTION: Section 1; Page 23; Column 1; Metropolitan Desk; Second Front

LENGTH: 530 words


FETAL TESTS: WHEN ANY RISK IS TOO GREAT
A rapidly growing number of younger women, health-care professionals say, are ignoring conventional medical standards and having tests to detect chromosomal disorders in fetuses. Below age 35, the risk of miscarriage from the test is greater than the risk of genetic defects. But those who call earlier tests a waste of health-care dollars, the women point out, don't have to rear a severely disabled child. Page 1.
 
NEW YORK CITY
 
AIMING SCHOOL CUTS AT ADMINISTRATORS
How many administrators does it take to run the New York City public school system? Although it might seem the beginning of a bad joke, Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani raised the questions in his plan to eliminate the job of every other manager at the Board of Education's headquarters at 110 Livingston Street -- as much a symbol of bureaucratic resilience as the Pentagon. News analysis, Page 25. 

RULING IS BLOW TO PREFERENCE PROGRAMS
By invalidating a New York City program that gives preferential treatment to women and members of minority groups who bid on municipal contracts, a State Supreme Court judge may have undermined incentive programs for other businesses in the city, regardless of the race or sex of their owners. Page 25.
 
BIKERS CAN KEEP THEIR HOG HEAVEN
The Hell's Angels may keep their Lower East Side home, a jury ruled. They voted that America's best-known bunch of Harley-riding, tattooed nonconformists had successfully proved that the Hell's Angels Motorcycle Club's East Coast Valhalla was not used for drug deals. Page 24.
 
SHARPTON TO CHALLENGE MOYNIHAN
The Rev. Al Sharpton, who had been considering a campaign either for Governor or for the United States Senate, said he had decided to challenge Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan in the Democratic primary. Page 26.
 
For the second time since he named Ninfa Segarra as a Deputy Mayor, Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani has redefined her duties. Page 25.
An employee of Gay Men's Health Crisis has sued the group, saying it discriminates. Page 24.
 A Bronx man has been charged with robbing 14 people, including five elderly women. Page 27.
 
A jewelry store robbery in Brooklyn turned into a car chase and one robber dead. Page 24.
 
REGION
 
STUDENT DEFENDS A SPEAKER
The head of the Trenton State College committee that has invited Khalid Abdul Muhammad to speak has received four death threats, but he is standing firm about welcoming Mr. Muhammad, the Nation of Islam spokesman who was demoted after making anti-white and anti-Semitic remarks in a speech. Page 26.
 
L.I.R.R. WORKERS THREATEN STRIKE
Long Island Rail Road workers who have gone without a raise since 1990 said they would strike on Feb. 17 unless they got a new contract, but the railroad said a Federal cooling-off period would block any job action until June. Page 26.
 
LINDBERGH BOOKKEEPER ACCUSED OF THEFT
The former bookkeeper for Anne Morrow Lindbergh, the author and widow of Charles A. Lindbergh, has been charged with embezzling an estimated $136,000 from Mrs. Lindbergh's checking account, said the police in Darien, Conn., where Mrs. Lindbergh lives. Page 27.

LOAD-DATE: February 5, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

TYPE: Summary

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The New York Times

February 5, 1994, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

Bronx Man Is Charged in Robbing of 14, Including Many Elderly

BYLINE: By NORIMITSU ONISHI

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

LENGTH: 407 words

The 92-year-old woman, less than five feet tall, showed a visitor to her Bronx apartment the bruises on her arms, still plainly visible two weeks after the attack. "My whole face was like this," she said. "He hit me on my face when I yelled for help. No one came."
On Thursday, the police arrested a man and charged him with 14 robberies in the Bronx since Dec. 3, crimes in which the victims were pushed into their apartments or cornered in elevators. The police said that five of the people preyed on by the suspect, Nathaniel Wilson, 25, of 2350 Ryer Avenue, were women over the age of 75. 
 In most cases, they said, he made off with paltry amounts of cash -- usually no more than $65 -- but one elderly woman was robbed of $3,000.
The 92-year-old woman, who the police said was the oldest victim, said just $10 was taken from her. "I was so shaken I couldn't add two plus two," said the woman, who asked to remain anonymous. "I can't sleep. I have nightmares."
She said the man who attacked her hid in a stairwell until she had opened the door to her apartment in the Parkchester complex, where she has lived for 53 years. "He pushed me into the apartment and shoved me on the floor," she said. "He took the keys from my bag and locked the door. He dragged me by my neck to the third bedroom so no one could hear me. He kept hitting me."
After taking the money from her purse, he fled, she said.
Mr. Wilson is also charged with pushing a 75-year-old woman into her Leland Avenue apartment, punching her or throwing her to the floor, breaking some of her teeth, ransacking her home and stealing $90. In another incident, the police said, he followed an 82-year-old woman returning from a supermarket, pushed her into her Metropolitan Oval apartment and hurled her to the floor, breaking her shoulder.
The police said some of the victims, seven of them woman and seven men, were held up at gunpoint.
Mr. Wilson was arrested on Thursday afternoon as he tried to leave the scene of the latest crime, the robbery of a 79-year-old woman in her apartment on Unionport Road, the police said. "The guy was jumping out the window," Sgt. Edward Monks said. "That's when he was grabbed."
Mr. Wilson served half of a three-year sentence for a 1989 conviction for possessing stolen property, said David Ernst, a spokesman for the State Division of Parole. He was paroled in April 1991, and completed his parole in August 1992, he said.

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February 6, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

At Work;
Old Age Is No Place for Sissies

BYLINE: By Barbara Presley Noble

SECTION: Section 3; Page 29; Column 3; Financial Desk

LENGTH: 1036 words

NOMINALLY, there was good news from a report on pension coverage released late last year. The Employee Benefit Research Institute in Washington reported that the decline in coverage, which appeared in the mid- to late-1980's to be occurring at roughly the speed of light, especially for participants in traditional defined-benefit plans, had flattened. The increasing number of women in the labor force covered by pensions -- up 3 percentage points, to 66.7 percent in 1991 from 63.7 in 1987 -- helped stop the decline. Coverage of men continued to drop slightly, to 68.5 percent in 1991 from 69.8 percent in 1987.
In fact, the rise in women's coverage continues a trend that began in the 1980's, even while men's coverage was dropping dramatically as "good jobs," with hefty wages and benefits, vaporized in the contracting manufacturing sector. "I would hypothesize that has to do with the continuing integration of females into the mainstream work force," said Paul Yakoboski, the report's author. "More are entering as college graduates at higher levels that tend to be covered. They used to be at the lower-skill level, where you don't find much coverage, male or female." 
 But while the trend bodes well for the future of well-educated female workers now in their early 30's and younger, who are benefiting from the expanded occupational opportunities of the last two decades, the great mass of women are still only a man or a misstep away from penury in retirement. That group includes people who have little in common except their gender: younger working women without college degrees or high school diplomas; middle-aged women who worked outside the home intermittently to balance their responsibilities to children and, perhaps, to elderly parents, and older women who may never have worked outside the home. What they do share is a gender-based tendency to longevity -- and to outlive their retirement income.
Financial planners talk about the three-legged stool of retirement income: Social Security, investments and savings and pensions. A few sobering facts derived from several sources, including the Labor Department, the Pension Rights Center in Washington and analyses of current population survey data by the Older Women's League, a Washington-based advocacy organization, reveal that for women, the stool has very short and uneven legs:
* Three-quarters of the elderly poor are female, though they represent just half the 65-and-over population.
* The median income -- Social Security, pensions, investments but not assets -- for men 65 and over was $14,183 in 1990. For women in the same age group, it was $8,044.
* The median real benefits of first-time male recipients of pensions rose 6 percent between 1978 and 1989. For women, it dropped 17 percent, thus dragging their median benefits down to 37 percent of men's in 1989, from 47 percent in 1978.
* Nearly half of the 65-plus group of women First in a series of articles on women and pensions. were widows in 1990. The median income for white women in that group was $9,366, $5,938 for black women. Three-quarters of all adults 45 and over living alone in 1989 were female.
* The one of five women aged 65 and over who had pension income in 1990 received an average of $4,915.
NONE of these numbers should inspire confidence in many women over 45, or, for that matter, lower-wage workers in general. "There may not be retirement, people will have so little in savings, so little in employer contributions and so little in Social Security," said Cindy Hounsell, a lawyer at the Pension Rights Center. "You will need to continue working, if you're lucky enough not to be disabled."
And, though more women are entitled to pension coverage by virtue of their employment, there is still a wide gap between men and women in participation and vesting rates, the measures of who takes advantage of pension opportunities and who is on the job long enough to realize the income. Despite their gains in opportunities, women have been and are still more likely than men to work in low-paying, sex-segregated jobs without pension coverage. "It gets down to whether you have access, and whether you can afford it," said Lou Glasse, president of the Older Women's League.
Ms. Glasse pointed out that the growth in popularity of "defined contribution," or 401(k)-type coverage, requiring employee contributions, has generally not worked to the advantage of low- and middle-income employees. "Lower-wage workers are less likely to be able to participate," she said. "Lower-wage workers tend to be women."
Moreover, to double the whammy, a survey released last week offers evidence for the perception that women tend to be more conservative -- or less confident -- in planning for retirement. Research by Yankelovich Partners for Fidelity Investments indicates that women are much more worried about their ability to save for retirement, are in fact less likely to have substantial retirement assets and are more likely to expect to work in "retirement." They also are less likely to express satisfaction with their knowledge of retirement planning, though, given the facts for women, they may just be in an appropriate state of denial.
 
 
 
AN UNEQUAL SHIFT OF THE BURDEN
THE increasing inclination of employers to shift the burden of retirement planning and saving from themselves to their employees will almost certainly have a disproportionate effect on women. The growth of 401(k) plans, for example, mainly benefits higher-paid employees. In 1991, only 11 percent of workers earning less than $21,000, a category dominated by women, were offered the opportunity to join plans, according to information provided by the Older Women's League.
The employer's idea may be to allow individuals more control over their retirement benefits and the degree of risk they assume. But women consistently rate themselves lower than men in investment knowledge and savvy. Whether that's true or simply a problem of self-image, the practical consequences may well be that women invest more conservatively than they need to. Come age 65, they will have an average of 19 hyper thrifty retirement years to ponder what might have been.

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GRAPHIC: Graphs: "The Gap Goes On" shows number of worker who participate in pension plans from 1984 to 1991, percentage of women's income compared with men's, by age and full time occupations for women workers. (Sources: Bureau of Labor Statistics; Older Women's League; Employee Benefit Research Group)

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February 6, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

CLINTON PROPOSING $30 BILLION SHIFT IN FEDERAL BUDGET

BYLINE: By GWEN IFILL,  Special to The New York Times

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

LENGTH: 1532 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Feb. 5

Hamstrung by overall spending limits set by law, President Clinton will send to Congress on Monday a 1995 budget that will propose cutting more than $30 billion from Government programs to pay for increases for crime prevention, homelessness and other priorities, according to Government documents and Administration officials.
Mr. Clinton will propose ending some programs and squeezing others, like heating aid for the poor and public housing for the elderly. At the same time, more money will be sought for programs like job training, education for poor children under Head Start and highway construction. 
In recent days, the Administration has released portions of the budget that emphasize the cuts Mr. Clinton is willing to make rather than the new spending he will endorse. The message is directed to Republicans as well as conservative Democrats in Congress who have sought to pass a balanced budget amendment and paint Mr. Clinton as an inveterate tax-raiser.
Mr. Clinton stressed the theme of retrenchment today during his weekly radio address, asserting that his plan would "maintain budget discipline" in cutting spending on more than 300 programs and reducing the Federal work force by more than 100,000.
"We had to cut spending on yesterday's outmoded programs so we can bring down the deficit and still invest more in tomorrow's most urgent priorities," Mr. Clinton said.
Many of Mr. Clinton's cuts, however, are the same ones that President George Bush went after every year, and there is little reason to think lawmakers will be more inclined to pass them now. [Page 34.]
Even so, the Administration's tactic is to send a signal to the financial markets as well as to critics of the President's expensive health care proposal that the White House is willing to make hard decisions that demonstrate fiscal responsibility.
The proposed cuts in the budget are likely to draw protests from some of the Administration's most loyal constituencies, including advocates for the poor and the elderly. But the budget would also cut deeply into the ranks at the Pentagon and slow the growth of spending in the space program.
While most departments would be forced to spend less money over all than they did during the current budget year, several, including Justice, Labor, Commerce, Health and Human Services and Education, would realize a net gain if Congress adopts Mr. Clinton's proposals.
At the Pentagon, the Administration wants to stretch out its procurement for several weapons systems, including the Air Force's B-2 bomber, reflecting a continuing desire to reduce the size of the military and long-term commitments to expensive hardware.
"They're squeezing the nickel where it won't have a major effect on force levels," said Eugene Carroll, a retired admiral who is the director of the Center for Defense Information, a private group. The new budget would also reduce civilian and military personnel at the Pentagon to save more than $4 billion.
 
100 Programs Are to End
 Elsewhere, the Administration is recommending that more than $700 million be cut from a heating aid program for the poor and $1 billion from a program to build public housing for the elderly. More than 100 small programs would be eliminated entirely, at a savings of about $3.2 billion.
Administration officials and Cabinet officers have chafed at the strict spending limits imposed by Congress in the deficit-reduction agreement with President Bush in 1990 and reinforced by the budget law President Clinton signed last summer. Instead of assembling a budget that would have increased by $16 billion just to keep pace with inflation, Mr. Clinton has been forced to come up with a spending plan that cuts $8 billion in 1995 in real dollars, without taking inflation into account.
More than half of Federal spending is devoted to mandatory programs like Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare, the health programs for the poor and elderly, and pensions for retired Government employees. The President has control over only the discretionary portion of the budget, and it is from this section that most of the proposed cuts would come.
Spending in almost every other area of Government, excluding the payment of interest on the national debt, is limited by law to $542 billion for 1995. Over the next five years, Government spending would have to be reduced by $221 billion overall to stay within the limits imposed by law.
 
Money for Manhattan
 But specific areas of the budget that reflect Mr. Clinton's priorities would see net spending increases. And although the budget calls for reductions in the politically difficult area of mass transit subsidies, the interests of Congress have not been entirely ignored.
The Clinton budget, for example, calls for $100 million in new financing for the renovation of the General Post Office at 33d Street and Eighth Avenue in Manhattan as a new Amtrak railroad hub: a project favored by Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Democrat of New York.
That project would include a retail shopping complex like Washington's Union Station. After lobbying by Mr. Moynihan, who as chairman of the Senate Finance Committee will influence the fate of the President's health plan, Mr. Clinton said in October that he would support such an idea. About $10 million would by appropriated for the current budget year, officials said.
The total cost for the project is pegged at about $315 million. The state and city are expected to provide the rest of the money by using Federal transportation and community development grants.
 
Broader Approaches
 Other increases address broader needs. At the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which will suffer a net loss in overall financing, spending for programs for the homeless would increase by $427 million, and the housing voucher program would increase by 25 percent.
At the Department of Labor, the Job Training Partnership Act would be reduced by $26 million, but much of the savings would be diverted to other training programs. Mr. Clinton said today that he hoped to replace a patchwork of job training programs with a more efficient system.
Those programs, he said, "have been trapped in a time warp, frozen in by-gone days when most laid-off workers could expect to be called back to their old jobs."
Administration officials said education programs like Head Start, the School-to-Work Initiative and the Chapter 1 program for schools with disadvantaged students would receive increases, as would technology programs administered by the Commerce department.
The following are among the cuts Mr. Clinton will propose:
*Agriculture: $242 million would be cut from watershed and flood-prevention operations, money that would be consolidated instead under programs operated by the Army Corps of Engineers.
*Army Corps of Engineers: No new projects would be started in 1995, delaying about $345 million in previously approved undertakings generally favored by members of Congress who lobby for discretionary spending for their home districts.
*Defense: The Pentagon would continue its shift away from increasing force levels and modernization programs and toward readiness, research and development. The operations and maintenance budget would actually increase by 2 percent, officials said. But very few new vehicles, missile projects or aircraft would be included. "No matter where you look, we are buying less," an official said.
*Health and Human Services: Although this department would realize an overall net increase of $1 billion, more than $1 billion in programs would be cut, including $247 million in health services and installations on Indian reservations.
*Housing and Urban Development: Administration officials would continue a trend begun under President Bush that replaces new construction with an emphasis on housing vouchers and incentives for private development. About $8 billion in previously authorized housing construction money would remain in the pipeline.
*NASA: Financing for the Space Shuttle would be scaled back to reflect the Administration's plan to emphasize maintenance of the existing fleet over new expansion. This would result in a $281 million cut. Another $203 million would be saved by shifting Federal involvement in aeronautics research to the private sector.
*Transportation: About $432 million would be cut, resulting in a 25 percent reduction in operation subsidies for mass transit programs in cities with populations of more than 50,000. Capital grants for construction of such systems, however, would increase by 40 percent, Administration officials said.
Fiscal reality has placed Mr. Clinton in an unusual and awkward position as he prepares to sell a budget that continues to emphasize deficit reduction and Government streamlining over ambitious new spending. Many past Presidents, Republicans and Democrats, have used budget pronouncements to brag of the contribution they will make to expanded Government programs.
Instead, Mr. Clinton is trying to focus on deprivation and discipline. Administration officials were reluctant to release any information on the amount of the budget they would divert to new

LOAD-DATE: February 6, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: At the Government Printing Office in Washington, Freddie Tate stacked newly printed copies of President Clinton's 1995 budget proposal. (Associated Press) (pg. 34)

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February 6, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

A DIRECTORY OF CRUISES WORLDWIDE;
Checking Into a Floating Hotel

BYLINE: By ELSA BRENNER;  ELSA BRENNER often contributes to the Westchester Weekly of The Times.

SECTION: Section 5; Page 12; Column 1; Travel Desk

LENGTH: 1531 words

LEAVING behind an already harsh winter and the usual everyday obligations, 18 members of our extended family converged on Miami early one Saturday morning in December. We had come together for six days for a family reunion on the Sovereign of the Seas, Royal Caribbean Cruise Line's third-largest luxury ship, as we celebrated an 80th birthday, a 30th wedding anniversary and other markers in our lives.
I raced through the crowded airport toward a friendly-looking envoy from Royal Caribbean, who held aloft a sign welcoming passengers bound for the Port of Miami. One of the two octogenarians in our party followed closely behind, pushed along in a wheelchair by an airport aide, while my 23-year-old son, Gabriel, grumbled next to me under the weight of an extra carry-on suitcase that I packed in a last-minute fluster. 
 Then, weaving through the side streets of Miami, past the Orange Bowl and the Hard Rock Cafe, we made our way by bus through rows of palm trees to the port and the 880-foot-long Sovereign. The ship was filled to capacity for our cruise -- it was the week before Christmas -- which began late that afternoon with 2,506 passengers.
When christened in 1988, Sovereign of the Seas was the biggest ship of its kind. Since then, Royal Caribbean has built two larger boats, Monarch of the Seas and Majesty of the Seas, and three more are in shipyards under construction.
Floating hotels like these are not cozy or especially romantic, although there were several honeymoon couples among the passengers and one pair got married on board. Skeptical at first because of the ship's size and apparent lack of charm, I was soon won over by the many features it had to offer a diverse group like ours.
Along the hallway where our cabins were situated, the cousins, brothers, sisters and grandmothers in our party finally met up with each other before dinner. We had arrived at different times from our homes along the East Coast throughout the late morning and afternoon.
Over the next six days, we often separated into smaller groups, depending on the activities we wanted to pursue, and each evening at dinner was filled with animated tales of our adventures. For 5-year-old Alexander, my nephew, it was the play he was starring in at the ship's day camp. And for one 81-year-old grandmother, it was a daily update of her winnings at the casino the night before. For me it was the discovery of quiet nooks and crannies: a place to read in the sun away from the insistent beat of music by the pool, and a jogging track with a splendid vista on the seventh deck.
The best guide to getting around the ship was the daily Cruise Compass, a publication delivered to passengers' cabins each night that listed the next day's onboard activities.
For fitness-minded passengers, the day began at 8 A.M. with a stretch class on the eighth deck. There was also a "gut busters" calisthenics session at 8:30 A.M., and, at 9:45 A.M., a group walkathon. The ship has a gym equipped with weights and exercise equipment, although I found it disappointing. For those used to working out in health clubs, this gym lacked some important pieces of equipment, such as a treadmill or Nordic Track, and one piece had an "out of order" sign on it. After that first afternoon, during which I was also waitlisted for an overcrowded aerobics class, I opted for brisk walks each afternoon around the Promenade Deck, where the jogging track is to be found.
The crowds were a problem I was to experience throughout the cruise, although I also learned some strategies for coping. There were long waits for elevators, so I climbed stairs (admittedly not an option for everyone). The lines at the purser's desk were often daunting, so I went during off-hours. And deck chairs by the pool were sometimes in short supply, but on the uppermost deck I found a haven.
One special place that was also rarely crowded was the genteel wood-paneled library on the seventh deck. Here were comfy, gray leather sofas, softly carpeted floors, richly decorated book cabinets and 1,800 volumes to please a variety of tastes -- current fiction, travel writing, children's books and large-print offerings among them. There were also desks at which to catch up on one's correspondence, and soft chairs by a large widow. One elderly couple spent their afternoons by that sunny window reading to each other. The library also had a large collection of audio books. Another quiet place for an amiable chat or a snack was the glassed-in sun room that wraps around the Windjammer Cafe, where breakfast was served from 8:30 to 10:15, and a buffet luncheon was served from noon to 2.
BUT my penchant for getting away from the crowd was clearly not universally shared; many passengers were there for the express purpose of joining in such events as line dance classes, passenger talent shows, belly flop contests, singles get-togethers and teen events. There were also bridge and blackjack tournaments, a calypso band by the pool and bingo. At night there were several clubs to visit, among them Finian's Rainbow, Follies and, for teen-agers and those in their early 20's, the Anything Goes Lounge. There was also a piano bar where people gaered for singalongs.
Two stage shows featured big names: one night there was Jerry Lewis and another the Fifth Dimension singing group. There was also a twin theater that showed movies such as "Dave," "Indecent Proposal" and "The Fugitive" in the afternoons and evenings. Auctions of contemporary art were well attended, as was a series of talks on shopping in the ship's ports of call. There was also shopping on board, with eight duty-free stores where clothing, jewelry, cosmetics and liquor were on sale at prices similar to those on shore.
One of the highlights of the cruise was the quality of the food; there were two seatings for each meal in two dining rooms. The dining room staff was courteous, the wine steward helpful. The wine list for Caribbean night in the dining room included a California Inglenook Zinfandel for $15, and a Deinhard Chardonnay Brut from Germany for $14.
Breakfast options included broiled Scottish kippers with lemon butter and steamed potato, and an omelet made with fresh herbs. The morning menu also included three types of pancakes -- banana, buttermilk and blueberry -- and bacon, ham, sausages, hash browns and grits. The six-course dinners followed a theme; on Caribbean night, for example, many dishes were flavored with curry and coriander. Each night's menu also offered low-fat, low-cholesterol choices, which were delicious. Passengers with special dietary needs can also be accommodated.
The ship's decor was reminiscent of a Hyatt Hotel, not surprising I suppose when you learn that the Pritzker family of Chicago, which owns the Hyatt hotel chain, also holds a major share of Royal Caribbean's publicly owned stock. In the plush lobby, called the centrum, a futuristic-looking glass-paneled elevator shaft was set between two curving brass-trimmed staircases.
The standard cabins, 122 square feet, were quietly decorated and comfortable with televisions and sufficient drawer and closet space for two. The cabins with portholes were especially nice, and throwing open the curtains on the first morning out to the view of the sea was a pleasure.
The bathroom was small but efficient, with a large mirror and countertop and several shelves for storage. Water pressure in the shower was good (there was no bathtub in the standard cabins).
Ports of call on this trip included Georgetown in Grand Cayman, Montego Bay in Jamaica and Nassau in the Bahamas. In Georgetown we took off on our own, trusting to our cab driver to show us where to find the best beaches. On Seven-Mile Beach three of us swam out to a coral reef.
In contrast, Montego Bay was disappointing. We arranged a tour with a taxi driver, who showed us a hot and dirty city and took us on broken-down roads through the countryside. After several hours we returned to the ship, and I watched from the deck as a small band played in the port.
Montego Bay is not a regular port of call for Royal Caribbean, and those considering any future cruise might be wise to check with their travel agent ahead of time to find out whether it is to be included. The cruise line usually stops in Labadee, on the north coast of Haiti, where it has exclusive docking privileges. But the United Nations oil embargo on Haiti precluded our visit there, and the alternative port, Ocho Rios in Jamaica, was already booked by other ships, according to a Royal Caribbean spokesman.  Nassau was our final port, and the best shopping stop of the three.
On Christmas Eve we disembarked in Miami with memories of a vacation that would be relived, through photo albums, with generations to come. There would be snapshots of me ensconced with a book in a deck chair; my brother presiding over dinner celebrations; the youngest nephews executing silly jumps into the pools. The Sovereign of the Seas had been a gracious hostess to each of us.
A listing of Sovereign of the Seas trips appears on page 18; information about where to call or write appears on page 36.

LOAD-DATE: February 6, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photos: The sun deck and pool deck aboard Sovereign of the Seas. (Len Kaufman for The New York Times)(pg. 12); The author's cabin, No. 5568, on the fifth deck. (Len Kaufman for The New York Times)(pg. 40)

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February 7, 1994, Monday, Late Edition - Final

Foes of Balanced Federal Budget Focus on Effect on Social Security

BYLINE: By ADAM CLYMER,  Special to The New York Times

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

LENGTH: 552 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Feb. 6

Hitting one of the capital's most sensitive political nerves first, opponents of the proposed constitutional amendment to require a balanced Federal budget have asserted that it would lead to cuts of $1,000 a person in Social Security benefits.
The amendment's defenders disagreed, pointing out that lawmakers treat Social Security very gingerly. And Senator Paul Simon, the Illinois Democrat who is the measure's chief sponsor, said that Social Security recipients would be helped by the amendment because it would strengthen the economy and reduce the deficit. 
 The Senate is expected to begin debating the proposed amendment late this month. As now written, the amendment would require the Federal budget to be balanced by 1999, but Mr. Simon said he would substitute a version delaying the deadline to 2001 to make the transition easier. The amendment does not tell Congress and the President how to cut Federal spending; it only says that they must.
 
Close Vote Predicted
 Families U.S.A. and other groups supportive of the elderly asserted last week that if the budget was balanced with no tax increases and proportional cuts among all varieties of Federal spending, that would lead to a $1,081 cut in individual Social Security benefits in 1999, and about $100 more in 2001.
When reporters challenged those assumptions, observing that in most deficit reduction packages, taxes have played a part, Ron Pollack, head of Families U.S.A., said that except for Mr. Simon, most of the amendment's backers say they want spending cuts, not tax cuts.
Senator Robert C. Byrd, the West Virginia Democrat who heads the Appropriations Committee and who is the amendment's most dedicated enemy in Congress, said the study showed "exactly the kind of real pain this amendment can cause if it were to become part of the Constitution."
Mr. Byrd predicted a close vote, but said he had faith that the Senate would not give the measure the two-thirds majority, or 67 votes, that a constitutional amendment requires.
 
'Momentum Is Building'
 When Mr. Byrd's news conference on the fifth floor of a Senate office building was over, Mr. Simon and Senator Larry E. Craig, Republican of Idaho, held one on the building's second floor.
Mr. Simon said balancing the budget would solidify the United States currency. "The Social Security retirement fund is secured by U.S. Government bonds," he said, "and if those bonds drop dramatically in value, then all Social Security recipients will be devastated."
Critics' assumptions "do not recognize reality," Mr. Simon said, adding that Social Security was "the last thing that gets tackled around here."
Mr. Craig said he did not think that across-the-board, equal cuts would be imposed. "Without doubt, there will be priorities," he said.
Mr. Simon said Senate passage of the amendment would be difficult because Mr. Byrd was "using the clout that he has as chairman" of the Appropriations Committee to get votes for his side. He added that he did not mean to imply that Mr. Byrd was threatening to eliminate spending for senators' pet projects if they opposed him.
"Momentum is building" for the amendment, Mr. Simon said. He said he did not doubt that proponents would have the 60 votes they needed to cut off debate on the measure and bring it to a vote.

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LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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February 7, 1994, Monday, Late Edition - Final

Elderly Angered by Changes For Courses at New School

BYLINE: By MARIA NEWMAN

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

LENGTH: 1281 words

Some of them make their way to class with the aid of walkers or wheelchairs. Others who are in their 90's have trouble completing reading assignments in less than two weeks. But the 550 members of the Institute of Retired Professionals are for the most part enthusiastic students of a daunting variety of academic subjects at the New School, and now they are angry.
What has them upset is a proposal by New School administrators to change an adult learning program that has been jointly sponsored by the institute and the New School for more than 30 years. 
 New School administrators want to limit to three or four the number of courses institute members can take -- some now take 10 or 12 -- and require the classes to be held once a week, not every other week. Institute members say the changes are a plot to get rid of them to make way for younger students, and some are so upset that there is talk of taking their program elsewhere.
"They are actually trying to get rid of the frail elderly," said Gina Liebow, 81, who attends courses at the New School. "We fill up the lunch room. Let's face it, we aren't as pretty as the young people."
But New School administrators say the changes have nothing to do with age.
"We're not looking at ways to get out of the business of serving older students at the New School," said Elizabeth Dickey, dean of the New School's Adult Division. "People having walkers or wheelchairs, no, that's not a problem."
 
Diversity Called an Issue
 Instead, she said that the program had become unwieldy and that it was not up to the academic standards of a university.
In addition, she said, the institute's members do not reflect the diversity of New York. Currently the institute's bylaws allow it to choose its own members, and most of them are white. Ms. Dickey and other officials say that the bylaws should not apply to the New School.
At the heart of the dispute is the changing image of a college that was founded 75 years ago as a forum for alternative adult education and now wants to move closer to being a traditional degree-granting university.
Most students at the New School, described as a "hotbed for nonconformist intellectuals" in one college guide, are not there to earn degrees.  But the school has been trying, since its undergraduate school was founded in 1976, to increase the enrollment of degree students.
Ms. Dickey said 12,000 students, with an average age of mid- to late 30's, attended courses, mostly part time, each term. There are 200 students in graduate programs.
 
Program Widely Copied
 The Institute of Retired Professionals was founded in 1962 by Hyman Hirsch, an economics and history teacher, to provide retired executives and other professionals an opportunity to learn along with their peers.
The program was allowed to exist almost autonomously at the New School. The members -- they do not like to be referred to as students -- make up their course list every year, and then they lead the classes, calling themselves presenters or coordinators.
So successful has the retired professionals' program been that it was copied by about 130 other schools around the country as a way of teaching older students.
Ms. Dickey, who has been at the New School for two and a half years, said her mission was to review all programs of the adult division. When she came to the retirees' program, she saw the need for many changes.
"One of the things we've talked to them about is that this is a university," she said. "We're not a social-service center."
Emotions on both sides are so high that school officials have delayed the changes until the start of the fall semester. In the meantime, they are conducting a series of meetings between institute members and administrators, although Ms. Dickey said the changes would take place regardless.
The president of the retired professionals group, Sidney Rosenberg, said he did not want to complain publicly about the New School, since he was taking part in the meetings with the administrators.
But in the school cafeteria on the fourth floor of the West 12th Street campus, where one day recently older people outnumbered younger students, talk of the proposed changes buzzed from table to table. "I want to be with my community," said Anne Glenn, who directed an occupational therapy program before she retired.  "I feel alive here, vibrant, and I'm going to cry because it's sad what they're doing to us. People need people. We would die if we were isolated in our own homes."
At the New School, institute members pay a discounted tuition of $485 a semester and can enroll in one traditional New School course and attend any number of the institute's "peer learning" courses.
The sessions are held during the day at the campus on West 12th Street, in rooms that would otherwise be unused since most New School classes are at night.
The retirees receive no academic credit. Most of them say they attend for the sheer love of learning. They also see no reason to change the class schedule.
"I don't want to coordinate a class every week," said Sandy Gordon, a retiree who teaches an art appreciation course. "We're retired. We do not get paid for this. We do it out of love."
The courses this semester include the African-American novel, current events and "habits of the heart," a philosophy class.
At a session last week of a class on the short story, every head of hair was gray, and bifocals and sensible shoes were de rigueur. Once the discussion on James Baldwin's "Sonny's Blues" got under way, the comments were reminiscent of university-level literature courses.
 
Lively Class Exchange
 "He reveals uncomfortable truths to a complacent society," Bob Hartman, who led the class discussion, said of Baldwin. "He is definitely a disturber of the peace."
One student said of the story: "I thought it wasn't up to James Baldwin's standards, as the brilliant writer and brilliant observer of his world. The passionate fighter, the passionate observer of relationships between blacks and whites -- none of that is in this story."
And on they went, one by one, with at least half of the 16 students waving their arms for the chance to voice their observations about the work of Baldwin and James Alan McPherson, the other writer assigned for that day, for an hour and 15 minutes.
Institute members say their courses are academically defensible.  Most institute members have college degrees, and about a fifth have Ph.D.'s. And they say the hours they spend preparing papers or presentations for class discussions would daunt many younger college students.
Students sign in when they attend a class, but the arrangement is so loose that many drop in on discussions that seem interesting.
Ms. Dickey said the most controversial change had been to limit the number of courses each retiree may take. She said she has heard of some students taking 12 a semester.
"From their point of view, they say they can take all the classes they want because they're not studying for degrees, for credit," she said. "I have to say, look, this is a university."
In a letter to one institute member, New School president Jonathan F. Fanton wrote, "If the I.R.P. really wants to be autonomous and, as you put it, 'serves important social purposes' as its principal mission, then I wonder if it would not be better off run as a wholly independent organization at some other location."
His letter was written in response to one he received from Jane (Jinx) Herselle, who is 91 and has been a member of the institute for 26 years.
"We are glad to be connected with the New School," she said. 'This is our home and we don't want to move."

LOAD-DATE: February 7, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: "They are actually trying to get rid of the frail elderly," Gina Liebow, 81, said of a proposal by New School administrators to increase the frequency of classes and limit the maximum course load by the Institute of Retired Professionals. (Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times)

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The New York Times

February 9, 1994, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Men Are Told to Reconsider How to Treat Enlarged Prostate Glands

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

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

LENGTH: 810 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Feb. 8

Men with enlarged prostate glands should consider many treatments other than surgery to relieve their symptoms, including, in some cases, no treatment at all, Federal health officials said today.
New Federal guidelines for treating benign enlarged prostates say that men with mild-to-moderate symptoms may want to consider periods of doctor-monitored observation, or "watchful waiting," instead of choosing drug or surgical therapy right away. 
 Dr. Philip R. Lee, Assistant Secretary for Health in the Health and Human Services Department, said the guidelines conclude that the ultimate decision on treatment should be left up to the patient for enlarged prostates, which are not life-threatening. Depending upon symptoms, he said, observation may be sufficient and even preferable to more aggressive treatment.
 
Unnecessary Tests?
 Dr. John D. McConnell of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, chairman of a 13-member nongovernment panel that drafted the guidelines, said that the large regional variations in how enlarged prostate glands were treated indicated that doctors and patients needed therapy recommendations.
Studies and the experience of experts indicate that some doctors may be recommending drug therapy or surgery to reduce prostate size without adequately considering the patients' symptoms and how much the condition is interfering with their quality of life, Dr. McConnell said. In addition, he said, some tests routinely given to men who report prostate problems may be unnecessary.
Doctors should not use kidney X-rays, ultrasound imaging or cystoscopy, in which an endoscope to see in the urinary tract, unless they suspect an unusual problem, the guidelines said. Experts said these commonly used tests often do not add much to determining the best treatment and cost millions of dollars a year.
The Agency for Health Care Policy and Research, a unit of the Public Health Service, assembled the panel of doctors, researchers, nurses and other experts that drafted the guidelines.
The prostate is a walnut-sized gland in the pelvis that for unknown reasons enlarges in many men over age 50. This condition, called benign prostatic hyperplasia, is not related to prostate cancer, a leading killer of older men.
Enlarged prostate glands affect an estimated 10 million Americans, Federal health experts say, and are found in varying degrees in 50 percent of men over age 60. Those who have a family history of the condition and black Americans are at higher risk.
 
Appropriate Surgery
 The prostate surrounds the urethra, the tube that carries urine from the bladder. When the gland enlarges, it can block urine flow or cause a weak stream, and result in frequent urination or feelings of incomplete voiding.
The guidelines said surgery was the best treatment for patients with severe symptoms, like urinary blockage, but carried a small risk of complications, like latent leakage and sexual dysfunction. The most common surgery, called transurethral resection, involves inserting an instrument into the urethra and using an electrical loop to cut out pieces of the enlarged prostate gland.
A similar, but less severe surgery, called transurethral incision, offers fewer risks, but is underused, the guidelines said. This procedure, most useful with moderately enlarged prostates, involves making one or two small incisions into the gland, allowing it to pull away from the urethra.
The American Urological Association, the medical specialty group that worked with the Federal agency to develop the guidelines, and the National Medical Association, which represents many of the nation's black doctors, were among several groups that endorsed the recommendations. But both groups said they disagreed with one recommendation on routine use of a blood test for a protein called prostate-specific antigen, or PSA, that leaks into the blood from enlarged or diseased prostates.
PSA and several other tests can be helpful, but their use should be optional rather than recommended, the guidelines said. Dr. Abraham Cockett, president of the urological group, said positive PSA tests could be indicators of prostate cancers as well as measures of enlarged prostate glands.
"We will continue to recommend annual PSA tests for people over age 50 or in high-risk groups, and more frequent tests in those who show elevated levels," Dr. Cockett said at the briefing.
Dr. Jackson Davis of Howard University, president of the National Medical Association, said his group also recommended annual PSA testing along with manual rectal examinations for the same population, including black Americans.
Copies of the guidelines can be obtained by calling (800) 358-9295 or by mailing a post card, marked "prostate" with a return address, to AHCPR Clearinghouse, P.O. Box 8547, Silver Spring, Md. 20907.

LOAD-DATE: February 9, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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February 9, 1994, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Advances in Cataract Surgery Bring Far Quicker Recovery

BYLINE: By SABRA CHARTRAND,  Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section C; Page 13; Column 4; National Desk; Health Page

LENGTH: 946 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Feb. 8

Leon Kaczmarek went home just hours after having a cataract removed one Friday last month. A soft bandage covered the eye where an artificial lens had been implanted, but he had no stitches and needed no painkillers. By Sunday he was outside his New Jersey house chipping ice off the front walk.
A few years ago, the operation to remove the cataract, a clouding in the eye's natural lens, would have left Mr. Kaczmarek puttering carefully around his house for three weeks, wary of jarring his stitches, unable to return to work until his eye healed. But recent advances in surgical techniques are shortening the recovery period to mere days. 
 "I've started to see things I've never seen before," Mr. Kaczmarek, 64, a retired display developer for the Woolworth Corporation, "colors, and looking into the distance and seeing sharpness."
Like most cataract sufferers, he had been crippled by blurry double vision and distorted depth perception. It forced him to use thick reading glasses. His wife had to do all the driving.
New technology, including the use of ultrasound to break up the cataract and remove it in fragments, artificial lenses that fold for insertion and new methods of entering the eye, means that doctors can make incisions that are so small they seal themselves, assuming they are properly shaped, meaning that no stitches are required.
 
Savings Are Foreseen
 The American Academy of Ophthalmology says cataract removal is the most commonly performed surgery in the nation. Cataracts usually strike the elderly, with such predictability that ophthalmologists believe they are an inevitable part of aging. So far, researchers have not pinpointed any way to prevent the condition, although they know it can also be caused by diseases like diabetes.
In 1991, Medicare spent $3.4 billion on more than one million cataract operations. The new surgical techniques not only offer patients a shortened recovery period but also may cut costs for the health care system over all.
"The biggest part of cost is the facility cost," said Dr. Monica L. Monica, a consultant to the American Academy of Ophthalmologists. Many ophthalmologists say surgery time can be halved if stitches are not required. And the use of topical anesthesia allows patients to bypass the recovery room.
"Small-incision surgery saves on operating room and recovery room costs, maybe by as much as $500 to $600, depending on the facility fee," Dr. Monica explained, "so it is cost effective."
In New Jersey, where Dr. Jaime Santamaria routinely performs stitchless surgery, he charges $2,500, and Medicare pays $1,200 of that cost.
 
A Difficult Technique
 So far, only about 30 percent of doctors nationwide use the tricky stitchless techniques. The surgery Dr. Santamaria performs requires cutting a precise tunnel in the eye. He said many surgeons found it difficult to avoid nicking the tunnel sides, which defeats its self-sealing potential. He has invented a sheath that covers the knife as it travels down the tunnel and is retracted when it reaches the damaged lens, to help avoid nicks.
Using ultrasound can be difficult as well. Surgeons must handle a rapidly vibrating tool without knocking other parts of the eye or losing fragments of the cataract. The chances of complications, including infection and detachment of the retina, are small, according to the American Academy of Ophthalmologists. The academy says 90 percent of cataract patients get their good vision back.
Before the middle of this century, crude stitches were used in cataract surgery, and patients had to spend two weeks in the hospital, lying in a dark room for days, sandbags against each ear, forbidden to lift the head or move while the eye healed. When eye stitches were refined in the 1950's, cataract surgery became an out-patient procedure, and sutures, bandages and painkillers made it possible to recover at home.
The stitches were necessary because doctors removed cataracts in one piece, meaning that the cut, usually about 10 millimeters, was too large to heal without stitches. But in the 1980's, many surgeons began using ultrasound waves to break up the cataract, which is then removed in pieces.
Ultrasound "allows us to bounce sound waves around to crack up the lens and take it out through a small port," explained Dr. Monica, who is also a New Orleans cataract surgeon. But while ultrasound lets doctors make a six-millimeter incision, small-incision surgery did not become stitchless surgery until the invention in the late 1980'sof folding and rolling artificial lenses, which could be unfurled after being inserted.
Together, ultrasound and folding lenses permit Dr. Monica and others to perform the operation with a three-millimeter incision. She uses anesthesia drops and enters the eye directly through the cornea, over the iris.
"You go through the cornea for the incision so as not to disturb the blood vessels in the white of the eye," she said, "so there is no bleeding, redness or blackening of the eye. No sutures are put in the eye to bridle and hold the eye in place. Patients return to full activity within 24 to 30 hours."
Another method favored by Dr. Santamaria involves cutting a tunnel three millimeters across from the white surface of the eye at an angle toward the cornea. In both types of surgery, stitches are unnecessary because the eye is a fluid-filled sphere. Internal pressure seals the incision.
Because the technique can be tricky, experts suggest choosing an opthalmological surgeon who has done the procedure many times before. "Unfortunately," Dr. Santamaria cautioned, "a patient may be on the doctor's learning curve."

LOAD-DATE: February 9, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


GRAPHIC: Newer procedures for cataract surgery use smaller and smaller incisions and often replace the clouded lens with one that can be rolled up for insertion, then unfurled. Some techniques can shorten both the operation and recovery period and use only topical anesthesia. However, they require thorough training.

Ultrasound procedure
Chart/Diagram: "New Routes to Clearer Vision"
 In phacoemulsification, the cataract fragments are removed by suction through a small tube.

Self-sealing incision
 A small tunnel through the cornea must be precisely cut to allow the eye's internal pressure to seal the incision.
Source: American Academy of Ophthalmology

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The New York Times

February 9, 1994, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Personal Health;
Depression in the elderly: old notions hinder help.

BYLINE: By Jane E. Brody

SECTION: Section C; Page 13; Column 1; National Desk; Health Page

LENGTH: 1092 words

DEPRESSION is a popular disorder these days. Although it may not be more common than in the past, today more people are willing to admit to themselves that they are depressed, to talk openly about the problem and to seek treatment. The exception is among the elderly.
People over 60, who are more likely to suffer from depression than any other age group, including teen-agers, are the least likely to recognize or acknowledge that they are depressed. Dr. Martiece Carson, a neuropsychiatrist at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center in Oklahoma City, explained: "It's a cultural thing, a sign of their times. The elderly tend to consider depression to be a symptom of weakness, of laziness, not a medical illness." 
 Dr. Ari Kiev, an expert on depression at the Payne Whitney Psychiatric Clinic in New York, agreed. "The elderly haven't grasped that this is a medical condition, and that it is treatable," he said. "Old attitudes hang on."
Dr. Carson and other experts say that doctors generally do not help matters when they fail to look beyond physical complaints and to ask probing questions that would reveal depression as the real cause of a patient's symptoms.
"Often the doctor will work up a depressed older person for all kinds of physical illnesses and then turn the patient away, saying, 'I don't find anything wrong with you,' " Dr. Carson said. "Or the doctor may find an unrelated physical problem and assume that to be the cause of the patient's symptoms, leaving the depression unrecognized and untreated."
Dr. Kiev said another common situation was for the doctor and others to recognize that the older person is depressed but then try to "explain it away by saying there's no reason to feel that way, 'just snap out of it.' "
"Depression is a real condition, and denying it tends to make the depressed person feel worse, even suicidal," Dr. Kiev said.
According to the National Institute of Mental Health, 3 percent of Americans over 65 are clinically depressed, while 7 to 12 percent of the elderly suffer from milder forms of depression that impair their quality of life. In nursing homes, Dr. Carson said, the situation is far worse, with 20 to 40 percent of patients very depressed.
 
Causes and Symptoms
 Many people have a lifelong propensity to depression that does not become obvious until late in life when the condition is triggered by circumstances, which can range from retiring to developing a serious illness or facing the death of a friend or spouse. But while it is natural for people to feel depressed after a traumatic loss, when that depression persists for months or years it is likely to have a biological cause as well.
Often, a physical illness itself causes depression in the elderly by altering the chemicals in the brain. Among the ailments that could touch off depression, Dr. Carson said, are diabetes, hypothyroidism, kidney or liver dysfunction and sometimes heart disease and infections. In people with these ailments, treatment that controls the underlying disease usually eliminates the depression. But if the depression persists despite treatment of the physical illness, the emotional disorder should be considered an independent problem requiring its own therapy.
Sometimes medications prescribed for other conditions precipitate depression. In exploring the causes of depression, it is crucial to take a complete inventory of the prescription and over-the-counter medications that the person is using.
Diagnosing depression in the elderly often requires time and a careful and thorough workup. Dr. Carson pointed out that rarely do elderly people "come in carrying a sign saying 'I'm depressed.' "
"More than likely," she said, "if they seek treatment, they may complain that they don't feel good, they hurt here or there or they're having trouble sleeping."
Depression often assumes the guise of physical, or psychosomatic, symptoms like headaches, backaches, digestive problems, joint pain or insomnia. Just because the symptoms are psychosomatic does not mean they are imaginary, only that they are physical manifestations of an emotional disorder. The pain is real, but if the underlying emotional problem is treated, it will go away.
Some signs of depression, like memory lapses or difficulty concentrating, mimic symptoms of Alzheimer's disease. An older person who develops cognitive disorders should not be assumed to be becoming senile, nor should such symptoms be written off as an expected part of aging. But in other cases, Dr. Kiev said, once the depression is treated, there may still be residual cognitive symptoms that may warrant treating the patient as an Alzheimer's sufferer.
 
Prevention
 Older people face many real-life problems that can compound a biological tendency to become depressed, including physical illness, financial burdens, deaths of friends and relations and loss of purpose. Dr. Kiev said people "must prepare for making life meaningful or life will be tough and unfulfilling, and if you go through any kind of stress it can precipitate depression."
He suggests that older people get involved in things that are meaningful to them. He urges them to shed burdens and obligations and instead do something they really want to do.
 
Treatment
 Depression should be suspected in an older person who has frequent crying bouts, is continually sad or irritable, develops sleeping or eating problems, dwells on death or loses interest in previously pleasurable activities.
The first step in a workup for depression should be a thorough medical checkup to determine whether there is an underlying, undiagnosed physical disorder. If none is found to account fully for the depressive symptoms, treatment with an antidepressant, perhaps in conjunction with counseling, is usually the next step. Newer antidepressants like Prozac and Paxil are far less likely to cause disruptive or dangerous side effects in the elderly than older medications like Elavil. Participing in a regular exercise program and a support group for the elderly may also help.
 
Further Information
 The National Institute of Mental Health, through its Depression Awareness, Recognition and Treatment program, provides information on depression, its diagnosis and treatment. The institute has also produced a booklet, "If You're Over 65 and Feeling Depressed . . ." The booklet and other guidance can be obtained by writing to D/ART Public Inquiries, National Institute of Mental Health, 5600 Fishers Lane, Room 15C-05, Rockville, Md. 20857.

LOAD-DATE: February 9, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Chart: "Depression: A Symptom Checklist" provides a list of symptoms of depression. (Source: National Institute of Mental Health Depression Awareness, Regognition and Treatment [D/ART] Program)
 
Drawing.

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The New York Times

February 9, 1994, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Sports of The Times;
Sizing Up Outfielder Jordan

BYLINE: By CLAIRE SMITH

SECTION: Section B; Page 9; Column 1; Sports Desk

LENGTH: 766 words

WHAT is the difference between Michael Jordan and Eddie Gaedel, besides 2 feet 11 inches? Or what is the difference between Michael Jordan and Minnie Minoso, besides more than 40 years in age? And, not the least bit less important, what is the difference between Michael Jordan and Lenny Dykstra, or Pete Rose, besides 1,110 career hits for Dykstra and a major league high of 4,256 hits for Rose?
According to Bud Selig, there's an awful lot of difference between Jordan -- the quintessential National Basketball Association All-Star and would-be major league right fielder -- and the above mentioned. And for a variety of reasons that have everything to do with the integrity of the game, Selig must make sure that remains so. 
 For Selig, as the titular head of baseball as well as the owner of the Milwaukee Brewers, is the interim guardian of the integrity and best interests of the game. And he knows more than anyone else that there are many skeptics out there wondering if Jordan's presence in the camp of the Chicago White Sox come next Monday will test the sport's integrity or bump up against its best interests.
There are those who believe that Jordan's mere presence may be just as much a sideshow as was the appearance of the 3-foot-7-inch Gaedel at the plate for the St. Louis Browns in a 1951 game. Or just another publicity stunt, as many believed were the White Sox attempts to activate Minoso, the septuagenarian, the last two seasons.
"A lot of people question whether it's a spectacle," Selig acknowledged yesterday by telephone from Milwaukee. "I honestly don't think that it is. I look at it this way: The greatest basketball player of all time retired and now says that all along he really wanted to be a baseball player.
"I know he has worked unbelievably hard this winter. He's a man of enormous pride, enormous competitiveness. And I have every confidence that Michael Jordan is not going to do anything to embarrass himself. And the White Sox aren't going to do anything to embarrass themselves, or baseball."
Gaedel was a spectacle. No one could argue differently. The irrepressible Bill Veeck, owner of those Browns and later owner of the White Sox, would have been insulted if anyone ever did.
And so would Minoso have been a spectacle had not one commissioner, Fay Vincent, refused to allow him to play when nearing age 70 and had not the displeasure shown by White Sox players last year dissuaded the team owner, Jerry Reinsdorf, from putting Minoso on the field at almost age 71.
But Selig is convinced that the Sox and Jordan are looking for something more upstanding than a cheap laugh or an oddity. Simply put, Selig said: "The difference is that an Eddie Gaedel, even if he worked hard, could never have been a major league baseball player. A lot of people believe Michael just might be."
If the question of whether Jordan is or is not a spectacle becomes moot because of such skills, another question may not. For Jordan, shadowed by gambling charges, could be playing baseball while Rose continues to serve a lifetime ban for a gambling scandal that consumed his career.
Jordan exited basketball with a clean slate given him by the N.B.A. commissioner, David Stern, whose investigation cleared Jordan of any wrongdoing.
That does not mean Selig does not owe it to baseball to determine Jordan's suitability for the game. After all, baseball is the sport that has been absolutely obsessed with gambling ever since 1920, when members of the 1919 White Sox were charged with accepting bribes to throw World Series games.
"We should have that obsession and it will continue," said Selig, who plans to confer with Stern. "As the spring develops, we will, as we would in any normal situation, be very conscientious in that area. But let me also say this: We have no reason, as of now, to be concerned."
It may be that Jordan, like Dykstra, just got caught up in wrong-headed excessive gambling away from his sport. It earned Dykstra, the Phillies' center fielder, a one-year probation. It caused Jordan much anguish and public humiliation.
Baseball, like basketball, seems willing to overlook all that for now and let Jordan's skills be more of a judge of where he winds up. But Jordan should know what Selig believes: that the vigilance in the game will not lessen just because of the candle power of its newest "star."
"Michael Jordan will be treated no differently than any player in major league baseball, in any way, shape, form or matter," Selig said. "That's all I can say. He will be under the same scrutiny as any other player."

LOAD-DATE: February 9, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Michael Jordan (Reuters)

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The New York Times

February 12, 1994, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

THE ENDLESS WINTER: ABOUT NEW YORK;
In Pursuit of Warmth In a City Transformed

BYLINE: By David Gonzalez

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

LENGTH: 898 words

With the snow stinging his face like a blizzard of glass shards, the chilled New Yorker set out yesterday morning in search of warmth, or at least comfort.
East Harlem seemed like a good bet. After all, generations of Caribbean transplants had managed one way or another to reach some accommodation with the elements. 
 On East 116th Street accommodation was at a premium. Cars and pedestrians impatiently shared the road and the thigh-high snow banks that jutted out from the sidewalks and that concealed curbs, potholes and whatever else lurked underneath, making the simple act of crossing the street more like an act of faith. It wasn't enough for a group of elderly women who peered out through the glass doors of a spiritualist's shop -- with few customers for their statues of Lazarus, African beads or herbal conjures, they closed up and went home.
But like an arctic outpost with tropical aspirations, the sliver of a community garden on the corner of East 115th Street gamely beckoned with a Puerto Rican flag flapping atop a snow-covered gazebo. Nearby, a sign announced "Young Devils Inc." Looked promising.
No devils in the garden. They were, appropriately enough, in the basement of an adjacent building, which is the headquarters for the social club the Young Devils, started a half-century ago. Island travel pictures and old posters from sizzling-hot boogaloo concerts by Joe Cuba hung on the walls. Warm thoughts of one sort or another.
Lots of the Young Devils collect a pension now, and as it turned out, it might have been better to ask them about staying warm a half-century ago.
"When you're young, you don't feel bad," said Rafael Rivieron, a 68-year-old retiree and former Golden Gloves champ. "When you're older, you're finished."
A friend suggested that the champ stay warm with a sip of Scotch, and plopped a bottle on the counter beside him.
"No," he protested. It was 10:30 in the morning. "I haven't eaten."
His antidote to the weather -- go back to Puerto Rico.
"I can't stay here by myself," he added quietly. "My wife died so many years ago. This is my only place now."
A ruddy-faced friend piped up.
"You can't go to P.R.," advised the friend. "The airports are closed. You got to stay here."
His friend is called Pete Russia. Well, there's a man who might have some sub-zero survival smarts.
Maybe not.
Turns out Pete Russia is Pete Rivera. He got the moniker back when he sported an Afro hairdo that one day frizzed out beyond control. A friend said he looked like a mad Russian.
Back to the streets.
Sand is usually a harbinger of warmer climes and balmy islands. Unfortunately yesterday's sand was on the roadway of the Triboro Bridge and the island was Randalls. But an opportunity awaited below the bridge, where a collection of red-brick buildings was spread out at the practice center of the Fire Department training center. Fire.
Chuck Glover and Robert Duell dug out their station wagon. The two men, captains in an upstate fire department, had finished training early this week and were preparing for a 230-mile drive home to Cortland.
"There it's not considered a storm until you get up to a foot," Mr. Duell said.
Looked like a storm here, as the chilled New Yorker felt the snow crunching inside his boots. Mr. Glover offered his own suggestion on how to fight the cold. He pointed to his car, where he had stashed his fireman's boots, coat and other firefighting gear.
"The same stuff that keeps you from the heat, keeps you from the cold," he said. He paused, as if debating whether to share the real inside story. "Besides," he confided, "when you're an officer, you sit inside the car."
Become a boss.
Reason caught the better of the chilled New Yorker as he plodded off, pondering the freezing point of ball-point ink and the absorbency of notepad paper. Baseball caps and athletic socks, he was learning, were very absorbent.
Despairing the possibility of physical warmth, he decided to seek esthetic comfort and headed for a sculpture park along the Astoria waterfront. He slogged through knee-high drifts, leaned into a wicked wind that blew in from the East River, and found the objects of contemplation -- three life-sized sculptures, including one of a bare-chested basketball player. Very little snow on that statue. He wondered, How many more days to summer?
Across the street, a group of men slipped and slid along Vernon Boulevard as they corralled a convoy of coffee wagons into their garage.
"It's unbelieveable we came out in this weather," said Kharem Khan, an Afghan immigrant who was returning from a dreary morning of selling little coffee and even fewer donuts on a midtown street corner.
A twinge of empathy.
As for dealing with the weather, Mr. Khan pointed to his head. "I think it's in here."
Think warm thoughts.
An hour later the chilled New Yorker found himself walking, more or less, down the promenade at Battery Park City searching for a bench where he had once spent lazy Indian summer afternoons. The bench was all but hidden by snow.
He smiled, but decided that it was probably warmer on the subway.
A few stops later, he emerged at Times Square. A young man in the crowd stopped and scanned 42d Street.
"Praise God," said the man, Herman Gonzalez. "With all the sin, this city looks pure."
Maybe a warm heart is the best defense against this weather.

LOAD-DATE: February 12, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: David Huling, armed with his snow shovels, yesterday on East 115th Street near Madison Avenue. (Angel Franco/The New York Times)

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49 of 457 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times

February 12, 1994, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

THE ENDLESS WINTER: THE STRUGGLE;
Stubborn Guest Makes the Common Special

BYLINE: By RICK BRAGG 

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

LENGTH: 1212 words

Because of the snow, so much snow, the miracle of birth had to unfold on a couch in Teaneck, N.J.
Because of the snow, a 90-year-old, one-legged man in Port Chester, N.Y., couldn't get a hot meal. But in Manhattan, a delivery man with ice in his eyebrows and terror in his eyes made a suicidal-type run on an out-of-control bicycle with a $7 order of moo-shu pork. 
 Because of the snow, a man stood waiting for a truckload of roses that never showed, on the one weekend of the year when lovers can't be lovers without something red.
The snow drifted down like feathers and piled up thicker than feather beds in New York and much of the rest of the region yesterday, smothering traffic, causing too many hardships to count and mocking the snow plows and shovelers who dared to challenge it. People slipped on it and cried and shook their fists at it and cursed, but it just kept on coming.
But nowhere did it have quite the effect that it did in the home of Sonia Alonso, who, trapped by impassable roads, gave birth to a 7-pound baby boy with the help of a few friends and a 20-year-old medical technician who had never done such a thing before.
The cold has kept others who need to get out locked in.
For 16 years, Mario Grasso has unfailingly delivered hot meals to elderly people who cannot leave their homes. Yesterday, when a plump carpet of snow fell upon plump carpets from earlier snows, he too was trapped.
 
Human Contact Broken
 "I couldn't get out of the church parking lot," said Mr. Grasso, a 76-year-old retired New York City auditor who was trying to deliver 10 plates of hot lasagna from the Scarsdale Congregational Church. "The parking lot hadn't been plowed and the wheels were turning around in the same spot."
It has been that kind of winter for the elderly of the New York City region. Meals on Wheels programs have been canceled for as many as nine days in some communities, and local pharmacies have had to stop delivering prescription medicine to the homebound. Visits to hospitals for physical therapy have been postponed.
The occasional fresh-air stroll or shopping expedition with a walker has been forgone for fear that a slip on unseen ice could leave a permanently disabling broken bone. Most painful for those who are shut in is that the human visits that brighten the flat routines of their days have become less frequent.
All those years of living have given the elderly the street smarts to put away provisions and extra medicine for a run of bad luck like this winter. But this run has been worse than most of them recall.
"This last week has been terrible," said Ansel Mason, 87, a retired security guard in Halesite, L.I., who had to make do yesterday with canned spaghetti instead of a delivered hot meal. "I've got enough canned goods to hold out for four or five days if I have to."
All through the snows of this winter, younger homebound adults have been suffering the restless anxiety known as cabin fever. But Raymond Daur, 90, a retired bank officer who lives alone in a house in Port Chester, N.Y., has not stepped outside since October, except for a four-day stay at his son's home during Christmas.
The reason he has been so pent up is that his prosthetic leg has been causing severe irritation and he has been wary of using it for more than a short period. He counts on the the visit by the Meals on Wheels volunteer, not just for the hot food, but for the break in his routine. That break didn't come yesterday because the volunteers, most of whom are elderly themselves, were afraid to drive, though Patrick Bradley, chairman of the local Meals on Wheels program, did telephone to make sure Mr. Daur had reserves of food.
 
Classical Pasta
 So Mr. Daur spent his day listening to classical music on the radio and doing crossword puzzles, and munching on a plate of pasta with tomato sauce that was delivered Thursday.
The elderly also put away extra medicine and other things they can't do without for this kind of emergency.
While many in the New York region spent yesterday worrying about food, medicine and friends, Lee Merto was wondering where his roses were. More than 50,000 of them.
For Mr. Merto, the manager of a wholesale flower distributor on Manhattan's West Side, the timing of the storm could not have been worse, given that he was to have shipped Valentine's Day orders yesterday to many of the 500 florists he supplies in the area.
Trouble was, with airports closed and highways treacherous, Mr. Merto had no way to receive the 14,400 roses that were being sent to him by air from California and the additional 40,000 that had been picked in South America but were stuck on a truck somewhere between New York and Miami.
"There's a lot of money that could be lost," said Mr. Merto, whose company, Atlantic Wholesale, at 46 West 28th Street, counts the days leading up to Valentine's Day, Mother's Day and Easter as its busiest of the year.
"Our customers are counting on us to get the job done," he added.
To other business owners, the storm will be difficult to forget. Many hair salons, those that stayed open, found themselves with virtually no heads to cut or nails to polish. Department stores had few customers and even fewer employees.
For Zhang Fu Zhcen, even a little business was almost more than he could stand. He was half-frozen and weaving dangerously through sliding traffic on his bicycle, trying to make a food delivery in midtown.
"Bad" was all he said as he wobbled to a stop at the top of a long, gradual hill where even cars had a hard time maneuvering. He was still upright when he disappeared from sight.
Ms. Alonso, in labor, couldn't take a chance of the dangerous roads. She was snowbound in her Teaneck apartment when her labor started yesterday morning. Shana Prystowsky, a medical technician, went to her.
She arrived at 10:35 A.M. to find several women walking Ms. Alonso around the living room, and had no time to do anything more than lay her down on the nearest sofa and let nature proceed.
Thirteen minutes later, at 10:48, Ms. Alonso, with Ms. Prystowsky coaching, brought little Omar into the world.
"He was beautiful," said Ms. Prystowsky later, still breathless. "I was very nervous and excited. It was a good nervous, and all my training came right back to me. Nervous or not, I had to do it."
Immediately after the birth, Ms. Alonso was bundled into the ambulance and taken to the Hackensack Medical Center. "Luckily we pulled in right behind a snow plow and had it ahead of us for most of the trip," said Ms. Prystowsky.
A hospital spokeswoman, Mary Garcia, said last night that Ms. Alonso and her new son were in excellent shape.
But for others awaiting a child, the snow is causing a great deal of fear.
Robin and Jonathan Reich of Majestic Beach took an hour and a half to make what is normally a 15-minute trip to the hospital in Port Jefferson, for what turned out to be a false alarm. That was Thursday, and only 10 inches had fallen by then. Now, with more snow, there is more fear.
At the first sign of labor, Mrs. Reich said, she and her husband will leave the house and head for the home of a friend who lives close to the hospital.
"When it's clear, I tell the baby to hurry up. Now I say, wait a day."

LOAD-DATE: February 12, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Snow interrupted power on the third rails of the electric portion of the Long Island Rail Road yesterday, halting service and leaving hundreds of passengers stranded at the Jamaica Station in Queens. (Steve Berman for The New York Times) (pg. 1); For Zhang Fu Zhcen, even a little business was almost more than he could stand. He was half-frozen and weaving dangerously through sliding traffic on his bicycle, trying to make a food delivery in midtown. (Monica Almeida/The New York Times) (pg. 25)

Copyright 1994 The New York Times Company



50 of 457 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times

February 13, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

The Last Romantics

BYLINE: By DAVID FIRESTONE 

SECTION: Section 6;  Page 44;  Column 1;  Magazine Desk 

LENGTH: 340 words

Love in later life is a distillation of love, a reduction to the essence of human need. Single adults past retirement, past the deaths of spouses and friends, past the confused gropings and hesitant sputterings of youth, are finally liberated to seek simple comfort in another's companionship.
They find it amid coat-and-tie gatherings in high-rise parlors and in the everyday cheer of senior centers, where ardent friends swing-dance in the afternoon and trade histories over cardboard cups of decaf. Walk through any of these 335 centers in New York City and you can hear animated exploratory chat about books and politics, movies and weather; stay long enough and you notice the same couples pairing off, flexing in rhythm through Stay Well classes and saving seats near the television when it's time to cluck at the evening news. Some hope to marry or remarry, while others seek only to escape the loneliness of tiny apartments or empty houses. Few need to read the scientific studies that show how much longer and healthier life can be when it is shared. 
 Now and then, there are even those who manage to share a bit too much.
"There are a lot more women than men in the singles scene, and sometimes you have some of the more eligible men getting involved in triangular situations," says Pat Monaco, director of the Newtown Senior Center in Elmhurst, Queens, and occasional peacemaker between feuding older lovers.
Some, though, watch the field from the sidelines. Anna Smith, who leads some exercise classes at the Allen Community Senior Citizens Center in Jamaica, Queens, lost her husband 17 years ago and claims no interest in finding another. "I don't want somebody with some illness I have to take care of," says Smith, trim and resolute, "and I don't want anybody nursing me."
But when her friends invited her to the center's Starlight Cotillion late last year, Smith showed up in a chiffon dress and an expectant look, ready to take possibility by the arms and waltz through the night.
   DAVID FIRESTONE

LOAD-DATE: February 13, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Older women greatly outnumber older men and often find themselves waiting on the outskirts of rooms. At the weekly afternoon dance in the Newtown Senior Center, far left, a woman listened in patient anticipation. At the Springtime in Paris ball in the Milford (Conn.) Senior Center, near left, a widow and a widower danced; they have dated ever since. Anna Smith, in the yellow dress, and the other "post-debs" of the Allen Community Senior Citizens Center's Starlight Cotillion, below. Gripping their pool cues like shields, the men of the Corona Preservation Senior Center in Queens, right, stood fast around their table while a celebration for couples married 50 years continued in an adjoining room. Though in demand, many older men prefer the company of one another to another round of intimacy. Folk music, so often heard at senior centers, can revive the pleasant memories of youth and take the chill off awkward social situations. These old friends (she's a widow and he's married), above, lost themselves in a brisk tarantella during a 50th anniversary celebration at the Corona senior center. Private social clubs, like the Night Owls and Who's Who International, remain a popular, if expensive, way to shake hands and discover who's out there. At this holiday dinner party in Manhattan, left, which cost $70 a person, the man on the left, visiting from California, met someone he continued to date. In the middle of the afternoon, halfway through an old song, there can be a moment of pleasure when all the loneliness and fears of old age seem beside the point. If only for an instant, these two friends at the Newtown Senior Center stop the earthbound progress of advancing time. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY REBECCA COONEY)

Copyright 1994 The New York Times Company



51 of 457 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times

February 13, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

YOUR HOME;
Updating To Meet Needs

BYLINE: By ANDREE BROOKS

SECTION: Section 10; Page 5; Column 1; Real Estate Desk

LENGTH: 1084 words

IT may all begin with frustration over lack of space, a desire for a room that was never needed before or even a fantasy of an updated kitchen or bathroom.
Whatever the catalyst, the family's current needs and yearnings govern most renovation programs. Even so, the best of these projects should also reflect marketplace trends to help make the home more marketable when selling day arrives. 
 Consider, for a start, the kitchen. According to Remodeling News, a monthly trade journal for the remodeling industry, kitchens have swollen in size like rising dough in the last few years. A kitchen, it observed, must now cater to a growing number of uses, all of which may be taking place simultaneously.
With less time available in two-income households, the magazine said in an editorial, the kitchen has become one of the only places where the family spends time together. So it needs to be redesigned to comfortably serve several people working at different tasks at the same time, people who also need to "relate while performing those household tasks."
Ellen Rand, a consultant in Teaneck, N.J., to the building industry and co-author of "The Complete Book of Kitchen Design," (Consumer Reports Books, 1991, $16.95), agreed. "You need enough space so a child can do homework, so one parent can fix a salad while the other cooks the pasta and where they can all eat," she said. Many families want space for TV, a desk and even a corner for entertaining friends.
For all these reasons Ms. Rand recommends adding even more counter space than one might at first think necessary. It may mean enlarging the square footage, even cutting into an adjacent parlor or family room. If that's not feasible, perhaps a wall can be removed, or partially removed, to provide a more open feeling and more light.
Center islands can be especially useful, she said, providing a locus around which several members of the household can work, socialize or eat in comfort and conviviality. If a sink or cooking facilities can be incorporated into the island, so much the better.
Since children tend to prepare much of their own instant food these days, Ms. Rand cautions homeowners about the height of cabinets and appliances. "Can storage areas be easily reached?" she asked. "Will the microwave oven be too high?"
Modifying for these needs, she added, also helps make the home more user-friendly to elderly people, another growing segment of the marketplace.
The same concerns should apply to all work surfaces, according to Remodeling News. It favors built-in recycling bins hidden behind cabinet doors for quick and easy clean-up chores.
In focus groups and from countless surveys, K. Hovnanian Companies of Red Bank, N.J., a builder of mass-market homes, finds buyers now prefer countertops in faux granite or marble, or even the real thing, rather than the more traditional formica.
Also trendy, said Richard Arzberger, Hovnanian's director of architectural services, are kitchens with ceramic rather than vinyl flooring. In older and antique homes, he added, wooden floors are back in style since newer and tougher polyurethene finishes allow for easier cleaning. Direct access to an outdoor area, such as a deck, is also highly desirable, he said.
When it comes to appliances, "think in terms of two of everything," said Kira Hann, vice president of marketing for Toll Brothers, a home builder based in Huntington Valley, Pa. This could mean two sinks, two range tops, two ovens "and even two dishwashers," said Karen Sneirson, a sales associate with William Pitt Real Estate of New Canaan, Conn.
"My customers love the idea," she said. "It's great for parties and you don't have to wait around while one load is being washed."
Since every member of the household may be trying to get off to work and school at the same time, the bathroom areas may also need redesigning to serve several people simultaneously. That means at least two vanities, suggested Ms. Kahn, separated by a comfortable distance or even at opposite ends of the area, as they are in contemporary hotel rooms.
Also gaining ground is the idea of having one or even two enclosed toilet stalls within the main bathroom area -- in this instance more closely reflecting the arrangements in commercial settings.
As a fantasy fulfillment, whirlpool tubs are really hot, report brokers. "People like them best when there are skylights too," said Jim Whittemore, a partner with Burbank/Whittemore Inc., real estate brokers in Larchmont, N.Y.
When it comes to bathroom fixtures, these experts agree that people are most eager to have a separate glass-enclosed stall shower in addition to an oversized tub. No longer is anyone content, it seems, with that awkward shower/bath combination so beloved by generations of suburbanites.
The home office has also been enlarged and made more luxurious, say these experts. At the top of the most-wanted list is a first-floor location, a separate entrance ("nobody wants to bring people through the entire house," said Mr. Arzberger), wiring that can accommodate the cornucopia of machines that typifies the modern office, multiple telephone lines and soundproofing, if feasible.
Built-in bookcases or storage shelves are other pluses, along with wiring for cable TV and a wide expanse of window for lots of natural light. "People expect to spend a great deal of time in these rooms," said Ms. Sneirson, the sales agent. "They want them to have a comfortable feel and a nice view, almost like a library."
A small bathroom or kitchen incorporated into the office suite will really provide a marketing boost. For example, Mr. Arzberger said his company was increasingly creating what it had dubbed a "flex room" -- a suite separated from the main traffic area that can serve as a home office, personal quarters for an au-pair or nanny or a mini-apartment for an elderly parent.
Ms. Hann, the marketing specialist from Toll Brothers, agreed. In fact, when she and her fiance, Jerry McCarron, a venture capitalist for the building industry, were planning a use for the unfinished lower level of their new home in Plymouth Meeting, Pa., last year they chose to have a multipurpose area even though they only needed a home office.
They made certain it had a separate entrance, a walk-in closet, a full bathroom and a galley kitchen, and was also heavily wired for electronic equipment.
"Even if we won't need it all," said Ms. Hann, "we were sure it would help sell the home one day."

LOAD-DATE: February 13, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Drawing

Copyright 1994 The New York Times Company



52 of 457 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times

February 13, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

At Work;
After the Divorce, the Deluge

BYLINE: By Barbara Presley Noble

SECTION: Section 3; Page 25; Column 3; Financial Desk

LENGTH: 1012 words

THERE are so many ways for a woman to end up living in poverty when she is elderly that it seems almost churlish to focus on one particular group as more victimized than any other. Women may, for example, work at jobs in companies unlikely to offer significant retirement coverage and for wages so low that saving is virtually impossible. Or, to increase their income, they may juggle two or three low-paying jobs. Together, the jobs may add up to years of more-than-full-time employment and yield a living wage -- but no benefits and certainly no pension.
Or they may enter and leave the labor force as family duties ebb and flow, interrupting the long march toward qualifying for retirement plans, or lowering the amount they will receive. Or their husbands may die, leaving them with considerably less than the expected amount of retirement income. "Our life patterns are different than the life patterns of men," said Lou Glasse, president of the Washington-based Older Women's League. 
 All women may be at the mercy of their life patterns, but women who divorce in midlife or later are shoved with sudden force into a vulnerable subset of the female experience. It is women who have done what was expected of them and led the most exemplary middle-class lives who may be the least prepared to face the reduced circumstances in which they will very likely find themselves in old age.
A study last year of the economic status of older divorced women by the Brandeis University Policy Center on Aging painted a Lucian Freud-ish picture of the so-called golden years. The study noted that only 5 percent of divorced women living on Social Security and a private pension were poor, but it also revealed that only about a quarter of older women (age 62 and over) receive a pension in addition to Social Security. The median annual income of older divorced women is about $9,000 (in 1990 dollars) and has been growing at a below-inflation rate of 1.5 percent.
Both the study and experts in pensions and divorce say changes in matrimonial law since 1970, when California became the first state to allow "no-fault" divorce -- based on irreconcilable differences instead of designating a guilty party -- have generally not worked to the benefit of women. Where the courts once used alimony and tangible assets to punish and reward, they now focus on distributing property fairly. They have expanded the definition of property to include intangibles like potential earning power and pensions, but in the process women have come to receive alimony less often and for shorter periods of time. The first major study of California's no-fault divorce law, published in 1985, found that men's standard of living went up 42 percent in the first year after divorce and women's went down 73 percent.
The last thing women may be thinking about as they contemplate the sinking trend line of their post-divorce income is a pension that won't come home to roost for several years. "Women, especially if they have children, may have other priorities. They have short-term problems," said Anna Rappaport, a senior actuary in the Chicago office of William M. Mercer Inc., the human resource consultants. "It's easy to say I'm going to solve a 2-year problem at the expense of a 10-year problem."
COMPOUNDING the difficulty is the well-documented reluctance of some women to throw themselves wholeheartedly into financial and retirement planning. "Women don't know enough about the issues," Ms. Rappaport said. "When they make a settlement, they let the husbands keep their pensions without realizing the economic impact."
Women are often not well-served by their lawyers, who themselves may be unfamiliar with the intricacies of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, the Federal law covering private pensions; the Retirement Equity Act of 1984, which broadened the rights of divorced spouses, or the particular pension system relevant to their client. And some lawyers, according to several pension advocates, simply don't think about pensions and benefits, which are not automatically put into play when the marital assets go on the table during a divorce. They may not anticipate changes, like remarriage or the death of the ex-husband, that could nullify the agreement and leave the woman with nothing. Such lapses are not uncommon despite the fact that a traditional defined-benefit pension accrued during a lifetime career at one employer will often be the couple's largest asset, after their home.
WHAT is to be done? First, learn about your family finances and catalogue your potential pension assets. Think long and hard before handling a divorce without a lawyer. When you do engage a lawyer, make sure he or she is knowledgeable about pensions, especially if you fall into a special category, like one of the Federal retirement systems. And if you feel you might be wrecking your karma by raising these topics when you are not contemplating a divorce, or if you can't cope with them when you are, ponder for a moment living alone in old age on the $500 monthly Social Security payment women typically receive.
 
 
 
WHERE TO START LOOKING FOR HELP
THE comprehensive "Your Pension Rights at Divorce: What Women Need to Know," by Anne Moss, is available for $16.50 from the Pension Rights Center, 918 16th Street N.W., Suite 704, Washington, D.C. 20006. The American Association of Retired Persons has published "Women, Pensions and Divorce," a survey of pension issues with a section on proposed reforms. The booklet is available from the American Association of Retired Persons at 601 E Street N.W., Washington, D.C. 20049. Also available free from the A.A.R.P. is "A Women's Guide to Pension Rights."
To receive a free packet of information on pensions from the Older Women's League, send a self-addressed, stamped envelope to the league at 666 11th Street N.W. Suite 700, Washington, D.C. 20001. A women-and-pensions edition of the league's newsletter has several short articles and a list of resources. Call 800-825-3695 for the current price.

LOAD-DATE: February 13, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

SERIES: Second in a series of articles on women and pensions.

GRAPHIC: Chart: "A Checklist of Pension Question" shows suggested questions to ask when concerned about your pension plan.
 
Drawing

TYPE: Series

Copyright 1994 The New York Times Company



53 of 457 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times

February 13, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final
Correction Appended

At Work;
After the Divorce, the Deluge

BYLINE: By Barbara Presley Noble

SECTION: Section 3; Page 25; Column 3; Financial Desk

LENGTH: 1013 words

THERE are so many ways for a woman to end up living in poverty when she is elderly that it seems almost churlish to focus on one particular group as more victimized than any other. Women may, for example, work at jobs in companies unlikely to offer significant retirement coverage and for wages so low that saving is virtually impossible. Or, to increase their income, they may juggle two or three low-paying jobs. Together, the jobs may add up to years of more-than-full-time employment and yield a living wage -- but no benefits and certainly no pension.
Or they may enter and leave the labor force as family duties ebb and flow, interrupting the long march toward qualifying for retirement plans, or lowering the amount they will receive. Or their husbands may die, leaving them with considerably less than the expected amount of retirement income. "Our life patterns are different than the life patterns of men," said Lou Glasse, president of the Washington-based Older Women's League. 
 All women may be at the mercy of their life patterns, but women who divorce in midlife or later are shoved with sudden force into a vulnerable subset of the female experience. It is women who have done what was expected of them and led the most exemplary middle-class lives who may be the least prepared to face the reduced circumstances in which they will very likely find themselves in old age.
A study last year of the economic status of older divorced women by the Brandeis University Policy Center on Aging painted a Lucian Freud-ish picture of the so-called golden years. The study noted that only 5 percent of divorced women living on Social Security and a private pension were poor, but it also revealed that only about a quarter of older women (age 62 and over) receive a pension in addition to Social Security. The median annual income of older divorced women is about $9,000 (in 1990 dollars) and has been growing at a below-inflation rate of 1.5 percent.
Both the study and experts in pensions and divorce say changes in matrimonial law since 1970, when California became the first state to allow "no-fault" divorce -- based on irreconcilable differences instead of designating a guilty party -- have generally not worked to the benefit of women. Where the courts once used alimony and tangible assets to punish and reward, they now focus on distributing property fairly. They have expanded the definition of property to include intangibles like potential earning power and pensions, but in the process women have come to receive alimony less often and for shorter periods of time. The first major study of California's no-fault divorce law, published in 1985, found that men's standard of living went up 42 percent in the first year after divorce and women's went down 73 percent.
The last thing women may be thinking about as they contemplate the sinking trend line of their post-divorce income is a pension that won't come home to roost for several years. "Women, especially if they have children, may have other priorities. They have short-term problems," said Anna Rappaport, a senior actuary in the Chicago office of William M. Mercer Inc., the human resource consultants. "It's easy to say I'm going to solve a 2-year problem at the expense of a 10-year problem."
COMPOUNDING the difficulty is the well-documented reluctance of some women to throw themselves wholeheartedly into financial and retirement planning. "Women don't know enough about the issues," Ms. Rappaport said. "When they make a settlement, they let the husbands keep their pensions without realizing the economic impact."
Women are often not well-served by their lawyers, who themselves may be unfamiliar with the intricacies of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, the Federal law covering private pensions; the Retirement Equity Act of 1984, which broadened the rights of divorced spouses, or the particular pension system relevant to their client. And some lawyers, according to several pension advocates, simply don't think about pensions and benefits, which are not automatically put into play when the marital assets go on the table during a divorce. They may not anticipate changes, like remarriage or the death of the ex-husband, that could nullify the agreement and leave the woman with nothing. Such lapses are not uncommon despite the fact that a traditional defined-benefit pension accrued during a lifetime career at one employer will often be the couple's largest asset, after their home.
WHAT is to be done? First, learn about your family finances and catalogue your potential pension assets. Think long and hard before handling a divorce without a lawyer. When you do engage a lawyer, make sure he or she is knowledgeable about pensions, especially if you fall into a special category, like one of the Federal retirement systems. And if you feel you might be wrecking your karma by raising these topics when you are not contemplating a divorce, or if you can't cope with them when you are, ponder for a moment living alone in old age on the $500 monthly Social Security payment women typically receive.
 
 
 
WHERE TO START LOOKING FOR HELP
THE comprehensive "Your Pension Rights at Divorce: What Women Need to Know," by Anne Moss, is available for $16.50 from the Pension Rights Center, 918 16th Street N.W., Suite 704, Washington, D.C. 20006. The American Association of Retired Persons has published "Women, Pensions and Divorce," a survey of pension issues with a section on proposed reforms. The booklet is available from the American Association of Retired Persons at 601 E Street N.W., Washington, D.C. 20049. Also available free from the A.A.R.P. is "A Women's Guide to Pension Rights."
To receive a free packet of information on pensions from the Older Women's League, send a self-addressed, stamped envelope to the league at 666 11th Street N.W. Suite 700, Washington, D.C. 20001. A women-and-pensions edition of the league's newsletter has several short articles and a list of resources. Call 800-825-3695 for the current price.

LOAD-DATE: February 13, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

SERIES: Second in a series of articles on women and pensions.

CORRECTION-DATE: February 20, 1994, Sunday

 CORRECTION:
A chart with the At Work column last Sunday, about how women can evaluate their pension and retirement income, misstated the telephone number for the Social Security Administration. It is (800) 772-1213.

GRAPHIC: Chart: "A Checklist of Pension Question" shows suggested questions to ask when concerned about your pension plan.
 
Drawing

TYPE: Series

Copyright 1994 The New York Times Company



54 of 457 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times

February 14, 1994, Monday, Late Edition - Final

Keeping Elderly at Home and Care Affordable

BYLINE: By TAMAR LEWIN,  Special to The New York Times

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

LENGTH: 1721 words

DATELINE: COLUMBIA, S.C.

After Rosa Alston had her second leg amputated, her surgeon began making arrangements for her to go to a nursing home.
But Mrs. Alston, a 73-year-old widow who lives alone, would have none of it. Instead, she signed up for Palmetto Senior Care, a comprehensive-care program for frail elderly people based on a San Francisco model that is winning support among health policy makers nationwide. 
 Palmetto social workers helped Mrs. Alston find and move to an apartment that she could navigate in her wheelchair with the prosthesis on her right leg. On Mondays and Fridays, Palmetto sends an aide to clean the apartment and to help her bathe. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, the Palmetto van takes Mrs. Alston to the program's day center, where she plays bingo, works on crafts, eats lunch, leads a Bible discussion group and is monitored for her diabetes and other health problems.
When necessary, Palmetto doctors make house calls. And when Mrs. Alston's dog, Skippy, had fleas, Palmetto paid to remove them.
 
Costs Are Moderate
 The program, which requires participants to sign over their Medicaid and Medicare policies, is free for Mrs. Alston, as long as she uses its doctors and nurses. And for Medicaid and Medicare, which pay its costs, the program is less expensive than care in a nursing home.
Palmetto and the eight similar programs across the country are an ambitious effort to weave medical care, home care, social services and case management into a single web of care. They are modeled on the 20-year-old On Lok center for frail elderly residents of Chinatown in San Francisco.
Unlike most other health plans for frail elderly Americans, the programs assign participants to a day center, where a team of doctors, nurses, social workers, therapists, nutritionists and pharmacists decide what services each person needs. The centers are small, allowing for individual attention. Palmetto's day centers -- one in a strip shopping center, one in an office building and one, for people with dementia, in a converted house -- serve a total of 200 people.
"This is what medicine is supposed to be like," said Dr. Paul Eleazer, the medical director of Palmetto, which is affiliated with Richland Memorial Hospital here. "It's taking care of people without worrying about funding sources, or malpractice, or inpatient-outpatient. All you have to think about is whether this is the best way to care for this patient."
The On Lok model, whose name comes from the Chinese words for "peaceful" and "happy," may be expanded to statewide use in both Massachusetts, where it has started in East Boston, and New York, where programs exist in the Bronx and Rochester.
"It's not for everybody," said Don Sherwood, who tracks On Lok for the Office of Research and Demonstration at the Health Care Financing Administration, the Federal agency that manages Medicaid and Medicare. "Only 5 percent of those over 65 are frail enough to be eligible, and many don't want to change doctors and go to a day health center. But for those who want comprehensive care, it's very good."
 
Widespread Praise
 Stephen Somers of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which helped finance the models in South Carolina and elsewhere, said the program helped frail elderly people close the gap between their day-to-day care and the treatment they received for acute problems.
"What makes a difference is helping people function in the community, instead of curing their heart or head or knee problem and letting them fall through the cracks and land in a nursing home," Mr. Somers, associate vice president of the foundation, said. "On Lok is really the leader in the field."
Mr. Somers and others suggested that the model might also work for people with AIDS, severely handicapped children who need intensive medical care or people with chronic mental illnesses.
Palmetto participants and their families describe the program as a godsend. Sandy McCutcheon said she could not run her day-care business if her 66-year-old husband, Kenneth, who has Alzheimer's disease, could not go to the Palmetto center. Nor, she said, could she bear the constant care-giving without the weekend off that Palmetto gives her every month.
Mrs. Alston, who lived in 35 states during a career that included picking oranges, cutting okra, working at an Army PX and ironing curtains, is another fan of Palmetto.
"Whatever I need, they give me," she said. "I don't even have to go the pharmacy anymore, because they hand out my medicine the last day of every month. I look forward to going to the center twice a week, but I wouldn't want to go any more than that. On my days at home, I read the Bible, and I'm not lonely. I like being on my own."
 
Three Crucial Factors
 Three factors make the On Lok model special. While most other comprehensive programs like health maintenance organizations serve healthy and ill participants, On Lok accepts only those ill enough to be eligible for nursing-home care. Most need help bathing, dressing or walking. Many are incontinent or demented.
Second, programs on the On Lok model receive from Medicaid and Medicare a set monthly payment per patient -- from $2,500 a month in Oregon to more than $5,000 in the Bronx -- and have broad discretion in spending it. The amount is based on the average Medicaid-Medicare payment for nursing home-eligible patients in the region minus 5 percent to 15 percent.
Third, each participant is assigned to an interdisciplinary team that meets regularly to assess the patient's needs.
"No doctor, no nurse, no case manager could on their own do the kinds of things the multidisciplinary team can, because we have both the flexibility and the authority to do whatever needs doing," said Susan Aldrich, director of Comprehensive Care Management, the program in the Bronx modeled after On Lok. "We can find housing. We can find a hospital bed. We can buy a microwave oven for someone who's no longer safe around a gas oven."
Central to the On Lok model is the day health center, a vastly expanded version of the social day programs for the elderly that proliferated in the 1970's. Most day centers offer activities that vary from basket-weaving to trips and discussions of current events. In recent years, many centers have added health services like blood-pressure checks or podiatric care.
But the On Lok model goes further, with geriatricians, rehabilitation therapists, nurse-practitioners and other health professionals.
At Mrs. Alston's center more than half the participants have to use wheelchairs. Some receive intravenous antibiotics or hydration in the treatment room at the back of the center.  Others work individually with a physical therapist. Each has a complete physical examination at least every three months.
The program is attractive to participants because they are guaranteed free health care, including hospital or nursing-home care, until they die or choose to leave the program. And the support systems like home care, the day-center programs and the continued attention of a team of health professionals are far more extensive than would generally be available under Medicaid.
 
A Financial Incentive
 Health-policy planners find programs like Palmetto financially appealing, too. Because the health of participants is constantly monitored, their use of hospitals is so sharply reduced that On Lok models cost less than regular care under Medicaid or Medicare despite all the extra services that the models provide.
The director of Palmetto, Judy Baskins, said participants averaged 3.4 days in the hospital a year, less than half the average hospitalization rate for all Americans over 65. Hospital stays for participants in On Lok in San Francisco are briefer, and participants' mortality rates are also low.
Because of careful monitoring, Ms. Baskins noted, participants can often be hospitalized before health problems becomes expensive emergency crises.
Every three months, the Palmetto team discusses each participant, with reports from the doctor, pharmacist, social worker, nutritionist, home-care supervisor, nurse, physical therapist and activities director.
When patients require hospitalization or nursing-home care, the doctors act as admitting physicians, and the team stays in close touch with the patient. In one case, the team became so angry about the shoddy care that their client was receiving at a particular nursing home that they reported the institution to the state licensing agency.
One recent team meeting began with an update on a woman who was about to be discharged from a hospital and taken home to die, as she and her family had agreed.
"The family finally decided at 99 she can do what she wants," Ms. Baskins said, summarizing the case for the 23 health professionals around the table. "They've given her permission. They don't want any more tube feedings. But they have agreed to oxygen and whatever we can do for her comfort level."
The team agrees to increase the number of hours of home care that the woman will receive, and one member volunteers to visit her regularly.
In another case, the team reported that things were going better after an 88-year-old participant had left her grandson's home and gone to her daughter's. The family did not want an aide to go in and give them a break, although the team consensus was that such respite care would relieve the family's stress. While the elderly woman was too demented to take part in group activities at the day center, the activities director said she would continue to sit and hold the woman's hand.
 
Decision on Services
 Deciding what services each patient should receive is a delicate process, often involving negotiations with participants or their families.
"We thought at the beginning that we'd hear a lot of requests for more home health care," Ms. Baskins said, "but we actually hear more requests for new dentures.
"A lot of families, even ones having a very difficult time, say they manage just fine without the extra help we could provide. Of course, there are also families that seem to be doing fine but want more and more help. In those cases, we work very hard to accept what they want, to recognize that we're not in their shoes and that we can't really know what they're going through."

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GRAPHIC: Photos: Rosa Alston being escorted home from Palmetto Senior Care, a comprehensive-care program for frail elderly people in Columbia, S.C. (Alan S. Weiner for The New York Times)(pg. A1); Palmetto Senior Care in Columbia, S.C., and the eight similar programs across the country are an ambitious effort to weave medical care, home care, social services and case management into a single web of care for patients assigned to small day centers that allow for individual attention. (Alan S. Weiner for The New York Times)(pg. A14)

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NEWS SUMMARY

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

LENGTH: 872 words


International   A2-9
 
HOW U.S. SHIFTED ON BOSNIA
The story of how the United States decided to enter the Bosnia negotiations illustrates how President Clinton does business, favoring deliberation over bold action and delegation over micromanagement.  A1 

NEW DEMANDS FROM THE SERBS
As a United Nations deadline for air strikes approached, Bosnian Serbs made new demands in return for withdrawing their heavy weapons, creating concern that the cease-fire would not hold.  A7
 
The U.S. threatened broader air strikes if the Serbs resist.  A7
 
ILLEGAL FUEL CAUSES FIRE IN HAITI
Drums of black market gasoline exploded in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, causing a major fire, and it was dramatic evidence of the problems posed by a United Nations embargo on fuel and weapons.A1
 
FALLOUT FROM PRETORIA CONLICT
News Analysis: The Inkatha freedom Party's decision not to take part in South Africa's elections will haunt the country and stems from a fundamental difference in ideas of what South Africa should be. A3
 
ECONOMIC CONFUSION IN RUSSIA
The resignation of Russia's best-known economic reformers has led to confusion over the condition of the economy and how to strengthen it, casting a chill over new relations with Western businesses.  A9
 
DISPUTE OVER ISRAELI TALKS
Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin is embroiled in a dispute with his own party over where the peace talks with Syria and the Palestinians are heading and whether he has been straightforward.  A8
 
Another sex scandal involving a British politician.  A2
 
The U.S. wants a swift response to Japan, but no trade war.  D5
 
Crimea's new leader will hold a referendum on independence.  A9
 
Paris Journal: Love, but only with the proper stranger.  A4
 
National   A10-15
 
REDISTRICTING FACES CHALLENGES
A year after Congressional redistricting brought a record number of minority lawmakers to Washington, new Congressional districts with high concentrations of blacks are facing court challenges that could threaten the new legislators' electoral gains.  A1
 
COMPREHENSIVE CARE FOR ELDERLY
New programs for frail elderly people are seeking to weave medical care, home care, social services and case management into a single web of care.  A1
 
MILITARY TECHNOLOGY CONVERTED
The beating of swords into plowshares is affecting the world of transportation, where military technology is being applied to an array of new projects.  A10
 
DILEMMA FOR CALIFORNIA SCHOOLS
Last month's earthquake raises the question of whether California state universities should spend their limited capital to upgrade or demolish all of their buildings known to be hazards.  A10
 
DEFENSE IN CAPITAL CASES
A case in Alabama demonstrates the imperfect legal representation given to poor defendants in capital cases. The extent and adequacy of the defense in trials are more and more becoming issues in appeals of death sentences.  A12
 
CHOCOLATE LOVERS NEED NOT FEAR
Millions of Americans assume that the quickest way to a lover's heart is through a box of chocolates, even if it is not the healthiest of gifts. But according to recent studies of chocolate's effects on cholesterol, they need not worry.  A1
 
President Clinton returned to his boyhood home in Arkansas.  A15
 
Metro Digest   B1
 
JOB SAFETY FROM CRIMINALS
With homicide now the leading cause of death on the job in New York City, the crimes are increasingly being viewed as occupational health threats. Employers or others with responsibilities in workplaces are being held accountable.  A1
 
Arts/Entertainment   C13-18
 
How Ralph Fiennes created a monster for "Schindler's List." C13
 
Rumors of a Beatles reunion.  C15
 
Theater: Albee's "Three Tall Women." C13
 
Music: David Johansen at the Bottom Line.  C13
 
Karrin Allyson sings.  C15
 
Salsa for Valentine's Day.  C15
 
Dance: Lucinda Childs Dance Company.  C15
 
Books: "John Maynard Keynes, the Economist as Savior."C18
 
National Book Critics Circle awards.  C18
 
Television: Critic's Notebook.  C16
 
Valentine's Day.  C16
 
Obituaries   B8
 
Donald Judd, artist.
 
Lucius Clay Jr., former Air Force general.
 
Neediest Cases   B3
 
Business Digest   D1
 
Sports   C1-11
 
Basketball: Pippen powers the East.  C2
 
Wake Forest upsets Duke.  C10
 
UMass edges Temple.  C10
 
UMass and Temple coaches clash.  C10
 
Column: Vecsey on Nancy-Tonya meeting.  C7
 
On Pro Basketball C2
 
Golf: Pavin stands tall against Couples.  C9
 
Olympics: American wins men's downhill.  C1
 
News Analysis on Harding decision.C1
 
U.S. ties France in hockey.  C1
 
Norwegian speed skater shatters mark.C4
 
Kennedy makes run at luge record books.  C4
 
Editorials/Op-Ed   A16-17
 
Editorials
 
The emerging school bureaucracy.
 
A demeaning travel ban to Cuba.
 
Cupid, rider on the storm.
 
Two for the Assembly
 
Letters
 
Anthony Lewis: Shultz on Bosnia.
 
William Safire: Sink the clipper chip.
 
Suzanne Gordon: Drive-through deliveries.
 
Amitai Etzioni: What's wrong?
 
Bridge   C16
 
Chronicle   A15
 
Crossword   C18

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CHRONICLE

BYLINE: By NADINE BROZAN

SECTION: Section A; Page 15; Column 1; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 267 words

When JOYCE RANDOLPH , the renowned Trixie Norton of "The Honeymooners," and RICHARD I. CHARLES , a retired advertising executive, were married 38 years ago, they barely had time to celebrate, because Miss Randolph had to be back at work shooting the television show the next day.
Today along with some 50 other couples, they will renew their wedding vows in a Valentine's Day ceremony of reaffirmation at the Milleridge Inn in Jericho, L.I. 
 "We do a lot of weddings here," said BRUCE MURPHY , one of the restaurant's owners, "and we thought it might be nice to give something back."
For the second year in a row, Mr. Murphy called groups for the elderly, church parishes and synagogues on Long Island asking for names of couples over the age of 65 who have been married for at least 35 years.
"Last year, we had 40 couples, this year we will have between 50 and 55, and there are several hundred on a waiting list," Mr. Murphy said the other day. The couples will take part in a nondenominational ceremony, to be followed by a reception, with a five-piece orchestra, given by the restaurant.
Miss Randolph, who will wear a gold lace dress for the occasion and who has been asked to cut the wedding cake, said: "It seems like just a lovely idea. I thought it would be great fun to do this."
For the officiating judge, SEYMOUR J. REISMAN , the village justice in Roslyn Estates, L.I., it will be a welcome departure from his full-time occupation; he is a divorce lawyer with a firm in Garden City. "Because I spend every day taking marriages apart, I am so happy to do this," he said.

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February 15, 1994, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

Irked by Medicare Limits, Doctors Ask Elderly to Pay Up

BYLINE: By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL

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

LENGTH: 1610 words

A small but growing number of doctors, angry with the Federal Government's limits on what they can charge for treating elderly patients, are finding ways to get around the Medicare rates by having patients pay extra fees, doctors, patients and Government officials say.
The practice, which usually involves doctors' asking their elderly patients to sign contracts that result in added out-of-pocket payments, is drawing scrutiny from the Government and from advocates for the elderly. And Medicare officials have written to some doctors warning them that taking excess payment under contract leaves them open to prosecution, fines and sanctions. 
 Some of these private contracts stipulate that the patient will forgo Medicare coverage for a particular visit and pay out of pocket a fee set by the doctor. Others hold the patient financially responsible for future services that Medicare deems unnecessary and refuses to cover. Still others require patients to pay separately for services, like phone consultations, that Medicare considers part of the standard fee for office visits.
Doctors say that at a time when Medicare is covering fewer services and when reimbursement rates often run only 75 percent or less of their standard charges, private arrangements are the only way they can afford to treat the elderly. They note that other doctors have dealt with the issue by refusing to see Medicare patients entirely.
 
Seen as Strong-Arming
 But some advocates for the elderly say the contracts and waivers are a thinly veiled scheme to get more money for doctors and to strong-arm vulnerable elderly patients into payments they are not legally obligated to make. They say that virtually all of these contracts skirt the intent of the Medicare law, and that others are blatantly illegal.
Medicare, the Federal insurance program for those over 65, prohibits doctors from charging more than 15 percent above its established rates and requires them to file Medicare claims for any services for patients covered by the program. Most private contracts are meant to bypass one or both of these requirements, Medicare officials say.
Although no one knows precisely how many doctors are using such contracts, Medicare officials say they are hearing more complaints.
Among the most vocal of the rebelling doctors is Dr. Lois J. Copeland, an internist in Hillsdale, N.J., who has sued Medicare for the right to contract with her patients. "That is a tyrannical system that forbids wealthy citizens to pay more and that's unfair to doctors and patients," she said. "Why should a patient lose the freedom to pay the doctor he wants for service he wants just because he turns 65?" She has private contracts for about 20 percent of the care she gives to elderly patients.
But to critics, the scheme is not about freedom but coercion. They say that elderly patients in search of quality medicine or afraid of losing a trusted doctor may feel they have no choice but to sign.
When a Long Island businessman consulted a specialist for a back problem last year, he balked when he was asked to sign a contract that would hold him personally responsible for doctors' fees, but then relented.
"They said, 'If you don't sign we won't service you,' " said the man who asked that he not be identified for fear of jeopardizing his relationship with other doctors in his small town.  "Look, you've been referred to this doctor as the best. You're anxious. You're sick. You'd probably give him your right arm. And you're certainly not going to cause trouble and question him."
Wendy Mariner, professor of health law at Boston University, said: "There is no reason on God's green earth for patients to agree to pay more unless they are worried that their physician is going to refuse to treat them otherwise. In effect, the doctors are saying, 'I reserve the right to charge you whatever I want at any time.' And that's unconscionable."
Since the agreements are generally signed quietly in a doctor's office and kept in his files, the exact number of physicians who use such contracts is unknown.
But both the Health Care Financing Administration, which administers Medicare, and organizations offering advice to the elderly say they believe the practice is rising, particularly in areas like New York and Florida, where the gap between doctors' fees and Medicare rates is large.
 
Stricter Limits in Some States
 Diane Archer, executive director of the Medicare Beneficiaries Defense Fund in New York, said that in the last two years her organization has received a growing number of complaints from patients about such waivers, a majority from the New York area. She added that the complaints she hears are probably the tip of the iceberg, since many patients do not realize their rights under Medicare or do not report it out of loyalty to their doctors.
The current dispute dates back to 1991, when the Federal Government announced regulations limiting doctors' charges and insurance filing practices, in an effort to hold down costs and prevent price gouging of the elderly. Some states have stricter limits on fees than the Federal stipulations; New York permits doctors to charge only 10 percent more than approved Medicare rates.
Before 1991, many private doctors accepted the Medicare fee and then billed patients the difference between that fee and the doctor's standard rate, which in some cases was two or three times the Medicare price. Having lost this ability, a few physicians now refuse to see patients covered by Medicare. But a number of doctors say they cannot afford to turn away all patients over 65, nor do they want to.
"I could not turn my back on my older patients," said Dr. Copeland, in explaining why she resorted to suing Medicare. Thirty percent of her patients are over 65, and 50 percent of her income is from patients on Medicare, as is typical for internists.
 
Doctor's Suit Dismissed
 In 1991, Dr. Copeland sued to be allowed to contract privately with patients, arguing that the Medicare Act did not forbid such arrangements. In October 1992, Judge Nicholas Politan of Federal District Court in New Jersey dismissed the case, ruling that the Medicare Act did not necessarily forbid private contracts and the Department of Health and Human Services had not clarified its position, so that the case was not "ripe" for court action.
Dr. Copeland and her allies declared "an absolute victory." But many medical societies, while generally supporting Dr. Copeland's position, still advise doctors to seek legal advice before embarking on contracting plans.
And in June 1993, the Federal Medicare office announced its interpretation of the law: While signing a contract was probably legal, such contracts had no legal force and doctors who tried to recover the added payments in small claims court "may very well violate Federal law." Despite the contracts, doctors could not accept payments above Medicare's limits and would face civil fines if they did.
Denis Garrison, chief of the Medicare Eligibility and Technical Issues Branch of the Health Care Financing Administration, said: "There's a law that limits Medicare charges and another that requires physicians to submit Medicare bills. You can't get out of following laws by signing an agreement; the patient doesn't have the right to waive that." But he said he knew of no doctors who had been prosecuted for signing private contracts, because no complaints had made their way through the Medicare review process.
While some private contracts are intended to circumvent Medicare's charge limits or to rid the doctor of having to submit claims, others are blanket waivers that hold the patients responsible for any and all future claims turned down by Medicare as "unreasonable or unnecessary."
A doctor may hold a patient responsible for services not covered by Medicare only after informing the patient that a specific service, like cosmetic surgery or an extra office visit for a certain condition, is not normally covered.
Contracts that try to hold patients responsible for services normally considered included in payments for office visits, like calling in a prescription or a telephone consultation, can also get doctors into trouble, Medicare officials said. Medicare adds the charge for the phone call to the fee for the office visit, and if the total amount is more than 15 percent above the fee permitted for the office visit, the doctor has violated the law.
Doctors who support the contracts say that Medicare rates do not cover their expenses and they resent subsidizing patients who could well afford to pay. Dr. Richard Swint, a dermatologist in Paris, Tex., files with Medicare for major procedures, like cancer surgery, but has his patients sign contracts to pay him privately a $150 annual fee to cover the rest of their care. He said the $150 was generally lower than the payments he would get from Medicare over a year for each patient, so he said he was not defying Medicare's limiting charges.
Late last year, Dr. Swint received what he characterizes as a "threatening and intimidating" letter from Medicare. Nonetheless, he said, he plans to offer private contracts next year -- for a fixed $175 fee.
Dr. Copeland also continues to write contracts, and she said that while some patients have left, many have been "supportive and grateful" for the option of bypassing Medicare limitations.
Elvira Shepherd, a patient from Washington Township who said she had been turned away by a doctor in North Carolina because he did not take Medicare, said: "I have no problem with Dr. Copeland charging. I'd be delighted to pay."

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GRAPHIC: Photos: Doctors irked by Federal restrictions on fees for elderly patients have asked those patients to sign contracts and pay extra fees. Dr. Lois J. Copeland, right, an internist in Hillsdale, N.J., said, "That is a tyrannical system that forbids wealthy citizens to pay more and that's unfair to doctors and patients." Dr. Copeland has lost patients to the contracts, but most remain to bypass Medicare limitations. "I have no problem with Dr. Copeland charging," said Elvira Shepherd, a patient of Dr. Copeland's for 14 years who was turned away by a doctor in North Carolina because he did not take Medicare. (Photographs by Norman Y. Lono for The New York Times)

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INSIDE

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

LENGTH: 115 words

Health Plan and Retirees
The Clinton health plan's proposal to cover early retirees is in growing jeopardy because of troublesome financial projections. Page A17.
 
Skirting Medicare Rate Caps
 A growing number of doctors, angry at Medicare's limits on charges for treating the elderly, are finding ways to get around the rates. Page B1.
 
Dead End on the Digital Path
 Telephone companies are cutting jobs by the tens of thousands and many of those laid off will have trouble finding work. Page D1.
 
Influential Israeli Indicted
 A former Ambassador to the United States who heads Israel's powerful immigration program was charged with credit card fraud. Page A3.


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February 16, 1994, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Cabinet Officers Assail Balanced-Budget Bill

BYLINE: By ADAM CLYMER, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section A; Page 14; Column 2; National Desk

LENGTH: 756 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Feb. 15

Jabbing at every exposed political nerve it could find, the Clinton Administration told Congress today that a Federal balanced-budget amendment would imperil the national defense, increase crime, cheat veterans, squeeze the elderly and weaken the economy.
Analyzing how cuts would affect the economy and their departments, five Cabinet officers testified today against a proposed amendment that would require the Federal budget to be balanced, probably by the year 2001. The Senate plans to begin debating the measure next Tuesday, and neither side is sure how the vote will go. 
 The Cabinet officers appeared before Senator Robert C. Byrd, the West Virginia Democrat who heads the Appropriations Committee and is the amendment's staunchest enemy. He variously called the amendment "seductive," "simplistic," "this monstrosity" and "this nefarious proposal."
Senator Paul Simon, Democrat of Illinois, who is the amendment's chief sponsor, sought to counter Mr. Byrd's display with a hearing of his own. He told the Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, which he heads, that "no one can study the past 25 years of successive deficits without recognizing that there has been governmental abuse that must be halted."
 
Injection of Discipline
 Mr. Simon's leading witness was Paul E. Tsongas, the former Massachusetts Senator and Presidential contender, who said the amendment was a necessary "mechanism of discipline" to make Congress undertake the sacrifices required to balance the budget.
"This deficit is all too real, this debt all too crippling," Mr. Tsongas said. "Only a balanced budget amendment can inject the discipline to achieve this indispensable end."
A two-thirds vote, or 67 if all senators vote, is required to pass a Constitutional amendment. The House is expected to take the measure up later this year. If both chambers pass it with two-thirds majorities, then it would become part of the Constitution if approved within seven years by the legislatures of 38 states.
The Administration and Mr. Byrd are working to mobilize opposition to the proposal, which does not specify how the budget should be balanced. That gives different supporters the chance to offer different solutions, or none at all, which was what Senator Don Nickles, Republican of Oklahoma, offered today when Mr. Byrd asked him how he would eliminate the current fiscal year's deficit, now about $220 billion.
 
Grim Pictures
 On Monday at the White House, Administration officials told reporters of their opposition to the proposal. Today, the Administration took the battle to Capitol Hill, with Leon E. Panetta, director of the Office of Management and Budget, painting a grim picture of the uncertainties the amendment would thrust on the economy and four other Cabinet heads outlining probable cuts in their departments. Each assumed that their departments would have to share in spending cuts in proportion to how much they now spend.
Defense Secretary William J. Perry outlined more troop cuts, of 60,000 to 270,000, listed weapons that would have to be abandoned and said the amendment would inject "great uncertainty, and, I do not think it is hyperbole to say, chaos, into our defense planning."
Attorney General Janet Reno asserted that the amendment would undermine the Justice Department's ability to fight violence and that its passage would lead to "gutting the heart and soul of the Senate-passed crime bill."
She said that with such an amendment, prison spending would be reduced and violent offenders released to prevent crowding.
Jesse Brown, Secretary of Veterans Affairs, predicted that 20 Veterans Administration hospitals would be closed, burial in national cemeteries denied to 12,000 veterans a year, and the average annual compensation paid to veterans with service-related disabilities reduced to $4,968 from $5,602.
Donna E. Shalala, Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, warned that the amendment, which permits deficit spending but only with three-fifths votes in both houses, would force the deepest cuts in "safety net" programs when they were needed most, in a recession.
In a similar vein, Mr. Panetta said that by forbidding any lift to the economy with an infusion of Government spending during a recession, "we would be doing exactly the wrong thing."
Chiding the amendment's supporters for requiring a three-fifths majority to allow deficit spending, Mr. Panetta asked, "Why can't they get a majority to tell us how they would cut the budget?"

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February 16, 1994, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Personal Health

BYLINE: By Jane E. Brody

SECTION: Section C; Page 12; Column 5; National Desk; Health Page

LENGTH: 1154 words

THERE is one incontrovertible fact of life: sooner or later it comes to an end. As societal conditions and medical care change through the decades, the causes of death change with them.
In the early part of this century, infectious diseases were leading causes of death. But environmental controls, vaccines and antibiotics brought most deadly infections to their knees and permitted a sharp increase in life expectancy. 
 Now, with Americans living about 30 years longer than they did in 1900, chronic diseases, especially cardiovascular diseases and cancer, have become the leading killers.
Here too some changes are taking place. An ever-widening effort to reduce the number of Americans at high risk for developing heart and other blood vessel diseases has resulted in a 40 percent decline in the cardiovascular death rate since 1968. Americans today are smoking less, eating less fat and exercising more. Those with high blood pressure are far more likely to have it under medical control, and those with high cholesterol levels are now more likely to be trying to reduce them.
But while fewer people are developing and dying of heart disease and stroke, more people are getting cancer and succumbing to cancer. This is in part a result of the aging of the population. Americans are now living long enough to get a disease that disproportionately strikes the elderly. It is also largely a consequence of changes in living habits like smoking and diet, and partly a result of occupational exposures and possibly exposure to environmental pollutants.
A report last week in The Journal of the American Medical Association noted that white men and women born in the 1940's were more likely to develop cancer, including cancers not related to smoking, than were their grandparents. Even when the data were adjusted for age and smoking-related cancers were disregarded, cancer was on the rise in the 15 years from 1973 through 1987, the report said.
The researchers, Dr. Devra Lee Davis of the Department of Health and Human Services, Dr. David G. Hoel of the Medical University of South Carolina and Dr. Gregg E. Dinse of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, suggested that exposure to environmental pollutants, like pesticides, engine exhaust and chemicals in the air and water, might be responsible for the rise in cancers.
No one is challenging the suggestion that environmental carcinogens warrant further study. Nor are they quibbling with the researchers' data, which were based on the National Cancer Institute's Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results Program. This program gathers reasonably reliable statistics on the incidence of cancer and mortality from nine regions of the country that combined represent 10 percent of the population. But many cancer experts do challenge the researchers' interpretations of their findings.
 
Matter of Perspective
 Analyses of cancer trends typically result in explanations that reflect the particular professional bent of those making the analysis. Thus, diagnosticians are likely to see rises in breast cancer cases as reflecting the increasing use of mammography and biopsy, while preventive medicine specialists point to increases in dietary fat and endocrinologists suspect the use of contraceptive or menopausal hormones.
And so with this newest analysis of cancer trends, which the researchers suggested may be related to as yet unidentified environmental exposures to cancer-causing agents, other experts offer other explanations, which they say are more strongly based on experimental studies and epidemiological observations.
But first there is a dispute over classification of several important cancers. The journal authors listed only five cancers as related to smoking: cancers of the lung, larynx, pharynx, mouth and esophagus.
In an accompanying editorial, however, Dr. Anthony B. Miller, a specialist in preventive medicine at the University of Toronto, pointed out that cancers of the bladder, kidney, pancreas and possibly the stomach and cervix had been directly linked to smoking as well. And, according to two reports published this month in The Journal of the National Cancer Institute, smoking is also an important factor in cancer of the colon, doubling the risk about 35 years after a person's smoking habit became well-established.
Several other cancers that have become more common are also probably unrelated to exposure to carcinogens. For example, improvements in diagnostic techniques have contributed to the rise in reported cases of brain cancers, Dr. Miller noted, and AIDS has resulted in an increase in non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.
As for two of the most common cancers, Dr. Clark Heath, vice president for epidemiology and statistics at the American Cancer Society, said in an interview that "early diagnosis almost entirely accounts for the increased incidence of breast cancer and prostate cancer in recent years." He added that figures for these two cancers could easily skew the data and make it appear as if overall cancer incidence is rising. At this point, he said, there is no reason to think that environmental exposures account for more than 5 to 10 percent of cancers, an estimate made in 1981.
 
Diet and Smoking
 Dr. Ernst Wynder, president of the American Health Foundation, has another perspective. "If I were to blame anything for the modest increase in breast cancer that is not related to better detection, I'd point to dietary fat, particularly the polyunsaturated fatty acids that are known to increase mammary cancers in laboratory animals," he said. In addition to breast cancer, Dr. Wynder said, cancers of the ovary, endometrium and prostate also "seem to have a powerful dietary fat component." Dietary fat has also been linked to an increased risk of developing colon cancer and smoking-induced lung cancer.
Dr. Peter Greenwald, director of the National Cancer Institute's Division of Cancer Prevention and Control, agreed. "While you cannot rule out environmental factors, the major leads are dietary factors and early detection," he said. "A strong case cannot be made for singling out environmental contaminants as a driving force" in rising cancer rates, he concluded.
One of the most telling findings of the new analysis is that while the very high rates of smoking-related cancers among American men have begun to decline, among younger women they have risen to five to six times the rates seen in women born before the turn of the century.
Dr. Miller and the researchers concluded that smoking "is the major factor to control" in reducing cancer incidence and deaths. "We probably know enough already to prevent more than half of all cancers," Dr. Miller asserted. The major stumbling block, he wrote, is putting this knowledge into effect by getting people to quit smoking and preventing young people from taking up this lethal and costly habit.

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February 17, 1994, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

METRO DIGEST

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

LENGTH: 456 words


CLINTONS PITCH HEALTH PLAN TO ELDERLY
Speaking at a forum in Edison, N.J., President Clinton and his wife, Hillary, began an aggressive effort to pitch their health-care proposal to older Americans, whose backing of the plan has been more tepid than expected. A20.
 
NEW YORK CITY
 
DEFENDANT WAS DUPE, HIS LAWYER SAYS
The lawyer for one of the four men on trial in the World Trade Center case admitted for the first time that there was a terrorist bombing plot and that his client was involved in it -- but only as an unwitting dupe. A1. 

PLAN WOULD PLACE E.M.S. IN FIREHOUSES
The Giuliani administration's plans to merge the Emergency Medical Service into the Fire Department will involve some crews' operating out of firehouses, top city officials said. B3.
 
FOES OF POLICE MERGER DOUBT SAVINGS
Opponents of a Giuliani administration plan to merge the city's three police departments said it would not result in much savings and could diminish police protection. B3.
 
Four tax preparers were charged with helping to file fraudulent refund requests. B3.
 
A man who was beaten by police officers won a $350,000 settlement from New York City. B4.
 
At City Hall, Mayor Giuliani praised a group of workers for their efforts in clearing snow, but more serious matters soon emerged. B9.
 
Broadway theater puts $2.3 billion a year in New York's economy, the Port Authority said. C17.
 
REGION
 
CUOMO PUSHES MEDICAID PLAN
Governor Cuomo renewed his push for a complex plan to ease the large and growing costs of Medicaid on New York City and county governments and offered to sweeten the deal with more money sooner from the state. A1.
 
THE THAW MAY BE PAINFUL, TOO
The sun is shining, but that does not mean the region's weather troubles are over. In fact, if the weather gets too warm too fast, the troubles may just be beginning. B8.
 
LAUGHING ROBBER HOLDS A CHILD HOSTAGE
 
A laughing gunman held a 2-year-old girl hostage as her mother obeyed his demands and withdrew money from an automatic teller machine, the Nassau County police said. B6.
 
A group of Democratic state Senators said that seven Republican Senators violated internal Senate rules in 1992. B6.
 
The Justice Department has accused Albany's bar examination board of bias against the disabled in the test to become lawyers. B4.
 
Business is expanding for a New Jersey office that specializes in mediating complex legal disputes. B6.
 
Salvatore Avellino Jr. will plead guilty in a murder conspiracy in Long Island's private garbage-collection business, his lawyer said. B2.
 
The first death sentence under Connecticut's 1980 capital punishment law was appealed. B5.
 
Chronicle B4

LOAD-DATE: February 17, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Graph: "PULSE: Office Rent" shows average annual asking rent for Downtown, Midtown South, and Avenue of Americas, in dollars per square foot, during December 1993. Also shown is the percentage change from December 1992. (Source: Edward S. Gordon Company)

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February 17, 1994, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

Clintons Asking Elderly To Support Health Plan

BYLINE: By DOUGLAS JEHL,  Special to The New York Times 

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

LENGTH: 1115 words

DATELINE: EDISON, N.J., Feb. 16

President Clinton and his wife, Hillary, began an aggressive effort today to pitch their health-care proposal to older Americans, whose backing of the plan to overhaul the existing system has been more tepid than expected.
Unlike either of its main rival plans, the Clintons' proposal would extend current Medicare coverage to provide long-term care and prescription drugs, and Mr. Clinton called attention to that distinction today in appealing for support from the elderly. 
 "The time has come to be counted, to stand up, to take a stand and to fight with us if you want to get something done," the President said at a forum sponsored by the American Association of Retired Persons. "This is a fight, and if you want it, you're going to want to have to fight for it."
But the one-two salesmanship by the President and the First Lady to 2,000 older Americans at Middlesex Community College here this afternoon reflected a recognition by the White House of the misgivings still felt by the elderly -- even though the plan's benefits to them are more evident than for most other segments of the population.
 
No Formal Endorsement
 The 32-million-member association has been an important supporter of the President's plan, though it has not formally endorsed it. A survey done for the group last month found that more than half of Americans 50 years and older either opposed the Clinton plan or did not know whether to support it, and White House officials concede that the plan stands little chance in Congress unless the elderly give it strong support.
The Administration is not taking any group's support for granted, especially after several business groups recently rejected Mr. Clinton's plan despite provisions in it to benefit big corporations.
In beginning to fight back harder against critics of the plan, Mr. Clinton took his first swipe today at the "Harry and Louise" television commercials sponsored by the insurance industry. Deriding the commercial's characters as actors, the President introduced four New Jersey residents who had written to the White House about their health problems, and he said their experiences reinforced his argument that the Medicare system is inadequate.
"These are people you will never see in television ads," Mr. Clinton said. "But they are real people with real problems that need to be addressed.  We want to talk about real people and real medical problems and not actors who are paid to act a certain way to promote a special interest."
 
Heartened by Speech
 After the speech, one of the letter writers, Helen Kallos of Fort Lee, seemed heartened.
"I feel pretty good he's going to do something about it," she said of her concern about current restrictions that allow Medicare to pay for her 82-year-old mother, bedridden with arthritis, to stay in a nursing home but do not allow payment of $65 a day for home health care. "He seems sincere."
Arthur Paranto, a 69-year-old retired Gloucester County social service worker, said the President's speech encouraged him in his fight to get Federal help to pay his $1,200-a-year prescription bill.
"I don't represent just me in this," Mr. Paranto said. "I know millions of others are in the same boat."
Today's joint appearance by the Clintons was their first at a health care event since Oct. 28. The association paid for a satellite link that made the proceedings available to television stations around the country, and White House officials hoped that it would be picked up in regions with large numbers of elderly people.
With White House aides concerned that too much attention has been focused on the $124 billion in Medicare cuts proposed in the Clinton plan, the President sought today to declare that his proposal was the only one in which those savings would be used to improve health care for the elderly.
The President's plan would create a prescription drug benefit, under which those eligible for Medicare would pay an extra $8 a month, and in return the Government would pay for most of their medications, after a $250 deductible. It would also provide for long-term care for those Americans who need help with daily tasks like eating, dressing and bathing.
Neither the rival plan sponsored by Representative Jim Cooper, Democrat of Tennessee, nor the one by Senator John H. Chafee, Republican of Rhode Island, would extend those benefits. While Mr. Clinton did not mention those plans by name today, the traveling White House released a testimonial from Senior Watch, a service of the Families USA Foundation, that portrayed the Clintons' plan as stacking up favorably against the two rivals.
 
Benefits for Older People
 Speaking in the college's gymnasium this afternoon, Mr. Clinton said, "We are the only plan that offers any help for long-term care and for prescription drugs, and I would respectfully suggest that the A.A.R.P. ought to be for the only plan that helps you, otherwise the interest groups will convince Congress that you don't really care, and you will lose these parts of the plan."
A plan sponsored by Representative Jim McDermott, Democrat of Washington, would impose a Government-administered health care system like Canada's, and White House officials acknowledged after Mr. Clinton's speech that the McDermott plan, too, would provide for long-term care. A spokesman, Jeffery Eller, described Mr. Clinton's failure to mention the McDermott plan as inadvertent.
Mr. Clinton also met briefly at Middlesex College with former Gov. Jim Florio to discuss how he might assist in the health care campaign. White House officials said Mr. Florio, who is now practicing law, did not want an Administration job but had sent word that he wanted to help any way he could.
Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, a Republican, also attended the forum and met with reporters afterward to the evident dismay of aides to Mr. Clinton, one of whom could be heard berating others for letting that happen at a White House event.
 
Trying to Get Personal
 By calling attention to the four New Jersey residents, whose letters were released by Mr. Clinton's aides, the White House sought to shift the focus of the health care debate from the abstract to the poignantly personal, where strategists say the Administration's arguments are most effective.
In one letter, Margaret Meding, whose husband has Parkinson's disease, described the troubles they face because neither her private insurance nor his Medicare will cover long-term care.
"One doesn't choose one's illness," Mrs. Meding, of Cedar Grove, wrote to Mrs. Clinton. "I lie awake some nights worrying about what lies ahead and beseech you to remember us in your plans."

LOAD-DATE: February 17, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH 

GRAPHIC: Photo: President Clinton and his wife, Hillary, yesterday at Middlesex Community College in Edison, N.J. (Marilynn K. Yee/The New York Times)

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February 18, 1994, Friday, Late Edition - Final

Clinton Tries to Win Over the Elderly With a Warning on Medicare

BYLINE: By GWEN IFILL, Special to The New York Times

SECTION: Section A; Page 14; Column 3; National Desk

LENGTH: 622 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Feb. 17

Toughening his appeal to older Americans, President Clinton said today that critics of his health care plan and supporters of a balanced-budget amendment were trying to rob Medicare to pay for their goals.
At a White House brunch with leaders of groups that represent older Americans, the President took aim at Congress, where critics of his health care plan are flourishing and proponents of a balanced-budget amendment are pushing for a vote. 
 "Congress comes back next week and will take up the balanced-budget amendment," Mr. Clinton said. "It also will take money from Medicare without doing anything to strengthen the health care security of senior citizens.
"Make no mistake about it. Right now in Congress, there are people who represent interests who want to use Medicare as a sort of a bank to pay for other people's health care, to bring down the deficit, to do other things that have nothing to do with the purpose for which Medicare was paid in the first place."
The American Association of Retired Persons, which has not formally endorsed the President's approach, has nevertheless worked with the White House to disseminate the Clinton view on both issues.
Mr. Clinton, arguing against the balanced-budget measure, maintained that he had reduced the rate of increase in the budget deficit in a responsible manner that makes an across-the-board constitutional amendment unnecessary. He said the amendment would force Government to scale back needed social programs.
Abandoning the reasonable-people-can-disagree approach that typifies much of the White House response to proposals it opposes, White House officials have lashed out at the proposed budget measure and stepped up their criticism of competing health care proposals.
The White House scare approach could be effective. John Rother, the legislative director for the American Association of Retired People, said Mr. Clinton must use strong language to cut through the confusion now surrounding his health care plan.
 
People Need Reassurance
 "If people think Clinton's plan will somehow threaten Medicare, the President has to take that on right away," Mr. Rother said. "None of the other messages are going to get through until people are reassured on that point."
In many cases, the White House is battling members who support it on one measure but not the other. Senator Paul Simon, Democrat of Illinois, who is a sponsor of the balanced-budget measure, is also a co-sponsor of Mr. Clinton's health plan. He said the two issues were not necessarily incompatible.
"The reality is, the health care plan we have has to be on a pay-as-you-go basis," Mr. Simon said. "There's no reason we can't have a balanced budget as well as a healthier citizenry."
Mr. Clinton and his aides disagree with Mr. Simon on that point.
"We have demonstrated with our budgets that you can reduce the deficit and still be fair to older Americans," Mr. Clinton said.
 
First Lady Speaks Out
 Hillary Rodham Clinton also spoke out on behalf of the health care plan for a second consecutive day today, addressing scientists gathered at the National Insititutes of Health in Bethesda.
Mrs. Clinton said that the plan the Administration had proposed would do more to support academic health centers and finance ambitious research that the alternatives that have been presented in Congress.
"As scientists, you are well schooled in the art of perseverance," she said. "You know what patience and fortitude it takes to solve the riddles of disease and to unlock the mysteries of nature and the universe. You know how important it is to push ahead until you do succeed. Well, that is exactly the attitude we take with us into this health care debate."

LOAD-DATE: February 18, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: President Clinton talking about health care and the budget with leaders of groups for older Americans yesterday at a White House brunch. (Paul Hosefros/The New York Times)

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February 18, 1994, Friday, Late Edition - Final

Glimmer of Spring: Flu Season Is Waning

BYLINE: AP

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

LENGTH: 207 words

DATELINE: ATLANTA, Feb. 17

This winter's flu season is winding down, Federal health officials say.
With the week that ended Feb. 5, the number of states with widespread outbreaks of influenza dropped to 6 from 13 the week before, said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention here. 
 "We're not sure when the peak was, probably in early January," said Nancy Arden, the centers' chief of influenza epidemiology. There is no way to know how much longer the flu season will last, she said.
The six states that reported widespread outbreaks were Alaska, Louisiana, Missouri, Ohio, Tennessee and Virginia, though the flu was losing its grip in those states as well.
Flu outbreaks usually do not occur until December or January. This season got off to an early start and was dominated by cases of the type A Beijing strain, which is particularly threatening to the elderly and the very young.
The centers does not yet have the final number of flu cases and deaths for this season but it said that fewer people than projected had contracted the flu.
Many nursing homes reported that 95 percent of their residents had been vaccinated. This was the first flu season that Medicare paid for the shot.  Many large companies provide flu shots for employees.

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February 18, 1994, Friday, Late Edition - Final

Abroad at Home;
Political Crime

BYLINE: By ANTHONY LEWIS

SECTION: Section A; Page 27; Column 2; Editorial Desk

LENGTH: 705 words

DATELINE: BOSTON

At the urging of President Clinton and many other politicians of both parties, the United States is about to embark on a remarkable new social program. It is to house, feed and provide geriatric support services for elderly Americans who have led worthless, harmful lives.
That will be one result of "three strikes, you're out," the much-touted proposal to put criminals away for life after a third violent felony. It would make state and Federal prisons hold increasing numbers of men past the age of violence, living on into their 80's and 90's. 
 If the Federal Government and the states considering the idea go ahead with it, the cost will be enormous. Philip Heymann, who has just left the job of Deputy Attorney General, estimates that it will cost between $600,000 and $700,000 to keep one person in prison for life after age 50, when the statistics show that criminal careers run down.
Mr. Heymann, speaking out after he returned to private life, said what most students of the crime problem privately believe: The three-strikes proposal and much else in the crime bill passed by the Senate will do little if anything to reduce violent crime.
"It's feeling good by appearing to be tough," Mr. Heymann said on ABC's "Nightline." Ted Koppel, who is usually so wise an interviewer, sneered at Mr. Heymann as "a lousy politician." Telling the truth about the phoniness of much crime legislation risks sneers, and that is why few have the courage to do it.
Politicians produce tough-looking remedies for crime because that is what voters want. The public is right to be angry and fearful about crime. Though statistics do not show a recent rise in violence, people are aware of drive-by shootings, the murder of children and other random horrors. They want to be tough: longer sentences, more prisons, boot camps. But the question is whether that kind of toughness will reduce violence.
The United States has more prisoners per capita than any other country: 455 per 100,000. That is 10 times the rate in Japan. There are almost one million Americans in prison today, three times the number in 1990.
The number of prisoners is so large, and growing so rapidly, for two main reasons. This country imposes penal sentences for minor drug offenses. And in recent years Congress and some states have imposed mandatory minimum sentences, without parole, for a number of crimes.
We tend to think of people who are sent to prison as depraved and brutal. Many, probably most, are in fact nonviolent offenders. About 20 percent of Federal prisoners are drug offenders with no prior record, no violence and no connection with any big drug operation.
Consider the case of Joel Proyect, a lawyer in upstate New York, former president of the Sullivan County Bar Association. He grew marijuana plants at his place in the country. He was not a dealer, not a seller, just a user of pot. He is now serving a mandatory minimum sentence of five years in Federal prison.
Joel Proyect was wrong to violate the law. But can it conceivably benefit our society to keep him in prison for five years for growing marijuana plants? And there are many thousands like him.
This country needs to reduce its prison population. It needs to get away from mandatory minimum sentences. Janet Reno knew that and said so before she became Attorney General. But the Clinton White House, determined to make the President look tough on crime, has evidently muzzled her.
The Senate crime bill would cost upwards of $22 billion. That kind of money would make a difference in a serious effort to deter violent crime, but the Senate bill is not that. It is a rag-bag of politicians' gestures, such as turning local offenses into Federal crimes, that will do nothing except waste money and frustrate citizens concerned about crime.
The saddest thing about the political posturing over crime is that it turns us back toward remedies proved useless: more prisons, longer fixed sentences and the like. The politicians, from President Clinton down, are determined not to let a new thought on drug policy or the causes of crime enter our failed system.
A headline in The Economist of London put it exactly: "Three strikes, you're hoodwinked."

LOAD-DATE: February 18, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

TYPE: Op-Ed

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February 19, 1994, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

Oregon Starts to Extend Health Care

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

SECTION: Section 1; Page 6; Column 4; National Desk

LENGTH: 1178 words

DATELINE: PORTLAND, Ore., Feb. 17

A woman stood up and asked, If someone makes absolutely no money, how could she possibly prove that her income was below the Federal poverty line to qualify for free medical insurance.
A man wanted to know if the cost of an operation that is not covered by insurance could be covered if the condition is discovered during a surgical procedure that does qualify for reimbursement. 
 "What about periodontal costs?" an older man called out.
The questions continued for an hour one night last week as two state administrators explained Oregon's new health care plan at a center for the elderly in Tigard, a suburb south of here. Many people listened with worried expressions.
 
Questions on Ability to Pay
 After years of dispute, Oregon is finally beginning to carry out an ambitious plan to extend health coverage to all residents, and the people at the Tigard Senior Center were some of the intended beneficiaries. In the first step, which took effect on Feb. 1, Oregon became the first state to extend Medicaid coverage, care paid for by the state and Federal governments, to most residents below the poverty line.
But serious questions are already being raised about the state's ability to pay for the new services and its political will to extend insurance to all.
The next step toward universal coverage is to require all employers to contribute toward health insurance, but that has been resisted by small-business owners, and the mandate has been put off until 1998.
Oregon's original idea was to help pay for the expanded coverage of poor people by eliminating payments for treatments deemed low in benefit, a step toward rationing that drew widespread criticism. In the end, only the most marginal of medical services were eliminated, saving little money, and the State Legislature had to come up with $65 million at a time of acute financial strain.
 
Difficult Decisions Ahead
 In coming years, unless it is bailed out by a new national health program, the state will either have to approve large additional outlays for health coverage or take the politically explosive step of scaling back the treatments it covers under Medicaid, denying medically useful care.
The five-year experiment guarantees coverage to all Oregonians whose income is under the Federal poverty level but too high to qualify for the existing Medicaid program. The estimated Federal poverty level for a family of four in 1993 was an annual income of $14,764.
The focus of most questions in Tigard last week was the list of covered services. The administrators' answers allayed enough anxieties to cause a near stampede when the audience was invited to fill out application forms.
"This is wonderful," said Janet Wieneke, 36, an unemployed radiation therapist. "Now, I've got no insurance and it's real scary. With every ache or pain, you think this is it. I could lose everything I own."
State officials estimate that as many as 120,000 of the 479,000 Oregonians without health coverage could qualify for the expanded Medicaid program. Applicants need to meet the poverty-line requirement for only a month to qualify for six months of coverage.
In formulating the Oregon plan, which provides a choice among 22 health maintenance organizations, a state panel produced a list of 696 health conditions and treatments, ranking them on a cost-benefit basis. After public hearings and negotiations with Washington, the state agreed to cover the first 565.
 
Extent of Coverage
 The plan provides general medical and dental coverage, with no stipulations for pre-existing conditions, and covers the entire cost of prescriptions. The conditions excluded from coverage are those that are not deemed to be serious enough to require treatment, like common colds, flu, mild food poisoning, sprains, cosmetic procedures and experimental treatments for diseases in advanced stages.
The program was approved for the 17 months through June 30, 1995, with financing of $20 million from the state's general fund and a gradual increase on cigarette taxes that is expected to produce $45 million.
But with the new plan scheduled to absorb all those who remain under the standard Medicaid plan by Jan. 1, 1995, and with benefits expanding to include mental health and chemical dependency treatment, officials are predicting that costs could rise to as much as $200 million over the next two-year period. With the cigarette tax increase expiring, it remains unclear where the money would come from in a state that prides itself on having no sales tax.
The entire Oregon plan could be folded into whatever national program is adopted by the Federal Government. "Which would be fine with me," said John Kitzhaber, a former state legislator who helped draw up the state's plan.
Mr. Kitzhaber, a Democratic candidate for governor, said the plan that went into effect two weeks ago differed from his original concept in one major area: the timing of the requirement that all employers offer health insurance. The original plan would have required employers to cover all workers by July 1993. For companies with 25 employees and more, the deadline was pushed back to July 1995, then to March 31, 1997. Companies with fewer than 25 workers were given until Jan. 1, 1998, to comply.
 
Concern on Rationing
 Advocates for the poor are concerned that the delay, combined with the possibility that health care costs will continue to rise in the short term, will force the state to begin cutting back on medical services that are covered, causing the dreaded rationing.
"Because Oregon has done nothing to control costs, there is only one way they will respond: move the benefit line," said Ellen Pinney, the executive director of the Oregon Health Action Campaign. But when the Federal Government approved the Medicaid experiment last year, it banned a reduction in services for two years, and required Federal permission for three years after that. What will happen if the state cannot come up with the required money is unclear.
In the past two weeks, the response to the plan around the state has been overwhelming, health officials say. Calls to an information number have far exceeded early projections of 5,000 a month, said Hersh Crawford, the assistant director of the state's medical assistance program. "The reality has been, we're getting 3,500 to 4,000 a day," he said.
Many of the 200 community meetings, like the one in Tigard, have attracted as many as 150 people at a time.
For people like John Oliphant, 26, an unemployed former marine who is now studying criminal justice at a local community college, the plan offers new hope. After his wife, Rae, was involved in an automobile accident, he said he called the health plan's information line and was told that her medical bills would be covered. He came to the Tigard center to enroll.
"When I called, they told me I would qualify, but I'm still a little skeptical," Mr. Oliphant said. "I know this is helpful. But I'll feel a lot better when my wife goes to the doctor and it's all paid for."

LOAD-DATE: February 19, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Oregon residents examining material on the state's plan to extend health coverage at an informational meeting last week at a center for the elderly in Tigard, a suburb of Portland. (Don Ryan for The New York Times)

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February 20, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

ART;
Redefining 'Immigrant' In the Bronx

BYLINE: By MELINDA HENNEBERGER 

SECTION: Section 2;  Page 32;  Column 1;  Arts & Leisure Desk 

LENGTH: 922 words

THE SOUTH BRONX STUDIO OF the Peruvian artist Kukuli Velarde is filled with terra-cotta figures of concupiscent cupids, Indians impaled on crosses, and altars to her own saint: the long-suffering Latin American wife, her heart pierced with nails and her face covered by a smiling mask with the Anglo features that the saint's husband prefers.
"I decided it's better to be dramatic in my work and not in my life," Ms. Velarde says, pouring mugs of strong coffee in her adjoining apartment. On this point she is not convincing. It isn't every artist, after all, who has had her work in clay, the material used by her ancestors, approved by Mother Earth, speaking through an Incan priest. ("Maybe it wasn't true," she says, smiling, "but it was a nice ceremony anyway.") 
 But like others of the 30 artists whose work is displayed in "Beyond the Borders: Art by Recent Immigrants," an exhibition that opened on Friday at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, she finds that the experience of immigration has transformed her work in unexpected ways.
Ms. Velarde, 31, came to the United States as a refugee from a broken love affair, but stayed on to mine the themes of her own culture with a freer hand, irreverently reinterpreting the pre-Columbian and folk art of her country in works like a "First Love," a portrait with two faces -- both of them hers -- one of a naive romantic, the other of a broken-hearted cynic.
From a distance, she said, the "colonized" mentality of a Latin American yearning to be American or European has become clearer to her, and she has become all the more Peruvian in her art. At the same time, she says, it is easier for her as an expatriate to criticize Latin American history.
Artistic freedom was a more concrete concern for Emilya Dunayets, a Ukrainian artist. She says that she and her husband, Ilya Zomb, a painter, were unable to work freely under the Soviet regime, and they left in 1989.
In their Brooklyn apartment, a painting that is a takeoff on the Russian matryoshka dolls that fit one inside of the other shows her niece as a grown woman, holding hands with progressively younger versions of herself. The light dims over the woman as she ages, "heading to the darkness of old age," she said, "and the natural depression that makes old people say everything was better before."
Compared to her earlier work, she said, this piece is cheerful. "In Russia we were always humiliated. Because we are Jewish everybody could say bad words to us, and here nobody cares," said Ms. Dunayets, who is 33. "I feel younger, and all my works, they got color. Before, in Russia, I had mostly dark work. Now look at this red!"
Her earlier work shows funeral scenes of friends entombed, dead to art and to life because they are unable to work as artists. In one new piece -- a mixed-media work with acrylic paint and colored pencils -- a friend in a (red!) wedding gown and several would-be grooms each stand alone in a forest, waiting for the perfect mates that have yet to appear.
"In New York I got kind of a new attitude, and we think of New York as our real home," she said. "It's like I can do everything."
Shirin Neshat, who left Iran at age 16, when she was sent to California to study, discovered the source of her art not in leaving her country but in returning there for a visit. In 1990, she returned to Iran for the first time in 16 years, and found a "completely new country." She was shocked at the treatment of women, but also surprised to find beauty and meaning in the veils they were now compelled to wear. She became intensely interested in veiling, both as a metaphor and as a physical boundary, and the search for Iranian identity now drives her work -- much of it photographs of herself in the traditional veils.
"Some feel it frees a woman because it makes men look at them as who they are rather than as a sex object," she said, "but why should it be a woman's problem that men cannot control their sexuality?"
The question remains unanswered for her, the subject not yet fully explored.
"In some ways I began doing this work not to do a body of work but to answer questions for myself," she said. Her medium became her own body, "because I felt in many ways the only thing I had was myself: I exist and I'm from there."
Some of her photographs feature those parts of the body that can be exposed in Iran -- the eyes, the hands and the feet, covered with the writings of Iranian women. Her newest work -- gun barrels included -- also explores the history of Iranian women in the military. Americans, she said, often assume that her work is simple criticism of a repressive government in her country. "People thought that me wearing a veil was about "Get this off! I want to be naked,' but it was just the opposite. It was saying there is beautiful feminine symbolism that exists in Islam."
Like others in the show, Ms. Neshat said she was initially skittish about the entire concept of "immigrant art." The Bronx Museum curators themselves had long discussions about how to present the work without marginalizing it.
But Betti-Sue Hertz, guest curator of the exhibition, said she sees the artists as "cultural mediators" between their countries and this country, moving back and forth between two or more cultures in a way that is actually redefining the whole idea of immigration.
"The word immigrant itself is in jeopardy. The notion is becoming problematic in our post-modern reality," she said. "But this exhibit is about coming to the end of that word."

LOAD-DATE: February 20, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photos: Kukuli Velarde in her studio with "First Love," a self-portrait--Distance has made her more Peruvian in her art. (Steve Hart for The New York Times); "Women of Allah," by Shirin Neshat, from Iran -- Exploring Iranian women's history in the military, as well as their writings. (Cindy Preston)

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February 20, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Q and A

SECTION: Section 10; Page 10; Column 6; Real Estate Desk

LENGTH: 517 words


Homeowners And Home Seekers
 
Q. I have often heard about organizations that profess to match home seekers with homeowners and that cater mainly to retirees. I am a retiree looking to share a home that's now too big for its present owner, another retiree. Is there any organization or service that I can contact? . . . Harold Blau, Glen Oaks, Queens 

A. For older people who remain independent but are not in a position to buy or rent by themselves, home sharing has indeed become an option in recent years.
In New York City, there are several nonprofit agencies that provide home-sharing information. Call the New York City Department for the Aging at (212) 442-1000 for referrals.
There is also a program, Project Share, operated by the Family Service Association and financed by the Nassau County Department of Senior Citizen Affairs, that matches home seekers with home and apartment providers. For information, call (516) 292-1300.
 
A Mentally Ill Co-op Resident
 
Q. For some time now, there has been an offensive odor coming from the apartment next door in my co-op apartment. The woman who lives there is mentally ill and her parents own the apartment.
I have contacted the city's Protective Services for Adults, the Mobile Crisis Unit and my Councilman, but I have had no results. I also have a pending civil suit against the woman's parents.
The co-op board, meanwhile, has been reluctant to take action for damages or dispossession. It did try to evict the woman several years ago, but was unsuccessful.
What are my options? I don't want to stop paying my maintenance because I don't want to get sued by the board. I also don't want to sue the board because of the legal expenses and possible consequences of alienating the board members. . . . Jennifer Skopp, Manhattan
 
A. According to Arthur Weinstein, a Manhattan lawyer, your situation is one of the most difficult issues that can ever affect a co-op, largely because the courts are reluctant to take action that could result in placing a homeless person on the streets of New York.
"Suits can be brought against both the occupants and the parents, but it is not clear that the results will be effective," Mr. Weinstein said. "The courts are reluctant to evict, make an involuntary commitment or impose judgments that the defendant cannot pay."
He added that the co-op board could very likely be taking all courses of reasonable action but would still not be able to solve your problem.
"Therefore, you would not be able to claim negligence on the board's behalf because they are taking all the reasonable steps to deal with the problem," Mr. Weinstein said.
He added that occasionally city social service agencies have sent social workers, who provide housekeeping, into apartments occupied by those who cannot care for themselves.
"That solution, called home-care services, has been the most effective that we have seen," Mr. Weinstein said. "The best advice is to keep contacting the social service agencies that you have been in touch with and urge them to provide home care for this woman."

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February 20, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Shoveling-Out Service Offered to the Aged

BYLINE: By MERRI ROSENBERG 

SECTION: Section 13WC;  Page 13;  Column 1;  Westchester Weekly Desk 

LENGTH: 290 words

DATELINE: GREENBURGH

IF the recent pileup of snow has left most residents with a bad case of cabin fever, the plight of the elderly and disabled extends beyond mere restlessness and boredom. Many are literally trapped by the snow, unable to shovel past their own doorways.
To help them, the town of Greenburgh recently began a Snow Angels program, in which volunteers will shovel driveways and walkways for the elderly and disabled. 
"A lot of seniors and people with disabilities would call me because they couldn't get out of their house," said Paul J. Feiner, the Greenburgh Town Supervisor. "They felt they were prisoners. I thought it would be nice to get this program started, to match volunteers with people who needed help. I really want people to feel that the town is concerned about them."
So far, about 10 volunteers have signed up to offer their services.
 
Acting as a Matchmaker
 While the Greenburgh program is offered free to elderly and disabled residents who need to be shoveled out, the village of Tarrytown has offered to act as matchmaker for those in Tarrytown and North Tarrytown who need help and for those who are willing to do the work.
"We have people who are elderly and people who work in the city and leave too early to have time to shovel their driveways," said Gerald Barbelet, the Village Treasurer of Tarrytown. "We keep lists of youngsters and those wanting to shovel and those who want this service in conjunction with our sister village in North Tarrytown."
Those interested in the Greenburgh program can call Mr. Feiner's office at 993-1540 or his home at 478-1219. For the Tarrytown service, residents can call the village office at 631-1106 or the Recreation Department at 631-5990.   MERRI ROSENBERG

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February 23, 1994, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Job Applicants Face Age Bias, Study Finds

BYLINE: Reuters 

SECTION: Section A;  Page 15;  Column 3;  National Desk 

LENGTH: 229 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Feb. 22

A national study made public today by the American Association of Retired Persons concluded that older people are discriminated against in job offers.
The discrimination is less prevalent among successful companies than among less successful ones, the study showed. 
 The A.A.R.P. said it had conducted a test of age discrimination in which virtually identical resumes of two people were mailed to 775 large companies.
The results, released at a news conference, indicated that companies discriminated 26.5 percent of the time against a 57-year-old fictional applicant whose resume was virtually identical to that of a 32-year-old applicant.
The survey was conducted by sending out two pairs of resumes -- one pair for an older woman and a younger woman, the other for an older man and a younger man -- for each of three jobs. In each case there were less favorable responses to the older applicant, the association reported. The job types sought included writer-editor, executive secretary and management information specialist.
The $75,000 test was conducted to test assumptions that older people were more discriminated against in the job market, which is a violation of Federal law.
Noting that the test results showed less discrimination by successful companies than by less successful ones, officials of the association said discrimination did not pay.

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February 25, 1994, Friday, Late Edition - Final

NEWS SUMMARY

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

LENGTH: 1026 words


International A2-10
 
PLAN TO EASE EXPORT RULES
The Clinton Administration plans to rewrite the export laws. The proposed overhaul, which would be the first since the cold war, is aimed at easing the sale abroad of machine tools, telecommunications equipment and other products that had been restricted because of their potential use in weaponry.  A1
 
BIG GUNS ARE SILENT
After more than nine months of relentless bombardment, a steady rain of shells and sniper fire that has wreaked devastation beyond what Serbian gunners did to Sarajevo, the big guns besieging the Muslim quarters of the ancient city of Mostar have fallen silent.  A1 

SERBS IN HILLS, BOSNIA SAYS
The Bosnian Government charged that Serbian artillery, tanks and other heavy weapons were still combat-ready in the hills above Sarajevo despite days of upbeat pronouncements by the United Nations that they had all been withdrawn or placed under its control.  A8
 
CROAT-MUSLIM TALKS IN U.S.
The Clinton Administration announced that it would play host to talks in Washington this weekend on an American-backed peace plan for Bosnia that would unite the Croatian-and Muslim-held parts of the country, a senior State Department official said.  A8
 
DE KLERK STRESSES EXPERIENCE
On the stump, President F. W. de Klerk, is stressing that only the National Party, the party now ruling South Africa, has the experience to govern and that the African National Congress is too dangerous and too undisciplined to be trusted with unchecked power.  A3
 
YELTSIN APPEALS TO FOES
Two years after he set Russia on the road of economic and political reform, President Yeltsin admitted that the results were disappointing and he called on his opponents to join in "a new political style" to move the country forward.  A6
 
A POPULAR CZECH PREMIER
Vaclav Klaus, the 52-year-old Czech Prime Minister and a conservative economist, draws enthusiastic crowds to speeches around his country, thanks to his gift for communications.  A6
 
CHINA'S VOW ON HONG KONG
China reiterated that when it resumes sovereignty over Hong Kong in 1997 it will dismantle any democratically elected legislature formed under a vote taken early by the colony's lawmakers.  A10
 
Lebanese seek Syrian help to insure calm in the south.  A5
 
Algiers Journal: For foreigners, there's only one safe place.  A4
 
National A12-18
 
HEALTH PLAN FAILS TO WIN ELDERLY
The American Association of Retired Persons has decided not to endorse President Clinton's health plan, despite a recent campaign by Mr. Clinton and his wife, Hillary, to win support from the elderly.  A1
 
WHITE HOUSE GOT INQUIRY BRIEFING
In a surprising admission, the head of a Federal agency examining the failure of an Arkansas savings and loan at the center of the inquiry into the Clintons' real estate investments said he held a briefing three weeks ago for senior White House aides on the agency's progress.  A1
 
THE INFORMATION DETOUR
News analysis: For all the talk of the information superhighway, the real vision behind the planned giant merger of Bell Atlantic and Tele-Communications was profit. The deal ultimately collapsed because the dollars and cents no longer seemed to add up.  A1
 
SUSPECT TO FIGHT SPY CHARGES
The lawyer representing Aldrich H. Ames, the C.I.A. official accused of spying for Moscow, said his client would fight the charges.  A1
 
U.S. FACES LARGEST BIAS CASE
Clearing the way for the largest discrimination case ever filed against the Government, a judge ruled that black employees may have systematically been denied promotions and training by the Immigration and Naturalization Service.  A12
 
LETTER TO JURY LEADS TO INQUIRY
As the jury began deliberations in the murder trial of 11 Branch Davidians, the F.B.I. began an investigation into how letters highly critical of the Government's case were mailed to at least eight jurors.  A12
 
ATTACK ON TEEN-AGE SMOKING
Releasing the Surgeon General's Report on Smoking and Health, Dr. Joycelyn Elders said health agencies, schools, and parents should make smoking prevention among teen-agers a priority.  A12
 
STRATEGY ON BUDGET AMENDMENT
Democratic opponents of the proposed constitutional amendment requiring a balanced Federal budget offered a counterproposal that seemed intended to lead to the defeat of all versions of the plan.A14
 
Balancing the Federal budget would mean hard choices.  A14
 
WELFARE PLAN MAY RAISE TAXES
Finding it difficult to produce a welfare plan that could be financed through spending cuts alone, the Administration is contemplating tax increases, and gambling establishments are among the targets.  A16
 
A GATHERING OF LABOR LEADERS
The annual gathering of the A.F.L.-C.I.O.'s executive council drew James P. Hoffa, a staff member of the Michigan Teamsters' joint council who also happens to be the son of the late James R. Hoffa.  A18
 
Law Page A19
 
Law firms have begun reining in sex-harassing partners.
 
At the Bar: A fallen crusader and his unlikely champion.
 
Metro Digest B1
 
ATTITUDES TOWARD THE HOMELESS
New Yorkers' frustrations about the homeless seem to have turned to apathy and then anger.  A1
 
AIDS AND BABIES
A New York State panel on AIDS has rejected a proposal to identify newborns testing positive for H.I.V., amid concerns that it would jeopardize mothers' privacy.  A1
 
Neediest Cases B2
 
Business Digest D1
 
Weekend C1-30, B14
 
Sports B6-13
 
Basketball: Rockets thump Knicks.  B7
Olympics: Baiul injured in figure skating mishap.  B7
American wins on short track.  B7
Italian woman wins giant slalom.  B7
 
Obituaries B16
 
Dinah Shore, entertainer.
 
Editorials/Op-Ed A28-29
 
Editorials
 
Death and the Supreme Court.
New York: The movie set.
Moral it's not.
Slaughtering the messengers.
 
Letters
 
A. M. Rosenthal: The basic rights.
Anthony Lewis: Major discontent.
Frederick C. Cuny: The Serbs have lost.
David Rieff: The Serbs have won.
 
Chronicle B4
 
Crossword C28

LOAD-DATE: February 25, 1994

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February 25, 1994, Friday, Late Edition - Final

Clinton Fails to Get Endorsement Of Elderly Group on Health Plan

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

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

LENGTH: 1128 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Feb. 24

The board of the American Association of Retired Persons has decided not to endorse President Clinton's health plan, despite a concerted campaign by the President and Hillary Rodham Clinton to win support from the elderly, officers of the organization said today.
First word of the decision came from Administration officials, who said they were somewhat disappointed but not completely surprised. They noted that the board had not endorsed any specific alternative to the Clinton plan. 
 Meeting here on Tuesday and Wednesday, the 21-member board stood by a statement issued in November that described the Clinton proposal as "the strongest and most realistic blueprint to date for achieving our goals." The goals include universal health insurance, cost controls, prescription drug coverage and a national program of long-term care.
 
33 Million Members
 The Administration, in public and in private, had sought a much stronger show of support from the organization, which has 33 million members. An endorsement would have been a victory for the White House after three major business groups withheld their endorsements of the Clinton plan earlier this month.
Leaders of the association said that health care reform was their top priority but that there was no clear consensus among members for a particular legislative proposal.
In an interview tonight, Lovola W. Burgess of Albuquerque, N.M., president of the association, said: "The Clinton plan is the nearest to what we are looking for, but it falls short in a number of ways. We are concerned about the financing. We don't know if the proposed cuts in the growth of Medicare and Medicaid would provide enough money to help finance the President's plan. We fear that doctors would be less willing to see Medicare patients if their fees are cut."
 
Appeal From President
 Health care legislation is just beginning what promises to be a tortuous journey through Congress. The association, like many groups, seems to have decided that it can maximize its influence by preserving a degree of independence and by stressing its concerns, without giving a blanket endorsement to one proposal. Such independence gives lobbyists more room to maneuver on Capitol Hill, where the politics of health care are continually in flux.
Last week, at a forum in Edison, N.J., sponsored by the American Association of Retired Persons and at a White House meeting with lobbyists for the elderly, Mr. Clinton appealed for support of his health plan.
He said then that he was "very grateful for the kind words that A.A.R.P. has said" about his proposal. But he declared: "The time has come to be counted, to stand up, to take a stand and to fight with us if you want to get something done. This is a fight, and if you want it, you're going to have to fight for it."
President Clinton was in Norwich, Conn., today, continuing a two-week effort to sell his health plan to older people. He said the plan would ease the burden of prescription drug costs for the elderly.
Asked today why the American Association of Retired of Persons had not endorsed any particular bill, Judith N. Brown of Minneapolis, chairwoman of the organization, said: "We did not feel that was appropriate. We felt that we needed to look at all the options, and that our members should tell their representatives in Congress how they feel about the need for health care reform."
Ms. Brown added: "We represent many different points of view. When you have 33 million members, it's hard to say that every one of them feels any particular way."
 
'Exactly the Same Message'
 Lorrie McHugh, a White House spokeswoman, said the association's decision was not a setback for Mr. Clinton. The group, she said, has issued a call to action encouraging older Americans to make their voices heard.
"That's exactly the same message the President has been delivering," Ms. McHugh said. "Older Americans deserve prescription drug coverage, guaranteed long-term care and protection of the Medicare program. That's what the Clinton plan provides."
People become eligible to join the association when they reach the age of 50. About half the members are 65 or older. Dues are $8 a year. While many members praise the Clinton proposal, others favor a Government-financed program of national health insurance, known as a "single payer" plan.
Jack Guildroy of Port Washington, L.I., a director of the association, said today: "The Clinton proposal has a great many things going for it that coincide with our desires. But we stopped short of endorsing it. We are not endorsing any specific program as such."
 
Ascertaining Views of Members
 Another officer of the association, speaking on the condition that he not be named, said: "Our members are confused about what is in the various health care plans. As people learn about the proposals, they are apprehensive and nervous."
Leaders of the organization were burned by their experience with the Medicare Catastrophic Coverage Act of 1988, which expanded Medicare to cover the cost of catastrophic illness. The association lobbied for passage of that law. But after elderly people realized that they would pay the bill, through higher taxes and premiums, they forced Congress to repeal it a year later.
Since then, leaders of the association have carefully tried to ascertain and express the views of members.
Horace B. Deets, executive director of the association, said: "An organization's endorsement is only as valid as the degree of support it enjoys from its members. It is our members' endorsement that the President wants."
In Connecticut today, Mr. Clinton said he was not troubled by warnings from Capitol Hill that his health plan had little chance of being approved in its current form.
He said that he and Representative Pete Stark, the California Democrat who heads the Ways and Means Subcommittee on Health, shared a commitment to provide comprehensive health benefits to all Americans. "If you can get there," Mr. Clinton said, "I'm convinced we'll work out the details."
 
Clinton Cites Two Studies
 The White House says the Medicare prescription drug benefit proposed by Mr. Clinton would cost $69 billion from 1995 through 2000. But Mr. Clinton said today that his proposal "would actually save the health care system a lot of money in the long run."
To bolster his case, Mr. Clinton called attention to two studies released today by the National Association of Chain Drug Stores and the National Association of Retail Druggists.
The studies said the proposed drug benefit would reduce the cost of other Medicare services, by reducing the need for hospital care and visits to doctors' offices. These savings would offset perhaps half of the $69 billion, the studies said.

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February 25, 1994, Friday, Late Edition - Final

Pharmacist Helps Clinton Sell His Health Plan

BYLINE: By DOUGLAS JEHL,  Special to The New York Times 

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

LENGTH: 510 words

DATELINE: NORWICH, Conn., Feb. 24

The backdrop was just right today but the dialogue was desultory until a pharmacist began to tell the kind of story President Clinton wanted to hear.
"I've seen people break down and cry across the counter," John Kiszkiel said, telling of his elderly customers who can no longer afford to pay for prescription drugs. It was just that painful problem that Mr. Clinton had flown here to dramatize, and he was quick to seize the opportunity. 
 "Say that again!" Mr. Clinton commanded, gesturing at the same time to the network and White House camera crews filming the proceedings from the other side of the Greenville Drug Store, just out of easy hearing range. "Can you people hear that?"
 
Rent vs. Prescriptions
 Mr. Kiszkiel cleared his throat and began again as the cameras zoomed closer. "I've had people come in here and break down and cry," he said. "I've had people who've had to sell their home. I've had people right here at the counter have to make the decision whether they were going to pay their rent that month or buy prescription drugs."
As he listened, Mr. Clinton nodded with a mixture of concern and satisfaction. For the past two weeks, his campaign to sell his health care plan has been aimed at older Americans, and his main message today was that any proposal adopted by Congress should expand Medicare so that recipients would for the first time be reimbursed for the cost of prescriptions beyond a modest deductible and small co-payments.
He made that argument at the pharmacy and later in a speech in the 19th-century auditorium of the Norwich Free Academy. While the cost of providing a prescription drug benefit to Medicare recipients has been estimated at $60 billion over five years, Mr. Clinton said he was convinced that the step would "actually save the health care system money in the long run" by keeping older Americans out of hospitals and nursing homes.
"We must not take the drug benefits out, because this is a pivotal part of what will change health care in America," Mr. Clinton said.
 
Voices of Ordinary Americans
 But like their opponents in the insurance industry, whose television advertisements feature "Harry and Louise," Mr. Clinton and his aides have concluded that their pitch is best made in the voices of ordinary Americans. In his visit to the pharmacy, Mr. Clinton posed in front of a remedy-laden counter as he listened to three longtime customers, including a man who appeared very ill, tell of the troubles that the high cost of drugs had caused for them. At the Norwich Academy, he met with four other Connecticut residents who had written to the White House of similar difficulties.
But it was Mr. Kiszkiel, a man just Mr. Clinton's age, who took over the drugstore from his father 19 years ago, who provided the sought-for sound-bite. As White House aides noted with satisfaction, a local television station that had strayed from its live coverage of the Presidential visit returned to it abruptly, allowing Mr. Kiszkiel to make Mr. Clinton's case to a Connecticut audience.

LOAD-DATE: February 25, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: President Clinton traveled to Norwich, Conn., yesterday to dramatize his concern over the prices of prescription drugs. As a customer, Louise Jaczynski, listened, John Kiszkiel, the owner of the Greenville Drug Store, told Mr. Clinton, "I've had people come in here and break down and cry." (Keith Meyers/The New York Times)

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February 25, 1994, Friday, Late Edition - Final

THE MEDIA BUSINESS: Advertising;
Can three elderly women in sensible cardigans
add a little sizzle to fast-food sales?

BYLINE: By Stuart Elliott 

SECTION: Section D;  Page 2;  Column 3;  Financial Desk 

LENGTH: 891 words

IF one little old lady shouting "Where's the beef?" could spark a national fad, helping a marketer achieve stellar sales, imagine what three times that many might accomplish talking about burgers, biscuits and chicken.
That's the idea behind a new campaign for Hardee's by Deutsch Inc., the new agency on the fast feeder's $75 million account. A series of warm, humorous commercials, carrying the theme "Have a good meal," features a trio of down-to-earth elderly women dubbed the Hardee's Girls, Meg, Peg and Ronnie. 
 The television and radio spots, which begin running on Sunday, present the women traveling around America, weaving pointed pitches about Hardee's menu items and promotional prices with grandmotherly observations about life and food.
In one television commercial, called "The Hardee's Girls Go to Washington, D.C.," Meg Potter, driving a sedate sedan, announces, "We are here to see the President." Ronnie Gibney chimes in from the back seat, "You know he likes down-home cooking," to which Ms. Potter replies, "Then he should jog himself into a Hardee's and get himself a great meal."
The other spots have similarly prosaic settings, from a construction site -- "We're bringing these young men some Hardee's Steak Melts," the women, wearing hard hats, declare -- to a girls' basketball game and a drive-in theater.
"We think they're our Charlie's Angels," Donny Deutsch, chief executive and executive creative director at Deutsch in New York, said yesterday, referring to a somewhat younger female threesome. (The Andrews or McGuire Sisters might be more demographically correct.)
"They serve double duty," he added. "They sell the brand and the menu at the same time."
The trio, with their sensible cardigans and sweet, though tart, straight talk and folksy patter, manage in almost every spot to walk that fine line between corniness and coyness, thanks to some deftly scripted dialogue by Rich Russo, the executive vice president and creative director on the Hardee's account at Deutsch. The spots combine a cheeky playfulness with a likable realism.
That enables the women to evoke popular archetypal predecessors like Clara Peller, whose beef-seeking bellow propelled Wendy's International to record results in the 1980's; the cast of the hit sitcom "The Golden Girls," and David Letterman's mother, Dorothy, whose wry reports from the Winter Olympics are helping her son's programs rack up their best ratings to date.
"These women represent what we call the essence of Hardee's," Mr. Russo said, adding that research among the chain's customers, and devotees of rival restaurants, found their blend of Hardee's family values and a "hip, irreverent attitude" enabled them to appeal "across the board to all age groups" -- even to younger men who predominate at fast-food outlets.
Jon Tracosas, the executive vice president and group director on the account at Deutsch, said: "We think we found something that can really differentiate Hardee's in a crowded marketplace."
The campaign is the first from Deutsch, formerly Deutsch/Dworin, since the agency was unexpectedly awarded the account in November, after a review that excluded the incumbent shop of eight and a half years, Ogilvy & Mather New York.
"If there's one thing Ogilvy deserves credit for," said Jerry Gramaglia, executive vice president of Hardee's in Rocky Mount, N.C., "it's keeping us on the track of a food-focused positioning." Among that agency's campaigns for Hardee's was one with the theme "Are you ready for some real food?" and another centering on Marty, the prototypical manager of a Hardee's restaurant.
"But we were never able to get traction in customers' minds," Mr. Gramaglia added, "a linking idea that both elevated the brand and separated us from our competition. 'The Hardee's Girls' is overarching, giving us a good, broad platform and not just a series of commercials."
That describes Deutsch's forte, as demonstrated for clients like the Ikea furniture chain and the metropolitan New York Pontiac dealers: seamlessly blending softly selling, image-building elements with hard-selling, product-moving appeals.
"What Deutsch is noted for is particularly smart retail advertising," Mr. Gramaglia said, "getting people onto the parking lot."
Nancy Kruse, a principal at Technomic Inc., a restaurant research and consulting company in Chicago, praised that ability.
"There has been a shift in the industry's strategic perspective," she said, "from 'the back of the house,' the kitchen and food preparation, to 'the front of the house,' the customer." As chains like Hardee's behave "more and more as brand marketers and retailers," she added, "perhaps the selection of an agency that's not a fast-food agency, but understands how to do business in the broad retail market, is not so strange."
The campaign is the first from Deutsch since the departure of Steve Dworin, the agency's president, who stunned Madison Avenue -- and Hardee's executives -- by resigning last week.
"Steve played an important role in getting the campaign where it is," Mr. Gramaglia said, "and it's difficult to see him leave."
"But we all recognize this campaign's success depends on the quality of the scripts," he added, "and we feel good about the ability of Donny, and the other folks on the Hardee's business, to see it through."

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February 27, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

METRO DIGEST

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

LENGTH: 475 words


COMPASSION FATIGUE ON THE HOMELESS
In New York, the youths who used to give the old men cigarettes now curse them. In Seattle, the homeless are fined for sitting on sidewalks. Over time, the growing national impatience with the presence of dirty and desperate people has turned frustration to apathy and then anger. A1.
New York's new commissioner for the homeless said she would keep trying to have nonprofit groups run the city's homeless shelters. B2.
 
NEW YORK CITY
 
SEARCH OPPOSED FOR AIDS BABIES
A panel of New York State AIDS experts rejected a controversial proposal to identify newborn babies that test positive for H.I.V., amid concerns that it would jeopardize the privacy of mothers. A1.
Washington is expected to waive a rule and let foreigners with the AIDS virus attend the Gay Games in New York in June. B4.
 
JOB CUTS MAY FOCUS ON POVERTY AGENCY
The Giuliani administration has identified many of the city jobs it hopes to eliminate through a severance offer, and almost half of those would come out of the agency that provides services to New York City's poor, officials said. B3.
 
PLAN FOR JOURNALIST'S MURDER RETOLD
An admitted murderer and double-crossing drug dealer testified in court that he had recruited a teen-ager to shoot Manuel de Dios Unanue to death without knowing that the victim was a muckraking anti-drug journalist. B3.
 
GIULIANI CRITICIZES SUBWAY CENSORSHIP
Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani criticized the Transit Authority for restricting the filming of violent movie and television sequences in the subway system. He said attempts to screen the content of films raised freedom-of-speech questions. B4.
 
SLIWA'S HIRING MAKES MONEY FOR STATION
The hiring of Curtis Sliwa as a talk show host on New York City's main public radio station has been a surprising fund-raising bonanza for the station, even though many longtime listeners have stopped donating as a result, WNYC officials said. B3.
 
REGION
 
CUOMO PLEA TO WASHINGTON
Gov. Mario M. Cuomo went to Capitol Hill to urge New York's Congressional delegation to keep the fight for a formula that gives the state more Medicaid money at the center of its negotiations on President Clinton's health-care proposals. B5.
 
CLUES SOUGHT IN VIRUS DEATH
Health officials began the painstaking medical detective work to explain the death of a Long Island college student last month from a mysterious virus spread through mouse droppings. B5.
 
FISHERMAN SHOT IN HOLDUP AT HOME
Three gunmen, one of them masquerading as a police officer, entered the home of a 29-year-old fisherman in Bayville, L.I. Wednesday night and shot him after he refused to give them money, the Nassau County police said. B5.
Falling chunks of ice closed several bridges, jamming traffic in the region. B4.
Chronicle B4
Neediest Cases B2

LOAD-DATE: February 25, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Graph: "PULSE: Sales of Existing Homes" shows the number of sales of existing homes in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and New England in '92 and '93. (Source: National Association of Realtors)

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February 27, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

The Pequots

BYLINE: By Francis X. Clines;  Francis X. Clines is a reporter and columnist for The Times.

SECTION: Section 6;  Page 50;  Column 1;  Magazine Desk 

LENGTH: 2861 words

They really are palefaces under the neon lights, all these senior citizens and tourists playing the slot machines, blackjack tables and big-payoff bingo games at the Wisconsin Oneida tribe's casino. The casino booms around the clock in the reservation woods near the luck-hungry bettors of Green Bay. Rick Hill, with shoulder-length hair and a patient, earthen-hued outlook on life, reigns there, counting the wondrously gross receipts with the dedicated eye his ancestors once applied to tracking redcoats for George Washington.
Hailing good fortune's arrival on the rundown reservation, Hill first supplies its historical context -- genocidal defeats and the transcontinental retreat of his people, 27 broken treaties and six million lost acres in New York State alone. Only then, against the bleeping and bonging of fortune's reversal, does he comment on Oneida casino revenues, which have risen to more than $375 million a year: "Compared to the previous 170 years, it's not a lot of money, and there are still third-world conditions on most reservations." 
 A few hours later Hill stands before a dozen graduates at the Oneida elementary school, run on casino profits. "Don't hold back," he tells them. And no wonder. Their reservation, like scores of others, is resurgent. "With the community you've got all the resources you need. We'll back you up," he promises. After an elder says a tribal prayer, the young American Indians march off toward the future, their higher-education expenses already guaranteed by the gamblers just down the road.
The Oneidas are but one of more than 100 tribes across the country working to resurrect themselves with gambling after the long spiral of bad dealings with the white man. And they are not the richest. This turn of luck has come about since 1988, when Congress, prompted by the Supreme Court's bolstering of tribal sovereignty, adopted the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act. Out of that law, which requires states to negotiate compacts with tribes, 170 casinos and high-stakes bingo halls have taken root. Where so recently there was utter destitution, the more fortunate tribes have created a $1.5 billion economy in which revenues have been doubling annually.
"Our day in the sun is arriving," Hill says of his tribe's new life of full employment and new schools, roads, sewers and houses -- the Indian version of a postwar Levittown.
"It's been wonderful. I never had these opportunities before in my life," says Pat Metoxen, who for years did odd jobs in Green Bay for $6.50 an hour. He has become an Oneida pit boss at $15 an hour, joining 2,500 other tribe members who work in the casino. Metoxen has a new house, a new car, and he says his three children "will probably need master's degrees in business, at the rate the tribe is progressing."
Law degrees wouldn't hurt either. Tribal gambling powers and sovereignty have come under increasing legal challenges from dumbfounded state officials crying foul at the Indians' success. The critical juncture for the gaming sachems is to come later this year, when Congress considers amending the act -- a familiar, frightening possibility for tribal leaders, who recall how countless compacts were written then disregarded in Washington.
"We've had 200 years of that process," says Timothy Wapato, executive director of the National Indian Gaming Association. The association has 96 member tribes and can afford an impressive lobbying presence in Washington. In recent months the tribes have been negotiating with state officials, searching for a peaceful common position to present to Congress in the growing conflict over tribal sovereignty and states' prerogatives.
In the face of Supreme Court backing of the tribes' sovereign rights, some experienced officials of the Las Vegas and Atlantic City gambling industry have begun cooperating and looking for a management interest in tribal casinos. Others, like Donald Trump, the owner of three casinos in Atlantic City, see their hegemony threatened. Trump is suing. He contends that his rights are being violated by what he calls a "very limited class of citizens."
"The Indians are only a sovereign nation when it comes to gambling," Trump argues, dismissing the nationhood precedent that tribes say was long abused by Washington to negotiate them into retreat. "Most people think casino gambling will be what alcohol was to the Indians of past generations," Trump says. "I have seen these Indians, and you have more Indian blood than they have."
As if measuring some tabloid-mache Custer, Hill smiles when he hears what Trump has to say. He dismisses Trump as a chronically bankrupt entrepreneur who talks a good game of competition until he's been bested. "Another white man has come to take even the measly beads left," Hill declares, matching Trump movie cliche for cliche.
For the lobbying effort, the 96 tribes of the National Indian Gaming Association elected Hill, a 41-year-old gaming tyro who emphasizes tribal culture, as chairman. His style is more Native American than that of his predecessor, Charles C. Keechi, a button-down executive and former chairman of the Delaware nation in Oklahoma. Hill's victory by a 3-to-1 margin last spring was a tribute to his skills in the art of Indian politics, inherited from his father, and to his success at investing casino profits in tribal welfare.
At the gambling tables, the palefaces seem indifferent to Trump's sudden sense of curtailed citizenship and Hill's recapitulation of the Great White Father's perfidy. "I don't know what I'd do with my days if it wasn't for the casino," a grandmotherly gambler says as her fellow retirees cluster vigilantly at Oneida's morning mega-bingo session.
To anyone who ever rooted for the underdog in tribal America's sad saga, the rise of Indian casinos is as heartening as it is amazing. "It's the return of the white buffalo," says Matt Connor of Gaming & Wagering Business International magazine, invoking the rare American bison, a traditional sign of renewed providence. W. Bruce Turner, a gaming company stock analyst with Salomon Brothers, assesses the Indian's gaming business less romantically -- "capable of 200 percent growth over the next several years." He finds their ability to adapt to gambling "nothing short of overwhelming."
A decade ago, the tribes had zero gross product and 70 percent unemployment. Now there are 70 major tribal casinos with table games and slot machines in 19 states. And dozens more are planned. A premise of the 1988 gaming act was that the reservations needed to be freed from patronizing restrictions that prevented them from amassing economic development capital. The result: they now generate, manage and reinvest betting profits that this year will approach $2 billion, over 3 percent of the nation's legal betting take.
"ISN'T THAT WHAT AMERICA IS SUPPOSED TO BE ABOUT?" ASKS IRVING Wizenfeld, an enthusiastic regular at the furiously busy Foxwoods Resort Casino in Ledyard, Conn. Created by the once nearly extinct Mashantucket Pequot tribe, Foxwoods is unique even in these tribal boom times. In only two years, it has become the single most profitable casino in the Western Hemisphere, raking in an estimated $600 million a year in profits.
A two-and-a-half hour drive from Manhattan, Foxwoods offers "wampum" betting cards, cocktail waitresses in skimpy fringed and beaded tunics, and more than 3,000 slot machines. More than 15,000 gamblers show up every day, on weekends as many as 35,000. The gleaming 24-hour casino is the talk of the country's $30-billion-a-year industry -- a subject of both envy and fear.
Foxwoods was created almost single-handedly by Chairman Richard (Skip) Hayward, a reclusive, canny pathfinder. He cut a bold profit-sharing deal with the State of Connecticut that will eventually allow him to have 4,600 slot machines, more than any other casino on the East Coast. He also took care to hire as his chief executive officer G. Michael Brown, the former director of New Jersey's Division of Gaming Enforcement; Brown built his reputation as a prosecutor who forced Atlantic City casinos to steer clear of underworld ties.
Working in desolate woods, Hayward first had to rebuild his own withered tribe by searching out members from the post-Colonial diaspora, some of them lost in the urban underclass. Twenty years ago, the Mashuntucket Pequot reservation had fewer than a dozen residents; Hayward authenticated more than 200 others and campaigned to get them Federal recognition, the key to sovereignty and legalized gambling. All now profit in well-paid jobs, guaranteed educations and health insurance. The tribe has also hired an archeologist to disinter its history and stock the new museum.
"This is truly a case of the last becoming first," exults Tom Tureen, the lawyer who was lead counsel in the land claim fight that established Pequot sovereignty. "There has never been anything to approach this as a means of providing capital to Indians."
To protect the Foxwoods bonanza from corruption threats, Brown, the chief executive, has used his Atlantic City experience to ease back from the absolute sovereignty so dear to other tribes and has instead invited on-site cooperation with state and Federal law enforcement experts, and exchanges of gambling intelligence with Las Vegas and Atlantic City networks.
Federal law concerning Indians is rooted in respect for sovereignty and defers to state-tribal compacts for regulatory procedures. But Washington insists on professional accounting standards to head off sweetheart deals that could siphon funds from tribal welfare programs. The Pequots run a consultant service for other tribes, stressing the need for high-level security, strict controls in the movement of money and experienced management.
"We've found a predictable mix," notes Brown in reference to studies of two other casinos. "One was excellently run; the other was so lax in controls that it could easily fall victim to illicit dealings." He says the main threat to Indian gaming is not underworld infiltration as much as "bad business deals in a risky area, just as with junk bonds."
The tribes might eventually end up with 250 or more casinos of various sizes, if the Federal gaming law is not radically crimped. The Indians' good fortune has helped spur an even larger boom in legalized gambling off the reservation. And it's not just the Indians who are getting richer; areas surrounding the reservations are profiting too.
Gov. Lowell Weicker of Connecticut has agreed that Foxwoods may add slot machines, in a clever monopoly compact worked out under the Federal act by Hayward. The tribe provides the state at least $100 million a year, so long as competitive slot operations, the main engines of gambling profit, are not authorized in other Connecticut cities now agitating for their own action. Last year, as casino revenues rocketed, Hayward defended his golden monopoly by giving the state an additional $13 million in budget help.
In Minnesota, cooperation between reservation and Statehouse has put 11 tribes in control of 17 high-stakes bingo and gambling casinos that constitute an annual industry with betting in excess of $650 million and a $116 million payroll. Seventy-three percent of the casino workers are non-Indians, hired as unemployment on the reservation dropped toward zero. Minnesota found that in casino regions the economy grew twice as fast as in other areas and that welfare dependency fell 3 percent in casino counties while it was rising 15 percent elsewhere.
Hill says he believes that their new wealth has firmed the tribes' resolve to face up to the gaming act challenge. "Economics gives us more political power," he says.
The main opposition comes from the National Governors' Association, which has been negotiating tentatively with the tribes to find common ground for a proposal that might head off the riskier unknowns of unlacing the gaming act. The tribes' staunchest support comes from Senator Daniel Inouye of Hawaii, the chairman of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, who says court decisions demand that the act be amended this year.
The governors resent Indian independence of state control and freedom from taxes. But their problem is that court interpretations upholding Indian sovereignty limit their options. They want to avoid the theoretical possibility that financially pressed cities might, under land-trust arrangements, donate part of their downtown areas to Indians to set up casinos. In California -- a critical battleground because it supplies Las Vegas with one-third of its gamblers -- the state has balked at Federally mandated negotiations with tribes, forcing the issue into the courts.
The Indians know that critics are just waiting for a corruption scandal to bolster a wholesale gutting of the gaming act. Rick Hill, bemused at white society's tolerance of its own savings and loan scandal, stresses a Justice Department finding that tribal management has thus far proved more than a match for underworld intriguers.
"There has not been a widespread or successful effort by organized crime to infiltrate Indian gaming operations," the Justice Department concluded. That was two years ago; some tribes have since begun creating their own Vegas-like anticorruption networks. They also are emphasizing management training, something critics believe is needed to deal with intratribal rivalries and charges of executive profiteering.
This emphasis is clear in the security room at the Mystic Lake Casino, run by the Shakopee Sioux outside Minneapolis. A wall of television screens faces a 24-hour control desk where monitors run a high-speed taping system of closeup surveillance, custom-designed by industry experts to zoom in, from multiple angles, on the fingertips of gamblers and all money-handling employees. Discretion is considered counterproductive: when a worker is caught skimming or a gambler is taped tampering with the floor games, the tribe's policy is to make a dramatic on-the-spot arrest.
Success has brought some discord. Since losing his post as head of the National Indian Gaming Association last year, Charles Keechi of the Oklahoma Delawares has been warning that the casino issue may degenerate into a struggle among tribes. "I'm afraid it's the casino haves fighting it out with the have-nots," he says, speaking now as chairman of Natives of the Americas, a two-continent tribal economic organization.
There has been no move toward an intertribal sharing of profits. Most tribes pool their revenues for reservation development; some pay shared dividends to members, who keep details to themselves. Hill denies that the tribes with casinos would insulate themselves at the expense of weaker brethren in dealings with Congress.
At least 30 more tribes in 19 states are now trying to develop their own casinos. But in a universe of more than 300 Federally recognized tribes totalling 1.9 million people, the reservations of two-thirds of them seem less than fortunate, deliberately set far from tourist crossroads by treaty. Others are rebuffed at the statehouse.
The Indians are only part of a legalized gambling industry sweeping the nation in the recession-heavy years. Riverboat casinos now ply the Mississippi and Gulf Coast, with proposals to spread northeastward. And in the rush for revenues, bogus "boats" are being rushed into trenches like frontier settlements. Keeping up with the tribes is a selling point.
THE HEART OF the Indians' problem with unexpected success lies, as ever, in Washington. Hill and the other tribal leaders are wary of what may develop there. They have put their trust in Senator Inouye and Senator John McCain of Arizona, vice chairman of the committee on Indian affairs, who, under pressure from the governors and state attorneys general, have been trying to mediate the casino fight quietly by calling private conferences and serving, in effect, as diplomats among competing nations. Senator Inouye insists he has obtained reassurances from the governors' association that the states do not wish to attack the tribes' sovereignty or economic resurrection; rather, they would work out a better compact process of mutual profit.
Rick Hill expresses watchful faith in the "Inouye process." But characteristically he declines to hold his tongue in denouncing proposed gaming law amendments from Atlantic City and Las Vegas legislators as a "Trump Act" retrenchment of Indian sovereignty. "The civil war may be over for some, but not in Indian country," he says in the flat tone of determination the tribal chiefs sought to project when they chose him for the looming Congressional fight.
For this contest, Tom Tureen, the lawyer who helped create fresh Indian legend from gambling luck, counsels the greatest vigilance.
"History shows that any time Indians have anything of value, there's been people on the non-Indian side ready to take it away. Look at the Black Hills," he says, recalling how the Sioux were forced to move there by Washington, then illegally routed anew when whites discovered gold. "Look at the United States itself."

LOAD-DATE: February 27, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photos: Hayward: Foxwoods' camera-shy mastermind. (pg. 49); The tribal boom is extending beyond the reservation to non-Indian casino workers like this Foxwoods cocktail waitress, Angela Adams. (pg. 50); Foxwoods rakes in $600 million a year for the once destitute tribe. "Isn't that what America is supposed to be about?" asks one gambler. (pg. 51); Casino dollars are bankrolling Pequot child education and development. (pg. 52)(PHOTOGRAPH BY KAREN KUEHN/MATRIX, FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES)

Copyright 1994 The New York Times Company



77 of 457 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times

February 27, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

YOUR TAXES;
Some Social Security Recipients Will Pay More for '94

BYLINE: By JOHN H. CUSHMAN Jr. 

SECTION: Section 3;  Page 14;  Column 1;  Financial Desk 

LENGTH: 577 words

SOCIAL Security recipients with significant income were spared a tax increase for 1993, but some of them will pay more this year.
To avoid penalties, additional estimated taxes will probably have to be paid in quarterly installments beginning April 15. 
 So after dusting off the 1993 return, it's time to start estimating for 1994.
The tax law enacted last year called for an increase in taxes on Social Security benefits, but only for people who are relatively well-off. The Federal Government estimates that 5.5 million of the nation's 43 million Social Security recipients will be affected.
The rule of thumb is that if a retiree's benefits have not been taxed in the past, they will not be taxed now -- unless his or her income has risen.
People who had to count half their benefits as taxable income in 1993 might have to pay taxes on as much as 85 percent of their benefits this year. Whether or not they are affected depends upon their income from several sources, including pensions, Social Security benefits and even tax-free interest.
Because taxes are not withheld from Social Security checks, most people affected will need to make quarterly estimated payments. This calls for some fairly tedious arithmetic, however, and some critics say the legislation places a burden on the people least equipped to handle it.
The winners in all this may be tax preparers, whom retirees are consulting and asking to deal with the confusing changes.
"I just went to see my C.P.A. yesterday, and I am not sure whether it is going to up my income tax," Jan McClure, a 72-year-old widow, said.
Ms. McClure said she had planned to cut expenses by doing her own tax preparations, but decided against it because of the changes.
"We have created this complex situation for the people who should least have to deal with it," said Judy Eggleston, a professor of accounting at George Washington University in Washington, who also has a private practice.
Under the new law, married couples with income of more than $44,000, and singles earning more than $34,000, will generally pay tax on 85 percent of their Social Security benefits.
That 85 percent of benefits will be taxed at the retiree's normal rate, which is often quite low.
The most complicated element is determining income. For this tax test, income includes gross taxable income plus tax-free interest income plus half of Social Security benefits.
I.R.S. Publication 553, entitled Highlights of 1993 Tax Changes, contains an 18-line worksheet to calculate how much of one's benefit is taxable.
Other useful material from the Internal Revenue Service is found in Publication 554, Tax Information for Older Americans, and in Publication 915, Social Security Benefits.
People whose retirement benefits are taxable will need Form 1040-ES to make estimated payments every three months.
The I.R.S. provides free tax preparation for senior citizens through two programs, called Volunteer Income Tax Assistance and Tax Counseling for the Elderly. Both programs use volunteers trained and tested by the agency.
These services can be reached by calling toll-free the taxpayer assistance numbers listed in the blue pages of the phone book under the United States Government. The numbers, which end with the digits 1040, are also listed in the I.R.S. instructions mailed to taxpayers.
Public libraries and senior citizen centers can usually steer the elderly to these services as well.

LOAD-DATE: February 27, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Stlvia Kass gives free tax couseling to the elderly at the New Youk Public Library.

Copyright 1994 The New York Times Company



78 of 457 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times

February 27, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Vital Signs Improve for the Nursing Home Industry

BYLINE: By KENNETH N. GILPIN 

SECTION: Section 3;  Page 5;  Column 1;  Financial Desk 

LENGTH: 1949 words

AS with virtually all segments of the health care marketplace, change is sweeping through the nation's $70 billion nursing home industry. What is different here, though, is that few in this highly fragmented business are complaining.
People in the business are smiling because, among other things, there is a rising tide of senior citizens to take care of, and there is a stagnant to declining pool of beds in which to put them. Nursing home companies are also successfully competing with hospitals in taking care of patients who are recovering from surgery. 
 Indeed, even as reform is causing dislocation in important components of the health care system, from hospitals to drug companies to physicians, analysts say many nursing home operators, particularly the biggest ones, are in pretty good shape.
"Nursing homes are the only area in health care where there is a shortage," said Peter Sidoti, a health care analyst at the NatWest Securities Corporation in New York. "There are not enough nursing home beds in the country, and demand is growing."
Although other factors are playing a role, the driving force behind the positive outlook for nursing homes is demographic. Millions of Americans are getting old, and advances in medical technology are allowing them to grow older still. By the year 2000, there will be about 35 million Americans age 65 or older, and 40 million by 2010, according to Census Bureau Estimates; that's up from 31.5 million in 1990.
For nursing homes, the critical group is people 85 and older, which happens to be the fastest growing part of the elderly population. By the year 2000, their numbers are projected to swell by 40 percent, and to double by 2010.
According to a recent research report prepared by Todd B. Richter, a senior vice president at Dean Witter Reynolds in New York, and by Mark G. Banta, another health care analyst at the firm, more than half of those over 85 need long-term care.
The other critical part of the equation is where will all these older people go? For the foreseeable future they will compete for a finite number of beds that is not expected to get much bigger. There are more than 15,000 nursing homes in the country, with about 1.6 million beds. On any given day, between 90 and 95 percent of those beds are occupied.
Thus far this decade, the supply of nursing home beds has stabilized, or has even declined slightly, because of state Certificate of Need laws designed to control or reduce the number of nursing home beds. If a nursing home wants to expand, it must apply to the state, showing why there is a need for more beds in its area. Because most nursing home residents are on Medicaid, the government health plan that covers the poor, the state pays a big part of the tab at nursing homes. So as beds increase, so does the state's Medicaid costs. The effect: States don't hand out Certificates of Need like aspirin.
In 1990 alone, nursing home payments represented 38.2 percent of Medicaid expenditures nationwide, according to a report prepared by John F. Hindelong, a principal and health care analyst at Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette. Paying for Medicaid is the second-biggest cost item for state governments, and it is probably the single fastest-growing cost.
In their report, Dean Witter's analysts concluded that since restrictive Certificate of Need laws are in place in most states, "We do not believe the supply situation will change materially for the better over the next several years," possibly not before the turn of the century.
Nursing homes, however, have found a way to profit from the state restrictions. Now the average nursing home derives more than 60 percent of its revenue from Medicaid. But by holding down the number of new beds and effectively putting a lid on Medicaid patients, home operators have greater latitude to "pick and choose who they let in the door," Mr. Sidoti from NatWest Securities said. The ability to pick from a generally more affluent group is boosting profitability.
The search for greater profitability has pushed nursing home operators into direct competition with their big cousins, hospitals, for subacute-care patients. These patients, recovering from cancer, coronary bypass and joint replacement surgery, or from serious accidents, are increasingly receiving post-operative therapy at nursing homes.
"We are branching out into areas that until the 1990's were dominated by hospitals," said Paul Ormond, chairman and chief executive of the Health Care and Retirement Corporation, the nation's fifth-largest nursing home operator. For nursing homes able to afford the $10,000- to $15,000-per-bed investment Dean Witter's analysts estimate is necessary to accommodate subacute and rehabilitation patients, the attractions are clear: Operating margins for treatment of subacute care patients are roughly twice those on custodial geriatric care.
For payers like health maintenance organizations and insurance companies, there is one clear benefit of using nursing homes for subacute care: cost.
"We make a pretty compelling argument to payers about the price reductions we can provide," said Paul Willging, executive vice president of the American Health Care Association, a Washington lobbying group that represents 11,000 subacute residential care nursing homes.
"We are talking about a day of care that is one-half to two-thirds the price of what a day at a hospital costs. And we know we can do it cheaper than that."
In Mr. Hindelong's report on the nursing home industry, the Donaldson Lufkin analyst, citing figures from the 1992 Marion Merrell Dow Long Term Care Digest, notes that in 1991 H.M.O.'s generated an average of 30 percent of revenue at for-profit nursing homes. In 1989 and 1990, the H.M.O. contribution to nursing home revenues was 3 percent and 4 percent, respectively.
"People that run skilled nursing facilities are much more cost conscious than people who run hospitals," said Stewart Bainum, chairman and chief executive of Manor Care Inc., the nation's third-largest and most profitable nursing home chain.
David Vanderwater, chief operating officer at Columbia/HCA Healthcare Corporation, the nation's largest hospital chain, admitted that "historically, hospitals have not been the most economical place for these types of services. But the world is changing. I think hospitals are poised to meet that challenge. And we believe hospitals provide much more flexibility than nursing homes."
In order to meet the challenge, some hospitals are reducing their number of beds and sharply cutting their work force.
Columbia/HCA is nevertheless keeping its options open. Last week, the company and Beverly Enterprises, the nation's largest nursing home company, said they were discussing joint ventures in some cities.
All this change is getting Wall Street's attention. Over the last year, shares in the 16 publicly traded nursing home companies have risen an average of 30 percent to 40 percent, Mr. Richter of Dean Witter said..
"We follow 10 publicly traded companies and have buy recommendations on all of them because we think the long-term fundamentals are superb," Mr. Sidoti of NatWest Securities said. That stated, he does have some particular favorites. He likes the Hillhaven Corporation, the nation's second-largest nursing home operator. And he said the Sun Healthcare Group, which NatWest is advising in its $320 million buyout of the Mediplex Group, has a great future.
"Hillhaven owns its own bricks and mortar, and they have good earnings," he said. "We also think that since National Medical Enterprises owns 35 percent of the stock, Hillhaven is a likely takeover candidate."
Sun Healthcare, meanwhile, "is a company that has been ignored by investors. Right now, it has a market capitalization of $250 million, but only $90 million of that is freely traded."
That will change after the buyout of Mediplex, a subacute care provider, is completed.
"After this deal, the company will have a market capitalization of more than $700 million, and more than $500 million of that will be freely traded," Mr. Sidoti said.
Although the big players are getting all the attention, the industry is still dominated by small entrepreneurs, and more and more of them are beginning to merge. There have been a half dozen nursing home combinations over the last 12 months.
At the moment, the nursing home industry remains widely diversified: The 20 largest chains operate just 18 percent of the homes, but that is expected to change.
"Right now the top 32 players have 21 percent of the beds," Mr. Richter said. "Five years from now, I would expect the top 10 players will have 21 percent of the beds."
Mergers make sense because of the need to work with managed care purveyors," said Carl Sherman, a senior vice president and health care analyst at Dillon Read & Company. "In the next few years, the nursing home industry sees this as being all-important."
Also important for the industry is keeping down labor costs, which represent close to 80 percent of a nursing home's expenses. Wages are under control, but that could change.
"So long as unemployment stays above 6 percent, we in nursing homes will do well," Andrew L. Turner, founding chairman and chief executive of Sun Healthcare, said.
Aside from the mergers, larger nursing home operators, including Manor Care, have also entered into joint-venture arrangements with hospitals, or are contemplating them.
Given the huge size of some hospital chains relative to nursing homes, "hospitals could purchase assets and capabilities from the nursing home industry," Mr. Ormond at Health Care and Retirement said. "But it is more likely they will focus on their segment of the market, and we will focus on ours. There will be ways for the system to enjoy the economics of both."
Mr. Turner of Sun Healthcare disagreed.  "In 10 years we will be in the hospital business," he said. "But it will be called something different than that."
 
 
 
SMALL FRY ARE MAKING ACQUISITIONS
 Over the last year the nursing home industry has seen a flurry of mergers and acquisitions. But unlike the 1980's, when big companies spent too much for their acquisitions, the buying and selling in the last 12 months has involved smaller operators doing smaller deals.
 "In the past, if there was acquisition activity, it was big fish swallowing little fish," saisd Andrew L. Turner, chairman and chief executive of Sun Healthcare Group, which in January announced in was buying the Mediplex Group for $320 million.
 "Today, it's the little fish who are getting married," he added. "The five largest companies are not out there."
 Indeed. Here is a list of the five biggest nursing home deals in the last year:
 * Genesis Health Ventures/Meridian Healthcare. Price, $205 million. Combination increases the number of beds at Genesis to more than 10,000. Genesis also agreed to lease an additional seven nursing homes from Meridian, with an option to buy them for $59 million in 10 years.
 * Horizon Healthcare Corporation/Greenert Rehabilitation Group. Price, $350 million. Combination gives Horizon just under 9,000 beds.
 * Sun Healthcare Group Systems/Mediplex Group. Price $320 million. Combination make Sun one of the 10 highest nursing home operations in the country, with more than 13,000 beds.
 * Integrated Health Services/Central Park Lodges. Price $184 million. Combination gives Integrated nearly 5,000 beds. Central Park had been a unit of the Trizec Corporation of Canada.
 * Regency Health Services/Care Enterprises. Prices, $120 million in a stock swap. Combination is giving Regency just over 9,000 beds.

LOAD-DATE: February 27, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Graphs: "Leading Providers of Nursing Home care: An Analyst's Outlook" shows nursing home statistics for several of the leading providers in the field. (Source: Datastream)

Copyright 1994 The New York Times Company



79 of 457 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times

February 27, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

POLITICAL NOTES;
Clinton Aides Find New York Chillier

BYLINE: By TODD S. PURDUM 

SECTION: Section 1;  Page 34;  Column 3;  Metropolitan Desk 

LENGTH: 786 words

O, tempora! O, mores! O, lights and sirens! Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani takes pride in being a new Republican broom at City Hall, and it seems that at least some of the routine Democratic customs of former Mayor David N. Dinkins have indeed been swept away.
The other day, Commerce Secretary Ronald H. Brown visited New York City for a couple of events in Harlem with Representative Charles B. Rangel, one of the new Mayor's sharpest critics, and asked for a city police escort. Mr. Dinkins always extended that courtesy to Mr. Brown, an old friend and former chairman of the Democratic National Committee. But this time the Police Department's Intelligence Division, which handles escorts for dignitaries, refused, to the chagrin of former Dinkins aides. 
 A police spokesman, Sgt. Nicholas Vreeland, said the division decided that no security or crowd-control concerns justified an escort. "It's a case-by-case evaluation," he said. "He has his own security, and based on the fact that there were no threats and nothing really confrontational on his itinerary, they determined that an escort wasn't warranted."
"You're kidding!" Mr. Rangel exclaimed when told of the Police Department's decision. He added, referring to the Giuliani administration: "They're so political, and so proud of what they don't know. It's just like they think the whole city was born in Staten Island."
Here's the puzzle: Carol Hamilton, a spokeswoman for Mr. Brown who was with him on the trip to a health clinic and a center for the elderly on Feb. 17, said their group in fact had an escort from a blue-and-white marked police car.
"We appreciate our friends looking out for us, but we've had no problems," she said.
So how did Mr. Brown get the car? "They may have called the highway unit on their own," Sergeant Vreeland said.
In any case, some Cabinet officers are more equal than others. The day after Mr. Brown's visit, Henry G. Cisneros, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, got a ride from the airport with Mr. Giuliani's personal security detail. His destination: City Hall, for lunch with the Mayor.
 
Great Moments in Locution

After nearly 12 years in office, Gov. Mario M. Cuomo is known far and wide as one of the most eloquent political orators of his generation. But sometimes his verbal footwork ends up sounding more like an Abbott and Costello routine, as it did last week in Washington.
The Governor went to Capitol Hill to lobby the New York Congressional delegation to keep up the fight for changes in the national Medicaid reimbursement formula that would benefit the state -- a cause for which he has long fought. After addressing a luncheon meeting convened by Mr. Rangel, the dean of the delegation, Mr. Cuomo told reporters that he had come to ask Mr. Rangel what he could do to help the fight, as Congress considers health-care legislation.
So, the Governor was asked, what did Mr. Rangel say?
"I sought his advice as to what I should do. I didn't seek his advice as to what he should do. He knows what he should do, and he didn't seek my advice as to what he should do. So the subject of what he should do remains very much with him. I asked him what I should do."
So, the Governor was asked again, what did he say you should do?
"He said, 'Keep doing what you're doing,' " Mr. Cuomo said. "Which is what I'm doing."
 
This Sticker Paid for By . . .
 The New Jersey Senate race between the Democratic incumbent, Frank R. Lautenberg, and his presumptive Republican challenger, State Assembly Speaker Chuck Haytaian, is already shaping up as a bitter fight. Lautenberg loyalists recently took some pains to show reporters red-white-and-blue Haytaian lapel stickers -- the cheaper, modern version of buttons -- that contain no disclaimer noting who paid for them.
"It's illegal," one Lautenberg aide gloated, on condition of anonymity. "I just hope they're this sloppy on everything."
In fact, according to the Federal Election Commission, Mr. Haytaian is on solid legal ground, since Federal law requiring campaign disclosure exempts small items -- pins, pens, buttons, bumper stickers -- "upon which the disclaimer cannot be conveniently printed." (The law also exempts other vehicles -- specifically, skywriting and signs on water towers -- where a disclaimer would be "impracticable.")
"Whatever is out there that has my name on it is paid for by my committee, and there's no intention to hide it," said Mr. Haytaian, who has yet to declare his candidacy officially. "If anybody is insinuating that, they ought to be worried about more important things, like reducing the deficit and cutting spending and national health care, and not some disclaimer on a tag."

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February 27, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

AT YOUR SERVICE;
Rent Aid to Tai Chi to Meals-on-Wheels: A Program Guide

SECTION: Section 13;  Page 16;  Column 1;  The City Weekly Desk 

LENGTH: 683 words

NEW YORK CITY is blessed with an abundant variety of programs for the elderly, reflecting the city's cultural mix. But it is also cursed by a lack of coordination that makes it hard for people to find out what is available.
"People don't know what services there are," said Grace Harewood, executive director of the Fort Greene Senior Citizens Council in Brooklyn. "I know a woman who worked full time and would race home on her lunch hour to cook meals for her parents. Then one day she saw one of our vans going through the neighborhood, and she called to see if she could get meals delivered to them." 
 There are 335 centers for the elderly administered by the city Department for the Aging, and hundreds of other programs organized by nonprofit agencies.
They include the basic programs found around the country, like Meals on Wheels. But like many other aspects of life in the city, programs for the elderly can be innovative in the way they address their clientele's physical and psychological needs.
Information about city programs can be obtained by calling the Department for the Aging. For help in English, Mandarin or Cantonese, (212) 442-1000; for help in Spanish, (212) 442-3010.
Here are some services for the elderly in New York:
* Exemptions from rent increases for households headed by a person age 62 or older with up to $16,500 in total income in rent-controlled or rent-stabilized housing, Mitchell-Lama buildings or hotels.
* Reduced fares on subways and buses at all hours for people 65 and older. Buses charge 60 cents; subways issue a return transfer for every token purchased.
* Helmsley Alzheimer's Alert, in which people suffering from Alzheimer's disease are given bracelets imprinted with a number that helps identify them if they wander off. The program is run by the Alzheimer's Association; (212) 983-0700.
* The Ability Is Ageless job fair, held every autumn by the Department for the Aging to bring businesses together with older New Yorkers seeking jobs. Workshops help sharpen job-hunting skills; (212) 442-1000.
* SeniorNet, a computer network offering an electronic bulletin board, retirement information, games and other activities for people over 55. Classes are held at seven centers, including University Settlement at 189 Allen Street on the Lower East Side; (212) 473-8217.
* Family Mentor Program, introduced last year to match troubled families with people 60 and older who can offer guidance to keep families intact; (212) 442-3161.
* Meals on Wheels, for hot home-delivered meals, available regardless of income; (212) 348-4344.
* Ageworks, which trains people 55 and older to use computers and helps them find computer-related jobs; (212) 442-1355.
 * A program to help elderly crime victims, run by the Department for the Aging; (212) 442-3103.
* A citywide home-repair program run by the New York Foundation for Senior Citizens. For no charge -- although clients are asked to pay for materials if they can -- workers will repair doorknobs, caulk bathtubs and perform other minor repairs; (212) 962-7653.
* A program that refers clients to agencies that provide personal alarms, which are worn around the neck or wrist and, with the press of a button, alert a central agency, like a hospital, if the wearer needs help; (212) 442-1195.
 Here are a few senior-citizens centers with a cultural accent:
* The mostly Chinese La Guardia Senior Citizens Center, or Ho Lok Chung Sum, at 280 Cherry Street in lower Manhattan, where bowls of congee (rice porridge, with pork and shrimp on top) are served at breakfast for 20 cents; English classes are offered weekly, and tai chi daily at 7 A.M; (212) 732-3656.
* The Christopher C. Blenman Senior Citizens Center, 720 East New York Avenue in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, with a mostly Caribbean clientele (and tai chi classes, too); (718) 773-7400.
* The Corona Program for the Elderly, a bilingual (English-Spanish) center run by the First United Methodist Church at 42-15 104th Street in Corona, Queens, which holds a Latin American festival every October; (718) 458-7259.

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February 27, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Beyond Denial: An 'Eldercare' Primer;
Health-Care Rules Are a Dizzying Maze. It's Terribly Painful to Confront a Parent's Mortality. But Why Wait for a Crisis?

BYLINE: By CONSTANCE L. HAYS 

SECTION: Section 13;  Page 1;  Column 1;  The City Weekly Desk 

LENGTH: 3911 words

CAROL MAURO'S father lived happily and healthily on his own in a Manhattan walk-up apartment until last Father's Day, when, at the age of 82, he fell and broke his hip. That injury, complicated by a heart attack, transformed his life, and the lives of his three daughters as well.
Caught unprepared, Mrs. Mauro says, she and her sisters flailed about in their search for information, "all sort of tripping over each other in trying to be helpful." The months since have been a crash course in the elements of what has come to be called "eldercare" -- the runic regulations of Medicaid and Medicare, the relative benefits of home health care versus life in a nursing home. 
 "We got lulled into forgetting how old he really was," said Mrs. Mauro, who directs training programs for a large insurance company. "You live with a whole lot of denial about what's going to happen to your parents."
Now, her father, John Vitale, a retired postal worker who has lived alone since his wife died in 1981, has health aides helping him around the clock, and Mrs. Mauro and her sisters are paying his not inconsiderable bills.
Their story, experts say, is all too typical. It is the rare adult who begins to grapple ahead of time with the financial, medical and emotional implications of caring for elderly parents. Most of the time, such topics are addressed only in mid-crisis, with decisions made hurriedly and then frequently regretted in hindsight.
All of this, of course, is as simple, and as maddeningly complex, as the relationships and inevitable conflicts between parent and child, brother and sister, husband and wife.
Some parents may feel that to involve their children in highly personal decisions would be to surrender irrevocably to old age. Disagreements frequently erupt over whether parents' money should be used for their care or kept to pass on to their children. And often the need to plan for elderly parents gets pushed aside by the demands of a child's own children or career.
But the biggest hurdle for many is simply facing the fact that parents get old and frail and, ultimately, are gone.
"I just didn't want to think of this person, my mother, who I loved so much and who had always taken care of me, as a helpless person," said Linda Nochlin, a professor of modern art at New York University whose mother died at the age of 80 last month. "It's terribly hard. To say one can be rational about it is simply untrue. No one can really help you confront the notion of your mother's mortality, and then your own mortality, which goes along with it."
Still, while a parent may remain healthy and independent until 65 or 90, "the mortality rate is 100 percent, so it's foolish not to deal with these things," says Louise Fradkin, a founder of Children of Aging Parents, a national support group.
The often staggering financial burden of medical care for the elderly is one of the major factors driving the furious health care debate in Washington. And there is added urgency in the changing demographics of New York. While the total number of people over 65 in the city remained fairly constant between censuses in 1980 and 1990, the number of people 85 and older -- those most likely to need specialized care -- rose 32 percent.
"The average 40-year-old couple has more parents than children," said Barbara B. Lepis, director of the Partnership for Eldercare, an information center run out of the city's Department for the Aging.
The aging of the population and the growing complexity of the situation have given rise to an expanding industry of services for the elderly, and for the children who will care for them, from corporate help to a new species of social worker, the geriatric-care manager, who can navigate much of the eldercare maze for you.
The field is vast and complex. All the more reason to learn the basics now. What follows, then, is a primer in many of the major issues of caring for elderly relatives in a city of extensive and diverse but often poorly publicized services.
 
THE PAPERWORK
 The first step is the paperwork.
An essential, lawyers and advocates for the elderly say, is power of attorney, a document in which a parent designates someone who will be able to perform tasks like paying bills and writing checks. Someone who becomes incapacitated without having assigned power of attorney may end up having decisions made by a state-appointed guardian.
A lawyer usually draws up the document, which must be notarized. Forms are available from any stationery store specializing in legal forms, but experts urge great care; power of attorneyis a highly potent instrument that is easily abused.
Next is the health-care proxy, which allows the person designated to make decisions about medical treatment should a patient not be able to participate in such decisions.
Many lawyers also recommend that parents sign living wills, which state their feelings about the degree to which they should be sustained on life-support if they become terminally ill or recovery otherwise seems unlikely. Though New York, unlike many states, does not have a law regulating the use of living wills, "judges generally uphold them," said Ellen P. Rosenzweig, a director of the Institute of Law and Rights of Older Adults at Hunter College.
Lawyers draft these documents, but for those who want to do it themselves, forms for health-care proxies and living wills are available from an organization called Choice in Dying. A New York health-care proxy is essentially valid only within the state.
Parents should also be encouraged to make, and give their children, lists of their assets and of their monthly income from all sources -- pensions, Social Security, rental property, interest and dividends. The list should include safe-deposit box locations, the names and telephone numbers of lawyers and accountants, the location of a will and other important documents, and any information about funeral arrangements already made.
 
HEALTH-CARE OPTIONS
 The next subject -- one that is considerably more bewildering and emotionally fraught -- is health care. While many parents are in good general physical condition and able to manage their own care, and while most will never need a nursing home, many will need some kind of specialized care at some point.
Simply raising the subject can be painful. Carolyn E. Mayo, compensation manager for American International Group, where Mrs. Mauro also works, checked out home care last year for her parents, Dorothy and Walter Spence, who are 78 and 83 and living in their own house in North Bayshore, L.I., despite failing eyesight and other health problems.
"My mother said to me, 'You know your father doesn't like having strangers in the house,' " she recalled. So Mrs. Mayo continues to commute from her home on Staten Island when they need help.
Often the choice is between nursing homes and home health care, which has grown dramatically of late.
Carl D'Aquino, an interior designer, and his two brothers placed their parents, now 73 and 79, in nursing homes twice within the last six months and Mr. D'Aquino called the decision and the aftermath "probably the most difficult thing I've gone through in my entire life."
"As fine as the home is," he added, "every time I go and visit, it's completely draining. Leaving is so hard."
Many people resist nursing homes on a gut level. When Judith Brickman, a nursing-home specialist with the city's Department for the Aging, tells her clients to free-associate with "nursing home," she says, she frequently gets responses like "sick, institutional, depressing."
"They have an absolutely horrible reputation, but I don't think it's deserved," she said, though she allows that 20 years ago, many nursing homes were indeed bad. Still, the 1990 census found that 46,118 New Yorkers over 65, or 4.8 percent, were in the city's 160 nursing ing homes or in other residential facilities.
The Department for the Aging provides lists of nursing homes as well as advice on how to assess them. And there are safety nets to help protect residents of nursing homes. Federal law requires, and pays for, each home to have an ombudsman to take complaints. Another advocacy option is a group called Friends and Relatives of Institutionalized Aged.
Gaining admission to a nursing home usually requires two evaluations -- the patient review instrument and the patient screen instrument -- to evaluate the need for care.
The most popular alternative to nursing homes is home health care, in which aides with varying levels of nursing training assist elderly people in daily activities, from bathing to taking medicine to going to the grocery store. Many private agencies specialize in placing home health aides, for a fee. Nonprofit agencies like the New York Foundation for Senior Citizens will provide health aides under certain circumstances, using Medicaid or private funds. The city also provides them for needy residents through Medicaid.
Screening a health aide is essential, and people should ask about applicants' training, whether they hold a certificate as a home health aide or nurse's aide, whether they have experience and good references, whether they have had a recent physical examination themselves, and how they might respond in a specific medical emergency. Have the person try out for a few days, and monitor the situation closely.
"Employers should lay the rules down right at the start and make sure the aide understands," said Agnes Mak, who runs the home health aide program at the New York Foundation for Senior Citizens. "They should not make medical decisions. They should communicate with the family. The key is constant supervision."
An alternative that falls between home care and nursing homes is "enriched housing," in which frail elderly people live in apartment buildings where a hot meal is served once a day and other services, from transportation to personal grooming, are arranged. The cost varies, but at one large building in Manhattan it is just under $800 a month. A related alternative is "shared housing," in which roommates are found for elderly people who remain in their homes.
 
PAYING FOR HEALTH CARE
 Except for the wealthy and those who qualify for Medicaid, the Federal insurance program for the poor, paying for medical care poses the thorniest problems, and raises some of the most difficult questions, of all.
Generally speaking, for a healthy person over 65, visits to the doctor are covered by private insurance or by Medicare, the Government's insurance plan for the elderly. When a crisis requires hospitalization, Medicare and private insurance will also cover most of those costs.
But by and large, private insurers and Medicare do not pay for long-term nursing home or in-home care, although Medicare does cover up to 100 days of skilled care following a hospital stay of three days or more. For example, a heart-attack patient can have most of his or her hospital stay paid through Medicare, but someone who develops Alzheimer's disease and deteriorates to the point of needing daily care usually can not.
Another significant cost not covered by Medicare is prescription drugs. Most people pay for them out of pocket or with private insurance.
Both nursing-home care and home care can be tremendously expensive. The average New York City nursing home costs at least $5,000 a month, according to the Department for the Aging, and home health aides typically charge $10 and up an hour, which can quickly be just as costly.
"You find out ultimately that this is going to be more expensive than anybody but Rockefeller can handle," said Barry Herman, an economist whose mother, Fannie, has Alzheimer's disease and entered a nursing home last month.
For younger parents without serious health problems, insurers do offer policies that cover long-term care. Such policies are expensive, and don't always cover every contingency.
Which leaves a huge swath of peo-ple in the middle struggling to be covered for long-term care. Which leads in turn to a common, and often emotionally trying, financial maneuver known as "spending down," which allows someone who starts out relatively well off to be covered by becoming legally indigent. Here is how it works:
In New York, which is more generous than other states because of the high cost of living, the cutoff for Medicaid is $534 in monthly income, with $4,700 in assets.
Spending down can take two forms. The first is actually spending assets to pay for care. Mr. Herman's mother, for instance, is now paying for her nursing home, at a cost of about $7,500 a month. After about six months, he said, her money will be gone and Medicaid will take over.
The other route is what is known as the surplus income program. People who have income that exceeds the official limits for Medicaid can still qualify as long as their medical expenses absorb that surplus. They turn the excess income over to the nursing home or home health-care agency, with Mediciad picking up the difference, Ms. Rosenzweig said.
With a certain amount of planning, however, there are ways to keep money in the family.
Because of a 1988 change in Federal law, the spouse of a nursing-home patient covered by Medicaid is allowed to keep $72,660 in savings and have an income of up to $1,817 a month -- more if need can be proven in court. Homes and other possessions are not counted as assets, as long as the spouse or a disabled child is living in the house.
An elderly person without a spouse can also transfer money to other relatives, and the rules for such transfers can influence the choice between home care and nursing home care.
A patient can transfer unlimited assets to another family member, apply for Medicaid and be approved immediately for home care. The same person choosing to enter a nursing home, however, would have to wait out a penalty period based on the amount of money transferred. For example, a person transferring $100,000 in stock would have to wait roughly 18 months -- the value of the assets divided by $5,400, the average cost of a month in a nursing home.
Until last year, the penalty period was limited to 30 months, but now there is no limit, Ms. Rosenzweig said, adding that there is also a proposal in the State Assembly to apply the penalty period to in-home care.
Perhaps the most difficult thing about getting people to spend down or transfer assets, experts say, is that many find it frightening and humiliating, after a life of hard work
"No matter how much you trust and love your children," says Nora O'Brien, a counseling coordinator with the Partnership for Eldercare, "it's scary to take all your money and give it to someone else."
There are myriad tax considerations that affect the transfer of assets to qualify for Medicaid. Mrs. Brickman urges people to see elder-law specialists for help in planning.
Paying for long-term care is one of the issues dealt with in the various health plans now being debated in Washington.
President Clinton's plan would give states grants to pay for in-home care for people of all ages. The plan proposed by Representative Jim Cooper, a Tennessee Democrat, would eliminate Medicaid altogether and recommend that states pay for long-term care, while the plan offered by Senator John Chaffee, a Rhode Island Republican, would provide tax incentives for people to buy long-term care insurance, which is also part of the President's plan.
 
HELPING THE HELPERS
 Like elder-law specialists, geriatric-care managers are a byproduct of the huge growth in the elderly population. Frequently they are hired by adult children to help convince their parents of the need for care or to fill in for the children when they are out of town or otherwise preoccupied.
Many of them started out as social workers and a few are therapists as well, but all are trained to step into complex family situations and begin to sort them out. They are self-regulated, with no licensing required, although most of them belong to the National Association of Professional Geriatric Care Managers and are licensed in their original occupations.
Their fees are substantial -- $80 to $150 an hour, depending on the task at hand -- and are not covered by health insurance or Medicare.
Leonie Nowitz is one such care manager. She started her business, the Center for Lifelong Growth, in Manhattan, in 1979 and has 20 or so clients at a time. She might accompany one elderly person to the doctor, visit with another, help the children of another sign up for Medicaid or find a reliable home health aide. Sometimes the children, and their parents, live in New York; more often the children live in a faraway state. In that case, having a geriatric-care manager on call can eliminate the need to fly out on the next plane when a parent appears to be ill or having trouble.
"People get very nervous about a bureaucratic system, so they ask me to help them get on Medicaid and help them get into nursing homes when the need arises," Ms. Nowitz said. "It's helpful to have contacts at nursing homes. It can be an old-boy network."
For those who can't afford to hire a geriatric-care manager, public and nonprofit private agencies offer social workers who perform many of the same tasks, although usually with much larger caseloads.
Even considering the cost, clients seem to think geriatric-care managers can be invaluable. A 50-year-old New York City schoolteacher said he hired Ms. Nowitz to take his mother and his uncle to the doctor and find home health aides to care for them, but he also found Ms. Nowitz a reliable shoulder when he tired of hearing both his uncle, now almost 90, and his teen-age children complain that he didn't spend enough time with any of them.
"I talked to her once about my feelings, about having to deal first with my mother and now my uncle who needed care," said the man, who did not want his name used. "She seemed to understand that. I had tried therapy many years ago, and it really didn't work. I didn't think they understood me. This time, someone really seemed to have my emotions down pat."
He seems to have reached his own kind of peace with the problems of caring for elderly relatives. These days, he said, he keeps an old black-and-white photograph of himself as a toddler, dressed in a snowsuit and cradled in his uncle's arms, in a dresser drawer.
"He looks so proud," he said. "And now the situation is reversed. Every time I go for my socks in the morning I take a look at it. My uncle was always very good to me, and now I have an obligation to him."
 
One Family's History
 THE CHILD: Carolyn E. Mayo, 44 years old, married, with five children. Lives on Staten Island. Compensaiton manager for American International Group, an insurance company.
 PARENTS: Dorothy and Walter Spence, ages 78 and 83, of North Bayshore, L.I. She is diabetic; he lost a kidney to cance.r Both have eye problems, but are generally healthy.
 THE FINANCES: The Spences get annuity payments from Penn Central Railroad, where he worked, and have private health insurance and Medicare.
 WHAT SHE'S DONE: She knows where the key documents are. Her parents have a burial plot. She researched home care, but her parents rejected it as too expensive and intrusive.
 THE FUTURE: "I now have a list of resources, in the event I have to force my parents to take on these services."
 
 
BARRY HERMAN
 HIS STORY: 50 years old, married, with two children, one in college, the other in high school. Lives in Manhattan. Works as an international economist.
PARENTS: Father died 25 years ago. Mother, Fannie, 81, worked as a bookkeeper. She developed early signs of Alzheimer's in 1992 and lived in a residence for the elderly until last month, when she moved to a Bronx nursing home.
 FINANCES: Mother had assets. Some were transferred to family members; others are being spent to cover he care until she is eligivle for Medicaid, probably inApril. Total cost this year: about $50,000.
 WHAT HE'S DONE: He and his sister have obtained power of attorney and a health-care proxy.
 THE FUTURE: The nursing home is where their mother will stay. "We couldn't have done anything for her that would have been better."
 
 
CARL D'AQUINO
 HIS STORY: 46 year old, self-employed interior designer in Manhattan.
 PARENTS: Josephine andCarl D'Auino Sr., 73 and 79. Father worked as a laborer on the Manhattan Bridge, Mother worked until Carl and his two brother were born. Parents wanted to remain independent in their Brooklyn home but she suffered a serious illness in 1991. They were persuaded to move into a special housing complex for the elderlyin Queens. After a series of accidents on the ice last winter, they entered a nursing home, then another one. Both parents are alert. Mrs. D'Aquino is deaf. Mr. D'Aquino has advanced Parkinson's disease and has had three heart attacks.
 FINANCES: Savings werenot substantial. Both parents applied for and received Medicaid, although a health aide remains on the family payroll to assist Mrs. D'Aquino.
 WHAT HE HAS DONE: Divided responsibilities with his brothers. Carl takes care of housing and the physical environment; Roger does accounting and financial planning; Victor helped hire caregivers. The sons have been given power of attorney and health-care proxy rights.
 THE FUTURE: The issue, Carl D'Auino says, is keeping both parents active and happy.
 
Getting Beyond the Basics
 The issues faced by the elderly and their relatives can be dizzyingly complex. Here are some of the government and private agencies that can provide help, as well as more in-depth information.
* General information: New York City Department for the Aging, (212) 442-1000; New York Foundation for Senior Citizens, (212) 962-7559.
* Living-will and health-care proxy forms: Choice in Dying, 200 Varick Street, New York, N.Y. 10014; (212) 366-5540.
* Information on nursing homes in New York City and help in assessing them: Judy Brickman, specialist at the city Department for the Aging, (212) 442-3092.
* Help in finding an advocate for a nursing home resident: Friends and Relatives of Institutionalized Aged, (212) 732-4455.
* Nurses who can conduct patient-review-instrument tests to evaluate need for care: Visiting Nurse of New York, (212) 714-9250; Catholic Charities, (212) 371-7000; Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies, (212) 764-3878.
* Home health aides: New York Foundation for Senior Citizens, (212) 962-7559; Jewish Home and Hospital for Aged, (212) 870-5000.
* Enriched housing: New York Foundation for Senior Citizens, Housing Division, (212) 369-5523.
* Hospice care: Department for the Aging, (212) 442-1000.
* Information on tax planning and other financial issues: American Association of Retired Persons, (800) 424-3410.
* Information on elder-law: Friends and Relatives of Institutionalized Aged, (212) 732-4455.
* Alzheimer's programs: Alzheimer's Assocation, New York chapter, (212) 983-0700; Jewish Home and Hospital for Aged, (212) 870-5000; Department for the Aging, (212) 442-3086.
* Help in finding geriatric care managers: National Association of Professional Geriatric Care Managers, (602) 881-8008, or the New York chapter, (212) 222-9163.
* Help in finding a caseworker to function like a geriatric care manager: Foundation for Senior Citizens, (212) 962-7559; New York City Department for the Aging, (212) 442-1000.

LOAD-DATE: March 1, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photos: Carl D'Aquino with his father, Carl Sr., 79, and his mother, Josephine, 73, at the couple's nursing home. (Sara Krulwich/The New York Times); Barry Herman holding a photograph of his mother, Fannie, 81. (William E. Sauro/The New York Times) (pg. 12)

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February 27, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

NEIGHBORHOOD REPORT: UPPER WEST SIDE;
On Broadway, Book Is Mightier Than the Car

BYLINE: By EMILY M. BERNSTEIN 

SECTION: Section 13;  Page 6;  Column 5;  The City Weekly Desk 

LENGTH: 423 words

Ending a debate that dates to the early 1970's, the city has decided to renovate a four-story garage on Broadway at 113th Street to make way for a branch of the New York Public Library.
For book lovers, the decision means more elbow room for a branch that has been housed since 1936 in a small room in the basement of Columbia University's Butler Library. 
 But for drivers it means the loss of 108 precious indoor parking spaces -- and therein lie the roots of the dispute.
About 20 years ago, the city bought the garage with the goal of giving the branch more space. But some local car owners fought to keep the garage, and the city began considering other sites.
The garage plan was revived last summer, when Columbia announced a plan to expand Butler and said the public library branch would have to find a new home by next January.
The Morningside Heights Residents Association, a community group, lobbied hard to take over the garage. It did a survey of surrounding streets and found hundreds of available spaces in parking lots in the neighborhood.
Now the city has determined that the building will be renovated to house the new library, though it is not clear how long that will take. Library officials have begun the design process and will decide whether to use three or four stories of the garage. If the fourth story is not incorporated into the library design, it might be set aside for the community's use, perhaps as a center for elderly residents.
But two sticking points remain.
First, there may be a long gap between moving the branch out of Butler and reopening it in the garage. If Columbia cannot delay the moving date, said Caroline Oyama, a spokeswoman for the library, the city may try to find an interim site.
Second, there are two businesses on the building's ground floor, a barber shop and a laundry. Laura Friedman, Democratic district leader for the area, said she would push the city to allow the shops to stay and make provisions for the library to take the space when they are ready to leave.
But Robert Roistacher, who lobbied for the new branch location on behalf of the community group, said the library space was more important. "I am against sacrificing library area for them," he said. "Maybe we can help them find other space."
Five-year-old Judy Green, an avid reader, said she was looking forward to using a library with its own children's room or even children's floor. "It would be great to be able to have as many books as I could read," she said.   EMILY M. BERNSTEIN

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March 1, 1994, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

The Aged Reject CPR Use

BYLINE: AP 

SECTION: Section C;  Page 6;  Column 4;  Science Desk 

LENGTH: 405 words

DATELINE: BOSTON, Feb. 28

Elderly people overwhelmingly say they would prefer not to have cardiopulmonary resuscitation for cardiac arrest after they learn how slim their chances of survival are, a study concludes.
The researchers found that many people who at first favor CPR change their minds after they understand the long odds of getting better. 
 "Most seniors are good gamblers," said an author of the study, Dr. Donald J. Murphy of Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center in Denver. "It's not the life-sustaining machinery that intimidates them. They just don't want to be on it for any length of time if the prognosis is poor."
CPR is used to shock the heart back to life after cardiac arrest.
 
371 Patients in Survey
 Dr. Murphy and colleagues surveyed 371 patients over one year at a geriatrics clinic at the medical center. At first, 41 percent said they would like to have CPR if their hearts stopped while they were being treated for an acute illness. But when they were told that their chances of surviving were only 10 to 17 percent, half of them changed their minds. Just 22 percent still wanted CPR.
Asked what treatment they would want if they had a chronic illness in which they were expected to live less than a year, 11 percent initially said they would choose CPR. But after learning that their chances of surviving long enough to be discharged were zero to 5 percent, half said they were no longer interested in CPR.
The researchers said older patients readily understand information about likely health outcomes, and this influences their views on CPR.
The study was published in the current issue of The New England Journal of Medicine.
When hospitalized patients say they do not want CPR, "do not resuscitate" orders are placed in their records. Some experts believe that wider use of these orders would save health care dollars.
But a separate report in the journal argues that this and other attempts at reducing the cost of dying are unlikely to result in big savings. Based on a variety of other research, Drs. Ezekiel and Linda Emanuel of Harvard Medical School concluded that these measures would cut health care expenditures by 3.3 percent at most.
They said it was often difficult to judge when a patient was going to die and aggressive treatment was futile.  And even if doctors avoid high-technology attempts to cure the hopelessly ill, keeping them out of pain as death approaches is expensive.

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March 2, 1994, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Flake and His Church Agree to Repay Federal Money

BYLINE: By DENNIS HEVESI 

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

LENGTH: 609 words

In a settlement to a civil suit brought by the Justice Department, Representative Floyd H. Flake and the church he heads in Jamaica, Queens, have agreed to repay $530,000 in Federal money that the government had claimed was improperly used to help build a church school.
With interest dating to 1982, when construction on the school started, the repayment will add up to $925,000. 
 The settlement is the latest chapter of a case that began when the Department of Housing and Urban Development provided loans to help build a senior-citizen housing project sponsored by the Allen A.M.E. Church, which the congressman serves as pastor.
 
First Amendment at Issue
 The alleged misuse of the money to build a community center connected to the church school came to light at the time Mr. Flake and his wife, Margaret Elaine, were indicted on Federal tax-evasion and embezzlement charges. In April 1991, the tax case was dismissed for lack of evidence.
The settlement of the civil suit, first reported yesterday in New York Newsday, includes no admission of wrongdoing on the part of Mr. Flake or the church.
"We are a church that has been at the forefront of economic development, education and housing in the community," Mr. Flake, a Democrat, said yesterday, "and as we continue into our next phase it was incumbent upon us to get this matter behind us so that we can move forward."
The repayment, in 48 monthly installments, is to be made by Mr. Flake and the church to the Allen A.M.E. Housing Development Corporation, the church-sponsored organization that built the senior-citizens housing project.
Mr. Flake contended yesterday that it was proper to use the money to build a community center connected to the school because the center served the general public.
But Robert Begleiter, chief of the civil division in the Office of the United States Attorney for the Eastern District, said, "It was for the purposes of the church school, and there happens to be something called the First Amendment." The First Amendment, among other things, stipulates the separation of church and state.
 
Prosecution Was Defeated
 Mr. Flake's congressional chief of staff, Edwin Reed, said the money used to build the community center became available because "they brought the housing project in on time and under budget."
"When we set up the corporation for the multiservice community center, we set it up as the Allen Christian School," Mr. Reed said. "That was the mistake." The center provides space for community meetings and services, he said, but classes for the school are also held there.
When the use of the money for the center was discovered, Mr. Flake persuaded officials in the regional Housing and Urban Development office to forgive the misspending. That decision was later rescinded.
On April 3, 1991, at the request of prosecutors, all the criminal charges of tax evasion and embezzlement against Mr. Flake were dismissed in Federal court in Brooklyn. The case ended after three weeks of trial in a complete defeat for the prosecution.
The Flakes had been charged with not reporting $177,578 of income from two sources that they deposited in a ministerial expenses fund. The Government charged that the money was used to buy such "personal" items as jewelry, clothing, toys and a life insurance policy.
One source of those funds, prosecutors said, was a "parsonage allowance." The other was a program to transport elderly residents of the housing complex to shopping centers and elsewhere.
Jurors interviewed after the dismissal said that the Government's case was weak and was undermined by its own witnesses.

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March 2, 1994, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Giuliani Picks Head Of Agency on Aging

SECTION: Section B;  Page 2;  Column 5;  Metropolitan Desk 

LENGTH: 207 words

Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani yesterday named Herbert W. Stupp, a former Federal education official, to head New York City's Department of Aging.
Mr. Stupp, 43, served in the administrations of Presidents Reagan and Bush as regional director of the Federal Action agency, the national agency for volunteer services. 
 In 1989, he became the deputy regional representative to the Secretary of Education, until early last year.
Since Mr. Bush left office, Mr. Stupp has been writing and serving as a consultant.
The appointment of Mr. Stupps, is the latest in a series of Republicans to be named to administration positions in recent days. Mr. Giuliani had been criticized by some Republican officials for the number of Democrats and Liberals he had named and for not appointing more members of his political party.
Mr. Stupps was an active supporter of Mr. Giuliani during last year's mayoral campaign, often serving as a surrogate speaker for Mr. Giuliani.
The aging department, with a budget of $150 million last year and a work force of about 350 employees, administers the city's 335 centers for the elderly and provides employment training services. The department also provides volunteer opportunities for older New Yorkers.

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March 5, 1994, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

ABOUT NEW YORK;
Lost Daughter's Images Touch a Mother's Heart

BYLINE: By Michael T. Kaufman 

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

LENGTH: 811 words

ON Dec. 22, Claire Avery, 82, left her retirement home in Stuart, Fla., and came to New York City to visit her 57-year-old daughter. The elderly woman knew that Rose Avery had not been feeling well, but she was not prepared for what she saw when she arrived at Ludlow Street on the Lower East Side, where her only child had lived and painted for the last 20 years.
"She had been protecting me," Mrs. Avery said, sitting in the fourth-floor walk-up and stroking Murdock, her daughter's cat. "She never told me how sick she was or that the cancer had come back. It was terrible. When I got here she could barely walk." 
 Two days after Christmas, Rose Avery was carried down the narrow stairs and was taken by ambulance to Bellevue. The next day her old mother, strong-willed and clearheaded, began a devoted vigil that was to last two months. Each morning she left the three-room apartment, taking the bus to the hospital where she sat at Rose's bedside. As darkness fell in this winter of frequent snows, she returned to the box-like rooms on Ludlow Street. In a city where she knew no one, the octogenarian woman tended to motherhood.
As she carried food up the stairs, and fed the cat, and wondered whether she could get her arthritic legs into and out of the bathtub in the kitchen, Mrs. Avery was tormented by persistent worry. What, she kept asking herself, would happen to Rose's paintings? What should she do with them in case her daughter died?
They were all over the apartment, perhaps 30 or 40 canvases. Some hung on walls and some were stacked in corners. Mostly they showed street scenes and street people of the Lower East Side. In her sorrow, Mrs. Avery had not found the neighborhood particularly inviting. She missed the weather of Florida and the golf course. The dirty streets, the loud radios were so very different from what she remembered of her native Boston or the places on the West Coast and the Midwest, where she had lived while her husband, an engineer, was alive.
But from the paintings, anyone could see that Rose Avery had loved these streets and the people who were her neighbors. The art was peopled with Chinese shoppers, Latin grocers, Russians at street fairs. There were old-fashioned bums from the Bowery and representatives of the area's younger types, green-haired girls and black-leathered boys. They filled the space, and their images bore into Mrs. Avery's mind and heart. This was the world her daughter had chosen after studies at the Rhode Island School of Design and Yale. This was where she settled, teaching at a Chinese nursery school and worshiping at a Russian church and painting.
Mrs. Avery felt the paintings should be seen. It would be awful, she thought, if they ended up being scattered or discarded. They did not belong in Florida. Whatever happened, she felt, they should be somewhere where people could understand their testimony.
By late January, as Rose weakened, her mother, haunted by the need to find a place for the paintings, phoned this columnist inviting him to look at her daughter's work. Impressed by the paintings and by the painter's mother, the columnist proposed writing a story about the Avery women. Perhaps some reader might offer a solution.
"Oh, no," said Mrs. Avery."I don't think Rose would let me do that. She is such a private person. I know it would embarrass her to think that people were paying attention to her paintings because of her illness or her mother. She never promoted herself. She just kept painting. I don't think you can write about the paintings while she is alive."
Last Wednesday Rose Avery died at the hospital. Her mother was at her side. A memorial Mass was offered at the small Russian chapel on the Lower East Side where Rose, as Irish-looking as her mother, had worshiped because she loved the music and the liturgy.
"It was a beautiful service," said Mrs. Avery. She added that she was thankful for the help she had from her daughter's friends and neighbors and from family friends from New England. In her mourning she was also pleased to have found a respectful home for the paintings.
In the last week of Rose's life, the elderly woman from Florida had made contact with the Tenement Museum, a growing institution whose exhibits at several locations document and portray the still valid melting pot experience so long associated with the Lower East Side. Anita Jacobson, the curator, examined the paintings and said the museum would be willing to show them and introduce them to collectors. "They recall the work of Edward Hopper but with an ethnic flavor," she said. "They have a great deal of character, with a roughness in texture that is like the neighborhood. I like that quality."
Soon Mrs. Avery will be able to leave the place on Ludlow Street to return to Florida. Her heart will be heavy but her work will have been done.

LOAD-DATE: March 5, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Claire Avery with some of the paintings done by her daughter, Rose. (Sara Krulwich/The New York Times)

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HOW THEY DO IT;
For The Elderly, Yet Another Way to Tap Home Equity

SECTION: Section 1;  Page 38;  Column 3;  Financial Desk 

LENGTH: 108 words

Marvin Kells, 70, of Los Angeles, recently used the equity in his house to buy a lifetime annuity. A retired freelance film editor, he had little savings and just $500 a month in income from Social Security. His 40-year-old house had been payed off long ago but was in desperate need of repair.
 The financial arrangement is similar to a reversed mortgage, allowing a homeowner to tap the equity in his home for a stream of payments while he is still alive.
 Mr. Kells took a loan on his home from Freedon Home Eqiuty Partners Inc., in Irvine, Calif., and used the amount to purchase the annuity from the Union Labor Life Insurance Company.

LOAD-DATE: March 5, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Chart showing how Mr. Kells got a home equity loan to buy a lifetime annuity.

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March 6, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

NEIGHBORHOOD REPORT: SOUTHERN BROOKLYN;
Restoring an Old Friend

BYLINE: By LYNETTE HOLLOWAY 

SECTION: Section 13;  Page 10;  Column 3;  The City Weekly Desk 

LENGTH: 443 words

When Sandy Koufax wasn't working on his fastball he was at the J, learning to control his jumpshot.
When Larry King wasn't announcing the makes of cars that passed in front of his family's stoop in Bensonhurst, he was at the J, meeting friends and playing basketball. 
 They are just two of the people who grew up hanging out at the J, the Jewish Community House of Bensonhurst, a 67-year-old Brooklyn institution that almost died four years ago. It had fallen into disrepair, and there wasn't enough money to have the needed work done.
But thanks to Mr. Koufax, Mr. King and their childhood pals, $4.8 million was raised for renovations that are now nearing completion.
To celebrate the refurbished building, a dinner was given last month at the J, at 7802 Bay Parkway, where awards were presented to the three men, all former habitues of the J, who led the restoration campaign: the public relations executive Howard J. Rubenstein; Stuart Subotnick, the executive vice president of Metro Media, and Martin Payson, former general counsel for Time Warner. Each man received a portion of the rusted beams that had been removed.
"This place helped shape my life and friendships," said Mr. Rubenstein, whose bar mitzvah took place at the J. "When I went back, it was a nice feeling."
Joel Karpp, executive director of the center for seven years, said he felt lucky to have such kindhearted and committed (not to mention well-to-do) alumni.
Work on the two-story beige brick building included restoring the exterior, repairing the roof, replacing eroded electrical, plumbing and ventilation systems, and installing an elevator and ramps for the handicapped. The architect was Irwin Chanin.
"It would have been a shame if this place had been destroyed," Mr. Karpp said. "People need this building today more than ever."
Over the years, the recreation center has evolved into a social service agency. It is the supervising agency for counseling, employment and health-care services for more than 1,000 people; the co-sponsor of government-subsidized housing for 100 elderly people and one of the city's largest resettlement services for Russian Jewish immigrants. The center also runs after-school programs, and the gym's basketball court is still there.
Mr. King reminisced about the center recently during two three-minute breaks from his radio talk show.
"My fondest memories of the J are the Sunday brunches," he said. "We ate bagels and cream cheese and then played basketball all day.
"I met Tobi Goodhart there when I was 17," he added. "She was the first love of my life, and she's still the love of my life."
   LYNETTE HOLLOWAY

LOAD-DATE: March 9, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Renovations are nearing completion at the Jewish Community House.
 
 
 

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March 8, 1994, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

METRO DIGEST

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

LENGTH: 526 words


NEW YORK CITY
 
ELDERLY FOSTER CARE: LIKE A NEW HOME
Foster care, a system developed to find homes for abandoned and abused children, is growing in the New York region and across the nation as a way to keep elderly people in home settings and communities they know. A1. 

TRANSIT EXECUTIVE CONDEMNS MERGER
The president of the New York City Transit Authority condemned a plan to merge the city's three police forces, saying it would weaken safety on the subways. But Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani said he still thought the authority's parent board would enact his proposal. B3.
 
SHORTFALL OF PATROL OFFICERS SEEN
A panel set up by Mayor Giuliani said the city failed to put as many police officers on the street as envisioned in a 1991 anti-crime law that provided for a substantial increase in the size of the Police Department through special taxes. B3.
 
HOSPITAL AGENCY TO REVIEW CONTRACTS
The president of the city's Health and Hospital Corporation ordered a review of consulting and technical contracts that were awarded without competitive bids, saying he was afraid the agency was not getting its money's worth. B3.
 
EFFORT TO SHIELD SHEIK FROM PLOT
Tapes secretly recorded by a Government informer show a studied effort by those who surrounded Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman to insulate him from the appearance of involvement in a plot to terrorize New York City, transcripts in the court file show. B3.
 
ACCORD SEEKS TO CURB GRAFT IN UNION
Federal prosecutors say they have worked out a legal agreement that will curb organized-crime corruption in a union that represents 30,000 carpenters in New York City and Long Island. B4.
 
REGION
 
SECOND TRIBE IS RECOGNIZED
The Department of the Interior said that the Mohegans of eastern Connecticut have qualified to become the 545th Indian tribe recognized by the Federal Government, opening the way for Federal aid for the 900-member tribe, settlement of its land-claim suit against the state, and possibly a second Indian casino in Connecticut. B6.
 
MULTICULTURALISM GROUNDS PETER PAN
A middle school in Southampton, L.I., canceled its production of "Peter Pan" because administrators found that its portrayal of Indians was offensive to members of the Shinnecock tribe, whose children make up about 9 percent of the district's student body. B6.
 
NEIGHBOR HELD IN DEATH OF 6-YEAR-OLD
A 6-year-old girl was killed late Saturday or early Sunday while her parents attended a party in their Manalapan, N.J., neighborhood with the parents of a 19-year-old man accused in the slaying, the authorities said. B6.
 
CUOMO SLIPS, BUT STILL LEADS RIVALS
An independent poll of New Yorker State residents showed that Gov. Mario M. Cuomo's lead over several potential Republican challengers has slipped but remains in the double digits. B6.
 
PLANS FOR GRUMMAN WORRY LONG ISLAND
The name Grumman has been synonymous with jobs and economic security on Long Island for more than five decades, so the announcement that it was being acquired by Martin Marietta came as a shock to many. Business Day. D6.
 
Chronicle  B5
 
Our Towns by Evelyn Nieves  B6

LOAD-DATE: March 8, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Graph: "PULSE: Personal Bankruptcies" shows number of personal bankruptcy cases each quarter from 1991 to 1993. (Source: Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, Bankruptcy Division)

TYPE: Summary

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Correction Appended

Foster Care for Elderly: Like a New Home

BYLINE: By ESTHER B. FEIN,    Special to The New York Times 

SECTION: Section A;  Page 1;  Column 2;  Metropolitan Desk 

LENGTH: 1536 words

DATELINE: YONKERS, March 2

In the middle of the night, when she gets a hankering for something tasty, Mary Taub slides into her slippers, goes into the kitchen and raids the refrigerator.
If she were in a nursing home, which is where some people thought the 77-year-old woman should go last year when she became too forgetful and scared to live on her own, she would not be able to indulge in the pleasure of a bologna sandwich at midnight. 
 But in a cozy brick house here surrounded by trees, Mrs. Taub has found privacy, companionship, a hand to help fix her soft white hair, three healthy meals a day and even after-hours snacks, living with a foster family paid to provide her with the amenities of home she can no longer provide for herself.
 
'I Want to Stay'
 "I like it here, I want to stay here," said Mrs. Taub, who has been living for the last three months with Cora and Fred Mondonedo and their two daughters, Cathy, 27, and Casandra, 12. "It's nice to be with a family. They make me laugh."
Foster care, a system developed to find homes for abandoned and abused children, is growing in the New York region and across the nation as a way to keep elderly people in home settings and communities they know.
As the number of elderly and frail elderly people in the country rises, along with the cost of nursing homes, the government, health policy experts and families are looking for alternatives to both save money and afford older people the greatest freedom in choosing a safe and comfortable place to live.
With monthly costs averaging about $1,000 -- one-third those of nursing homes -- and the immeasurable value of living within the embrace of a family, supporters say foster care should play an increasingly vital role in caring for the elderly.
Two states that have had extensive experience with foster care for the elderly, Oregon and Washington, have found few drawbacks. So far, cases of abuse have been very limited, people who work in the field said, although they add that as programs proliferate, they will have to be vigilant in looking out for such problems.
The problems that arise most often tend to involve emotional attachments, experts say. When the elderly person becomes too ill to stay in foster care and must move on to a nursing home, the move can be wrenching for all parties.
And the use of foster care can be difficult for relatives of the elderly. They often feel guilty that they are not taking in their aged parent, aunt or grandparent. Sending the elderly to a nursing home, experts say, offers the illusion that a greater level of care is needed, even when it is not.
There are no overall figures on how many older people are living in foster homes since there is no single agency or organization that monitors the dozens of programs nationwide. Experts estimate that tens of thousands of older people of varying ages and conditions are in foster homes and they see those numbers increasing.
 
Responding to a Need
 "We started this program as a response to a need we saw," said Eleanor Frenkel, director of programs for the Bergen County Visiting Homemaker and Home Health Aide Service, which administers a pilot adult foster-care project in northern New Jersey with 27 placements so far.
"We saw people wanting to be cared for at home," Ms. Frenkel said, "frail elderly not wanting to go into a nursing home but not having a situation that could support care at home either because they had no family or they needed more supervision than they could afford, or they were in substandard homes that were unsafe or unsanitary. But it was very important to them to stay in the community, not in an institution. This is not their original home, but it creates a home where they can be cared for."
In New York State, Gregory Giuliano, who heads the adult foster-care program in the Office of Housing and Adult Services, said the state had about 800 licensed adult foster-care operators, with 1,600 people in the program. "The important thing is to be creative, to look at many options and to realize that no one alternative is right for everybody," he said.
 
Less Expensive
 Foster care for adults is like foster care for children: a person or a family is paid to take in other people and provide them a home -- meals, laundry, a place to sleep, someone to talk to and watch over them. While children are placed in foster care when others decide it is best, the elderly in foster care choose it themselves.
In some programs, the residents pay for the care with their own money, although often a government agency or a nonprofit organization brings the family and the participant together. Mrs. Taub was matched with the Mondonedos through the Family-Type Home Program for Adults, run by Westchester County's Social Services Department, but she pays the family $950 a month out of her own income, which includes Social Security, dividends and her husband's pension.
 
Medicaid Waivers
 Some elderly people have their foster care paid for with Supplemental Security Income. And in some cases, states have received Medicaid waivers that allow them to spend Federal long-term nursing funds for community-based care programs like adult foster homes.
"It's a very cost-effective option for the elderly," said Dr. Susan Sherman, a professor of social welfare at the State University of New York at Albany, who has studied foster care for older people. "And one thing we have found is that it provides as much of a family for care providers sometimes as it does for the residents."
Taking in Mrs. Taub and Julia Schlegel, a 63-year-old mentally disabled woman, has allowed Mrs. Mondonedo to be home when Casandra gets out of school each day. The Mondonedos first became a foster family for adults when they were living in California and then in Oregon.
"Not everyone can do it -- it's a 24-hour-a-day job," said Mrs. Mondonedo. "It takes a lot of love, a lot of compassion, a lot of ear to listen to them. But I love elderly people and my daughter needs a grandma. Casandra just loves Mary."
"Casandra makes me laugh," said Mrs. Taub, her pale blue eyes crinkling as she giggled.
Regulations and licensing requirments vary with the programs. In New York a foster family can care for up to four adults; in Massachusetts, up to three; in Washington State, up to six, and in Oregon, up to five.
Many people in Oregon and Washington have made a business of adult foster care by buying several houses and hiring families to live in them and care for elderly people.
 
'More Humane'
 "It is a more humane and human environment than a nursing home for many older people," said David Olson, coordinator of the adult foster home program in Oregon, which has licensed more than 8,600 adult foster-care beds. "There is independence with supervision but without the feeling of an institution. It's a home and it quickly does become their home."
Helen Roethe brought her own chest of drawers, end table, bed and television set when she moved into a foster home in Gladstone, Ore., 13 months ago. She put some prints on the walls and family photos on the dresser top. Then it felt like home.
She is 81, was never married and was living with her sister and brother-in-law in Milwaukie, Ore., but it became too difficult for them to care for her.
"What else was there to do -- go live in an institution?" Miss Roethe asked. "Not me. I don't want it. We care for each other here, like a family. That suits me better."
Elderly people in foster care, even those with serious medical conditions, do not focus on their health problems, said Thomas Tobin, director of the Family Care Program of Cape Cod Hospital in Hyannis, Mass., which has had an adult foster-care program for 15 years.
"The whole focus is on wellness despite whatever might be wrong with them," Mr. Tobin said. "Someone in a nursing home is constantly confronted with infirmity and so it becomes a center of their lives."
 
'Very Excellent Break'
 Richard Connor spent five years in a nursing home in Wareham, Mass., after a stroke. He was divorced and could no longer live alone, and it was not feasible for him to live with either of his two daughters.
The nursing home was confining and dispiriting, he said, and he considered it "a very excellent break" when he heard a year ago about the adult foster-care program on Cape Cod. He now lives in Yarmouthport with Matthew Keanan, a widowed psychotherapist, and his 18-year-old son, James, a college student.
"Nursing homes of necessity are very restrictive, very crowded," said Mr. Connor, 68, a retired physicist. "They can't take you for rides or to the beach. But here with Matthew, I can go out and do things. I can visit Boston for some plays and musicals."
The transition from the confinement of a nursing home to the freedom of living in a home with a family, Mr. Connor recalled, "was almost shocking."
"I had to readjust myself to my own way of doing things," he said. "There was a renewed pleasure in dealing with normal chores: what would I like to eat, or should I bake some bread? In a nursing home you tend to adopt the depression of people around you. In a home, you adopt the atmosphere there, and this is a happy one."

LOAD-DATE: March 8, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

CORRECTION-DATE: March 27, 1994, Sunday

 CORRECTION:
A picture caption on March 8 with an article about foster care for the elderly incorrectly described the financial arrangement Mary Taub has at her home with the Mondonedo family in Yonkers. Mrs. Taub pays the Mondonedos herself; the state does not pay for her care.

GRAPHIC: Photos: Instead of being put in a nursing home, Mary Taub, 77, was placed in adult foster care in Cora Mondonedo's home in Yonkers. (pg. A1); "I like it here, I want to stay here," said 77-year-old Mary Taub of her foster home in Yonkers. She sat in her bedroom with Casandra Mondonedo, whose parents are paid by the state to care for Mrs. Taub. Monthly costs in the program average about $1,000 -- one-third those of nursing homes. (pg. B4) (Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times)

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March 9, 1994, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

House Panel Begins Deliberations on a Health Bill

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

SECTION: Section A;  Page 13;  Column 2;  National Desk 

LENGTH: 606 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, March 8

Congress today entered a new phase in its effort to revamp the nation's health care system as a House subcommittee began deliberations on a bill substantially different from President Clinton's proposal.
The Ways and Means Subcommittee on Health began analyzing the bill, proposed by its chairman, Representative Pete Stark, Democrat of California, with lawmakers of both parties saying they felt they were participating in a historic process. 
 "Few issues grip the American people as deeply as the health care crisis," said Representative John Lewis, Democrat of Georgia. "Health care is a basic right of all individuals. It's not a privilege."
Lobbyists for doctors, dentists, psychologists, small businesses and other interests swarmed over Capitol Hill today as the subcommittee took up health care legislation after 36 days of public hearings. Just after the panel convened, President Clinton spoke to trade association executives defending his proposal and expressing optimism about its future.
 
A Test of Strength
 Mr. Clinton said he was not distressed by recent obituaries for his health plan. "I have seen a lot of endeavors in which I was involved over the last 15 years given up for dead," he said.
The ranking Republican on the subcommittee, Representative Bill Thomas of California, said he would push for an up-or-down vote on the President's proposal, just to show that it lacked support. "The American people deserve a test of strength for the President's plan," he said.
But Mr. Stark said he expected no votes till next week. At the moment, he does not have a majority for his proposal in the 11-member subcommittee, but he said he might be able to forge such a majority with help from other Democrats.
Mr. Stark's bill would expand Medicare, the Federal health insurance program for the elderly and disabled, to cover people who are unemployed, people who have no connection to the labor force and low-income people now in the Medicaid program, as well as part-time, temporary and seasonal workers.
 
Leaner Benefits Package
 Mr. Stark's plan, like the President's, would require employers to pay at least 80 percent of the cost of health insurance for their workers. In addition, he suggested a new Federal payroll tax, equal to eight-tenths of 1 percent of wages and salaries. But he made clear that he was open to other ways of financing his plan.
Mr. Stark said his proposal would achieve the President's goal of guaranteeing health insurance for all Americans while controlling medical costs. But he proposes a leaner package of benefits, with less coverage for mental health services and long-term care.
Mr. Stark would not require consumers or employers to obtain coverage through purchasing groups like the alliances proposed by Mr. Clinton. Under Mr. Stark's proposal, the Government could directly regulate doctors' fees and hospital charges but would not regulate health insurance premiums, as Mr. Clinton wants to do.
The prospects for Mr. Stark's proposal in the full Ways and Means Committee, on the House floor and in the Senate are unknown. But White House officials said they were pleased to see one Congressional panel moving ahead with health legislation.
Under Mr. Stark's proposal, employers with more than 100 employees would have to contribute to the cost of health insurance for their workers beginning Jan. 1, 1995. For employers with 100 or fewer employees, a similar requirement would take effect Jan. 1, 1997. These smaller businesses could enroll their workers in the new Federal program, known as Part C of Medicare, or they could buy private insurance.

LOAD-DATE: March 9, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: A House subcommittee began deliberations yesterday on a health bill substantially different from President Clinton's proposal. Jon Tahsman, seated, a staff member of the Joint Committee on Taxation, and health care lobbyists listened to the Ways and Means Subcommittee on Health discuss the bill. (Stephen Crowley/The New York Times)

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March 9, 1994, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Personal Health

BYLINE: By Jane E. Brody 

SECTION: Section C;  Page 13;  Column 1;  National Desk;  Health Page

LENGTH: 1206 words

AT the age of 96, George Abbott, the grand old man of American theater, had a pacemaker installed to maintain a normal rhythm in his aging heart. The surgeon told him that it would last about a decade, to which a distressed Mr. Abbott replied to the bemused doctor, "You mean I'm going to have to come back here in 10 years and go through all this again?"
Well, last month at the age of 106, Mr. Abbott returned to have a new pacemaker battery installed, leaving him well prepared to attend last week's Broadway opening of a revival of one of his greatest triumphs, "Damn Yankees." 
 Mr. Abbott's experience is testimony to the extraordinary life-prolonging power of a relatively simple implantable device that keeps the heart from slowing down to a point that is incompatible with normal living. Invented 34 years ago by Dr. William Chardack, a surgeon, and an electrical engineer named Wilson Greatbatch, "permanent" implantable pacemakers have undergone technological modifications that have greatly improved their therapeutic powers and rendered them useful even for the very old.
To 77-year-old George Piskiel of Brooklyn, a pacemaker installed last year means he has been able to return to his bicycle and the tennis court free from the nausea, dizziness and fainting spells caused by a pulse rate that periodically dropped to about 35 beats per minute. They resulted in a serious fall and, he suspects, an even more serious automobile accident.
To Doris Kapp, 72, also of Brooklyn, a pacemaker means she is once again free to travel widely with her husband, George, a retired science teacher. She had begun to experience terrifying fibrillations during which her heart raced at some 150 beats per minute for hours at a time. Between these episodes, her heart beat dropped to an abnormally slow rate of 38 or 40. The pacemaker made it possible for her to take heart-slowing drugs to control the fibrillations and still maintain a relatively normal heart rate of 50.
 
Who Needs One?
 The heart is equipped with a specialized group of cells called the sinus node that regulates how often the heart pumps blood, what is commonly called the heart beat or heart rate. These cells produce a biochemical signal that travels through the heart, first causing the upper atrial chambers to contract and then the lower ventricular chambers. The upper chambers pump blood into the lower chambers and the lower chambers pump blood to the rest of the body.
If the path of these signals is partly or completely blocked, the heart does not beat in a normal rhythm. The blood is pumped too slowly, and the heart may occasionally skip some beats altogether. As a result, the body receives an inadequate supply of oxygen and nutrients. In partial heart block, which is quite common in people over 70, the interruption in rhythm is intermittent. In complete heart block, the interruption is continuous and the heart beat can become irregular or very slow, falling into the 30's.
Many elderly people have heart rates of just 40 to 50 beats per minute. A daytime heart rate of 60 or 70 is more typical among adults, although in people who regularly do vigorous aerobic exercise, a heart rate of 50 is considered normal. A slow heart rate in itself is not a reason to install a pacemaker.
In most cases it is only when a very slow heart rate results in symptoms that installing a pacemaker is called for. Such symptoms include intermittent lightheadness or dizziness, weakness, shortness of breath, palpitations or fainting spells that coincide with a drop in heart rate into the 30's. A pacemaker may also be installed in patients with advanced heart block who have a persistent heart rate of 30 to 40.
 
How They Work
 A pacemaker, in a way, resembles a tiny Walkman. The main unit is a two-ounce pulse generator, a disk about a half-inch thick and two and a half inches in diameter powered by a long-lasting lithium battery. Extending from this power unit are insulated wire leads, each with an electrode at the end.
Depending on the precise abnormality in the patient's heart, a pacemaker with one or two leads is used. The pulse generator produces a signal that is transmitted through the flexible wires to the electrodes, which deliver the electrical impulse to the heart muscle.
To achieve this, the pacemaker leads must be inserted through a vein in the chest wall to reach the parts of the heart requiring stimulation. This is achieved by threading the wires through a catheter that is first inserted in the vein to the heart. Once the electrodes are in place, the power unit is implanted under a flap of skin, usually on the chest wall above the breast. After the incision heals, the unit is rarely noticeable.
Pacemakers are typically installed under local anesthesia with only overnight hospitalization, although sometimes a longer hospital stay is recommended for patients with special problems to be sure the device is performing as needed.
People with pacemakers can bathe and swim normally and perform nearly all their usual activities within weeks of installation. Before being fitted, patients should tell the surgeon what activities they enjoy -- for example, tennis or golf -- so that the power unit is placed most judiciously. Modern pacemakers are well shielded so that household and office electronic devices, including recent models of microwave ovens, do not disrupt their operation.
But patients with pacemakers are advised to avoid being in the vicinity of activities that emit strong electromagnetic fields, like arc welding and magnetic resonance imaging, the diagnostic procedure called M.R.I. Although airport screening systems do not disrupt the operation of a pacemaker, the device may cause the metal detector to signal, so it is best to request a hand check at all airports.
Most modern pacemakers are designed to function on demand; that is, they kick in only when the heart rate drops below a certain preset level. This allows the heart to beat faster when physical exertion demands more rapid blood flow. It also prolongs the life of the unit, since it has to work only when the heart malfunctions. The setting of a pacemaker, incidentally, can be reprogrammed without removing the device or opening the skin flap.
The operation of a pacemaker and the strength of its battery can be monitored by telephone, without the patient's having to go back to the doctor's office. A special modem in the patient's home or office picks up the electrical activity of the heart and transmits the patient's electrocardiogram by phone to a receiving unit in the doctor's office. The same modem can be used to transmit the signal being emitted by the pacemaker's battery.
Pacemaker batteries usually last about 10 years. But they do not fail abruptly. Even between tests, a patient can usually tell when the battery is weakening because there will be a return of the symptoms that prompted installation of a pacemaker in the first place. When the battery needs to be replaced, the patient must return to the doctor's office. The skin flap is opened, a new battery is installed in the pulse generator and the flap is closed once again. The unit is then primed to work for another decade or so.

LOAD-DATE: March 9, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


GRAPHIC:  In a normal heartbeat, first the upper atrial chambers contract and then the lower ventricular chambers. When the heart's own signals for normal contractions malfunction, a pacemaker can mimic them. Diagram shows how a pacemaker is connected to the heart.
 
Source: "The Mayo Clinic Heart Book" (William Morrow & Company)
Diagram: "A Gentle Reminder for Heart Rhythms"

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March 10, 1994, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

Mr. Stark's Race Backward

SECTION: Section A;  Page 24;  Column 1;  Editorial Desk 

LENGTH: 445 words

Representative Pete Stark, a California Democrat, heads the House subcommittee in charge of Medicare. So it comes as no surprise that his idea of health-care reform is to shove as many Americans as possible into Medicare, making him czar over an industry almost as large as the Italian economy.
But while Medicare-for-all might be the right prescription for Mr. Stark, it is the wrong reform for the rest of us. Medicare has demonstrably failed to control costs and provide first-rate care. Building reform on the Medicare model would send health care careering in the wrong direction. 
 Mr. Stark would open Medicare -- the Government plan that pays hospital and doctor bills for the elderly -- to the uninsured of any age. The new program, which he calls Medicare Part C, would charge premiums to cover its costs. That is unlike existing Medicare, which charges enrollees only 10 percent of their medical cost (a fact that explains the program's popularity among the elderly).
Mr. Stark rejects the reforms of Mr. Clinton and Representative Jim Cooper of Tennessee, which are designed to control costs by forcing large health plans to compete against one another. He would, instead, attempt to control costs by slapping price controls on doctors and hospitals. That is the system that Medicare uses now. And it fails. Medicare costs spiral out of control because while Washington can control prices, it cannot control volume -- how many office visits, tests and procedures doctors provide patients.
The Stark plan is dismayingly backward-looking. Price controls, he proposes, would be based on how much Americans have spent in the past on individual health services. But in a system in which, as studies show, perhaps one-third of expenditures are wasted, such a calculation would lock in bad practice.
Medicare's fee-for-service coverage, which reimburses doctors for nearly anything they do, rewards doctors and hospitals for providing unneeded procedures. In attempting to control that problem, Washington has been forced to impose incomprehensibly complex regulations. The result is a system that does not constrain costs and drives providers toward procedures that patients do not need but that involve risk.
A better way to achieve high-quality, affordable health care is the creation of integrated networks of doctors and hospitals that are paid a fixed annual fee for taking care of enrollees. That way doctors have incentive to keep patients healthy, with ample doses of preventive care, and to weed out unwarranted procedures. That is the approach adopted by Mr. Clinton and Mr. Cooper. Mr. Stark wants to push health care back to the past.

LOAD-DATE: March 10, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

TYPE: Editorial

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March 11, 1994, Friday, Late Edition - Final

McEnroe at 35 To Try Seniors

SECTION: Section B;  Page 14;  Column 1;  Sports Desk 

LENGTH: 150 words

John McEnroe turned 35 last month, and as far as tennis goes, he's now a senior citizen. Next month, he's going to prove it by headlining a five-stop semi-senior circuit, in which each player is, like him, a former No. 1.
McEnroe announced yesterday at the Manhattan headquarters of his representatives, the International Management Group, that he will anchor the $425,000 Advanta Tour, which starts April 21 in Denver. McEnroe's competition is familiar and unprecedented in this or any format: Jimmy Connors, Bjorn Borg, Mats Wilander, Ivan Lendl and McEnroe will make up a field that holds 50 Grand Slam titles and 488 major titles over all. 
 McEnroe said the chance to rekindle memorable rivalries was what persuaded him to experiment on the senior side of tennis for the first time.
The Advanta Tour will also visit Chicago; Anaheim, Calif.; Charlotte, N.C., and Key Biscayne, Fla.

LOAD-DATE: March 11, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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March 13, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

COPING;
Wishful Thinking: Remembering Winter '94

BYLINE: By ROBERT LIPSYTE 

SECTION: Section 13;  Page 1;  Column 3;  The City Weekly Desk 

LENGTH: 846 words

ROY NEMERSON is on the phone. You remember Roy, the Coping column's comedy consultant. "Cold? Only time in New York history a cop yells, 'Freeze!,' a whole neighborhood obeys. How come Andrew Giuliani dropped out of sight? I guess you can't see him over the snowbanks."
Why are we still talking about winter? The calendar says spring is only a week away. But then again, this was supposed to be another greenhouse winter. I thanked Roy and put him on hold. There were others in the Coping corps to check up on. 
 "Coping is also knowing when to say, 'I surrender,' " said Rick Curry. "You have to understand that some things are just out of your control. I tell my students they have to sit out the storm."
You remember Brother Rick, the one-armed Jesuit who directs the National Theater Workshop for the Handicapped. He hates to suspend classes at his loft on Broome Street because life means showing up, being on time, knowing your lines. But this winter has had a curtain of its own.
"You don't have to be handicapped to see how dangerous it is out there," said Rick. "Go check the emergency room at St. Vincent's, see how many jocks for Jesus are on their tushes. If you're in a wheelchair it is absolutely impossible to navigate a snowbank.
"If you're using a cane or crutch that ice is just waiting to give you another one. So I tell them knowing when to wait it out is reality, too.
"Here's a funny story for you. One of my blind students -- you know when blind people lose the sense of their street corners they lose all perspective on where they are -- this blind student got so frustrated he decided to climb up and over a snowbank. Then someone told him he was on top of a Volkswagon."
*
 "That's not funny, that's terrible," howled Roy. "Here's funny. This winter's so bad all my assets are frozen. Even my doorman gives me the cold shoulder."
Daphne Mahoney replaced him on the line. You remember Daphne, one of the five owners of Daphne's Hibiscus, a struggling Jamaican restaurant on 14th Street.
"January and February are always hard months," said Daphne, "but we've gotten some good publicity and some wonderful support."
One supporter, an elderly woman living on Social Security who can't even eat Jamaican food because of her medications and diet restrictions, demanded that Daphne accept enough money to repair the air-conditioning system. And a business executive, acting anonymously through this column, donated enough money for Daphne to buy a steam table, which is essential for the lunch and takeout business she hopes to attract.
Through it all, the Hibiscus continues its own outreach -- stepping up its contributions to Jamaican and city children and to a nearby soup kitchen. On Sunday, April 10, it will be host of a "cabaret lunch" benefit for the Harlem youth vocal ensemble, Expressions.
"Right now," said Daphne, her phone voice sounding kitchen-steamy, "I'm working on more vegetarian dishes. A lot of people have been coming in who don't eat jerk pork."
"I'll eat it," said Roy, whose sideline, selling one-line zingers for $15 each, helps him get through all the cold years his screen-plays are bought but not produced. "When you buy me dinner at Daphne's, we'll start with my favorite cocktail, a Tonya-Bobbitt. It's club soda with a slice. That was my biggest hit. Winter was good for me, I could do New York cold jokes for a national audience. For example, the snow only seemed to cut down the crime rate; what it really did was conceal the bodies. You hear about the new chief of staff at Lenox Hill? Dr. Zhivago."
I clicked him into Nynex limbo to talk to Carole Roberto, the Litter Lady of East 16th Street, who snatches fliers from car windshields before they pile up in front of her brownstone.
"Not this winter I don't," said Ms. Roberto. "I can't risk these frail old bones climbing over snowbanks. You can't find people to shovel the way they used to. Growing up in Brooklyn, my brothers loved snow, it was a chance to go out and make money. Of course, that was 60 years ago. Nowadays, people who love snow, even the children, go off to ski."
Ms. Roberto is a retired interior designer still active in civic organizations. Winter dreams have helped her slide through icy days and nights. She recalls the 1968 blizzard when Zero Mostel and the cast of "Rhinoceros" applauded the audience it outnumbered. After the show, Ms. Roberto and her husband, Joe, ran all the way home to 16th Street, laughing and throwing snowballs.
"I'm also looking ahead," said Ms. Roberto. "In two weeks, there will be crocuses down here. I saw them yesterday on the Upper East Side, where there is more sunlight and doormen shoveling. And clearer cross-walks. The city is always more responsive to where the money is."
Roy is hopeful, too. Several of his unproduced screenplays are getting a second look in Hollywood.
"So why don't you just go out there?" I asked.
"You know the difference between New York and L.A.?" he answered. "In New York you know that when the snow melts, the ground will still be there."

LOAD-DATE: March 15, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Drawing

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March 14, 1994, Monday, Late Edition - Final

Chinese Puzzle;
After Months of Dialogue on Human Rights, Beijing Takes Harder Line Toward the U.S.

BYLINE: By PATRICK E. TYLER,   Special to The New York Times 

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

LENGTH: 999 words

DATELINE: BEIJING, March 13

From the outset, Warren Christopher's first visit here as Secretary of State has been a diplomatic mugging. Today he and his aides were trying to understand why.
But instead of answers, what Mr. Christopher got was a philosphical discussion punctuated by aphorisms in a meeting with President Jiang Zemin: 
 President Jiang: "You can't become a fat man with one big meal."
Rough translation: The Chinese must proceed step by step toward human rights reform, and no amount of force-feeding will speed up the process.
President Jiang: "You have to clash before you become friends."
Rough translation: We bashed you intentionally to put you on the defensive, and now that we have the advantage, we would like to resume our talks.
After six months of broad and deepening dialogue with the Chinese on human rights, one of the most sensitive issues in this society, Mr. Christopher has been treated to a Chinese attitude that an American official described as "in your face."
The Chinese reaction was not altogether surprising, because Beijing had asked Mr. Christopher to delay his visit, hinting that the timing was not good. But his aides said that this trip best accommodated the Secretary's calendar, and that he was insistent on delivering President Clinton's message on human rights. So Beijing relented.
With less than three months to go before Mr. Christopher recommends to President Clinton whether to renew or revoke China's favorable trade status with the United States, the Communist leadership refuses to articulate, by word or deed, how it intends to respond to Mr. Clinton's challenge to make "overall significant progress" on human rights.
What seems certain is that the struggle within the Chinese leadership over how to define human rights for the country's 1.2 billion citizens is very much unresolved. And therefore Mr. Christopher's mission to admonish, scold and cajole Chinese officials seems destined to be resisted.
The state security authorities who rounded up the usual suspects of dissent last week so Mr. Christopher and his aides would not be able to hear their voices have only reinforced China's image of being in a defensive crouch.
Some American officials have said Mr. Christopher's trip was ill timed, because the annual session of the National People's Congress, China's ceremonial Parliament, opened on Thursday, one day before Mr. Christopher arrived. The Secretary's message may have sounded too much like a rebuke to Chinese leaders concerned about losing face before the assembled cadres.
Other officials wondered whether a new hard-line current was in ascendance in the Chinese leadership. With Deng Xiaoping, the paramount leader, appearing to be in frailer health, China's anti-reform octogenarians whom Mr. Deng forced into retirement may be pondering a comeback.
If that is so, President Jiang may be losing some of his political maneuvering room for tough decisions regarding human rights, like accounting for and releasing political prisoners and opening Chinese jails, detention centers and labor reform camps to international inspection.
No Chinese leader can contemplate concessions on that scale without considering whether the hard-liners will regard them as a sign of weakness.
Since January, when President Jiang told a delegation from the United States Congress that China was going to make an effort to improve human rights, his pronouncement has been followed by inaction.
Some American officials are worried that it could be paralysis.
Not since President Richard M. Nixon came to China in 1972 to begin to reopen relations after more than two decades of hostility has there been such a sense that China and the United States are on the cusp. But of what?
The stakes are enormous for both sides. No one in the Clinton Administration, and virtually no one in Congress or in the human rights organizations, actually wants China to lose its status as a favored trading partner.
Such a move would hurt American consumers, whose purchases of a wide range of Chinese products, including inexpensive textiles and toys, have given China a $20 billion trade surplus with the United States.
At the same time, the Chinese have enjoyed the phenomenal economic growth that comes from access to the United States market. Any slowdown risks social unrest.
American corporations, whose regional chiefs today also chided Mr. Christopher over the Administration's human-rights policy, depend on the low cost of Chinese labor. As their investments grow, what they want is stability in American-Chinese relations.
The simplest explanation for this month's clampdown on dissidents, and the hostile reception for Mr. Christopher, may be the most compelling. Many China analysts point out that the fear of chaos is deep within the Chinese leadership. "Stability" has become a code word not only for political repression but also for a "never again" attitude toward the remnants of China's democracy movement.
This winter's human rights dialogue with Washington and the June deadline for Mr. Clinton's trade decision have empowered and emboldened China's dissidents for the first time since the violent crackdown at Tiananmen Square in 1989. So it is not surprising that with the Communists' urgency for control and order, the authorities swiftly detained and intimidated members of the democracy movement and effectively muted them.
 
A Display of Muscle
 The prospect of Mr. Christopher's arrival seemed only to encourage the dissidents further. What better opportunity, one Chinese analyst said, for President Jiang to establish his credentials as a leader tough enough to crack down on dissent, strong enough to lead the country after Mr. Deng is gone?
"The leadership needs to demonstrate that it can run China," the Chinese analyst said. "It needs to demonstrate to itself and to the country that it is strong."
These currents may have converged as Mr. Christopher and his entourage made their way across the Pacific.

LOAD-DATE: March 14, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

TYPE: News Analysis

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March 14, 1994, Monday, Late Edition - Final

Drop in Hospital Bill Is Found for Patients Having Living Wills

BYLINE: AP 

SECTION: Section B;  Page 8;  Column 6;  National Desk 

LENGTH: 286 words

DATELINE: CHICAGO, March 13

Older people with living wills or other documents outlining the extent of medical care they want in case they are unable to convey their wishes spend about a third as much on their final hospital stays as those without such provisions, according to a new study.
Living wills are designed to keep such patients from getting unwanted treatment like life-prolonging therapy. 
 Results of the study appear in the March issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine, which is published by the American Medical Association. The study looked at patients who receive Medicare, the federally financed health insurance program for the elderly.
For 342 Medicare patients who had not left oral or written instructions about what kind of treatment they wanted, the average in-patient charges during the final hospital stay of their lives was $95,305. For the 132 patients with preparations, the average charges were $30,478.
The pattern remained significant after the researchers considered differences in severity of illness, use of intensive care units and number of procedures on each patient.
"Our study shows that respecting a patient's right to choose the kind of medical care received at the end of life also results in a tremendous benefit to society by limiting resources spent on futile and often unwanted attempts to prolong life," said the study leader, Dr. Christopher V. Chambers of Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia.
Studies show that fewer than 15 percent of Americans have living wills.
About 28 percent of the Medicare budget goes to treat the 5.9 percent of Medicare patients who die in a given year, previous research has found. Medicare spent $142.9 billion on benefits in fiscal 1993.

LOAD-DATE: March 14, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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March 14, 1994, Monday, Late Edition - Final

Wells Fargo to Offer Funds Designed for Baby Boomers

BYLINE: By SAUL HANSELL 

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

LENGTH: 766 words

Wells Fargo Bank will introduce today an innovative family of mutual funds in an attempt to reach affluent baby boomers who never enter its branches and may not even live in the bank's home state of California.
The products are a series of five asset allocation funds, which switch a customer's money among stocks, bonds and short-term money market investments. Each of the funds has a target date, from 2000 to 2040, representing the approximate year the investor will need the money, most likely for retirement. The further off the investment goal, the more aggressive the investment strategy will be. 
 Asset allocation funds have been quite successful recently at other mutual fund companies, but Wells Fargo's funds, called Lifepath Funds, are the first to offer target dates and strategies that change over time.
"People tend to take too little risk when they are young and then they get panicked as they get older and take too much risk," said Dudley Nigg, an executive vice president of Wells Fargo, which is based in San Francisco. "Our fund goes from growth in the early years to income later, which is exactly what the textbooks say you should do."
Wells Fargo hopes this twist will help its funds stand out from the thousands that are being offered by banks and investment companies. And in particular, the bank wants to appeal to young and affluent customers who use banks for checking accounts and credit cards but invest through companies like Charles Schwab and Fidelity Investments.
"We have 700,000 of these customers, but they regard the bank as a fuddy-duddy, not very interesting place to put their money," Mr. Nigg said.
Wells Fargo has already been among the most successful banks offering mutual funds through brokers in its branches, with $3.5 billion in its Stagecoach family of funds. But these sales have been to older customers looking for alternatives to certificates of deposit. The most popular offerings have been conservative tax-free bond funds.
To reach its younger customers, many of whom use automated teller machines and rarely set foot in the bank, Wells Fargo is copying the direct-marketing techniques of companies like Fidelity, offering new funds with a toll-free telephone through the mail and at its branches.
The new funds will not have an upfront sales charge, called a load, which turns off many customers, Mr. Nigg said. Until now, Wells Fargo, like most banks, charged sales loads, mainly to pay commissions to the brokers in the branches.
The new funds do charge a one-quarter of 1 percent annual sales fee, although their total annual expenses are about 1.2 percent, well within the normal range for such funds.
Wells Fargo is considering whether to offer its other funds without a load to customers who buy them by mail or telephone rather than in the branches, Mr. Nigg said.
Direct marketing of the funds would allow Wells Fargo to expand beyond California without buying other banks -- a strategy it considers too expensive. Wells Fargo plans to test advertising of the Lifepath funds in several other states.
A handful of other banks have tried to expand their mutual fund businesses beyond their branches. The Chase Manhattan Corporation has been successful selling its Vista mutual funds through stockbrokers, mainly because several of the funds have had top-ranked performances. Also, the Mellon Bank Corporation has agreed to buy the Dreyfus Corporation, one of the largest companies that sell funds nationwide mainly by mail and telephone.
Wells Fargo is also considering offering more traditional banking services through nontraditional distribution channels, probably through an all-in-one package of deposit and investment products.
 
More Ambitious Funds
 The Lifepath funds will be managed by Wells Fargo Nikko Investment Advisers, owned jointly by the bank and Nikko Securities of Japan.
While Wells Nikko has a successful 10-year track record for its traditional asset allocation fund, the Lifepath funds are more ambitious than any of its previous offerings. Instead of switching money between 3 categories -- stocks, bonds and cash -- the new funds have 14 categories: 6 types of domestic stocks, including large capitalization growth stocks and medium capitalization utility stocks; 4 kinds of domestic bonds; 3 of international securities, and cash.
Wells Fargo also hopes to offer the Lifepath funds through employers that have 401(k) plans, a form of tax-advantaged savings through payroll dedications. Wells Fargo and Wells Nikko already manage more than $17 billion in 401(k) funds.

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LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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March 16, 1994, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Citing Cancer, Fish Declares He Will Retire From Congress

BYLINE: By JACQUES STEINBERG,   Special to The New York Times 

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

LENGTH: 633 words

DATELINE: GARRISON, N.Y., March 15

Representative Hamilton Fish Jr., the New York State Republican who followed his father, grandfather and great-grandfather into the United States Congress, announced today that he would retire when his 13th term ends next January because he is battling a recurrence of cancer.
Mr. Fish's unexpected announcement leaves wide open the race for the House seat in his district, which covers all of Putnam County and parts of Westchester, Dutchess and Orange Counties. His withdrawal also raises the possibility that for the first time since 1843 a Hamilton Fish will not be representing the state in Congress. 
 Mr. Fish's father, Hamilton Fish Sr., a conservative Republican who served in Congress from 1920 to 1945, became nationally known as a bitter opponent of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who lived in his Congressional district, and the New Deal. He died in 1991. Hamilton Fish Sr.'s father and grandfather, both named Hamilton Fish, had also served in the House.
Hamilton Fish Jr., who is 67, has represented parts of the Hudson Valley since 1968. He underwent successful treatment for prostate cancer in 1982 and "did not lose a day's work," he said at a news conference here today in Putnam County. But recent tests had revealed a "new area of prostate cancer" that had spread to his right hip and perhaps elsewhere.
The Congressman, who represents the state's 19th District, said he would undergo surgery on March 25 to remove a lesion on his lung on which doctors have been unable to perform a biopsy.
 
Bills on Civil Rights
 Mr. Fish, a longtime advocate of civil rights, has been the principal Republican sponsor of a dozen such bills in recent years, most notably the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990. Currently the ranking minority member of the House Judiciary Committee, Mr. Fish served on the committee during the Watergate hearings and twice voted to impeach President Richard M. Nixon to his father's chagrin.
Mr. Fish's eldest son, Hamilton Fish 3d, a Democrat who ran unsuccessfully in the state's 20th Congressional District in 1988, declined to comment today on his political future. But neither he nor his brother, Nicholas, a Manhattan lawyer, would rule out seeking their father's seat.
Shedding no tears and appearing vigorous despite a broken left ankle attributed to "Old Man Winter," the elder Mr. Fish said he felt "fine" but had chosen to retire because he was unsure that he could serve out a 14th term. Mr. Fish said he was told by doctors, in a consultation last Wednesday, to expect "further progression of the disease" and intensive therapy and hospitalization.
After mulling the matter with his wife, Mary Ann, Mr. Fish told his daughter and three sons on Saturday that he had reluctantly decided to abandon the campaign he had already begun for a 14th term.
"I told them that this was not something I wanted to do," Mr. Fish recalled, speaking to reporters, staff members and supporters assembled here at the library named for his father. "Rather, it is something I must do in fairness to everyone."
Representative Fish, a Republican-Conservative candidate who beat his Democratic opponent, Neil McCarthy, by a 3-to-2 margin in 1992, would have likely faced a challenge in this year's Republican primary from Guy Parisi, a Westchester lawyer. Mr. Parisi, 47, a former lobbyist in Albany for the Westchester County Legislature, announced his candidacy for the Republican-Conservative nomination on Feb. 15.
Although Mr. Parisi appeared to have the Republican field largely to himself today, several political leaders predicted that other candidates would appear after the shock of Mr. Fish's announcement wears off. Al Lynn, a Westchester businessman, announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination in January.

NAME: Hamilton Fish Jr.

LOAD-DATE: March 16, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Representative Hamilton Fish Jr. held the hand of his wife, Mary Ann, at the announcement of his retirement in Garrison, N.Y. He said he would step down at the end of his 13th term because of a recurrence of cancer. (Chris Maynard for The New York Times)

TYPE: Biography

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March 17, 1994, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

Panama Likes Ruben Blades But Not, It Seems, as Leader

BYLINE: By HOWARD W. FRENCH,    Special to The New York Times  

SECTION: Section A;   Page 14;   Column 3;   Foreign Desk  

LENGTH: 796 words

DATELINE: PANAMA

A sense of wonderment descends on Ruben Blades as he sets out late in the afternoon from his sparely furnished apartment in the Casco Viejo district, a stone's throw from the neighborhood where he grew up.
Girls in high-school uniforms muster the courage to approach, hoping to catch his eye. Elderly men leave their shops, crossing the street to exchange a word. Mothers lean from their finely wrought balconies for a peek at him. Shirtless young boys drop their street games to cry out his name. 
 Wearing jeans, a T-shirt and a straw hat, the salsa singer, Hollywood actor, Harvard-trained lawyer and now presidential candidate scarcely breaks stride. Still, he finds a special way to acknowledge each passer-by.
"What's happening?" he says in a street-tinged Spanish to one. "Hey, brother," he says to another. For the girls, there is a wave and friendly grin that quickly sets off giggles.
 
A Valuable Asset
 All of this is immensely refreshing to the man who would change Panama's long-standing political equations, based in equal parts on well-stoked party machines, unbridled corruption and military machinations.
"I have a very easy contact with people," he said, speaking as if in warning to those who write off his anti-campaign for its dearth of public events. "People here know me by my first name."
Many had said that after 20 years away from his homeland, Mr. Blades, who returned late last year to head the ticket of the newly formed Papa Egoro, or Mother Earth Party, was too much the outsider to be a serious candidate in the presidential elections in May. In fact, although his name is sometimes pronounced BLAH-dess here, the proper pronunciation is the English one; the Blades family traces its roots to the English-speaking Caribbean island of St. Lucia.
But as each stroll serves to reminds him, his star recognition has been a valuable asset. Months of pre-campaign polls showed him to be the runaway favorite to succeed President Guillermo Endara, who cannot run for re-election. The other major candidates are Ernesto Perez Balladares and Ruben Carles. Mr. Balladares is a member of the party of the former dictator, Manuel Antonio Noriega, and Mr. Carles was the comptroller in the Endara Government before he resigned to run for President.
 
'I Really Love Home'
 Recent weeks, however, have been much more sobering for Mr. Blades.
Dropping out of the lead in the polls and apparently losing steam, his campaign has been a difficult baptism for Mr, Blades. Recent polls show him in third place with only 9 percent of the vote.
He says his money is running short, and a pugnacious press often seems to be waiting behind every door.
Mostly, however, the 45-year-old Mr. Blades is realizing how much he enjoys his privacy.
"I really love home," he said, almost mournfully, reflecting on his absence from his wife, Lisa Lebenzon, who is also an actress and is in Hollywood.
"We are very private people," he said. "We read a lot. We don't go out much. You know, our dog, flowers in the garden, the whole thing."
But for skeptics, and there are many, attitudes like these reflect nothing so much as the quixotic flavor of his candidacy.
"We like him, but we are not sure how serious this is," a woman said, reflecting an attitude toward Mr. Blades that is widespread here. "A campaign for President is not like a concert, where you just sell tickets and everyone shows up."
Even Mr. Blades sometimes speaks of his candidacy in the past tense. The pessimism is fed not only by his decline in the polls, but by campaign coffers that he says contain "not even $100 that I know of." There are also worries about his own post-political career.
"We ran out of time," Mr. Blades said, contemplating the harbor through the bay windows of his airy, high-ceilinged new apartment. "There are only 77 days left. I don't know how we are going to do this."
The mood quickly passes, though, as he contemplates the alternatives to forging ahead with the race. "If we didn't run, it would have been a battle between two evils," he said. "It would be just a matter of which one won. This campaign is aimed at dismantling a system that believes that corruption is a necessary evil."
Since he is no longer a favorite, Mr. Blades looks to his music for another asset it has given him: a sense of timing that he now says he must count on, given his lack of funds, for his message to carry him over the top. In this instance, Mr. Blades is referring to a strategy that scorns the polls and awaits the final days of the campaign before launching a blitz of appearances, concerts and other events.
If this fails, the singer said with a remorseless smile, "I'll go back to my band and dust them off and say, 'Boys, let's hit the road.' "'

NAME: Ruben Blades

LOAD-DATE: March 17, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: The floundering presidential campaign of Ruben Blades contrasts with the Panamanian entertainer's success as a singer and actor. (Anita Baca for The New York Times)

TYPE: Biography 

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March 17, 1994, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

A Dangerous Homeless Policy

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

LENGTH: 514 words

After well-deserved criticism for its plan to cut New York City funds from a successful program for the homeless, the Giuliani administration has been scrambling to come up with Federal money to keep the program alive. Give the Mayor and his advisers credit for admitting their error. But unless the Federal money is real and substantial, the administration needs to back down from an ill-considered plan that will cheat both the city and its homeless population.
The program in question, the S.R.O. Loan Program, finances the development of single-room-occupancy apartments and provides their tenants with support services. Such "supported S.R.O.'s" are one of the few techniques for helping the homeless that have proved effective, and one of the few policies of the Dinkins administration that Rudolph Giuliani said he supported as a candidate. 
 The program was supposed to lend about $160 million over four years to not-for-profit groups to develop the housing and provide social services that range from drug counseling to job training. The method works well largely because nonprofit groups do a better job than government does, and because housing is only part of the problem. Many homeless people lack the capability to live alone. They suffer from alcohol abuse or drug addiction, are mentally ill or elderly and sick.
Supported S.R.O.'s provide the services that can help single men and women get on their feet.  Mr. Giuliani, who has acknowledged this, nevertheless cut the entire $89 million in capital funds to be contributed by the city in the next four fiscal years, or about 55 percent of the program's total cost, because the city budget is so strained.
That was shortsighted. It could easily cost more in law enforcement and other city services to deal with people living on the streets than to house and counsel them. And what of Mr. Giuliani's commitment to improve the quality of life in New York?
City Hall said from the beginning that it hoped to find Federal money to substitute for city funds. But a large part of the Federal money the administration is considering is reserved for people with AIDS. Only a small number of those in the S.R.O. loan program have AIDS. The city cannot transform this program into an AIDS program and thereby weaken its commitment to the elderly, the mentally ill and the addicted simply because certain funds might be available.
Federal funds already support about 45 percent of the program. It is not clear how much new Federal money City Hall can tap, whether those funds would be available every year and if they could be used immediately.
Mr. Giuliani has a budget gap to fill. He has to save money and he has to be creative about finding new sources of revenue. But his administration's belated search for Federal funds in this instance has a suspicious smoke-and-mirrors quality to it. If the funds are new and real, terrific. But if they are not, City Hall must rethink its plan to cut its own contribution to this valuable program. A saving like that would be counterproductive -- and inhumane.

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March 17, 1994, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

Panel Endorses Price Controls on Drugs

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

SECTION: Section B;  Page 8;  Column 4;  National Desk 

LENGTH: 617 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, March 16

A Congressional subcommittee voted today to impose a kind of price control on prescription drugs, as part of a bill to provide all Americans with insurance covering the cost of such medications.
Under the proposal approved by the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Health, the Government would review drug prices and could deny Medicare coverage for drugs whose prices were deemed excessive. 
 The voice vote came amid impassioned debate over a bill to provide all Americans with insurance for a standard package of health benefits including prescription drugs. The bill was offered by Representative Pete Stark, the California Democrat who heads the subcommittee, as an alternative to President Clinton's health plan. But both plans share the goal of universal health insurance coverage.
The subcommittee also voted to guarantee coverage of a wide variety of mental health services. Mental health benefits guaranteed under the bill would be more extensive than those now provided under Medicare and some private insurance plans.
 
Revisions Possible
 Any of the actions taken today may be revised by the full Ways and Means Committee, other committees, the full House or the Senate. But the subcommittee's deliberations are the first measure of Congressional sentiment.
Chris Koyanagi, a lobbyist at the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law in Washington, welcomed the changes. "We are particularly pleased that the subcommittee has added intensive community services for people with severe mental disorders," Ms. Koyanagi said. "These services are an alternative to hospital care for people with mental illnesses."
Mr. Stark's bill would set "payment limits for prescription drugs" dispensed to Medicare patients, similar to those in the Clinton plan.
Mr. Stark said it was appropriate for the Government to review drug prices if it was going to require coverage of prescription drugs. "I don't intend to let the greedy drug manufacturers decide how they are going to waste the taxpayers' money," he said.
The drug industry vehemently opposes Government review of its prices and has aggressively lobbied against such a policy. On the other hand, many advocates for patients, including Consumers Union and the American Association of Retired Persons, say some limits on drug prices are needed.
Mark E. Grayson, a spokesman for the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association, said the group was "very disappointed." "The bill as it now stands contains disincentives for pharmaceutical research and development," Mr. Grayson said.
 
Expansion of Federal Power
 Republicans on the subcommittee said Mr. Stark's proposal authorized a huge expansion of Federal power.
Medicare now finances health care for 36 million elderly or disabled people. Mr. Stark's bill could double the size of the program by covering millions of people who lack private health insurance or have low incomes. Drug companies say Medicare would then have immense power as the biggest buyer of prescription drugs.
Mr. Stark proposes to create a new agency to assess the reasonableness of drug prices in general. Under his bill, the Government would require drug companies to give Medicare a discount equal to at least 17 percent of the retail prices.
If the Secretary of Health and Human Services found that the price of a new drug was excessive, the Secretary could demand a bigger discount. He could then deny Medicare coverage of the drug if the maker and the Government were unable to agree on the amount of the discount.
If total private self-spending on drugs exceeds goals defined by Federal law, the Government could also set "maximum rates of payment for each drug" bought under private plans.

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March 18, 1994, Friday, Late Edition - Final

Health Panel Backs Costs Based on Size of Families

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

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

LENGTH: 702 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, March 17

Having already decided that employers should help buy health insurance for their workers, a Congressional subcommittee voted today to set much higher premiums for people with children than for those who have no children.
The House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Health, drafting a bill to revamp the nation's health care system, decided that single people and childless couples should not have to subsidize the cost of coverage for children. Rather, the cost would be borne by the parents of such children and by companies that employ the parents. 
 How to divide these costs is one of the thorniest issues in health care.
The subcommittee is considering a slimmed-down version of President Clinton's health plan offered by Representative Pete Stark, Democrat of California, the chairman of the subcommittee. The subcommittee proceedings are only the beginning of a complicated process of producing a bill that ultimately will involve at least five committees in the House and the Senate. But the subcommittee is taking the first actual votes on many of the most contentious elements in the debate.
 
Allocating Family Costs
 Under the original version of Mr. Stark's bill, there would have been only two categories of coverage. The premium would initially have been set at $2,500 a year for a family with one adult and $5,000 a year for a family with more than one adult.
Representative Gerald D. Kleczka, Democrat of Wisconsin, proposed an amendment "to more fairly allocate premium costs based on type of family," and the subcommittee approved.
"Single people and couples without children should not bear the brunt of the cost of children," said Mr. Kleczka. Of the 126 million people in the labor force, 62 percent have no children under 18 living at home, according to the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Mr. Stark opposed Mr. Kleczka's proposal, saying it "would increase the minimum wage more than 50 percent for small businesses that are required to pay for family coverage."
Under Mr. Kleczka's proposal, the premium for a married couple with one or more children would be $6,075 a year. The employer would have to pay 80 percent of this amount, or $4,860. In other words, the employer would have to pay $2.34 an hour for an employee working full-time.
That amounts to 55 percent of the minimum wage, now $4.25 an hour.
The subcommittee also voted today to prohibit insurance companies from charging higher premiums because of a person's age or medical history. Under the concept of "community rating" endorsed by the panel, premiums would be calculated to reflect the average cost of insurance for all people in a geographic area, including healthy young workers in the same insurance pool with elderly retirees.
 
The Age Factor
 Representative Nancy L. Johnson, Republican of Connecticut, said that insurers should be allowed to adjust premiums for the age of subscribers.
"Community rating will impose a very significant increase in rates for young people," she said. "Young working people already support the retirement benefits of people over 65. It would be most unfortunate if those people were also asked to subsidize health insurance premiums of their parents, who have better-paying jobs. To make them share in the cost of their parents' insurance is unconscionable."
Representative Bill Thomas of California said pure community rating, as proposed by Mr. Stark and President Clinton, could provoke "a generational war" by increasing premiums for young people and reducing premiums for older people. "People above 65 are better off than at any time in our history," said Mr. Thomas, the ranking Republican on the panel. "Young people with children are falling through the cracks."
In other action today, the subcommittee voted to establish severe penalties for any insurance company or health plan that discriminates on the basis of race, national origin, religion, sex, sexual orientation, "socioeconomic status," age, health status or need for medical services.
This provision would prohibit selective marketing aimed at high-income neighborhoods.
Under the bill, a company could serve as its own insurer only if it had 1,000 or more full-time employees.

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March 18, 1994, Friday, Late Edition - Final

Last Chance

SECTION: Section C;  Page 26;  Column 5;  Weekend Desk 

LENGTH: 470 words

Here is a sampling of shows and exhibitions in New York City that are to close soon:
 
Closing This Weekend
 
"NO MAN'S LAND," Roundabout Theater, 1530 Broadway, at 45th Street. Revival of Harold Pinter's drama about two elderly poets, starring Christopher Plummer and Jason Robards; directed by David Jones. Through Sunday. Performances: Today at 8 P.M.; tomorrow and Sunday at 2 P.M. Tickets: $50. Information: (212) 719-9393.
 
"INNOCENT ERENDIRA," Gramercy Arts, 138 East 27th Street, Gramercy Park. Drama about a young girl forced into prostitution by her grandmother, based on the novella by Gabriel Garcia Marquez; starring Miriam Colon; directed by Jorge Ali Triana. Presented by Repertorio Espanol. Through Sunday. Performances: Today at 8 P.M.; tomorrow at 3 and 8 P.M.; Sunday at 3 and 7 P.M. Tickets: $20 and $25. Information: (212) 889-2850. 

MERCE CUNNINGHAM DANCE COMPANY, City Center, 131 West 55th Street, Manhattan. Through Sunday. Performances: Today at 8 P.M.; tomorrow at 2 and 8 P.M.; Sunday at 3 P.M. Tickets: $15 to $35. Information: (212) 581-1212.
 
FELD BALLET, Joyce Theater, 175 Eighth Avenue, at 19th Street, Chelsea. Through Sunday. Performances: Today and tomorrow at 8 P.M.; Sunday at 2 and 7:30 P.M. Tickets: $30. Information: (212) 242-0800.
 
"JEANNE MOREAU: NOUVELLE VAGUE AND BEYOND," Museum of Modern Art, 11 West 53d Street, Manhattan. Retrospective of films starring or directed by Jeanne Moreau. Last screening, "Querelle," today at 2:30 P.M. Admission included in museum admission: $7.50; $4.50 for students and the elderly. Information: (212) 708-9480.
 
Closing Next Weekend
 
"HELLO AGAIN," Newhouse Theater, Lincoln Center, 150 West 65th Street. A musical by Michael John LaChiusa about 10 people in search of perfect lovers; directed by Graciela Daniele. Through March 27. Performances: Tuesday through Friday at 8 P.M.; Saturdays at 2 and 8 P.M.; Sundays at 3 and 7:30 P.M. Tickets: $47.50. Information: (212) 239-6200.
 
"THREE BIRDS ALIGHTING ON A FIELD," Manhattan Theater Club, Stage 1, City Center, 131 West 55th Street, Manhattan. Drama by Timberlake Wertenbaker about a woman who uses the art world to enhance her husband's social standing; directed by Max Stafford-Clark. Through March 27. Performances: Tuesday through Friday at 8 P.M.; Saturdays and Sundays at 2:30 and 7 P.M. Tickets: $40.  Information: (212) 581-1212.
 
"ELEPHANT: THE ANIMAL AND ITS IVORY IN AFRICAN ART," Metropolitan Museum of Art, Fifth Avenue and 81st Street. An exhibition of sculpture, masks, headdresses, carvings and other items. Through March 27. Hours: Fridays and Saturdays, 9:30 A.M. to 8:45 P.M.; Sundays and Tuesday through Thursday, 9:30 A.M. to 5:15 P.M. Admission: $6; $3 for students and the elderly. Information: (212) 535-7710.

LOAD-DATE: March 18, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

TYPE: Schedule

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March 20, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

WEDDINGS;
Jeffrey Goldstein and Carolyn Curtis

SECTION: Section 9; Page 9; Column 3; Society Desk

LENGTH: 128 words

Carolyn Grace Curtis, a daughter of Nancy B. Strauss of Chapel Hill, N.C., and Richard R. Curtis of Lilburn, Ga., is to be married today to Jeffrey Brian Goldstein, a son of Leslie F. and Robert I. Goldstein of Bridgewater, N.J. Rabbi Ronald Isaacs will officiate at Beth El Synagogue in Durham, N.C.
The bride, 24, is a student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is a stepdaughter of Albrecht B. Strauss, who teaches English literature at the Duke Institute for Learning in Retirement, a continuing education program for senior citizens at Duke University in Durham. 
 The bridegroom, 25, graduated from Duke, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and where he is now a medical student. His father is an orthodontist in Bridgewater.

LOAD-DATE: March 20, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Jeffrey Goldstein and Carolyn Curtis (Jeremy Goldstein)

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March 20, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

ENDPAPER;
Spiro Agnew and I

BYLINE: By Cathleen Schine;   Cathleen Schine is the author of "Rameau's Niece" and a regular contributor to this page.

SECTION: Section 6;  Page 92;  Column 1;  Magazine Desk 

LENGTH: 882 words

Monday.  My birthday is coming up and not having had a midlife crisis at 40, I'm planning to have one now. I will be over 40! I can't focus. I have no energy. I think about Spiro Agnew more than other people do. Whatever happened to Spiro Agnew? Has he opened a restaurant, the way retired baseball players do? Spiro Agnew's Ribs. Or a used-car dealership? I can see his face so clearly, his hair combed straight back. It is the face of my youth.
 
Tuesday.  Did you know that an anagram of Spiro Agnew is "Grow a penis?" Did you know that the lead singer of the Red Hot Chili Peppers was convicted of sexual battery because he waved his penis at a fan after a concert? I heard this on MTV. I think it would be dangerous to wave it at a fan. I was always told to keep my fingers away from fans. And I always have. 

Wednesday.  How old was Spiro Agnew when he fell from power? Not much older than I am now. In the 60's, even the old people were young. But now! My birthday is next week: I don't have much time to determine exactly what form my midlife crisis will take. This is urgent. I could join a cult. But which one? And it seems a little strenuous for someone my age. Daydreaming about Spiro Agnew -- I remember his tie clips best of all -- I turn on the TV. "Mystery Science Theater 3000," my favorite show. That's it! I could become a "Mystery Science Theater 3000" groupie! Groupies are so youthful. You can do it from home in your spare time. No investment necessary. No special equipment. And I already watch the show twice a day, every weekday. A man and two robots sit in front of a big screen and we watch the backs of their heads as they watch bad movies and make wisecracks. Once, some devils in red leotards were writhing around plotting the demise of Santa Claus and one of the robots said: "Oh! Hell got an N.E.A. grant."

Thursday A.M.  Maraschino is an anagram for Harmonicas. Roast Mules become Somersault. Someone told me those, I didn't figure them out myself, I hate anagrams. "Mystery Science Theater 3000" is also on for an hour at 8. What am I doing? Anagrams? Four hours of bad movies a day? I must take up a more constructive hobby, a life-affirming hobby for my midlife crisis. Got a Smith & Hawken catalogue today, as I do every day. I will order English gloves and French watering cans and Japanese pruners. I will make things grow.

P.M.  Yorba Linda, C-Span 2. Richard Nixon is standing in front of the Presidential Library and Birthplace. It's the 25th anniversary of his inauguration. My heart pounds with excitement, rejuvenated by the sound of his voice. He poses in front of a fountain with Gerald and Betty Ford. Does former President Ford really count as a Vice President? Where is Agnew? Oh, it's all wrong, wrong. Nixon doesn't even look like his masks anymore.

Friday.  US Magazine says the "deck is stacked against today's younger actors." Sounds promising. Perhaps I can take up acting. Although I'm sure I read somewhere else that actresses over 40 can't get any parts. So back to gardening. I already have several oddly shaped aloe plants the kids brought home from school as cuttings. I never water them. Maybe that simulates the harsh life of the desert. I wonder if Spiro Agnew gardens. If he doesn't already, he should. Gardening is what every celebrity does when he sinks into obscurity. Or do they raise horses? It seems so unfair that Agnew gets so little exposure, and he's not even a younger actor.

Saturday.  I don't have to have a midlife crisis after all! I have discovered true immortality. I read in Audubon that ecologists in northern England are planning a "forest of the dead." People will be buried beneath trees to help enrich the soil, instead of wasting all those nutrients in crematories or cemeteries. You can choose your tree and the species of wildflowers you want to have planted above you. Pushing up the daisies, the Indian paint brushes; though blue bells and bunchberries might be more appropriate, more discreet. I've never had much luck with wildflowers, myself. I once bought one of those cans of seeds from the Smith & Hawken catalogue and sprinkled it on my mother's lawn near the septic tank, which had just been dug up, but the seeds washed away with the first rain or were eaten by birds, and she planted grass again instead. I wonder if the gardeners in Echoing Green, as the corpse forest will be called, will order their seeds from Smith & Hawken.

Sunday.  A birthday present has arrived! A pot of narcissus from Smith & Hawken, the first of a series of plants to come. Now I don't have to garden after all, just open cardboard boxes once a month. Well, it's 10 A.M. "Mystery Science Theater 3000" is on. But so is "The McLaughlin Report." What will I do? Which will I choose? Life is so full, so ripe with possibility. And I am only in the middle of it! The scent of narcissus drifts through the room. I hate the smell of narcissus. But the name is so historically and psychologically suggestive, so rich with meaning. And they're awfully pretty in the windowsill by the twisted aloes. I am content. I have made up my mind. Someday, as I lie decomposing in Echoing Green, it is this species I will feed. For now, I could just sit here and gaze at narcissus forever.

LOAD-DATE: March 20, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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March 22, 1994, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

Don G. Goddard, 89, Expert on Alcoholism

SECTION: Section B;  Page 8;  Column 5;  National Desk 

LENGTH: 260 words

Don G. Goddard, a former broadcaster who became known for his work with geriatric alcoholism and other addictions, died on Sunday at Boswell Hospital in Sun City, Ariz. A Sun City resident, he was 89.
He suffered a long illness, his family said. 
 Mr. Goddard was born in Binghamton, N.Y., attended Princeton University and had a first career in print and broadcast journalism. He was the host of the ABC television series "Medical Horizons," an on-the-scene documentary about medical advances at American hospitals and research centers. He retired in 1970 as head of ABC's Biographical and History Archive, which he helped to establish.
Mr. Goddard's second career had its roots in the 1950's, when he met Bill Wilson, co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous. The two collaborated on A.A. documentaries and the publication A.A. Grapevine. That experience led to his working with alcoholism after he retired and moved to Arizona, first becoming a consultant to the Mile High Council on Alcoholism and then joining the staff of St. Luke's Chemical Dependency Program in Phoenix as a consultant and therapist.
In Arizona Mr. Goddard developed special treatments for older people with addictions. His "Top o' the Hill Gang" for patients over 55 at St. Luke's fostered similar programs at clinics across the country.
He is survived by his wife of 63 years, Adele Letcher Goddard; three daughters, Marilu Nowlin of Acton, Mass., Dr. Susan Goddard of Rice Lake, Wis., and Meg Moss of Evanston, Ill.; a son, Donald L., of Manhattan, and nine grandchildren.

LOAD-DATE: March 22, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

TYPE: Obituary (Obit); Biography

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March 22, 1994, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

Leader in House Proposes Trims On Health Plan

BYLINE: By ADAM CLYMER,   Special to The New York Times 

SECTION: Section A;  Page 1;  Column 5;  National Desk 

LENGTH: 1126 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, March 21

A powerful House committee chairman is circulating a scaled-back alternative to President Clinton's health care bill. It would maintain the President's goal of health insurance for all Americans while cutting the bureaucracy to administer it, reducing the cost to small business and promising not to increase the Federal deficit.
The plan, being put forward by Representative John D. Dingell, the Michigan Democrat who heads the Energy and Commerce Committee, is the first significant movement by Mr. Clinton's supporters to trim the President's plan in the hope of gaining enough votes to pass it. 
 Unlike the Clinton plan, the draft would raise the cost to individuals to make up for decreased revenue from business. In addition, it would maintain Mr. Clinton's goals of making coverage permanent and cutting costs while doing away with a main element of his plan, insurance-purchasing alliances that all employers but the biggest would be required to join. But that proposal has seemed dead for weeks anyway.
The proposal is labeled a "staff draft," but there is no question that it is Mr. Dingell's concept for getting a health care proposal out of his committee, whose 44 members closely mirror the whole House in ideology and party balance.
The White House had no comment on the substance of the plan, although Lorrie McHugh, a spokeswoman, said, "We are glad that the committee is moving forward."
White House officials said they had been kept informed of the direction Mr. Dingell was taking, and there was no indication that they objected.
While Mr. Dingell was not available to comment, one of his subcommittee chairmen, Representative Philip R. Sharp of Indiana, said he believed the committee, with 27 Democrats and 17 Republicans, would approve this plan or something close to it after the Easter recess, which ends on April 11. If all Republicans vote against it, Mr. Dingell would need the votes of 23 of the 27 Democrats to get it through the committee.
 
The Toughest Test
 In many ways, the committee provides the toughest test health care legislation will face in the House. Its members include not only solidly opposed Republicans, but also several Democrats who have been critical of the Clinton plan, as well as two who have proposed slimmer alternatives, Representatives Jim Cooper of Tennessee and J. Roy Rowland of Georgia, a retired family doctor.
The Dingell draft says generally that the provisions of the Clinton plan that are not mentioned in its seven pages "are generally maintained." That suggests, but does not guarantee, that he would preserve the Clinton plan's additional benefits for the elderly, coverage for prescription drugs and a start on coverage of long-term care.
The President himself and his wife, Hillary, were urgently selling the his plan today to thousands of retirees in sun hats at Deerfield Beach, Fla. "Under our approach, you get more," Mr. Clinton told them. At the first event of a weeklong White House health campaign, Mr. Clinton also said that he now had three Republican Senators who had promised him their votes. Only Senator James M. Jeffords of Vermont has made his commitment public, and White House aides would not say to whom else Mr. Clinton was referring.
On Capitol Hill, a subcommittee of another House committee voted to control private health spending by setting limits on payments to doctors and hospitals in any state that exceeds spending goals to be set by the Federal Government.
As the health subcommittee of the House Ways and Means Committee plodded ahead in writing its version of the bill, it also voted to limit awards for "pain and suffering" in malpractice cases to $350,000, even though Republicans wanted a lower amount.
 
Some Blanks Stay Blank
 In addition, the subcommittee authorized the Federal Government to set priorities for the training of doctors. Washington could require 53 percent of medical residents to be trained as internists, family practitioners, obstetricians and gynecologists. Only 33 percent of new doctors are now trained in such primary care specialties. The subcommittee's work could be modified by the full Ways and Means Committee.
The Dingell plan, which was passed out in draft form to Commerce Committee members today, did not specifically mention another benefit included in the Clinton plan, the Federal assumption of most health insurance costs for early retirees and others from the ages of 55 to 64 without insurance. This idea has been widely criticized, especially by Senate Republicans, as a windfall for big manufacturers, But Mr. Dingell has said that he regards it as a major element in changing health care, as well as a benefit to the automobile industry, so in some form, it is likely to survive in his committee.
The draft concentrated on three major sources of concern about the Clinton bill that Mr. Dingell had encountered in his committee. They were its requirement that small business, along with other employers, pay most of the cost of workers health care, the concern that the revisions would end up increasing the budget deficit rather than curbing it as Mr. Clinton hoped and the concern about the alliances that employers would have to join.
The Dingell plan would allow the smallest employers, those with 10 or fewer workers, to choose not to buy workers' insurance, though it would require those with up to 5 workers to make a "minimum employer contribution of 1 percent of payroll." Those with 6 to 10 workers would start at 1 percent and eventually pay 2 percent.
The approximately 15 million workers in these small firms would have to buy their own insurance, but would be heavily subsidized by the Government. Regardless of income, they would have to pay no more than 3.9 percent of their income for coverage. Under the Clinton proposal all employers would have to pay a minimum of 3.9 percent of payroll for workers' health insurance.
The money to pay for those subsidies would come mainly from two changes in what individuals would pay for medical care. While the Clinton bill would require them to pay 20 percent of the cost of most services, up to an annual limit of $1,500, the Dingell plan would make that 25 percent, up to a limit of $2,500.
The bill would copy the Clinton measure in guaranteeing the renewal of health insurance, requiring that coverage be portable when a person changes jobs and prohibiting exclusions for pre-existing medical conditions.
The Dingell proposal would require states to set up insurance purchasing alliances and offer various types of plans, including the traditional fee-for-service system. But no one would be required to buy insurance through alliances, although everyone except employers of 1,000 or more could do so.

LOAD-DATE: March 22, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photos: As a scaled-down version of the President's health care plan circulated among members of a House committee, Mr. Clinton campaigned for his plan with his wife, Hillary, in Deerfield Beach, Fla., yesterday. (pg. A1); A plan to provide universal health coverage but with fewer administrators and less cost for small businesses is being floated as an alternative to President Clinton's plan by Representative John D. Dingell. Mr. Clinton spoke to residents in Deerfield Beach, Fla., yesterday after a health care forum. (pg. A17) (Associated Press)

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March 23, 1994, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Youths Are Arrested After 12 Muggings

SECTION: Section B;  Page 5;  Column 4;  Metropolitan Desk 

LENGTH: 228 words

Five teen-agers were arrested yesterday and charged with attacking and robbing elderly women in Canarsie, Brooklyn, over a three-week period, breaking one 70-year-old's skull and hip, the police said.
Lieut. Thomas Sbordone, a spokesman for the housing police, said the muggings began on Feb. 24 and quickly escalated in brutality. "What started as pushing and shoving grew to punching and choking," he said. 
 The five boys, ranging from 12 to 16 years old, apparently followed elderly women from a local store to the Glenwood Houses, a housing project in Canarsie. Twelve women between the ages of 60 and 81 were robbed, Lieutenant Sbordone said.
In the last incident, on March 15, the suspects robbed a 70-year-old woman who is still at Brookdale Hospital with a fractured skull and broken hip. The women were usually robbed of small amounts of money, though $500 was taken in one incident, the police said.
The housing police arrested two of the youths on March 19 in a stakeout during which they were observed stalking an intended victim, the police said, adding that the two teen-agers were carrying a gun. Those arrests led to three others yesterday, the police said. Arthur Roberts, 16, of Crown Heights was charged with robbery and assault and may be tried as an adult, Lieutenant Sbordone said. The four other youths also face similar charges.

LOAD-DATE: March 23, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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March 23, 1994, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

HEALTH WATCH;
Don't Walk, Run!

BYLINE: By JANE E. BRODY 

SECTION: Section C;  Page 12;  Column 3;  National Desk;  Health Page

LENGTH: 553 words

THIS, in effect, is the message given to many elderly people who try to cross busy city streets while the traffic light signals "Walk" and then flashes "Don't Walk" to warn that the light is about to change. A study of pedestrians at a busy intersection in Los Angeles found that 27 percent of elderly people who began to cross as soon as the light flashed 'Walk' were unable to reach the opposite curb before the light changed against them. At least one-fourth of those who were unable to cross in time were left stranded by at least one lane of traffic, according to a report in the current issue of The Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.
In the study, Dr. Russell E. Hoxie and Dr. Laurence Z. Rubenstein of the University of California at Los Angeles School of Medicine watched 1,200 people trying to cross a street in an area where a lot of older people live. They found that all the younger pedestrians, who walked at an average speed of 1.27 meters a second, managed to get across the street in time. But among older pedestrians, whose walking speed averaged 0.86 meters per second, only 73 percent crossed in time. 
 Nearly all the elderly pedestrians observed walked more slowly than the 1.22 meters a second that city traffic engineers use in timing the interval between red lights. The researchers suggested that crossing times be increased, especially where many older people live.
The researchers believe their finding may largely explain why elderly people account for the largest share of the 7,000 pedestrian fatalities that occur annually in the United States. And, they suggested, that the number of fatalities might be even higher if not for the fact that many elderly pedestrians are reluctant to cross streets they consider dangerous. Three-fourths of the elderly pedestrians interviewed by the researchers said fear kept them from crossing the street as often as they would like to.
 
In Praise of Red Wine
 Yet another possible cardiovascular benefit has been uncovered for red wine: an anticlotting effect. Dr. John D. Folts and colleagues at the University of Wisconsin have singled out a substance called quercatin, found in the skin of grapes as well as in other fruits and vegetables, as the likely protective factor. They said it acts like aspirin to suppress the tendency of the blood to clot. Blood clots that close off arteries that feed the heart are a major factor in heart attacks.
Previous studies have shown that moderate consumption of any alcohol raises blood levels of protective HDL cholesterol. And other studies have found that red wine in particular contains a substance that inhibits oxidation of damaging LDL cholesterol, which in turn reduces the accumulation of cholesterol on artery walls.
Dr. Folts and his colleagues tested their own response to various wines, showing that within 45 minutes of drinking red wine the tendency of the blood platelets to form clots was reduced by 39 percent. White wine had no such effect, but one beer showed an intermediate benefit.
If red wine in fact is an effective clot inhibitor, its benefits may be largely limited to wine consumed with meals. Heavy meals, especially those with a high fat content, tend to increase the blood's tendency to clot, and drinking wine with them may counter that effect.

LOAD-DATE: March 23, 1994

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March 24, 1994, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

Panel Endorses Alternative To President's Health Plan

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

SECTION: Section A;   Page 18;   Column 1;   National Desk  

LENGTH: 849 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, March 23

After voting against President Clinton's original proposal to overhaul the nation's health care system, a Congressional subcommittee today approved an alternative plan to achieve his goal of universal insurance coverage but supply a more modest package of medical benefits.
The subcommittee voted 6 to 5 to approve the alternative and send it to the full House Ways and Means Committee for further action. 
 The alternative drops the idea of a payroll tax on all employers, which had been proposed by Representative Pete Stark, the California Democrat who is chairman of the subcommittee considering the legislation.
"The payroll tax has been dropped and is not included in this substitute amendment," Mr. Stark said in announcing a compromise on the alternative devised over the last few days in quiet negotiations among Democrats on the panel, the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Health.
 
Moving to the Center
 Mr. Stark had earlier proposed an alternative to the ambitious health care proposal offered by Mr. Clinton in October. But Mr. Stark had to make concessions to gain the support of some Democrats on his panel like Representative Sander M. Levin of Michigan, who said he would not vote for any bill with a general increase in payroll taxes.
The tax proposed by Mr. Stark, equal to eight-tenths of 1 percent of payroll, would have raised $24 billion a year.  But the Democrats found other ways to raise the same amount of money, with a variety of new taxes and cutbacks in the growth of Medicare, the Federal health insurance program for the elderly. The taxes are similar to those proposed by Mr. Clinton.
The new proposal, like one devised by Representative John D. Dingell of Michigan, chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, moves toward the center of the political spectrum in an effort to find votes for health legislation, which President Clinton has described as his top priority.
The chairman of the full Ways and Means Committee, Dan Rostenkowski, said today that his panel would pass a "much more conservative" bill than Mr. Clinton has been seeking. In an interview with The Washington Post, Mr. Rostenkowski said that members of Congress would "not fall on their swords" to pay for health insurance for all Americans, even though Mr. Clinton has said such universal coverage is a major goal.
Earlier today, in a vote engineered by Republicans to embarrass Mr. Clinton, the Ways and Means subcommittee formally rejected the original version of the President's proposal. Democrats praised the President for initiating serious discussion of the nation's health care problems, but declined to vote for his bill.
The vote was four against and none in favor, with all seven Democrats on the panel voting "present." By voting present, the Democrats declined to take a position for or against the bill. All four Republicans on the panel voted against it.
Representative Bill Thomas of California, the ranking Republican on the panel, offered Mr. Clinton's bill as a substitute to show that it had little support in the subcommittee.
 
First of Many Revisions
 The health care bill is likely to be rewritten many times, but the work of Mr. Stark's subcommittee is significant because it is the first panel to vote on the issue.
These are the major provisions of the compromise devised by Mr. Stark, Mr. Levin and other Democrats on the Health Subcommittee:
*Employers with more than 100 employees would have to provide their workers with a standard package of health benefits by Jan. 1, 1996. Other employers would have to buy such coverage starting on Jan. 1, 1998.
*Medicare beneficiaries would have to pay 20 percent of the cost of health services delivered to them in their own homes. This would raise $6 billion a year. No such payments are required under current law. Mr. Clinton proposed requiring a 10 percent payment.
*Companies with 1,000 or more employees could serve as their own insurers, but in that case, they would be subject to a tax equal to 1 percent of payroll. This would raise $9 billion a year. Under Mr. Clinton's bill, companies could have served as their own insurers only if they had 5,000 or more employees.
*States would have to maintain current levels of spending on health care for Medicaid recipients and for people who get welfare benefits through programs financed entirely with state money. States that help elderly people buy prescription drugs would also have to continue such spending at current levels. Taken together, these requirements would raise $7 billion a year.
*State and local governments and their employees would all have to pay the payroll tax for Medicare hospital insurance (2.9 percent, equally divided between employer and employee). This would raise $1 billion a year.
By a vote of 6 to 5, the subcommittee today also rejected a bill that seeks to increase access to health insurance and control costs by fostering competition. By the same tally of 6 to 5, the panel rejected a Republican health care bill proposed by Mr. Thomas and Senator John H. Chafee of Rhode Island.

LOAD-DATE: March 24, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Despite some indications of wavering by Democrats in Congress, President Clinton is pushing his proposal for overhauling health care. Sister Bernice Coreil of the Daughters of Charity moved a platform she had used as Mr. Clinton prepared to speak to 200 doctors and nurses at the White House yesterday. With him were Vice President Al Gore, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Dr. Jim Haggerty. (Paul Hosefros/The New York Times)

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March 25, 1994, Friday, Late Edition - Final

Italian, Held in Scandal, Muses on Dante and Sin

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

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

LENGTH: 1114 words

DATELINE: ROME, March 24

Languishing in prison, Mario Zamorani couldn't help but think of Dante's "Inferno."
Through the third-floor window of his cell in Turin, Mr. Zamorani said he could see the construction site for an extension of the prison building, a contract he himself had negotiated with the authorities before his arrest almost two years ago on charges of paying bribes to win contracts. 
 "In the 'Inferno,' the sinners were confronted with their sins," he said in an interview last week. "You could say the same thing happened to me."
These days, Mr. Zamorani, the 46-year-old former head of Italy's largest public construction company, Italstat, is out of prison, free to work while he awaits trial on five counts of corruption linked to the vast web of graft that brought down Italy's political old guard.
His position -- accused but not tried; freed but not judged -- reflects the anomaly of a country that has broken with its past without conjuring a vision of the future. Even the course of political renewal on which it embarked by scheduling elections on March 27-28 may prove far less of a catharsis than many had earlier expected.
 
How Will It End?
 Indeed, with a staggering number of businessmen and politicians -- 6,000 so far -- implicated in the corruption scandal, and investigators still scouring for evidence of public wrongdoing, figures like Mr. Zamorani raise the question of how it is ever going to end.
"I am hoping that after the election there will be an amnesty because what happened was more like a general levy, and that is not a crime," he said of the system of kickbacks that permeated political and business dealings.
"If it doesn't finish some time, we will reach a position where every single Italian family has one member under investigation," Mr. Zamorani said. "Either Tangentopoli finishes, or Italy is finished."
But that is not the view of those who helped expose the corruption scandal that has come to be called Tangentopoli, or "Kickback City," in Italy.
 
Not the Moment for an Amnesty
 "The investigations will go on as long as there's something to investigate," Gherardo Colombo, one of the magistrates in Milan who uncovered the scandal, said in a recent telephone interview. "This is not the moment to be talking of amnesty."
The scandal broke in February 1992, when an official in Milan, Mario Chiesa, was caught accepting a bribe in return for awarding a cleaning contract at a senior citizens' home.
Since then, magistrates have uncovered a network of graft that reached into the boardrooms of industrial giants like Fiat, Ferruzzi and Olivetti, as well as government-owned state holding companies.
The parties that have dominated Italy since the beginning of the cold war, the Christian Democrats and the Socialists, have been all but obliterated by the scandal.
Former political barons like Giulio Andreotti, who has served seven times as Italy's Prime Minister, face accusations of corruption and consorting with the Mafia. Many of the nation's most prominent businessmen have been jailed, and at least 14 have taken their own lives, some in circumstances that have not been fully explained.
 
A Taste of Jail
 Mr. Zamorani, who in June 1992 became the first head of a state-owned company to be jailed under Italy's preventive detention laws, was initially held in San Vittore prison in Milan, where members of Italy's business elite were left to rub shoulders with drug dealers and other less illustrious prisoners until they agreed to cooperate with the investigation.
"I admitted my crime on the first day," Mr. Zamorani said. But he was not freed for another 60 days.
Under the pressure of incarceration, he told investigators about the system under which construction companies shared the state contracts for which they would submit bids and bribes. He did not, he said, name names.
So, in April 1993, it was back to jail, this time in Turin to answer more questions about illicit payments to politicians. Barely had he emerged from prison in Turin on May 11 than he was jailed again in the northeastern town of Pordenone, from May 22 until June 9, on the testimony of the same former associate.
"Considering that I've done six months in preventive custody," including 63 days of additional house arrest, "I think that's enough," he said.
Possibly more striking is the success of those involved in the scandal in cutting another deal, albeit in slightly less august circumstances.
Mr. Zamorani's post-jail job as a manager in a public sector company gives him a secretary, a chauffeured car and a cellular phone, though his salary has been cut to $200,000 a year before taxes, half of its pre-scandal level.
 
Still Not Faced Trial
 Like thousands of others implicated in the scandal, Mr. Zamorani has not faced a formal trial. Hearings in Milan are to begin in April, but a trial in Turin is not expected to start until next year.
Mr. Colombo, the investigating magistrate in Milan, said only about 100 of the 1,400 corruption cases being prosecuted in that jurisdiction alone have passed the first stage of the trial proceedings, which permit two appeals before final judgment.
Even then, a jail term is only a remote possibility. Like others, Mr. Zamorani maintains that any individual wrongdoing should be pardoned because the system of corruption involved virtually everyone.
"I have always said that it was the culture of the country," he said. The system was so widespread, Mr. Zamorani argues, that business people talked about it openly among themselves.
 
'Everybody Paying Everybody'
 "The joke at the end was that everybody was paying everybody so we canceled each other out," he said.
As for his business prospects, Mr. Zamorani has turned to other pursuits.
In a four-part magazine series, he wrote a businessman's guide to being arrested ("Don't bother to proclaim your innocence -- it won't work," he advised) suggesting that detainees pack a sweat suit, sandals, cigarettes, a radio, insect repellent and writing materials when the Carabinieri arrive.
Last month he published a 300-page book suggesting new procedures for bidding for contracts, and he has also compiled computerized lists of arrest warrants and investigations: more than 5,000 warrants and 20,000 continuing investigations into the activities of some 6,000 individuals.
Of those, according to his figures, 183 are legislators in the current Parliament, which is to be replaced in next week's election.
"There has been a revolution in Italy, and the ruling class has been changed," Mr. Zamorani said. By the time the cases finally come to judgment, he said, "I hope the revolution will be over."

LOAD-DATE: March 25, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH 

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March 27, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

EXPLOSION IN EDISON;
Diversity of Residents Is Reflection Of a Changing Central New Jersey

BYLINE: By N. R. KLEINFIELD,    Special to The New York Times  

SECTION: Section 1;   Page 32;   Column 1;   Metropolitan Desk  

LENGTH: 1967 words

DATELINE: EDISON, N.J., March 25

Preeti Sanghavi came to Durham Woods from India by way of Texas. Chao-Tsun Yen came to Durham Woods from Taiwan by way of Brooklyn. Michael Adeyemo came to Durham Woods from Nigeria by way of Alabama. George Moices came to Durham Woods directly from Brooklyn.
In so doing, they joined an international bazaar of 1,500 residents in an apartment complex where so many people look and talk differently but wish and hope for the same things. A mix of middle-income professionals and members of the working class -- security guards, store owners, salesmen, teachers, police officers, warehouse managers, computer operators, chemists -- they constitute the full backbone of working America. Resigned to toiling hard for their money, they came here for opportunity, a touch of the bucolic and suburban equanimity.
 
A Dissimilar Group
 In these respects, Durham Woods affords a telling snapshot of the swarm of people who have converged on bulging central New Jersey during the last decade or so, a far more dissimilar lot than this state has been accustomed to. 
 They have largely brushed aside ethnic and cultural disparities and unpacked their suitcases in the spate of housing colonies that have sprung up in almost every crevice of space -- practically on the aprons of highways and in the backyards of factories and on land once inviting only to mosquitoes. Durham Woods itself began to rise in the mid-1980's on 137 acres of swampland just beyond the buzz of Interstate 287.
The housing development, of course, was pushed into the public eye by an event no family wishes for near its home: the natural gas pipeline explosion late Wednesday night that leveled 8 of the 63 buildings and touched off a hysterical flight for safety by the residents. Scores of people were hurt, and one death has been reported.
The residents proved their nimbleness in their midnight dash for salvation. But in their more humdrum existence, they have exhibited the character and concerns of the sort of people who in recent years have made this densest of all states still denser.
They are mostly young and middle-aged families, with two and three children and dual incomes, with a sprinkling of singles and senior citizens and one-parent households.
"We're the world in miniature here," said George Moices, a 40-year-old assistant warehouse manager. "What we do is we all get up early in the morning and work till we ache and try to get a dollar ahead. More days than we care to admit, we fall a dollar behind."
 
Two From Taiwan
A Furniture Store Anchors the Dream
 Part of the familiar immigrant saga, Chao-Tsun Yen and his wife, Vivian, came to this country in search of opportunity, and like many, they have experienced some of opportunity's heckling nature.
He arrived from Taiwan in 1982, first settling in Brooklyn, with a vision of a business of his own. "If you have the drive, it's good here," he said. "In my country, you need $10,000 to start a small business. Here, you can have $50 and set up a table and sell something. Little by little, you make more."
His first year, he worked part time in a liquor store and did little to bolster his dream. Then he switched to a jewelry store, and things brightened. Five years ago, the couple had a son and, like many other new parents, reasoned that life in the suburbs was the ticket to happiness. They moved to Edison and bought a house.
 
'Business Wasn't So Good'
 For a year, he sold posters and novelties at an outdoor flea market. Then, convinced that he had squirreled away enough, he opened his own furniture store. He called it Steve's Furniture, using the American nickname he adopted.
"Business was good, and then business wasn't so good," he said. "First, the couches and tables sell, then not so much. I put $5,000 into the store, and that is all gone. We couldn't afford the mortgage anymore -- $1,600 a month -- and so we sold the house and I closed down the store."
They moved to Durham Woods -- where monthly rents range from $600 to $800 for the one-and-two bedroom units. He found work as a warehouse manager at a computer company; his wife is an accountant.
"This is just for now," he said. "I'm waiting for the right chance -- maybe next year, or the year after -- and then it will happen. I'm going to bring back Steve's Furniture."
 
Brooklyn Transplants
'A Lot of People Want to Be Like Us'
 An employer relocation drew George Moices and his family to Durham Woods. He and his wife, Suzette, both grew up in Brooklyn. They lived in Midwood as he commuted into Manhattan to his job with Juki, the Japanese sewing machine manufacturer. Then Juki moved to New Jersey, and Mr. Moices commuted. In 1987, the wear of the journey convinced them to move to Edison, where Ms. Moices' father lives.
They chose Building 39 of Durham Woods, which had just been completed. "The rent was the most reasonable of the complexes we looked at," he said. "Everyone was very neighborly. They try to help each other out. We made friends right away. We're all the working class and some professionals. There are some BMW's, Mercedes and Corvettes. To be honest, I don't know how they do it. And then all the Pontiacs and Jeeps and pickup trucks."
 
A Two-Shift Family
 The Moices have three children -- 8, 3 and 17 months. Ms. Moices is a registrar at the emergency room of the John F. Kennedy Hospital in Edison. He gets home by 6; she begins work at 6:30 -- the dual-shift family. "So when she leaves, I take over the kids," Mr. Moices said. "We can't afford a baby sitter. Not with the rates and the amount of kids we have."
"We think about a house. I had some money put away, but I had to use it to solve a financial problem last year. I got backed up on my credit cards, and before I knew it, I'm over my head. My wife wasn't working then. For now, I've cleared my bigger debts and I'm trying to pay my little ones."
He and others already talk of how Edison is getting too crowded as more and more people just like him choose to live here. A condominium development -- Waterford Condominiums -- is under construction around the corner from Durham Woods. And the thicket of traffic continues to intensify.
"When we first moved here, there wasn't much traffic congestion at all," he said. "Now there's a lot. In the morning, just getting out of the complex can take time. A number of us have complained about trying to get a light at the exit to the complex. When it snows, it can take hours to get to the store. What can I say? I guess a lot of people want to be like us."
 
Dreamers From India
'On the Treadmill' To Work and Back
 Preeti Sanghavi, who's 25, and Amolika Tikekar, 26, are part of the young guard of Durham Woods. They were friends in India who both immigrated here in the late 1980's and now share an apartment in Building 23.
Ms. Sanghavi got a job about a year ago as a systems analyst for a consulting concern in Edison. Attracted by the complex's neat, spacious look, she moved into Durham Woods. Her husband is completing his doctorate in Pittsburgh, and she plans to move soon to join him.
 
'Safe and Pleasant'
 Ms. Tikekar, who is single, went to school in Michigan and stayed with her brother until she found a job three months ago in Oakland, N.J., as a data base operator. Ms. Sanghavi invited her to be her roommate.
"We like it," Ms. Tikekar said, "It's been safe and pleasant. But we really haven't met a lot of people. Like a lot of others here, we leave early to go to work and get back late. We're running on the treadmill."
Ms. Sanghavi said, "I like the mix a lot here. I don't like a concentration of one kind of people, and we certainly don't have that here. But we're really focused on working. Up early, off to work, back late, into bed. The American life. Sweet, huh?"
 
Hailing From Alabama
'A Nice Little Life' In Relative Safety
 Michael Adeyemo, who is 32, thought life would be "more lively" in New Jersey than in his previous home in Alabama, and he thought that even before the explosion.
For four years, he has lived with his wife, Florence, who is studying finance in college, and their three children in Building 46. He came to this country from Nigeria in 1984, bent on a good education and a career. He studied at Jacksonville State University in Alabama, then set his sights on New Jersey, where job opportunities were more plentiful. In short order, he found a position as an accountant for Merrill Lynch in Princeton and took a two-bedroom apartment in Durham Woods.
"I think it's a very nice community," he said. "It's like you have all these different societies together. You have China and India and Japan and America all together."
 
Crime Is Infrequent
 Like many residents of the complex, he pointed to the security, the quiet, the amenities like the swimming pool, tennis court and playground for the kids. Crime has visited Durham Woods infrequently. A few apartments have been burglarized, and some cars have had radios stolen. However, residents said that matters like vandalism, drugs and teen-agers armed with guns are unknown at the development.
"It's all about work for me," he said. "There are jobs here. It's very central. It's very convenient to a lot of places. With a family, you want all the conveniences, and we have that here. It's a nice little life."
 
New Jersey Bred
Counting Pennies, Saving for a House
 Still, not many residents of Durham Woods come here expecting to let their roots grow too deep. Rather, they look on the complex as a temporary way station on the way to owning a house. They know, of course, that the wait can get weary. But they count their pennies and they hope.
"Yeah, that's what we're doing, waiting on a home," said Steve Farnum. He is a shaggy-haired, 29-year-old receiving clerk at the Overlook Hospital in Summit. He lives in Building 10 with his fiancee, Donna Steffen, 35, a clerk and typist for an insurance agency. That is, they did live there. Building 10 was one of the eight that burned to the ground, taking with it the material possessions of their lives, including a 35-inch television that they had just bought. Among the people interviewed for this article, they alone lost everything in the blast and fire.
They have been together for 10 years, she promoting marriage, he hemming and hawing. When her father died in November, he felt saddened that he would never have the chance to attend their wedding. On Christmas, they were engaged.
In one important respect, the engagement will save them an appreciable amount of money. They had no insurance on their possessions until two months ago, when they bought some largely to protect Ms. Steffen's engagement ring.
Both of them grew up in New Jersey and have always lived in the state. Five years ago a friend who lived in Durham Woods recommended the place, and they liked what they saw. "We got a one-bedroom with an upstairs loft," Mr. Farnum said. "It's really something. I had never seen a two-floor apartment before."
Their lives have had their tribulations. His vision began deteriorating, and last year a rare disease was diagnosed that has left him legally blind. He held a paper right in front of him. "I can't see that," he said. He can no longer drive. Ms. Steffen takes him to and from work.
Planning their wedding has been consuming. "We've been saving for a real nice wedding, something that will cost like $20,000," he said. "We're only going to do this once. There are too many divorces. My parents were one of them. But that won't be us, I'll tell you that. We're marrying for good."
And, of course, the house. "We were going to stay here for a while, save and buy a house," he said. "We are looking forward to something better. Isn't that life? Waiting on something better."

LOAD-DATE: March 27, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH 

GRAPHIC: Photo: A woman whose home was destroyed in the gas explosion last week being comforted by a friend yesterday in Edison, N.J. (Sam D'Amico for The New York Times)

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March 27, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Residents in Project Stand Up to a Gang

BYLINE: By DENNIS HEVESI  

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

LENGTH: 908 words

What struck the detectives, beyond the apparent viciousness of a group of youngsters, was that residents of the Glenwood Houses in Canarsie, including some of the older folks, were not going to take it, were willing to come forward and bear witness.
From their windows, or across the greens of the 20-building housing project off Ralph Avenue and Farragut Road, they saw the gang members -- none older than 16 and one only 12 -- stalking and mugging their victims, growing more violent each time. 
 More than half a dozen residents called 911, said Detective Lieut. Joseph Cardinale of the housing police. "We didn't have to wait for them to tell us they were terrified," he said. "The tenants, lots of the tenants, got involved, calling up and saying this kid did this. We had several eyeballs who said they knew the guys."
 
'We're Doing Our Part'
 "People weren't just sitting back and letting it happen," the lieutenant added. "They were telling us, 'Look, you do your part, we're doing our part.' It's what community policing is all about."
On Tuesday, the housing police announced that five boys -- who had named themselves Bebe's Gang after an animated movie called "Bebe's Kids" -- had been arrested and charged with attacking 12 elderly women over a three-week period, including, on March 15, a 70-year-old whose skull and hip were fractured. That woman remains in critical condition at Brookdale Hospital.
Because of their ages, the police would identify only one of the boys, Arthur Roberts, 16, of 349 St. John's Place, Crown Heights. Only two of the boys, Lieutenant Cardinale said, actually lived in the Glenwood Houses.
The lieutenant would not, of course, identify any of the witnesses. But the resolve of those who came forward was reflected among some of the elderly this week at the Glenwood Senior Citizens Center.
 
'I'd Go for Them'
 "Absolutely, I'd participate and call," said Ina Yudovin, 65, shielding a hand of poker from the view of her friends around the card table. "If I was seeing them do this, I'd go for them," Mrs. Yudovin said of the attackers. "I'm not afraid."
The Glenwood Houses, with its 1,200 apartments, is an integrated, working-class project that also is home to many elderly people who have lived there for years.
"Everybody's coming home from work; they have the same routine," Lieutenant Cardinale said. "And these kids were brazen, or stupid enough, to do most of their attacks around dusk."
The movie that gave the gang its name is about "a bunch of kids that get into mischief," Lieutenant Cardinale said. "But these kids were far from that; they really took it to the extreme."
 
Gang Called a 'Wolf Pack'
 The lieutenant called the gang "a wolf pack." He explained: "You know how a wolf sits and waits for the lamb?"
"Usually the people were returning from the stores on Ralph Avenue, or Glenwood Road," he continued, "and they would follow the victim to the entrance of the building, yoke her from behind, punch her, throw her down. But as they went along they got worse." The muggers took between $4 and $500 from the victims.
On March 19, based on information provided by witnesses, Detective Brian Lavin and Officer Chris Hein set up a stakeout at the project.
"They see the kids following a woman," Lieutenant Cardinale said. "They could see a couple of them maneuvering, and then they observed a gun. So these kids went from strong-arming to outright knocking them down and, now, carrying a gun."
 
Five Boys Are Arrested
 Two boys were arrested that night, and two nights later, three others were taken into custody. "There were lineups; a couple of victims and witnesses identified these kids," the lieutenant said.
Several youngsters from the project voiced disapproval of the attackers. A 12-year-old boy on his way to track practice at his school, identifying himself only as John, said he knew some of the arrested boys.
"It's no good, but that's what they do," John said. "At least this 12-year-old, maybe he'll behave himself now."
Dwain Bredwood, 17, offered a succinct view of the muggers: "They're crazy."
Still, the series of attacks created anxiety among residents of Glenwood Houses, particularly the elderly. One woman, who would identify herself only as Rosalie, said: "I've been here 28 years; it's never been like this. Used to be a kid walked on the grass and got a $5 fine."
 
'We Don't Want to Take This'
 Alan Weisberg, director of the Canarsie Neighborhood Development Corporation, which operates four centers for the elderly, including the one at Glenwood, said: "We have a full complement of support services for the seniors: meals on wheels, home care, transportation, cultural programs. And then this happens, and it creates uneasiness."
But some would not succumb. Belle Alpert, 75, a retired bookkeeper, was adamant: "By all means, we don't want to take this kind of thing. Believe me, I'd be the first one. If I see something out the window, I yell. You know that commercial where they scream out the window, "I don't want to take it any more'? That's what we feel around here."
And Martin Lawrence Klier, 60, a retired floor coverer who lives in the neighborhood, said the witnesses "did the right thing."
"I would tell," said Mr. Klier, sitting with two friends at a cement chess table in a playground at the housing project. "It's not squealing. It's doing some justice. Who the hell are these kids?"

LOAD-DATE: March 27, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH 

GRAPHIC: Map shows the location of Glenwood Houses.

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March 27, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

NEIGHBORHOOD REPORT: RIVERDALE;
At Home for the Aged, Lessons in Living

BYLINE: By GARRY PIERRE-PIERRE 

SECTION: Section 13;  Page 7;  Column 1;  The City Weekly Desk 

LENGTH: 405 words

For nine high school dropouts, the Hebrew Home for the Aged, a complex of eight well-tended buildings nestled amid rolling woodlands along the Hudson, is more than a nursing home. It's a chance to make good.
"I like this program," said Christina Manso, 17, who enrolled in the program last October. "Without it, I probably would be at home taking care of my baby." 
 And Lauren Shipsky, 20, said: "They're teaching me a lot. They're giving me a chance to work with the residents. I am part of the team."
Ms. Manso and Ms. Shipsky are part of the first wave of students, most from the South Bronx, who qualified for a special vocational education program sponsored by the home and the Board of Education.
The new 18-month program is one of the newest of 50 throughout the city that provide technical education in a nontraditional learning environment. About 700 students at other sites are studying building maintenance, food services and other subjects.
For some students, the home -- with its collection of more than 3,300 artworks, including pieces by Picasso, Andy Warhol and Alexander Calder -- is like an enormous private school, with about 900 grandparents.
"I used to think that the old people would be in bed and not talk," Ms. Manso said. "But now I realized that I have many things in common with them. We talked about makeup and dresses. One of them told me she was a model."
Last Wednesday morning the students took their daily walk to class down the first-floor corridor of the main building, passing an exhibit of lifesize photographs of immigrants at the turn of the century.
The students are working for their general equivalency diploma and from 8 A.M. to 1 P.M. receive a combination of classroom work like writing, literature, arts, math and social studies. For the rest of the school day, they get hands-on experience in their chosen field of health care.
Residents serve as mentors and tutors, so the students -- most of them black -- receive practical lessons in ethnic and racial relationships. But the biggest challenge for the students has been age, and it is one the home's administrators feel certain progress has been made.
Ms. Manso strolled through the nursing home Wednesday afternoon, talking with residents. "Hi! Mr. Katz," she said, holding her hands out to Harry Katz, 86, a wheelchair-bound resident. "I'm doing fine, sweetheart," he replied.   GARRY PIERRE-PIERRE

LOAD-DATE: April 2, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Christina Manso, a student in a vocational education program, visiting with Harry Katz at the Hebrew Home for the Aged inthe Bronx. (Ruby Washington/The New York Times)

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March 27, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

COPING;
Pedestrians' Plea: Please Curb Your Wheels

BYLINE: By ROBERT LIPSYTE 

SECTION: Section 13;  Page 1;  Column 3;  The City Weekly Desk 

LENGTH: 875 words

ELENA PAPA found a new cause last September a few seconds after she stepped off a city bus and onto the sidewalk at 82d Street and Bay Parkway, a block from her Bensonhurst home. She remembers thinking how nice the bus driver had been to drop her off at the corner instead of at the official bus stop. Next she remembers feeling as though she was sliding into second base on her nose. A bicycle rider had struck her from behind and slammed her face-first into the concrete.
"If I wasn't in such great shape I would have been killed or at least broken my hip," Mrs. Papa said the other day. "But ever since my heart attack I've gone to cardio-rehab twice a week at Victory Memorial Hospital in Bay Ridge, and all that walking and lifting and stretching saved my life. I was on my way back from the hospital when it happened." 
 It was not a hit-and-run. In fact, the cyclist, a young man in his 20's who had apparently been racing another cyclist along the sidewalk, stopped and kept repeating that he was sorry until Mrs. Papa, now on her feet, waved him away. As it turned out, except for a broken pinkie, soreness and a face that resembled a Halloween mask almost until Halloween, Mrs. Papa was not damaged.
"But I think about what might have happened to an elderly person," said Mrs. Papa, a 72-year-old retired parochial-school teacher. "So I became a committee of one to remind politicians and police officers and bicycle riders that it is illegal to ride on the sidewalks. Most of my life I tried to help young people. Since the accident I am trying to help old people."
Mrs. Papa's story will fatten the files of two City Councilmen from Manhattan, Charles Millard and Andrew Eristoff, who have each submitted bills calling for stricter enforcement of bike laws and more severe penalties for violations by commercial riders.
The story will make Charles Komanoff, the bike-riding founder of Transportation Alternatives, wince. He wants to defuse the growing pedestrian anger at people who ride on the sidewalk -- most of them, according to Mr. Komanoff and others, Chinese and Mexican men delivering takeout food -- because it diverts attention from the crowded, chaotic, cratered streets that cause the problem in the first place.
The jostle for space between the wheeled and the unwheeled begins in the gutter. Buses and trucks bully one another and bully taxi cabs, which bully the cars of people who would be on buses if buses weren't so slow or on subways if subways weren't in a hole that gives the impression, not always untrue, of danger and dirt.
All the big wheels bully bicyclists, the brave commuters, the dashing messengers, the bringers of food. It seems reasonable (although it is illegal if you are more than 12 years old) to seek the security of the sidewalk and bully pedestrians. In the kind of urban irony that makes irony banal, it is the curb cuts for wheelchairs that make it so easy for the clunky old delivery bikes to mount the sidewalks.
Having just outlined a mature, fair-minded overview, I now admit to flashes of fury at being bullied on the sidewalk by someone lugging glutinous clots of MSG to yuppies too lazy to cook. I have yelled at deliverymen and chased them and once shouldered one off his bike when he tried to edge me into the gutter. It made my day.
Mr. Millard's 1993 bill, reintroduced this session, would give the police the right to confiscate a bicycle being ridden on the sidewalk for commercial purposes. That bill also mandates penalties for motorists who violate a bike lane and for cabbies who run red lights.
Mr. Komanoff, who originally supported the spirit of that bill, is uneasy at the idea of confiscation. At least take the food before the bike, he says. Mr. Komanoff says he has stopped and chastised hundreds of sidewalk riders and usually been brushed off. He has talked to Chinese restaurant managers about building good will by advertising that their delivery people ride only in the streets. So far, he has met only with politeness. He thinks an organized campaign aimed at restaurant trade associations might work.
Mr. Eristoff, punched in the face while campaigning last year by a bike rider he had asked to leave the sidewalk, has introduced a bill that would penalize the rider's employer. A person injured by a commercial delivery bicyclist would have the right to sue for $1,000 in punitive damages.
Mrs. Papa, who belongs to the Bensonhurst Council for Senior Citizens, among other civic and religious groups, is in favor of any such legislation, although she is not so sure it will be enforced. Police officers on foot usually can't run down a bike, especially knowing that serving a Criminal Court summons on someone who doesn't carry identification will probably be a futile exercise in exercise and paper work.
"I always tell bicycle riders that they shouldn't be on the sidewalk," said Mrs. Papa, "but I say it nicely because I believe you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. Also, I don't want to get punched.
"Sometimes they listen to me and sometimes they ignore me. I was most successful right after the accident. I would say, 'Please don't ride on the sidewalk,' and then point to my face while it was still a mess."

LOAD-DATE: April 2, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Drawing

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March 29, 1994, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

Medicare Claim May Be Rejected, It's Found, Depending on the State

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

SECTION: Section D;  Page 23;  Column 1;  National Desk 

LENGTH: 653 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, March 28

Federal investigators said today that they had found huge variations in the approval and denial of Medicare claims for the same services in different states. And they said there were no obvious reasons for the disparities.
Auditors from the General Accounting Office, an investigative arm of Congress, examined claims that Medicare rejected on the ground that the services were unnecessary. 
 Representative Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, who ordered the audit, said, "This evidence has great implications for the debate about national health care reform.
"As part of health care reform," he said, "Congress is considering a standard national benefits package for all Americans. But the new report shows that enacting legislation is not enough to insure uniform coverage. Medicare coverage seems to depend more on where the elderly live than on their medical needs."
 
Public Claims, Private Judges
 For doctor's office visits, Medicare denied 4 claims for every 10,000 approved in Northern California, while it denied 97 for every 10,000 approved in Wisconsin.
An older woman whose doctor prescribed a diagnostic mammogram to detect breast cancer was 180 times more likely to have a claim denied in Southern California than in Northern California or in North Carolina, the auditors said.
Likewise, for angioplasty, a technique for opening clogged blood vessels, Medicare denied 1,824 claims as unnecessary for every 10,000 approved in Southern California. Denial rates in North Carolina and Wisconsin were about 300 per 10,000. But in South Carolina and Illinois, Medicare did not reject any claims for this service in 1992.
The report, prepared for a Congressional hearing on Tuesday, highlights a little-known fact about Medicare, the Federal health insurance program for 36 million elderly and disabled people. Claims are reviewed and paid by private insurance companies serving as agents of the Federal Government, and their standards vary from place to place.
 
'A Crazy Quilt'
 In an interview tonight, Mr. Wyden, a co-director of Oregon Gray Panthers, said: "Most people think of Medicare as a Federal program with uniform benefits nationwide. But we are learning that Medicare is really a crazy quilt of separate and dramatically different programs run by 34 private insurance carriers."
The carriers last year reviewed 576 million claims submitted by 780,000 doctors and 136,000 suppliers under Part B of Medicare.
Carol Walton, director of Medicare program operations at the Federal Health Care Financing Administration, said that she had not seen the report by the General Accounting Office. But she said the regional disparities did not necessarily indicate a problem. The disparities, she said, reflect "variations in populations, disease rates and medical practice" in different parts of the country.
Eleanor Chelimsky, a G.A.O. official who supervised the study, suggested several reasons for the disparities. Different carriers use different definitions of what is medically necessary, she said. In addition, she said, medical practice, billing practices and even levels of fraud vary in different parts of the country.
Katy Samiljan of the Medicare Beneficiaries Defense Fund, an advocacy group in New York City, asserted that "Medicare carriers are denying coverage to patients in an arbitrary and irrational manner." As a result, she said, many people in poor health who are living on small fixed incomes do not receive the medical care they need.
Ms. Samiljan said the Government gave Medicare carriers too much discretion to decide whether services were needed. The insurance company employees who review claims for the Government "generally do not have the skills, the time or the medical documentation" needed to make such decisions, she said.
Mr. Wyden said the Government should consider fining Medicare carriers that improperly deny large numbers of claims.

LOAD-DATE: March 29, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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March 29, 1994, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

GAPS IN COVERAGE FOR HEALTH CARE

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

SECTION: Section D;  Page 23;  Column 1;  National Desk 

LENGTH: 726 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, March 28

Twenty-five percent of all Americans were without health insurance some time from February 1990 to September 1992, the Census Bureau said today.
The statistic helps explain the political appeal of President Clinton's proposal to guarantee "health care that can never be taken away." Even people who have health insurance through their employers may lose coverage when they lose or change jobs, the bureau observed. 
 Thus, it said, 60 million Americans, or a quarter of the population outside institutions like prisons or nursing homes, lacked coverage for at least one month during the 32-month period.
In general, adults were more likely to have insurance as they grew older. Robert Bennefield, a statistician at the Census Bureau, said: "Young adults were most vulnerable to lapses in coverage, while the elderly were the least vulnerable. One-half of the people age 18 to 24 spent at least one month without coverage, compared with just 1 percent of older Americans, most of whom are covered by Medicare."
 
'There's No Guarantee'
 Hispanic people were much more likely than blacks or whites to experience a loss or lapse of coverage. Forty-eight percent of Hispanic people were without insurance for at least one month. By contrast, 36 percent of blacks and 24 percent of whites were uninsured for a month or more.
Women were slightly less likely than men to have had gaps in coverage, for two reasons. It was more common for women to be poor and to participate in Medicaid. In addition, a higher proportion of women than men were 65 and over; women were therefore more likely to be enrolled in Medicare.
Joshua M. Wiener, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said: "Thirty-nine million Americans, or 17 percent of the population, lack health insurance at any given time. But the problem affects many more people over a longer period, and the middle class is worried. Many giants of American industry -- I.B.M., Sears, Procter & Gamble -- have laid off thousands of workers. You might have great health insurance now, but there's no guarantee you'll have it in the future because you may lose your job."
In a poll taken by The New York Times earlier this month, people were asked what happened while they were uninsured. About one-third of the uninsured said they had serious medical problems in that time. Another third said they had no serious problems at all. One-third said they had no real problems, but worried a lot.
The Census Bureau said that only 13 percent of full-time workers experienced gaps in health insurance coverage from 1990 to 1992, while 38 percent of those who were unemployed for a month or more had such gaps.
The likelihood of having insurance coverage was closely correlated with a person's income. "Falling below the poverty line increases the odds of losing coverage," the bureau said.
Among people with incomes under the official poverty level, 49 percent were without insurance for a month or more from 1990 to 1992. By contrast, among people with incomes at least four times the poverty level, only 9 percent were uninsured for a month or more. (A family of three was classified as poor if it had income less than $11,521 last year.)
 
Campaign Contributions
 In a separate study, a consumer group reported today that the health and insurance industries had significantly increased campaign contributions to Congressional candidates.
Contributions from January 1993 through January 1994 totaled $11.3 million, up 22 percent from the comparable period of the last election cycle two years ago, said the consumer group, Citizen Action.
Michael Podhorzer, health policy director at Citizen Action, said, "These hefty campaign contributions have helped paralyze Congressional action."
Contributions from doctors and other health care professionals totaled $2.6 million, up 39 percent from the earlier election cycle, Citizen Action said. Contributions from drug companies and manufacturers of medical equipment totaled $1.5 million, up 21 percent.
Mr. Podhorzer said the top contributors in the health and insurance industries were the political action committees of the American Dental Association, which gave $474,847 last year, the American Medical Association ($411,569), the National Association of Life Underwriters ($359,310) and the American Hospital Association ($326,850).

LOAD-DATE: March 29, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Graph: "Not Covered" shows percentage of people without coverage for at least on month from Feb. 1990 to Sept. 1992. (Source: Census Bureau)

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April 1, 1994, Friday, Late Edition - Final

Review/Film Festival;
Black, 12 and Complex: More Than Role Models

BYLINE: By JANET MASLIN 

SECTION: Section C;  Page 6;  Column 2;  Weekend Desk 

LENGTH: 906 words

In addition to being the most commercially viable film to come out of this year's New Directors/New Films series, Boaz Yakin's "Fresh" is likely to be the most controversial. "Fresh" is the story of the title character, an impassive black 12-year-old who is first seen stopping off to visit an elderly couple on his way to school. The woman busily offers him milk and cookies. Fresh delivers her supply of drugs.
Fresh (Sean Nelson) has two important men in his life. One is Esteban (Giancarlo Esposito), the seductive drug dealer who employs him as a courier without realizing that Fresh is actually quite an independent-minded little entrepreneur. The other is Sam (Samuel L. Jackson), Fresh's father, an indigent chess whiz who does what he can to discipline his son. He can't do much. When Sam scolds the boy for casually using the word "nigger," Fresh makes it clear he's not about to take orders from any no-income, chess-playing old man. 
 "Fresh" starts off in such a slow, deliberate style that it initially looks like nothing special, at least in dramatic terms. Is this yet another story of a sensitive young man forced to choose between good and bad role models? No, it is not: it's much more complicated, thanks to the film's portrait of Fresh as a deeply troubling character. This isn't the usual pre-teen innocent, nor even the standard bad seed. This is a seemingly decent kid who can sit there eating a candy bar while other people die.
As "Fresh" examines the stock ideas that usually shape such stories, it ponders the question of how fully accountable Fresh is for his behavior. The film presents an ultimately devastating panorama of Fresh's problems, to the point where his actions can only be understood in a larger context. The warring drug dealers in his community are immensely powerful, which makes it clear why Fresh has learned to get along with them. His home life, with the 11 cousins who share his aunt's apartment, offers nothing. And the violence Fresh observes is terrible. Mr. Yakin doesn't include many violent episodes in this film, but the ones he stages are made so meaningful that their impact is brutalizingly intense.
Since Mr. Yakin is white, there are bound to be those who question his drug-, violence- and prostitution-filled vision of Fresh's world. But "Fresh" cannot be mistaken for an exploitation film; it earns the right to approach this subject through the obvious thoughtfulness of Mr. Yakin's direction. Deliberately lurid elements are avoided, especially noisy ones; there's a moody, effective score by Stewart Copeland instead of loud music, and the crowded apartment where Fresh lives is as quiet as a library. The film's most brazenly decadent characters, like Mr. Esposito's sinuous Esteban, are still played with intelligence and care.
Even the screenplay's jargon comes in for close examination. Fresh is so numb to racial epithets that he often uses "nigger" when addressing his white friend. This friend is Chuckie (Luis Lantigua), whose big-talking, reckless behavior within the drug culture underscores the value of Fresh's calculating restraint. One of the film's most anguished episodes involves Chuckie's dog, who should have been a pet but is being forced to fight instead. Fresh likes the dog, and he has reason to sympathize with its situation. Because of that, Fresh's last scene with this animal provides the film's most bitterly shocking moment.
Mr. Nelson is often so blank-faced he keeps Fresh's inner thoughts opaque. Backhandedly, that becomes an advantage. Only at the end of the film, as Fresh engineers a staggering set of human chess moves and goes on to acknowledge that his father's lessons have not been lost after all, is this boy's character fully revealed.
Mr. Yakin's pacing seems overly slow at first, but his measured style pays off in a major way. His screenplay has been written with similar care. He has also been inspired enough to hire Adam Holender, the cinematographer whose work on "Midnight Cowboy" apparently stuck in Mr. Yakin's memory. Mr. Holender does a stunning job: he makes "Fresh" extraordinarily handsome, with a sharply sunlit look that brings out the hard edges in its urban landscapes. The subject and visual style could not be more forcefully matched.
"Fresh" features delicate and sympathetic work from both Mr. Esposito and Mr. Jackson, whose fine characterizations say a lot about the originality of this film's vision. N'Bushe Wright makes a sadly affecting appearance as Nicole, Fresh's drug-addicted older sister. Though she seems barely to notice him, she becomes the essential pawn in Fresh's game.
"Fresh" will be shown tonight at 6 and Sunday at 9 P.M. at the Museum of Modern Art as part of the New Directors/New Films series.
 
Fresh
 
Written and directed by Boaz Yakin; director of photography, Adam Holender; edited by Dorian Harris; music by Stewart Copeland; production designer, Dan Leigh; produced by Lawrence Bender and Randy Ostrow; released by Miramax. At the Roy and Niuta Titus Theater 1 in the Museum of Modern Art, 11 West 53d Street, as part of the New Directors/New Films series of the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the museum's department of film and video. Running time: 115 minutes. This film is not rated.
 
Fresh . . . Sean Nelson
Esteban . . . Giancarlo Esposito
Sam . . . Samuel L. Jackson
Nicole . . . N'Bushe Wright
Chuckie . . . Luis Lantigua

LOAD-DATE: April 1, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Sean Nelson. (Miramax Films)

TYPE: Review

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April 3, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Habitats/A Grand Victorian, With Water Damage;
Taking On a Big Job

BYLINE: By TRACIE ROZHON 

SECTION: Section 10;  Page 4;  Column 1;  Real Estate Desk 

LENGTH: 637 words

DRIVING up Ashburton Avenue in Yonkers, past bodegas, auto-parts stores and fast-food outlets, Jeffrey Gardere keeps up a steady stream of badinage, preparing visitors for his new neighborhood and new house.
"Some people look scarier than they are," he says as the car passes a group of baggy-trousered teen-agers strolling down the street in a wide pack. "Their dress is stereotype rap-hip fashion." 
 The car turns up Palisade Avenue, toward his grand but decrepit Victorian Gothic mansion. Pointing to the Manor, a nursing home on the corner, he says to his wife, Deyanira: "Honey, this is where I'll stay after the renovation is over."
Deyanira Gardere, whose family is from the Dominican Republic, favors him with a wide smile. "Honey, when the renovation is over, we're going to have a very big party."
Dr. Gardere, a psychologist specializing in treating children, wants to establish a mental health center in the basement of his new house. "No drugs administered," he says. "That's the last thing they need around here."
"It was a calculated risk -- to buy in this particular neighborhood and own a mansion or to buy a smaller house in a fantastic neighborhood," he says as the car pulls up to a house that looks like something out of the Addams Family. Dr. Gardere says so himself and adds, "I do think Deyanira looks like Morticia, don't you?"
The 19-room hipped-roof stucco house, known locally as the Smith- Collins House, has Victorian gingerbread trim over the dormers and a balustraded square tower. Built in the 1850's and substantially remodeled several decades later, it sits on a hill overlooking the Hudson River, a somewhat tattered remnant of the glory days of Yonkers.
"What's this here? Somebody's broken in," Dr. Gardere says, dashing over to the side entrance, sprayed with graffiti. A glass panel in the door has been smashed and the window above the door is open, a shredded white cotton curtain waving in the wind.
As Dr. and Mrs. Gardere survey the damage, an elderly man picks up trash in the backyard. "He lives at the Manor and comes up here and cleans, just for something to do," Dr. Gardere says as the man waves hello.
The magnificent house was not always a wreck. The Garderes first saw it three years ago when they were looking throughout the five boroughs and beyond, telling realtors they wanted a "mini-mansion."
At that time, the mansion had been vacated by a lawyer who had had his practice in the offices downstairs. He had run into financial problems, according to the realtor who is selling the house and to Dr. Gardere, and the bank took over.
Disaster struck when whoever was responsible for securing the house for the winter failed to shut off the water. The pipes burst, flooding the house, bringing down parts of ceilings and -- most damaging -- buckling the fine old oak strip floors.
On a visit two weeks ago, the still-melting snow had leaked through the roof and was dripping into the sunroom, a beautifully lighted room at the back of the house, overlooking the river. Raccoons had gnawed through plaster ceilings in the attic and run amok on the top floor, where there were traps set.
Because of the flood and the ensuing damage, the Garderes were able to buy the house for less than they had originally offered. Just after it was taken over by the bank the asking price was $400,000. The Garderes offered $275,000, which was not accepted. Then the pipes burst and they came to see it again. They were set to buy the house last week for $138,000, with a contractor lined up to restore it for $115,000.
"It broke my heart to see it this way," Mrs. Gardere said, as she surveyed the damage, "and it's very scary to take on this big a job. We weren't even married when we saw this house, and now, two kids later, we're finally buying it."

LOAD-DATE: April 3, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photos: Jeffrey and Deyanira Gardere in the house they bought in Yonkers. (Chris Maynard for The New York Times)

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April 3, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Older People and the Need for Assistance

BYLINE: By PENNY SINGER 

SECTION: Section 13WC;  Page 11;  Column 1;  Westchester Weekly Desk 

LENGTH: 1317 words

IF we live long enough, many of us will fit the profile of an older person: living alone, independent, with mental faculties intact but having a need for stimulation and possibly requiring some physical assistance to perform routine chores.
Now there is help for older people who want to remain independent but yearn to live richer lives. Selfhelp Community Services, a 58-year-old nonprofit agency, has started a household-manager program to bridge the gap between companionship and traditional home care, said Elizabeth N. Radow, the program's director. 
 "The first household-manager program was opened in White Plains last September to provide services to help improve the quality of aging residents of Westchester," Ms. Radow said. "A similar program was opened in Manhattan in November."
The population of Westchester is getting older. Quoting 1990 census figures, Ms. Radow said, "There are 33,400 people older than 65 listed as living alone in Westchester. And the number of people 85 and older was 14,104, which represents 35.9 percent growth over the 1980 census." The household-manager program, she said, is a logical extension of Selfhelp's existing services for older people.
 
Giving Something in Return
 Selfhelp Community Services, she said, was begun in 1936 by refugees from Nazi Germany to help other refugees find jobs, homes and schools in American communities.
"Over the years, Selfhelp's programs were expanded, and services were extended to the community at large," Ms. Radow said. This came about "because of the strong desire of those who once were refugees to return something to everyone in the community for the support they received when they first came to the United States."
Today, Selfhelp Community Services is one of the major nonprofit geriatric and home-care social agencies in the New York City area, offering programs at six centers for the elderly, which they operate, and four apartment houses, which they own and operate in Queens, in addition to offering services to individuals in their own homes. The average age of those in the apartments is 80.
Some of the Selfhelp programs are offered free to Holocaust survivors, but other programs, like the new household-manager program, are offered on a fee basis. Selfhelp receives financial support from U.J.A.-Federation and other philanthropic agencies along with donations and government funds for certain programs, Ms. Radow said, adding that Selfhelp's overhead costs are among the lowest in the field of elder care.
 
Trained Companions Offered
 Regarding the household-manager program, Ms. Radow said it is a fee-for-service program priced at $16 an hour during the week with a minimum of two hours. "But most all of the fee, $10 plus $2 for Social Security and unemployment, goes to the employee," she said. "The remainder, $4, goes to offset our overhead costs. We haven't reached the break-even stage yet, but we hope that over time we will be able to sustain ourselves."
What the household manager program provides are trained companions who deliver a variety of services to people in their own homes.
"Because the success of the program is largely dependent on the caliber of the companion, companions are chosen very carefully," Ms. Radow said. "They can be student nurses, free-lance writers, homemakers, office workers, retired executives -- but all of them have the ability to do what may be required of them, which can include such things as reading aloud and discussing current events, assisting with paying bills, walking a dog or shopping, preparing and serving lunch to a bridge club. However, one prerequisite is that the companion has to own and drive a car. In Westchester, especially, what many people need is transportation to stores, to see the doctor or even to the theater."
Ms. Radow, a real estate lawyer, has been a member of the New York State Bar Association special committee on seniors and has published a report on housing for the elderly. She was a member of Selfhelp's executive board when she was chosen to head the household-management program.
"I was enthusiastic about taking the job because I feel that this is an exceptional, unusual home-care service, and as far as I know there is nothing like it in the area," she said. "I do the interviewing myself," she added, explaining that candidates' backgrounds and references are checked thoroughly before the applicants are sent to Selfhelp's Guthery Institute in Manhattan where they take a 40-hour certification course in personal care.
 
'I Saw the Difficult Time'
 Cynthia M. Brill of Thornwood, one of the first people hired as a companion, formerly worked as an office manager in a family business.
"It was my father's company, and after he sold it and retired, I saw the difficult time and loneliness he was experiencing before he passed away," Mrs. Brill said. "It made me realize that many older people really could use something else, and that made me very receptive to becoming part of the household management program."
Mrs. Brill, who has found it more fulfilling to work one-on-one with people than in an office, said: "Every case is different. For instance, I drive one woman who broke her shoulder in a fall on the ice this winter to her physical therapist three times a week. I also walk her dog, take her to the grocery store and do whatever tasks in and around the house are necessary. And for an older client, whose eyesight is bad, I go in twice a week to read to her. She loves to know what's going on and is so eager to talk about things. We discussed the Tonya Harding affair in detail, and now I'm reading her Bette Davis's autobiography, which she seems to enjoy immensely."
One of Mrs. Brill's clients, a woman who broke her arm and agreed to be interviewed only on the condition of anonymity, said: "Cindy is a treasure. It is such a help for me to have her here. She is like a good friend."
Myra Doniger, who lives in Greenwich, has an elderly mother-in-law who lives in Purchase, and she, too, is enthusiastic about the household-manager program.
"My mother-in-law has a housekeeper, so our concern was not so much for her physical care, but it was our feeling that because she had very little mental stimulation the quality of her life was sadly diminished," Mrs. Doniger said. "She was always such an active, independent woman, who was constantly on the go, that when we heard about the companion program we decided to give it a try."
Just having someone to read the newspaper aloud, Mrs. Doniger said, has made a noticeable difference in her mother-in-law's life.
"Now that she has company, she seems much more animated and happier. What do they read? Mainly the society pages of The New York Times, especially the marriages, the charity affairs and, oh, then the obituaries. But it's more than companionship that Selfhelp provides. Companions are trained to be observant and to contact us if they spot any physical change in my mother-in-law that we should know about. And that is very reassuring."
 
Cost Sharing
 Too often, older people become homebound when they are unable to drive, Ms. Radow said. "Having transportation available helps them lead fuller lives," she said. "For example, if a woman wants to have her friends over for lunch and bridge, the companion will not only call for the friends and take them back home, but shop, prepare the lunch, clean up, everything. And if four friends share the cost of having the companion, each pays $6.50 an hour."
And for two people who want to go shopping or perhaps to the theater together, the fee is $10.50 an hour for each, she said.
"It's often the children of our clients who seek out and pay for our services," she said. "They feel that by helping their parents stay independent, they are giving them a great gift."
For more information, Selfhelp's telephone number is 684-1200.

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April 5, 1994, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

Medicare Paying Doctors 59% of Insurers' Rate, Panel Finds

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

SECTION: Section A;  Page 16;  Column 3;  National Desk 

LENGTH: 928 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, April 4

Medicare, the Federal health insurance program for the elderly, pays doctors only 59 percent of what private insurance companies pay, and this gap may "compromise access to care for Medicare beneficiaries," a Federal advisory commission said today.
The gap has increased in the last five years, and President Clinton's health plan could widen it further, said the panel, the Physician Payment Review Commission. In 1989, Medicare paid doctors 68 percent as much as private insurers paid. 
 The 13-member commission, created in 1986, advises Congress on payment of doctors under Medicare and Medicaid, which together serve more than 65 million people. Recommendations of the commission are taken seriously by Congress, which has approved many of its past suggestions.
Judith N. Brown, chairwoman of the American Association of Retired Persons, said: "When retirees move into a new area, they often have difficulty finding a physician who will take them. It's becoming more difficult to find doctors who will take people if they're on Medicare."
 
Long Viewed as Inadequate
 Medicare has always been less generous than private insurers in paying doctors. But Government data show that Medicare was paying 85 percent as much as private insurers in 1970's.
Howard B. Shapiro, director of public policy at the American College of Physicians, which represents 80,000 internists, said the trend documented by the commission was worrisome. "Medicare payment levels are beginning to approach Medicaid payment levels," which have long been viewed as inadequate, he said.
Doctors' fees under Medicaid, the Federal-state program for low-income people, vary widely from state to state. On the average, the commission said, Medicaid pays doctors 47 percent of what private insurers pay.
Medicaid payments to doctors have increased in the last few years, mainly because of a Federal law that forced states to raise payments for pediatric and obstetric services.
 
A Widening Gap
 "Physicians continue to serve new Medicare patients," the commission said. But it added, "The gap between Medicare payments and those of private insurers is widening," and these disparities may reduce access to care for some patients, as doctors take patients with private insurance in preference to Medicare beneficiaries. Black, Hispanic and disabled people already report difficulties getting care under Medicare, the panel said.
The gap between Medicare and private insurance is partly a result of the Government's success in slowing the growth of Medicare spending for doctors' services. Such spending rose 4.8 percent a year from 1989 to 1993, as against 12.1 percent a year from 1980 to 1989. In recent years, private insurers have allowed much larger increases in doctors' fees than Medicare permitted.
The commission said that stringent limits on Medicare payments proposed by President Clinton would widen the gap, so that by the year 2000, Medicare would pay doctors only 43 percent to 52 percent of what private insurers pay.
 
Ups and Downs of Fees
 In its report to Congress, the commission also made these points:
*A Medicare fee schedule that took effect in 1992 has redistributed doctors' income. Payments per service increased 17 percent for family doctors and general practitioners, but only 2 percent for internists. For surgeons, payment rates dropped 8 percent.
*Medicare pays doctors 54 percent of what commercial insurance companies pay and 69 percent of the fees paid by Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans.
*The volume of doctors' services for each Medicare beneficiary increased, on the average, about 50 percent from 1986 to 1993.
 
Variations in Payments
 Dr. John M. Eisenberg, chairman of the commission, said that some of the increase occurred because of new technology and was "definitely appropriate." For example, he said, doctors are performing more endoscopy procedures, to screen patients for colon cancer, and more angioplasty procedures, using small balloons to open up coronary arteries.
The study found huge variations in Medicaid payments to doctors in various states. In New York, New Jersey and Rhode Island, it said, Medicaid fee levels are about half the national average. In Alaska, Arizona and Wyoming, Medicaid fees are at least 25 percent above the national average. In Connecticut, Medicaid payments to doctors are about the same as the national average.
Comparison of Medicaid fees in 1990 and 1993 shows a mixed picture. Payments to doctors in West Virginia, which had been among the lowest in the country, nearly tripled and now match the national average. Fees in seven other states -- Alaska, Connecticut, Kentucky, Mississippi, Montana, New Hampshire and Washington -- increased by 30 percent or more in this period. But fees in California, Indiana, Massachusetts and South Carolina declined slightly from 1990 to 1993.
 
Concern Over Proposals
 The commission welcomed efforts by Mr. Clinton and members of Congress to guarantee health insurance for all Americans. But it expressed concern about the complexity of proposals for regional health insurance purchasing groups, or alliances.
Instead, the commission urged Congress to create a national alliance, which would offer consumers a variety of health plans. The plans would include one that is run by the Government, like Medicare, and pays doctors a separate fee for each service performed.
This public plan would guarantee that low-income people have access to a full range of doctors, and it could compete with private plans, the commission said.

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April 6, 1994, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Looking Beyond Family to Aid the Elderly

BYLINE: By ESTHER B. FEIN 

SECTION: Section A;  Page 1;  Column 2;  Metropolitan Desk 

LENGTH: 1797 words

Beverly Wagner has logged hundreds of hours on the telephone, flown regularly from Michigan to New York, and missed dozens of days of work, all trying to arrange care for her 94-year-old aunt, who lives in Manhattan and is losing the ability to care for herself.
After failing to persuade her aunt to move from her apartment of 50 years near Lincoln Center into her lakeside house in Michigan, Mrs. Wagner finally hired Fine and Newcombe Associates, a geriatric guidance and family counseling service in Manhattan. Fine and Newcombe is one of hundreds of companies that have sprung up over the last several years to help people coordinate and monitor the affairs of aging relatives who do not live nearby. 
 In the past, without local people to look out for them, the elderly have often been forced prematurely into nursing homes or made to move in with relatives in distant cities where people and geography are unfamiliar.
But these days, many who must minister to elderly relatives from a distance are turning to referral services that provide information about care of the elderly, and to geriatric care managers who, for a fee, will shoulder many of the tasks families usually take on.
The company Mrs. Wagner hired has arranged for a daily meal delivery for her aunt, found a housekeeper who comes twice a week to clean, shop and accompany her to doctors' appointments, and sends a social worker weekly to make sure everything is running well. If there is an emergency -- a phone that goes unanswered, a middle-of-the-night fall -- they respond.
"It has saved my life and my family life," said Mrs. Wagner, a nurse in Onekama, Mich. She paid the company an initial consultation fee of $150, and now pays the company $65 an hour, for a monthly average of about $100, none of which is reimbursed by insurance. The housekeeper is paid by Mrs. Wagner separately.
"I was spending so much time and money between the travel and the day-to-day calling that I finally had to take a leave of absence," she said. "If I wasn't physically there on one of my two-week stretches visiting her, then I was mentally involved. It took up my work days. It made for a bad relationship with my husband. It was really stressful and the distance just made it an awful, impossible situation."
 
Older and Independent
 Families, employers, governments and social-service agencies in the New York region and elsewhere face an explosion of challenges caring for an aging population, a population often reluctant to leave homes they are attached to, either to live in nursing homes or even to move in with family.
This growing elderly population's desire for independence, coupled with the mobility of the American workforce, has left millions of people like Mrs. Wagner scrambling to arrange for assistance to aging relatives who live far away.
"Adult children trying to do everything are getting overwhelmed and run down," said Kathy Lampe, manager of the employee assistance program at Philip Morris, which offers employees a referral and information service for problems in caring for the elderly. "And when you're not there, what can you do? Get the Broward County Yellow Pages? Trying to stitch together a plan of care when you're here and they're there is nearly impossible."
 
A New Partnership
 Executives at Philip Morris noticed several years ago that more and more employees were asking for assistance with problems caring for the elderly. In response, the company joined American Express, J.P. Morgan & Company and the New York City Department for Aging to start the Partnership for Eldercare, a nonprofit company hired by businesses to advise workers about caring for aging relatives.
The Partnership has contracts with 10 companies and serves almost 700 people a year, said Barbara B. Lepis, the director. At least 30 percent of those people are looking after a relative or friend long-distance, Ms. Lepis said, and the percentage is even higher when counting people within New York City, who may live more than an hour from an elderly relative.
"We've been operating since 1988, but this last year has been a crisis of growth," Ms. Lepis said. "The impact of elder care, especially at a distance, is one of the most critical issues companies are facing now."
 
Taking Their Leave, by Law
 Under the Federal Family and Medical Leave Act enacted last August, companies with 50 or more employees must allow their workers 12 weeks a year of unpaid leave with continuing health-care benefits and job security to care for a parent, spouse or child. Personnel executives at many companies said that in the short time the law has been in effect, many employees have taken the leave to care for aging relatives in distant cities.
Andrew E. Scharlach, a gerontology expert at the University of California at Berkeley, said care for the elderly will soon be a bigger problem than child care for most working people. But while child care is fairly predictable, he said, the problems of caring for the aged vary widely and are increasingly complicated by distance.
Over the last decade, the National Association of Professional Geriatric Care Managers, an organization based in Tucson, Ariz., has promoted quality care and services to the elderly. The organization, started in 1985, has seen its ranks swell from 30 members to more than 550 nationwide. "They go from the small, home-based business to major corporations, companies who have everything in house," said Jihane Rohrbacher, an association spokeswoman. The majority are hired by people whose elderly relatives live out-of-town.
For a fee ranging from $40 to $150 an hour, case managers, who are usually nurses or social workers, will do everything from assessing the needs of elderly people to shepherding them to day care programs and doctors appointments, signing them up for meal programs, hiring and checking up on home health aides, and stocking the refrigerator with healthy foods.
Eva Levine was living alone in an Upper West Side apartment and having trouble managing her affairs when her nephew, Jack Blechner, who lives in West Hartford, hired Fine and Newcombe Associates, the Manhattan company run by Claudia Fine and Nick Newcombe. At first, Mr. Newcombe arranged for a part-time companion and looked in on Ms.  Levine weekly. Then she fell, was hospitalized and needed closer attention.
Mr. Newcombe arranged for Ms. Levine to move into an assisted living senior residence in her old neighborhood. He continued to visit weekly, but she no longer needed an aide. Then last summer, she was hospitalized with pneumonia and when she was released, she needed 24-hour care.
Dr. Blechner never had to rush to Manhattan for these emergencies. The company monitored Ms. Levine, who is 93, and its fees varied with the level of service. At the height of her illness, the monthly cost came to about $1,000; at her healthiest, it came to about $100. Her bills have averaged between $300 to $700, which the company says is fairly typical.
 
'A Surrogate Family'
 Phyllis Lufschtein, a high school librarian in Rye, N.Y., says she thinks of the geriatric-care manager who looks after her late husband's stepmother in Lauder Hills, Fla., as "a surrogate family." The stepmother-in-law, Hilda Rosenstein, has Alzheimer's disease and was forgetting to take her medication, failing to pay bills, and letting her insurance expire.
Mrs. Lufschtein hired Rona Bartelstone in Fort Lauderdale to size up the situation. Ms. Bartelstone drew up a care plan that she revises periodically to address Mrs. Rosenstein's deteriorating condition.
"I know her situation is inexorable," Mrs. Lufschtein said, "but I know she's safe and cared for."
For those who cannot afford such private management, information about services for the elderly across the country can be obtained from the Eldercare Locator, a toll-free information and referral line sponsored by the U.S. Administration on Aging. The phone line started as a regional pilot program in May 1991 and went nationwide the fall of 1992. About 4,000 people call the number -- 1-800-677-1116 -- each month, said Julie Beckley, the project manager. One-fourth of those people give care long distance, she said.
 
People Movers
 "Families are scattered," Ms. Beckley said. "Employers transfer people around. The population of older people is rising. They are moving around. All these factors have converged to the point where older people are not supported by people who are in the same place."
Jane Gould, New York State's commissioner on aging, said she practically commuted between Albany and her mother's Manhattan apartment for the three and a half years her mother suffered from Alzheimer's disease before her death last year.
"I'm in the field of aging and it was still a problem," Ms. Gould said. "I lost weight. I suffered from insomnia. I felt this tremendous tug between my job and my mother. Her experience and mine are extraordinarily typical, except that I had the advantage of knowing what to ask. And still, if you are not there, to some degree you are operating in the dark."
 
Two Journeys Home
 Even when someone has been hired to help with the care, there are times when shuttling between home and an aging relative is the only answer. One recent Friday evening, Melissa Boatright and her husband, Scott, got into their separate cars at their home in Fairfax, Va., and each began a journey of several hours to visit ailing parents.
Mr. Boatright's trip took him to Kingsport, Tenn., where his 88-year-old father moves with the aid of a walker but spends most of his time in a wheelchair, and his mother, even with the help of home health aides, is increasingly exhausted from the lifting, dressing and organizing that would tire someone a fraction of her 78 years.
Their situation is blessed, said Mrs. Boatright, compared with that of her mother, whom Mrs. Boatright drove 6 1/2 hours to see in a nursing home in Beverly, Ohio. The 80-year-old woman, already suffering from dementia, was placed there this winter after developing hypothermia and malnutrition living alone in a mobile home.
Mrs. Boatright has been making the trip every other weekend since January. It costs her about $200 in gas, untold stress and aggravates her asthma. When she's not there, she calls to check on her mother's condition, spending well over $100 a month in telephone bills.
"It's expensive financially, it's expensive healthwise and emotionally," said the 45-year-old government worker. "Psychologically, the whole situation really bothers me. I think I would handle it all a lot better if she were nearer. At least then I could check in more often and be reassured. It's distracting to never really know how she is unless I see."

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GRAPHIC: Photos: Eva Levine, 93, being visited by Nick Newcombe, who oversees her care with the aid of a home attendant, Linda Ingles, left. (Ruby Washington/The New York Times) (pg. A1); The long-distance arranging of medical care for elderly persons who prefer to stay in their own homes, far from concerned relatives, is inspiring new deep ties as well as spurring new enterprises. Phyllis Lufschtein, left, a high-school librarian in Rye, N.Y. (Susan Harris for The New York Times), thinks of the geriatric-care manager who looks after her stepmother-in-law, Hilda Rosenstein, right, in Lauder Hills, Fla., as "a surrogate family." (Susan Greenwood for The New York Times) (pg. B6)

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April 6, 1994, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

METRO DIGEST

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

LENGTH: 488 words


SPECIAL EDUCATION'S MINORITY TRAP
Nearly two decades after Congress passed a law requiring public schools to educate all children with disabilities, providing extra money for smaller classes, special assistance for a variety of disabilities and individual attention, many education advocates say New York City's special education system, which involves 130,000 students, insures a second-class education, particularly for black boys, becoming a trap that incubates failure. At the heart of the issue is compelling evidence that black and Hispanic students are harmed, not helped, by special education. A1.
CARING FOR AGING PARENTS, AT A DISTANCE
Many people who must minister to elderly relatives from a distance are turning to referral services that provide information about care of the elderly, and to geriatric care managers who, for a fee, will shoulder many of the tasks families usually take on. A1.
 

NEW YORK CITY
 
FIGHT INTENSIFIES OVER SCHOOLS BUDGET
Schools Chancellor Ramon C. Cortines and Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani dug in their heels in the tug-of-war over the schools budget, with Mr. Cortines dismissing as unrealistic the Mayor's demand that 2,500 jobs be cut and the Mayor pushing a plan to dismantle the Board of Education. B2.
 
SUSPECTS IN KILLING TIED TO HOLDUPS
The police have linked the two men indicted in the killing of Officer Sean McDonald to 10 armed holdups in the Bronx and Manhattan in the last several months. B2.
 
STATE TO ALTER METHOD OF REPORTING AIDS
State health officials want to expand their system of reporting AIDS cases to try to avoid losing an estimated $9 million a year in Federal money, but advocates for people with H.I.V. say they fear a threat to confidentiality. B3.
 
LETTER BOMB HURTS BROOKLYN WOMAN
A 75-year-old woman was critically injured when a letter bomb delivered to her Brooklyn home exploded and punctured her stomach, postal inspectors said. Investigators said the package was addressed to her brother, but do not yet have a motive for the bombing or know why it was mailed to him at an address where he had not lived for years. B3.
 
REGION
 
HEIRESS'S FAMILY SEEKS HER CHILD
The sister of Anne Scripps Douglas, the heiress to a newspaper fortune who was slain three months ago by her husband, asked a court if she could become the guardian of Mrs. Douglas's orphaned 3-year-old daughter, Victoria. B4.
 
REACHING OUT TO JAZZ MUSICIANS IN NEED
A joint venture between the Jazz Foundation of America and Englewood Hospital and Medical Center provides free care and hospitalization for jazz musicians in need. B4.
 
MISSING WOMAN BOUGHT TICKET
A Long Island woman who vanished from a shopping mall 12 days ago while shopping for a dress for a bridal shower apparently purchased a plane ticket to Canada a week before she disappeared, the Nassau County police said. B2.
About New York by Michael T. Kaufman B3

LOAD-DATE: April 6, 1994

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GRAPHIC: Graph: "PULSE: Unemployment Claims" shows the number of people filig their first claims for unemployment compensation in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut from Dec. '91-Dec. '93. (Source: State Labor Departments)

TYPE: Summary

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April 6, 1994, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

In America;
Out of Control

BYLINE: By BOB HERBERT 

SECTION: Section A;  Page 21;  Column 5;  Editorial Desk 

LENGTH: 684 words

On Sunday night a teen-age boy who was doing well in school and had managed to stay out of trouble was shot to death when a fight broke out among other youths in a subway in Brooklyn.
Last Thursday gunmen invaded the O Street Market, a small cluster of retail stores in Washington, and began firing indiscriminately. When the shooting stopped nine people had been hit, including a toddler, a couple of elderly women, two security guards and a 15-year-old boy. The boy died. 
 On Friday the Justice Department released a study showing that carjackings, which are usually committed at gunpoint, have become as common as fatal auto accidents.
No one has to look far to find evidence that gun violence in the United States is out of control. The only question has been what to do about it.
One of the answers would be to pass a bill introduced last week by Representative Charles Schumer of Brooklyn and Senator Bill Bradley of New Jersey. The point of the bill is to try and control the flow of guns into the hands of criminals.
The Brady law, which imposes a five-day waiting period and a background check on handgun purchasers, is already having a modest effect in this area. Early surveys have shown that some two thousand people have already been blocked from legally purchasing handguns because of information turned up by the background checks.
But Brady is not enough. As Representative Schumer noted, "Guns are still pouring into the hands of criminals and violently unstable people through loopholes in our gun laws."
There are four main elements to the Schumer-Bradley Handgun Control and Violence Protection Act:
* All handgun purchasers would be licensed. A national handgun card -- similar to a credit card, with a photo, an identification number and a magnetic strip -- would have to be presented at the time of purchase. The card would be issued only after an applicant is fingerprinted and a thorough background check is conducted.
* Handguns would have to be registered with the appropriate local law enforcement authority. This would help to thwart straw buyers -- individuals with clean records who buy guns for criminals and gunrunners. Transfers of handgun ownership after the initial purchase would require a registration transfer. This would be similar to the transfer of ownership of a used car.
* Handgun purchases would be limited to one gun a month. It would be illegal to buy or otherwise receive more than one handgun in any 30-day period anywhere in the United States. This provision is aimed at gunrunners who purchase weapons in bulk from legal dealers and resell them on the illegal market.
* New, uniform standards for legal gun dealers would be imposed. A dealer's license would cost at least $3,000 and licensees would undergo background checks and be required to have legitimate places of business with tough security measures in place.
This bill would not impose a tremendous hardship on law-abiding people who have guns for legitimate purposes. But it would place many effective obstacles in the path of illegitimate buyers and illegal and unscrupulous dealers.
"We are literally awash in a sea of guns," said Senator Bradley. "It's time to own up to the reality of guns in America and acknowledge the link between our lax gun laws and the horrible carnage on our streets."
A couple of weeks ago in Chicago there were more than 300 shootings in just four days at the Robert Taylor Homes, an enormous public housing project that has been the scene of a breathtaking outburst of violence. Residents are in a virtual state of panic.
Across Chicago, 88 people were murdered in March, a record. Most of them died by gunfire. Last weekend alone, 13 people, several of them teen-agers, died in shootings.
There are many causes of the epidemic of violence in America, and solutions have to be developed on many fronts. Guns are just a part of the problem, but they're a huge part. Support for the Schumer-Bradley bill is a way for politicians to get past their usual grandstanding and gibberish, and get down to the real business of fighting crime.

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April 10, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

NEW JERSEY;
A Town Faces Cuts to School Aid

BYLINE: By KIMBERLY J. McLARIN,   Special to The New York Times 

SECTION: Section 1;  Page 42;  Column 1;  Metropolitan Desk 

LENGTH: 1057 words

DATELINE: WOODBRIDGE, N.J. April 8

When Gov. Christine Todd Whitman announced in her budget address in March that she was cutting state aid to some school districts and holding it steady in others, she told voters to blame their local officials if their property taxes went up.
The suggestion found fertile ground in Woodbridge. On Thursday night, when school boards across New Jersey voted on their 1994-95 budgets, taxpayers here let it be known that they were pointing the finger at the school board, and not Trenton, for a proposed 10 percent increase in the local tax rate. 
 "The Governor has made some attempt to give us relief, and yet the board comes back with an 8 percent increase," complained Peter Ballota, referring to the growth in Woodbridge's total tax levy. "For some people that doesn't matter, doesn't hurt. For some people, especially our senior citizens, it does."
 
Cuts and Shifts
 In her first budget as Governor, Mrs. Whitman has proposed holding state aid to most districts at current levels. She also proposed eliminating $14 million in so-called desegregation aid -- money that was supposed to be used by 26 school districts to carry out desegregation programs. Most significantly, she proposed shifting $28.5 million from some of the state's wealthier districts to the 30 poorest and so-called special needs districts.
School officials warned that the cuts would mean either higher property taxes or program cuts because districts face annual increases in salaries, enrollment, transportation costs and other areas. But Mrs. Whitman said that if she could pare the size of government, so could local officials.
Woodbridge, a district with about 11,000 students in Middlesex County, will lose nearly $1.6 million in state aid. State officials say about $500,000 will be made up by changes in the way pensions for the district's teachers are financed, but school officials have taken a wait-and-see approach on that issue.
"I say it's $1.5 million," the board's secretary, Vince Smith, said in referring to how much the district expects to lose.
 
Drop of 2 Percentage Points
 Superintendent Fredric Buonocore said the drop in state aid -- from 13 percent to 11 percent of the total budget -- and rising costs left the school board with only two choices. The board decided to raise taxes.
The board voted 7 to 1 on Thursday in favor of a $104 million budget that would raise the property tax rate by 25 cents, to $2.78 per $100 of assessed valuation. On a house assessed at $75,000, the taxes would increase by $187 to $2,085.
The budget must next be reviewed by Woodbridge voters, who have rejected every one for more than a decade. If comments at the board meeting were any indication, that scenario will not change in 1994.
Mr. Ballota called the budget offensive and spent many minutes going over the budget line by line, questioning item after item.
"We have some areas that are definitely overbudgeted," he told the board. "Not all the money is going in the direction it should be going, to the children."
 
No New Staff Members
 Mr. Buonocore defended the budget, saying school officials turned down $15 million in requests from various departments and tightened the belt everywhere they could. The district will add no new staff members in 1995, will leave some positions vacant, and consolidated its alarm systems to save money. Officials were conservative in their estimates of some costs, like the cost of electricity next year.
"If there's a five percent increase, we're underbudgeted in that area," he said.
Mr. Buonocore told the audience of about 60 people that it was easy to look at the budget from the outside and propose cutting it.
"But that person needs to be responsible for what occurs when we cut that item," he said. "If we don't provide a textbook for a child, what immediately happens? Someone complains."
 
Complaints About Spending
 People did complain. Sid Lieberman complained about teachers' aides who he said spent most of their time photocopying workbooks at a cost that was much higher than buying more of the books. He complained about money budgeted for teacher conferences, and he complained that too many items were overbudgeted to build up the district's surplus.
"The hour of reckoning is going to come," he said. "If I don't see a $3 million to $5 million reduction, I'm going for a certified audit."
Mr. Lieberman is a member of a committee appointed by the town council to review the school budget. It is the council that traditionally extracts money from the budget after voters reject it. Then district officials lobby the State Department of Education to put some or all of the money back in.
"It's a game," Mr. Lieberman said. "The Governor just gave us a five percent tax return and then they try to jack us up. We're losing."
The board and the president of the teachers union said teachers received raises of about 4 percent last year and will receive the same this year. But Robyn Teri told the board she calculated that some raises, especially those for administrators, were much higher. She complained about a deteriorating playground at her son's elementary school.
"How can you say you're working for the children when there's no money left over for their immediate needs?" she asked.
 
Reluctant to Make Cuts
 The issue of teacher salary increases is a concern not only in Woodbridge: members of a panel appointed by Governor Whitman to examine how to achieve educational parity recommended that school districts take a tougher stand in negotiations with teacher unions.
Jane Nowitz, the only board member voting against the budget in Woodbridge, said that as lay people, board members were reluctant to cut items that district officials say are vital to the quality of education in the district.
"The question becomes: how far are we willing to go to put ourselves on the line?" she asked. "And the answer is, not very."
Ms. Nowitz said she also believes that there is fat in the budget and that cuts in state aid do not necessarily have to lead to higher taxes.
"I would gladly give them 10 times as much of a tax increase, even from my meager resources, if I was confident that they were being fiscally responsible," she said. "As a parent I would religiously go out and vote to pass the budget. But now I know I'm going to vote against it."

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April 10, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

PUBLIC INTEREST;
Community Board Meetings in the Bronx

SECTION: Section 14;  Page 5;  Column 1;  The City Weekly Desk 

LENGTH: 440 words

DISTRICT 1: Port Morris, Melrose, Mott Haven. Last Thursday of month; next meeting is April 28; 6:30 P.M.; Lincoln Hospital, 234 East 149th Street; (718) 585-7117. Chairman: George Rodriguez
DISTRICT 2: Hunts Point, Longwood; last Wednesday of month; next meeting is April 27; 6 P.M.; 1029 East 163d Street; (718) 328-9125. Chairman: Roland Lopez 

DISTRICT 3: Morrisania; 2d Tuesday of month; next meeting is Tuesday; 6:30 P.M.; J.H.S. 98, 1619 Boston Road; (718) 589-6300. Chairwoman: Marcella R. Brown
DISTRICT 4: East and West Concourse, Mount Eden, Highbridge, Concourse Village; 4th Tuesday of month; next meeting is April 26; 6 P.M.; 1650 Selwyn Avenue, Suite 11A; (718) 299-0800.
Chairman: Robert Hannibal Jr.
DISTRICT 5: Mount Hope, Morris Heights, Fordham University Heights; 4th Wednesday of month; next meeting is April 27; 6 P.M.; East Concourse Hebrew Center, 226 E. Tremont Avenue; (718) 364-2030.
Chairman: Kenneth Fogarty
DISTRICT 6: Bathgate, Belmont, Bronx Park South, Crotona Park North, East Tremont and West Farms; first Wednesday of month; next meeting is May 4; 6:30 P.M.; location t.b.a.; (718) 579-6990. Chairman: Patrick Lochrane

DISTRICT 7: University Heights, Norwood, Fordham, Bedford and Bedford Park; 3d Tuesday of month; next meeting is April 19; 7 P.M.; St. Philip Neri Parish Center 3025 Grand Concourse at East 202d Street; (718) 933-5650. Chairwoman: Nora Feury
DISTRICT 8: Kingsbridge, Marble Hill, North Riverdale, Spuyten Duyvil, Fieldston; 2d Tuesday of month; next meeting is Tuesday; 7:30 P.M.; Riverdale Jewish Center, 3700 Independence Avenue at West 237th Street; (718) 884-3959. Chairwoman: Joyce M. Pilsner
DISTRICT 9: Bronx River, Castle Hill, Clason Point, Harding Park, Parkchester, Bruckner, Soundview, Unionport; 4th Thursday of month; next meeting is April 28; 7 P.M.; Caldor Plaza, 1967 Turnbull Avenue; (718) 823-3034. Chairwoman: Elizabeth Rodriguez
DISTRICT 10: City Island, Throgs Neck, Pelham Bay, Country Club, Co-op City; 3d Thursday of month; next meeting, April 21; 7:30 P.M.; Middletown Plaza Senior Citizens Center3033 Middletown Road; (718) 892-1161. Chairman: Tony Cannata
DISTRICT 11: Allerton, Eastchester, Pelham Parkway, Morris Park; 3d Thursday; next meeting is April 21; 7:30 P.M.; Knights of Columbus, Mary Queen of Peace Hall; (718) 892-6262. Chairman: Dom Castore
DISTRICT 12: Wakefield, Woodlawn, Williamsburg, Baychester, Eastchester; 4th Thursday of month; next meeting is April 28; 8 P.M.; 4101 White Plains Road; (718) 881-4455.
Chairman: Richard Gorman
 Meetings in other boroughs will be listed in coming issues.

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April 10, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Making the Unaffordable Affordable

BYLINE: By PENNY SINGER 

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

LENGTH: 1188 words

SPRING. Time to fix leaky roofs, paint peeling walls, repair broken walks. But tackling such improvements are far beyond the means of too many poor, elderly or handicapped homeowners in Westchester, people like Joseph C. Reyes, 69, whose Victorian house in Katonah is in bad shape. Mr. Reyes, who lives on Social Security and a small pension, cannot afford to make the necessary repairs.
In Bedford Hills, Lorraine Rossi, who suffered injury to her limbs and lives in a ground-floor condominium, cannot afford the remodeling needed to make the condominium suitable for wheelchair use. Ms. Rossi, a former schoolteacher, has been confined to a wheelchair since she lost control of her car on her way to school one icy morning five years ago, when she went over a 25-foot cliff. She lives with her 86-year-old father, Paul J. Scagnelli, an amputee, who also uses a wheelchair. 
 But help is on the way, thanks to a volunteer program called Americares Home Front, which has selected Mr. Reyes's house and Ms. Rossi's condominium for renovation.
The program, staffed by volunteers, mounts a one-day massive repair project, which helps people who are not physically or financially able to help themselves fix up their homes.
 
Six Houses Selected
 "Home Front works much in the same way as barn raising did in the early days of the country," said Judith Lynch, a volunteer.
May 7 has been designated Home Front Day. On that Saturday six houses in Katonah, South Salem and Pound Ridge are to be renovated.
Mrs. Lynch, who lives in Katonah, helped start the Home Front program in Westchester. A realtor in the Bedford and Katonah offices of Houlihan/ Lawrence, she said she was inspired by her own experience last year as a volunteer in the Home Front program in Connecticut.
"I was part of a team of 30 people assigned to work on a house in New Canaan that belonged to an elderly couple who were desperate to stay in the home but couldn't afford the repairs that would make it livable," Mrs. Lynch said. "I scraped shutters, painted the outside. We worked under the direction of a professional contractor who ordered the material and took charge of the project and gave out the assignments. What impressed me was the camaraderie that built up during the day. The simple act of doing something that made a difference, someone in need, was especially a satisfying experience."
 
Corporate Sponsors Sought
 The houses, which must be occupied by the owner, are selected by the New Canaan-based Americares Home Front on the basis of need from applicants with incomes of less than $20,000 a year. Service organizations, churches and groups for the elderly submit names. On May 7, Mrs. Lynch said, 5,000 volunteers will renovate 145 homes and shelters in Westchester, Fairfield, and Hartford counties. There is no cost to homeowners to participate in the program.
In order to begin the program in Westchester, Mrs. Lynch said, corporate sponsors willing to donate $1,500 toward repairing a house were sought out.
"The first Westchester sponsor was my office, Houlihan/Lawrence," she said. A. Stuart Fendler, a private citizen, is also a sponsor, as is the First Presbyterian Church of Katonah. Nynex is sponsoring two houses. A sponsor for a sixth house is still being sought.
The average cost for materials for one house is $2,222. Local suppliers and manufacturers also donate materials, and professionals in the buildings trades donate their services.
 
No Experience Necessary
 "Sherwin-Williams, the large paint manufacturer, has given us thousands of gallons of paint," Ms. Lynch said. "The Home Depot in Connecticut also gives us such things as plywood and nails. Alpine Tree has sent equipment and volunteers. It is a massive effort, and so many people have been good about contributing to it."
Volunteers need not be skilled in home repairs, Mrs. Lynch said, reiterating that the success of the program hinges on professionals who donate their services for specialized tasks.
"Any talent can and will be put to use, but without a cadre of skilled volunteers like electricians, carpenters and plumbers, we really couldn't do any major work."
Lee Lasberg, a principal in Lasberg Construction Associates in Armonk, has volunteered to be a house captain in charge of the work at Mr. Reyes's house.
"I inspected the house, and it's probably close to 100 years old, and it's in pretty bad shape," Mr. Lasberg reported. "A lot of slates are missing from the roof. There has been water damage. The kitchen needs shoring up. There is a lot of structural work to do, and how do we proceed? Just the way we would on any commercial job. First, there is the estimating, and then we evaluate the type of work to be done, schedule it and order the materials."
Mr. Lasberg, who will be working with both skilled and unskilled volunteers, said: "I will assign the bankers and corporate types to the simple tasks like scraping and painting, but we are going to need a lot of professionals on this job. Paul Handly, owner of Healy's Deli in Katonah, knows everybody in town. He has been instrumental in getting us volunteers such as plumbers, electricians, roofers and carpenters."
Because so much work has to be done on Mr. Reyes's house, Mr. Lasberg said he is going to give an extra day to the project. "Just to make the house safe and watertight will require an extra day, so five of our own people have agreed to donate their services to the job, which is teriffic of them."
Mrs. Lynch added: "People like Lee Lasberg are absolutely essential to the success of the program. If the houses were renovated commercially, it is estimated that the cost of the work would average out to $8,800 a house, which is completely beyond the means of the people whose houses will be renovated."
For Ms. Rossi and her father, improvements planned at their condominium include widening the doorways to accommodate their wheelchairs, adjusting the height of countertops, building a ramp to the outside and adding a bathroom and Jacuzzi with a hydraulic lift.
 
A New Volunteer
 "I can't wait," Ms. Rossi said. "Not long ago, I was evicted from my house, and I bought the condominium because it was all I could afford. But it has been difficult. It doesn't accommodate the wheelchairs, and we are always banging into the walls. I haven't been outside in two months. I can't get into the bathroom without help. This may be the best thing that has happened to me since I had my accident. I know the quality of our lives will be vastly improved."
Mr. Reyes, who raised seven children in his house, is also happy. "This is a family home," he said. "It means a lot to me. I think of it as our refuge. I want my kids to know it is here for them. I have tried and tried to make the repairs myself, but I don't have the means. However, I want to return something, so I have joined the Home Front program as a volunteer."
Others who would like to volunteer, make a donation, sponsor a home or know someone who might benefit from the Americares Home Front program in Westchester may call Mrs. Lynch at 232-5007.

LOAD-DATE: April 10, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Joseph C. Reyes shows Judith Lynch, left, and Lee Lasberg, right, parts of his front porch needing Home Front repairs. (Chris Maynard for The New York Times)

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April 12, 1994, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

South Africa Tries to Prepare Those It Long Denied Ballot

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

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

LENGTH: 1356 words

DATELINE: JOHANNESBURG, April 9

There was a pastoral sweetness in the room as the once-fantastic idea of voting freely in South Africa was explained at the Soweto Home for the Aged to 50 black people who had suffered the longest across decades of racist white oligarchy.
"You have lived long and can give us a great legacy," Zweli Nkosi, a voting organizer, explained amid the grand metamorphosis now sweeping this nation toward the approaching election. "Mark your stamp on life. Give us your final gift: Vote." 
 The room of old people, poised as if at a bonus rite of passage, responded with a burst of applause and cheers, some putting aside cane and crutch.
"I'm voting for the return of my country," declared 77-year-old Jerry Buthelezi, lean-faced and content under a big brown fedora. "That's important. That's a beautiful thing."
The exchange, in which Mr. Nkosi returned as a successful businessman to preach free choice on his boyhood streets in the state-segregated ghetto, was one of the least slick moments in what has become the costliest, most integrated civic endeavor ever attempted in South Africa -- a get-out-the vote drive that is flooding the public with the message that historic duty and fortune await in the first fully free post-apartheid elections on April 26-28.
The campaign has vans cruising back roads to coax rural villagers to come forth and practice their "X."
"Some had never held a pencil before," said Nicholas Wolpe, a roving elections trainer.
A colleague, Sharon Balsys, a visiting elections worker from Canada, feels at home. "No worse than Rainy River," she said, referring to the electoral rigors of a multilingual Canadian town where ballot boxes sometimes have to be parachuted down through winter snows.
In South African cities, the message is carried in thumping rap lyrics, in a special voters' soap opera and "Make Your Mark" election quiz shows on TV, and in euphoric liberation ads worthy of the glossy yearnings in Ronald Reagan's "morning again in America" commercials. One shows a bright huge voting-X pattern of a throng of multi-hued humans moving lushly across a green and promising national landscape.
It is a ubiquitous message, from programmed cassettes on black workers' jitney vans to the fading primacy of the white Afrikaner-run television channel where a Wagner ian singer booms clunky two-step jingles about a future that will somehow prove grand for all. "We're gonna have a ball!" she croons and sways and grins to the tune of "After the Ball Is Over."
The message is not monolithic, for the voter education drive is directed at all sorts of problems. One pitch, emphasizing the secrecy of the ballot, is intended to undercut husbands' attempts in traditional tribal areas to dictate their wives' choice. Other messages warn against scheming tribal chiefs who are demanding patronage tithes as the price of franchise, and against white overseers who are confiscating their black farm workers' identity cards to hinder voting.
Cautions toward fairness rain down endlessly in the media. There are the sitcom family morality tales of the popular comic actor, Joe Mafela, spokesman for the Chicken Licken restaurants. There are the theater tableaux of Black Sash, the highly respected women's protest group. All the hurried innovations of democracy's mechanics -- from ultra-violet hand dye at the ballot box to an 18-party potpourri of options on the first of two paper ballots -- are being explained to the 22 million eligible voters, especially the black majority long denied a fair and thoughtful franchise.
 
A Rite of Transformation
 But the overall point of the voter education drive, costing somewhere beyond $30 million, is that the vote is not merely about a leadership choice, but about a people's passage to a higher phase of democracy and national definition. "Heal Our Land" is the slogan under an X of crossed Band-Aids. It is an imprimatur on liberation. The likely result, the choice of Nelson Mandela as national leader, is well known, but not the volume of turnout in ratifying a transformed nation.
"It is a grand, purificatory moment in which the nation is to pass through a membrane of history from darkness to a sunlit upland," wrote Simon Barber in Business Day, relishing with sarcasm the TV commercial blitz, including one showing a patriarchal old man walking miles to vote, clutching the hand of his grandchild.
 
A Long Walk to Freedom
 In fact, Mr. Wolpe saw just such a tough old man climb three hours down from his mountain home to join a hamlet crowd of 250 for a practice vote at the elections van. South Africa is in just such a state, trembling somewhere between the wondrous reality of the first-time voter facing the fullest choice, and the Utopian dreams of the modern media's motivation arts.
"This was real heart-and-soul stuff," said Linda Radford, account director on some of the most lyrical ads for the local J. Walter Thompson advertising agency. "The task was daunting," she said, noting professional crews were more integrated as they filmed idealized ethnic portrayals that would have been treasonous in the recent past.
Barry Gilder, one of the chief creative executives of the drive as communications chief of the Matla Trust, can talk in detail of fine tuning the message in such critical areas as radio, the most effective medium for reaching the black poor majority in rural and small-town areas. But he feels that foremost is the campaign's overall spiritual dimension.
"It's like a kind of catharsis," he said, "even for white people, who want an end to the uncertainties and the fear, the guilt and the anxieties."
Matla Trust, a nonprofit organization, was one of a score of groups in the Independent Forum for Electoral Education that began preparing for the day of a free vote well before the Government's moves to dismantle apartheid put that on the horizon four years ago.
The campaign now includes hundreds of organizations operating through the forum, and through the Democracy Education Broadcast Initiative of media professionals, the Business Election Fund of private entrepreneurs, and the Independent Electoral Commission, the interim Government body which has taken an ever firmer hand to avoid postponement of the elections in the face of violence and resistance in KwaZulu, the homeland created under apartheid for the Zulu people.
Even with all the problems and confusion and protest violence in some areas, campaign directors hope for a turnout of up to 85 percent. Blacks are the most enthusiastic, while the racially frayed nation's mixed-race and Asian minorities are most ambivalent, reflecting a fear that they will remain in a political limbo, second to black majority power as they have been a secondary buffer for the white regime.
Countless foreigners are arriving to help get out the vote and monitor the election. Craig Charney, a Yale political scientist, has been here for several years, working lately as a broadcast news polling expert.
"It's an extraordinary thing to see millions of people around the country put slips into a box and see their government change as a result, without tanks in the streets," he said, looking beyond the demographics. "South Africa is going to become not a Western style democracy but a wobbly, imperfect third-world democracy. But it is a vast improvement over what came before."
 
Some Find Fault
 In democratic fashion, there are numerous complaints. Some white political leaders charge the education drive favors the black majority. Other people feel too much faith has been placed on entertaining TV ads and not enough on the face-to-face approach favored by Mr. Nkosi in visiting the Soweto old folks.
"What's a political party?" he asked, and "Mandela!" was shouted in reply by one old man, grinning gap-toothed.
Jabu Mohlouwa, a social worker, smiled at the scene. "People think this election will put honey on their plates, but they're wrong," she said. "They think Mandela is a magician. He's not."
But her elderly charges plunged ahead into the future, intoning his name and asking more questions about how to vote free.

LOAD-DATE: April 12, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: To prepare for South Africa's first open elections, set for April 26 through 28, a large-scale voter-education effort is being conducted among blacks who have long been denied the ballot. Gloria Mvulane, a resident of the Soweto Home for the Aged, listened to a lecture last week. (Ozier Muhammad for The New York Times) (pg. A8)

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April 12, 1994, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

NEWS SUMMARY

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

LENGTH: 1116 words


International A3-11
 
NATO HITS SERBS AGAIN
NATO conducted its second air strike against the Bosnian Serbs in two days after they failed to stop shelling the town of Gorazde, and the attacks finally stopped.  A1
 
RESTRAINT IN BOSNIA ATTACKS
The United States portrayed the bombing of Serb positions in Bosnia as a demonstration of its resolve to stop their attacks, but the NATO military operation was actually modest and restrained.  A10
 
News analysis: The West is hoping that the Serbs bow to force.  A10
 
SOUTH AFRICA, IN THE HUSTINGS
South Africa has undertaken a vigorous voter education campaign leading up to its first all-race election, appealing to people's sense of historic duty and opportunity.  A1
 
Troops have not halted Zulu violence in South Africa.  A8
 
Henry Kissinger will help mediate in South Africa.  A8
 
WILDLIFE TRADE PUNISHED
The Clinton Administration said it was imposing trade sanctions on Taiwan for refusing to halt the sale of tiger and rhinoceros parts.  D1
 
RWANDA REFUGEES LOOK BACK
Westerners evacuated from Rwanda, many of them church workers, spoke with anguish of the fate of friends they had left behind and looked to the day when they would be able to return. A6
 
RWANDA REBELS CLOSE IN
Rebels were closing in on the capital of Rwanda as Western nations struggled to complete the evacuation of their nationals. Reports said fighting continued both inside and outside the capital, Kigali.  A6
 
The deadline for Palestinian self-rule will change. A7
 
Citing violence, the Pope has canceled a Lebanon visit. A7
 
NO SHOO-IN FOR MEXICO
While the ruling party's presidential candidate is expected to win in Mexico, voter dissatisfaction and party infighting are expected to make the race a difficult challenge.  A3
 
A former East German official was sentenced in a bombing. A11
 
A suicide was troubling for France's President. A11
 
Hanoi Journal: Fiction with a dissident's sting.  A4
 
National A12-15
 
BLEAK VIEW OF CHILDREN
A wide-ranging three-year study found a bleak picture for millions of American children: disintegrating families, poverty, child abuse and poor health care threatening their chances of growing to become whole adults.  A1
 
CORPORATE-PAID THERAPY
To curb costs of treating workers for mental illness and substance abuse, companies are measuring treatment in a way that cuts expenses but also tries to apply a precision to psychotherapy that worries therapists.  A1
 
FREEWAY SUCCESS STORY
The Santa Monica Freeway, a vital artery Southern California's road system, is reopening two months earlier than officials expected after repairs of its severe earthquake damage.  A12
 
MEDICARE FUNDS IN PERIL
The Medicare trust fund that pays hospital bills for the elderly will run out of money in seven years and a separate trust fund that pays benefits to disabled workers will be exhausted next year if Congress does not act.  A12
 
INQUIRY IN AIR FORCE CRASH
An especially volatile type of jet fuel is being investigated as a possible contributing factor to the high death toll in a crash at Pope Air Force Base last month.  A13
 
RON BROWN IN ACTION
Washington at Work: Commerce Secretary Ronald Brown was temporarily detoured from the Washington fast track, but now he is back, and doings things Democrats could scarcely have imagined: building alliances with business.  A14
 
SELLING THE CRIME BILL
President Clinton urged local and state law officers at a Justice Department rally to put pressure on members of Congress to pass anticrime legislation.  A14
 
A CLINTON CORRECTION
The White House said a 1980 profit of $6,498 for Hillary Rodham Clinton in commodities trades was not reported to the I.R.S., and the Clintons have paid more that $14,000 in back Federal and state taxes.  A15
 
A trucking company closed, leaving striking Teamsters jobless.  A12
 
Accusations of forged signatures in radiation experiments.  A15
 
Metro Digest B1
 
SIDE EFFECTS OF MAYOR'S VICTORY
Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani emerged from his weekend confrontation with the Schools Chancellor largely with what he wanted: a mayoral appointee to look into school finances. But his confrontational style may have used up some of the good will he needs for his long-term agenda.  A1
 
WELFARE LURE SHIFTS
The view of New York City as a place attracting waves of poor people with relatively generous welfare benefits, if ever true, exists no more, fresh census findings reveal. Instead, in the late 1980's, New York City appears to have become a net exporter of welfare families.  A1
 
Obituaries B10
 
Dr. Jerome Lejeune, geneticist.
 
Matthew Feldman, New Jersey Democratic legislative leader.
 
Science Times C1-14
 
The secret underground world of the naked mole rat.  C1
 
Hopes of restoring full weather satellite coverage.  C1
 
A cancer researcher won't explain data problems to Congress.  C1
 
Putting a dollar value on urban trees.  C4
 
Cells' 'everlasting life' chemical opens way to attack cancer.  C10
 
Broccoli is good for you, just as your mother said.  C11
 
Peripherals C9
 
Q&A C11
 
Personal Computers C14
 
Fashion Pages B8-9
 
Fashion reviews: Calvin Klein.  B8
 
Michael Kors and Betsey Johnson.  B8
 
Geoffrey Beene, Carolina Herrera, Mary McFadden.  B9
 
Business Digest D1
 
Arts/Entertainment C15-24
 
Eastern Europe loses art to thieves for the West.  C15
 
A battle over "Showboat." C15
 
Theater: Film as subject.  C15
 
"Fragments" by Albee.  C16
 
Music: Classical reviews.  C16
 
Dance: Miami City Ballet.  C19
 
Small 'Romeo and Juliet.' C19
 
Books: "The Birthday Boys," by Beryl Bainbridge.  C24
 
Television: "AIDS Research: The Story So Far." C24
 
A life of Sid Caesar.  C24
 
Sports B11-17
 
Baseball: Mets revert to '93 form in home opener.  B11
 
Kruk comes back from cancer.  B12
 
Yanks bullpen still unsettled.  B14
 
Columns: Vecsey on Mets.  B11
 
TV Sports.  B13
 
On Baseball.  B13
 
Basketball: Knicks lose fourth game in last five.  B11
 
Hockey: It's for women, too.  B15
Sports People B14
 
Editorials/Op-Ed A16-17
 
Editorials
 
Necessary air strikes in Bosnia.
 
A cease-fire on schools.
 
The Jordan effect.
 
Letters
 
Russell Baker: Been away too long.
 
A. M. Rosenthal: Clinton in wartime.
 
Robert I. Friedman: 25,000 saboteurs of peace.
 
Brandon del Pozo: Everybody's corps.
 
Chronicle B2
 
Chess C6
 
Crossword C16

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April 12, 1994, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

Benefit Funds May Run Out Of Cash Soon, Reports Warn

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

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

LENGTH: 905 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, April 11

If Congress takes no action, the Clinton Administration said today, the Medicare trust fund that pays hospital bills for the elderly will run out of money in seven years and a separate trust fund that pays benefits to disabled workers will be exhausted next year.
The estimates were part of reports on Social Security and Medicare finances that have to be submitted to Congress each year. Such reports are often gloomy, but the figures this year are, in some ways, slightly worse than those of recent years. 
 The Administration said there was a "high probability that the hospital insurance trust fund will be exhausted around the turn of the century." Looking to the future, the report added, "the Medicare program is not sustainable in its present form."
Medicare finances health care for 36 million people, at a cost of $143 billion in the last fiscal year.
The Administration said the Social Security trust fund that paid cash to disabled workers would be exhausted next year if Congress did not change the existing law. The Government is receiving record numbers of applications for disability benefits and approving them at a higher rate than in the past.
 
Proposal to Cut Retirement Fund
 The Administration said that problem could be solved, at least temporarily, by taking money earmarked for the Social Security retirement program and shifting it to the disability program. The trustees made a similar recommendation last year, but Congress did not act on it. The trustees said today that the need was "more urgent now."
Even without the change, the reports said, the trust fund for the retirement program will be exhausted in 2036, eight years sooner than predicted last year. People born in 1971 turn 65 in 2036.
Social Security paid $302 billion in benefits to 42 million people last year. As baby boomers age, the ratio of active workers to retirees will decrease, worsening the problems of Social Security and Medicare alike, the trustees said. But, they added, the hospital-insurance fund "is projected to become exhausted even before the major demographic shift begins to occur."
The outlooks for Medicare and Social Security were described in detailed reports from the trustees of the trust funds, including Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen, Labor Secretary Robert B. Reich and Dr. Donna E. Shalala, the Secretary of Health and Human Services. The reports, widely regarded as authoritative, were prepared by Government actuaries.
 
Specter of Political Trouble
 The bankruptcy of Medicare or Social Security is politically unthinkable. As in the past, Congress is likely to pass legislation to keep money flowing to elderly people, their doctors and hospitals.
But the trustees' reports show that the financing of Medicare, the biggest Federal health program, is shaky as Congress considers large programs to finance care for 39 million people who lack health insurance.
The Medicare hospital trust fund had a balance of $127.8 billion at the end of last year. Under current law, the trustees said, it is expected to decline to $100.9 billion at the end of 1998 and $40.4 billion in the year 2000 before it runs out of money in 2001.
"Medicare's financial condition," Dr. Shalala said, "would improve significantly as a result of general cost containment under the President's health-care-reform proposal." But some members of Congress, as well as the Congressional Budget Office, say the Administration has underestimated the cost of the Clinton proposal.
In a separate statement the two independent public trustees of the Medicare trust fund, who are not part of the Administration, said, "Current national health-reform proposals do not adequately address the serious long-range financial imbalance in the Medicare program."
In an interview, one trustee, Stanford G. Ross, a tax lawyer who was Social Security Commissioner in 1978 and 1979, said:
"The long-term deterioration in the Social Security retirement trust fund is a serious concern. When combined with the long-term financial imbalance in Medicare it suggests that we need to take a serious look at the long-term financing of these programs."
Medicare is growing much faster than Social Security. The trustees highlighted the difference by measuring the programs in relation to the economy as a whole. Social Security outlays equal 4.8 percent of the gross domestic product, the total output of goods and services. That share will rise to 6.9 percent in 75 years, the trustees said.
By contrast, they said, Medicare outlays, now 2.5 percent of the gross domestic product, will rise to 10.4 percent of G.D.P. after 75 years.
Mr. Ross and the other public trustee, David M. Walker, an expert on employee benefits at Arthur Andersen & Company, the accounting firm, said people should worry about these problems now, when the solution is relatively painless.
"The changes that will be required can be relatively small and gradual if they are begun in the near future," they said in a joint statement. "However, the magnitude of those changes grows each year that action is delayed."
In a statement attached to the report, the chief actuary of the Medicare program, Roland E. King, expressed some concern about the trustees' estimates of growth in workers' earnings. He suggested that the estimates might be too optimistic. Medicare's hospital-insurance program is financed with a payroll tax on earnings.

LOAD-DATE: April 12, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Graphs: "BALANCE SHEET: Declining Federal Trust Funds" shows amount of money in the Medicare trust fund, Social Security Disability trust fund, and the money left in both funds at the end of the year. (Source: Department of Health and Human Services)

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April 14, 1994, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

Decisions on Banning of Events On City Hall Steps Are Faulted

BYLINE: By JONATHAN P. HICKS 

SECTION: Section B;  Page 3;  Column 5;  Metropolitan Desk 

LENGTH: 342 words

A day after two groups were denied access to the steps of City Hall, security officials allowed several organizations to conduct news conferences there yesterday, and several public officials asserted that the Giuliani administration was seeking to limit criticism.
Police officials allowed three news conferences, the largest by a group of nearly 50 elderly people protesting potential cuts in services for the aged. The other news conferences were held by the New York Public Interest Research Group and some Con Ed employees. On Tuesday a group representing organizations that represent parents of public-school children and another of people protesting the potential elimination of the Division of AIDS Services were turned away when they approached City Hall to hold news conferences on the steps. 
 A police spokesman, Officer Andrew McInnis, said a commanding officer at City Hall determined that the groups on Tuesday were conducting demonstrations, and police policy bans groups of 20 or more people from protesting on the steps. But yesterday's groups, he said, "were clearly conducting press conferences and a press conference is a completely different situation from a demonstration."
Though the policies are not official or part of any law, he said, they are longstanding security practices.
Nonetheless, several city officials, including Council Speaker Peter F. Vallone, said the groups on Tuesday were seeking to conduct news conferences.
"When I went outside, I saw Susan Sarandon and Rosie Perez," he said, referring to two actresses who were participating in a news conference about the Division of AIDS Services that was held along the sidewalk. "They didn't seem like they were about to make any trouble."
Several City Council members accused the administration of trying to regulate who can conduct news conferences on the steps of City Hall.
Mr. Giuliani has said that the Police Department, not his office, determines security policy for City Hall and that he has not interfered in how those polices are enforced.

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April 15, 1994, Friday, Late Edition - Final

Study Finds Promise in Regimen for Treatment of Bone Disease

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

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

LENGTH: 610 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, April 14

A study released today supports the idea that a careful regimen of fluoride and calcium supplements appears to prevent new spinal fractures in patients with a major form of osteoporosis while helping to rebuild bone loss.
Experts on osteoporosis, the debilitating bone-thinning condition that afflicts millions of elderly Americans, said that if the findings stood up, the treatment would be the first to restore bone mass lost to the disease. 
 The interim results of the ongoing study were reported by researchers at the University of Texas. Dr. Charles Y. C. Pak and his colleagues said their controlled study of 99 post-menopausal women who were diagnosed with osteoporosis showed that fracturing in the spinal vertebrae could be greatly reduced with low doses of fluoride given in slow-release form along with a readily absorbed type of calcium not commonly used. Half the group had an increase of about 5 percent per year in the bone mass of their vertebrae, and their spinal fractures decreased by more than 50 percent.
The findings, reported in The Annals of Internal Medicine, should renew interest in the treatment, pioneered at the university's Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas.
The results of the new Texas study are being hailed as solid indications that the right combination of fluoride and calcium, given on a particular schedule, may have a major impact on the bone disease.
"This study suggests that at the lower doses of fluoride that they used, using their different formulations of the drugs and using their schedule of treatment, that fluoride may be helpful," said Dr. B. Lawrence Riggs of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., a researcher who led a study published in 1990 that raised doubts about the fluoride treatment. "This is good, solid work, and it should encourage others to do more research on fluoride and osteoporosis."
Dr. Judith L. Vaitukaitis, the director of the National Center for Research Resources, a unit of the National Institutes of Health that sponsors the Texas work, said the few current therapies for osteoporosis slow bone loss but do not stop it. The Texas study shows that fluoride can rebuild weakened bones, she said.
More than 25 million older Americans -- 90 percent of them women -- have osteoporosis, which is responsible for 1.5 million fractures of the hip, spine and wrist each year, according to the National Osteoporosis Foundation. With the spinal form of the disease, fractures occur in the vertebrae, causing them to compress and the back to curve, a condition sometimes called dowager's hump.
 
Reducing Toxicity
 Dr. Pak said in a telephone interview that his group had been successful because lower doses of sodium fluoride stimulated the production of bone cells while reducing the toxicity the drug, which can cause severe nausea, vomiting and other problems.
The researchers also use a time-release form of sodium fluoride, developed by the Mission Pharmacal Company of San Antonio, that puts the drug in a porous wax capsule that passes through the stomach, the primary site of complications.
Building bone also requires adequate calcium supplies, Dr. Pak said. While most calcium supplements are commonly in the form of calcium carbonate, the Texas researchers use calcium citrate, which they say is more easily absorbed by the body.
The researchers gave patients two doses of fluoride and two of calcium daily for 12 months, followed by two months without the fluoride before beginning the double-drug schedule again. Dr. Pak said the interruption appeared to enable the body to clear itself of fluoride toxicity and restore its responsiveness to the drug.

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April 17, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

WESTCHESTER GUIDE

BYLINE: By ELEANOR CHARLES

SECTION: Section 14WC; Page 8; Column 4; Westchester Weekly Desk

LENGTH: 1255 words


'LA FRONTERA' EXHIBIT
The Neuberger Museum at Purchase College has turned to the Mexican border as the source of its new exhibition: "La Frontera/The Border: Art About the Mexico-United States Border Experience." It opens today and runs through June 26 for its only East Coast showing. 
 Drawn across 1,952 miles, the border has been as much a ribbon of violence and aggression as a symbol of two cultures meeting and mixing. It is that intersection of cultural, historical and political movements that this exhibition seeks to portray.
The work of 35 artists has been mounted with the cooperation of the Centro Cultural de la Raza and the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego.
It includes painting, sculpture, photography, mixed media, drawings, installations and video art. Images of Tiajuana night life, political statements on the state of border hostilities, daily life, awesome landscapes and touching portraits will find their mark.
In conjunction with the exhibition, the museum has begun assembling personal stories by people who immigrated to the United States or who can relate the experiences of others. A team consisting of the Westchester Hispanic Coalition, La Casa del Pueblo and El Centro Hispano is collecting the stories in the New York City and southern Connecticut areas.
The results will be published in English and Spanish by the college's Center for Editions and Clifton Meador and titled "Border Stories," available for purchase by June 12, when the museum will hold a Community Day celebration. Although the time for submitting stories is limited, those wishing to participate should call 948-8466.
The exhibition can be seen Tuesdays through Fridays from 10 A.M. to 4 P.M. and Saturdays and Sundays from 11 A.M. to 5 P.M. Admission is by donation, and the number for museum information is 251-6100.
 
'OLDER AND BETTER'
 Dr. Joyce Brothers, the psychologist whose buoyant personality has earned her a niche in the media, will be the keynote speaker at the 18th yearly Aging Awareness Day at Westchester Community College in Valhalla on Wednesday.
She will speak on "Celebrating Life: Older and Better" at 9:30 A.M. after a registration period beginning at 8:45.
Later a panel discussion with Janet T. Langsam, executive director of the Westchester Arts Council, Christine Mastrangelo, chairwoman of the college's department of finance and computer information services, and other members of the college staff will deal with the subject of lifelong learning.
Afternoon workshops will focus on resources and services for caregivers, the family in dramatic literature, health and wellness, getting a center for the elderly started and other subjects of interest to older men and women. For free reservations, call 785-6793. Reservations may also be made for a buffet lunch at $10.
 
DINOSAUR FOLLIES
 Huge puppets named Willie Mammoth, Smiley the Saber-Toothed Tiger, Bessie the 22-foot Apatosaurus, Tony and Trixie Triceratops and 20 or so additional characters will cavort in "The Mammoth Dinosaur Follies" at the Tarrytown Music Hall today at 2 P.M.
As the latest creations of Lois Bohovesky's Hudson Vagabond Puppet Company, the creatures in this musical extravaganza explore the complexity of life in prehistoric times with amusing dialogue, song and choreography that tests the strength of the floor. The 14--year-old troupe is known for its unusual and unusually large puppets and its imaginative scenarios.
Tickets, thanks to a grant from the Nynex Corporation, are only $3.50. Call 359-1144 for reservations. The theater is at 13 Main Street.
 
RUNNING FOR THE Y
 The sixth yearly Rye Derby, a five-mile road race, steps off today at 1:30 P.M. from the corner of Purchase Street and Theodore Fremd Avenue, ending at the Rye Y.M.C.A., 21 Locust Avenue. A one-mile family run begins at 1 P.M. at the Y.
Winners in nine categories will share $1,500 in prize money, and first finishers will also receive inscribed trophies of silver and crystal.
Registration will be held at the Y from 10 A.M. to 12:30 P.M., with entrants in the five-mile race paying a fee of $14, while running the one-miler costs $8. Rye Derby ribbons will be awarded to the one-mile winners.
Awards will be presented by Eamon Coghlan, who broke the Masters four-minute mile in Boston in February, finishing at 3:56.5. He will lead off the five-mile race. Proceeds will help finance the Y's children's programs. For more information, call 967-6363.
 
LITERARY LUNCH
 Three notable writers will preview their latest work at the Westchester Library System's Book and Author Luncheon on Tuesday from noon to 2 P.M. at the Tarrytown Hilton.
Murray Kempton, a 1985 Pulitzer Prize winner for commentary, has spent 40 years as a newspaperman and written nearly 10,000 columns, formerly for The New York Post and now for New York Newsday. His new book, "Rebellions, Perversities and Main Events," due this month from Times Books, will be the subject of his talk.
Mary Higgins Clark's "Remember Me," a suspense novel set on Cape Cod, will be published next month by Simon & Schuster, joining the 25 million copies of her books in print in the United States alone. Her popular mystery novels, some of which have been made into movies and television dramas, include "A Stranger Is Watching" and "Where Are the Children?"
The third speaker will be Hilma Wolitzer, whose "Tunnel of Love" is being readied for publication next month by HarperCollins. Ms. Wolitzer writes about human relationships, and her books have been Literary Guild and Book-of-the-Month Club selections.
Tickets at $35 can be reserved by calling 592-8214. Tickets at $50 include a copy of "Reading Rooms," an anthology of works by prominent American writers.
 
FISHING WISELY
 Ecological preservation and the rainbow and brown trout fishing potential of the Neversink River might seem like contradictory topics, but Robert Ewald, proprietor of the fly shop on the Eosopus River, will present a slide lecture on how the two issues can be joined. Speaking before the Croton Watershed Chapter of Trout Unlimited on Tuesday at 7:30 P.M., he will discuss access to the river, little-known fishing spots and newly acquired property, which the state can use to improve and maintain water quality and fishing stock.
Trout Unlimited, a national nonprofit organization, is dedicated to the preservation of natural resources, which in turn permits ecologically sound fishing practices to flourish.
Regular monthly meetings, including this one, are held at the Fox Lane Middle School on Route 172 in Mount Kisco. Visitors are welcome free of charge. For more information about the lecture and the organization, call 666-5727.
 
A SECURITY THREAT?
 Peter G. Peterson, Secretary of Commerce during the Nixon Administration and now chairman of the Blackstone Group, a private investment bank based in Manhattan, will speak before a joint meeting of the Forum for World Affairs and the World Trade Club of Westchester on Wednesday at 7 P.M. His subject will be "Economic Weakness as a National Security Threat: Redefining the National Security Agenda."
The event will be held at the Thornwood Conference Center, at 500 Columbus Avenue, beginning with cocktails at 6:15 P.M., followed by the lecture and a question-and-answer period and ending with coffee and dessert at 8 P.M. It is open to the public for a fee of $20. Reservations can be made by calling the Forum office in Stamford at (203) 356-0340.   ELEANOR CHARLES

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April 17, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Rugged, Aggressive, A Hockey Throwback;
New York-New York Spotlight on Graves

BYLINE: By JOE LAPOINTE 

SECTION: Section 8;  Page 1;  Column 2;  Sports Desk 

LENGTH: 1890 words

With sandy brown hair that can't stay combed and full lips that frequently curl upward at the corners in a smile, Adam Graves looks a little like a kid on the cover of "Boy's Life," except for the ugly cuts, bumps and bruises that flare and recede during the course of a hockey season.
The wounds are part of the reason Graves is a key member of the Rangers, perhaps their most valuable player, as they begin their Stanley Cup playoffs today against the Islanders at Madison Square Garden. By leading the team this season with 52 goals, Graves has attracted a spotlight of his own, no longer merely sharing in the one that shines on Mark Messier, his linemate and mentor. 
 The Graves lore is well-chronicled. It starts with his boyhood in Caledon, Ontario, about an hour's drive north of Toronto where his parents, Henry and Lynda Graves, cared for Adam, his two older sisters and more than 40 foster children, or "Crown wards" as they are called in Canada. It includes Adam Graves's frequent charity work around New York, including hockey instruction to kids in Harlem and reading sessions with underprivileged children in Brooklyn. Then there's his impending summer wedding. Plus, don't forget his new contract, forced upon him by his employers, who tore up the old one for $400,000 and insisted on paying him $1.15 million this season, an average of $2.56 million for the five seasons beginning next September.
And although he would probably volunteer to walk senior citizens across Eighth Avenue, Graves isn't paid by the Rangers to be a Boy Scout.
They reward him because he plays a rugged, aggressive game of hockey, with a mean streak that enhances his talent and inspires his teammates. The approach is as basic and persuasive as a punch in the nose.
Consider, for instance, the opinion of a certain National Hockey League coach.
"He's very physical, he will do anything to get his team geared up," said the veteran strategist, smiling as he spoke, his voice booming with enthusiasm. "He plays the game every inch of that ice. He wants to command, and he commands a lot of respect out there. He's a total player. He's a spark. He's an inspiration. There's an m.v.p. guy, let me tell you. He's just an outstanding player and an outstanding person."
Mike Keenan, the Ranger coach, probably feels the same way, but those are the words of Al Arbour, the Islander coach, who needs to contain Graves in this four-of-seven-game series.
 
Pure Canadian Hockey
 In an era of a global talent pool and sophisticated scouting and training, Graves's style is traditional Canadian, distilled to the basic elements. Graves "finishes his check," a term that means he skates directly toward puck-carrying opponents and collides with them, before or after they pass the puck. Another trademark of Graves's style is to stand in front of the opposing net, especially when the Rangers have a power play.
A player who does this will get extra goals because pucks will find their way to his stick on rebounds and deflections. He also will feel the sticks and elbows of opposing defensemen and goalies who don't appreciate the poaching. One of those goalies used to be Glenn Healy, a former Islander who is now Graves's teammate on the Rangers.
"Adam and I have joked this season about some of the comments he and I have given each other in the past," Healy said. "You take a simple shot for a goaltender, a shot from the point, and that is a routine save. Put a guy like Adam in front of the net, with a defenseman trying to clear him out, and it's no longer a routine save. The split second you don't see the puck is the longest split second of your life."
Unlike some players, who tend to coast when they don't have the puck, Graves moves without it, looking for open ice.
"If you don't hold him up or get in his way, he's gone," said Brad Dalgarno, the Islander right wing. "The best you can do is try to take ice away from him and get in his way and make sure he doesn't get physical."
Earlier this season, Dalgarno cut Graves with a stick early in the game. Late in the game, Graves flattened Dalgarno with a shot to the chin.
Listed at 6 feet and 200 pounds, Graves carries much of his bulk in his thick upper torso. He just turned 26 years old and has the maturity of an older man and the trusting nature of a younger one. Despite his playing style, he is remarkably injury-free, playing every game in the last three seasons. Although not considered sneaky or dirty, Graves is one of the league's most combative athletes, fifth on the team in penalty minutes with 127.
This season, he has five major penalties for fighting and 21 minors for roughing. Many of these moments are for coming to the aid of teammates, especially Messier. They go back to their days as teammates on Edmonton's last Stanley Cup champion in 1990. Kevin Lowe, their teammate then and now, calls Graves "the sheriff" for his willingness to defend fellow Rangers. For their three seasons together in New York, Graves has been Tonto to Messier's Lone Ranger, Robin to Messier's Batman.
"Mark got him where he is," said John Davidson, the former Ranger goalie who now broadcasts their games on television, "but I think Adam is leaving the nest now."
Although N.H.L. rules mandate the ejection of instigators and of the third man who joins a two-man fight, Graves has only one game misconduct this season, partly because he knows the gray margins of the rules and partly because he treats referees with respect. Paul Stewart, a veteran referee who used to be a professional player, said Graves "is very businesslike, he goes about things in a professional way.
"When he's got a problem with me, he just rolls his eyes, he doesn't say much," Stewart said. "I've seen him in people situations, with fans, and he's not sheepish. He looks people in the eye. When he scores goals, he doesn't try to rub the other guy's face in it by celebrating too much."
After a game that included a fight this season, Graves said he knew he wouldn't be ejected for provoking it because all he did was glare at his intended target before punches were thrown. After another brawl, he explained that he wasn't really joining a fight that a teammate was losing, but merely "helping the linesmen" to break it up.
 
The Lemieux Incident
 Few of his fouls involve use of the stick, so it seems out of character that Graves's most infamous moment involved a stick foul against the Pittsburgh Penguins' star Mario Lemieux, two years ago, in the second round of the playoffs.
While killing a Pittsburgh power play, Graves swung his stick and broke a bone in Lemieux's right hand, putting him out of the series. Graves received a suspension that kept him off the ice for the rest of that series, and the Rangers, regular-season champions then, as they are now, were eliminated by the Penguins.
For this, Graves took a media beating that still rankles the Ranger brass, especially Colin Campbell, the assistant coach then and now.
"It wasn't like he was spearing or chopping some guy in the head," Campbell said. "He went out on the point on the face-off and he whacked the hands. And he hit him hard. He broke his hand. It happened to be Mario Lemieux's hand, the last guy you want to do it to."
Graves, curiously, seemed to take the storm in stride, never ducking reporters, repeating over and over that the deed was accidental.
"Deep down inside, he was a little hurt," said Rick Curran, his agent. "He was very sorry. He was a little surprised and disappointed that people didn't realize it wasn't malicious. He was very frustrated that a number of people were so critical, But he's never been a naive person. He's a mature individual and he has been ever since he was 15 years old. That maturity went a long way in allowing him to cope."
Campbell and Neil Smith, the Rangers' president and general manager, have known about the maturity for 10 years because they worked for the Detroit Red Wings and scouted Graves when he played across the Detroit River, for the junior team in Windsor, Ontario, in the mid-1980's. They were involved in drafting him for Detroit and in luring him to New York from Edmonton when he became a free agent with the Oilers in 1991.
"Adam was always the type of kid you wanted to make it," Campbell said. "He is conscientious, nice, hard-working, respectful. And usually those guys don't make it. Adam is the milk-drinker who goes through hell for you."
Perhaps that is why he has such a strong following among younger Ranger fans. Even a casual glance around the Garden will reveal more "Graves" jerseys than those of other players.
Graves's father said his son learned a lesson about fans when he was 8 years old, waiting for an autograph of an N.H.L. star. Henry Graves, a retired Toronto policeman, won't reveal the name of the player, but he said Adam waited a long time for this autograph and that the star brushed him off.
"Adam said to me, 'I'll never do that to a kid,' " Henry Graves said. "When you are a young kid, and you do that, it just crushes you."
"Giving an autograph is a privilege, especially to a little guy," Adam Graves said. "To give a kid an autograph and to see a smile on his face, there is not a better thing in the world than to do that. It really matters to them."
Along with his name, the back of the shirt has the number "9," which has special significance. In hockey's pre-expansion era, before 1967, this number always went to the best players: Maurice Richard in Montreal, Gordie Howe in Detroit, Andy Bathgate in New York and Bobby Hull in Chicago.
In a modern era dominated by superstar numbers such as 66 for Lemieux and 99 for Wayne Gretzky, Graves is a throwback, an ancestral memory of single-digit N.H.L. stars who didn't arrive from Moscow, Helsinki and Prague or from the college campuses of the United States.
"Hockey is a wonderful sport that appeals to blue-collar people, and Adam Graves gives you your money's worth," Davidson said. "In a society where things are crumbling, people are begging for guys like that. Seldom do you see guys like Adam Graves pop out. This is the real deal. This is New York."
 
Commercial Appeal
 Still, it's hockey, and it isn't as if Madison Avenue is beating down the door to Madison Square Garden. Curran, the agent, said the only approaches for Graves's endorsements have come from manufacturers of hockey equipment. Although the game's exposure is spreading through Sunbelt expansion, it's still seen as a cult sport by many who control the floodgates of the media mainstream.
Graves, with his bland quotes about team play and hard work, is not about to crash the airwaves and print columns with the bluster of, say, basketball's Charles Barkley. Always willing to chat with reporters for as long as they care to question him, Graves sometimes apologizes for speaking in cliches and thanks them for their interest.
Perhaps, during this much-anticipated New York-New York series, his profile will grow. And a long playoff run by the Rangers might bring about the exposure and hip status sought by the ambitious new N.H.L. administration in league headquarters on Fifth Avenue.
Wouldn't it be interesting if the game's trendy new personality turns out to be a plain, wholesome "milk-drinker" who wouldn't say "spit" if he had a mouthful?

NAME: Adam Graves

LOAD-DATE: April 17, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: The physical play of Adam Graves enhances talent and inspires his teammates. (Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times)(pg. 1); By setting himself up in the crease, here in front of Islander goalie Ron Hextall, Adam Graves gets his share of extra bumps and extra goals. (Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times)(pg. 3)

TYPE: Biography

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April 17, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

THEATER;
'Spittin' Image' In World Premiere

BYLINE: By ALVIN KLEIN 

SECTION: Section 14NJ;  Page 14;  Column 3;  New Jersey Weekly Desk 

LENGTH: 974 words

DATELINE: METUCHEN

THREE musical theater newcomers have compressed an expansive World War II novel about a Kentucky mountain clan, the Tussies -- 45 of 'em -- into a down-home show with a contemporary spin.
Down the country dirt roads more than 50 years ago, Grandpa, proudly illiterate, holds back his fatherless 12-year-old grandson, who is itching to learn. Grandpa just wants him to go fishing. 
 Segue to modern times. Sid, a grandfather who writes books, and Matt, a motherless, snooty pre-teen-age rock-and-roller who doesn't want to read or go to school, are newly written counterparts in reverse, and therein hangs a lesson plan.
So goes the motivation for "Spittin' Image," a musical freely adapted from "Taps for Private Tussie" by Jesse Stuart, once deemed the region's official chronicler; the Tussies were a nonfiction family in fiction form. In its world premiere at the Forum Theater Group, the show, overflowing with purposeful wholesome intentions, is more earnest than entertaining.
An appended story, written by Karin Kasdin, has Sid reading the Stuart book to Matt. It frames the show, supports the source material and appears so insistently validating that there would be no musical without it. Yet these scenes are totally devoid of music, with only Ms. Kasdin's slick, formulaic dialogue, between a wise, easygoing elderly man and a wiseacre kid, to maintain it.
In her adaptation, aided by the rescuing songs, Ms. Kasdin measures the mountain folk as if in lumps of ignorant bliss. Lacking vivid identities, the dopey and the unwashed reflect a writer's attitude that lands somewhere between affection and derision, between jest and mockery.
Within a toneless style, little mind is paid to the lush blue and greenery of the continuous Kentucky hills ("like heaven on earth"). It remains for flashes of Stuart's descriptive prose in the story being read by Sid to Matt to remind one of a flavorful folk tale.
Stephen A. Weiner's generically springy music, orchestrated with savvy by Steve Cohen, and Laura Szabo-Cohen's sassy lyrics form an agreeable mix of musical comedy convention spiked by the buzz of the backwoods.
Buoyed by the very real presence of a gestating musical at the Forum, where he is the artistic director, Peter J. Loewy has directed and staged -- whatever that means -- "Spittin' Image" with the sort of verve that presumably arises when one is doing the same thing twice.
Dan Siretta's "additional choreography" -- there is no indication of who made it up primarily -- abounds in high-stepping jigs, hoedowns and stomping, with washboards, books and spoons to enhance indigenous effects, especially in the sprightly "Divine Decree," wherein the widowed mother (Mama) of the mountain boy (Boy) is promised to her scuzzy brother-in-law. His name is Mott, and he is "as low as a mudhole."
One aspect of Stuart's plot preserved is the war death of Kim Tussie (Boy's father), reputedly a bully, a liar, a cheat and a fake. In an attempted comic number, "Bury Him Here," one of several clap-along tunes, the gluttonous Tussies show up for the funeral feast, giving Ms. Szabo-Cohen the chance to go all out with lyrics about crawfish fry, possum stew, angel food cake, hams and yams, "buns on the griddle and grits on the boil."
Another aspect of Stuart's story line, here recounted, has to do with the renting of the Big White House, a 16-room manse, and the onslaught of the Tussies -- "All your kin," Grandpa says -- and squatters all. They turn a free supper into a free-for-all -- jamboree is the operative word -- and wind up getting everyone thrown out for wrecking the place. Such other plot convolutions as Kim's returning from the grave are perhaps welcomely omitted.
Even in the story's most simplistic form, it's hard to cotton to a slothful Grandpa who thrives on being poor and getting "relief grub," appropriates Mama's insurance money (to rent the manse) and hollers to his grandson, "I ain't about to send you to school" while the town's kids taunt the boy ("Stupid and dirty," they call him).
Leonard Drum won't be faulted for failing to find folksy redemption in Grandpa's role, or for playing it with unshakable indolence. But it's easy to go with the boy -- so far as one can figure, his name is Boy -- when he protests that reading stars and befriending raccoons somehow ain't enough for dealing with the world out there. And Ramzi Khalaf as Boy, radiating genuine charm and no small talent, makes it easier still.
Eden Riegel as Becca, a neighboring rich -- they say "comfortable" -- girl, takes Boy as a charity case, teaching him to glide, twirl and sway, in one of Mr. Weiner's and Ms. Szabo-Cohen's most felicitous numbers, "Waltzing Tonight Together." The accomplished Ms. Riegel is capable of announcing that she's precocious and prim and making it winning.
At the same time, Charlie Hofheimer, playing Matt, is sulky, scowling, overindulged, overeducated (he thinks) and, of course, starved for acceptance. Sarah Hubbard (Lucy) tries to teach him manners. Mr. Loewy's direction and staging are especially adept in the overlapping scenes involving the four youngsters.
In a cast of 19, note Janine LaManna as Boy's lively Mama, who sings "Love Don't Have Nothing With Mansions, Money or Fancy Clothes," and John Carroll, Matt's executive father, who realizes, between trips to London, that money can't buy love and respect.
Finally, Boy teaches Grandpa that fishing is no substitute for reading, just as Matt's father learns life's lessons from his son. Class dismissed.  "Spittin' Image," a musical in its world premiere, produced by the Forum Theater Group, 314 Main Street in Metuchen. Performances run through next Sunday: today and next Sunday at 2:30 P.M., Wednesday at 2:30 P.M., and Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 8 P.M.Box office: (9098) 548-0582.

LOAD-DATE: April 17, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Performing in "Spittin' Image," a musical in its world premiere at the Forum Theater Group in Metuchen, are Leonard Drum, left, as Grandpa, and Ramzi Khalaf, as Boy.

TYPE: Review

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The New York Times

April 19, 1994, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

Budget Plan Draws Fire From Hevesi

BYLINE: By JONATHAN P. HICKS 

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

LENGTH: 402 words

City Comptroller Alan G. Hevesi said yesterday that the Giuliani administration's budget proposals would mean fewer home-delivered meals for the elderly, less support for companies owned by women and minorities, dirtier parks and more potholes.
The report by Mr. Hevesi, a Democrat, looked at the effect on city services of the preliminary budget plans announced earlier this year by Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, a Republican. Mr. Hevesi applauded Mr. Giuliani's efforts to close a projected budget gap of $2.3 billion for the next fiscal year. But he added, "It is important to recognize that the proposed cuts will have long-term consequences -- in some cases severe -- for New York City residents." 
 For example, Mr. Hevesi said that a Giuliani administration proposal to cut the preventive housing subsidy, which is intended to help families remain intact, could result in more children being placed in foster homes. "The subsidy costs the city about $2.50 per day per family, while foster care costs the city about $10 per day per child," the report said.
The report noted that cuts in the city's Department for the Aging could result in fewer home-care visits and fewer meals for the elderly. That, it said, would lead to more elderly people being forced to go to nursing homes and higher medical expenses arising from nutrition problems.
 
An Unusual Report
 The report, issued before Mr. Giuliani releases his executive budget plan, is unusual since city comptrollers have traditionally waited until the executive budget to offer a critique. But Mr. Hevesi said there was no political motivation in his decision.
"The role of the Comptroller is not only to inform the public that there will be pain but to be alert that some of the proposed cuts, while helpful in the short run, are harmful in the long run," Mr. Hevesi said. "The Charter says that the Comptroller comments on the budget."
Forrest R. Taylor, a spokesman for Mr. Giuliani, said that although the Mayor "appreciates the comptroller's concern, his report is somewhat vague and does not provide alternatives to the Mayor's financial plan." He said that if Mr. Hevesi "is suggesting that certain cuts not be made, it's incumbent on him to offer proposals on where cuts should be made. If not, is he advocating tax increases?"
Mr. Hevesi's report did not offer many specifics on the impact of the proposed budget reductions.

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April 19, 1994, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

Cuts and Tax Rises Urged To Bolster Social Security

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

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

LENGTH: 947 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, April 18

Representative Dan Rostenkowski, the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, today proposed shoring up the finances of Social Security by reducing next year's cost-of-living adjustment, increasing the retirement age, trimming benefits for new retirees and raising payroll taxes in the 21st century.
Some of the proposals, standing alone, would provoke a political outcry. But Mr. Rostenkowski said he hoped they would be acceptable as part of a comprehensive plan to preserve Social Security for future generations. 
 Some combination of changes like those proposed by Mr. Rostenkowski has a good chance of passage. Social Security trustees said last week that unless Congress acted the Social Security trust funds would run out of money in 2029, seven years earlier than projected last year. The trustees said that Congress should worry about the problem now, when the solution is relatively painless. Bigger changes would be required in later years if lawmakers defer action, the trustees warned.
In opinion polls, young workers often say that they doubt Social Security will be available to them when they retire. Mr. Rostenkowski said his proposal would restore confidence in Social Security and guarantee the Treasury's ability to pay all promised benefits for at least 75 years. He said he hoped the proposal would stimulate debate on ways to solve the long-range problems of Social Security without drastic cuts in benefits or sharp increases in taxes.
 
Limiting an Increase
 Under Mr. Rostenkowski's proposal, all Social Security beneficiaries, about 42 million people, would receive a smaller cost-of-living adjustment in January 1995. The increase was expected to be 3 percent, but Mr. Rostenkowski's proposal would limit it to 2.5 percent.
As a result, the average monthly Social Security benefit, now $674, would rise to $691 in 1995, rather than $694. In the past, protests by elderly people have blocked proposed cuts in cost-of-living adjustments.
Mr. Rostenkowski is also proposing a tax increase for Social Security beneficiaries who are single and have incomes of $25,000 to $34,000 a year or are married with incomes of $32,000 to $44,000.
Under current law, these people must count up to half of their Social Security benefits as taxable income. Under Mr. Rostenkowski's proposal, up to 85 percent of their benefits could be included as taxable income.
The change would affect 13 percent of Social Security beneficiaries, about 5.5 million people. Single people with incomes of more than $34,000 and married couples with incomes over $44,000 are already subject to this requirement.
 
Cutting Future Benefits
 Mr. Rostenkowski would gradually reduce the generosity of the Social Security benefit formula over a 50-year period beginning in the year 2003. This would trim benefits for workers with average and above-average earnings, but not for those with low earnings.
For a person born in 1990 who earns average wages over a lifetime, benefits would be cut 8 percent. For a high earner, one who pays the maximum taxes, the reduction would be 20 percent if the person was born in 1990 and retires in the middle of the next century. High-earning baby boomers, those who pay the maximum taxes and retire early in the next century would experience reductions of 2 percent to 12 percent.
Mr. Rostenkowski's bill would also increase the age at which workers may retire with full benefits. This "normal retirement age," now 65, will rise gradually under current law, reaching 67 for people born in 1960 or later. Mr. Rostenkowski would speed up the change so it would take effect 11 years earlier, for people born in 1949 or later.
The first of Mr. Rostenkowski's proposed increases in the payroll tax would take effect in 26 years, in 2020, and additional increases would follow.
Under current law, employees and their employers each pay a tax equal to 6.2 percent of a worker's wages up to a maximum level, which is $60,600 this year. The tax rate is not scheduled to go up under current law, though the Social Security trust funds are expected to run out of money in 2029, when people born in 1964 will reach the age of 65.
Mr. Rostenkowski's bill would gradually increase the Social Security tax rate by nearly one-third over a 38-year period beginning in 2020. The tax rate would stay at 6.2 percent through 2019, then climb gradually to 7.35 percent in 2024 and remain at that level for 30 years. The tax rate would rise again in 2055 and in each of the next three years, reaching 8.15 percent in 2058.
The proposal would not affect Medicare's hospital insurance trust fund, which is expected to run out of money in 2001. Many experts say the Government will soon need to increase the Medicare tax, now 1.45 percent each for employee and employer.
Mr. Rostenkowski said the effect of the higher taxes would be more than offset by the growth of wages over the next 75 years. Even after paying the increased payroll taxes and taking account of inflation, he said, workers will still have higher incomes, with greater purchasing power, than they now have.
Under his proposal, a person who earns $32,600 in 2025 would pay a Social Security tax of $2,396, which is $375 more than the person would pay under current law.
Under Mr. Rostenkowski's proposal, all state and local government workers hired after Dec. 31 would have to pay Social Security taxes and participate in the program. Of the 21.5 million people who worked for state or local government some time last year, 5 million were not covered by Social Security, Federal officials say. Such workers may face severe financial hardship when they retire or become disabled.

LOAD-DATE: April 19, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Representative Dan Rostenkowski yesterday in Chicago after he proposed a measure to insure adequate financing for Social Security. (Todd Buchanan for The New York Times)

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April 20, 1994, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Daniel Rudman, 67; Studied Hormones and Aging

BYLINE: By WOLFGANG SAXON 

SECTION: Section D;  Page 27;  Column 4;  National Desk 

LENGTH: 507 words

Dr. Daniel Rudman, an endocrinologist and nutritionist who devoted his research to the well-being of the frail and elderly, died on Sunday in Froedtert Memorial Lutheran Hospital in Milwaukee. A resident of that city, he was 67.
The cause was complications after brain surgery, according to the Medical College of Wisconsin, where he had worked since 1988. 
 Dr. Rudman and his team focused on the aging of the endocrine system and the resulting hormone deficiencies. At his death, he was professor of medicine at the college and associate chief of staff for extended care at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Milwaukee.
 
Study on Growth Hormone
 Dr. Rudman was the author or co-author of 173 papers, articles and book chapters. He received national attention in 1990 as the principal author of a paper in The New England Journal of Medicine, "Effect of human growth hormone in men over 60 years old."
The study was based on a clinical trial of 21 healthy men aged 61 to 81. It found that after six months of injections of a genetically engineered version of the natural human growth hormone, the men emerged with bodies that by many measures were almost 20 years younger than the ones they started with.
"This is not a fountain of youth," he cautioned at the time. "We need to emphasize that the aging process is very complicated and has many aspects."
He termed the study highly preliminary and said far more work was required to determine the long-term effects. In fact, a paper he published a year later reported adverse symptoms and found that the benefits -- such as an increase in muscle mass and a decrease in body fat -- tended to disappear after the injections were stopped.
He and other experts warned that the dosage of the hormone had to be determined carefully because of the possibility of adverse side effects. But the original article immediately stirred the interest of the scientific community.
 
40 Years of Research
 It focused attention on research into aging and the health care and nutrition of the elderly. Currently the National Institutes of Health supports several trials involving human growth hormone as an anti-frailty drug.
Dr. Rudman was born in Boston and graduated from Boston Latin School. A Yale University graduate in chemistry, he received his medical degree at Yale's School of Medicine in 1949. His research on aging, metabolism, nutrition and the deficiencies of old age spanned 40 years and resulted in many original contributions.
From 1957 to 1968 he was associated with Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. From then until 1983 he was at Emory University and, before moving to Milwaukee, served as chief of geriatric medicine at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in North Chicago, Ill.
Dr. Rudman is survived by his wife, Inge Weinberg Rudman, a senior researcher in geriatrics and his closest collaborator; a daughter, Nancy, of San Jose, Calif.; a son, Richard D., of Boston, and a brother, Dr. Irving Rudman of Frankfurt, Ill.

NAME: Daniel Rudman

LOAD-DATE: April 20, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

TYPE: Obituary (Obit); Biography

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April 21, 1994, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

New in Congress, but a Powerful Friend of Drug Companies

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

SECTION: Section D;  Page 24;  Column 1;  National Desk 

LENGTH: 948 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, April 20

In a concession to the biotechnology industry and its supporters on Capitol Hill, the chairman of a major Congressional committee decided today to drop President Clinton's proposal for a Federal agency to review the "reasonableness" of new drug prices.
The chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, Representative John D. Dingell, said the proposal "should not be included as part of any comprehensive health care reform," and he vowed to oppose it throughout the legislative process. 
 The Michigan Democrat's decision came in response to the pleas of Representative Lynn Schenk, a Democrat whose San Diego district contains nearly 100 biotechnology companies. This segment of the drug industry considers itself particularly vulnerable because many of these companies have invested large sums on research in a new field without yet realizing profits. Officials of these companies say the Clinton plan is frightening away investors.
 
Accusations of Price Gouging
 Within the committee, Ms. Schenk carries a crucial vote on health care legislation, and her role illustrates how a new member of Congress can influence major legislation by focusing single-mindedly on an issue of intense concern to her constituents.
President Clinton and his wife, Hillary, have accused drug companies of price gouging. Mr. Clinton's bill would establish an Advisory Council on Breakthrough Drugs to review the prices charged for innovative drugs to see if they were "reasonable." The 13-member council would publicize its findings, and the Secretary of Health and Human Services could deny Medicare coverage for drugs deemed to be overpriced.
Ms. Schenk campaigned tirelessly against creating the advisory council, saying that any Government review of drug prices would discourage research on new cures.
Mr. Dingell accepted her arguments to try to win her vote for a modified version of Mr. Clinton's health plan. Ms. Schenk said she had not made a commitment to support Mr. Clinton's bill or Mr. Dingell's variation of it.
Carl B. Feldbaum, president of the Biotechnology Industry Organization, a trade group for 380 companies, said: "Ms. Schenk has exercised extraordinary influence for a freshman member of Congress. The ultimate winners will be the people suffering from diseases that have no treatment or cure."
But Clinton Administration officials still want some mechanism to restrain drug prices. Lobbyists for the elderly, including the American Association of Retired Persons, also want some limits on drug prices.
Lorrie McHugh, a White House spokeswoman, said tonight: "The Administration wants to protect consumers. We want to provide prescription drug coverage at affordable prices to all Americans. We feel that we put forth a good proposal to help achieve this objective."
John C. Rother, chief lobbyist for the association of retired persons, said Ms. Schenk was "a crucial vote" for Mr. Dingell in his effort to round up support for health care legislation. He said Mr. Dingell's commitment, in a letter to Ms. Schenk, was apparently "the price of her support."
Ms. Schenk is still trying to eliminate part of the bill that permits the health secretary to deny Medicare coverage for certain drugs if the manufacturer refuses to pay "an acceptable rebate" to the Government. The effect of a rebate is to reduce the price of a drug.
In addition, Ms. Schenk said, she is working to minimize any adverse effects on small businesses. Mr. Clinton's bill would require employers to pay most of the cost of health insurance for their employees. Many small businesses oppose this requirement, saying it would be prohibitively expensive for them.
In an interview today, Ms. Schenk said: "I didn't sign on to the President's bill or anyone else's. I wanted to be able to have an impact on those issues that caused me great consternation."
Biotechnology companies regard Mr. Clinton's proposal for Federal review of drug prices as a form of price controls. The mere possibility of such review alarmed investors and depressed biotechnology stock prices, the companies said. Ms. Schenk said, "The proposal has already panicked financial markets and forced cutbacks on research and development in the biotechnology industry."
Mr. Feldbaum of the biotechnology trade group said: "Since the beginning of 1993, when Clinton took office and announced his plans for health care reform, the biotech industry has been stymied in its efforts to raise money for research. This is a survival issue for us."
Biotechnology drugs use discoveries in genetics, cell biology and molecular biology to combat conditions like cystic fibrosis, multiple sclerosis, hepatitis and hemophilia. Other biotechnology drugs are being developed to fight Alzheimer's disease, AIDS, osteoporosis and heart disease.
Few biotechnology companies are profitable. Most do not have products on the market. Only 28 biotechnology drugs have been approved for sale to the public, but more than 270 are in clinical trials.
Mr. Feldbaum said Mr. Dingell's stance was important because "no member of Congress working on health care reform is more respected or powerful." But other lawmakers are seeking restraints on drug prices.
Henri A. Termeer, chairman of the Genzyme Corporation in Cambridge, Mass., met recently with Senator Edward M. Kennedy, and urged the Massachusetts Democrat to drop the drug-review council. An aide to Mr. Kennedy, who is chairman of the Committee on Labor and Human Resources, said the Senator was "exploring possible compromises that would encourage the biotechnology industry to develop miracle drugs while also insuring that the drugs will be affordable to consumers."

NAME: John D. Dingell

LOAD-DATE: April 21, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

SERIES: One Health Care Vote -- A periodic look at a lawmaker.

GRAPHIC: Photo: After pleas from Representative Lynn Schenk, a California Democrat whose district has many biotechnology companies, Representative John D. Dingell of Michigan decided to oppose a Clinton proposal for a Federal agency to review new drug prices. They conferred yesterday. (Stephen Crowley for The New York Times)

TYPE: Biography; Series

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April 21, 1994, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

Attacker of Queens Woman, 74, Is Linked to 6 Other Robberies

BYLINE: By RICHARD PEREZ-PENA 

SECTION: Section B;  Page 3;  Column 5;  Metropolitan Desk 

LENGTH: 392 words

The same man who pistol-whipped, robbed and shot a 74-year-old woman outside her home on Tuesday has also robbed six other persons in Queens, including four elderly people, in the last four weeks, the police said yesterday.
With Constance Vieira of Whitestone recovering from a gunshot wound to the stomach and a blow to the head with the butt of a gun, the police yesterday appealed for the public's help in finding her attacker. 
 "I would take help from the devil if I can in order to get this information," Capt. Donald Kelly said at a news conference at the 111th Precinct. "We've got to get a line on him."
He said the string of robberies in Whitestone, Bayside and Flushing is of particular concern because "the level of violence is escalating," as is the pace. Five of the robberies occurred in the week ending Tuesday.
Mrs. Vieira, who was in stable condition at New York Hospital Medical Center in Queens, was the most recent victim and the only one who was shot. After shooting her, the robber took her car, which the police are still looking for. It is a brown 1991 Oldsmobile 88, a four-door sedan, license QDE 603.
Captain Kelly said the suspect was a neatly dressed, well-spoken and clean-shaven black man, 28 to 35 years old, 5 feet 10 to 6 feet 2 inches tall and weighing 190 to 210 pounds.
In five of the seven instances, the robber wielded a silver-plated handgun, and in all seven, he took both cash and credit cards. Three times, the victim's car was taken.
On April 15, Captain Kelly said, the man robbed a 20-year-old woman, clubbed her in the head with his gun and took her car, a new Nissan Maxima. He said he thought the man took the car "more as a means of escape" than to steal it.
The woman reported the crime, and police spotted the car shortly afterward on the Grand Central Parkway and gave chase. The car thief hit another car, causing an accident, and escaped.
The first robbery, on March 25, was of a 78-year-old woman. In the second, six days later, the victim was a 24-year-old woman.
On April 13, the robber began to pick up his pace. That day, a 78-year-old man was robbed and his 1988 Buick was stolen. The next day, a 68-year-old woman was the target, and the day after that the 20-year-old woman was struck.
The day before Mrs. Vieira was robbed and shot, a 78-year-old woman was robbed.

LOAD-DATE: April 21, 1994

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April 21, 1994, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

METRO DIGEST

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

LENGTH: 536 words


NEW YORK CITY
 
FAX BRINGS ARREST OF NUMBERS SUSPECT
For 30 years, Raymond Marquez was a thorn to law-enforcement agencies and a legend to countless gamblers in Harlem and East Harlem. With a clientele whose wagers ranged from a dime to more than $1,000 a day on numbers games, Mr. Marquez, nicknamed Spanish Raymond, built a gambling empire that raked in about $30 million a year, the authorities say. Much of the case that resulted in his arrest, they said, stemmed from one mistake: his use of a fax to get daily reports on his illegal gambling profits from Manhattan to his vacation retreat in Fort Lauderdale. A1.
 
DARING ROBBERIES BAFFLE POLICE
Two well-dressed men have shown an unusual combination of precision and ruthlessness, pulling off seven armed jewel robberies during the last year, shooting and wounding three victims and taking $320,000 worth of diamond rings. B3. 

A BRUTAL PATTERN IN QUEENS
The same man who pistol-whipped, robbed and shot a 74-year-old woman outside her home on Tuesday has also robbed six others, including four elderly people, in Queens in the last four weeks, the police said. B3.
 
SOME SKEPTICAL ABOUT CONTRACT SYSTEM
Some minority and women business owners responded skeptically to a new city procurement system designed to aid their companies and other small businesses, saying it does not go far enough in filling the void left by the elimination of a more aggressive affirmative-action contracting program. B4.
 
REGION
 
PACT IS REACHED ON DUNE EROSION
Property owners in erosion-ravaged West Hampton Dunes, L.I., have reached agreement with Federal, state and Suffolk County officials on a $32 million project to rebuild their beaches and reconstruct jetties blamed for robbing them of sand. B6.
 
L.I.R.R. CHIEF ASSAILED AS OUT OF TOUCH
The president of the Long Island Rail Road may be unable to fulfill his responsibilities because he is habitually away from New York, the chairman of the State Senate Transportation Committee contended, as contradictory accounts emerged about where the president, Charles W. Hoppe, spends his off-duty hours. B6.
 
YALE OFFERS WORKERS MONEY FOR HOMES
In an effort to stabilize New Haven's impoverished neighborhoods, Yale University said today that it would give its employees $20,000 if they buy homes in the city before January 1996. B6.
 
JEWISH BOY FIGHTS RETURN TO PARENTS
The Jewish boy at the heart of a complex custody fight testified that he was dissatisfied with the religious life style his parents provided during a four-day stay with them in March. B5.
 
25 HELD IN IMMIGRANT SMUGGLING
Federal agents charged 25 Chinese and Turkish immigrants with taking part in an elaborate smuggling and bribery scheme. B5.
 
NEW JERSEY VOTERS REJECT TAX INCREASES
For months, Gov. Christine Todd Whitman has been telling New Jerseyans that local property taxes are their responsibility, not hers. On Tuesday, in a scant turnout, voters apparently acted on that message, rejecting school budgets and their higher taxes in almost half of the state's school districts. B7.
 
Governor Cuomo criticized legislative leaders for failing to end the state budget impasse. B7.

LOAD-DATE: April 21, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Graph: "PULSE: Helping Tourists" tracks the number of people seeking information in each month of 1993 at the Grand Central Parnership's tourist office at Grand Central Terminal. (Source: Grand Central Partnership)

TYPE: Summary

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April 21, 1994, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

Review/Television;
Confessions of a Former Alarmist

BYLINE: By WALTER GOODMAN 

SECTION: Section C;  Page 22;  Column 1;  Cultural Desk 

LENGTH: 864 words

Here's a how-de-do! A network news special that makes light of the perils on which network news specials thrive. ABC's "Are We Scaring Ourselves to Death?" is a sharp expose of exposes about crime, pollution and other television favorites.
Leading the charge is a repentant sinner. In a mea culpa before an audience at Seton Hall University, John Stossel, who made his reputation as a consumer-affairs reporter, admits to having played up such transient worries as train accidents, lawn chemicals and coffee makers. But he has found the light and now maintains that in addition to raising blood pressures, the incessant scaremongering feeds public misapprehension and leads to the misallocation of public money. 
 His evidence is mainly statistical. Whatever impression you may get from television, for example, crime, including violent crime, is not rising. (The program includes a clip from a "20/20" segment, reported by one John Stossel, about "criminals dressed like cops, getting away with murder and robbery and rape.") Older Americans, who express the most nervousness about crime, maybe because they watch more news programs, actually have the least to worry about. (Although his targets have changed, Mr. Stossel cannot quite shake off news-magazine hyperbole. Now he is warning of the perils to the affluent elderly of living in "gated communities," which he describes as "fortresses like something out of the Middle Ages.")
The people who ought to be worried, and worried about, says Mr. Stossel, are black male teen-agers in the inner cities; their chances of being on the receiving end of violence are stunningly high.
Popular dangers that you need not lose sleep over abound. Mr. Stossel makes a case, for example, that the reaction to asbestos-flaking in New York City schools was overwrought but that no politician or official dared say so in the face of parental concern, stirred up by local television news. The expensive attempt to remove the asbestos, he says, not only may have spread the stuff into the air, but may also have subjected some children to more palpable dangers by leaving them on the streets while the schools were closed. (He does not go so far as to assert that the children may have been deprived of learning something in the classrooms.)
Also noted, as the debunking proceeds, is the lack of evidence of increased cancer at Love Canal, the object of much hand wringing by television reporters, and the unjustified agitation over the use of Alar on apples, stirred up by "60 Minutes." Mr. Stossel suggests, too, that the cost of tamper-proof packages is as excessive as the commotion about a few instances of contamination. (Not counting the damage to fingers and psyches in the efforts to open them.)
Particular attention is given to a lead-infested site in Aspen, Colo., that has made the Environmental Protection Agency's Superfund list. The agency wants to remove 150 houses, and dig up and dispose of tons of earth. In a striking reversal of the usual environmental scare story, this ambitious project has so far been blocked by residents who, besides not wanting to be bothered, argue that the lead, which has been in the ground for 100 years, has not been shown to have hurt anybody. (Just as pictures of stricken children are customarily used to arouse emotions about the risk of the hour, so pictures of healthy children are presented here as a testament to the harmless or beneficial nature of the lead.)
Despite the evidence, officials tell Mr. Stossel they are still determined to go ahead with their earth moving, possibly in accord with the principle that once an agency has been given the power and money to do something, facts must not be allowed to get in the way.
Mr. Stossel also engages in an amusing exchange with Ralph Nader, who has evidently never met a product he liked. Here he warns against hot dogs, carpets, chickens and coffee, including some sorts of decaffeinated coffee. He is also not wild about flying.
For viewers in need of serious things to worry about, Mr. Stossel offers automobile accidents, smoking, falling down stairs and, especially, poverty. He maintains, much like business spokesmen, that regulations to prevent minor or imagined risks are a brake on the economy and that the money would be better used to create jobs.
After the hourlong report, Mr. Stossel gives the regulators and health campaigners in the audience an opportunity to respond to his argument that "since your rules probably made America a little poorer, might you have killed people in the name of safety?" (Viewers may add a new worry of their own. What will Mr. Stossel do with himself now that he has abjured his calling?)
You don't have to agree with Mr. Stossel on all particulars to welcome tonight's program as a breath of good sense in the fear-and-trembling atmosphere of much television news. The evening's lesson: Don't panic about decaf, but try not to swallow too much Ralph Nader.
 
Are We Scaring Ourselves to Death?
ABC, tonight at 10
(Channel 7 in New York)
 
A special produced by Jeff Diamond for ABC News; anchor and reporter, John Stossel; Victor Neufeld, executive producer.

LOAD-DATE: April 21, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

TYPE: Review

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April 21, 1994, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

An Exposition for the Over-50 Population

BYLINE: By ENID NEMY 

SECTION: Section C;  Page 12;  Column 3;  Home Desk 

LENGTH: 893 words

WHEN she was 60 years old, Evelyn Nef of Washington, a former executive secretary of the American Sociological Association and the author of several books on the Arctic, decided to become a psychotherapist. At 65, she graduated and got her first Social Security check the same year. She is now 80, still practicing and writing her autobiography.
"When I was 50, I thought my life was over," she said. "Little did I know the best years of my life were still ahead of me." 
 Unusual? Only in degree. There are tens of thousands of men and women today who change careers after the age of 50, voluntarily and otherwise, whose average life expectancy is 29 years longer than it was at the turn of the century and who can look forward to several active and productive decades.
The concerns and interests of this group, described by some as the "second middle age" and others as the "third age," and spanning the years between 50 and 80, will be addressed Sunday and Monday at the second Fifty Plus Expo, at the Hotel Pennsylvania in Manhattan. Organized by Julie Frank, the exposition will include seminars, discussions, classes and exhibits on everything from finance, health care and fitness -- including tai chi exercises -- to careers, computer skills and hobbies.
"Expo was created to educate, inform and inspire the fastest growing, most affluent and most neglected segment of our population that they must plan for the second half of their lives," said Ms. Frank, who is 37. A former special assistant to Andrew Stein when he was the City Council president, she has created a number of community programs involving the elderly and also organized the first Fifty Plus Expo last year.
The planning now taking place for the next White House Conference on Aging will be discussed at the exposition by Robert B. Blancato, the executive director. The conference, scheduled for May 1995, will help shape aging policy for the following decade. A national series of state and regional conferences, aimed at encouraging grass-roots involvement, has already begun.
"By the time the conference begins, the baby-boom population will be one year away from turning 50," Mr. Blancato said. "It is estimated by the Census Bureau that more than one million baby boomers will reach age 100 and over."
Dr. Lydia Bronte, a former director of the Aging Society Project at the Carnegie Corporation, will be the keynote speaker. She said she believed the event was both timely and necessary since "the major change in the composition of our society is the increase in longevity."
Dr. Bronte warned of a danger already observable and likely to escalate -- the combination of increasing longevity and corporate downsizing, with the latter, she said, leading to a precedent "that the working years of an individual's life will be between 20 and 45 or 50." She said that "the logical extension of this current trend is that a smaller and smaller percentage of adult life will be spent in the work force."
"What I want to do today is to change forever the way you think about your own life," Dr. Bronte said. "The reality is that most Americans don't get old at 65 either physically or mentally."
More important, she said, she believes that the extra years of life expectancy are not being added to old age but to the "second middle age." She attributed this to the increasing number of men and women who maintain a high level of functioning in their 60's and 70's and who maintain it until they die.
Dr. Bronte interviewed 150 people over 65, all of whom were still working, for "The Longevity Factor," her recently published book (HarperCollins, $20). She found that some people had three different career peaks, one in their 40's, another in their 50's and early 60's and still another in their 70's. "Almost half had a major peak of creativity beginning at about the age of 50 and in many cases lasting for 25 or 30 years," she said.
"Essentially, if corporations want to increase productivity, they have to abandon what Robert Reich calls the 'butcher approach' -- chopping something to the size that you need and lopping off pieces that you don't want -- to the 'baker approach' -- increasing the value of all the ingredients and creating something different and useful out of them."
A number of seminars at the exposition will be conducted by IDS Financial Services Inc., a division of American Express. Financial planners will deal with the cost of long-term care, estate-planning techniques and strategies that can minimize taxes, and how to maintain life styles after retirement.
Cancer Care will present speakers on breast cancer and widowhood, and the Isabella Geriatric Center will sponsor a seminar on "Caring for Loved Ones With Memory Disorders," coping with depression and various aspects of fitness.
Other participants will include Dr. Norbert Sander and Dr. Kenneth Meiseler, both experts on fitness; Maureen Curley, executive director of the Retired Senior Volunteer Program; Rabbi Joseph Potasnik, who will moderate the Career and Life Planning seminar, and Msgr. Charles Fahey of Fordham University
The Fifty Plus Expo will be held at the Hotel Pennsylvania, Seventh Avenue at 33d Street, on Sunday from noon to 6 P.M. and on Monday from 9:30 A.M. to 5 P.M. The entrance fee is $8. For information: (212) 343-8975 and (212) 631-7547.

LOAD-DATE: April 21, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Drawing

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April 24, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

From Afar;
An Indomitable Man, an Incurable Loneliness

BYLINE: By TOM WICKER 

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

LENGTH: 1366 words

To many Americans born before World War II, the death of Richard Milhous Nixon seemed hardly believable, even though he was 81 years old and film clips had shown him looking somewhat feeble during a recent trip to Russia. That only alerted older Americans to look for another Nixon comeback.
He had, after all, played an improbably long, large -- sometimes unwelcome -- part in their lives and time, in a public career that lasted for nearly 50 years after he first won election to Congress in 1946. And he had seemed indomitable (or, to the many who did not love him, relentless), returning again and again to prominence after defeats and a disgrace that would have finished other politicians. 
 At his death, he had won his way painfully back from the Watergate scandal that had driven him from the White House in 1974 to a relatively respected position as elder statesman, political analyst, author and commentator. President Clinton paid tribute to him as a wise counselor on foreign policy.
Richard Nixon's jowly, beard-shadowed face, the ski-jump nose and the widow's peak, the arms upstretched in the V-sign, had been so often pictured and caricatured, his presence had become such a familiar one in the land, he had been so often in the heat of controversy, that it was hard to realize the nation really would not "have Nixon to kick around anymore."
That famous remark, directed at the press with which he so often warred, was the exit line in a self-proclaimed "last press conference" after he lost to Edmund G. (Pat) Brown in a race for governor of California in 1962. And that defeat came only two years after Mr. Nixon had lost to John F. Kennedy in the most celebrated, and the closest, Presidential election of modern times.
Yet in 1968, despite those crushing blows, he was elected in another close campaign as the 37th President of the United States. Four years later, Richard M. Nixon won a second term in one of the biggest landslides on record.
Americans young enough never to have voted for or against him -- he did not seek office after 1972 -- probably thought of Mr. Nixon mostly as the first President forced to resign the nation's highest office. And that, no doubt, is how he will be characterized in the thumbnail historical sketches of the future (it may be as the only President forced to resign).
That description is accurate and perhaps fair enough, but it leaves out much about the only American other than Franklin D. Roosevelt to have been nominated on five national tickets, to run for President or Vice President. Each won four times in those five elections, Mr. Nixon capturing two terms in each office.
It does not tell much, either, about the remarkable and contradictory record of a man who won early fame as a determined Communist-hunter, then became the President who conceived and carried out an "opening to China" that ended decades of silence between the United States and the second-largest Communist power. An unrelenting hawk in pursuing the war in Vietnam, he nevertheless, in 1972, entered into the first significant arms-limitation treaty with what was then the Soviet Union.
A Republican and a self-styled conservative, Richard Nixon was the only President ever to impose wage-and-price controls in peacetime. He sponsored and suffered the defeat of the Family Assistance Plan, essentially a guaranteed annual income and still the most far-reaching reform of welfare ever seriously debated. And in 1970, the Nixon Administration -- elected not least by a "white backlash" against the gains of black Americans -- helped desegregate more schools in the South than had any of its predecessors.
Those future sketches may not even include events in Mr. Nixon's career that have achieved near-mythic status. Even before his epic contest with John F. Kennedy in 1960, his so-called "Checkers" speech, rebutting charges of accepting illicit contributions, was a political masterpiece that may have saved the Eisenhower-Nixon campaign in 1952. It also became the butt of a generation's jokes, and is still derided by persons who neither saw nor heard it, because of its maudlin appeal to public sentimentality.
(The Checkers speech was named after a dog that had been given to the Nixon family, a pet Mr. Nixon said the family loved too much to even think of returning.) The speech attracted the largest television audience up to that time -- a record not surpassed until Mr. Nixon and John F. Kennedy engaged in the first televised Presidential debate in 1960.
To characterize Richard Nixon only as a President forced to resign would say little about a career and a character steeped in controversy long before Watergate. He was a tough and ruthless competitor who seldom hesitated to cut corners or engage in questionable tactics, and many opponents never forgave what they regarded as his smears and trickery. Though he made himself the heir apparent to President Eisenhower, and campaigned in that role against Kennedy in 1960, Eisenhower tried to dump him as Vice President in 1956 and secretly sought to thwart his Presidential nomination in 1960.
Nor does his resignation, which was preceded by two years of unrelenting investigation and shrill publicity, tell much about a personality that was clearly withdrawn and perhaps tortured. Mr. Nixon was a rare example of a lonely introvert who rose to the top in the extroverted world of elective politics. The unremitting effort to do so -- to convince the public that a shy and withdrawn man was a genial backslapper -- must have cost him a great deal psychologically; and it fixed on him the enduring suspicion that he never allowed Americans to see the "real Nixon." He rarely did.
Perhaps partially because of a perceived need to conceal his real self, Mr. Nixon was a secretive man, both personally and as President. His profound insecurities seemed strangely to have been enlarged when he achieved the White House, a goal he had tenaciously pursued, and became for a time the most powerful man in the world. Perhaps he felt he had more to lose; and one reason he tried to "stonewall" the Watergate break-in, leading to his downfall, seems to have been an almost fanatic unwillingness to "give in" to the enemies he imagined all around him.
 Such insecurities may have been rooted in a lonely and emotionally deprived childhood. A mother he and all who knew her regarded as a "saint" may have provided less warm motherly love than saintly Quaker examples of determination, hard work, discipline, emotional privacy, self-control. These were qualities that marked Richard Nixon's life from adolescence in Whittier, Calif., to law school at Duke University, to the White House, in the last 20 years of decline and recovery, in his final desire to be subjected to no extraordinary life-saving procedures. In all of that life, he remained essentially a man alone, one who had always believed that people did not like him.
Bryce Harlow, a Republican who knew Mr. Nixon well and served him faithfully, believed that in youth he had been "hurt very deeply by somebody he trusted. . . . He never got over it and never trusted anybody again. But in life we get back what we plow into it." Indeed, if Richard Nixon trusted no one, millions of Americans never trusted him.
Arthur Burns, whom Mr. Nixon appointed chairman of the Federal Reserve, once wondered "if he ever really had a good, close, personal friend." Rather sadly, Mr. Burns decided not. "A friend like that could have saved him," he said -- from his lifelong isolation, surely, perhaps from his inability to trust, hence to be trusted outside his family circle.
Henry Kissinger, whose name will always be associated with Mr. Nixon's, once said to the journalist Hugh Sidey, "Can you imagine what Nixon would have been had somebody loved him? . . . He would have been a great, great man had somebody loved him."
Perhaps he might have been. There are those who believe he was. They probably did not include Richard Milhous Nixon, who in the aftermath of Watergate, uncharacteristically near tears, told David Frost that he had "let down my friends . . . let down the country . . . let down the American people."

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April 24, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

GOOD HEALTH;
IS MISPLACING YOUR GLASSES ALZHEIMERS

BYLINE: By Robin Marantz Henig;  Robin Marantz Henig, who writes frequently for this magazine, is the author of "The Myth of Senility" and, most recently, "A Dancing Matrix: How Science Confronts Emerging Viruses."

SECTION: Section 6; Page 72; Column 1; Magazine Desk

LENGTH: 2303 words

IN LITTLE MORE THAN A DECADE, ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE HAS moved from an obscure and supposedly rare condition to become the nation's fourth-leading cause of death. The disease slowly but relentlessly eviscerates a lifetime of memories, destroying brain cells and blocking communication from one cell to another. It eventually erases all that makes a person alive, unique and human. A recent Gallup Poll found that one of every three Americans now knows someone who has it and that nearly 50 percent worry about developing it themselves. The disease afflicts four million people, and family after family has a sad story to tell about it.
 Harriet H., for example, says she did not understand her husband's condition until the night they gave a dinner party at their suburban Washington home. "It was a very nice evening; we all had a wonderful time," she says. "And then as people were getting ready to leave, my husband put on his coat to leave with them. He didn't know he was in his own home." 
IN PART BECAUSE OF THE INCREASED FAMILIARITY WITH THE ailment, there is concern in the medical world that people, and occasionally their doctors, are jumping too quickly to a diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease when all that's happening is normal aging. Scientists now recognize that Alzheimer's is totally different from the memory lapses that plague everyone who gets old; it is a specific, organic condition that develops only in some human brains.
 "There is some tendency to diagnose Alzheimer's disease too readily when one is presented with the everyday kind of forgetfulness that all of us have," says Leonard Berg, professor of neurology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and chairman of the medical and scientific board of the Alzheimer's Association. "Alzheimer's disease is the new phrase on the block."
 Being too quick to the diagnosis can be tragic. In making such a judgment, the doctor might be overlooking some physical and potentially treatable condition that can cause almost identical symptoms. What looks like Alzheimer's might, in fact, be caused by one of scores of underlying, often treatable, conditions -- including depression, drug intoxication, thyroid imbalance, vitamin B-12 deficiency, even a mild heart attack.
 The first step when evaluating an elderly patient complaining of memory loss is "to do a neurologic exam to see if the patient really has dementia," says Daniel A. Pollen, a neurologist at the University of Massachusetts. Dementia is the loss of intellectual abilities, like memory, judgment and language, without a loss of consciousness or alertness. "Then, if there is dementia, you have to look for a treatable cause that might explain it," adds Pollen, the author of "Hannah's Heirs: The Quest for the Genetic Origins of Alzheimer's Disease." A thorough examination is the only way to rule out these possibilities.
 The disease is named after Alois Alzheimer, a German psychiatrist who in 1907 reported the perplexing case of a 51-year-old woman who experienced intellectual deterioration. When his patient died, incontinent and bedridden, four years later, Alzheimer conducted an autopsy of her brain. He found it riddled with two abnormal cell formations that he characterized as "plaques" and "tangles." These two types of brain cell masses are today the hallmarks of the neurological disease that bears his name.
 Subsequent research has shown that the plaques are made of a brain protein known as beta-amyloid and that the tangles consist of abnormal nerve cell filaments wrapped around each other like a fraying piece of twine. To this day, the only way that Alzheimer's disease can be diagnosed with absolute certainty is if brain tissue examined under a microscope, usually after death, turns up sufficient evidence of these tangles and plaques. Brain biopsies are rarely done because they are difficult and dangerous.
 For many years, the diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease was used only for early-onset, then called "presenile," dementia. "When I went to medical school in the 40's, we were taught that Alzheimer's disease was a very rare disorder affecting people in their 40's and 50's and that none of us was ever going to see a case in our lifetimes," Berg says. "They told us that something else happens to old people, but because it affected people in their 60's and 70's, they weren't going to go into that."
 Gradually, though, scientists realized that the same plaques and tangles that appeared in the brains of people who died of presenile dementia were found in the brains of people with a later onset of the very same symptoms. Since the late 1970's, Alzheimer's disease has been used to mean dementia caused by a specific kind of brain degeneration no matter what the age of the patient.
 In much of medicine, the diagnosis of a specific disease is made by ruling out others. This is true of Alzheimer's. "If you have a good history of progression over a year or more, and if you've ruled out the possible reversible causes of the symptoms, you can usually make a diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease," Pollen says. "Some people like to do MRI or CT scans to see whether there's brain atrophy -- but these are only consistent with the diagnosis, not proof."
 Reversible pseudo-dementia occurs in only about 10 percent of patients who come in for evaluations. Still, it's worth looking for, since the alternative is to consign someone with a treatable disease to a category of illness that's progressive and incurable.
 Just as there are reports of overdiagnosis, so too are there reports of underdiagnosis. Some physicians are reluctant to give such a dire name to a patient's condition; instead, they say the forgetfulness and confusion are the inevitable result of aging. "A patient came to us just a few weeks ago with dementia, who had been told by his doctor that it's just normal aging, and there's nothing anyone can do," Pollen says. It may not prove to be either; it's possible that something can be done or that it's not normal aging at all but rather a case of Alzheimer's.
 Overdiagnosis does not completely explain why Alzheimer's seems so common today, affecting a million more Americans than a decade ago. A fuller explanation is the population growth of the people at highest risk. Alzheimer's is overwhelmingly a disease of very old age. Those over 85 represent the fastest-growing segment of the population. As this age group expands, the number with the disease is expected to grow exponentially, with as many as 14 million by the year 2050.
 The prevalence rates rise steeply with age, according to a 1989 study conducted in the working-class neighborhood of East Boston. "We went door to door and interviewed everyone over 65," says Dr. Denis A. Evans, who coordinated the study while at the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. More than 3,800 older people were interviewed and 467 were asked to come to a health center for further evaluations. From this sample, Evans's group concluded that for people aged 65 to 74, the prevalence of Alzheimer's was 3 percent; for those aged 75 to 84, it was 19 percent, and for people over the age of 85, the rate of Alzheimer's disease was an astonishing 47 percent. Earlier estimates had put the rate at closer to 20 to 30 percent.
 "The age distribution curve," says Evans, now at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center in Chicago, "implies a dramatic increase in prevalence of the illness in the years ahead." The economic implications are staggering. The four million who have the disease now cost the nation some $90 billion a year. "Imagine the whole state of Texas," says Zaven S. Khachaturian, associate director of the National Institute on Aging. "Imagine all those people in need of long-term nursing home care. Our society simply cannot afford it."
 In response to the problem, Federal support for Alzheimer's research has increased tenfold since 1983. This has led to an eruption of scientific discoveries in the past few years. Biologists have now identified several genetic markers that seem to correlate with early-onset Alzheimer's disease, which affects as many as 10 percent of Alzheimer's patients.
 For the past 15 years, researchers have focused on the plaques and tangles identified by Alzheimer back in 1907. These brain abnormalities are most plentiful in two critical regions of the brain: the hippocampus, which controls memory, and the cerebral cortex, which controls higher order thinking and reasoning.
 In those same regions, you can also find high concentrations of beta-amyloid, the protein in many of the plaques. This finding led to the amyloid hypothesis: that the first step in a sequence of destructive events in the brain involves beta-amyloid. But a small group of Alzheimer's researchers have questioned the amyloid hypothesis, saying the presence of beta-amyloid in Alzheimer's brains is the result, rather than the cause, of the brain cell devastation.
 Then last fall, scientists at Duke University made one of the most important discoveries since Alois Alzheimer's original finding. They linked a different gene to an increased susceptibility to the most common form of Alzheimer's, the form that strikes after the age of 65.
 The Duke scientists, led by Allen D. Roses, a neurobiologist, offered an alternative to the amyloid hypothesis. They proposed that the first step in the brain cell degeneration involves a protein called apolipoprotein E (ApoE).
 The scientists found that 64 percent of Alzheimer's patients had at least one gene coding for the type of the ApoE protein known as E4. Among a control group, only 31 percent did. And they charted a clear relationship between the ApoE types and the age of onset of the disease. For those Alzheimer's patients with two E4 genes, one from each parent, the average age of onset was 68. For those with a single E4, paired with another type like E3, the average age was 75. For those with no E4, the average age of onset was 84.
 It became clear, then, that having ApoE4 is a risk factor for Alzheimer's disease, just as high cholesterol is a risk factor for heart disease. "If you have E4, you're more likely to get Alzheimer's disease; if you don't have E4, you're less likely," Roses says. Research on how E4 works, he says, holds promise for a preventive therapy within the next 10 years, perhaps as simple as a pill to supply a missing brain chemical.
 Just as diet and exercise can lessen the risk of heart disease for someone with high cholesterol, something in the environment might affect whether a person with E4 actually develops Alzheimer's. So far, evidence of environmental influences on Alzheimer's disease is scanty. But two recent studies have raised some possibilities.
 At the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, Dr. Victor Henderson reviewed the medical records and death certificates of some 2,400 women who had lived in Southern California and found that those who had been on estrogen replacement therapy were 40 percent less likely to have had Alzheimer's than those who had not taken estrogen. And at Duke, John Breitner examined 50 pairs of elderly twins who developed Alzheimer's disease at different ages -- or in which only one twin ever developed the disease -- and found that those who took anti-inflammatory drugs for arthritis were four times more likely than their co-twins to have developed Alzheimer's at a later age, or to be spared altogether. Now clinical trials are under way to see whether estrogen replacement therapy or anti-inflammatory drugs offer protection against Alzheimer's.
 WHEN THE BRAIN CELL destruction begins, the effect is at first insidious. The earliest symptoms of the disease -- often noticeable only in retrospect -- are loss of recent memory and impaired judgment. But often these deficits are easily disguised. "My husband maintained his poise for a very long time," says Harriet H., whose husband's diagnosis in 1982 came after signs of decline that began eight years before. "If we ran into you on the street and you were a friend, he would say: 'How are you? Nice to see you. How's your family?' And you would think he was absolutely fine. But he would have no idea who you were. If you were a stranger from New Guinea who had just set foot on our shores, he would say the same thing."
 At first, it's hard to distinguish these symptoms from normal forgetfulness. Harriet's husband, for instance, had always been absent-minded. But as the brain decays, the memory loss becomes more profound; people forget not only where they left their glasses but that they ever wore glasses. As the brain deteriorates, Alzheimer's changes not only memory but personality. One patient may lash out at a spouse or child; another, retreat into silence, or become confused, paranoid or belligerent. In the final stages, usually about 8 to 10 years after diagnosis, patients are often unable to control their bodily functioning, becoming unable to speak, swallow or recognize their own families.
 Harriet cared for her husband at home for 10 years. Finally, when he could no longer walk and barely recognized anyone, she put him in a nursing home. Since there is no cure, this is where most Alzheimer's patients spend their last years -- bedridden, incontinent, an empty, sad shell of what they once were.
 Curiously, the body often stays intact while the mind falls to pieces. Harriet is still moved to tears by her husband's face, which looks younger than its 80 years. "He's always had a very sweet face. Now it's just the same sweet face, but it's lost all its tension." Despite his mute helplessness, she can recognize in that face the man she once loved, the man who, in a changed but no less powerful way, she loves still. "It's a very dear face. He's a very dear man."

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April 25, 1994, Monday, Late Edition - Final

Carjacker Unnerves the Elderly of Queens

BYLINE: By LYNETTE HOLLOWAY 

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

LENGTH: 740 words

Eight times now he has struck in broad daylight in several Queens neighborhoods, a lone attacker following his elderly victims from banks, threatening them at the point of a silver pistol as he demands money and sometimes a car.
Once he pistol-whipped, robbed and shot a woman inside the garage of her home. Once he stole a woman's handbag as she was unloading packages in the driveway of her house. And another time, he entered the passenger side of a man's car, demanded money and ordered him out. 
 The gunman, whom the police are calling the Silver Gun Carjacker, is still at large. But on Friday the police released a photograph of a man they identified as a suspect in the robberies, which began on March 21.
In the Queens neighborhoods of Bayside, Whitestone and Richmond Hill, where the robberies have occurred, people have altered their daily routines if only in subtle ways. Some say they are alternating their use of bank teller lines and cash machines. Others say they cast more glances over their shoulders than they used to or check their rear-view mirrors to see if anyone is following them. But even his victims are going on with their lives, saying it is hard to escape crime in a city like New York.
"My mother wanted to go out to the bank alone a few days after the attack," said Gayle Sablich, 35, a resident of Bayside whose parents were attacked in their driveway after they returned home from the bank 12 days ago. "What can they do? Stay in the house and barricade themselves? It's gotten me sick on the other hand, and I'm hesitant to go out without asking someone to join me."
Neal Vartanian, district manager for City Councilman Michael J. Abel, who represents areas including Whitestone, Bayside and parts of Flushing, said that people had expressed more anger and frustration than fear over the incidents.
"People are just being careful," Mr. Vartanian said. "They are, however, concerned about whether this type of thing is going to increase. They do want more police protection, and they want this thing solved. We've had a lot of problems with car thefts in these communities, and people are just fed up."
So far, the only pattern to emerge is that the gunman scouts most of his victims at banks, watching to see how much money is withdrawn, then follows them home and accosts them in their driveway or front door, the police said. He works mostly near bridges for a quick getaway. In Whitestone and Flushing, four attacks have occurred near the Cross Island Parkway, Utopia Parkway and the Clearview Expressway. In Bayside, the attacks have occurred near the Clearview Expressway, Francis Lewis Boulevard and the Union Turnpike.
Meanwhile, investigators have found themselves in the unusual situation of having to put a name to a face. The photograph of the gunman was made by surveillance cameras last Monday in a Flushing bank where the police say he was scouting another victim.
"We're advising people to take a good look at this picture and to beware," said John Miller, deputy commissioner of public information for the New York City Police Department. "We're working at an extra advantage here because it's not often that you have a picture of the person you're after."
Lieut. Kenneth Carlson, commanding officer of the Queens robbery squad, said officers are working on the case around the clock, including uniformed and undercover patrols.
"It's a difficult case because we don't have one bank," Lieutenant Carlson said. "And except for the proximity to major highways and the age of the victims, we really don't have any common denominators."
In five of the robberies, the man showed victims a silver pistol, and in each case, he took both cash and credit cards. Four times, the victim's car was stolen.
Last Tuesday, Constance Vieira was attacked in the garage of her Whitestone home on 154th Street at 12:45 P.M. The police say the gunman pistol-whipped her and shot her in the stomach after she refused to turn over her money and the keys to her Oldsmobile. She is serious but stable condition at New York Hospital Medical Center in Queens.
About an hour after assaulting Ms. Vieira, he drove her car to Richmond Hill, where he accosted 79-year-old Leo Feiner, who was in the parking lot outside his office at 129th Street and 101st Avenue. He escaped with Mr. Feiner's white Nissan Maxima and $36. Mr. Feiner is the gunman's most recent known victim, the police said.

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April 26, 1994, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

High Blood Pressure Tied to Memory Decline

BYLINE: By DANIEL GOLEMAN 

SECTION: Section C;  Page 10;  Column 5;  Science Desk 

LENGTH: 491 words

FOR the elderly, chronic high blood pressure over the course of several years can lead to mental decline beyond that caused by the natural course of aging, researchers have found.
"The longer you have high blood pressure, the worse the decline, especially on tests of short-term memory and attention," said Dr. Merrill Elias, a psychologist at the University of Maine who reported the results at the meeting of the Society for Behavioral Medicine in Boston this month. 
 Older people with high diastolic blood pressure readings -- above 90 for the lower of the two readings -- had the greatest decline in memory and in fluid intelligence, mental tasks involving short-term memory, according to a report at the meeting by Dr. Michael Robbins, Dr. Elias's co-author on the paper.
In another study, in which people were tested regularly for 15 years, Dr. Elias also found that the longer a person's blood pressure was elevated, the greater their decline on a test of neurological impairment.
The findings corroborate earlier results with 1,702 men and women taking part in the Framingham Heart Study. People whose blood pressure was in the hypertensive range in the late 1950's and early 1960's, when the study began, had lower scores on mental tests 15 years later, Dr. Elias reported last September in The American Journal of Epidemiology.
Each rise of 20 millimeters of mercury in diastolic blood pressure that continued for 8 to 10 years was associated with a drop of about a quarter of a standard deviation on tests of some kinds of memory, including the ability to recall something just read. That amounts to 2 or 3 points on an intelligence scale where 100 is average.
 
A Slow Decline
 The negative impact of hypertension on mental abilities develops slowly, over the course of several years. Although Dr. Elias's study noted a drop after five years, the difference did not become especially notable until later. "At 10 years," he said, "you start to see larger drops and after 15 years, they are much more pronounced, especially for memory."
Dr. Elias suggests that hypertension may result in some sort of brain injury. Research with animals shows that chronic high blood pressure makes the oxygen supply to the brain less efficient.
When sustained over many years, hypertension also leads to small lesions throughout the brain, Dr. Elias said, "speeding up arteriosclerosis in the small arteries of the brain." He added, "You see small areas of microscopic tissue damage, which can hamper cerebral blood flow."
The results are another reason, apart from the increased risk of heart disease or stroke, for people with high blood pressure to treat it.
"If your blood pressure is in the hypertensive range, you have a higher likelihood of a cognitive decline in the years ahead," Dr. Elias said. "But if a medication holds the levels down, you are not going to have further damage. It puts you in a holding pattern."

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April 26, 1994, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

Mental Decline in Aging Need Not Be Inevitable

BYLINE: By DANIEL GOLEMAN 

SECTION: Section C;  Page 1;  Column 4;  Science Desk 

LENGTH: 1494 words

SHE was 69, and still active as a professor at Harvard University. But, she told a research team there, she had begun to find it hard to recall the names of newer faculty members, and not long ago completely forgot her classroom number when asking for a slide projector to be set up. Just that morning, she said, she was at a loss to think of the word for "the thing you turn eggs over with."
She had one question for the research team, assembled to study the normal course of mental aging: "Am I losing it?" 
 That question, on the minds of thousands of people as they age, is the principal focus of a new wave of scientific inquiry on the decline in mental ability as people grow old. The findings are challenging some basic assumptions, like the belief that such decline is a natural part of the aging process, irrespective of a person's general health.
In fact, a number of recent studies have found that although it is common, it is by no means inevitable. From 20 to 30 percent of people in their 80's who volunteer for cognitive testing perform as well as volunteers in their 30's and 40's, who are presumably in their mental prime.
The intellectual and creative productivity in later life of such public figures as Martha Graham and Pablo Picasso and more recently of George Abbott, who at 106 helped plan the Broadway revival of "Damn Yankees," may represent not so much an exception as an ideal, some experts on aging now are saying.
Dr. K. Warner Schaie, a psychologist at Pennsylvania State University, is the director of a major study of normal mental decline in the elderly. For more than 35 years, his study has been following more than 5,000 men and women who have been tested regularly.
Dr. Schaie's research seeks to fill a gap in gerontological research, which, another geronotologist, Dr. Jack Rowe, said, "has focused on disease and disability, and neglected the prospects of maintaining high functioning in old age." Dr. Rowe is the president of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City and heads a research network on successful aging sponsored by the MacArthur Foundation.
Gerontolologists have focused on "the 6 to 15 percent of the elderly who are frail, and then lumped everyone else as 'normal,' " Dr. Rowe said, adding, "But there is a huge variation from person to person among older people: the older a group gets, the less like each other they become."
Dr. Schaie's study looks at three key areas of mental ability: the spatial skills involved in, say, assembling a piece of furniture from printed directions; the inductive reasoning used to read a bus timetable; and the verbal fluency that determines how readily you can think of a word. The men and women in the study were tested regularly in these areas over the decades; those who developed severely disabling diseases or senility were dropped from the study. Dr. Schaie's most recent findings were reported this month in The American Psychologist.
 
Different Rates of Decline
 Although the study's results show that on average, the decline in these basic mental abilities begins gradually in the middle to late 60's and accelerates in the late 70's, the rate of decline differs for various mental faculties and differs in men and women.
The sharpest declines are seen in the area of basic mathematics. At 74, men scored about a third lower on tests of addition than they had in their 50's. For women, the drop was slightly greater. By their late 80's, both men and women were only about half as adept in basic math as they had been in their 50's.
For men, the mental ability showing the least decline is spatial orientation, used, for example, in reading a map correctly. By the late 80's, it had dropped by only about one-eighth on average.
For women, the most enduring mental skill is inductive reasoning, assessing the information in a timetable, for instance. As women reached their late 80's, it had dropped just over one-eighth from its height in middle age.
One of the drastic declines for women proved to be in verbal comprehension, understanding what one reads; while that ability dropped relatively little into the 70's, it plummeted by about one-quarter during the 80's. For men, verbal understanding declined only slightly in those years.
Another study of normal memory loss, this one by Dr. Richard Mohs, a psychologist at Mount Sinai Medical School who is the acting director of a research consortium on normal memory loss and aging sponsored by the Charles A. Dana Foundation, has found that different kinds of memory differ in their vulnerability to aging. "Crystalized" memory, vocabulary or other knowledge accumulated over the years "holds up very well into old age," Dr. Mohs said. These abilities include knowing what words mean, using language and answering questions.
But "fluid" memory, the ability to add new information to memory or to recall something that happened recently, is more prone to decline, beginning in the 60's. He found little decline in very short-term memory, like remembering a telephone number that one has just looked up.
 
A Test of Mental Skills

 
 Whether a given man or woman is undergoing a consequential decline is a question that can only be answered by assessing them individually. Toward that end, a pair of Harvard psychologists, Douglas Powell and Kean Whitla, have designed a computerized test of mental skills like long- and short-term memory, attention, reasoning and calculation; they reported the test in the February issue of Current Directions in Psychological Science.
They are the researchers whom the 69-year-old professor asked whether she was "losing it." Their test compares a person's score with norms for others the same age, for people who are still in middle age and for others in their own professional group.
Dr. Schaie's study has found certain predictors for good mental function in old age. These include a high level of ability in reading comprehension or verbal fluency, a successful career or some other active involvement through life and continuing keen mental interests after retirement. Having a flexible attitude in middle age was also a promising indicator. "There is less mental decline in people who adapt easily to change, who like learning new things and enjoy going to new places," Dr. Schaie said.
The study also found that simply living with someone with these characteristics is beneficial. Over the course of long marriages, it found, spouses' scores on mental abilities tend to converge, with the brighter partner elevating the other's score.
"It helps to have a high-functioning spouse, since this is your major, immediate social environment and support," Dr. Schaie said. "You benefit cognitively."
Dr. Rowe and his colleagues have come up with a slightly different set of predictors of good mental functioning in old age. In a recently completed study of 1,300 men and women whose average age was 75 and who had stayed in good health, they found that besides a lifelong habit of intellectual activity, two other predictors of good mental function were physical: getting regular strenuous activity and having good pulmonary function. They also found a psychological factor: having a sense of mastery, a feeling of being in control of what happens in life rather than being at the mercy of circumstance.
 
Training Can Help

 
 Dr. Schaie's study has also found that it may be possible to slow or even reverse the mental declines that come with aging. Men and women in their 70's were chosen at random from those in his ongoing study for a five-hour training course in spatial orientation and inductive reasoning, the abilities in which men and women respectively show the largest drops in those years. The coaching in spatial orientation included tips on how to read a road map, and in inductive reasoning, how to recognize rules of thumb helpful in practical decision-making, like knowing from a timetable what train to take.
About 40 percent of those who took the tutorial had an increase in their scores to levels they had had 14 years before, in their early 60's. Seven years later, as the group entered their 80's, the five hours of tutoring still showed surprisingly strong effects, slowing mental declines. Those tutored were at the same levels as seven years earlier, just before the first coaching.
By contrast, those who had no coaching had declined greatly. "Presumably if we had given them booster sessions there would have been much less decline," Dr. Schaie said.
Dr. Rowe said: "It's an optimistic picture. We are responsible for our own old age: it's increasingly clear that factors under our control or which we can modify should enhance our capacity to have a successful old age."
The MacArthur researchers are moving on to design ways to slow or reverse the mental declines that have been taken as the norm. "It's time to change people's lives," Dr. Rowe said, "not just study them."

LOAD-DATE: April 27, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Graph: "What the Mind Loses as It Ages" shows the decline of different mental capacities at varying rates as people age. (pg. C10)

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April 27, 1994, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

THE 37TH PRESIDENT: THE OVERVIEW;
Rainy Prologue to Subdued Funeral for Nixon

BYLINE: By MAUREEN DOWD,   Special to The New York Times 

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

LENGTH: 1245 words

DATELINE: YORBA LINDA, Calif., April 26

In a scene worthy of "King Lear," the usually sunny California sky unleashed thunder, lightning, rain and hail today as Richard M. Nixon's body returned to his birthplace in a plain wooden coffin covered by a flag.
The former President's two sad-eyed daughters, Tricia and Julie, accompanied by their families and the Rev. Billy Graham, followed the coffin through the raging elements and delivered him to the Nixon library, where he will be "planted," as he dryly put it to a friend a couple of years ago, under an oak tree outside the little wooden bungalow where he was born. 
 As the hearse rolled down Yorba Linda Boulevard, with two small American flags on its hood reminiscent of the flag pin that Mr. Nixon always wore in his lapel, an elderly disabled veteran threw her own small flag at the car in tribute. With the rain acting as an adhesive, the flag remained stuck to the window as the car pulled up to the library.
The family had arrived at 12:30 P.M. at El Toro Marine Corps Air Station after a simple 15-minute departure ceremony and a 21-gun salute this morning at the Stewart Air National Guard Base in Newburgh, N.Y. The coffin was carried west on the same Air Force plane that delivered the 37th President into exile in California in 1974, after the Watergate scandal forced him to resign.
But if the thing forever to be yearned for, with Richard Nixon, was affection and approval, he was bathed in that today, as thousands of people shivered and huddled under umbrellas, clutching bouquets and flags and presents and poems, for the chance to catch a glimpse, or a picture, or a video, of the military pallbearers carrying the coffin past the citrus trees into the library as "Hail to the Chief" played. The solemnity of the moment was marred a bit when the music from the military band was drowned out by the sound of seven television news helicopters crisscrossing the sky.
Mr. Nixon would lie in state throughout the night, until the funeral on Wednesday afternoon.
At five minutes past 3, the long line of people, who had been waiting since early morning, began filing into the library scented with roses, carnations, chrysanthemums and lilies. They passed a large color photograph of Mr. Nixon in his prime, smiling and thumbs up, along with pictures from some of the triumphant moments in Mr. Nixon's turbulent career: standing on the Great Wall of China, with Anwar el-Sadat at the pyramids, and more recently with Boris N. Yeltsin before the Russian leader snubbed him earlier this year.
As an honor guard stood sentry by the coffin, people of all ages -- some in strollers, some in wheelchairs -- filed into the entrance as hailstones the size of peas bounced off the sidewalk. As they passed the closed coffin, some made the sign of the cross, others doffed their hats or placed their hands over their hearts. They had checked their cameras at the door.
 
File of the Silent Majority

The largely white, middle-class crowd seemed subdued and quiet, conjuring up images of the great Silent Majority that Mr. Nixon so often appealed to in moments of political peril.
The former President would have appreciated this crowd. Jack Brennan, his chief of staff during the first years after his resignation, told reporters today that Mr. Nixon had designed his funeral with precisely these people in mind, specifying a plain wooden coffin and rejecting the idea of a grand state ceremonial in Washington. To Mr. Nixon, these were the sort of people who stood by him while the people in Washington deserted him.
"The blue-collar guys were more his type of people, even though the world didn't think so," Mr. Brennan said. "He wanted the simple stuff. He had an affinity for the blue-collar people, the 'dese, dem, dose' guys."
Whether they liked him or not, Mr. Nixon had an outsized presence in the lives of those that came to pay last respects today.
The scene was almost like a cathartic picnic, as people sat in lawn chairs before the foul weather began, and the children played games like solitaire and tic-tac-toe. Many came from the little towns in Orange County where Richard Nixon spent his youth -- Whittier, Fullerton, Dana Point, Placentia, Yorba Linda itself.
Near the spot where the motorcade would soon go by, Denis Jana stood, holding up a picture of himself and a smiling Richard Nixon at the Acropolis in 1967. The history teacher at National University in San Diego had met Mr. Nixon, dressed formally in a suit as always, sightseeing in Greece.  And now he wanted to hold up the picture taken before a Presidency marred by Vietnam and Watergate.
Mr. Jana also had a framed picture of a signed form letter he had received from President Gerald R. Ford, thanking him for his letter in support of the Nixon pardon.
And, on top of that, he was handing out copies of a poem written by his 9-year-old daughter, Jennifer-Erin, who was at his side, munching on crackers.
"Swallow it," he barked at her. "Spit it out. Recite your poem for these people."
She obliged proudly, finishing the recitation with this couplet:
"Now he goes to his darling Pat.
We will remember him with a top hat."
Caroline Morse of Escondido said she had stayed up all night Friday after Mr. Nixon died, unable to sleep, jotting down a poem on scraps of paper by her bed. She had the finished product, framed, which included a note to Mr. Nixon's daughters and four grandchildren: "It is never easy to lose a parent. Please take heart."
"I don't think a single person ever sat in the Oval Office who did not make a mistake," she said. "Nixon was nailed to the cross because of Watergate. But he was held to a higher standard. Look who's sitting in the Oval Office now."
There were a few in the crowd who were not Nixon partisans.
Dee Flanagan, a 33-year-old nurse from Long Beach, said her father was a doorkeeper at the Senate when Mr. Nixon resigned and that she had come "to get closure on the whole Nixon ordeal."
"He was a liar and a crook, and the Ford-Nixon sweetheart deal on the pardon paved the way for Reagan and Bush to let people off in Iran-contra," she said, adding "History is getting all glossed over here."
Even many in the crowd who had come to bid him good-bye, readily acknowleged his foibles.
"I disagree with some of his paranoia in Washington, his personal police force, his certain regal quality," said Dan Payne of Newport Beach. "But I think he did a splendid job in the last 20 years recouping himself. He didn't just lie over and die."
Mr. Nixon brought forth Shakespearean references from both his admirers and detractors. "He strutted his hour upon the stage," said Ms. Flanagan, quoting from "Macbeth." "Now he is no more."
Mike Yoder of Fullerton said: "I keep thinking about 'Hamlet': 'Take him for all he's worth. He was a man. We shall never see his like again.' That's a paraphrase, that's not exact, but that's what I keep thinking about Nixon."
As the once-exiled leader's daughters brought him to his burial place, the storm began howling and raging, recalling the scene in "King Lear" when one of Lear's daughters turns the King out into the storm, with the admonition: "To willful men, the injuries that they themselves procure must be their schoolmasters."
Many in the crowd seemed flabbergasted at the freakish tempest. When the hail began falling, a member of a group of Chinese mourners commented, "When a great man dies, there are always storms."

LOAD-DATE: April 27, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photos: The coffin of former President Richard M. Nixon is carried to an Air Force plane at Stewart Air National Guard Base at Newburgh, N.Y., yesterday for the flight to the El Toro Marine Corps Air Base in California. (Andrea Mohin/The New York Times) (pg. A1); Richard M. Nixon's daughters, Tricia Cox, left, and Julie Eisenhower at the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station in California yesterday, where their father's coffin was loaded into a hearse for the trip to Yorba Linda. (Associated Press) (pg. A14)
 
Map shows the location of Yorba Linda, California. (pg. A14)

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April 29, 1994, Friday, Late Edition - Final

TV Weekend;
How a Confederate Widow Became the Oldest

BYLINE: By JOHN J. O'CONNOR 

SECTION: Section D;  Page 16;  Column 3;  Weekend Desk 

LENGTH: 892 words

Like the best-selling novel by Allan Gurganus, the television adaptation of "Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All" is a big old sprawling affair, beginning in the 1980's at a North Carolina home for the elderly and riding memories that reach back to the Civil War. The four-hour production will be broadcast on Sunday and Tuesday, at 9 P.M.
The title character is feisty Lucy Marsden, now 99 and played by Anne Bancroft. Widowed for nearly 50 years, Lucy is looking forward to her 100th birthday and an elaborate celebration planned by the town. Meanwhile, she confides that "the memories have been swarmin' lately." She thinks about 1899, the year she met and married Capt. William Marsden, a Civil War veteran. She, played by Diane Lane ("Lonesome Dove"), is 14 and, for no discernible reason, convinced that she isn't pretty. He, portrayed by Donald Sutherland, is 50, and, although basically gentle and genteel, is haunted by the war, particularly the death of his beloved boyhood friend. 
 Their marriage is a tempestuous, sometimes abusive affair, eventually producing six children. The lonely, uncertain and very young Lucy gets pointers on growing up from the initially hostile Castalia (Cicely Tyson), the captain's housekeeper and former slave. In flashbacks to the Civil War, the captain keeps nurturing the memory of his friend's death. The dead boy becomes a living presence in Lucy's family. At several points, the marriage teeters on disintegration, but two things keep it going. The captain adores his wife ("I surely do love your observations, Lucille"), and she comes to love him truly, not least his frequent physical advances.
"Confederate Widow" meanders, somewhat recklessly at times, but this handsome production manages to encompass an enormous number of the story's myriad eccentric details, right down to talk about the war chaplain who loved his wife so much that he wore her dress under his uniform. Some of the modern-day scenes in the retirement home are a touch too pat, especially the E. G. Marshall character of a grumpy professor who is finally won over by spunky Lucy's positive thinking. But Gwen Verdon is delightful as the liveliest member of a geriatric dance group called the Dixie Cups.
The heart of the drama, however, beats in the performances, all quite splendid, of Ms. Lane, Mr. Sutherland and Ms. Tyson. Struggling to survive and connect, their characters reflect the haunting influence of the Civil War that continues to this day. That's when this peculiar story works best.
 
'Tonya and Nancy'
'The Inside Story'
NBC, tomorrow at 8 P.M.
(Channel 4 in New York)
They're back, quicker than you can say rip-off. This inside story, pieced together by Phil Penningroth ("Amy Fisher: My Story") from the very public records, holds no surprises. The film's construction, though, is diabolically clever.
A character called the Writer (Dennis Boutsikaris) tells how "sometimes I think this could be a fairy tale, that once upon a time there were two little girls . . ." Then as the stories of Nancy Kerrigan (Heather Langenkamp) and Tonya Harding (Alexandra Powers) unfold -- far more Tonya the Bad than Nancy the Good -- various people on the sidelines, including parents and coaches, offer their observations, pro and con, directly to the camera.
As for who was telling the truth to the police authorities about the knee-whacking incident, Tonya or her former husband, Jeff Gillooly (James Wilder), who insists that she was in on the planning, the film simply includes separate dramatized versions in support of each side.
Then in an ingenious ploy to undercut any suggestion of NBC cupidity, an entire scene takes place at the network, where one hotshot executive notes excitedly that 45 percent of the public was closely following the story of "Beauty and the Bitch" (oh, that fairy tale). "If we could get it on for sweeps," this executive says excitedly, "the ratings are going to be enormous." May sweeps officially began yesterday.
Curiously, Mr. Wilder turns Mr. Gillooly, something of a creep in his public appearances, into the film's most dynamic character. Docudramas have a nasty habit of distorting facts. In the end, the Writer, observing that the news media had moved on (except for NBC, evidently) and that Tonya was left with little other than an offer to wrestle in Japan, says, "Some fairy tales don't have a happy ending."
A journalist character gets the ultimate statement. Charging that the financial stakes have grown so enormous that the only Olympic ideal is money, and that ethics, fair play and sportsmanship are dead, he concludes, "We're all whores." Few viewers of this movie exercise will argue.
 
Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All
CBS, Sunday and Tuesday at 9 P.M.
(Channel 2 in New York)
 
Directed by Ken Cameron; written by Joyce Eliason, based on a book by Alan Gurganus; Ms. Eliason, supervising producer; produced by Jack Clements for the Konigsberg/Sanitsky Company; Frank Konigsberg and Larry Sanitsky, executive producers.
 
Lucy Marsden . . . Diane Lane
Cap. William Marsden . . . Donald Sutherland
Older Lucy Marsden . . . Anne Bancroft
Castalia . . . Cicely Tyson
Bianca Honicut . . . Blythe Danner
Professor Taw . . . E. G. Marshall
Lady Marsden . . . Maureen Mueller
Etta Pell . . . Gwen Verdon

LOAD-DATE: April 29, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

TYPE: Review

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April 30, 1994, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

As Competition Expands, Nursing Homes Diversify

BYLINE: By ESTHER B. FEIN 

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

LENGTH: 1826 words

From the corner outside his apartment on 51st Street in Borough Park, Brooklyn, Anthony Nardi can see patients from the Metropolitan Jewish Geriatric Center's nursing home one block away, sitting outside in their wheelchairs, their creased faces turned toward the warm noon sun.
That single-block distance pleases him immensely: he, too, is a patient of Metropolitan, having suffered two heart attacks and a stroke that left him weak beyond his 62 years -- but he is served by the staff in his home. 
 As a way of staying competitive with home care and the widening array of alternative services for the elderly, nursing homes in the New York area and around the country have begun to reinvent themselves, offering programs and services that reach beyond the traditional, residential institutions that so many people now say they want to avoid in favor of aging at home.
Some in the industry have compared the new nursing homes with shopping malls offering "boutique services" under one roof. Metropolitan, for example, offers adult day care and visiting nurses to people still living at home. It also has a respite program that allows people who need to go away on business or a vacation to leave an elderly relative temporarily in the nursing home's care.
The Glenn Hill Convalescent Center in Danbury, Conn., opened a housing complex for older people on the same grounds as the nursing home, offering amenities like housekeeping and meal service, while allowing them to live as independently as they like in spacious apartments designed to accommodate the needs of the elderly.
Pacific Homes in Woodland, Calif., has gone into what it calls the personal security business, in which older people in the community can pay to have the nursing home check up on them daily.
The Eddy, in Troy, N.Y., has evolved over the last decade from a 19-bed nursing home to a diversified organization providing a variety of services to some 14,000 mostly elderly clients.
For the frailest and the sickest among the elderly, and for younger people with debilitating injuries and illnesses, many nursing homes now also run subacute care units, admitting for long-term and temporary rehabilitation people who might otherwise have to remain in a hospital at greater expense.
"Our whole industry is on the verge of changing dramatically," said Craig Duncan, executive director of the Eddy. "We are moving away from an institutional base except for the frailest population, and that's because we have better-educated older consumers telling us what they want, and that is to stay out of a nursing home. If we want to maintain and gain a share of that market -- and let's face it, all of us are revenue-driven -- we had better respond."
Since these changes are fairly new, nursing home operators, both nonprofit and for-profit organizations, are still weighing which new services will prove most lucrative, said Donna L. Wagner, vice president for programs at the National Council on the Aging.
As with nursing home stays, reimbursement for these different services by Medicare, Medicaid and private insurers varies widely by state and by case. Much of the diversification by nursing homes is in areas that are not medical -- like adult day care, apartment complexes, transportation -- and are paid for out of pocket.
For someone requiring extensive care, health care experts say, putting together a home health care program either through a nursing home or other organization roughly equals, on the average, the cost of keeping someone in a traditional nursing institution, about $36,000 a year.
But the experts point out that people who can maintain their independence with support services usually heal faster and remain healthier than those forced unnecessarily into institutions, saving future health care dollars.
"Your home instead of a nursing home" is how Metropolitan's long-term home health care program was pitched to Mr. Nardi. But that also reflects the way Metropolitan and other nursing homes are responding to changing philosophies about aging that now promote independent living for people who in the past had been institutionalized.
Through Metropolitan, for example, Mr. Nardi has a home health aide who comes five days a week for seven hours each day, helping him to dress, bathe, prepare meals and go to doctors. Every two weeks he is visited by a nurse he calls a "master sergeant" who takes his blood pressure and other vital statistics.
He occasionally consults with a social worker about filing insurance forms and has blood tests done monthly in his apartment by a laboratory technician. And every four months a senior nurse comes by to re-evaluate his plan of care. Because of his age, disability and need, Mr. Nardi's costs are covered entirely by Medicare and Medicaid.
 
'I'm a Free Man Here'
 "There are days I can't go out of my house and days I can't get out of my bed," said Mr. Nardi, a chatty man who loves to talk about his days as a chef in Italian restaurants and to reel off sports trivia. "But I'm a free man here. I got my freedom all around. The home is still down the block."
There are about 1.7 million beds in more than 16,500 nursing homes nationwide: about 75 percent of them are for-profit concerns, 20 percent of them are nonprofit and 5 percent are operated by Federal, state and local governments.
Changes within the $70 billion nursing home industry will not lead to the extinction of those residential institutions, people in the industry and experts on aging say. With the United States Census Bureau predicting that the over-65 population will grow two and a half times over the next 40 years to more than 70 million people, and that the population of people over 85 will nearly triple to about 9 million, there will still be a demand for nursing homes.
 
A Range of Services
 But increasingly, people in the field say, for-profit and nonprofit nursing home operators have begun to compete not with one another but with organizations and establishments that have developed programs aimed at replacing the traditional homes. But unlike companies that provide specific services, like home care, the nursing homes hope to attract customers by providing a continuum of services that treat people, from the time they are most healthy to when they are most sick.
"They read the tea leaves correctly," said Daniel Thursz, president and chief executive officer of the National Council on the Aging. "There is still a place for nursing homes at the end of the continuum and for certain kinds of dementia. But nursing homes are facing the fact that they are only one of many alternatives and they will not be able to survive if they provide only that one service. What's going on is an important change that recognizes the desire of almost all people not to be institutionalized."
Glenn Crest, an apartment complex for older people in Danbury, Conn., was opened in December 1987 by the owners of the Glenn Hill Convalescent Center on the same grounds as the nursing home. Its owners recognized earlier than most in the industry that society was moving toward more community-based options for its increasingly aging population.
In a three-story building with 24 one-bedroom and 24 two-bedroom units -- each with a bay window, fully-equipped kitchen and bathroom, washer-dryer, living room and terrace -- Glenn Crest offers, among others services, a home-delivered meal daily, housekeeping, transportation to shopping and doctors' appointments and an emergency call system.
These services are included in the monthly rental fee, which is $1,860 for the one-bedroom apartment and $2,340 for the two-bedroom, and, like rent, is not reimbursed by insurance. Residents who get medical care in the nursing home pay extra for their treatment, which is reimbursed by either Medicare or private insurance.
Some residents have ailing spouses who live in the nursing home, and all it takes is a walk across the manicured lawns to visit. Inside the nursing home itself, Glenn Hill has a subacute care unit, respite care and a hospice.
"It made economic sense for us to expand this way," said James K. Malloy, Glenn Hill's administrator. "We've been in the business of providing services to the elderly since 1963. Reaching out to other segments of that population, meaning well people and very sick people, was logical."
 
Subacute Care
 One of the nontraditional services being most vigorously pursued by nursing homes is subacute care, which is comprehensive inpatient treatment for people recovering from illnesses like pneumonia, injuries like a broken hip or chronic diseases like arthritis that do not require the intensive level of diagnosis or surgery available at hospitals.
Usually, when nursing homes enter the subacute market, they broaden beyond geriatric clientele to include younger patients. Since they operate without the high overhead of hospitals, nursing home subacute care units typically charge 20 to 60 percent less than hospitals, according to studies by industry analysts and health maintenance organizations, which are increasingly sending patients from hospitals to such institutions.
A study last year by Dean Witter found that for appropriate patients, average daily charges in such units ranged from $300 to $550, while charges for the same treatment in acute care hospitals ran between $700 to $1,000. Health care analysts estimate that about 10 to 20 percent of general acute care hospital patients could be cared for in subacute care units at nursing homes.
Given the growth of managed medical care in the country and the increasing population of elderly people, industry analysts estimate that the subacute care units for nursing homes have the potential to grow into a $5 billion to $20 billion market in the next decade.
 
'Everyone Is Specializing'
 The field is so ripe that the American Health Care Association, which represents about 11,000 for-profit and nonprofit nursing homes, published a business guide this month to aid its members in setting up subacute care units.
"I don't know anybody in this business who just wants to keep being or buying up traditional nursing homes," said Richard F. Grosso Jr., administrator of the Lakeview Subacute Care Center in Wayne, N.J. "Everyone is specializing." His institution has changed over the last 14 years from a 120-bed traditional nursing home to a center with a variety of specialized subacute care wards, including ones for oncology and ventilators, and only 30 traditional beds.
"We shouldn't be linked to bricks and mortar," said Eli S. Feldman, chief executive officer of Metropolitan in Brooklyn. "We're here to provide the best services for the individual the way they want it, which is why we took an organization that was 100 percent institutional to where we are delivering services to 20,000 people in their own homes. We are changing as an industry. We have to evolve or we will die."

LOAD-DATE: April 30, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photos: "Your home instead of a nursing home" is how Metropolitan Jewish Geriatric Center's long-term home health care program was pitched to Anthony Nardi, top right, who lives one block away from the center but has a personal care worker, Elaine Change, and a medical service coordinator, Yvonne George, center, coming by to help him. Martha and Harold Hansen have an apartment at the Glenn Hill Convalescent Center in Danbury, Conn. The center allows residents to live as independently as they like. (Susan Harris for The New York Times)(pg. 26)

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April 30, 1994, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

METRO DIGEST

SECTION: Section 1; Page 25; Column 1; Metropolitan Desk; Second Front

LENGTH: 508 words


BRATTON APOLOGIZES FOR DOUBTS ON RAPE
New York City Police Commissioner William J. Bratton publicly apologized for comments from someone in his department that raised doubts about a Brooklyn women's report that she had been raped. Page 1.
 
TO COMPETE, NURSING HOMES DIVERSIFY
As a way of staying competitive with home care and the widening array of alternative services for the elderly, nursing homes in the New York area and around the country have begun offering programs and services that reach beyond the traditional, residential institutions that so many people now say they want to avoid in favor of aging at home. Page 1. 

NEW YORK CITY
 
HIGH SCHOOLS PICKED FOR REMEDIAL ACTION
A day after announcing that he would take over six of the city's worst-performing lower schools, Schools Chancellor Ramon C. Cortines said he was recommending remedial measures for 16 high schools because of academic failures. Page 27.
 
GIULIANI PUTS OFF PLAN TO MERGE SERVICES
Mayor Giuliani has for now dropped plans to merge the Emergency Medical Service with the city's Fire Department, one of his administration's efforts to streamline government, in part because the city would lose reimbursements from the state. Page 27.
 
OFFICERS HAILED FOR REJECTING BRIBE
After weeks in which officers have been whisked away in handcuffs, and the term "testilying," the police slang for perjury, has been added to the city's vocabulary, Mayor Giuliani brought five officers to City Hall and honored them as heroes for refusing a bribe -- a bag filled with $254,564 in cash. Page 27.
 
TRIAL BEGINS IN PROSPECT PARK SLAYING
Nearly a year after a drama teacher was shot to death in Prospect Park in Brooklyn, a teen-ager went on trial for murder, accused of firing the fatal shots after the victim refused to surrender his bicycle to a group of youths. Page 26.
 
Members of the Newspaper Guild approved a contract with The New York Times. Page 26.
 
REGION
 
L.I.R.R. CRIME DATA IS DEBATED
Five months after a gunman opened fire in a crowded commuter train and killed six passengers, Long Island Rail Road officials clashed with critics over the extent of crime on the railroad. Page 28.
 
NEW GAS SAFETY WORRIES IN EDISON
An overhead electrical line, crackling and burning, fell near a natural gas transmission line, rekindling memories of a pipeline explosion five weeks ago and creating a new round of safety jitters in Edison, N.J. Page 28.
 
WEATHER SEEN AS FACTOR IN PLANE CRASH
Federal investigators said they were focusing on the weather as a factor in the crash of a charter plane in Stratford, Conn., on Wednesday that killed eight people. Page 28.
 
RIFKIN RECORDS SAID TO SHOW SANITY
Joel Rifkin, who has confessed to killing 17 women, was an honor student in high school, made the dean's list in college and scored in the superior category on intelligence tests, according to evidence presented by the prosecution in his murder trial. Page 29.
 
About New York by Michael T. Kaufman  27

LOAD-DATE: April 30, 1994

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TYPE: Summary

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May 1, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Police Arrest Man And Stepdaughter In Two Robberies

BYLINE: By RAYMOND HERNANDEZ 

SECTION: Section 1;  Page 46;  Column 1;  Metropolitan Desk 

LENGTH: 294 words

A man and his 12-year-old stepdaughter were arrested yesterday in the robberies of two elderly men at public housing complexes on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, the housing police said.
Investigators say they believe that the two suspects were also responsible for other recent robberies in the area. In those cases, they said, some of the victims were also elderly men who were robbed by a man and a girl. 
 The girl, who was not identified, and her stepfather, Stanley Everett, 34, were each charged with two counts of robbery, said Lieut. Thomas Sbordone, a housing police spokesman.
The charges resulted from two incidents on April 11 -- one in the Wald Houses at Houston Street near Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive and the other in the Rutgers Houses at Madison and Clinton Streets.
 
Grabbed by the Neck
 In both cases, the police said, Mr. Everett and the girl followed the men off elevators, and Mr. Everett grabbed them by the neck and held them as the girl emptied their pockets. The suspects took $20 to $30 in each of the robberies, Lieut. Sbordone said.
Mr. Everett and his stepdaughter were picked up by the housing police after New York City detectives from the Seventh Precinct station house on the Lower East Side detained the two in connection with another robbery.
But when the victim in that case could not identify the suspects as his attackers, the detectives contacted the housing police to see whether they were searching for suspects who fit the description of Mr. Everett and his stepdaughter.
Lieut. Sbordone said the girl would be released into the custody of her family, possibly her mother, who the police said was apparently not involved in the robberies. "We don't think the mother was aware of this," he said.

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May 1, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Agency Shift Wins Support From Clinton

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

SECTION: Section 1;  Page 25;  Column 1;  National Desk 

LENGTH: 838 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, April 30

In a reversal of Administration policy, President Clinton says he now supports the creation of an independent Federal agency to run Social Security, the nation's biggest social welfare program.
The change, Administration officials say, is the result of an informal deal between Mr. Clinton and Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the New York Democrat who is chairman of the Finance Committee. In exchange for the President's support for the new agency, the officials said, Mr. Moynihan will redouble his efforts to get a health bill out of the Finance Committee by the end of May. 
 Mr. Moynihan and lobbyists for the elderly have long sought the change for Social Security, saying it would bolster public confidence in the program. Some 42 million people now receive monthly Social Security benefits.
Mr. Clinton's support virtually guarantees that the Social Security Administration will be given independent status. The agency, created in 1935, is now part of the Department of Health and Human Services. With outlays of $318 billion this year, Social Security accounts for 50 percent of the department's budget and 21 percent of the entire Federal budget.
 
Senate Killed Previous Bills
 In March, by a voice vote, the Senate approved a bill to establish Social Security as an independent agency. The House has passed similar bills three times in the last decade, most recently by a vote of 350 to 8, but those bills died in the Senate.
Donna E. Shalala, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, opposed the creation of an independent agency. Like her predecessors in the Reagan and Bush Administrations, Dr. Shalala argued that Social Security must be closely coordinated with Medicare, Medicaid and other programs run by the department. People apply for Medicare at Social Security offices.
Mr. Moynihan said, "Social Security was once a model agency run by the great civil servants of the New Deal era." But in the last 15 years, he said, "the agency has lost some of its distinctive energy" as top officials in the department focused increasingly on health policy.
In recent years, the Senator said, the Social Security Administration has been "brain dead and lost in the exurbs of the Department of Health and Human Services." As a result, he said, service to beneficiaries has deteriorated and many workers fear that Social Security will not have enough money to pay the retirement benefits they have earned.
 
Agency Termed 'Vulnerable'
 Representative Dan Rostenkowski, the Illinois Democrat who heads the House Ways and Means Committee, said that under the current arrangement the Social Security Administration had shown itself "vulnerable to political pressures." In the 1980's, he said, the agency improperly cut off benefits for thousands of disabled people and the agency's staff was curtailed, damaging service to the public. Social Security has 65,000 employees, down from 83,000 in 1984.
Social Security has separate trust funds to pay benefits to retired people and disabled workers. Federal officials say that the retirement program is financially secure until 2036 but that the disability insurance trust fund will run out of money next year unless Congress takes action.
Senator Richard H. Bryan, Democrat of Nevada, said, "Creation of an independent Social Security agency will protect the integrity of the Social Security trust funds, improve the delivery of services and restore public confidence in the system."
Under the Senate bill, Social Security would be an independent agency in the executive branch of the Government. The Commissioner would be appointed by the President for a four-year term coinciding with the President's.
 
Cabinet Status Sought
 Senator Moynihan said the President would still give overall direction to the agency. "We want this to be like a Cabinet department," he said. "The President should appoint a Social Security Commissioner at the same time he appoints a Secretary of State. You can't imagine any President in the last 20 years who has even known the name of the Commissioner of Social Security."
There have been 12 Commissioners in the last 20 years, including five who served on an acting basis. The current Commissioner, Shirley S. Chater, was president of Texas Woman's University for the last seven years
Under Mr. Moynihan's proposal, a bipartisan seven-member board would advise the Commissioner on policy questions, assess the quality of service to the public and suggest ways to improve the financial condition of the trust funds. The House bill would place Social Security under control of a three-member board rather than a Commissioner.
Victor F. Zonana, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, said: "The President told Congressional leaders last week that he would support efforts to make Social Security an independent agency. Donna argued in the past that Social Security should stay within H.H.S., and she made her case to the President, but she supports his decision. She's a team player."

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May 1, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

High Schools Mandating Community Service for Graduation

BYLINE: By LINDA SASLOW  

SECTION: Section 14LI;   Page 1;   Column 1;   Long Island Weekly Desk  

LENGTH: 1730 words

COMMUNITY service, performed without pay, is becoming increasingly familiar to high school students. Schools are encouraging students to include service as part of their school experience. Several Long Island districts have recently mandated service as a graduation requirement. Others have added courses that include service in the curriculum.
Although there is no argument over youth involvement, the question of whether to mandate service for high school students has encountered mixed responses. 
 In Nassau County the Roslyn and Hewlett-Woodmere districts recently approved service mandates. In Roslyn students beginning with the high school class of '97 will be required to take a one-semester half-credit community-service course and to complete a minimum of 30 hours of field work to graduate. For the class of '98 the number of field hours will increase, to 40. The course was introduced this year as an elective on a pilot basis.  Superintendent Frank Tassone said that 40 percent of the high school students now participated in community service and that the goal was to encourage the rest to become involved.
"It's important for students to give back to the community that for a number of years has provided them with a wonderful public education," Dr. Tassone said. "This also gives the kids the opportunity for new experiences, whether it be visiting a senior-citizens' home, volunteering in a hospital or working right in the school district in the library or attendance office. From our research, we've learned that in school districts where community service is mandated many kids who might have been reticent or too shy to volunteer have admitted that they were glad they had been forced into participating."
Dr. Tassone added that there had been strong community support to require service. "At first, some kids questioned why this would be required," he said. "But once they realized how beneficial it is, their resistance has been minimal."
But elsewhere the constitutionality of mandated service is under fire. Last month a libertarian group, the Institute for Justice, filed a suit for two students at Rye Neck High School in Mamaroneck who refused to carry out the required 40 hours of service. The institute has sued other districts, including those in Chapel Hill-Carrboro, N.C., and Bethlehem, Pa.
In the Bethlehem case the Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal on the institute's argument that mandated service violated the prohibition in the 13th Amendment against involuntary servitude.
The requirement in Hewlett-Woodmere starts with the class of '95. It will require students to complete 10 hours of service in a course called Participation in Government, a one-semester program usually taken in the senior year.
Superintendent Bert Nelson said 60 percent of the senior class was involved in some voluntary service. He added that several years ago a group of students started a Reach Out to Seniors program, in which they volunteered to help older people with activities like yard work, shopping, running errands and changing lightbulbs and smoke-detector batteries.
"We've had almost 100 kids participate in the program," Dr. Nelson said. "This told me that our kids were looking for ways to give something back to the community. We felt the need to reach out to those 40 percent who are not involved.
"We want our students to understand that a responsible commitment to the community is part of a well-rounded education. We've started with a small requirement. But our expectation is that once the students get a taste of satisfaction doing for others they will increase the number of hours on their own."
In Suffolk County the Sag Harbor high school has had a mandated program for several years. To receive a diploma, all students are required individually or in groups to complete at least one service project in their four years at the school. Superintendent John G. Barnes said that the the school suggested 10 hours of work, but that each project was individually evaluated. "We believe that community service is a must for all students," he said.
 
Clearinghouse for Information
 Up to this year there had been no clearinghouse to exchange ideas on service. This year, educators from public and private schools and representatives of community agencies organized the Service Learning Network to share programs and projects.
The director of the Student Service Center at Mineola High School, Diana Falk, said the network would help public schools learn about service.  "Public schools are just beginning to see service as a way to reform education," she said.
As service becomes a growing priority, other districts are also considering mandating it, said Dr. William Johnson, Superintendent of Schools in Rockville Centre and president of the Nassau Council of Superintendents.
"But before a district can mandate a community-service requirement," he added, "it must have concomitant support and coordination from the community.
"First, there must be enough service opportunities to accommodate all students. Then you must define what will be accepted, how much service is required and how it will be verified and coordinated by school personnel.
"There are also the issues of what do you do with kids who don't have access to transportation? Or if they have paid jobs because their income is needed to help their families, would that count as community service?"
 
Difficulties in Large Schools
 Service requirements are especially difficult to enforce in large high schools, said Dr. Jorge Schneider, principal of Syosset High School, which has 1,700 students.
"With a graduating class of 450 students, it would be almost impossible to mandate and keep track of voluntary activities for every student," he said. "But there is no shortage of service opportunities -- from ongoing activities through the many school clubs, to short-term projects like the recent daffodil sale we had to raise money for the American Cancer Society, to one-day events like our senior prom for elderly citizens held in the school. While not required to participate, the majority of students, by the time they graduate, have some form of community service experience."
Some districts, without mandating service, encourage participation by offering credit. Students at Westhampton Beach High School who participate in community activities for one term receive a half-credit toward graduation. Superintendent Edward Broderick said most service programs were geared toward the elderly, who make up 80 percent of the village population. Other projects include beach cleaning, tree planting and community cleanups.
"By offering credit for these projects," Dr. Broderick said, "we're giving a strong message to the kids that this is of great importance. Community service also helps the students to understand that the school and community are related, and this helps to maintain our small-town atmosphere."
 
Encouragement for Volunteers
 At Great Neck North High School, 99 percent of the senior class takes a social studies elective course that includes community service. A spokeswoman for the district, Jessica Vega, said that the course was not required, but that faculty advisers strongly encouraged it. Over all, in the two Great Neck high schools, North and South, participation in activities like tutoring, AIDS awareness, Students Against Drunk Driving, day care, care for the elderly and environmental work is 30 percent, Ms. Vega said.
Other districts have programs to recruit students for service. Bay Shore High School formed a service honor society this year to recognize and reward students on all academic levels who have performed and documented service.
A teacher and adviser, Pat Ponzi, said students received credit for every hour working, whether at a hospital or in school making announcements. After 240 credits, they are eligible for the Honor Society. Mrs. Ponzi added that 70 students had qualified so far.
"We want to institutionalize and celebrate community service," she said. "The kids are still not sure what's in it for them. But we're trying to excite them with a sense of belonging, a feeling of satisfaction from helping others and the added incentive that this recognition will help for college admission. The bottom line here is that it doesn't matter how academic you are, just where you heart is."
At North Shore High School in Glen Head, the crucial factor for involvement is interest, said the service coordinator, Julia Salat.
"If kids are required to participate," Ms. Salat said, "it becomes a pressure point instead of a worthwhile experience. If they are interested in a specific project or charity, they are more dedicated and committed.
"My job is to help students explore options and find projects best suited for them. By the time they graduate, 90 percent of the students will participate in some form of community service."
 
For All Levels and Abilities
 An end-of-the-year breakfast at Mineola High School next month will recognize participants in the Student Service Center with awards and certificates. The center, started 11 years ago with a $1,500 grant, has expanded, from 4 programs to 14. In 1991, the center received the Eleanor Roosevelt Community Service Award from the Governor's office, one of 10 given each year.
Mrs. Falk, director of the Student Service Center, said the programs had been created to appeal to students of all levels and abilities.
"Some students enjoy working with handicapped kids, while others prefer visiting a nursing home or might join the Red Cross Club to be trained in disaster relief," she said. "This year we've added to our list peer mediation and a special recreation program for handicapped children. The kids know it's their effort that counts. At our celebration breakfast each student can invite a parent and one friend who hasn't participated in a community-service program.
"The community spirit is contagious. We don't have to mandate, because we have so many kids on board. When kids don't have to do something, but do it because they want to, you can't beat that. Long after they forget algebra, they'll remember the letters and words of thanks from these experiences. They get a sense of filling a need, of feeling important, and as corny as it sounds, of making a difference."

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May 2, 1994, Monday, Late Edition - Final

Victims Use Photos to Identify Silver-Gun Carjacking Suspect

BYLINE: By ROBERT D. McFADDEN 

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

LENGTH: 557 words

The Silver Gun Carjacker, a fugitive wanted in eight recent armed robberies of elderly and frail Queens residents who were accosted or attacked after being followed home from banks, has acquired an identity -- and with it, a history of similar crimes dating back nearly 10 years.
The 27-year-old suspect, Gerald Jerome, was identified by robbery victims from a bank-camera photograph and by Queens robbery detectives, who matched the bank's picture with photos in his criminal record. He remains at large after failing to appear in a Brooklyn court on an unrelated charge last week. 
 Criminal records show Mr. Jerome has been arrested many times in Queens, Brooklyn, the Bronx, Manhattan and Nassau County on more than 75 charges in an 11-year criminal history in which he has used many aliases, false birth dates and bogus addresses and has been imprisoned for nearly half of the last decade.
 
Prison Sentences
 Martin F. Horn, the executive director of the State Division of Parole, said Mr. Jerome was first convicted of robbing an elderly woman in Nassau County in October 1984, when he was 17, and was imprisoned for more than two years in the case.
Since March 21, the police say, Mr. Jerome, pursuing the same pattern, has struck eight times, following elderly women and frail men from banks where they took out cash, to their homes in Bayside, Whitestone, Flushing, Auburndale and Richmond Hill. The police say he has accosted them with a silver pistol in their driveways, cars or garages and taken money, credit cards and sometimes vehicles.
On April 19, the police say, he pistol-whipped and shot a 74-year-old woman in the garage of her Whitestone home when she refused to surrender her money and car keys; the woman called the police from a telephone in the garage and was taken to a hospital, where she survived. Later that day, the police said, the assailant drove the woman's car to Richmond Hill, where he robbed a 79-year-old man and took his car.
 
An Unusual Situation
 A day earlier, a camera at a Flushing bank had taken a photograph of a burly, bearded man in a warmup jacket, and several of the Queens robbery victims later identified the man in the photo as their assailant. But investigators found themselves in the unusual situation of having a suspect's face without a name, and dubbed him the Silver Gun Carjacker.
Last week detectives succeeded in matching the bank picture with photos in Mr. Jerome's extensive criminal record, but they did not immediately disclose the discovery because an opportunity to seize the suspect had unexpectedly come up.
Under one of his known aliases, Albert Brown, Mr. Jerome had been arrested in Brooklyn on April 15 on a car-theft charge; he was free on $1,500 bail and was scheduled for a court appearance in Brooklyn last Thursday. The detectives were there waiting for him.
But when he did not appear, they disclosed his identity as the suspect in the Queens robberies.
Over the years, investigators say, Mr. Jerome has called himself Albert Brown, Franz Santas, Mike Rome and other names and listed a smokescreen of addresses, birth dates and other bogus information about himself. But in each brush with the law, he was photographed and fingerprinted, and New York State knows him unambiguously by his criminal identification number, 5105896-N.

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May 3, 1994, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

Escaped Family of 5 Tells of Starvation in North Korea

BYLINE: By ANDREW POLLACK,   Special to The New York Times 

SECTION: Section A;  Page 9;  Column 1;  Foreign Desk 

LENGTH: 657 words

DATELINE: SEOUL, South Korea, May 2

A family of five that escaped from North Korea said today that starvation is so severe there that children cannot keep their heads up in school and elderly people are being found dead in the fields, apparently having gone to die to relieve their families of the burden of feeding them.
Yo Man Chol, his wife and three children, arrived here Saturday, having escaped from North Korea by walking across a frozen river into China. While many individuals have defected from the North over the years, the Yo's are only the second complete family to do so, the first having arrived in 1987. 
 Today, at a packed news conference, the family members, sometimes breaking into tears, described their escape and the conditions they endured in North Korea.
There was no way to verify their account, but there have been many reports seeping out of North Korea about a severe food shortage, caused in part by a cold growing season. At the news conference, the Yo's did not look as if they had been starving, but they said they had been out of North Korea for more than a month.
South Korean press reports say that hundreds of North Koreans have tried to escape to China, but that many are captured by Chinese police officers or North Korean agents and taken back and executed. But the Yo's said they had decided to take the risk because of the food shortage.
"I thought that we would die if we stayed and we would die if we were dragged back," said Mr. Yo, 48. "We made the decision to try to escape."
Mr. Yo, who lived in Hamhung in the northeast part of the country, had also suffered a turn for the worse in his career. A captain in the North Korean security agency, he was dismissed for taking a bribe. Because of his disgrace, his daughter, Kum Joo, 20, was removed from the Kipumjo, or "Happy Group," an elite team of young men and women being groomed to work in the homes and resorts of the supreme leader, Kim Il Sung, and his son Kim Jong Il.
Mr. Yo said that food rations ran out last August and that some people were trying to eat tree bark. Many were dying of starvation, he said.
"There are many old people who leave the house and die in order to lighten the burden on their households," he said. His eldest son, Kum Ryung, 18, said 60 percent of his classmates did not eat breakfast and lacking the strength to work, merely put their heads down on their desks.
Mr. Yo's wife, Lee Ok Kum, 45, said she often took socks and other household items to the countryside to trade with farmers for rice. Despite her best efforts, she said, her children complained of hunger before they went to bed. "I couldn't feed my family," she said, breaking into sobs.
The escape took place in March. Through friends at the security agency, Mr. Yo obtained traveling passes and sent his eldest son and daughter to a border village of Hyaesan, ostensibly to obtain food. "I told them that if the Yalu River was frozen over to send back a telegram saying, 'Our cousin is getting married,' " he said.
He received the telegram on March 16, and he and the rest of the family arrived at the border village by train on March 19. Late that night, one at a time, they walked the 20 yards across the river, covering themselves with a bedsheet to avoid detection.
Once across, they were befriended by an ethnic Korean in China. They would not tell how they traveled from China to Hong Kong and then to Seoul, saying they did not want to endanger people who helped them.
Mr. Yo said that North Koreans were once extremely loyal to Mr. Kim but that the loyalty was now waning because of food shortages and other economic problems. "All North Koreans wore Kim Il Sung badges on their collars in the past, but now only about 20 percent wear them," he said.
Here in South Korea, President Kim Young Sam told the military today to be on round-the-clock alert after what officials here described as unusual moves by the North Koreans over the last few days.

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May 3, 1994, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

Case Breaks New Ground In DNA Tests For Paternity

BYLINE: By JAN HOFFMAN 

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

LENGTH: 804 words

To resolve the question of paternity and a claim to an estate, a judge in Manhattan has ruled that both the parents of a dead man and the 7-year-old boy whose mother claims he is the dead man's son must submit to DNA testing.
Legal experts say this is the first case in New York State in which DNA tests will be used to determine inheritance by examining whether the chromosomes of a child born out of wedlock match those of his purported grandparents. 
 Last week, Judge Renee M. Roth of Surrogate's Court in Manhattan granted the request of the dead man's parents, Dorothy and Harold Sandler, who are contesting the child's claim to their son's estate. The Sandlers are trying to find out whether their son, Dr. Jeffrey Sandler, a dentist who died in 1992, was the father of the boy.
Typically, the father would be tested himself. But Judge Roth has already ruled that people who have died cannot be exhumed for DNA paternity testing. In a paternity dispute last year involving the estate of the Manhattan art dealer Sidney Janis, a woman claiming to be Mr. Janis's out-of-wedlock daughter had asked that his body be exhumed for DNA testing. But the judge denied the request, saying that testing to establish paternity had to be done on living people, a ruling which is being appealed. Harvey E. Corn, a lawyer for the woman, called the decision to test the Sandlers "absolutely novel."
 
Court of Appeals Ruling
 In reaching her decision, the judge relied in part on a March ruling by New York State's Court of Appeals, which permitted limited use of DNA testing in criminal matters. In that case, blood stains on a defendant's clothing were found through DNA tests to tie him to the rape and murder of an elderly woman.
Though methods of DNA testing are still evolving, many scientific and legal experts agree that it can provide more information about paternity than traditional blood tests. Its proponents claim that when the tests are done on living people, the accuracy of the test is 99 percent.
But Barry C. Scheck, a lawyer who has urged that stricter regulations be imposed on the testing, said the probability of a match depends on the extent of a population study with which the sample is compared. He said the test was more effective in establishing who was not the father than in determining who was.
According to state law, however, courts are not required to accept the results of DNA tests for paternity purposes if the laboratory has not been certified by the State Department of Health. A spokeswoman for the department said no laboratories in New York have yet been approved for those tests, although some may be certified as soon as July.
The quarrel over Dr. Sandler's estate, which his parents' lawyer estimated to be worth between $50,000 and $100,000, was triggered by a state law governing the status of children born after a will has been written.
In a will dated May 4, 1987, Dr. Sandler indicated that his parents and brother should inherit his estate. Two months later, Steven East Sandler was born. The will did not mention the boy or his mother, Regina East.
 
Troubled Relationship
 If a parent does not subsequently amend a will to mention the so-called "after-born child," the law provides a sharp corrective: if paternity can be established, that child can lay claim to the estate. And because Dr. Sandler had neither a wife nor another child who would also have had valid claims, Dr. Sandler's entire estate will go to Steven if the boy is found to be his son.
Lawyers on both sides said that while Dr. Sandler and Ms. East had a troubled relationship, they did live together in Manhattan after Steven was born. Indeed Ms. East offered an amended birth certificate on which Dr. Sandler had acknowledged that he was the father of the boy.
Under inheritance laws, a birth certificate alone may not be considered sufficient proof of paternity: a father could have been coerced or deceived into signing one. Often, additional material -- such as genetic testing-- is required.
Cirino Bruno, the lawyer for Ms. East, was dismayed by Judge Roth's ruling, which was reported in The New York Law Journal yesterday. Referring to the Sandlers, he said, "How do we know that they are his biological parents and that he wasn't adopted?" If that indeed was the situation, then the Sandlers' genetic material would not match the boy's, and the question of whether Dr. Sandler was his father would still be open.
Mr. Bruno said he believed that the dispute over the estate was fueled by the Sandlers' refusal to accept that their son, who is white, had a child by Ms. East, who is black.
But Lawrence Anderson, a lawyer for the Sandlers, dismissed that view. "It wasn't the child's color," he said. "Their attitude is: if that's our grandchild, we want him to have it all."

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May 4, 1994, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

A.M.A. Says It Will Support Some Compulsory Insurance

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

SECTION: Section A;  Page 20;  Column 5;  National Desk 

LENGTH: 884 words

WASHINGTON, May 3 -- Taking a compromise position on a central question in the health care debate, the American Medical Association said today that companies with 100 or more employees should be required to buy health insurance for workers, but that smaller companies should not.
Dr. James S. Todd, executive vice president of the association, affirmed the group's commitment to health insurance for all Americans, but offered a new twist. For several years, the association supported an employer mandate, requiring all employers to provide coverage for workers, but in December it backed off amid complaints from some of its more conservative members. 
 Many doctors are small employers. A recent survey by the association found that one in three doctors' offices did not provide health insurance for employees like nurses, receptionists and laboratory technicians.
 
Furor From Small Businesses
 In a speech at the annual meeting of the Health Insurance Association of America, Dr. Todd said today that people working for companies with fewer than 100 employees should be subject to "an individual mandate" requiring them to buy their own health insurance. Government subsidies would be available to help lower-income people, he said.
Lorrie McHugh, a White House spokeswoman, said she was pleased that the association supported an employer mandate for large companies, but disappointed that it opposed such a requirement for smaller businesses. President Clinton wants to require all employers to buy health insurance for workers, but this idea has encountered fierce opposition from many small businesses. Representative John D. Dingell, the Michigan Democrat who heads the Energy and Commerce Committee, has proposed exempting businesses with 10 or fewer employees.
The Small Business Administration says about 40 percent of workers in private industry are employed by companies with 100 or fewer employees. Twelve percent work for companies with fewer than 10 employees, it says.
Dr. Todd said the proposed insurance requirements should be put into effect gradually so that 95 percent of Americans would have health insurance within six years. Mr. Clinton proposes a more ambitious timetable: coverage of all Americans by January 1998.
In an interview, Dr. Todd said: "Employer mandates don't seem to be going anywhere. Indeed, opposition seems to be increasing. Individual mandates don't seem to be going anywhere. So how do we achieve the goal of universal coverage? It makes sense to use a combination."
 
Alternative Proposal
 Under Mr. Clinton's proposal, all Americans would be assured of coverage for prescription drugs. Merck & Company, the world's largest pharmaceutical concern, today proposed an alternative way of providing such coverage for Medicare beneficiaries without any of the price regulation envisioned by Mr. Clinton. Medicare finances health care for 32 million elderly Americans and 4 million disabled citizens.
Merck said that managed-care companies, like its own Medco Containment Services unit, should bid for the opportunity to manage pharmacy benefits for people in Medicare.
Under Merck's proposal, the nation would be divided into 10 regions, and the Federal Government would choose three companies to manage drug benefits in each region. The companies could control drug costs for Medicare as they now do for private health plans: by encouraging doctors and pharmacists to prescribe and dispense lower-cost, including generic, drugs; by offering mail-order pharmacy services and by negotiating discounts with drug makers.
Dr. P. Roy Vagelos, the chairman of Merck, said: "Our proposal will immediately reduce drug costs for the elderly. The Administration's plan for a Medicare drug benefit swims against the tide of market-based reform already taking place through the growth of managed care."
"Under the President's plan, there is no way to manage the utilization of drugs," Dr. Vagelos said in an interview. "It's a fee-for-service plan, with a mandatory 17 percent rebate and other mechanisms to control the prices of drugs -- mechanisms that would also deter investment needed for the discovery of important new drugs."
 
Seeing Competitive Advantage
 Rival drug companies and many retail pharmacists say Merck's proposal would give Merck a significant competitive advantage: the right to promote the sale of its own products to Medicare beneficiaries. Under the proposal, each pharmacy benefit manager would use a formulary, listing drugs preferred or required for specific purposes like lowering cholesterol, controlling high blood pressure or treating ulcers.
But Dr. Vagelos said: "An independent committee would select the drugs that are most cost-effective, whether they be Merck drugs or someone else's drugs. We recommend that there be three different pharmacy benefit managers in each region, so there would be competition. People could select any of the plans and could change once a year if they were not satisfied."
The pharmacy benefit manager would also monitor the use of drugs, to make sure Medicare patients took them as prescribed. Managed-care companies use similar techniques to control drug costs and to review the use of drugs by millions of people who work for large companies and government agencies.

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May 4, 1994, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Personal Health

BYLINE: By Jane E. Brody 

SECTION: Section C;  Page 13;  Column 1;  National Desk;  Health Page

LENGTH: 1189 words

A YEAR ago, a neurologist described five cases of serious neurological problems, including four strokes, in women aged 54 to 84 after shampoos in beauty parlors. As is common practice when beauticians shampoo hair or neutralize a permanent wave, the women's heads were tipped back over the edge of the sink.
Now, after a year of detailed studies of blood flow to the brain, the neurologist, Dr. Michael Weintraub, believes that the risk of stroke and lesser forms of brain damage when the neck is arched or twisted in extreme positions is much greater than he had originally believed. 
 The hazard, he says, is not limited to older people and extends well beyond those who visit beauty salons.  Also at risk are young people born with a hidden malformation of a main artery leading to the brain. Damage from extreme neck positions can affect them if they undergo prolonged dental work, paint ceilings or do other work over their heads, are subjected to extreme chiropractic manipulations of the neck or are fitted with a breathing tube in surgery.
Each of these circumstances can place the neck in a position that greatly reduces blood flow through one or both of the vertebral arteries, Dr. Weintraub's studies have shown. The problem is especially likely to affect older people who have complicating factors like high blood pressure or diabetes, which make them more vulnerable to stroke.
When blood flow becomes sluggish, clots can form that are carried into the brain when normal blood flow is restored. These clots can block circulation to part of the brain, causing a stroke. Dr. Weintraub suggested that this might account for the disproportionate occurrence of strokes during sleep or just after awakening.
In a report to be presented today to the annual meeting of the American Academy of Neurology, Dr. Weintraub is calling for doctors and potential patients to be alert to the warning signs of interrupted vertebral circulation, like dizziness or loss of balance when the neck is bent. He is also warning the elderly and anyone who already faces a higher than average risk of stroke to avoid extreme neck positions.
 
Vulnerable Arteries
 The two vertebral arteries carry oxygen-rich blood from the vessels leaving the heart up to the back of the brain -- the brain stem, cerebellum and thalamus -- as well as to parts of the spinal column. They are called vertebral arteries because where they rise through the neck they are housed in bony tunnels formed by projections from the sides of the cervical vertebrae. Together they are responsible for carrying 20 to 25 percent of the blood that reaches the brain. (The remaining 75 to 80 percent of the brain's blood supply comes from the large carotid arteries in the front of the neck.)
Because the vertebral arteries are next to the bones of the neck, they are easily twisted and compressed when the neck is bent in extreme positions. The risk is especially great in people born with an underdeveloped vertebral artery or who develop shifting of the neck bones or bony protuberances on the cervical vertebrae, which can displace or compress a vertebral artery even when the neck is not bent or turned.
The elderly are especially at risk because with age all major arteries tend to become clogged with fatty deposits that reduce the passageway through which blood must flow. The elderly are also more likely to have arthritic changes in their necks and irregular bony spikes on their cervical vertebrae, both of which can increase the risk of vertebral artery compression when their necks are turned in ways that caused no trouble in their younger years.
In last year's report in the April 28 issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association, Dr. Weintraub described the cases of the five women who required hospitalization for severe neurological disturbances and stroke after shampoos in beauty parlors. He attributed the damage to "mechanical impingement" of blood flow through one or both vertebral arteries when, during the shampoos, their necks were arched back so that their chins pointed toward the ceiling.
Just a month before his report, 10 cases of stroke after anesthesia administered with the neck in an extreme position had been described in the journal Neurology. When anesthesiologists insert the tube that maintains lung function during surgery, they temporarily arch the neck far back to straighten out the airway. But sometimes the neck is kept in that position throughout the surgery, which could last for hours.
During the procedure, the anesthesiologist is not likely to be aware of any problem because patients under anesthesia cannot complain when they experience neurological symptoms like dizziness or imbalance as a result of disrupted circulation to the brain.
 
The New Studies
 To document the nature of the problem and further define its extent, Dr. Weintraub, who is chief of neurology at Phelps Memorial Hospital in North Tarrytown, N.Y., and a clinical professor of neurology at New York Medical College in Valhalla, undertook detailed studies of blood flow to the brain when the necks of older men and women were twisted or arched in extreme positions. He has so far completed his studies on 40 people who had prior symptoms suggesting a vulnerability to brain damage and 30 people of similar age who had no symptoms.
The group of 40, ranging in age from 55 to 95, had experienced symptoms like vertigo, double vision, loss of balance or numbness on one side of their bodies at some time during the month before the study. These are indications that they may have already suffered ministrokes or transient ischemic attacks, which are warning signs of a future stroke.
Dr. Weintraub used a technique called magnetic resonance angiography, a method that without a dye or penetration of body parts allowed him to track the flow of blood through the vertebral arteries as the position of the neck was changed.
He showed that as the necks of patients with symptoms were moved to one side, chin to shoulder, the vertebral artery was compressed, there was a marked decline in blood flow and symptoms of dizziness occurred in 70 percent. But in those who had no previous symptoms, only 13 percent experienced dizziness during the brief manipulation. Women in the symptomatic group experienced the most severe compression of the vertebral artery during the study.
 
What to Do
 Dr. Weintraub and other experts suggest that elderly people and especially those of any age who have experienced dizziness or loss of balance when the neck is bent should avoid activities that demand extreme neck positions.
For example, hair can be washed with the head bent forward instead of back. The dental chair, instead of the patient's head, can be tilted way back. The anesthesiologist should be reminded to restore the patient's head to a normal position as soon as the tube is inserted.
People already at high risk for stroke -- those who are obese, have high blood pressure, heart abnormalities, diabetes or smoke cigarettes -- might consider wearing a cervical collar while sleeping, the neurologist suggested.

LOAD-DATE: May 4, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


GRAPHIC:  Vertebral arteries, which run through bony tunnels on either side of the cervical vertebrae, carry blood from the heart to the brain. Extreme positions that arch the neck backward or twist it sharply to the side compress the arteries, reducting blood flow, and can pose a risk of stroke for the elderly and people with certain malformations of the vertebrae.
Diagram: "Extreme Neck Position and Blood Flow"
 Diagram shows location of Vertebral arteries and how they are compressed at points of sharp angulation. (Source: Dr. Micheal I. Weintraub)

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May 7, 1994, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

Employers May Get Reprieve In Reporting Health Coverage

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

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

LENGTH: 554 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, May 6

Bowing to complaints from thousands of businesses across the country, the White House today asked Congress to delay or do away with a 1993 law requiring employers to report information on the health insurance coverage of their employees.
Presidents Clinton and George Bush both asked Congress to impose the requirement, which took effect on Jan. 1. But it has caused major problems for employers, who say they must gather large amounts of data never collected before. 
 Sally Katzen, a senior official of the Office of Management and Budget, asked Congress to delay the reporting requirements until July 1995. By then, she said, they may not be needed. Other White House officials said they hoped Congress would simply repeal the reporting requirements.
 
Money-Saving Scheme
 The requirements were part of an elaborate scheme to save money for Medicare and Medicaid, the Federal programs for the elderly and the poor. These programs are not supposed to pay for health care when a person has private insurance to pay the bills. But the Government often has no way of knowing who has private insurance.
So Congress last year created the Medicare and Medicaid Coverage Data Bank. The law says that any employer with a group health plan must report the names and Social Security numbers of all people covered under the plan, regardless of whether they also have Medicaid or Medicare. Employers say that while they know their workers' names, they often do not know the names of spouses and children and do not want to invade employees' privacy.
 
'Data Bank Is Unworkable'
 Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut, has denounced the data bank as a waste of time and money. "I am pleased that the Administration has finally come to agree with what I have argued for some time," Mr. Lieberman said at a hearing today. "This data bank is unworkable."
The hearing was held by a subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs. Mr. Lieberman is chairman of the subcommittee.
The General Accounting Office, an investigative arm of Congress, agreed that the data bank was a bad idea. The 1993 law, it said, would require employers to report insurance data on 160 million people, of whom only 7 million were also enrolled in Medicare or Medicaid.
Leslie G. Aronovitz, a supervisor at the General Accounting Office, said the data bank would save little or no money but would create "an avalanche of unnecessary paperwork." The Government, she said, would have to collect information on 160 million people just to identify the estimated 3 million Medicare beneficiaries and the 4 million Medicaid recipients who have another source of coverage.
Business lobbyists rejoiced at the reversal by the White House. "This is great news," said Kent Knutson, a lobbyist for the National Federation of Independent Business, which represents more than 600,000 small businesses.
Kenneth D. Simonson, chief economist of the American Trucking Associations, said: "I am elated in a small way. It's great that the Administration has come out and said, 'We don't want to go ahead with the data bank in 1994.' But my elation is tempered by the fact that it will be difficult to get Congress to act. In the meantime, employers apparently need to collect this information for their employees and dependents."

LOAD-DATE: May 7, 1994

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May 7, 1994, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

Observer;
The Joys of Rome

BYLINE: By RUSSELL BAKER 

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

LENGTH: 705 words

The high-school flavor of the Washington news was more than the spirit could bear, so I took Rome off the shelf. Not always admirable, those Romans, but they wrote a muscular prose far more bracing than the wheezing, whining, hyper-inflated, empty-headed, tongue-twisting, death's-door English of Washington.
Here is Cicero, for instance, reminding us that "lustful pleasures . . . cloud a man's judgment, obstruct his reasoning capacity and blind his intelligence." 
 If this seems pertinent just now, it is probably because the press seems about to embark on yet another earnest-Puritan exploration of Bill Clinton's pre-Presidential sex life.
It is tempting to defend Mr. Clinton by noting that any American male under 75 who fails to behave goatishly at the drop of an eyelash risks disgracing the ideal of American manhood taught by our press, literature and entertainment.
Still, the American man's terrible conviction that he must remain a boy forever, while amusing, diverts us from the essence of Mr. Clinton's problem. Cicero states it with Roman Republican clarity of mind: "Let sensuality be present, and a good life becomes impossible."
He also mocks our prejudice against grown-up men by noting that in Rome the Senate was "an assembly of old men," which is the Latin meaning of the word. It comes from the same Latin word as "senility."
Roman senators obviously did not have to look friskily blow-dried, as their American versions must to pass inspection by an electorate besotted with dreams of eternal youth. Reading Cicero makes you feel a delightful 2,000 years distant from high school.
Cicero's Rome also played politics more robustly than today's Washington. There we have Republican sore losers trying to undo the last election with hints that Mr. Clinton is a shady-buck artist and godless philanderer.
Plutarch's account of Cicero's end reminds us how real men, as opposed to Washington's eternal high-school boys, play political hardball.
Cicero's politics had outraged Mark Antony, who seems to have been more Al Capone than Richard Burton. When Antony's party prevailed over Cicero's, Antony claimed the right to have Cicero's head, quite literally. He sent killers to cut Cicero's throat. When overtaken on his litter by the assassins, Plutarch says, Cicero ordered the litter set down.
"Holding his chin in his left hand, as he had a way of doing, he looked steadily at his murderers, his hair all unkempt and dusty and his face worn by anxiety. Most of those who were there covered their faces while Herennius was killing him. He was stabbed, stretching his neck out from the litter, being then in his 64th year. Following Antony's orders, Herennius cut off his head and his hands, with which he wrote . . . his speeches against Antony."
Antony had head and hands brought to Rome and publicly displayed, "a sight to make Romans shudder," says Plutarch, "for they saw there, they thought, not Cicero's face but an image of Antony's soul."
Antony's Rome had grown more civilized than the Rome of the early kings. The historian Livy, describing how King Tullus dealt with an unfaithful ally named Mettius around 670 B.C., shows a delicacy that suggests how little progress we have made these past 2,000 years.
Addressing Mettius, Tullus says, "Were you capable of learning loyally to abide by your word, I should have let you live. . . . But you are not capable. . . . Yesterday you could not decide between Fidenae and Rome: doubtless it was a painful division of mind -- but today the division of your body will be more painful still."
Then, writes Livy, "Two chariots were brought up, each drawn by four horses. Mettius was tied, spread-eagled, to both of them. At the touch of the whip the two teams sprang forward in opposite directions, carrying with them the fragments of the mangled body still held by the ropes. All eyes were averted from the disgusting spectacle -- never, in all our history, repeated.
"That was the first and last time that fellow-countrymen of ours inflicted a punishment so utterly without regard to the laws of humanity. Save for that one instance we can fairly claim to have been content with more humane forms of punishment than any other nation."

LOAD-DATE: May 7, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

TYPE: Op-Ed

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May 8, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

A THAI-HIGH AMERICAN

BYLINE: By Rick Bragg 

SECTION: Section 6;  Page 42;  Column 1;  Magazine Desk 

LENGTH: 488 words

THE FIGHTERS PUNISH EACH OTHER WITH FISTS, FEET, knees and elbows, yet they wound without cruelty. Blood drips to the mat and eyes glaze from the force of the blows, yet they thank God for the honor. To be Thai, to stand inside a ring surrounded by hundreds of adoring, screaming, wildly wagering fans, is to reach for the sky and touch it. To be American, to be an outsider in the ring, is a feeling Steve Milles struggles to form into words.
"I could hear him hit me," he says, trying to describe his battle with a Thai kick-boxer on Ko Samui, an island in the Gulf of Thailand. "I couldn't feel it." 
 Milles, a 28-year-old graduate student in political science at the New School for Social Research in New York, was never a fighter, just a young man who found something beautiful in the physical and spiritual discipline of the 500-year-old art of muay Thai, Thai boxing. Milles trained for a year in New York and went to Bangkok in February to learn from one of its champions. He did not intend to fight.
Muay Thai was born on a battlefield in the 15th century and became a sport 300 years later, when fighters wrapped their fists in cloth soaked with glue and pressed into ground glass. Now they wear light boxing gloves, but feet, knees and elbows are bare.
"Pain is part of the art," Milles says.
Milles, six feet tall, dropped from 165 pounds to 145 pounds in two months of training. On the streets of Bangkok old women gave him food because he looked so thin, and people touched the bruises on his lean face. Day after day, he banged his tender shins against the hardened ones of other fighters until he began to lose sensation and the skin formed a ridge over bone. His teacher was Jitti Damriman, a former champion with skin like iron. It was he who suggested that Milles fight a professional, and it was the highest compliment he could pay him.
Milles entered the ring to the sound of drums and a cheering crowd, and faced Sakchai, a 28-year-old veteran of 100 fights who looked at him the way a cat looks at a bird. First they did a slow dance in the ring, to honor their teachers; then it was time to rumble. With the first blow -- a blow that probably won the match -- Sakchai kicked Milles in the thigh with the force of a $40 mule. The men were evenly matched, and at one point in the second round a flurry of punches by Milles had Sakchai dazed on the ropes. But the kick to Milles's leg would haunt him.
Throughout the 15-minute fight, divided into 3-minute rounds, Sakchai continued to methodically hammer the wounded leg. By the start of the crucial fifth round it had swollen to twice its normal size and Milles was left immobile, unable to attack. He lost by a few points. Sakchai, exhausted, praised him. As Milles limped through the crowd more people praised him. Many had bet on him, the outsider. Victory, in a fighting stadium in Thailand, is a relative thing.   -- RICK BRAGG

NAME: Steve Milles

LOAD-DATE: May 8, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photos: "I took a class as a lark," says Steve Milles (left and above, in Bangkok), "and it was so fierce and so ferocious and so graceful all at the same time that I stayed." (pg. 42-43); At the Jitti Gym: Milles meets his match (above); his teacher ministers to his wounds during a break in the fighting (below). (pg. 44); Midfight, midring: Thai boxers hit with the shin, knee, elbow, not just the foot, and any part of the body is fair game (above). Milles prepares for battle (below). (pg. 45)(PHOTOGRAPHS BY DAVE KRIEGER)

TYPE: Biography

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May 8, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

NEIGHBORHOOD REPORT: HARLEM;
Encounters With Ralph Ellison

BYLINE: By RANDY KENNEDY 

SECTION: Section 14;  Page 6;  Column 2;  The City Weekly Desk 

LENGTH: 458 words

In the last years of Ralph Ellison's life, the Harlem neighborhood that he called home and transformed into a powerful metaphor for alienation was a place that had all but forgotten him.
But John B. Weaver still remembers. For 20 years, Mr. Weaver, a thin man with graying hair, delivered mail to Mr. Ellison's building on Riverside Drive. And until just before Mr. Ellison's death on April 16 at the age of 80, he would buzz each day around noon, so the writer could collect his voluminous mail. 
 Writer and postman, the two men followed the ritual almost unerringly for two decades. And through the years, through their brief encounters, they developed a friendship of sorts, at a distance.
The postman ribbed the writer, whom he called "doc," about his ever-present cigar, "this big, Cuban thing," as Mr. Weaver remembers. Mr. Ellison talked to Mr. Weaver about Yale, where Mr. Weaver's daughter attended college and where Mr. Ellison was a visiting scholar.
Mr. Weaver, in turn, helped the writer with small errands, once driving him to an office supply warehouse near Coney Island so Mr. Ellison could buy his favorite typewriter, an old I.B.M. model that he could not find in stores anymore.
"He was a man with a lot of respect about him," Mr. Weaver said the other day as he stuffed mail into boxes in the building where Mr. Ellison's widow, Fanny, still lives.
"He was not an easy man to talk to, so I did a lot of listening, and every once in a while I'd get around to asking him a question," said Mr. Weaver, who said he had read all of Mr. Ellison's writings many times. "It was always the high point of my day."
All of Mr. Ellison's literary peers -- Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Chester Himes -- left the neighborhood long ago. Alfred Kazin, the critic, said he believed that Mr. Ellison had remained "out of stubbornness."
Like many other elderly people in the neighborhood, Mr. Ellison only rarely ventured onto the streets, which drugs have made dangerous. He would sometimes walk the few blocks up Riverside Drive to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, where his books sit in the hushed library beside biographies of Duke Ellington.
Most mornings, after he gathered his mail, would venture a few blocks south to buy his newspaper at a bodega on 145th Street and Broadway, but, like many people in what is now a largely Dominican neighborhood, those behind the counter did not know who he was.
"And it's a shame, too," Mr. Weaver said. "He should have been a king around here."
Mr. Weaver said he saw the author for the last time one morning in early April, a few days before he fell ill. "I remember thinking at the time," he said, "that he looked really too young to be 80 years old."   RANDY KENNEDY

LOAD-DATE: May 12, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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May 8, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

THEATER;
'Over the River' in The Bronx

BYLINE: By ALVIN KLEIN 

SECTION: Section 14WC;  Page 13;  Column 1;  Westchester Weekly Desk 

LENGTH: 795 words

DATELINE: THE BRONX

IT is customary for the audience in a small nonprofit theater to hear a pre-performance welcome; in other words, a pitch for donations and subscriptions. It is not customary for the audience to interrupt such a ritual three times with cheers and applause.
But that's the Belmont Italian American Playhouse experience for you. It's not that the people at Saturday night's performance of "Over the River and Through the Woods" weren't feeling perfectly welcome in the first place. It's just that the lively greeting by Lou Izzo, the theater's general manager, was a mere informality, rather like a communal embrace. 
 By no means intended as an audience-participation show, the new comedy by Joe DiPietro is as interactive as one can get, in Old World terms, before technology put a new spin on the word interactive. And it's the Old World, culturally and theatrically, that informs Mr. DiPietro's play about a young man brought up according to the three F's: family, faith and food. Yes, the audience calls out the third word in spontaneous, unsolicited chorus.
If anyone has run by Mr. DiPietro the vocabulary of contemporary pop psychology -- dysfunctionalism, 12-step programs -- he has not been paying attention. Guilt is beside the point; it comes with the territory and one mentions it only in passing, with eyes rolled upward.
For 27 years, Nick Cristano has been showing up for Sunday dinner at the home of his maternal grandparents, Frank and Aida Gianelli. His paternal grandparents, Nunzio and Emma Cristano -- "the loudest people I ever met," Nick says -- are also there to eat and to nag: "Be a man. Start a family. Don't eat Chinese food." More to the point, Emma says to Nick: "I want to see you married before I'm dead." Nick's parents moved to Fort Lauderdale, and Nick understands why.
What makes one Sunday night different is that Nick has to tell his grandparents the good news that he is up for a promotion and the bad news that a move to Seattle, Wash., is part of the deal. "Not the close-by Washington," the elderly folks quickly realize. They conspire to find a reason to keep Nick on home ground. Caitlin O'Haire, a pretty neighbor, is the reason. She is invited to dinner; the elderly folks are on their best behavior.
Sample table talk:
"Since when do we say grace?"
"Shut up; we've got company."
When Nick shows exasperation with his meddlesome grandparents, Caitlin retorts with a zinger: "How many grown adults have the opportunity to know all of their grandparents?"
Such unabashed sentiment is altogether sufficient to sustain Mr. DiPietro's warm and appealing play. In a "glimpse of the past splashed with color," the two elderly couples dance ("Yes, Sir, That's My Baby") and Frank Gianelli plays the banjo.
"We were always laughing; we always had time for fun," says Emma, married to Nunzio 60 years. No financial worries here. (Frank won't turn on the air-conditioner until the Fourth of July, but he certainly doesn't scrimp on food.) No hostilities. No rivalries. No recriminations. Just plenty of cannolis, crumb cake, ham and ricotta cheese sandwiches, fettuccine Alfredo and lasagna. And veal, pushed upon Caitlin, a vegetarian.
"Over the River and Through the Woods" (everyone is supposed to know the next line) makes no claim to be more than a story about a young man's coming of age and two sets of old folks with an ever-deepening love. The price a younger generation pays for the devotion of the elders, the extent of sacrifice -- such issues are delicate asides. Is Nick's complicated existence better than his grandparents' good life? Or just different? So much for philosophy. And stereotypes are dealt a good-natured whack. Nunzio could only get his factory job by pretending to be Irish.
Dante Albertie has directed an agreeable cast with brio. Marco Greco as Nick looks for life's formula and suffer's panic attacks in stride. John Marino (Frank) sits in a rocking chair, remembering the words of the father he misunderstood. He is resigned to not driving any more. "Good, the world will be safer," Emma says. "We'll sit in my car and pretend it's moving."
Add Evelyne Aronin's easy humor as Emma, Grace Bentley's dedication to the kitchen as Aida and Ralph Lucarelli as Nunzio, discovering peacemaking in a private way and realizing that it isn't too late for him to grow up.
With such all-around affection, who can be so churlish as to deny the play's recognition scenes and built-in entertainment value for a home-grown audience? Or its bracing, nourishing effect on an outsider?
"Over the River and Through the Woods" by Joe DiPietro. Produced by the Belmont Italian American Playhouse, 2385 Arthur Avenue in the Bronx. Performances through May 22. Box office: (718) 364-4700.

LOAD-DATE: May 8, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

TYPE: Review

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May 10, 1994, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final
Correction Appended

KENNEDY PROPOSES EXPANDED CHOICES FOR HEALTH PLAN

BYLINE: By ADAM CLYMER,    Special to The New York Times 

SECTION: Section A;  Page 1;  Column 6;  National Desk 

LENGTH: 1360 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, May 9

Edward M. Kennedy, the Senate's senior campaigner for national health insurance, today proposed changing President Clinton's health care plan to broaden individuals' choice of insurance and to lighten the burden on very small businesses.
The Massachusetts Democrat worked out his proposal in consultation with the White House and with Senator George J. Mitchell of Maine, the majority leader. It would require all but the smallest employers to buy insurance for their workers and would offer any American the same insurance choices Federal workers have. 
 Mr. Kennedy also proposed raising more money than Mr. Clinton would through higher taxes on tobacco and large corporations as well as higher out-of-pocket payments by individuals. This revenue would finance more generous benefits than Mr. Clinton proposed for women's health care, mental health and drug and alcohol abuse treatments, and greater support for biomedical research and academic health centers.
Mr. Clinton, campaigning for health care legislation in New York City today, praised the Kennedy proposal. "I think it clearly has health security for all Americans," he said. "It relies on the private insurance system. It tends to do more for the smallest businesses and has a comprehensive benefits package."
Mr. Clinton also told New Yorkers that the Federal Medicaid formula should be changed to provide more money to states with many poor people. The formula now provides less Federal aid for states with high percapita incomes, including New York, and lawmakers have long complained that it did not take sufficient account of the number of residents. [Page A20.]
In his proposal, Mr. Kennedy followed the basic outlines of the Clinton plan, but he would add benefits for women and the elderly and disabled, who have been supportive but not ecstatic of the President's program . He would offer concessions to small businesses while seeking to enlist the support of the insurance industry by requiring universal coverage but not compelling anyone to join an insurance-buying cooperative.
The Kennedy plan is instantly influential, not only because of Mr. Clinton's backing, but also because Mr. Kennedy heads the Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources, the only Congressional committee with a firm timetable for completing a health care bill by the Memorial Day recess. Its deliberations begin next week, and the measure he outlined today will be put before the committee, where he already commanded a majority for the Clinton bill without the sweeteners proposed today.
While the measure is unlikely to win any sudden Republican converts, it includes pet features taken from proposals made by about a dozen Republicans.
 
'Road to a Compromise'
 Mr. Kennedy, who first introduced a national health insurance bill in 1970, said today: "These modifications are the result of dozens of discussions with Republicans and other Democrats in the Senate. It's a good-faith attempt to respond to their legitimate objections and concerns. Clearly there is more to be done, but I think we are on the road to a compromise that preserves all of President Clinton's basic goals and has a realistic chance of winning broad bipartisan support."
On the touchiest political issue in health care, employer insurance payments, Mr. Clinton would require all employers to pay the bulk of their workers' health insurance premiums. Mr. Kennedy's proposal would exempt employers with five or fewer workers, though they would be required to pay a 2 percent payroll tax instead. Their seven million to eight million workers would be required to buy their own insurance, with substantial subsidies for the lower-paid among them.
Mr. Clinton defended this area of the Kennedy proposal, saying: "It still has coverage for everybody. Even the smallest firms have to assume some responsibility."
The biggest single way in which Senator Kennedy's plan varies from the President's proposal deals with how people would get insurance.
The Kennedy plan would borrow the idea of a bill offered by Senator William V. Roth Jr., Republican of Delaware, and allow Americans to join the Federal Employees Health Benefits Plan instead of obtaining insurance through their employers. They could choose among the insurance options offered all Federal workers, from President Clinton through Congress down to the lowest-paid civil servants. "If it's good enough for us," Mr. Kennedy said in a statement, "it's good enough for all Americans."
Under the President's plan, all Americans, except those associated with companies employing 5,000 or more, would get their policies through insurance purchasing alliances. Employer participation in Mr. Clinton's alliances would be mandatory.
Mr. Kennedy would require all states to establish insurance-purchasing cooperatives, but at the same time he would allow employers to continue to purchase insurance from private insurers instead of joining the cooperatives. Individuals would also be allowed to get their insurance through the cooperative or directly from an agent.
 
The Financing
 There are further differences. Where Mr. Clinton called for an additional 75-cents-a-pack-tax on cigarettes, for a total of 99 cents, Mr. Kennedy recommends adding $1.25, for a total of $1.49.
Where Mr. Clinton proposed a 1 percent payroll assessment on companies with 5,000 or more workers to help pay the costs of academic health centers, Mr. Kennedy would expand its reach by imposing it on companies with 1,000 or more employees.
And, following a pattern suggested by Senator Mitchell in a meeting with Democrats last month, Mr. Kennedy would alter the formula for subsidizing small business. Mr. Clinton based it on the size of the company involved, but the Mitchell-Kennedy approach would partly base subsidies on wages. So there would be greater subsidies for low-wage workers and smaller subsidies for highly paid workers.
Each of these three provisions was estimated by Mr. Kennedy's staff as likely to produce or save about $40 billion over five years. More than half of that would be used to eliminate the $74 billion in increased deficits that the Congressional Budget Office found the Clinton plan would cause.
But Mr. Kennedy would also spend more money -- the exact amount will be specified on Wednesday -- on academic health centers and teaching hospitals. And, adopting a proposal by Senators Mark O. Hatfield, Republican of Oregon, and Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa, he would add $7.5 billion over five years to Federal funds available for biomedical research. Mr. Clinton would add $2.4 billion.
Mr. Kennedy would also put $2.5 billion more than Mr. Clinton would into a program that aids hospitals serving the poor.
One major addition in the Kennedy program would be the establishment of a voluntary program of self-insurance for up to $90,000 worth of benefits for nursing home care. The younger a participant was when he signed up, the lower his premiums would be.
 
Increased Benefits
 Many of Mr. Kennedy's changes deal with the standard benefits package that insurers would have to offer the public, although here he would meet the cost with somewhat higher out-of-pocket costs to middle- and upper-income patients.
Where Mr. Clinton proposed covering mammograms every two years for women over the age of 50, Mr. Kennedy would provide them annually over 50 and every two years for women 40 to 49. It would also provide annual Pap smears for all women who have not had three consecutive negative tests. Mr. Clinton urged coverage every three years. Mr. Kennedy would also support annual physical examinations for children from 13 to 19, while the Clinton plan would authorize them once every three years.
By emphasizing services outside of hospitals, the Kennedy measure would offer greater benefits for Americans needing help with mental health and drug and alcohol abuse. Again, the precise terms were to be available Wednesday, but an aide to the Senator said his package would go beyond Mr. Clinton's in offering "more outpatient services including psychotherapy," and "residential non-hospital treatment for substance abuse."

LOAD-DATE: May 10, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

CORRECTION-DATE: May 12, 1994, Thursday

 CORRECTION:
A picture caption yesterday about an encounter between President Clinton and Senator Edward M. Kennedy described their conversation incorrectly. Referring to a health care bill Mr. Kennedy has proposed, Mr. Clinton said, "You've got a great bill there." They did not engage in "horse-trading."

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May 11, 1994, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Personal Health

BYLINE: By Jane E. Brody 

SECTION: Section C;  Page 11;  Column 4;  National Desk;  Health Page

LENGTH: 1201 words

UNTIL recently, little was known about the effects of age on nutrition. Research into the vitamin and mineral requirements of Americans over 50 lagged seriously even as age distribution in the nation shifted toward the decades beyond midlife. In devising recommendations about how much of each nutrient should be consumed each day, nutrition experts assumed that people of 70 or 80 were no different from those of 50.
But now researchers seeking to correct this oversight are finding that millions of older Americans are nutritionally deprived either because they consume too little of various vitamins and minerals or because certain medical conditions or treatments prevent them from making full use of the nutrients in the foods they eat. 
 The potential consequences of such undernutrition are serious indeed. They include a much greater than average risk of developing heart disease, cancer, osteoporosis and infectious illnesses, as well as a debilitating brain condition with symptoms that resemble Alzheimer's disease. Caloric needs decline with age but the need for many nutrients rises, leaving less room for so-called empty calories and making it all the more important for older people to be sure most of their calories are nutritious.
But while dietary improvements can go a long way toward correcting nutrient deficiencies, researchers are discovering that many older people need to take supplements of certain vitamins and minerals to counter their susceptibilities and symptoms.
 
For Better Health
 While beta carotene and vitamins C and E have been the subject of much talked about and often controversial research, the B vitamins have not received anywhere near the popular attention they deserve. Recent studies indicate that many older people, including those with well-balanced diets, may need to take supplements of certain B vitamins.
Low blood levels of the B vitamin folacin, for example, have recently been linked to a significant rise in the risk of heart attack, stroke and possibly certain common cancers, including cancers of the colon, lung and cervix. Deficient levels occur even in people who consume recommended amounts of folacin, suggesting that the elderly may need more of this nutrient than younger adults. Folacin, also known as folic acid or folate, is prominent in dark-green leafy vegetables, liver, kidneys, wheat germ and dried peas and beans.
A large proportion of elderly Americans are deficient in vitamin B6; they are consuming considerably less than the Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA), and to make matters worse, recent studies suggest that the RDA for B6 for older people is too low, as it is for folacin. Inadequate B6 has been linked to poor functioning of the immune system and an increased risk of infection in the elderly. It may also disrupt sugar metabolism. Vitamin B6 is prominent in whole grain (but not enriched) breads and cereals, liver, avocados, spinach, green beans, bananas and fish.
But it is a B12 deficiency that is perhaps most frightening, for it can cause devastating symptoms even though it may not show up as a deficiency on an ordinary blood test. About 20 percent of 60-year-olds and 40 percent of 80-year-olds have a condition called atrophic gastritis that results in a diminished ability to absorb B12 from foods.
The resulting subclinical deficiency of B12 can cause memory loss, disorientation, balance and coordination problems and other symptoms easily mistaken for Alzheimer's disease. In such people, supplements of crystalline B12, the kind found in an ordinary multivitamin capsule, can often correct the brain syndrome.
 
Antidotes to Aging
 Osteoporosis, the loss of bone mineral that can result in crippling fractures, is epidemic among older Americans. Among the many factors that contribute to it -- including a high-protein diet, cigarette smoking and sedentary living -- a life-long insufficiency of dietary calcium is the primary culprit.
The newest, unofficial recommended amount of calcium for women over 50 is 1,000 milligrams a day for those who take postmenopausal estrogen and 1,500 milligrams for those who do not. The typical American woman consumes about one-half the 800 milligrams listed as the current official Recommended Dietary Allowance.
The most popular supplement, calcium carbonate (found in Tums, for example), is poorly absorbed. Calcium is best absorbed from dairy foods like milk and yogurt; low-fat and nonfat products are the best sources. Other foods rich in calcium include collard greens, broccoli, and canned salmon and sardines eaten with the bones.
To be properly absorbed, calcium depends on vitamin D, which is also often in short supply in the elderly. About two-thirds of older adults consume less than the recommended amount of vitamin D. Milk is fortified with it and fatty fish like mackerel, salmon and sardines are rich in it.
Vitamin D is also made in skin exposed to ultraviolet B radiation from the sun. But the skin's ability to make vitamin D declines with age, older people tend to spend less time in the sun, and in northern latitudes, almost no vitamin D is manufactured in winter. Also as people age, they gradually lose the ability to convert vitamin D to the active hormone that is needed for dietary calcium to become incorporated into bones. Some older people may need treatment with this hormone to prevent serious bone loss.
Certain vitamins play a double role that makes them especially important to the health of the elderly. When consumed in recommended amounts, they prevent the symptoms of nutrient deficiencies. And in larger doses they protect against oxidation damage to cells and other substances involved in heart disease and cancer. These antioxidants, as they are called, include vitamins C and E and beta carotene, which is converted in the body into vitamin A.
Older people who consume lots of foods rich in vitamin C and beta carotene tend to have fewer heart attacks, lower blood pressure and less cancer. Vitamins C and E taken as supplements may also help delay the onset of cataracts, and vitamin E may protect against heart disease and macular degeneration, a vision-impairing disorder of the retina.
Although definitive evidence of benefits is still lacking, the apparent safety of large doses of vitamin E has prompted many experts to recommend supplements of 200 to 400 international units a day, particularly after the age of 50, since it is not possible to consume large amounts from foods. There is less agreement about vitamin C, in part because megadoses can sometimes cause problems like diarrhea and kidney stones and may also interfere with the absorption of vitamin B12.
As for beta carotene, the jury is still out. Evidence for its benefits as a supplement is sketchy at best, and taking beta carotene in supplement form might even be harmful. This nutrient is but one of some 500 carotenoids in foods, and it is uncertain which of them and in what combinations are beneficial. Until further facts are available, the best bet is to eat plenty of foods rich in carotenoids: carrots, dark-green vegetables like spinach and broccoli, cantaloupe, sweet potatoes and the like.

LOAD-DATE: May 11, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Table: "Recommended Dietary Allowances for Adults" lists recommended dietary allowances for adults. (Source: National Academy of Sciences-National Research Council)

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The New York Times

May 11, 1994, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final
Correction Appended

Lois G. Forer, 80, a Judge and Author, Dies

BYLINE: By WOLFGANG SAXON 

SECTION: Section D;  Page 25;  Column 1;  National Desk 

LENGTH: 580 words

Lois G. Forer, an author, a retired Philadelphia judge and a lifelong advocate for the young, the elderly and the poor, died on Monday at Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia. A Philadelphia resident, she was 80.
The cause was non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, her family said. 
 Judge Forer, an authority on criminal justice, spent 32 years practicing law and 16 years on the bench. Her books on the law received critical acclaim nationally.
She also headed a poverty law office for children, sat on the board of the American Civil Liberties Union and represented poor people in constitutional cases. As a private lawyer, she worked for wealthy clients and corporations, and as a judge she tried both criminal and civil cases.
 
Benchmark Cases
 From 1955 to 1966, she served Pennsylvania as Deputy Attorney General and played a key role in two benchmark cases. One of them ended the whites-only policy that the founder of Girard College had written into his will. The other opened the celebrated art collection of the tax-exempt Barnes Foundation to the public.
She became a judge of the Court of Common Pleas in Philadelphia in 1971 and retired as a senior judge in 1987.
Lois Goldstein Forer was born in Chicago and graduated from Northwestern University in 1935. She worked briefly as a reporter and then as a union organizer. Dissatisfied, she returned to Northwestern for a law degree and spent several years in public service in Washington before moving to Philadelphia as a law clerk in Federal Court.
After her stint as Deputy Attorney General in 1966, she organized the Office for Juveniles at Community Legal Services and headed it for nearly two years.
Judge Forer received national attention with her first book, "No One Will Lissen: How Our Legal System Brutalizes the Youthful Poor" (1970). In it, she argued that the humane ideal to treat juveniles differently had been mangled in practice. For the most part, she wrote, juveniles falling into the system are poor, nonwhite and defenseless.
Her "Criminals and Victims: A Trial Judge Reflects on Crime and Punishment" (1980) tried to make sense of seeking to mete out justice in an environment of abstract theories of the way things are supposed to be. A judge, she asserted, finds little in the way of either practical guidance or spiritual comfort from abstractions.)
 
Critical Views on Justice
 "Money and Justice: Who Owns the Courts?" (1984) describes a system that costs too much and takes too long and often results in "substantial injustice." "A Chilling Effect: The Mounting Threat of Libel and Invasion of Privacy Actions to the First Amendment" (1987) argued for definitions of what is libelous and what is newsworthy. Federal legislation to that end would help rid the First Amendment of the ballast a litigious society has heaped on it, she contended.
Since her fourth-stage lymphoma was diagnosed eight months ago, Judge Forer finished two more books. One, "What Every Woman Should Know Before (and After) She Gets Involved With Men and Money," is scheduled for publication by MacMillan later this year.
Her highly topical last book, "The Rage to Punish: The Unintended Consequences of Mandatory Sentencing," is on W. W. Norton's list for next month.
Judge Forer is survived by her husband, Morris L. Forer; two sons, Stuart, of Warwick, R.I., and John, of Philadelphia; a daughter, Hope Forer Ross of Manhattan; a sister, Marion Schott of Mount Kisco, N.Y., and two grandsons.

NAME: Lois G. Forer

LOAD-DATE: May 11, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

CORRECTION-DATE: May 14, 1994, Saturday

 CORRECTION:
An obituary on Wednesday about Lois G. Forer, author and retired Philadelphia judge, referred incorrectly to the publication of her book "What Every Woman Needs to Know Before (and After) She Gets Involved With Men and Money." The publication, by Macmillan, is not due later this year; it occurred in February.

GRAPHIC: Photo: Lois G. Forer (Roberto Celli)

TYPE: Obituary (Obit); Biography

Copyright 1994 The New York Times Company



170 of 457 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times

May 12, 1994, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

Patients Share Bigger Burden Of Rising Health Care Costs

BYLINE: By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL 

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

LENGTH: 1929 words

Patients covered by what they thought was comprehensive medical insurance are increasingly facing large out-of-pocket costs as insurers and employers turn to them to help pay the nation's ever-rising health care bill.
Personal outlays for medical care have risen steadily since the early 1980's, but the trend has accelerated in the last several years, with 1994 estimates showing yet another leap. 
 And patients are discovering that merely having insurance is no surefire protection from financial hardship or even ruin. In a survey of 1,623 households published in March in The Journal of the American Medical Association, one in five families reported problems paying medical bills. To the researchers' surprise, nearly three-quarters of those families were insured.
"The problem is that many people's insurance is not as deep as they think, and their medical bills are not being paid for adequately by insurance," said Dr. Bob Blendon, a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health and the study's main author. "You do not have absolute security. The real message of our survey is uncertainty: you think your insurance is going to cover you and the answer is, maybe you're right."
When Ann Nita Silverman of Manhattan was admitted to a hospital last year for a pinched nerve in her neck, she assumed that her private insurance would cover her hospital bills, which totaled $6,000. But her insurer concluded that the charges were beyond the "reasonable and customary" amount for lower Manhattan and offered only partial reimbursement. Ms. Silverman had to pay $2,000 from her own bank account.
Such rejections have become increasingly common; an estimated 8 to 10 percent of charges are now turned down. But most policies do not protect the patient from being stuck with bills when a doctor and insurer disagree about fees.
"I have a job and good insurance and I pay a lot for it," said Ms. Silverman, who works for a large New York advertising firm. "But now I still live in fear of serious illness or major surgery. Will it wipe out my savings, even with coverage?"
Even patients covered by Medicare, the Government insurance program intended to protect the elderly from unforeseen health care costs, are feeling the squeeze. A study by the American Association of Retired Persons released last month projected that older Americans would spend an average of $2,803 on medical care in 1994, or 23 percent of their household income -- more than twice what they spent in 1987. Even those who have bought supplemental insurance may find themselves paying more, since the costs of many private medical services have skyrocketing and supplemental Medicare policies may also reject charges that are deemed excessive.
When Lillian Drucker, 89, of Brooklyn transferred from a community hospital in Queens to the hospital in Connecticut where her cardiologist practices, the private ambulance bill came to $2,100. Medicare contributed $646. Her supplemental Medigap policy paid nothing. And Ms. Drucker kicked in $1,400.
"We pay for supplemental coverage, so I took it for granted that this would be paid for," her daughter, Phyllis Silvestri, said.
In fact, Dr. Blendon said he believed that the nation's determination to overhaul the health care system is fueled not primarily by concern for the 38 million uninsured -- who lack a strong political voice -- but by the frustration of the hundreds of millions of working and retired people who are paying more for medical care.
"We believe that we're having a national health debate because of the reduction of benefits that people are experiencing," he said. "You're covered for less. You're paying more. And you're nervous about what is going to happen in the case of large medical bills."
The rise in personal medical costs has many causes, but is often related to attempts by employers and insurers to shift their burden to consumers:
*An increasing number of insurers now review medical bills submitted for payment to make sure the charges are "reasonable" and the care "appropriate." Based on these reviews, insurers now refuse to pay an estimated 8 to 10 percent of submitted charges. And patients, caught between the insurer and the medical world, often end up footing the bill.
*The push by insurers for shorter hospital stays means that patients who are discharged quickly after operations or childbirth often need to hire nursing services privately to help out at home. This trend toward more outpatient surgery drives procedures to a setting where patients are often responsible for larger fees.
*Medically related expenses that are not always covered by insurance, like prescription drugs and ambulance service, had been relatively cheap, but have risen sharply in recent years. Mrs. Drucker, who paid $1,400 for an ambulance, also pays $225 a month for her prescription heart pills.
*People who long considered health insurance a free benefit that went with a job must now contribute more toward premiums and are facing escalating co-payments and deductibles. Many policies do not kick in until the patient has spent hundreds of dollars, and many require patients to pay 20 percent on thousands of dollars' worth of bills thereafter.
Often there is little patients can do to avoid such expenses, since they do not know how much they will be billed until after treatment has been given. But consumer advocates advise people to ask about charges in advance when possible, and to study insurance policies yearly to make sure they know about their changing obligations. They add that medical charges rejected by an insurer can be appealed.
 
$2,000 a Year
 A report released last year by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and the Commonwealth Fund found that Americans had an average of $909 in medical bills not covered by insurance, and that the average adult contributed $86 a month toward health insurance premiums, for a total annual expenditure of almost $2,000 on health care. Six percent of the adult population paid more than $3,600 yearly for health insurance, and 11 percent spent more than $2,000 for health care, aside from premiums.
That does not include people who face bills for nursing home or home care. Thirty percent of people with such bills have out-of-pocket expenses exceeding $3,000 a year, the survey found. Only one in five Americans contribute nothing toward health insurance.
"One of the key drivers of Americans' attitudes toward health care services and the system in general is out-of-pocket expenses," the report concluded. "The level of dissatisfaction with services and with the system increases as out-of-pocket costs increase."
In some cases, patients have chosen to gamble on the risk of out-of-pocket medical expenses to keep rising insurance premiums manageable. For her own policy, Mrs. Silvestri, a healthy 62-year-old who pays for her own insurance, chose a Blue Cross / Blue Shield policy with a $1,000 deductible and high out-of-pocket limits to hold down her premiums -- and hoped that she wouldn't get sick. Nonetheless, she paid nearly $3,000 for her 1993 coverage.
The gamble paid off until she got walking pneumonia last October and ended up paying well over $1,000 for doctors' payments and medicine. With her insurance premium, the doctors' fees and antibiotics, she spent over $5,700 on medical care last year.
"All of a sudden I'm getting big bills -- and paying cash," Mrs. Silvestri said. "And that was just for an outpatient pneumonia."
 
An Unhappy Surprise
 To others, the bills in the mail have come as more of a surprise. Mrs. Silverman had worked for the same Manhattan advertising firm for 14 years, where -- until recently -- the free health insurance that came with her job reliably covered medical expenses large and small. But over the past five years, her contributions to her premium have risen to $72 from each biweekly paycheck, and her out-of-pocket expenses have mounted as well.
After minor outpatient gynecological surgery in 1992, she submitted hospital bills totaling $2,203 to her insurer, which paid 80 percent of the charge, or $1,763. Since by that year her insurance required a 20 percent co-payment, she was asked to pay the remaining $440 of the bill. She initially withheld payment because of an error in the hospital bill, which the insurer had paid without review, but she eventually sent in a check after threats from a collection agency.
For families facing major illness, insurance policy limits or even the requirement of a 20 percent co-payment can prove financially ruinous. Tina and Joel Venutti of California have had two children die in intensive-care units in the last five years -- the last more than two years ago. Despite their insurance they are still paying off thousands of dollars in medical bills.
"Many policies have a number of exclusions: in total dollar limits; restricted coverage for pre-existing conditions; co-payments, which are the patient's responsibility, and deductibles," Dr. Blendon said. "When patients run up large bills, insurance gets to the point where it stops paying some of them. Policies have various limits, and unless you have a major illness you may not discover them."
Although Medicare is supposed to insulate these groups from the vagaries of the insurance marketplace, they too have seen out-of-pocket costs soar. Medicare does not cover a wide variety of what insurers refer to a "secondary medical expenses," including medicines, home nursing care and home medical equipment like wheelchairs.
And as more medical treatments move to the outpatient setting, outlays for such items have become increasingly common. Just five years ago most chemotherapy was administered to patients who stayed in the hospital for a few days after treatment to recover from the profound fatigue and nausea they suffered as side effects. Today these drugs are often given in a doctor's office or clinic, and patients bear the expense of dealing with the aftershock at home. A weakened patient who lives alone might have to pay for ambulance transportation and home nursing assistance.
In addition, while Medicare carefully regulates what doctors may charge and limits inpatient hospital bills, the movement of many minor but costly surgical procedures to "day surgery" departments has effectively decimated the protection of these regulations. Medicare does not yet regulate hospital outpatient charges, and the requirement that patients contribute 20 percent of all outpatient bills still stands.
Last year, Jeremiah Harris of Folsom, Pa., had five outpatient endoscopic examinations of his esophagus at Ridley Park Hospital in Philadelphia. The hospital fees, not including the doctor bills, totaled $5,709, which meant that his 20 percent co-payment was $1,141.80.
"The Government by its policy has allowed hospital to charge Medicare patients any amount they choose," he said.
The rise in patient expenses has led many to turn to health maintenance organizations or other forms of managed care, which in many cases provide a broad range of services for a yearly fee. But even many managed-care plans come with their share of co-payments and other patients costs.
As of Jan. 1, 1994, Ms. Silverman switched her health insurance to the Travelers Managed Care Plan, hoping that would insulate her from rising medical bills. But she has already spent more than $500 to treat bone spurs in her shoulder. She is scheduled for inpatient surgery on the shoulder this month, and she is holding her breath to see what bills she will accrue there.

LOAD-DATE: May 12, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Graph: "HEALTH: What Insurance Does Not Cover" shows the per-capita out-of-pocket health care spending in the U.S. from '75-'90. (Sources: Health Care Financing Administration; Datastream) (pg. B6)

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171 of 457 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times

May 12, 1994, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

Books of The Times;
A Brother and Sister Excavate Their Past

BYLINE: By CHRISTOPHER LEHMANN-HAUPT 

SECTION: Section C;  Page 20;  Column 1;  Cultural Desk 

LENGTH: 937 words


School for the Blind
 By Dennis McFarland
 287 pages. Houghton Mifflin. $21.95.
Vivid memories of the past are said to be a recompense of old age, but what happens to Francis and Muriel Brimm in Dennis McFarland's accomplished new novel, "School for the Blind," may be too much of a good thing. At the age of 73, Francis has retired to the Florida town of his youth, where his spinster elder sister, Muriel, has spent her entire life. 
 As the novel's opening paragraph recounts: "He had been a news photographer -- a witness, a messenger amid the world's fire and ashes -- and he figured he had earned not only the right to let the world go, but also the poise to let it go with authority. He would read, write, sleep, visit the beach, fish, garden a bit, whatever he pleased -- the pastimes, he imagined, of solitary old people of some accomplishment."
But instead of puttering, Francis finds himself shamefully trying to catch glimpses of the beautiful young woman who lives next door. Too early in the morning, he wakes to see on the ceiling the face of the shorn French girl he long ago photographed being marched through the street for having a baby by a German soldier. And in his mind there echoes the indecipherable words that the crowds had chanted at her.
The effect of Francis's return on Muriel, who still lives in the house where they spent their childhoods, is similarly disturbing. "She had never been the least bit taken with the past," but lately the upstairs rooms have begun to seem haunted, and "on three or four occasions in the last few weeks, she'd found herself standing at the base of the old stairs, one hand resting on the pineapple-adorned newel post, gazing upward like some woebegone character in a Tennessee Williams play."
What is happening to Francis and Muriel is symbolized dramatically when the two of them take an evening stroll on a golf course near Francis's house and come upon a dog digging up human bones from a sand trap.  The bones turn out to belong to one of two young girls who had been murdered, cut up and stripped of their flesh. They were students at a local school for the blind, where Muriel worked as the librarian until she retired. Yet the novel's title really refers to the experiences that Francis and Muriel are about to undergo in digging up their buried pasts.
These experiences are narrated in chapters that alternate between Francis's and Muriel's points of view, and that overlap in time so that the novel keeps catching up with itself and creating its own immediate past.  Like the murder of the two girls, what the old folks gradually unearth is grim.
Muriel explores their father's suicide and her own long-repressed connection with it. Francis finally recalls what the French were chanting at the collaboratrice: " 'Ange de la mort,' the voices had said. . . . Of course, angel of death, not really a surprise at all." He shortly discovers that he has a terminal blood disease.
Yet for all the morbidness of these details, the prevailing mood of "School for the Blind" is one of gently comic wackiness. Muriel is finally drawn away from her crippling obsession with the past by her spirited cleaning woman, Deirdre, who has got herself pregnant by a fellow member of her Alcoholics Anonymous group. When Deirdre reminded him who she was and told him she was pregnant, "I thought he said, 'No regrets,' which kind of surprised me." She explains: "But when I asked him to please repeat what he'd said, it turned out to be 'No rug rats.' . . . You know, babies crawling around on the floor. Rug rats."
Meanwhile, as Francis lies dying with Deirdre reading aloud to him from detective mysteries, he dreams of an afterlife that resembles "a huge, sprawling, seaside bathhouse," in which "men of all sizes, shapes, ages and races wander tiled halls naked and in varying states ranging from bewildered to bitter to resigned."
Even the murder incident has an element of humor. The killer writes an anonymous letter to the local paper explaining his motives. He concludes: "This letter is not a work of art but there is no profanity and it is grammatically correct. I believe I have spelled everything correctly.  When I don't know how to spell a word I look it up in the dictionary. I have read 'The Elements of Style,' a book on how to write in which it says to 'avoid fancy words' and that 'it is seldom advisable to tell all.' "
If the novel has flaws, they are a sometimes heavy-handed symbolism and gratuitous literary references to the likes of Chekhov, Conrad, Yeats, Joyce and Eliot. As Mr. McFarland demonstrated with his talented first novel, "The Music Room," which was also an exploration of a family's past, his own prose serves him more than adequately.
In "School for the Blind," the language soars with equal suppleness but takes a welcome turn for the droll. Muriel, who eventually survives her spiritual crisis, comes away from it thinking of God "as often sleeping, as someone who would sleep through anything, through practically any human peril, and as someone who has to be waked up." So "in the end she has felt guided, helped, but she has to pray really loud, figuratively speaking."
Her faith is intact and she feels proud that it is; "the pride, she imagined, had to do simply with her having survived this long, as if life were a tedious, meandering spectacle -- the halftime show in a stadium at a ball game, unsure of itself, amateurish, and she one of the few who had remained faithful enough in the bleachers to see it through to the last number, where, surprisingly, it redeemed itself."

LOAD-DATE: May 12, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo of Dennis McFarland. (Tellis A. Lawson Jr./Houghton Mifflin)

TYPE: Review

Copyright 1994 The New York Times Company



172 of 457 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times

May 13, 1994, Friday, Late Edition - Final

Where There's No Car, There's a Bus;
Navigating and Surviving the Suburbs: Taking the No. 60 in Westchester

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

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

LENGTH: 1250 words

DATELINE: WHITE PLAINS, May 12

On weekday mornings, buses like the No. 60 weave through the fraying urban neighborhoods of Mount Vernon, New Rochelle and Yonkers and fill up early with women who are heading out to clean the homes and care for the babies and tend the frail in the more prosperous villages farther north in Westchester County.
The passengers sit in cocoons of silence, gazing dreamily at the scene reeling film-like out the tinted windows, their bodies swaying gently as the bus rounds a curve or halts a little too suddenly. Some leaf through The Daily News or listen to radios or chat with other regulars. A few take naps, knowing their journey will be a long one. 
 Although suburban life was built around the car, about 55,000 people in Westchester prove every day that you can survive in the suburbs without one. They take the bus to and from work, to and from school, to and from the mall, enduring bus stops in January's blasts of snow or August's furnace-room heat.
 
Workers and the Elderly
 They are most definitely not a cross-section of Westchester. They are poorer, older and more likely to be immigrants, women and black or Hispanic, a survey done in 1990 for Westchester's Transportation Department found. Many do the jobs most of those who can afford to own cars would prefer not to do.
They are people like Lula Blue and Donna Carr. Ms. Blue, a health aide for an elderly woman in Elmsford, spends an hour and a half on two buses to get to her job from her home in New Rochelle. Ms. Carr, who immigrated from Jamaica six months ago, takes a bus from Boston Post Road and 216th Street in the Bronx to her job as a cafeteria worker at the Mamaroneck Avenue School in White Plains, an hour and half trip each way.
The long journeys are part of their daily rhythm, as inevitable as a rising and setting sun, and they do not complain.
"I read sometimes," Ms. Carr said. "Mostly I sit and think."
John and Margaret Kenyon are not working people, but they too are bus regulars. They gave up their car 14 years ago when they turned 70.
"We were getting too old and the insurance was too high," Mr. Kenyon, a retired postal worker, said.
But everyday brings a new adventure on the bus. On one recent morning, the Kenyons, he sporty in a newsboy cap, she more prim in a linen sunhat, headed from their home in New Rochelle to buy a few items at a new Bradlee's department store in Yonkers.
"We'd never seen it before," Mrs. Kenyon said.
 
Making a Day of It
 By car, Bradlee's is a 15-minute excursion to the west. But by bus, they had to travel far to the north to go south and west eventually. Such circuitousness is one of the wrinkles of bus service in Westchester, which is designed to run between towns rather than to blanket whole neighborhoods the way buses often do in New York City. You can get to White Plains, the county seat, from almost anywhere, and getting around Westchester's cities -- where there are large numbers of people who do not drive -- is not that difficult. But it is hard to plan a trip from say, Port Chester to Scarsdale.
The Kenyons took the No. 60 to the White Plains TransCenter, which has the dim, forbidding ambiance of a parking garage, and waited there for the bus that runs down Central Avenue, Westchester's main shopping strip. At Bradlee's, Mrs. Kenyon bought another white sunhat. Mr. Kenyon bought a pair of grass shears. Carrying their trove in white plastic bags, they headed home. The trip took two hours each way, but they had made a day out of it.
"It's very convenient," Mr. Kenyon said of the bus service. "They're right on time. They're clean. Most of the bus drivers are courteous."
Westchester has 328 buses that navigate 58 routes covering 846 miles, including one express route that runs from White Plains to Wall Street and several that just ferry people to village railroad stations. Eight years ago, the system was christened the Bee Line to give it a name that riders might identify with. Yet, most passengers still refer to it simply as "the Bus." Whatever its name, the system is actually seven separate bus companies that have contracts with the county's Transportation Department.
The buses carry 28.4 million passengers a year. With a basic fare of $1.15 a ride, the system took in $30 million last year, less than half of its operating expenses. Like almost every other public transportation system in the country, the Bee Line is heavily subsidized by local, state and Federal governments.
 
Hewing to Schedules
 The trick to mastering the bus system is knowing the schedule. Unlike New York City's system, where bus riders head for a bus stop and keep their fingers crossed that a bus will come soon, Westchester buses hew to a tight schedule. During most of the day, the No. 60, for example, comes every half-hour. Veteran riders memorize the times that buses show up, and most say the buses are generally on time.
The schedule is the bane of Melissa Sullivan's social life, however. Miss Sullivan, a 20-year-old sophomore at Westchester Community College, knows that when she visits a friend in say Bronxville, she must cut the visit short to catch the last bus leaving for her home in Larchmont. Even in the daytime when she catches a bus to college, she said, some drivers will come several minutes too early, and if she is not at the bus stop early, she will have to wait a half-hour for the next bus, a wait made more dismal by bad weather.
"And there's no booth at my bus stop," she said.
She and her mother, a secretary, used to own a car, but "it died," she said, and they will have to rely on the buses until they save up enough for a car.
"I used to hate taking the bus, but it's now part of everyday life," she said.
Similarly, the only thing Mr. Kenyon laments about surrendering his car is that he can no longer attend the weekend concerts at the State University at Purchase. He can get to the concerts, but there are no buses late enough to take him back to New Rochelle.
 
Time to Socialize
 Annie Lynch, a 30-year-old teacher's aide, genuinely looks forward to her rides on the bus, even though each way is an hourlong odyssey. She works at the Westchester School for Special Children in Yonkers, which would be a 15-minute ride from her home in Mamaroneck if she had a car. But she does not mind the long ride because she regularly encounters a hospital attendant who has become her friend.
"I just like to take the bus," she said. "I like to socialize with people."
One of the more farflung travelers is Susan Jankowski, who works as a "floating" cafeteria worker for a food service compnay. On any day, she not only does not know whether she will be working as a cashier or a waitress or kitchen worker, but she also does not know at which company she will be working. Yet, lacking a car, she has to get to wherever work is by a series of buses or a bus connection to a commuter railroad. She has worked as far away as Stamford.
Of course, not everyone on the bus is working-class, old or a student. Eriko Sato, a stylishly dressed woman in her 30's, was at the White Plains TransCenter the other day, looking suitably lost for someone who had never been there before.
She lives in Manhattan, but was here to catch a bus to Neiman Marcus a few blocks away from the TransCenter. There is no Neiman Marcus in New York City and she had her eye on a particular shoulder bag that the store carried. Luckily, she also had a whole day to spend getting to the store and back.

LOAD-DATE: May 13, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photos: Passengers settled into their seats recently on the Bee Line No. 60 bus, where some nap, read papers or ruminate during the 90-minute trip from the Bronx to White Plains in Westchester County. (pg. B1); Juan Castro sharing the rear seats of the No. 60 bus with Janae Crudup, left, her sister, Shadreya, second from left, and Ashley Janowski, right. For families without a car in the suburbs, the bus is their only transportation. (pg. B2) (Susan Harris for The New York Times)

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METRO DIGEST

SECTION: Section 1; Page 23; Column 1; Metropolitan Desk; Second Front

LENGTH: 536 words


NEW YORK CITY
 
TO OBEY LAW, HOMELESS MOVED AT 8
The courts say New York City may not keep homeless families in emergency assistance offices overnight, sleeping on chairs and tables. But "overnight" has been defined as whether anyone is left in the office at 8 A.M. So just before 7 A.M., those who had spent the night at a city office in the Bronx were roused and moved, mostly to shelters. Page 1. 

7 SUSPENDED OFFICERS ARE BACK AT WORK
Seven of 14 police officers suspended after being arrested on corruption charges last month have returned to work while awaiting trial, earning full pay for what police officials call "modified assignment." Page 24.
 
CLEANING SERVICES GET MIXED GRADES
The Mayor's office has proposed privatizing school custodial services. But the record of three decades of experimentation with such contracting in some schools is mixed. Page 25.
 
AN 'UNFORGETTABLE' OMISSION IS CHARGED
Natalie Cole's studio-engineered duet with her father, Nat (King) Cole, may truly be "Unforgettable." But her record company has amnesia when it comes to giving credit, according to a lawsuit filed in Manhattan. Page 25.
 
E.M.S. WORKER HAD WEAPONS CACHE
A 39-year-old paramedic, described as a loner by the police, had quietly stockpiled guns and crude explosives in his Bronx apartment until an informer led the authorities to arrest him, the police said. Page 25.
 
NONPROFIT GROUPS LOSE JOB FROM CITY
The Giuliani administration has given a national for-profit company a contract to provide city services to elderly people, saying it can do the job cheaper than the four nonprofit groups that have been offering the services. Page 26.
 
REGION
 
DISMISSAL OF CHARGES SOUGHT
Lawyers for the owners of an armored car company who have been accused of stealing up to $38 million said that they want the charges dismissed because the Government allowed disposal of documents vital to their case. Page 26.
 
PLEA DEAL IN KIDNAP CASE IS IN DOUBT
Efforts to reach a plea bargain that would have spared Katie Beers, the 11-year-old Long Island girl who was kidnapped for 16 days, from having to testify in a sex-abuse case have collapsed, a lawyer involved in the case said. Page 26.
 
3 IN SENATE RACE BANK ON PRIMARY UPSET
The June 7 primary election in New Jersey is just a blip on the screen for the two major candidates for United States Senator, but for three lesser-known and less affluent candidates it's the big show. Page 27.
 
WATERSHED POLICE LOOK FOR TROUBLE
On the pond was a white sudsy substance. Ronald A. Gatto didn't like the looks of it, especially considering where it was going: from the pond into the Kensico Reservoir, and from there to the taps of nearly nine million people. Page 27.
 
SLAUGHTER OF A SWAN SHAKES A VILLAGE
In the 16 years that Angelo Albanese has been mayor of Manlius, N.Y., nothing, he says, has shaken the community like the slaying of a mute swan that lived in a village park. Page 27.
 
STATE BATTLE OVER GUNS TO CONTINUE
Governor Cuomo and leaders of the Assembly say they will press for state legislation that would outlaw assault weapons. Page 26.
 
About New York by Michael T. Kaufman 25

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May 14, 1994, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

Aging Dept. Privatizes 4 Contracts For Services

BYLINE: By JONATHAN P. HICKS 

SECTION: Section 1;  Page 26;  Column 1;  Metropolitan Desk 

LENGTH: 673 words

The Giuliani administration has given a national for-profit company four contracts to provide city services to elderly people, saying the company can do the work cheaper than the four nonprofit groups that have been offering those services.
The decision has prompted protests from some elderly residents and City Council members, who say the four neighborhood-based organizations will now be forced to lay off dozens of employees and scale back the other services they provide. 
 The $1 million contract was awarded to Personal-Touch, a for-profit company with 23 offices across the country, by the Department of Aging. While the decision affects just four local organizations and involves a relatively small amount of money in the city's $31 billion budget, the controversy illustrates the difficult choices -- and consequences -- of trying to balance the city's budget and scale back government spending by opening up the competition for providing services..
 
Campaign Cornerstone
 The Giuliani administration, facing a projected $2.3 billion deficit in the budget for the next fiscal year, says it has been looking for ways to shave costs in every quarter of municipal spending. Moreover, the concept of widening the competition for functions performed on behalf of government was a cornerstone of Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani's mayoral campaign last year.
Herbert W. Stupp, the Commissioner of the Department of Aging, said that the decision to award the contract to a corporation operating for profit resulted from an analysis that the company could provide the same services for 12.5 percent less than the four neighborhood nonprofit groups.
But several City Council members and officials of the organizations that are now losing those contracts say the decision will hurt not only their agencies, but also the level of service received by their elderly clients.
The four contracts cover a number of home care services currently provided by four centers for the elderly in Brooklyn and Queens to enable elderly people to remain independent -- from helping with shopping to assisting with chores. The nonprofit groups will continue to provide other services, including operating the centers for the elderly and providing meals there.
Mr. Stupp said that the department had no ideological preference for for-profit companies and that of eight contracts that had been awarded recently, four went to nonprofit organizations. But he said Personal-Touch was selected for its contracts because it could provide equal service at a savings of 12.5 percent.
Cheryl Heiberg, executive director of the Bay Ridge Center for Older Adults, said her agency will lose a $270,000 contract to provide home care services for the elderly. "We have had contracts with the city for 15 years," she said. "This action takes the services out of the community so that seniors can't come to our center and address all their needs."
Ms. Heiberg added that the loss of the contract will mean that her organization will have to lay off 15 of its 42 employees. "And these are older women who are not all that well off and probably won't get rehired because of their ages," she said.
Councilman Sal Albanese of Brooklyn said, "It is outrageous that community-based senior providers with excellent records of service to their communities have been perfunctorily terminated."
Mr. Albanese and several officials of the nonprofit health care organizations said the savings were not worth the inconvenience for elderly people and the pain that would be created for the groups' employees.
David N. Slifkin, chief financial officer of the Personal-Touch Home Care Corporation, said that as a larger company with 12,000 employees and 23 offices in 12 states, Personal-Touch had been able to achieve economies of scale and lower overhead costs.
The company, which has its headquarters in Jamaica, Queens, already has several contracts with New York City, most of them with the Human Resources Administration. The new contracts become effective on July 1.

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ABOUT NEW YORK;
Ex-'Ward Heeler,' 95, Is a Healer

BYLINE: By Michael T. Kaufman 

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

LENGTH: 808 words

ELSYE ROTHSCHILD, who is a year older than the 20th century, likes to sit on the stoop of the apartment house on Fort Washington Avenue in upper Manhattan, the one she moved into when she married in 1926, and tell her neighbors what they should do.
"Well, these days I only talk to people who still ask me for my advice," said Mrs. Rothschild, a widow with eyes both twinkly and sharp. For several decades she was the Democratic Party's captain on the block, getting out the vote on Election Day and serving as a fixer and expediter much of the rest of the time. 
 In that time if someone wanted to open a bar, she would tell him which lawyer could make the phone call that would speed up the processing of his application for a liquor license. Or when neighbors born abroad applied for naturalization, she would shepherd them through the process, from filing first papers to standing with them when they went before the judge to offer their oaths of citizenship. She knew her way around housing regulations and housing court, and she would accompany newly widowed women to the Social Security offices or tell mothers which schools had the best teachers.
THESE days precinct captains have vanished from many streets. There are other conduits for patronage and pressure now, and Mrs. Rothschild has no official capacity, and the helpful and effective people whose numbers she knew to call are certainly retired and probably dead. The Washington Heights neighborhood, largely Jewish through much of her life, is now largely Hispanic. But still Mrs. Rothschild goes on functioning as what one of her two sons, Charles Rothschild, describes as a "freelance ward heeler."
"I keep the applications for food stamps and rent stabilization," said Mrs. Rothschild, who will turn 95 next Tuesday, as she sat at her table beneath the Raoul Dufy prints and the Ben Shahn poster where she eats the Stouffer's frozen dinners that she heats and prepares and where she advises those neighbors who still value her fixing and expediting skills.
"If they come by now, it's usually for help with health matters or to get food stamps." Mrs. Rothschild said.  She helped one woman, an adopted child, to search for her natural mother by looking through pictures in high school yearbooks. She advises others on which plans pay best for prescription drugs.
"There's one woman who has been in the hospital a lot," she says, "who I am trying to convince that the best thing she can do is to give the few thousand dollars she has to her children in order to qualify for Medicaid." Mrs. Rothschild says she has gone over this ground before and she knows that for old people even tiny nest eggs symbolize the idea of autonomy.
She knows how much being on your own means. For her it is the most important thing. She lives alone, she says, because she likes it. Her sons call regularly and visit and they are giving her a party this Sunday. They are good boys, she says: Charles, who is a manager for performers like Judy Collins, the singer; and Edmund, a physician, who is a senior administrator at St. Luke's Hospital. "But you want to do what you can on your own; that's what keeps you going," said the woman, who only last year quit her job as bookkeeper of the Mount Neboh Cemetery in Brooklyn.
HER father, an upholsterer, had made sure that each of his six daughters learned some skill, something she could do with her hands. A few learned tailoring and upholstery, and she was taught to type. That came in handy when she served in the Navy as a yeoman first class in World War I. She reared her sons and worked as the neighborhood fixer. When her husband died 16 years ago she took over his job at the cemetery.
"It was good; I could talk to people," she recalled. First she traveled by subway, but then her employers paid for her to commute by car service. Her son Charles is fairly sure she kept using the train on the way back and pocketed the rest of the carfare. "She would pin her money to her bra and carry paper bags so no one would bother her," he said.
So how does she spend her time now?
"I have no trouble keeping busy," she said, pointing to one of the index cards on her table. "Here's one thing I do: anagrams. I take a long word like apostrophe and see how many words I can make from its letters. I get 300 or 400. I watch television at night, usually David Letterman, so I get up late. I was never much for cards or being around only old people. If there's somebody to help, I help them. I call my sister, the only one left. She's 92 and plays golf.
"Sometimes the people from the hospital come to test me on my memory. They want to know what I eat. I eat everything. I go downstairs and sit on the stoop and watch the world go by and talk to people. I wish I could get around better but really I've got nothing to complain about."

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IDEAS & TRENDS;
Right, Then: Your Policy Covers Fido For Therapy

BYLINE: By WILLIAM E. SCHMIDT 

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

LENGTH: 765 words

DATELINE: LONDON

FOR hundreds of thousands of Britons, it is a sterling example of affordable, privately financed health care coverage that works. With modest annual premiums of less than $150, there is a full menu of coverage for surgical and medical procedures, from hip replacements to acupuncture; reimbursement for the costs of medical tests and physiotherapy, and even a lump sum payment of cash to replace the insured, once he or she, as they say, passes on.
But unlike Britain's National Health Service, which relies on taxpayer revenues to provide health care for every man, woman and child, this insurance plan is for the dogs. Not to mention cats, horses, budgerigars and the odd boa constrictor, parrot and gerbil. 
 Begun 20 years ago as a novelty, pet insurance is now a $150 million industry in Britain, with as many as seven companies competing to offer combination health, accident and mortality plans. Estimates vary, but more than a million pets and other animals may now be covered among Britain's population of 7.5 million dogs and 7 million cats.
For anyone who has ever seen a puppy wheeled through a London park in a buggy, or watched waiters fuss over dogs in restaurants where small children are not welcome, it is not surprising that pet insurance has become one of the fastest-growing health care niches in Britain. Pets are big business, fueling a $4.5 billion annual market in pet food, leashes, feeding bowls, shampoos and collars.
Indeed, with revenues from premiums expected to reach a record $50 million this year, Pet Plan, the largest of Britain's pet insurers, has even set up its own charitable trust to finance research into pet welfare. Among its first donations will be a $15,000 grant to fund a study on the problems of older cats.
Dr. Bruce Fogle, a veterinarian who runs one of London's more prosperous practices, estimates that half the dogs and cats he sees on a regular basis are now covered by insurance. "I pay one assistant the equivalent of a full day's pay just to fill out the claims paperwork," said Dr. Fogle, echoing a complaint heard in people-doctor offices across the United States But, he says, the insurance is a real boon, especially for older people on fixed incomes whose aging pets might fall ill, leaving them to deal with veterinary bills that can easily run more than $1,500.
Just recently, Dr. Fogle treated a dog that had lost its vision as a result of a tumor on the lining of its brain. By the time the regimen of magnetic imaging and radiation therapy was complete, the bills totaled more than $1,800. The owner's insurance sent a check for nearly the whole bill, along with a computer-generated note expressing the company's best wishes for the dog's speedy recovery.
In general, most pet policies pick up anywhere from $800 to $2,000 in annual veterinary bills. They also help pay for kennel costs, if the owner becomes ill and has to go to the hospital; third-party liability, if the pet bites or injures someone else, and the cost of newspaper advertisements, to recover a lost animal.  Most policies also have an accidental-death clause, providing a modest benefit that helps cover the cost of replacing the pet.
Britain is not the only country with a private insurance sector serving pets. In Sweden, for example, a country where social welfare for humans is high art, an estimated 85 percent of the dog population also carries health and life coverage.
But in the United States, if insurance coverage is any measure, pets are facing a health care crisis. Only a handful of America's estimated population of more than 110 million dogs and cats have health insurance. The untapped market for pet insurance is vast, but until now, Americans generally have chosen to have their animals put to sleep rather than incur hefty bills. On April 1, in fact, an American company that had mounted a national effort to sell pet insurance went out of business.
In some ways, say those who have studied the issue, pet health care runs into the same sorts of problems the Clinton Administration is grappling with as it tries to cobble together a national health care plan for Americans: existing insurance schemes drive up costs, as providers order more sophisticated tests and procedures on the assumption that the insurers, not the consumers, will pay the bills.
"I think the British have a very pragmatic attitude toward their pets," said Dr. Fogle. "People love animals here, but I would only point out that it is not the English who take their cats to psychiatrists or buy pink satin baby doll pajamas for their boxers."

LOAD-DATE: May 15, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Queen Elizabeth with her pet Corgies. (Associated Press (1971))

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PUBLIC INTEREST;
Community Board Dates: In the Bronx

SECTION: Section 14;  Page 11;  Column 1;  The City Weekly Desk 

LENGTH: 439 words


DISTRICT 1: Port Morris, Melrose, Mott Haven; last Thursday of the month; next June 30, 6:30 P.M., Lincoln Hospital, 234 East 149th Street; (718) 585-7117.
 
DISTRICT 2: Hunts Point, Longwood; last Wednesday of the month; next May 25, 6 P.M., Feldco Building, 1029 East 163d Street (corner of Southern Boulevard); (718) 328-9125.
 

DISTRICT 3: Morrisania; second Tuesday of the month; next June 14, 6:30 P.M., Junior High School 98, 1619 Boston Road; (718) 589-6300.
 
DISTRICT 4: East and West Concourse, Mount Eden, Highbridge, Concourse Village; fourth Tuesday of the month; next May 24, 6 P.M., 1650 Selwyn Avenue, Community Room; (718) 299-0800.
 
DISTRICT 5: Mount Hope, Morris Heights, Fordham University Heights; fourth Wednesday of the month; next May 25, 6 P.M., East Concourse Hebrew Center, 236 East Tremont Avenue; (718) 364-2030.
 
DISTRICT 6: Bathgate, Belmont, Bronx Park South, Crotona Park North, East Tremont and West Farms; first Wednesday of the month; next June 1, 6:30 P.M., St. Barnabas Hospital, East 183d Street and Third Avenue, auditorium; (718) 579-6990.
 
DISTRICT 7: University Heights, Norwood, Fordham, Bedford and Bedford Park; third Tuesday of month; next May 25, 7 P.M., St. Brendan's School gymnasium, 268 East 207th Street; (718) 933-5650.
 
DISTRICT 8: Kingsbridge, Marble Hill, North Riverdale, Spuyten Duyvil, Fieldston; second Tuesday of the month; next June 14, 7:30 P.M., Conservative Synagogue, West 250th Street and Henry Hudson Parkway; (718) 884-3959.
 
DISTRICT 9: Bronx River, Castle Hill, Clason Point, Harding Park, Parkchester, Bruckner, Soundview and Unionport; last Thursday of the month; next May 26, 7 P.M., Blessed Sacrament Church, Chapel Hall, 1170 Beach Avenue, between Gleason and Watson Avenues; (718) 823-3034.
 
DISTRICT 10: City Island, Throgs Neck, Pelham Bay, Country Club, Co-op City; third Thursday of month; next May 19, 7:30 P.M., Throgs Neck J.A.S.A. (Jewish Association Services for the Aged) Senior Citizen Center, 2705 Schley Avenue, between Randall and Balcom Avenues; (718) 892-1161.
 
DISTRICT 11: Allerton, Eastchester, Pelham Parkway, Morris Park; third Thursday of the month; next May 19, 7:30 P.M., Knights of Columbus, Mary Queen of Peace Hall, 1919 Williamsbridge Road, between Rhinelander and Neill Avenues; (718) 892-6262.
 
DISTRICT 12: Wakefield, Woodlawn, Williamsburg, Baychester, Eastchester; fourth Thursday of the month; next May 26, 8 P.M., 4101 White Plains Road; (718) 881-4455.
 The schedules for community board meetings in other boroughs will appear in subsequent issues of The City.

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May 16, 1994, Monday, Late Edition - Final

Gaps in Geriatric Medicine Alarm Health Professionals

BYLINE: By ESTHER B. FEIN 

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

LENGTH: 1511 words

At a time when the population of the United States is growing older, the need for doctors properly trained in the problems and the process of aging is urgent. And so it might seem that Sean Morrison had entered a competitive field when he decided a few years ago, in the middle of his medical training, to specialize in geriatric medicine.
Through a fellowship program that links the Mount Sinai Medical Center with the Jewish Home and Hospital for the Aged in Manhattan, Dr. Morrison has spent the past year treating elderly patients in the nursing home, in their doctors' offices and in the apartments they are desperately trying to remain in despite the encroaching years and infirmities. 
 Dr. Morrison, it turns out, is an anomaly. While the number of older Americans is rising quickly -- particularly those over 85 and in the frailest health -- experts say the number of doctors trained to meet their needs is in critically short supply and that this shortage is seriously endangering the health and quality of the lives of the elderly.
A reluctance by doctors to confront aging and death, poor reimbursement for medical services and a dearth of qualified academic leaders and role models all conspire to make geriatrics an unpopular field at a time of growing necessity.
"Older people in this country, particularly those 75 and older, unless they have an unusual primary-care physician, are at great risk for poor health care and an earlier death," said Dr. Robert N. Butler, head of the geriatrics department at Mount Sinai. "If we don't start doing something about it, these gaps in care will become a national disaster."
About 4,000 doctors in the United States are trained in geriatrics, according to a report by the Alliance for Aging Research. In 1980, a study from the University of California at Los Angeles estimated that, considering the growth of the elderly population, the country would need 13,000 doctors trained in geriatrics to teach, do research and treat older patients by 1990.
Not only are there not enough physicians, like Dr. Morrison, who intend to focus their work on the elderly, experts say, but also doctors in other specialty and general practices are not being educated adequately in the common problems of aging that they will see increasingly among their patients.
Undergraduate medical students, in general, have little, if any, systematic training in geriatrics. Of the 126 medical schools in the country, only 13 require course work in geriatrics and only 2 offer it as an elective, according to the 1993-94 Association of American Medical Colleges' Curriculum Directory.
While most medical schools sprinkle information about geriatrics in different courses, experts say this academic approach is inconsistent with demographic realities. About 32.3 million Americans are over the age of 65. That number is expected to more than double to about 70.2 million people over the next 40 years, according to the United States Census Bureau. The population of people 85 and older will almost triple, to nearly 9 million.
But while people over 65 now make up about 13 percent of the population, studies show they use 30 percent of the nation's health-care resources, accounting for 44 percent of all days spent in the hospital and 40 percent of all visits to internists.
"There is a tremendous mismatch between the curriculum for training physicians and who is out there," said Dr. Leslie S. Libow, medical director of the Jewish Home and Hospital for the Aged. Dr. Libow leads weekly rounds for medical school students and geriatric fellows from Mount Sinai in one of the most comprehensive training programs in the country. "It's like nobody's looking."
The Alliance for Aging report noted that while not all people 65 and older need to see a geriatrics specialist regularly, the numbers showed "a gap in health care services of crisis proportion."
Susan Rosenberg, a retired accountant from Briarwood, Queens, said she had fallen into this chasm repeatedly in her visits to doctors. Either because they were improperly trained or impatient, she said, doctors have largely dismissed her complaints about worsening arthritis or other ailments as the inevitable and largely untreatable result of a progression of years.
 
'Respect and Competence'
 "They try to slough me off with a panacea, a pill," she said at a recent gathering of several older people at the Jewish Association for Services for the Aged in Manhattan, bemoaning the prevailing state of medical care for the elderly. " 'You have arthritis?' they say. 'Join the club.' I don't expect every ache and pain to be treated as a matter of life and death, but I want to be handled with respect and competence."
The only way for older people to guarantee themselves appropriate attention and care is to become professional medical consumers, said Charlotte Sinovoi, an 81-year-old retired secretary from Chelsea. She said older patients should check out which doctors had advanced training in geriatrics or were known to be responsive to older patients and what new treatments were available for common problems of aging like incontinence, arthritis and depression. And, she said, they should insist to the point of bullying that doctors address their needs.
"To know how to use the system is very important," she said. "It takes a lot out of you, but you have to do the research. The only reason I get good service and good care is because I demand it, not because the doctors or the system is prepared for dealing with people our age."
Many doctors admit the inadequacy of their training in geriatrics. Fewer than half of young physicians feel they were well prepared in their medical training to manage the care and needs of the frail elderly, according to a survey reported last September in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Unlike younger people, who usually go to doctors to be treated for a specific injury or disease, older people usually have an array of ailments and are taking several medications. Often, the medical problems are complicated by social or psychological problems -- the death of a spouse, the loss of a job, the inability to climb the stairs in the building they have lived in for decades.
Doctors trained to do comprehensive geriatric assessments learn, for example, to distinguish depression from dementia or the delirium of malnutrition from senility.
"An internist with no geriatric training might not be able to make a diagnosis and is more likely to send an elderly patient to different specialists," said Deborah Friedlander, assistant professor of geriatric medicine at New York Hospital-Cornell University Medical College.
Such fragmented care, she added, is a particular burden to elderly people who have difficulty getting around and could be avoided if more primary care doctors were sufficiently versed in the basics of geriatrics.
 
Too Few Doctors
 But there are too few doctors in the nation qualified to train the number of geriatric specialists the population needs and to teach geriatrics in all medical school disciplines.
"The current training capacity is not even sufficient to maintain the current level of faculty over the next 10 years," said Dr. David B. Reuben, chief of geriatrics division at the U.C.L.A. School of Medicine.
Many doctors do not want to specialize in geriatric medicine because it is a time-consuming practice that is poorly reimbursed by Medicare. "Medicare doesn't cover even the most reasonable physician's costs," said Margaret E. Mahoney, president of The Commonwealth Fund, a private foundation based in New York that focuses on issues affecting the elderly. "Dealing properly with an older patient requires patience and time, but that time is not taken into account by insurance payment schedules. And doctors feel that unless they reduce the amount of time they spend with older patients, they won't be able to make a living. But of course that undercuts the efforts to effectively evaluate patients. It's all a cyclical problem."
Dr. Morrison, who still has another year to go in his geriatric fellowship, said many of his peers stayed away from the field and from older patients because, like other people, they had biases against the elderly and tended to see them in the context of dying, not living.
"But to me, geriatrics offered a chance to drastically improve someone's quality of life," said Dr. Morrison, who is 29 and graduated from the University of Chicago Medical School. "To me the emphasis is on keeping people functioning, keeping them in the community. There are very few areas of medicine where you get to see the patient as a whole, not as a disease, where understanding the psychological and social side of a person is as critical as the medical side."
This view draws praise from Dr. Morrison's patients, like Yvette Berlowe, at the Jewish Home. "He is uncommon in his thinking," she said.  "Most doctors, when they see an old person, a cloud covers their eyes. Then they overmedicate them and send them home."

LOAD-DATE: May 16, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: At the Jewish Home and Hospital for the Aged, Dr. Leslie S. Libow, second from left, showed a new hearing aid to Yvette Berlowe, a patient, during weekly rounds with medical school students and geriatric fellows. (Sara Krulwich/The New York Times)(pg. B4)

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May 16, 1994, Monday, Late Edition - Final

METRO DIGEST

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

LENGTH: 710 words


GAPS IN GERIATRIC CARE CAUSE ALARM
While the number of older Americans is rising quickly -- particularly those over 85 and in the frailest health -- experts say the number of doctors trained to meet their needs is in critically short supply and that this shortage is seriously endangering the health and quality of the lives of the elderly. A reluctance by doctors to confront aging and death, poor reimbursement for medical services and a dearth of qualified academic leaders and role models all conspire to make geriatrics an unpopular field at a time of growing necessity. So Dr. Sean Morrison, a specialist in geriatric medicine, is an anomaly. Through a fellowship program that links the Mount Sinai Medical Center with the Jewish Home and Hospital for the Aged in Manhattan, Dr. Morrison has spent the past year treating elderly patients in the nursing home, in their doctors' offices and in the apartments they are desperately trying to remain in despite the encroaching years and infirmities. A1. 

NEW YORK CITY
 
INDICTMENTS ARE NEAR IN CO-OP GRAFT
Law-enforcement officials investigating managers of Manhattan condominiums and cooperative apartments who took payoffs from contractors as the price of doing business in their buildings say prosecutors are moving to win a first set of indictments. So much new evidence has been uncovered that investigators are focusing on close to a hundred of the major bribe-takers, some of whom were found to have taken hundreds of thousands of dollars each. Others who took no more than several thousand dollars have been deemed too minor to pursue now. Because the payoffs ultimately increased the cost of building maintenance, tenant-owners and shareholders ended up being bilked out of untold millions of dollars, law-enforcement officials say. A1.
Commercial buildings provide similar opportunities for corruption, investigators say. Earlier this year, Federal agents arrested a former commercial building manager and an assistant manager for Four New York Plaza in lower Manhattan on charges of bilking the Manufacturers Hanover Trust Company of more than $1 million in kickbacks through false and inflated bills. B2.
 
OFF-DUTY OFFICER COMMITS SUICIDE
An off-duty rookie police officer involved in a traffic accident Saturday night got out of his car and, while fellow officers from another precinct filled out the accident report, shot and killed himself, the police said. The death of the officer, Stephen Griffin, 24, was the fourth suicide by a New York City police officer this year. It appeared to speak to the complicated pressures that can add to the challenges of police life: the sudden violent death of colleagues, pressure on personal relationships and fear of losing the job. B3.
 
REGION
 
EX-OFFICER KILLS 2 IN ANGER
A former police officer in Rome, N.Y., apparently angry that someone had slashed his garden hose, shot and killed two teen-agers who were riding past his house. He then took his own life. Two other people were wounded in the incident, and they remained hospitalized. B5.
 
MAYOR'S VISIT IRRITATES STUDENTS
At 7:45 on a spring morning, the Mayor of Yonkers, Terence M. Zaleski, accompanied by a cadre of police officers armed with portable metal detectors, stormed onto the grounds of Roosevelt High School. The Mayor said it was an attempt to restore order, one day after a student had been stabbed in a school hallway. But many at the school saw the Mayor's unannounced visit as unnecessary and self-serving. B5.
 
ANOTHER CLASS FACES THE FUTURE
The departing president of the State University of New York at Stony Brook told the 2,600 undergraduates and 1,700 graduates in the 1994 graduating class that the road ahead for them would be more difficult than the one he had followed. "The continuity of education and career that many of my classmates and I experienced is rare today," said the president, John Marburger. The future today, he said, is a field "for which no curriculum seems adequate." And the president of Adelphi University, Peter Diamandopoulos, warned graduates yesterday that they were entering a world of confusion, disputed values and "politics by talk-show consensus." B5.
 
Chronicle B2
 
Traffic Alert B2

LOAD-DATE: May 16, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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May 17, 1994, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

Addiction Center Sees Medicare Imperiled By Rising Bill for Smoking and Drinking

BYLINE: By ADAM CLYMER,   Special to The New York Times 

SECTION: Section A;  Page 14;  Column 1;  National Desk 

LENGTH: 884 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, May 16

Smoking, excessive drinking and illicit drug use will cost Medicare one trillion dollars for hospital care over the next 20 years, and smoking will cause most of it, Joseph A. Califano Jr., head of the Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, said today.
Mr. Califano issued a report by the center showing that at least $20 billion out of $87 billion being spent by Medicare for inpatient hospital care this year is due to such substance abuse, and that about $16 billion of that goes for conditions attributable to smoking. 
 As medical costs and the number of people covered by Medicare increase, the annual costs are expected to soar.
Mr. Califano said that repeated warnings about the financial instability of the Medicare system underlined the importance of antismoking efforts. He said the "key to preserving the viability of the Medicare trust fund for future generations is to mount a major national effort to make America smoke-free."
 
Insurance Help Is Urged
 When it comes to potential savings, he said in a telephone interview, "the big health care bucks are in smoking." He said a thorough effort to reduce smoking would also reduce the need to raise taxes or reduce benefits to preserve the solvency of Medicare, the Government health plan for the elderly and disabled.
Mr. Califano, who was Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare in the Carter Administration, said health insurance should cover such proven antismoking devices as "the nicotine patch, smoking cessation programs and Nicorette gum." Nicotine patches deliver the drug gradually through the skin; Nicorette is a prescription nicotine chewing gum.
Richard Coorsh, a spokesman for the Health Insurance Association of America, said he did not know how widely either the patch or smoking cessation programs were now insured. He said that the patch was likely to be included in those insurance plans that covered prescription drugs, and that large employers often subsidized efforts to quit smoking.
Under President Clinton's plan, the patch would have to be covered and the smoking cessation programs could be. Both would have to be covered under Senator Edward M. Kennedy's bill, a modification of the Clinton plan that will come before the Senate Labor Committee this week. Mr. Califano said the Kennedy bill's substance-abuse coverage was the broadest he had seen.
Mr. Califano said he expected the share of Medicare costs attributable to tobacco to increase because women who were heavy smokers were just beginning to enter the covered group of people 65 and older. But he said it was impossible to know whether that addition would be outweighed by the rise in the number of people who had quit smoking.
 
Medicaid Costs, Too
 Compared with the 23 percent of Medicare hospitalization costs attributable to substance abuse, the Center reported last year that 19 percent of the hospitalization costs of Medicaid, the health program for the very poor, were caused by substance abuse.
But of that 19 percent, smoking and illicit drugs each accounted for about two fifths of the total, with the remaining fifth attributable to alcohol.
Among the elderly and disabled, smoking was dominant. It accounted for four-fifths of the substance abuse hospitalization under Medicare. Drug abuse accounted for only 3 percent, and alcohol abuse for 17 percent. The most frequent smoking-related conditions treated were lung cancer, chronic pulmonary obstruction disease and coronary artery disease. Eighteen percent of the Medicare population are current smokers, and 36 percent are former smokers.
 
Concern for Medicare Fund
 A spokesman for the Center cautioned that the Medicare numbers for alcohol and illegal drugs might be too low because physicians, out of concern for their patients' reputations, underreported their use and because there was relatively little research on their impact on the elderly.
The trustees who oversee the Medicare Trust Fund warned last month that it could run out of money for hospital care in seven years.
The addiction center's report argued that "the future solvency of the Medicare Trust Fund is inextricably intertwined with what we do today to reduce substance abuse in all its forms."
"Preventing diseases that result from substance abuse and prolonging a healthy life for the elderly can be a much more potent weapon against rising Medicare expenditures than the multitude of other, more frequently discussed cost-containment mesures or benefit reductions," it said.
"If there were no substance abuse, the Trust Fund's solvency would not be in doubt for almost twice the period that the trustees are now projecting."
Besides efforts to persuade people to stop smoking, another major campaign by the Center is to increase the tax on tobacco to discourage young people from starting. Mr. Califano urged the Senate Finance Committee in March to raise the tax not just by the 75 cents Mr. Clinton has proposed, but "by at least two dollars a pack."
The report said the United States was the only industrialized nation that taxed tobacco at less than 50 percent of its price. With an average tax rate of 30 percent on tobacco, the report said, the United States has not "yet made the commitment to address the problem of substance abuse."

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May 18, 1994, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Medicare's Big Cigarette Burn

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

LENGTH: 227 words

Smoking, as its adherents like to point out, is a private choice. But it is also a choice with public consequences. Just how extraordinary those consequences are is evident in a report issued this week by Joseph A. Califano Jr., head of Columbia University's Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse.
Out of $87 billion spent by Medicare for inpatient hospital care this year, at least $20 billion is due to substance abuse. Drug abuse accounts for 3 percent; alcohol abuse, 17 percent; and smoking a whopping 80 percent. Those put in the hospital by cigarettes are, for the most part, suffering from lung cancer, coronary artery disease and chronic pulmonary obstruction disease. 
 Because women who were heavy smokers -- targets of the "You've come a long way, baby" school of smart sell -- are just beginning to enter the covered group of people 65 or older, Mr. Califano figures the share of Medicare costs attributable to cigarettes can only increase. That share might eventually be outweighed by a rise in the number who quit smoking. Even so, Mr. Califano says, substance abuse will cost Medicare $1 trillion for hospital care over the next 20 years -- and smoking will be responsible for most of it.
Cigarettes are beginning to burn a big hole in the elderly's medical safety net. To mend it, America had better start putting out the fire.

LOAD-DATE: May 18, 1994

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May 21, 1994, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

Hiring Welfare Recipients and Making Them Management

BYLINE: By DOUGLAS MARTIN 

SECTION: Section 1;  Page 26;  Column 1;  Metropolitan Desk 

LENGTH: 1021 words

Isabel Cruz's life used to revolve around the 7th and 27th day of each month. Those were the days the welfare checks came.
Then her caseworker handed her a flier from a South Bronx company whose business is attending to the elderly and ill in their own homes. After 11 years on public assistance, Miss Cruz, 34, got a job. After four years with the company, she is running for its board. 
 Miss Cruz works for Cooperative Home Care, a home-aide service begun nine years ago with 20 workers. Today, there are 300, almost all former welfare recipients.
At a time when the nation is focused on the effectiveness of the welfare system, Cooperative Home Care is one of several organizations, both profit and nonprofit, that revolve around finding jobs for people on public assistance.
But while most such organizations place clients in a variety of fields, Cooperative Home Care focuses on one field, and not only trains its employees but also makes them partners in the business.
 
Program Being Copied
 The goal is to improve conditions and promote careers in an industry in which poor people are likely to land jobs. The philosophy: better salaries and training in what has historically been a low-paying, almost transient field will increase motivation and, hence, the level of care.
Jack Litzenberg, a program officer with the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, which has helped finance Cooperative Home Care, says his organization is now working with other "sectoral development" projects, one in Philadelphia to develop child-care careers and another in Appalachia in food processing.
An operation modeled after Cooperative Home Care opened last year in Philadelphia, one is starting this year in Boston and two more are slated for unannounced Midwestern cities later this year. The Ford Foundation has pledged $400,000 and the Mott Foundation $1 million to help Cooperative Home Care set up the new companies and train personnel. According to the plan, the new cooperatives should become self-financing within two years as they attract clients and a stream of revenue.
"It's a wonderful recipe for success," said Margaret MacAdam, who studies home health care at the Baycrest Center for Geriatrics in Toronto. "They're the model."
The Visiting Nurse Service of New York, which taps 24 home-care agencies for aides, consistently rates the cooperative in the top four or five, said Brenda Lowther-Mandel, in charge of contracting with home-care agencies.
Each day, Miss Cruz goes to the apartment of Lillian Goldson, 96 and blind after two strokes. She makes strawberry shakes, describes the weather, dispenses medicine.
Miss Cruz welcomed the revolution in her life, though she allowed that it wasn't easy. "I was nervous and excited at the same time," she said.  Like more than 80 percent of her co-workers, Miss Cruz is a company co-owner: she is buying her $1,000 share in $3.65 weekly installments.
The cooperative recruits half its employees -- most of them black or Hispanic, and all but two women -- through word of mouth and half through New York City's Department of Social Services. On the basis of references and interviews, one of five job applicants is selected.
The workers must pass a four-week training program, with courses ranging from bathing a patient to handling emergencies. In addition, there are regular brush-up sessions.
Rick Surpin, 44, the cooperative president and a longtime community organizer, started the cooperative in response to poor people's statements that they want jobs more than anything else. His strategy, developed in the early 1980's when he worked for the Community Service Society, was to pinpoint a growing economic sector and to improve job satisfaction and the workers' sense of well-being.
 
Less Profit, More Pay
 There are 70,000 home-care aides in New York City. The industry, experts says, traditionally pays slightly more than the $4.25 minimum wage to a part-time work force with no benefits.
Cooperative Home Care pays its workers $7 to $8 an hour and offers medical, dental and vacation benefits. But cooperative workers are still far from financially comfortable, with most earning just a bit over $200 a week.
The company has been set up as a for-profit enterprise to enable employee ownership and dividend payments. Cooperative employees split profits of $150,000 a year on $4.5 million in revenues. The dividends amount to a return of 20 percent to 50 percent. Workers must sell their shares for the $1,000 value when they leave the cooperative.
Aside from profit sharing, the company is bucking industry practices by guaranteeing at least 30 hours of work a week.
"They have created a workplace environment that is startlingly different from most of the home-care agencies in New York City," said Donald Gould, vice president of the United Hospital Fund, a New York hospital philanthropy and policy center that has given Cooperative Home Care $150,000. "Better care comes from better jobs."
Continuing training is vital, in part because learning sessions allow staff members to gather as a group, a break from what are often monotonous and lonely jobs. Four times a year, aides gather to learn new techniques and discuss problems.
It is this active involvement Mr. Surpin most values. He says it represents a shift in mind-set for the aides, who often had long felt it was best for them to avoid attention.
"These women thought if somebody saw them, they'd criticize them," he said. "Now, they become some of the most important people in the world to middle-class people worried about their parents and grandparents. That changes their lives in a fairly substantial way."
Phyllis Brown is an example. She takes care of Annie Peterson, who has diabetes, is nearly deaf and needs an ulcer treated twice a day, in the Jackson Avenue area of the South Bronx. "We are a bunch of serious people, intelligent, good workers," Ms. Brown said.
Mrs. Peterson said of her aide, "Ain't no problem with her."
"Am I a good cook?" Ms. Brown asked.
"A-plus," Mrs. Peterson shot back.
"See, I think that's what she loves me for."

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Isabel Cruz, who used to be a welfare recipient, now works for Cooperative Home Care, a home-aide service. At the prospect of holding a job for the first time in her life she said, "I was nervous and excited at the same time." Miss Cruz attended Lillian Goldson, 96, at her apartment. (Andrea Mohin/The New York Times)

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May 22, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

TRAVEL ADVISORY: CORRESPONDENT'S REPORT;
A New San Francisco Is Growing Downtown

BYLINE: By JOHN MARKOFF  

SECTION: Section 5;   Page 3;   Column 1;   Travel Desk  

LENGTH: 665 words

DATELINE: SAN FRANCISCO

EVERY morning on the Yerba Buena Gardens Esplanade, a block south of Market Street and four blocks from San Francisco's financial district, dozens of elderly people from a neighboring apartment complex, most of them Chinese, can be seen performing tai chi exercises.
They are a fitting symbol of how San Francisco has succeeded in its attempt to retain its multicultural heritage while redeveloping decaying neighborhoods. 
 Yerba Buena Gardens, a rolling five-and-a-half-acre site that opened in October 1993 after decades of frustration and litigation that delayed one of the nation's biggest urban renewal projects, is helping to transform a deteriorating area of the city without destroying its livability or turning it into a sterile high-rise ghetto.
For more than 30 years the 19-block Yerba Buena area was a legal and political battleground as the city struggled over ways to redevelop the downtown neighborhoods that lie between Market Street and the bay.
Home to the urban poor, retired sailors and longshoremen in the 60's, 70's and 80's, more recently the south-of-Market Street neighborhoods have become a trendy evening spot for the young and hip, with a variety of music clubs and dozens of restaurants. They have also become home to a burgeoning multimedia business, including small production houses that design interactive computer software, recasting the faded industrial lofts into low-cost office space.
In the 70's, San Francisco's Redevelopment Agency planned to transform the Yerba Buena area with high rises and a sports arena. Instead, after a political and legal battle that resulted in a new multicultural focus for the area, the $44 million Center for the Arts, designed by Fumihiko Maki and James Stewart Polshek, was opened last October. The center presents a diverse program of music, dance, theater and visual arts exhibitions.
The center is composed of two buildings, a theater and galleries intended to fulfill the same role as Lincoln Center in New York. The 755-seat theater is one of the best equipped in northern California, and the Arts Forum has three separate galleries and a large room designed for dance performances and receptions that is already fully booked through this year.
Next to the Esplanade, an oval walkway at the center of Yerba Buena Gardens, is a memorial to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. the work of the sculptor Houston Conwill, the poet Estella Majoza and the architect Joseph De Pace. Twelve shimmering glass panels are placed behind a 50-foot-wide, 20-foot-high waterfall; each of the panels is engraved with quotations from Dr. King's writings and speeches.
Set next to the city's Moscone Convention Center, the Yerba Center, which includes the gardens and the performing arts center, is still a work in progress. A cinema complex with a 12-screen theater and a giant-screen Imax theater as well as shops and restaurants is being developed next to Yerba Buena Gardens. In late 1996 a Children's Center is to open atop the Moscone Center with a large skating rink, bowling center, garden and carousel.
To the north of the center the redevelopment agency plans a 28-story office tower and retail shopping center scheduled to be completed in 1998.
The center is rapidly becoming a magnet for other institutions. Just across the street, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is scheduled to open next January. The work of the architect Mario Botta, the 225,000-square-foot building will have a steel-and-glass skylight mounted at 45 degrees on a granite-banded cylindrical turret to permit sunlight to pour into the museum's atrium.
The California Historical Society, the Mexican Museum and the Jewish Museum are all planning future sites in the area. Current neighbors include the Ansel Adams Center, 250 Fourth Street, a photographic museum with a permanent exhibit of Adams work, and Opts Art, next to the Adams Center, a gallery for contemporary art primarily from northern California.

LOAD-DATE: May 22, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH 

GRAPHIC: Map of San Francisco showing location of Yerba Buena Gardens.

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May 22, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

YOUR HOME;
Caring For Aged In Co-ops

BYLINE: By ANDREE BROOKS 

SECTION: Section 10;  Page 5;  Column 1;  Real Estate Desk 

LENGTH: 1164 words

NOT until he was stricken with a serious illness last year did Leonard Levine, 78, realize how much support older people need to remain in their apartments.
"I couldn't even change a light bulb," said Mr. Levine, a board member at Clearview Gardens, a 1,788-unit co-op in the Whitestone area of Queens. It helped him understand the need for a comprehensive program of assistance for the older people in Clearview. 
 When the program is in place later this year, Clearview will be joining a growing number of co-ops and condominiums acknowledging the effect that the frail or disabled elderly have upon the health, safety, quality of life -- and even property values -- of every other resident in a complex.
With no timely intervention by a caring relative or friend, these older residents can cause a fire, vermin infestations and even water damage by forgetting to complete such routine tasks as regularly removing refuse and turning off faucets or burners. Others may cause frustration or embarrassment by wandering naked in the hallways or sitting for endless hours in the lobby.
Caring for, and about, a needy neighbor is often discussed in terms of a moral obligation. But only now is the realization of a need for practical measures beginning to emerge.
The changing approach may be stemming from the rising numbers of the elderly in almost every community. Some 35 million Americans will be over age 65 by the end of the decade. They will also be spending more years when they are not disabled enough to require nursing home care but may be in need of minor housekeeping and other support services.
A survey taken six months ago at Clearview Gardens found that nearly two-thirds of the residents were over 65, Mr. Levine said.
What, therefore, are the obligations or requirements of a co-op board?
Ellen G. Hirsch, a partner in the law firm Becker & Poliacoff in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and a condominium specialist, knows all about the impact of the elderly from her work in a region heavily populated by retired people.
She maintains that any program of assistance must start with sensitizing every resident, regardless of age, to the shared perils. Otherwise, she argues in an article in a recent issue of Common Ground, younger residents may challenge any or all initiatives. Common Ground is the magazine of the Community Associations Institute, the national organization of common-interest community residents and their leaders.
"Too many people may see such assistance as a sign that the community is turning into a nursing home," Ms. Hirsch wrote in the article, "and resist providing even minimal assistance."
Any meaningful programs, she further suggests, may also require modification of the house rules or other governing documents. Unit owners, she notes, may have to provide information concerning next of kin, emergency telephone contacts, medical data and physicians.
The board may also need the authority to institute specific procedures for dealing with the deterioration of a resident's condition. Maintaining a regularly updated list of the individuals who can be reached at such a time or knowing which social service agency to call is therefore crucial.
A list of such services is most easily compiled through the area's agency on aging, which by law must maintain a comprehensive listing of all community organizations -- public and private -- that deal with concerns of the aging, according to the American Association for Retired Persons.
These include visiting nurses, companions, housekeeping, after-hospital care, senior day care, assistance with bill paying and other paperwork, cooking and programs such as Meals on Wheels.
Those services are expanding. Consider the six-month-old Household Manager Program operated by Selfhelp Community Services of White Plains and Manhattan, which even offers companions (at $16 an hour) who will drive the elderly to stores, a friend or a doctor, read to them and take them to the movies.
When dealing with an agency, it is important to speak in terms of the welfare of the elderly resident -- not the danger to neighbors or the building, warned another article on the topic of aging in place in the January edition of the Apartment Law Insider, a New York City trade publication aimed at landlords. The elderly resident may also need to make safety changes inside the unit, such as installing a smoke alarm or removing a slippery rug.
One source of ideas is a new illustrated booklet from AARP called "The Perfect Fit." For a free copy write for booklet D14823, AARP Fulfillment (EE0647), 601 E Street, N.W, Washington, D.C. 20049. The elderly person may also benefit from being reminded that the maintenance staff can assist them.
Putting into practice such caring initiatives can be handled in several ways. Consider the approach at Clearview Gardens. A letter was first sent to all residents, regardless of age, alerting them to the need for creating an assistance program.
The letter has since been followed up with personal visits from a team of 25 volunteers carrying identification cards -- "so people know it's safe to let them in," said Mr. Levine, the board member. The volunteers were professionally trained to pose questions in a nonthreatening manner and to work with difficult or fearful people. The questions were aimed at providing basic but vital information: nearest relative, name of physician and so forth. Gathering the data by mail was deemed impossible.
"Older people aren't going to give you this information easily," warned Elizabeth N. Radow, director of the Household Manager Program in White Plains, who regularly deals with such issues. "They treasure their privacy and feel vulnerable." Asking everyone the same questions also eliminates possible allegations of discrimination.
The Clearview Gardens team is also compiling a list of services in the area and maintenance personnel are being told to inform management when they see signs of disarray.
A program of this sort can be operated by a volunteer committee, as at Clearview Gardens. Or it could be run by management or a full-time paid employee, as at Waterside Plaza, a 1,470-unit rental complex in mid-Manhattan where 400 units are occupied by people over age 62.
Finally, attention must be paid, the housing experts say, to potentially delinquent monthly charges. Notifying a relative or case worker whenever payment is overdue may be more appropriate and effective than the usual dunning notices.
Even better -- but largely untried -- would be to encourage the elderly person to switch to an automatic debit plan. This way the maintenance fee could be automatically deducted from the person's checking account each month.
But even though it would eliminate dependency on someone else and the stigma (seen more often in the elderly than the young) of receiving repeated late notices, elderly people are known to be frightened of electronic transfers. So it may work only for a few.

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May 22, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Q and A

SECTION: Section 10; Page 11; Column 1; Real Estate Desk

LENGTH: 692 words


Rent Limit For the Elderly
 
Q I have lived for more than 10 years in a rent-stabilized building. I am over 62 years old and retired. My rent at the beginning was $1,200 a month; it is now $1,650 a month. Since I am a senior citizen, is there a limit to how much my rent can be raised when I renew my lease every two years? . . . Frank Catani, Manhattan 

A Your rent may be increased with every renewal unless you are eligible for the Senior Citizen Rent Increase Exemption Program, said Lou Ganim, a spokesman for the New York State Department of Housing and Community Renewal in Albany, which oversees rent regulation.
Increases on stabilized apartments are set annually by the New York City Rent Guidelines Board. Current guidelines call for increases of 3 percent on one-year leases and 5 percent for two-year leases on renewal leases signed between Oct. 1, 1993, and Sept. 30, 1994.
In New York City, if a tenant or a tenant's spouse is 62 or older and lives in a rent-regulated apartment; if the combined household disposable income is $16,500 a year or less, and if they are paying at least one-third of their disposable income for rent, the person who is 62 or older may apply for the exemption.
If the tenant qualifies, he or she is exempt from future rent-guidelines increases, maximum base rent increases, fuel-cost adjustments and increases based on the owner's economic hardship and major capital improvements.
The program is administered in the city by the Department for the Aging. Applications should be filed with the Department for the Aging, SCRIE Division, 150 William Street, Fourth Floor, New York N.Y. 10038. Telephone: (212) 240-7000.
In counties outside the city covered by the Emergency Tenant Protection Act, the program is administered by the state Division of Housing and Community Renewal. Outside the city, the program is a local option and communities have different income-eligibility limits and regulations.
The Department of Housing and Community Renewal has a Rent Infoline: (718) 739-6400.
 
Designating Proxies At Co-op Elections
 
Q The ballot for my cooperative's annual elections states that any shareholder can choose to have representatives of the board of directors vote his or her shares in any way that the representatives choose. All that needs to be done is for the shareholder to sign the proxy line and not vote for any candidate.
The board's agents in this matter, themselves on and off members of the board, have been the same two people for as far back as anyone can remember. They have never revealed how they voted the proxies. Many shareholders consider this a questionable practice.
Is this the norm for co-op elections? Does it make any sense? What can be done to change the ballot? . . . Jay Maurer, Manhattan
 
A Things can be changed, said Marc Luxemburg, a Manhattan lawyer and president of the Council of New York Cooperatives.
"There are two basic types of proxies," Mr. Luxemburg said. "There's a general instruction proxy, which authorizes proxies to vote for directors using their own discretion. That is probably the most common form, with shareholders typically designating proxies who are board members or people chosen by the board. There is no legal requirement that the proxies reveal how they voted."
But there is also a second common form, he said, not as frequently used as the first. "It is a ballot-type proxy that directs the proxies specifically how to vote," he said. "The discretion of the proxies with respect to that issue is eliminated."
And, Mr. Luxemburg said, there is no mandate that a form of proxy promulgated by the board must be used. "Nothing says people can't use their own form of proxy," he said. "An individual shareholder can make up his or her proxy forms, and the forms can be similar to the second one described."
Also, he said, you may designate almost anyone as a proxy. "You are not obligated to designate the board's choices as proxies," he said. "You can pick anyone you want within the confines of the bylaws. The only legal requirement is that the proxies have to be physically present at the meeting."

LOAD-DATE: May 22, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

TYPE: Question

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May 22, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

It Is Time to Be Old

BYLINE: By Sven Birkerts;   Sven Birkerts is the author of "American Energies: Essays on Fiction" and of "The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age," to be published later this year.

SECTION: Section 7;  Page 12;  Column 1;  Book Review Desk 

LENGTH: 1114 words


SCHOOL FOR THE BLIND
By Dennis McFarland.
287 pp. Boston:
Houghton Mifflin Company. $21.95. 
FICTION has always been more about becoming than about being or ceasing to be -- which may explain why there are so few novels about the elderly. If writers address the subject at all, it is usually only once they are themselves older. Dennis McFarland, who can't be past his mid-40's, is an exception. He has followed the success of his powerful and emotion-driven first novel, "The Music Room" (1990), with an affectingly oblique meditation on age and time and the long-term wages of denial. The new novel, "School for the Blind," is, in tone and intensity and final effect, as unlike its predecessor as it is possible to be.
"His life's work and ambition fulfilled, Francis Brimm believed the only metamorphosis left him was a slow, affable decline toward death, and so at the age of 73 he returned to the town of his youth to retire." With the opening sentence Mr. McFarland not only situates us, but also plants the subliminal conviction that Francis is wrong, that there will be some other metamorphosis and that the "slow, affable decline" will be anything but.
A lifelong bachelor, now a retired photographer, Francis buys a small cottage in the Florida Gulf Coast town of Pines. He locates himself right next to a golf course and a short drive away from his older sister, Muriel, who is still living in the old family home. She, too, has never married.
Shortly after his arrival, Francis begins to have a recurrent vision. Morning after morning he awakens to the first bird calls and finds himself staring at the face of a young Frenchwoman he'd photographed years ago. It was just after World War II, and her fellow villagers had shaved her head and were subjecting her to public humiliation because she'd had a child by a German soldier. Neither Francis nor Muriel can figure out the import of this apparition. A reproach of some kind? An emblem of self-betrayal? We must abide with the uncertainty.
Though Muriel is glad to have her brother around, she soon starts to complain that his homecoming has stirred up the past. Long-forgotten images and memories present themselves: "Now it seemed to Muriel that she'd almost seen these events as she recalled them, as if they were painted on the silver canvas of the rain outside the window -- an expression that so pleased her when she thought of it that she slipped into a meditation about why she had never realized her youthful dream of becoming a novelist." Muriel will admit to such regrets, but as we read we sense the pull of something darker. Our suspicions are confirmed when we learn that she imagines she is in therapy and that part of her "work" involves conquering a phobia about unopened rooms in the upstairs of her house.
"School for the Blind" stirs easily to life, in part on the strength of Mr. McFarland's characterizations -- there is a crabby authenticity about Francis, an aura of dreamy depths enveloping Muriel -- and in part because of these odd portents. Then comes a tug, and the hook is lodged. Brother and sister take an evening stroll on the golf course, where they see a dog digging near a sand trap. Later Francis finds bones strewn about at the spot. They are large -- yes, human bones. And with this the novel acquires a mystery as well as a set of negotiable metaphors about returning to the scene of the crime, digging up what may be best left buried and so on.
Francis' find gets his picture into the local paper, and soon both he and Muriel receive a threatening phone call in the night and visits from Connie Shoulders, a soft-spoken young black police officer. But then, just as we tense ourselves for the shock and revelation pattern of a mystery novel, Mr. McFarland eases off. The flurry over the probable crime is displaced by certain more private psychological concerns. The excitement appears to have triggered the release of some of Muriel's more deeply repressed memories. As she begins to peer back through the decades, back to the years of her late childhood, her search becomes the central focus of the book. Francis and his perplexing vision must move to the side.
Mr. McFarland does, I'm obliged to say, implement the now fashionable and overused motif of the recovered memory of sexual abuse. He treads perilously close to formula: the dark hallway, the open door, the shattering discovery. By the same token, the mystery of the uncovered bones feels a bit creaky, as if it had been thought up expressly to give the novel a thematic center, an urgency.
IF "School for the Blind" has a conspicuous flaw, it is found here, on the author's planning sheet. Mr. McFarland must have felt the need to gather his characters around a strong narrative thread. But in truth Francis and Muriel do quite well without these more overtly scripted scenes. They register just right in their idiosyncrasies, and -- as with characters from Anne Tyler's later novels -- we like just reading about their movements through the day. Like Ms. Tyler, Mr. McFarland knows how to make time the warp and weft of a novel, and much of the pleasure of reading comes from shuttling about through the decades of a life.
Unsexy though it may be, writing about the elderly does have certain fictional rewards. The author need not exert himself to bring death -- Wallace Stevens's "mother of beauty" -- into the calculation. It is there naturally. At one point, for instance, Francis observes Muriel in her backyard: "Moving closer, he could see, beneath the curtain of leaves, that she had taken a seat in the arbor's wooden swing. She kicked off her shoes and dangled her bare feet, swaying gently back and forth in the swing." The fact that this is a woman nearing 80 makes an otherwise unremarkable action piercing. Indeed, just by existing Muriel seems to press on the heart of things.
And then there is the real, the Jamesian "distinguished thing" itself. In the second half of the book, Francis takes ill and begins to die. As he draws away from the world, from Muriel, from us, we cannot help flashing back to his hubristic assumption about an "affable" decline. This man has believed for too long that he can plan the outcome of things. The vision on his ceiling has long since vanished, but its inscrutable admonition -- about the need for passion and the danger of it -- has entered the texture of his last days. Mr. McFarland excels at capturing these increments of subjectivity. Readers of "School for the Blind" may find their attention held less by the plot than by everything that supports it. This is an inversion of expectations, but not finally a disappointing one.

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LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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May 23, 1994, Monday, Late Edition - Final

With World War II Crew, Circle Line Boat Sails Back to '44

BYLINE: By DOUGLAS MARTIN 

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

LENGTH: 934 words

The Circle Line claims on its side to be "America's Favorite Boat Ride," and on Saturday afternoon, a sunny and splendid wisp of the summer to come, aboard a ship named Circle Line X, it was more than that.
The ship's former captain, officers, cook and deck hands, who served on it when it was a Navy landing vessel in the South Pacific, the Philippines and China during World War II, returned for a reminiscence-filled journey around Manhattan. From Florida and Colorado and many places in between, the old men came to glimpse faces they remembered from younger days, and to hug, cry and laugh. It was a reunion, their first, and they brought families, including one man's 5-month-old great-granddaughter. 
 They did all this as the ship -- once known simply as Landing Craft, Infantry (Large) 758, bought by the Circle Line in the 1950's as a Navy surplus bargain -- sliced through the Hudson, East, Bronx and Harlem Rivers. After the ship left Pier 83 on West 42d Street, an announcer, breathlessly and maybe accurately, pointed out the dwelling places of the rich and famous. Hundreds of passengers blissfully ignored them. Lovers kissed, beer drinkers swilled and children cried.
 
A Peek at the Past
 No one remarked on their flying the thin, snakelike flag of the original ship, an act some considered exuberantly defiant, since decommissioned ships are not allowed to fly their colors. It was the very flag hoisted at the ship's commissioning in Portland, Ore., 50 years ago -- the occasion for the gathering.
"They're so cute I can't stand it," said Daria Malinchak, who came to peek at a slice of the past that she knew her father, Charles, had long cherished. "For many, many years, we thought he was just making all this up."
Another grown child could express only awe. "The older I get, the more I appreciate how much history he holds in his head," said Rodney Beeson, a college student in Tampa who came to hear the tales firsthand.
In their memory, the veterans were churning along on LCI(L) 758, the ship on which they delivered Army troops to at least five Pacific invasions. In reality, they were traveling on one of three identical vessels refitted by the sightseeing company from surplus Navy landing craft. It rounded out its current fleet with five former Coast Guard cutters.
The Circle Line is itself a year younger than this combat vessel, whose crew never experienced a fatality. The ship, which carried about 250 troops and could deliver them right to the beach, sailed 100,000 miles in one two-year period. Most of the veterans said they had no idea their ship still existed until a year or so ago, when they learned about the reunion cruise.
But they remembered being at sea for six months without setting foot on land. A few recounted how they lost their virginity, one on a rickshaw with a Russian woman named Angelina. Somebody recalled counting 68 Japanese kamikaze planes plunge to their doom. Who could forget the typhoon in September 1945, off Okinawa? And remember that old Victrola, the one with the little lion feet and the horn decorated with flowers?
 
A Bar Brawl, a Pet Monkey
 One man muttered thanks to another for help in a never-to-be-forgotten barroom brawl. There were photographs of the pet monkey they had kept for a while, and stories about how the ship's dog, a mongrel named Baby, ended up living a satisfying retirement on Long Island. One photograph showed a crew member, Ray Jalley, posing with a big smile and a jellyfish on his head.
"We had a happy ship," said the ship's former captain, Gerard Marder, now a 70-year-old pediatrician from Gastonia, N.C. As principal organizer of the cruise, Dr. Marder tracked down 20 former crew members after a year's search.
"We bonded," said Dr. Marder of his crew. "You bond with me when you're under fire."
Ralph Wilson, the former quartermaster, agreed. "I got tears in my eyes, I can't explain it," he said. "We're lucky to be alive and most of us haven't seen each other in 47 years."
There was good-natured ribbing. The one Army veteran in attendance, Charles Novotny, remembered the last words he heard as he scrambled from the boat in the Philippines to invade Ormoc, a city now named MacArthur. "The only thing you said was, 'Good luck, dogface,"' Mr. Novotny, a former member of the 77th Army's Statue of Liberty division, only a few minutes before passing the Lady herself.
"Yeah, but we had four more invasions," shot back Dr. Marder, who four weeks ago had surgery for prostate cancer and insisted he would have come on a stretcher if necessary. He skipped his 50th reunion at the University of North Carolina, also held on Saturday.
Few of the veterans, conversing intensely, got their sightseeing money's worth. One geographic thought that did grip several conversations was the exact location of the officers' training school that some attended for 90 days to become, yes, "90-day wonders." It was agreed that school was near Riverside Church on the Upper West Side.
A few old-timers visited the pilot house and the engine room, where they found many things had changed. The crew enjoyed showing them around. "This was nice to see," said Tom Corsini, chief engineer of the Circle Line, of the special passengers.
The veterans were pleased to find faded typed descriptions of the ship's history as a naval vessel, which noted that it sailed and performed gallantly in difficult invasions. Some even heard the last words of the guide, though most were too busy talking among themselves.
"We're hoping in 50 years that you can come back again," the voice said.

LOAD-DATE: May 23, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Robert Mills, left, a Navy veteran, holding a photograph of the ship known as Landing Craft, Infantry (Large) 758, when the ship was commissioned 50 years ago for service in World War II. Mr. Mills was radio man on the vessel, which was bought by Circle Line in the 1950's. (Joe Major for The New York Times)

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May 24, 1994, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

U.S. Investigating Report That Guards Beat Inmate

BYLINE: By JACQUES STEINBERG,   Special to The New York Times 

SECTION: Section B;  Page 6;  Column 5;  Metropolitan Desk 

LENGTH: 523 words

DATELINE: WHITE PLAINS, May 23

Federal prosecutors are investigating an incident at the Westchester County Jail in November in which an inmate said he was beaten by several guards while handcuffed, law-enforcement officials said today. The incident was videotaped by an officer, which jail officials said was standard procedure.
In a separate case, the inmate, Kenneth DeGraffenreidt, 27, was arraigned this month on charges that he had held several guards hostage during an uprising at the jail on Aug. 15. 
 The County Corrections Commissioner, Norwood E. Jackson, said he forwarded the tape of the Nov. 5 incident to Federal authorities "right away" after investigators from his department viewed it and were concerned by what they saw. He said that jail policy stipulated that an officer with a video camera be present any time officers respond to another guard's call for emergency assistance.
Three officers involved have been informed by the United States Attorney's Office that they are the targets of a grand jury inquiry, said Bob DelBene, the vice president of the officers' union.
 
Officers Identified
 Union officials said that the three officers under investigation were Sgt. Michael Harrison, a 13-year veteran of the department who was honored in December by the State Federation of Police; Arthur White, a correction officer since 1986, and M. Sean McQuade, who has worked at the jail for four years. Attempts to reach lawyers representing the three officers were not successful.
Details of the investigation were reported today by Gannett Suburban Newspapers.
At the time of the incident, Mr. DeGraffenreidt was facing charges that he had tried to kill an elderly Westchester woman. Two weeks later, he was convicted of second-degree attempted murder and sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.
In the Aug. 15 riot, Mr. DeGraffenreidt was accused of using a home-made knife to hold several guards hostage. The Westchester County Executive, Andrew P. O'Rourke, has suggested that the uprising was staged by the guards as a union negotiating ploy -- an assertion that the officers deny -- and it is being investigated by the Westchester District Attorney, Jeanine Pirro.
Asked today if there was a link between the uprising and the incident involving Mr. DeGraffenreidt three months later, Mrs. Pirro declined to comment. While Mrs. Pirro said that the Federal investigation began late last year, Carol Sipperly, a prosecutor in the United States Attorney's office in White Plains, refused to confirm its existence.
Word of the investigation comes one month after Federal prosecutors charged 10 other guards at the county jail with smuggling food, vodka and cash to prisoners.
Commissioner Jackson, who said he has yet to view the videotape, said the Nov. 5 incident began after Mr. DeGraffenreidt refused an order to enter his cell.
But in a civil rights lawsuit filed in December in Federal District Court in Manhattan, Mr. DeGraffenreidt said that he was handcuffed and then punched, kicked and stomped by guards after he "trashed the personal items on the floor" of his cell when he was denied permission to take a shower.

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May 27, 1994, Friday, Late Edition - Final

NEWS SUMMARY

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

LENGTH: 903 words


International A2-9
 
CHINA'S TRADE STATUS RENEWED
President Clinton renewed China's favorable trade status, saying he would stop using trade as a lever to force Beijing to make progress on human rights.  A1
 
In wrestling with China, economic interests are the victors.  A1 

NEW TACTIC ON TRADE
Signaling a new tactic in the Administration's trade policy, the Justice Department won a settlement from a British company that keeps it from blocking American concerns from doing business overseas.  A1
 
FEAR CREEPS THROUGH GAZA
In Morag and other Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip, a fear deepened by Palestinian self-rule keeps many from venturing beyond their security fences unarmed.  A1
 
VATICAN AT ODDS WITH SCHOLAR
In a documents, a German lay theologian has suggested that Roman Catholics acknowledge that they share historical responsibility and guilt for the Holocaust. But the Vatican moved quickly today to say that the draft did not have the approval of the Holy See.  A3
 
VICTORS REVISIT D-DAY
As the 50th anniversary of the Normandy landings draws near, soldiers from the United States, Britain and Canada are everywhere, armed with their memories.  A3
 
VIETNAM AND U.S. MEND FENCES
The United States and Vietnam announced that they would set up diplomatic missions, a move the countries consider an important step toward normalizing relations.  A7
 
TROOPS SOUGHT FOR GEORGIA
Russian officials said today that Moscow was seeking permission from the Security Council to deploy several thousand peacekeepers in Georgia to reinforce a cease-fire.  A3
 
Officials followed refugees out of the Rwandan capital.  A5
 
A vast sanctuary for whales was created around Antarctica.  A2
 
U.S.S. Peleliu Journal: The neverending mission.  A4
 
National A10-20, B6-7
 
A BLOW FOR TOBACCO INDUSTRY
Florida's Governor signed a law intended to make it easier to hold manufacturers responsible for diseases associated with smoking.  A1
 
The tobacco industry may have influenced a research group.  A16
 
HARMONY IN ECONOMIC POLICY
What makes the way the Clinton Administration develops economic policy newsworthy is the remarkable absence of conflict among the prominent officials involved.  A1
 
RECOUPING COSTS OF IMMIGRATION
Texas plans to sue the Federal Government to recover costs incurred in dealing with illegal aliens.  A10
 
TESTIMONY IN CITADEL CASE
The woman who is suing the all-male military college testified that she sought relief after learning that her acceptance had been revoked only because of her sex.  A10
 
NOT BEGINNER'S LUCK AFTER ALL
Records confirm that Hillary Rodham Clinton received preferential treatment as she turned a $1,000 investment into $100,000.  A20
 
MISLEADING MAILINGS
Consumer groups charged that some conservative direct-mail organizations were scaring elderly people with inaccurate attacks on the President's health plan.  A18
 
18 HOLES AND ONE JOB LATER
A White House official was dismissed for taking one of the President's $2,380-per-hour helicopters on a golfing trip.  A20
 
POSTCARDS VERSUS STUMPS
A report to the Forest Service said recreation and tourism bring in far more money than timber harvests from national forests, and recommended that logging be curbed.  B6
 
Law Page B18
 
Is justice delayed justice denied for a civil rights-era murderer?
 
At the Bar: A hirsute lawyer turns hairless, and rumors and clients fly.
 
Metro Digest B1
 
BRONX GANG INDICTMENTS
Seventeen gang members were charged with running a sophisticated operation that required dealers to pay them rent in order to sell drugs in the South Bronx.  A1
 
Business Digest D1
 
Weekend C1-28, D17
 
Urban children meet wild animals.  C1
Multicultural folk festival.  C1
Things to do Memorial Day weekend.  C27
For Children C12
Theater: On Stage, and Off C2
"Big Momma 'n' 'Em." C3
Film: "The Flintstones." C1
Restaurants C20
Diner's Journal C21
Art: W. Eugene Smith photos.  C24
Western artists' African art.C24
Finding Wayne Thiebaud niche.  C28
Inside Art C22
Art in Review C24
Books: Memories of a killer.  C25
Television: TV Weekend D17
Home VideoD17
 
Sports B9-17
 
Auto racing: Lyn St. James blazing new trails at Indy.  B11 Baseball: Yankees flying high.  B10
Eight doubles lift Red Sox.  B10
Pirates, led by veterans, outlast Mets, 11-10, in 13 innings.  B11
Basketball: Nets' Daly quits.  B16
Ewing scores 32 points as Knicks take 2-0 lead over Pacers.  B9
Jazz face 0-2 deficit.  B16
Columns: Vecsey on Rangers.  B9
Araton on Daly's resignation.  B9
Hockey: For Rangers and Devils, it's winner take all in Game 7.  B9
McMullen, Devils owner, struggling in Rangers' shadow.  B13
Sports People B14
Tennis: Krickstein rolls.  B11
 
Obituaries B8
 
Joe Brainard, artist, set designer and a poet.
John Devaney, author.
 
Editorials/Op-Ed A26-27
 
Editorials
 
Shortchanging rights in China.
On Denny's menu: discrimination.
I'll fly away.
For a better Board of Education.
 
Letters
 
A. M. Rosenthal: Bill Clinton's teachings.
Anthony Lewis: Savaging the great.
Garrison Keillor: Lighten up, graduates.
Louis V. Gerstner Jr.: Our schools are failing. Do we care?
 
Chronicle B4
 
Crossword C25

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May 27, 1994, Friday, Late Edition - Final

FLORIDA PREPARES NEW BASIS TO SUE TOBACCO INDUSTRY

BYLINE: By LARRY ROHTER,   Special to The New York Times 

SECTION: Section A;  Page 1;  Column 1;  National Desk;  Law Page

LENGTH: 1456 words

DATELINE: MIAMI, May 26

The State of Florida is preparing the ground for a new attack on the tobacco industry that is intended to make it easier to hold cigarette manufacturers responsible for diseases associated with smoking.
Gov. Lawton Chiles today signed legislation that would allow the state to file a suit on behalf of all its Medicaid patients who smoke. Such class-action suits make it more difficult for cigarette companies to defend themselves by using the two main arguments they have successfully employed in cases brought by individual smokers. 
 In beating back every individual suit that has been brought against them, the companies have maintained that anyone who takes up smoking knowingly assumes all the risks associated with smoking and that those who sue did not conclusively prove that smoking caused their illnesses.
Such arguments are generally less successful when people sue as a class or group and show through broad-based demographic and health statistics that they were harmed by a product or activity. Class action suits have been brought successfully in recent years to recover damages in cases of exposure to asbestos and the use of breast implants.
Other states are likely to follow Florida's lead and the tobacco industry is concerned that Florida's action could make it vulnerable to new efforts to collect hundreds of millions of dollars in damages.
The industry suffered a new public relations setback today when the chairman of the Council for Tobacco Research, which identifies itself as an independent research organization run by a board of distinguished scientists, told a Congressional subcommittee that the council had carried out research suggested by lawyers for tobacco companies. [Page A16.]
At a news conference this morning in Tallahassee, the state capital, Mr. Chiles made it clear that Florida planned to move promptly to seek reimbursement from tobacco companies for the costs of treating Medicaid patients with smoking-related health problems. "We're going to take the Marlboro Man to court," Mr. Chiles, who is running for a second term in office, promised today after signing the bill.
A report just released by the state of Florida's Agency for Health Care Administration concluded that smoking-related illnesses, including lung cancer and emphysema, have cost Florida taxpayers at least $1.2 billion in Medicaid payments since 1989. The state agency also estimates that tobacco products are responsible for the deaths of about 28,000 people in Florida each year, many of them elderly people who have recently retired to the state after living most of their lives elsewhere.
Under the new law, which the Florida Legislature approved last month without public discussion as an obscure amendment to a Medicaid fraud bill, the state is authorized to sue tobacco companies on behalf of its Medicaid patients who suffer from smoking-related illnesses. The law also allows the state to introduce new types of statistical evidence, while prohibiting cigarette manufacturers from using the assumption-of-risk defense, with which they have fended off legal challenges in the past.
The threat of the new legislation to tobacco companies lies not only in Florida's ability to act on behalf of the entire class of smokers on Medicaid but also in the state's more privileged legal position as a sovereign entity. "The state can change the legal criteria for a suit and that is what we have done," said Harold D. Lewis, general counsel of the state health care agency. "Once we are past the threshold of showing that a cigarette is a harmful product, we can use statistics rather than bring in all 650,000 Medicaid patients."
 
Suit by Mississippi
 Earlier this week, Mississippi filed suit against 13 tobacco companies seeking to hold them legally responsible for the health consequences of smoking.
"Mississippi filed its suit under existing common law, whereas Florida has changed the law to make it easier to bring this sort of case," said Jennifer Lew, managing lawyer for the Tobacco Products Liability Project, an anti-smoking group based in Boston. "It basically tilts the playing field in favor of the state and streamlines the process of getting money from the tobacco companies."
Governor Chiles predicted during a telephone interview that the law, which goes into effect on July 1, will be the tobacco companies' undoing. "I think this will go through all kinds of legal tests, but at the end, I don't think the tobacco companies are going to be able to brag any longer that they have never paid out a dollar in a law suit," he said.
The law enables the state's Attorney General to use a formula based on each tobacco company's market share in collecting damages from cigarette manufacturers whenever they are found guilty of damaging the health of smokers. And it permits the state to sue for any additional harm to Florida residents stemming from fraudulent activity or other criminal violations by tobacco companies.
 
Power Granted Only to State
 The new law, the Medicaid Third Party Recovery Act, applies only when the state of Florida sues on behalf of its Medicaid patients. It would not change the standard of proof required when individual smokers or their families sue tobacco companies for damages. The law covers only economic damages incurred by the state and does not allow it to seek damages for the pain and suffering of patients.
Tobacco companies likely to be affected by the new law declined to comment on the measure. But the Tobacco Institute, an industry trade group based in Washington, attacked Florida's action as inherently unfair. "It is a travesty and poor public policy when legitimate businesses operating legally in the state of Florida are forced to the courthouse steps defenseless and guilty long before the first trial gavel is struck," the organization said in a statement today.
But anti-smoking advocates hailed Florida's action as an important blow against the tobacco industry and a model for the nation. Richard A. Daynard, chairman of the Tobacco Products Liability Project, said the new law was "the most important legislation ever adopted anywhere in the United States" on the issue of "holding cigarette manufacturers financially responsible for the health care costs their products and conduct produce."
The National Association of Attorney Generals said it had no information on how many other states are considering similar legislation. But Ms. Lew of the Tobacco Products Liability Project predicted that many other states would follow Florida's lead as news of the measure spreads.
Lawyers for the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration described the state as an innocent third party.
Governor Chiles said: "Our authority comes from the same place as the authority to sue in breast implant, asbestos and a whole line of other cases. The state does not buy that package of tobacco, so we don't read the warning on the side. We just pay for the carnage."
The law was strongly opposed by Associated Industries of Florida, one of the state's principal business organizations. In a letter to Mr. Chiles last month, Jon L. Shebel, president of the state business group, complained that the legislation "is tailor-made to foster a cottage litigation industry" that would affect all businesses in the form of higher insurance premiums.
In an interview today, Mr. Shebel said he was also concerned that the legal principles contained in the law could easily be extended to other industries, like dairy, beef, sugar, pharmaceuticals and automobiles. He said the language of the statute is so broad that the state could conceivably hold sugar manufacturers responsible for tooth decay and obesity.
Mr. Chiles has already said he was willing to modify the language of the new statute so that it applied only to cigarette manufacturers. But Mr. Shebel said such a change would not be acceptable to Florida businesses and vowed to work for quick repeal.
"It is against the principles of American justice to take all the defenses away from somebody because you don't like them or their product, so that when they arrive at the courthouse steps they are are already guilty by innuendo," he said. "This law makes conviction automatic. There is just no way to defend yourself under this law and that is wrong."
But Mr. Chiles was not sympathetic to the complaints of the tobacco companies. "These are the most arrogant people who have ever lived," he said. "They cover up material they've had for 30 years saying how addictive cigarette smoking is and hide research that could have made smoking less harmful, and then they have the gall to put on this face and say they don't know if they have caused any harm."

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May 27, 1994, Friday, Late Edition - Final

'Liars' Attacking Health Plan To Scare Elderly, Groups Say

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

SECTION: Section A;  Page 18;  Column 1;  National Desk 

LENGTH: 723 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, May 26

Two large consumer groups charged today that conservative direct-mail organizations were scaring elderly people with inaccurate attacks on President Clinton's health plan.
Lawrence T. Smedley, executive director of the National Council of Senior Citizens, denounced the direct-mail organizations as "liars for hire." He said they were trying to raise money with "fright mail" warning elderly people that they might lose Medicare benefits under Mr. Clinton's health plan. 
 "The health care debate has brought out a feeding frenzy of fearmongers whose primary goal is to fleece older Americans," Mr. Smedley said.
He criticized letters, postcards and brochures sent out by the American Council for Health Care Reform, in Arlington, Va.; the Seniors Coalition, in Fairfax, Va., and the United Seniors Association, in Fairfax.
 
Threat of 'Jail Time'
 Christopher Manion, director of legislation at the American Council for Health Care Reform, defended its description of the Clinton plan as accurate.
A brochure prepared by the American Council says consumers face "jail time if you buy extra care," and it says people will want extra care because spending limits in the Clinton plan will force doctors to ration care.
A fund-raising letter from the Seniors Coalition begins by asking, "Do you want to be stripped of your Medicare benefits and pressured to enroll in Bill Clinton's Government-controlled health care plan?"
It asserts that "the goal of the Clinton health care plan is the systematic elimination of Medicare." It urges readers to "send $10, $15, $25, $50 or $100" to save Medicare and stop the Clinton plan.
Joining the Council of Senior Citizens in denouncing the solicitations were Senator David Pryor of Arkansas, chairman of the Senate Special Committee on Aging; Representative Andrew Jacobs Jr. of Indiana, chairman of the Ways and Means Subcommittee on Social Security, and the American Association of Retired Persons.
John C. Rother, director of legislation and public policy at the American Association of Retired Persons, said, "It is unconscionable to prey on seniors' fears by spreading untrue information to raise money."
 
'Fear and Scare Tactics'
 But he said such solicitations must be taken seriously. "Similar appeals, based on fear and scare tactics, had a large role in persuading Congress to repeal a program of insurance against catastrophic health costs in 1989," he said.
Senator Pryor, a close ally of President Clinton, said: "The same old breed of predators, direct-mail fund-raisers that pose as advocates for senior citizens, is attacking seniors by playing upon their fears about health care reform. Seniors should think twice before sending their retirement funds to these modern-day snake oil salesmen."
Paul E. Bramell, chief executive of the Seniors Coalition, said: "We have ginned up hundreds of thousands of letters to Congress from our supporters opposing Clinton's Government-controlled health care proposal. This has begun to sting and scare members of Congress, who are feeling the weight of opposition from their constituents."
Sandra L. Butler, president of the United Seniors Association, said: "David Pryor has refused to debate us on the issues. He's pushing the President's plan to socialize medicine, as is the National Council of Senior Citizens. Middle-class American seniors aren't buying it."
Ms. Butler said she worked from 1978 to 1990 for Richard A. Viguerie, a master of direct-mail fund raising for conservative candidates.
 
Claim Is Defended
 Mr. Manion said it was true, as his group asserted, that Mr. Clinton's health bill would provide prison terms for patients who offer "anything of value" to obtain special treatment from doctors.
The Clinton bill says that anyone who offers or promises anything of value to influence the actions of a "health care official" may be imprisoned up to two years. The bill defines health care official to include any employee of a health plan. A health care official who demands or accepts improper payments may be imprisoned up to 15 years, the bill says.
Mr. Manion's group, the American Council for Health Care Reform, was among the organizations that sued Hillary Rodham Clinton to gain access to meetings of her advisory committee, which developed President Clinton's health plan last year.

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May 27, 1994, Friday, Late Edition - Final

TVWeekend;
Edith Ann (or Lily Tomlin) Explains It All for You

BYLINE: By JOHN J. O'CONNOR 

SECTION: Section D;  Page 17;  Column 3;  Weekend Desk 

LENGTH: 571 words

One of Lily Tomlin's more endearing characters on "Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In" in the early 1970's was a 6-year-old named Edith Ann. Sitting on an outsized rocker and wearing children's duds, Edith Ann observed the passing world with that special combination of innocence and mischief reserved for childhood. Her idealism was exceeded only by her determination, signaled by a very visible tongue poking through the corner of clenched lips as she made gloriously opinionated entries in her diary.
Ms. Tomlin went on, of course, to assorted personal triumphs in television, film and the theater, although in recent years her appearances have been far too few to satisfy more ardent fans. Now, coming full circle, she has returned to television and Edith Ann in a series of animated half-hour specials constructed around the little girl and her stress-laden but loving family. Jane Wagner, Ms. Tomlin's longtime collaborator, is the writer. The animation is by Klasky Csupo, best known for the original version of "The Simpsons." 
 The first "Edith Ann" show was broadcast on ABC in January and got hefty ratings; the second is on tonight at 8:30. Once again, Edith Ann is found in her rocker writing in her diary with an array of colored pencils. (Blue is for sad.) She lives in a working-class area of Edgetown. Daddy is unemployed and in a 12-step program. Mom tries to keep close tabs on Edith Ann's baby brother while working full time. An older sister appears to have overdosed on punk rock, resenting the fact that she has to have urine tests in school. Still, Edith Ann can enjoy a late afternoon by herself, noting that before dark, "it's the safest time for kids like me," not to mention the elderly.
While Edith Ann is preoccupied with environment pageants at school, her neighbors are busy compiling a petition to get rid of the town's homeless. "Property values could plummet," they warn. A good neighborhood would be destroyed, they insist. "Seems to me," says Edith Ann, "it would be a good neighborhood if we helped the homeless."
Edith Ann's instincts are buttressed when she meets an elderly bag lady named Twinkle. The feisty old woman tells how a meteorite spotted at her birth was a sure sign that she had charisma. Edith Ann is enchanted. The two are peas in a pod, knowing full well that "the truth can be made up if you know how." Meanwhile, buzzing around the central plot are two insects thought to be dreaded negflies, their very presence provoking demands to saturate the town with insecticides. Edith Ann's plate is obviously full.
Commenting on the show in a network release, Ms. Tomlin says: "Children are doing their best to understand how things work. They're not like adults. They haven't gotten used to things yet. They don't necessarily see problems as something to be ignored, avoided or swept under the rug. Kids are close to the real world." That's what comes across delightfully in "Edith Ann," and that's what makes the show the nicest thing to happen to family entertainment this year.
 
Edith Ann
Homeless Go Home
ABC, tonight at 8:30.
(Channel 7 in New York.)
 
An animated special created by Lily Tomlin and Jane Wagner; written by Ms. Wagner; directed by Tamara Varga; produced by Sherry Gunther for ABC; with the voices of Ms. Tomlin, Thom Sharp, Amy Ziff, Pamela Segall and Reno; Ms. Wagner, Ms. Tomlin, Arlene Klasky and Gabor Csupo, executive producers.

LOAD-DATE: May 27, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Lily Tomlin's character Edith Ann stars in an animated special. (ABC)

TYPE: Review

Copyright 1994 The New York Times Company



193 of 457 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times

May 27, 1994, Friday, Late Edition - Final
Correction Appended

For Memorial Day Weekend, Things to Do and Places to Go

SECTION: Section C;  Page 27;  Column 1;  Cultural Desk 

LENGTH: 2930 words

Memorial Day is observed on Monday. Here is a sampling of activities planned in the New York metropolitan region for the holiday weekend.
 
NEW YORK CITY
 
Today
 
BILL SIMS AND THE COLD-BLOODED BLUES BAND AND BUDDY MILES, blues and rhythm-and-blues, South Street Seaport, Ambrose Stage, Pier 16, at the East River, lower Manhattan. 5 P.M. Free. Information: (212) 732-7678.
 
SEAPORT LIBERTY CRUISE, Pier 16, South Street Seaport, lower Manhattan. One-hour cruises around the southern tip of Manhattan. Tickets: $12 today; $16 tomorrow through Sept. 5; half-price under age 12. Schedule and other information: (212) 630-8888.
 
"D-DAY: THE LIBERATION OF EUROPE," Intrepid Sea-Air-Space-Museum, West 46th Street and 12th Avenue, Manhattan. An exhibition celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Allied landing at Normandy, with videos, newsreels, combat film, photographs and memorabilia. Hours: Wednesdays through Sundays, 10 A.M. to 5 P.M. Admission: $7; $6 for the elderly and veterans; $4 for those under 12. Information: (212) 245-0072.
 
SALT 'N' PEPA AND R. KELLY WITH KID CAPRI, Radio City Music Hall. 8 P.M. and midnight. Ticket: $35 and $37.50. Information: (212) 247-4777.
 
CIRCLE LINE, Pier 83, Hudson River and 43d Street, Manhattan. Daily three-hour cruises around Manhattan and two-hour "star attractions" and "harbor lights" cruises. Tickets: $18; $9 under age 12. Schedule and other information: (212) 563-3200.
 
WORLD YACHT, Pier 81, Hudson River and 41st Street, Manhattan. Daily two- and three-hour dining and music cruises. Prices range from $27.50 to $75 for dinner and cruise, $16 to $25 for cruise only. Reservations: (212) 630-8100.
 
"CAN'T TOP THE LINDY HOP!," Roosevelt Hotel, Madison Avenue and 45th Street. Four days of parties, dance instruction, lectures and discussions, sponsored by the New York Swing Dance Society. Tonight at 9; tomorrow and Sunday, 9 A.M. to 9 P.M.; Monday, 10 A.M. to 6 P.M. Admission: $75 for all events; $15 for each party. Information: (212) 696-9737.
 
BASEBALL: METS VS. CINCINNATI REDS, Shea Stadium, Flushing, Queens. 7:40 P.M. Tickets: $6.50 to $15. Fireworks after the game. Information: (718) 507-8499.
 
ASTROLAND AND THE CYCLONE ROLLER COASTER, 1000 Surf Avenue, Coney Island, Brooklyn. The amusement park will be open tonight from 7 to midnight; tomorrow through Monday, noon to midnight. Rides are $1.50 to $3; a single admission of $12.99 allows unlimited access to major rides today and tomorrow. Information: (718) 265-2100.
 
Tomorrow
 
THE ROY GERSON BAND FEATURING HAYWOOD GREGORY, big band, South Street Seaport, Ambrose Stage, Pier 16, at the East River, lower Manhattan. 2 P.M. Free. Information: (212) 732-7678.
 
LOWER SECOND AVENUE FESTIVAL, Second Avenue from St. Mark's Place to 14th Street. 11 A.M. to 6 P.M. Free. Information: (212) 809-4900.
 
WASHINGTON SQUARE OUTDOOR ART EXHIBIT, sidewalks surrounding Washington Square Park, Greenwich Village. Noon to sundown, tomorrow through Monday and June 4 and 5. Free. Information: (212) 982-6255.
 
GREENWICH VILLAGE WALKING TOUR, Sponsored by Adventure on a Shoestring. 6 P.M. Fee: $5. Reservations and meeting place: (212) 265-2663.
 
TURKISH PARADE, Madison Avenue, between 47th and 55th Streets. Sponsored by the American Turkish Society. 2 P.M.
 
"A LOVELY WAY TO SPEND AN EVENING," Symphony Space, Broadway and 95th Street. A concert produced by the jazz pianist Barry Harris, with singers from public schools around the city and Chris Anderson, pianist; Charles Davis and Jimmy Heath, tenor saxophonists; Scoby Stroman, dancer; Roberta Davis, singer, and others. Tomorrow at 8 P.M. Tickets: $20 in advance; $25 at the door. Information: (212) 864-5400.
 
RICHMOND HILL MEMORIAL WEEKEND FESTIVAL, Jamaica Avenue, from Lefferts Boulevard to 108th Street, Queens. A celebration in honor of the area's 100th anniversary. 11 A.M. to 7 P.M. Information: (212) 995-9412.
 
IRISH-AMERICAN FEIS, Floyd Bennett Field, Gateway National Recreation Area, southeast Brooklyn. A festival featuring the Irish tenor Frank Patterson and other Irish musicians, a storyteller, children's pony and amusement-park rides and food and cultural exhibitions. Hours: tomorrow and Sunday, noon to 8 P.M.; Monday, noon to 6 P.M. Free. Information: (718) 338-3799.
 
LITTLE ODESSA WALKING TOUR, Brighton Beach, Brooklyn. A tour of the area with an optional lunch. Sponsored by Adventure on a Shoestring. The tour starts at noon in Manhattan or 1:15 P.M. in Brooklyn. Fee: $5, lunch and subway fare not included. Information: (212) 265-2663.
 
"SKY HUNTERS '94," Bronx Zoo, Bronx River Parkway and Fordham Road, Fordham, the Bronx. A variety of free-flying birds of prey to demonstrate various flying maneuvers. Beginning tomorrow, daily, except Wednesday, at 11:30 A.M. and at 1:30 and 3:30 P.M. Free with zoo admission: $5.75; $2 for the elderly and children 2 to 12 years old; free under age 2. Parking: $5. Information: (718) 367-1010.
 
"HAPPY BIRTHDAY, WALT WHITMAN," Fort Greene Park, Visitors Center, Dekalb and South Portland Avenues, Fort Greene, Brooklyn. A walk and talk about the poet, who helped establish the park. 11 A.M. and 2 P.M. Led by the Urban Park Rangers. Information: (718) 287-3400 or (800) 201-7275.
 
CITY BEACHES, the beaches operated by the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation open for the season. The beaches are Orchard Beach in the Bronx; Rockaway Beach in Queens; Wolfe's Pond and Midland Beach on Staten Island, and Brighton Beach and Manhattan Beach in Brooklyn. Daily through Labor Day, 10 A.M to 6 P.M.
 
"THE ESTUARY: ARM OF THE SEA," Inwood Hill Park. The Urban Park Rangers will lead a walk along the last remaining salt marsh in Manhattan. Meets at 2 P.M. at 218th Street and Indian Road. Free. Information: (212) 772-0210.
 
BASEBALL: METS VS. CINCINNATI REDS, Shea Stadium, Flushing, Queens. 1:40 P.M. Tickets: $6.50 to $15. Information: (718) 507-8499.
 
Sunday
 
SHAWN COLVIN, folk music, South Street Seaport, Ambrose Stage, Pier 16, at the East River, lower Manhattan. 3 P.M. Free. Information: (212) 732-7678.
 
FIREWORKS BY GRUCCI, South Street Seaport, Pier 16, at the East River, lower Manhattan. 9 P.M. Free. Information: (212) 732-7678.
 
"RITES OF SPRING: PROCESSION TO SAVE OUR GARDENS," Lower East Side. An all-day procession with stops at more than 50 gardens on the Lower East Side and performances at five locations: Garden of Eden Memorial at Forsyth Street, between Rivington and Stanton Streets; La Plaza Cultural, northwest corner of Ninth Street and Avenue C; northeast corner of Ninth Street and Avenue C; Tree of Life, Sixth Street and Avenue B; El Jardin Paraiso, Fourth Street, between Avenues C and D. 11 A.M. to 6 P.M. Sponsored by Earth Celebrations. Free. Information: (212) 727-8283.
 
EAST VILLAGE WALKING TOUR, sponsored by Adventure on a Shoestring. Noon. Fee: $5. Reservations and meeting place: (212) 265-2663.
 
GREENWICH VILLAGE WALKING TOUR, led by Joyce Gold. Meet at the arch in Washington Square, Greenwich Village, at noon. Fee: $12. Information: (212) 242-5762.
 
"THE TENDER LAND," Bryant Park, 40th Street and Avenue of the Americas. The New York Chamber Ensemble performs Aaron Copland's opera. 3 P.M. Free. Information: (212) 870-2439.
 
FLATIRON DISTRICT WALKING TOUR, midtown Manhattan. Sponsored by Adventure on a Shoestring. 3 P.M. Fee: $5. Reservations and meeting place: (212) 265-2663.
 
"ROLLER-SKATING REUNION," Wollman Skating Rink, Central Park; entrance at Fifth Avenue and 60th Street. Nonmember skaters are welcome to join members of the Metropolitan-Manhattan Skate Club, who are to roller skate to jazz and disco music. 5 to 9:30 P.M. Admission: $6; skate rental, $3.25; Rollerblade rental, $6.50. Information: (212) 687-1775 or (212) 517-4800.
 
"TAP EXTRAVAGANZA '94," Haft Auditorium, Fashion Institute of Technology, 227 West 27th Street, Chelsea. A performance in tribute to the dancers Maceo Anderson, Gene Kelly and Ann Miller. Scheduled performers include Brenda Bufalino, Buster Brown, Savion Glover, Jimmy Glover and the Rhythm Queens. 7:30 P.M. Tickets: $22 to $34. Sponsored by the New York Committee to Celebrate National Tap-Dance Day. Information: (212) 279-4200 or (718) 597-4613.
 
LIVABLE WEST SIDE STREET FESTIVAL, Broadway between 72d and 86th Streets. Sponsored by the Coalition for a Livable West Side. Sunday, 11 A.M. to 6 P.M.
 
"A WORTHY USE OF SUMMER: JEWISH SUMMER CAMPING IN AMERICA," Jewish Museum, 1109 Fifth Avenue, at 92d Street. An exhibition on the history of American Jewish summer camping, told with photographs, letters, clothing and other items. On view through Aug. 21. Hours: Sundays through Thursdays, 11 A.M to 5:45 P.M.; Tuesdays, 11 A.M. to 8 P.M. Admission: $6; $4 for students and the elderly; free under the age of 12. Information: (212) 423-3200.
 
"BERLIN AND FRIENDS," Woodlawn Cemetery, Jerome Avenue Gate and Bainbridge Avenue, the Bronx. Michael J. Buglio conducts the Bronx Arts Ensemble Orchestra's tribute to Irving Berlin and other American composers. 2 P.M. Free. Information: (718) 601-7399.
 
SIWANOY TRAIL TOUR, Pelham Bay Park, Pelham Golf Clubhouse, off Shore Road, the Bronx. A tour of the marshlands, forest and meadows of Pelham Park, led by the Urban Park Rangers. 2 P.M. Free. Information: (718) 667-6042 or (800) 201-7275.
 
"THE WORKS," Central Park. A five-hour walking tour of Central Park, led by the Urban Park Rangers. Meets at 10 A.M. at Fifth Avenue and 60th Street. Free. Information: (212) 772-0210 or (800) 201-7275.
 
BASEBALL: METS VS. CINCINNATI REDS, Flushing, Queens. 1:40 P.M. Tickets: $6.50 to $15. Information: (718) 507-8499.
 
Monday
 
VINCE GIORDANO AND THE NIGHTHAWKS, jazz, South Street Seaport, Ambrose Stage, Pier 16, at the East River, lower Manhattan. 2 P.M. Free. Information: (212) 732-7678.
 
TURTLE BAY FAIR, Second Avenue from 42d to 53rd Street. 11 A.M to 6 P.M. Free. Information: (212) 228-8262.
 
"NEW YORK IN WAR AND PEACE," lower Manhattan. A walking tour exploring New York's military history. Sponsored by Big Onion Walking Tours. Meets on the steps of City Hall at 1 P.M. Fee: $9; $7 for students and the elderly. Information: (212) 439-1090.
 
BROADWAY ASTORIA MEMORIAL DAY FESTIVAL, Broadway from 21st Street to 47th Street, Astoria, Queens. 11 A.M. to 7 P.M. Free. Information: (212) 995-9372.
 
MEMORIAL DAY PARADE, West End Avenue and 72d Street to Riverside Drive and 90th Street. 10 A.M. Sponsored by the New York City County American Legion. Free. Information: (212) 788-7438.
 
MAHLER'S SYMPHONY NO. 9, Cathedral of St. John the Divine, Amsterdam Avenue at 112th Street, Morningside Heights. Kurt Masur is to conduct the New York Philharmonic. 8 P.M. Free. Information: (212) 662-2133.
 
"MEMORIAL DAY WALK IN FORT GREENE," Fort Greene Park, Visitor's Center, Dekalb and South Portland Avenues, Fort Greene, Brooklyn. A walk past some of the war monuments, including the Revolutionary War Prison Ship Martyrs' Monument. Led by the Urban Park Rangers. Meets at 11 A.M. and 2 P.M. Free. Information: (718) 287-3400 or (800) 201-7275.
 
BASEBALL: METS VS. COLORADO ROCKIES, Shea Stadium, Flushing, Queens. 1:40 P.M. Tickets: $6.50 to $15. Information: (718) 507-8499.
 
BASEBALL: YANKEES VS. CHICAGO WHITE SOX, Yankee Stadium, the Bronx. 4:05 P.M. Tickets: $11.50 to $17. Information: (718) 293-6000.
 
WESTCHESTER
 
Today
 
"SHELTER AND DREAM: PLAYHOUSES BY ARCHITECTS AND ARTISTS," an exhibition in the sculpture garden, where children can have fun figuring out commissioned play structures. At the Katonah Museum of Art, Route 22 at Jay Street, Katonah, N.Y. Hours: Tuesdays through Fridays, and Sundays, 1 to 5 P.M.; Saturdays, 10 A.M. to 5 P.M. Free. Information: (914) 232-9555.
 
14th WESTCHESTER COUNTY FAIR, Yonkers Raceway. Rides, races, food and musical entertainment. Through June 12. Entertainers this weekend are to be the Tokens tonight at 7 and 9; Sh-Boom tomorrow at 3 and 8 P.M.; Larry Chance and the Earls on Sunday at 3 and 7 P.M., and the Regents, the Duprees and the Demensions on Monday at 3 and 8 P.M.  Festival hours: Mondays through Fridays, 5 P.M. to midnight; Saturdays, Sundays and Memorial Day, noon to midnight. Admission: $6; children under 8, free. Parking: $3. Information: (914) 968-4200.
 
"THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS: REFLECTIONS ON REFLECTIONS," Philipsburg Manor, Route 9, North Tarrytown, N.Y. An exhibition on things that reflect, including early looking glasses and mirrors, a telescope, a shaving stand and a scientific prism. Hours: Wednesdays through Mondays, 10 A.M. to 5 P.M. Admission: $6; $3 for ages 6 to 17. Information: (914) 631-8200.
 
"MEMORIAL DAY WEEKEND BASEBALL CARD AND SPORTS MEMORABILIA CLASSIC," County Center, Bronx River Parkway and Central Avenue, White Plains. Hours: today, 5 to 9 P.M.; tomorrow, 10 A.M. to 6 P.M.; Sunday, 10 A.M. to 5 P.M. Admission: $6. Information: (914) 285-4050.
 
PLAYLAND BEACH, Exit 19 off the Gov. Thomas E. Dewey Thruway, Rye, N.Y. A 279-acre amusement park with rides, miniature golf and swimming. Hours: today through Sunday, noon to midnight; Monday, noon to 11 P.M. Swimming fees: $3.25; $1.50 for children. Parking: $3, today; $5 tomorrow and Sunday; $6, Monday. Information: (914) 967-2040.
 
Tomorrow
 
"ANIMALS AND ACROBATS," a 19th-century-style road show featuring elephant and camel rides, musicians, magicians, a slack-rope walker, puppeteers (including a Punch and Judy show) and food. Tomorrow, Sunday and Monday from 10 A.M. to 5 P.M. at the Van Cortlandt Manor, Route 9, Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y. (within walking distance of Metro-North). Admission: $6 for adults; $3 for children; free under age 6. Information: (914) 271-8981.
 WOODSTOCK-NEW PALTZ ART AND CRAFTS FAIR, Ulster County Fairgrounds, New Paltz, N.Y. More than 300 artisans are to display their work. Hours: Tomorrow and Sunday, 10 A.M. to 6 P.M.; Monday, 10 A.M. to 5 P.M. Admission: 5.50; $4.50 for the elderly; $3.50 for ages 4 to 12. Information: (914) 246-3414.
 
Monday
 
NATURE WALK, Lenoir Preserve, Dudley Street, Yonkers. A walk to identify wildflowers, led by by Tim Barton, a naturalist. 10 A.M. Free. Information: (914) 968-5851.
 
LONG ISLAND
 
Today
 
FIREWORKS AND MUSIC, Bar Beach Park, Port Washington. Featuring the Impalas, a pop group. 7 P.M. Information: (516) 327-3100.
 
CARNIVAL AT THE STATE UNIVERSITY AT STONY BROOK, South Parking Lot, Stony Brook Road, off Route 347. Games, rides and food. Sponsored by the State University of New York at Stony Brook University Hospital Auxiliary. Today, 5 P.M. to midnight. Also tomorrow and Sunday, 1 P.M. to midnight, and Monday, 1 to 10 P.M. Fireworks today and Sunday at 10 P.M. Free. Information: (516) 444-2699.
 
Tomorrow
 
SPRING FESTIVAL AND HORTICULTURAL EXHIBITION, Old Bethpage Village Restoration, Round Swamp Road, Exit 48 from the Long Island Expressway, Old Bethpage. Games, dancing and sheep-shearing demonstrations. Sponsored by the Agricultural Society of Queens, Nassau and Suffolk Counties and Friends for Long Island's Heritage. 10 A.M. to 5 P.M. Also Sunday and Monday, same hours. Admission: $5; $3 for children and the elderly. Information: (516) 572-8400.
 
Sunday
 
INTERNATIONAL JEWISH ARTS FESTIVAL OF LONG ISLAND, Suffolk Y-J.C.C., 74 Hauppauge Road, Commack. Entertainment, crafts demonstrations, dancing, food. 10 A.M. to 6 P.M. Also Monday, same hours. Daily admission: $14; $12 for students and the elderly; free for children under 12. Two-day pass: $20. Information: (516) 938-4600.
 
NEW JERSEY
 
Tomorrow
 
DOG SHOW, Wolf Hill Farm, Monmouth Park, Oceanport. A juried event with 1,500 dogs from all over North America. Presented by the Monmouth County Kennel Club. 9 A.M. to 5 P.M. Admission: $3; $1 for children. Information: (908) 264-0658.
 
COUNTRY MUSIC CONCERT, Six Flags Great Adventure, Exit 7A (Exit 98 off the Garden State Parkway to Interstate 195, Exit 16). Rides, games and food. Performance by Sammy Kershaw at 8 P.M. Admission: $33.92; $21.15 for those under 55 inches. Information: (908) 928-2000.
 
Sunday
 
IRIS SHOW, Quakerbridge Mall, Route 1, Lawrenceville. Sponsored by the Garden State Iris Society. Noon to 5 P.M. Free.
 
Monday
 
FAMILY FUN DAY, Meadowlands Racetrack, Route 4, East Rutherford. Clowns, pony rides, a petting zoo and the Tim Gillis Band. 11:30 A.M. to 5 P.M. Admission: $2; $1 for the elderly; children under 12, free. Information: (201) 935-8500.
 
CONNECTICUT
 
Tomorrow
 
MYSTIC SEAPORT'S LOBSTERFEST, Mystic.  Participants may buy lobsters or lobster dinners while being entertained by performers singing sea chanteys. Tomorrow through Monday, 11:30 A.M. to 3:30 P.M. Seaport hours: 9 A.M. to 5 P.M. daily. Admission (not including food): $15; $7.50 for ages 6 to 15. Information: (203) 572-5315.
 
HOT-AIR BALLOON RALLY, Eastern High School, Route 229, Bristol. Saturday and Sunday, 8 A.M. to 5 P.M.
 
Monday
 
DECORATION DAY, Mystic Seaport, Mystic. Services and activities dedicated to the fallen heroes of the Civil War begin at 12:30 P.M. A parade starts at 2 P.M. Seaport hours: 9 A.M. to 5 P.M. daily. Admission: $15; $7.50 for ages 6 to 15. Information: (203) 572-5315.
 
MEMORIAL DAY PARADE, Rocky Hill. Representative Barbara B. Kennelly is to speak at the ceremonies on the green. 9:30 A.M. Free. Information: (203) 529-2379.

LOAD-DATE: May 27, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

CORRECTION-DATE: May 28, 1994, Saturday

 CORRECTION:
A Memorial Day listing in Weekend yesterday misstated the admission price for a holiday party tomorrow at 9 P.M. in the series called "Can't Top the Lindy Hop!" at the Roosevelt Hotel, Madison Avenue and 45th Street. Tickets are $25, not $15.

GRAPHIC: Photo: An African fish eagle and other birds are to demonstrate flying maneuvers in "Sky Hunters '94" at the Bronx Zoo. (Wildlife Conservation Society)

Copyright 1994 The New York Times Company



194 of 457 DOCUMENTS


The New York Times

May 29, 1994 Sunday  
Late Edition - Final

Discoveries Made Along The Croisette

BYLINE: By Janet Maslin

SECTION: Section 2; Column 5; Arts & Leisure Desk; Pg. 9

LENGTH: 1489 words

DATELINE: CANNES, France 

THE REWARDS OF THE CANNES international Film Festival go well beyond the pleasure of hearing the word Hudsucker pronounced with a French accent, though certainly that was one of them. Cannes offers an incomparably broad overview of world cinema, with all its contrasts and extremes. The arts of self-promotion are as well displayed here as the artistry on screen, and it takes a cool head to keep them separate. Nearly two weeks' worth of cinematic overload and celebrity drumbeating do not encourage cool thinking, but then that's the whole point. The first step to frenzy is well-orchestrated confusion.
 Cannes thrives on that. You arrive here to daily press handouts that do not necessarily intend to shed light. From one Monday's listings, some sample film synopses: "A deluded bank robber believes he is King Arthur." "The humdrum life of a couple is disrupted by the arrival of an anonymous love poem." "A nocturnal homosexual preys on elderly women, kidnapping them and killing them." "A retired judge wins the affection of a young model who accidentally hit his dog with her car." 
  I can't speak for the first two, since they appeared on a day when the program guide listed 166 screenings. But the third and fourth are, respectively, "I Can't Sleep," a widely admired French film by Claire Denis, the director of "Chocolat," and Krzysztof Kieslowski's "Rouge," a supremely subtle and enveloping work that could not possibly be summed up in a single sentence. Definitely not a sentence about a dog being hit by a car. But the fact that nothing at Cannes is what it sounds like only enhances the festival's suspenseful atmosphere.
 So does the potential for making discoveries. This was a strong year for films outside the main competition, and a number of them will find international audiences now that this event is over. Among those that attracted attention: Hal Hartley's droll, spare "Amateur," which may not expand Mr. Hartley's following but should certainly please his admirers; "Muriel's Wedding," an Australian film by a director named Paul J. Hogan, not to be confused with Crocodile Dundee, although he turned up, too; "Eat Drink Man Woman," a tasty, commercial comedy from the Taiwanese director of "The Wedding Banquet," and "Bandit Queen," a super-violent Indian film about an avenging female outlaw. 
 The Leningrad Cowboys, Aki Kaurismaki's hopeless musical group known for their shellacked hairdos, could be seen roaming the Croisette during the wee hours. But they didn't do much for "Tatyana, Take Care of Your Scarf," an hourlong Kaurismaki film that continues the Cowboys' globe-trotting adventures. A more successful publicity gambit was the so-called Bronx Block Party to promote "I Like It Like That." This bright urban comedy is directed by Darnell Martin, who brings a knowing feminine sensibility to bear on her material and who made the most of Cannes's prominence as a showcase for new film makers. As a smart, appealing, young African-American film maker with impressive talent, Ms. Martin came to the right place at the right time.
 Films in the main competition usually arouse the strongest emotions in Cannes, since the festival's international audiences are not shy about expressing audible opinions. But the crowds were polite this year, perhaps because half the main competition films were so eminently forgettable. Shrugs greeted "The Browning Version," starring Albert Finney and signaling every shading of Terence Rattigan's play within its first 10 minutes. Along with "The Whores," a black-and-white Italian film that is exactly what it sounds like, it prompted the greatest doubts about the festival's selectivity.
 Many of the other main competition films played like rough drafts, since they will call for serious editing if they are to receive wide release. "Les Patriotes," a solemn two-and-a-half-hour spy film by Eric Rochant that could have been an hour shorter, was typical in that regard. On the other hand, Quentin Tarantino's "Pulp Fiction" had virtually the same running time and didn't seem long. Mr. Tarantino, with an energy level that is somewhere beyond the volcanic, has no trouble holding an audience's attention. 
 Mr. Tarantino's success story is the sort that lends excitement to this entire event. Two years ago he was a new kid on the block with his first film, "Reservoir Dogs," which was shown in one of Cannes's ancillary festivals. This year he won the main competition with a much bigger film, jump-started the careers of some of his actors (notably John Travolta, whose performance was dubbed "la surprise du festival" by Le Figaro), and came across as such a fresh, avid cineaste that he will doubtless inspire many others. 
 The subject of screen violence always comes up when Mr. Tarantino's name is mentioned. And an event like this festival also raises the issue of violence in broader terms. For documentary film makers, addressing the bloodshed in Bosnia is now a matter of compelling interest; there are several such documentaries here, although the essence of the tragedy is not easily captured. A poster for one film, entitled "MGM Sarajevo -- Man, God, the Monster," also turned up in the window of an extravagant Cannes gourmet shop, which may offer some idea of how jarring festival-induced contrasts can be.
 A different but equally fundamental idea of violence has colored recent Chinese films dealing with the Cultural Revolution. In Zhang Yimou's "To Live," hardship and brutality are depicted only indirectly, in the ways they affect the film's central family, and yet the horrors are overwhelming. It's truly disorienting to move from a film of such gravity, which split the grand jury prize, to something like Lodge Kerrigan's "Clean, Shaven," which tries to convey the inner turmoil of its deeply disturbed protagonist by shocking the audience in bloody, graphic terms. (A sign warning that "Clean, Shaven" might be violent enough to upset viewers guaranteed that screenings here drew huge crowds.)
 The self-mutilation scenes in Mr. Kerrigan's film look ugly and exploitative, but then that's the way some critics dismissed "Reservoir Dogs" two years ago. If Mr. Kerrigan turns out to have new stature as dramatic and unexpected as Mr. Tarantino's, then the festival circuit (his work has already been shown at New Directors and Sundance) will have served its purpose. 
 Meanwhile, Mr. Tarantino has himself come a long way in dealing with violence. This time he has toned down the gore to a much more bearable level and offset it with wild, unexpected humor.
 At a lunch with Mr. Tarantino (who turned up in one of the south of France's toniest restaurants wearing a Fred Flintstone T-shirt), both Mr. Travolta and Bruce Willis gave some thought to the violence in "Pulp Fiction." Mr. Travolta brought up "Goodfellas," which combines horror and humor in similar ways, and rightly observed that the unusual circular structure of Mr. Tarantino's film makes it ultimatley seem anything but exploitative. Mr. Willis, having starred in films in which the body count climbs into the hundreds, said that he saw this film as something very different from that brand of escapism. It is.
 Mr. Willis and Mr. Travolta are old hands at dealing with celebrity. And, notwithstanding the fact that Mr. Willis rightfully blew his cork when a woman spoke contemptuously of his work at his festival press conference, they bring an obvious professionalism to the job. At the other end of the spectrum, 14-year-old Sean Nelson, who plays a drug dealer in "Fresh," came to France from the Bronx just after his picture had been plastered all over Cannes and was politely thrilled by the whole experience. Politeness, professionalism: nice qualities. But they aren't always what the Cannes press corps is after. And they can't compare to the inimitable je ne sais quoi of Mickey Rourke.
 Mr. Rourke was only here for a couple of days, during which he announced his intention to be a Hollywood team player, then had a public fit. But on one of his good days, he appeared jauntily for an early-morning (1 P.M.) interview accompanied by a friend of his, a novelist named Michael Davis. Claiming that Mr. Davis deserved screenwriting credit on his latest movie, "S.F.W.," Mr. Rourke loyally defaced a poster to add his buddy's name. He punctuated his remarks with a "You agree with that, Mike?" every now and then. Sure enough, Mike agreed.
 THE GREAT MYSTERY about Mr. Rourke, inescapable in Cannes, is that the French love him so. So he explained that he loved them too and had many French friends, including the renowned photographer Robert Doisneau, who recently died.
 Mr. Rourke was too busy to go to the funeral, he said. So Mike went instead. Mr. Rourke wasn't sure how to spell his friend Doisneau's name. So Mike did that too.
 "You see?" Mr. Rourke exclaimed, grinning at Mike. "That's why you always need a writer." 
 Or that's why you always need a writer in Cannes.


URL: http://www.nytimes.com

LOAD-DATE: February 18, 2004

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photos: John Travolta, left, Uma Thurman, and the director Quentin Tarantino promote Mr. Tarantino's film "Pulp Fiction," which won the main competition at the Cannes Film Festival last week. (Associated Press)(pg. 16)
 Lauren Velez and Jon Seda in "I Like It Like That." (Lisa Leona/Columbia Pictures)(pg. 9)

DOCUMENT-TYPE: Review

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper


Copyright 1994 The New York Times Company



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The New York Times

May 29, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

WESTCHESTER GUIDE

BYLINE: By ELEANOR CHARLES

SECTION: Section 14WC; Page 12; Column 4; Westchester Weekly Desk

LENGTH: 910 words


FUNK FEST
The Mexican Mud Band and Tongue-in-Groove will bring their music and wit to the Funk Fest, which takes place at 10 P.M. today in the Port Chester night spot named for its address, 7 Willow Street, off Route 1.
Doors will open at 8, and admission is $10. 
 The Mexican Mud Band's repertory tonight will include some of the songs inspired by their initial success in the late 80's at Syracuse University: "What Can You Do With a Taxidermy Major?" "Cable Ready" and "The Palm Tree Song," a lament on spending one's last dollar on a two-week vacation.
The quintet consists of the drummer Matt Pedone, the singer-percussionist Scott Lehr, the bass player Don Martin and the guitarists Mark Czuj and Dave Parsons.
Tongue-in-Groove's eight members have become a popular attraction in Fairfield County. Andrew Gromiller, the lead singer, and Eddie Beard, guitarist, met while studying at the Berklee College of Music in Boston and formed the band in 1990, describing their style as funky soul. For more information, the number to call is 939-1474.
 
AN ARTIST-ARCHITECT
Indicating that it pays for Mom to take not only her daughters but also her sons to her workplace is a new art exhibition at the Hopper House Art Center in Nyack. Theodore Ceraldi, whose oil and acrylic landscapes will be on view there from next Saturday through June 26, was inspired to enter the world of art by frequent trips to the studios where his mother worked as a commercial artist.
Mr. Ceraldi is an adjunct instructor of design, painting and landscape drawing at Rockland Community College and an architect as well as a painter. His conceptual design for an artist's studio, which was shown at the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan, is in the Hopper House show.
Viewing hours are Saturdays and Sundays from 1 to 5 P.M.; a reception and gallery talk are to be held on June 12 at 3 P.M. Admission is free, but a $1 contribution will be welcome. Hopper House, the boyhood home of the painter Edward Hopper, is at 82 North Broadway. Call 358-0774 for more information.
 
MEDICARE DEMYSTIFIED
Older people will have an opportunity to sort out "The Maddening Maze of Medicare" at a free program by that name. The Northern Westchester Geriatric Committee, the Central Westchester Geriatric Committee and the County Office for the Aging are sponsoring the event, to be held Thursday from 9:30 to 11:30 A.M. at the White Plains Library.
The speaker will be Diane Archer of the Medicare Beneficiary Defense Fund in Manhattan, a nonprofit patient-advocacy organization financed by the State Office for the Aging. She will address the issues of maximizing home health care, resolving problems with Medicare claims and exploring common misconceptions about Medicare.
Open since 1989 but not yet well known, the fund publishes five brochures about various aspects of Medicare. They may be obtained for $1 each by writing to Medicare Beneficiary Defense Fund, 1460 Broadway, Eighth Floor, New York, N.Y. 10036.
A hot-line number, said Anne Burt, a spokeswoman for the organization, becomes available after contact has been established with a Medicare patient by letter. She added: "The staff will discuss the patient's problems by telephone then call and write to its contacts in the Medicare administration and to the patient's doctors. We will help file claims and even go to the claims hearing with the client." For more information about the library program call 241-3421; the library is at 100 Martine Avenue. The office number for the Medicare Beneficiary Defense Fund is (212) 869-3850.
 
THE VISUAL VIOLIST
Emanuel Vardi has had a long and distinguished career as a violist, but his paintings are the focus of attention in an exhibition at the Gallery in the Courtyard in Katonah through June 19.
His semi-abstract expressions of love for music, the instruments that produce it and the performers who coax the instruments to life are in the collections of many musicians and in institutions like the Bordighera Museum of Art in Italy.
The son of musical parents from Vilnius, Lithuania, who came to America, Mr. Vardi was a soloist with the NBC Symphony Orchestra under Arturo Toscanini and has performed at the White House for President Franklin D. Roosevelt. He teaches at the Manhattan School of Music and at Temple University in Philadelphia.
Visiting hours at the gallery are Mondays through Saturdays from 10 A.M. to 6 P.M., Sundays from noon to 6 P.M. The phone number there is 232-9511.
 
SPRING BULB SALE
Tuesday is the deadline for ordering bulbs and at the same time helping out the Scarsdale Historical Society.
Its yearly spring sale features more than 100 species, including anemones, snowdrops, fritillaria, wood hyacinths, amaryllis, allium, iris, narcissus, tulips, daffodils, and others. Color photos of every bulb on the list are on display at the society's headquarters at 937 Post Road. For information, call 723-1744.
 
'PETER PAN'
A student production of the Broadway musical "Peter Pan" will be presented for family audiences on Saturday at 3 P.M. and next Sunday at 2 P.M. at the Kids Theater in Mount Kisco. The cast, from 7 through 14 years old, was selected at auditions held by the show's producer, the three-year-old Dance, Drama and Song Performing Arts School of Bedford Hills. The company has been in rehearsal since February.
Tickets are $7 and can be reserved by calling 666-0223.   ELEANOR CHARLES

LOAD-DATE: May 29, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: The Mexican Mud Band is one of the attractions tonight at the Funk Fest in Port Chester.

Copyright 1994 The New York Times Company



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The New York Times

May 29, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

At Work;
Women's Pensions, Wilting Fast

BYLINE: By Barbara Presley Noble 

SECTION: Section 3;  Page 21;  Column 3;  Financial Desk 

LENGTH: 1018 words

HEALTH CARE legislation may be the only item on the agenda on Capitol Hill this year, but there is now a light at the end of the tunnel bright enough to put a glint in the eye of those who would overhaul other less-than-seamless social security systems. As anyone knows who periodically has a good denial-driven laugh at how much should be set aside for retirement -- to make up for all those profligate years of paying rent, clothing the kids and buying food with stagnating wages -- pensions are a trouble spot.
It may not seem so on the surface. Women working full time are more likely than ever before to have pension coverage, according to a survey released on Thursday by the Pension and Welfare Benefits Administration, a Labor Department agency. The percentage of women in full-time, private-sector jobs with pension coverage grew to 48 percent last year from 38 percent in 1972. Coverage for men in the same category and period seesawed, ending at 51 percent in 1993, down 4 percentage points from the peak year of 1979. 
 But, increasingly, workers are losing out on traditional coverage, in some cases because whole, heavily covered industries have virtually disappeared. Or they are taking on more direct responsibility for assuring their retirement income.
Although the overall number of employees covered by pensions has held steady and even increased slightly, much of the increase has come from 401(k) plans, which are unlikely to provide adequate retirement income, given the contributions many people can afford to make, some benefits experts say. Thirty-five percent of employers offered such plans in 1993, up from 25 percent in 1988, according to the survey.
Moreover, part-time workers are far less likely to have pension coverage than full-time workers: only 15 percent of part-time female workers and 8 percent of part-time male workers are covered -- not a happy trend given the recent increase in contingent and temporary jobs. Three times more women than men work part time.
It is the more sobering numbers that brought the reform-minded pension community together in Washington this month for a kind of omnibus presentation on aging and retirement. Senator Howard M. Metzenbaum, Democrat of Ohio, used the occasion to preview the Pension Bill of Rights Act of 1994, legislation he will introduce next month.
The immediate cause was the kickoff of the "Pensions Not Posies" campaign, a nationwide educational effort sponsored by the Women's Pension Policy Consortium in Washington and several other groups to raise the awareness of the link between poverty among elderly women and their lack of pension income and of their inadequate access to the pension system.
The elderly poor, for example, are disproportionately female: roughly half of the 65-and-over population is female, but three-quarters of the elderly poor are female. The median income from Social Security, pensions and investments -- excluding assets -- for men 65 and over was $14,183 in 1990, the last year for which such numbers are available. For women in the same age group, it was $8,044. As Olena Berg, who heads the Labor Department's pension unit, noted at the gathering, the pension benefits received by men rose 6 percent between 1978 and 1989, in real dollars, and declined 17 percent for women; in 1989, women's benefits amounted to 37 percent of what men received, down from 47 percent in 1978.
"If you're lucky enough to be 35 and in a $70,000-a-year job, everything is O.K.," said Cindy Hounsell, the consortium's coordinator, in an interview. "Except you'll probably still be dropping out of the work force," she said, referring to the greater responsibility of women for child-rearing and the greater likelihood they will give up their jobs when conflicts occur.

THE campaign, which will end next spring with the presentation of a "women's pension policy agenda" at the White House Conference on Aging, was called "Pensions Not Posies," Ms. Hounsell said, because women are often forced to leave jobs before their pensions are vested. "They are given a bouquet of flowers when what they really need is a pension," she said.
The consortium is working with 9 to 5, the National Association of Working Women, at grass-roots efforts to educate women on pension issues. Several chapters of 9 to 5, whose membership comes from the great majority of American women who work in traditionally "female" support staff jobs, have sponsored bag lunches to go over the consortium's "Guide to the Working Women's Pension Checklist."
"It's a big issue for our members," said Ellen Bravo, 9 to 5's Milwaukee-based director. "A lot are in undervalued women's jobs." They either don't have pensions or have less coverage. In some cases their husbands have lost pensions. She said even the younger members are worried about how they will finance their old age. "Everyone's feeling more vulnerable and conscious of not wanting to be naive," she said. "They don't see where the money will come from."
 
A Push for Pension Reform
 PENSION reform may go nowhere this year because of the 500-pound canary known as health care, but proponents want it on the agenda now. "It needs to be done because people are talking about it," said Nancy Coffey, a spokeswoman for Senator Howard M. Metzenbaum, the Ohio Democrat who will introduce the Pension Bill of Rights Act of 1994 after the Memorial Day recess. The measure would guarantee:
* Inclusion in an employer-sponsored pension plan.
* Fair treatment in earning retirement benefits.
* Timely access to information about pension and welfare benefits.
* Advice on the investment of plan assets.
* Adequate financing and secure investing.
* Labor Department help in protection of pension and welfare benefit rights.
* Court enforcement of legal rights.
* Equitable treatment of spouses of employees at death or divorce.
* Pension portability.
* Protection against fraud and abuse.
Introduction of the measure comes 20 years after the last large-scale reform of the pension system, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974.

LOAD-DATE: May 29, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Olena Berg, head of the Labor Department's Pension and Welfare Benefits Administration. (Stephen Crowley/The New York Times)

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The New York Times

May 29, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

NEIGHBORHOOD REPORT: UPPER WEST SIDE;
Synagogues Propose a Ritual Fence

BYLINE: By RANDY KENNEDY 

SECTION: Section 14;  Page 5;  Column 1;  The City Weekly Desk 

LENGTH: 601 words

If everything goes according to plan, Adeena Penner will soon be able push her 2-year-old daughter in a stroller to the Lincoln Square Synagogue.
Her husband, Marc, who is to become an assistant rabbi at the synagogue soon, will be able to carry keys to get the family back into their apartment after services. 
 These are things that the couple, and thousands of other Orthodox Jewish families on the Upper West Side, are not allowed to do now during the Sabbath because of religious laws that prohibit them from doing 39 types of work, including carrying things, from sunset Friday until Saturday night.
But now, concerned about losing congregants because of the strictness of the laws, the leaders of two large Orthodox synagogues have begun negotiations with the city to construct an eruv, or religious fence, around the entire Upper West Side. By extending the symbolic boundaries of a private home, the eruv would allow some of the restrictions to be relaxed.
The plan, being advanced by the Lincoln Square synagogue, at Amsterdam Avenue and 69th Street, and Ohab Zedek, at 95th Street between Columbus and Amsterdam Avenues, has been discussed by the area's 14 Orthodox synagogues for a decade. It would rely mostly on existing structures, like buildings, the wall along Central Park West and walls and fences in Riverside Park.
The complex laws governing the construction of an eruv allow for some gaps in the boundary, which are considered doorways. But where spaces between fences or buildings are too great, the leaders propose to string translucent 100-pound fishing line between light poles or in trees. They say the lines would be almost impossible to detect.
Rabbi Penner, who is in charge of the plans, says that many Orthodox Jews have begun to move away from the Upper West Side to attend synagogues within eruvs in Brooklyn, New Jersey, Connecticut and upstate New York because the rules against carrying make going to services so difficult. Baby sitters must be hired, he said, and keys left with doormen or friends. The rules sometimes prevent elderly people who use canes or walkers from attending synagogue at all.
"We are really losing a lot of people on the West Side, which makes the eruv imperative," he said.
But proponents of the eruv are proceeding cautiously. Similar proposals in the New York area and elsewhere have drawn opposition from civil libertarians and have also exposed divisions in the Jewish community.
In London last year, a plan to build a six-square-mile eruv was opposed by preservationists who thought it would mar the landscape. Some were accused of anti-Semitism.
Rabbi Penner said he had worked to keep other synagogues informed and had not experienced any serious opposition yet. He said he was more worried about those who will view the boundary as a violation of the separation of church and state.
Arthur Eisenberg, legal director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said the organization would monitor the plan. But he said that his group would probably not get involved because the construction would not require substantial entanglement between the city and the synagogues.
Martin Algaze, Manhattan coordinator for the Mayor's community assistance unit, said city officials foresaw no problems, so far.
Rabbi Irving Greenberg, president of the Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, a progressive Orthodox organization, said of possible religious opposition: "The fact that they're going ahead probably means that they've done their nose counting and figure that there won't be big opposition."   RANDY KENNEDY

LOAD-DATE: June 3, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


GRAPHIC:  The construction of an eruv (pronounced AY-ruv) goes back at least 2,500 years in Jewish law. Orthodox Judaism prohobits any form of work, including carrying a child, pushing a baby stroller, keeping keys or a pen in one's pocket or using a cane, on the Sabbath. But an eruv (the word eruv comes from the Hebrew, meaning "to join together") permits certain kinds of carrying by extending the symbolic boundaries of a private home. More than 100 cities and towns have eruvs.
 
SOME EXISTING ERUVS
 
Queens: Covers a 90-block area on the Rockaway Peninsula.
Lawrence, L.I.: Cuts across several villages and encompasses 15 square miles.
Boston: Encompasses 18 square miles, one of the largest eruvs in the United States.
Orlanda: Circles a 57-acre Hyatt hotel complex with an unbroken strand of rope.
 
PROPOSED SITE: Upper West side of Manhattan. The eruv would have actual physical boundaries. For example, it would use existing walls along the West Side Highway and Central Park. Where boundaries do not exist, fishing line would be strung up in trees and the tops of lampposts.
 
Map of Manhattan showing location of the Eruv.
Chart: "RELIGION: What Is an Eruv?"

Copyright 1994 The New York Times Company



198 of 457 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times

May 30, 1994, Monday, Late Edition - Final

Review/Theater;
D-Day Get-Together With a Captive Guest List

BYLINE: By WILBORN HAMPTON 

SECTION: Section 1;  Page 13;  Column 2;  Cultural Desk 

LENGTH: 461 words

As D-Day veterans gather for the 50th anniversary of the Allied landings in Normandy, proving Vera Lynn a prophet, it seems only fitting that some small commemoration be held for the pilots, navigators, gunners and bombardiers who flew vital missions out of Italy against industrial targets inside Germany.
"The Last Sortie," a play by George Rattner at Theater for the New City, provides a nostalgic fly past for one American crew of the Allied Heavy Bomber Force, which flew B-17's out of an old German airfield at Foggia. 
 Set in a makeshift officer's club and moving back and forth between 1944-45 and an anniversary reunion in April 1990 (presumably the 45th of the Italian surrender), the dialogue is mostly a trip down memory lane, complete with a simulated bomb run in a Flying Fortress and padded with barracks banter about sex. But while these recollections might play well for the old bomber wing, to anyone else they quickly take on all the fascination of a Saturday night social at a V.F.W. hall.
In the second act, it soon becomes clear that this particular reunion is taking place in that great briefing room in the sky, and the reminiscences turn into a sort of "how did we get here from there" exercise of disgruntled old men for whom life once seemed to hold great promise. Mr. Rattner tries to build dramatic tension around an incident in which the crew members, eager for their 50th mission so they can go home, blame another flier for the mistaken downing of a German escort plane. But the victim of this betrayal, who is court-martialed and comes to a bad end, is not even a character, and the episode, which could have provided some emotional spark, is undeveloped.
The performances are uneven, with some actors seeming unsure of their characters. Exceptions include Steven Stahl, who is consistently convincing as Colonel McKay, and Christopher Healy, who is engaging as the conscientious young Grant. David Rosenbaum is credible as the older Joel, who traded neurosurgery for a Hollywood silicone practice, and Frank S. Palmer is mysterious as Justino, the otherworldly host at the reunion. Robert Landau directed.
 
The Last Sortie
Theater for the New City
155 First Avenue, at 10th Street
East Village
Through June 5
 
Written by George Rattner; directed by Robert Landau; set and lighting by Fred Kolo; costumes by Helen E. Rodgers; sound by Gary Harris and Timmy Harris; production stage manager, Marybeth Ward. Presented by Theater for the New City, Bartenieff/ Field, in association with James Di Paola and Wind Merchant Productions.
 
WITH: Fred Burrell, Anthony Grasso, Christopher Healy, Alan Levine, Kevin Martin, Frank S. Palmer, David Rosenbaum, Edward Seamon, Steven Stahl and Michael Twaine.

LOAD-DATE: May 30, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Alan Levine, left, and Christopher Healy in a scene from George Rattner's play "The Last Sortie," at Theater for the New City. (Andy Warren/"The Last Sortie")

TYPE: Review

Copyright 1994 The New York Times Company



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The New York Times

June 1, 1994, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Charges Against Tong President Threaten a Chinatown Institution

BYLINE: By SETH FAISON 

SECTION: Section A;  Page 1;  Column 5;  Metropolitan Desk 

LENGTH: 1680 words

A few dozen elderly men gather each day in the main hall of the Tung On Association on Division Street in Manhattan to drink tea and play mah-jongg beneath dusty paintings of George Washington and the Chinese leader Sun Yat-sen, restlessly clacking their colored tiles against the tops of worn wooden tables.
Members of the Tung On like to say that their association is as innocent as their afternoon gatherings. But Federal prosecutors say they can prove otherwise, and they have charged Clifford Wong, the Tung On's longtime president, with leading a criminal enterprise that killed 10 people and participated in many other crimes, like armed robbery and heroin trafficking. 
 The Tung On case has lifted a curtain on one of the most enduring mysteries about Chinatown: how leaders of tongs, or fraternal organizations, sometimes rely on street gangs and professional killers to protect and expand their businesses, many of them gambling operations.
For prosecutors, the case is a milestone. While they have periodically cracked down on street gangs during the last decade, until now they have never been able to link the violent acts of a gang to a tong. "We've never gone to a level this high before," said Catherine E. Palmer, the Federal prosecutor in the case, who has won convictions in several Asian organized crime cases during the last eight years. "We're talking about tong leaders here."
The central figure in the Tung On case is Mr. Wong, 39, a man with a slightly puffy face and a head of thick, black hair. Prosecutors portray him as a powerful businessman who owned race horses and restaurants in Florida and New York City, and who had close friends in the Hong Kong underworld. Acquaintances say that Mr. Wong also suffered from a gambling addiction. A secretive man rarely seen in Chinatown without two bodyguards, Mr. Wong cultivated the reputation of someone with dangerous friends to impress and intimidate his financial partners, and often exaggerated the extent of his wealth, acquaintances say.
Mr. Wong's lawyer, Barry Schulman, would not comment on the charges against his client, who is being held without bail in a Federal detention center in Brooklyn. A trial is scheduled for October.
Unlike Mafia crime families, law enforcement officials say, Asian crime networks are loosely organized, making it difficult to track patterns of wrongdoing. To minimize their risk in any given criminal enterprise -- whether operating a gambling den, importing heroin or smuggling illegal immigrants -- businessmen like Mr. Wong rarely act alone and frequently shift partners.
Court records and interviews with tong members show that Mr. Wong's downfall came after prosecutors found gang members willing to provide evidence that he ordered crimes to protect his gambling operations.
With about 120 active members, the Tung On led by Mr. Wong has traditionally been known as the third most influential of Chinatown's 70 tongs, after the Hip Sing on Pell Street and the On Leong on Mott Street. The Fukien-American Association on East Broadway has also become more prominent in recent years.
 
Aid for Immigrants
 In most of its functions, the Tung On is a legitimate association of businessmen and immigrants from the same part of China, with an executive board, monthly meetings and a banquet at Chinese New Year. When it was established early this century, named for two counties abutting Hong Kong whence its members came, the tong was like an unofficial social service center, helping new immigrants locate relatives and find a place to stay.
In recent decades, those functions dropped off as the pattern of immigration from China shifted to other parts of the country. But tong members say the Tung On is still a social anchor for people far from their native land.
Prosecutors say that like many other tongs, it was also a regular home to illegal gambling operations.
 
Youths From Hong Kong
 The need for guards, bouncers and debt collectors for the gambling operation led to the tong's hiring of disaffected young men from Hong Kong, said a member of the Tung On, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. A gang emerged in the 1970's. While it owed its main business to the tong, he said, it was involved in other crimes on its own, like muggings and kidnappings.
The ties between the Tung On and its street gang were symbiotic, the association member said. The Tung On relied on its gang to safeguard its gambling operations, and through the association, the gang gained prestige and the right to collect protection money from merchants along Division Street. Gang members sometimes frequented tong headquarters, but were rarely allowed to join.
The gang, calling itself the Tung On Boys, did not try to hide the identity of its parent association, and the name similarity confused people outside Chinatown about the relationship between the two. But while the tong was a permanent club of men over 30, the gang was an ever-changing collection of 80 or 90 youths divided into separate factions that competed for work.
"When the tong needed the gang for a job, the leader decided which faction to assign it to," said Ko-lin Chin, an assistant professor at Rutgers University who has written extensively about Chinese gangs. "A tong leader determined who headed the gang, and could replace or discredit him."
Mr. Wong was president of the tong from 1984 until his arrest late last year. Some tongs designate a lesser member of their executive board to be their liaison with a gang, Mr. Chin said. But at the Tung On, the member of the association said, it was Mr. Wong himself who directed the gang.
 
Headed by Tigerboy
 For several years, the Tung On Boys were headed by Mr. Wong's younger brother, Steven Wong, known as Tigerboy, until he was convicted of narcotics trafficking in 1988. He is serving a 15-year sentence. A successor, Sonny Mei, was arrested in December.
Prosecutors say they can show that there was a clear arrangement between gang and tong.
"Gang members slept in the Tung On Association, stored their guns and other weapons in the Tung On Association, and frequently met at the Tung On Association to plan their illegal activities, such as murders, assaults and extortions," they wrote in an indictment.
Although Mr. Wong is the only leader of the Tung On charged in the indictment, the association's fate is now tied to his. Using racketeering charges, the authorities have filed forfeiture proceedings that threaten to confiscate the tong's headrters, where elderly men play mah-jongg each afternoon.
 
Breaking Sixence
 Kee Chong, who replaced Mr. Wong as president of the Tung On early this year, broke the tong's practice of silence toward outsiders and agreed to an interview to talk about the tong and to defend its right to exist. He denied any formal connection between the Tung On and the Tung On Boys, but conceded that young men he could not control sometimes hung around tong headquarters.
"I know what people are saying," said Mr. Chong, 53, during a break from his nightly shift as a manager at the New Hong Kong City Restaurant on Division Street, of which he is a co-owner. "But none of our current members have anything do with organized crime."
Mr. Chong said the Tung On is financed by $1-a-game fees at its mah-jongg tables, by its $25 annual membership fee and by the rent from a restaurant downstairs. He declined to discuss the association's annual budget, but suggested that it was modest.
"We are a nonprofit organization," added Mr. Chong, a slight, balding man who said proudly that he is a United States Army veteran.
In 1991, Mr. Wong's troubles mounted. He was subpoenaed to appear before a Congressional subcommittee, where he declined to answer questions about his role in organized crime. He and his wife, Charlyne, also filed for personal bankruptcy to keep a bank from foreclosing on their Staten Island home.
The beginning of the end for Mr. Wong came in February 1992, when a Stuyvesant High School student, mistaken for a rival gang member, was shot and killed in a crowded pool hall in Greenwich Village by three members of the Tung On Boys. It was one of the 10 murders in the indictment, covering a period from 1986 to 1993.
At 11:30 on a Friday night, three men wearing black ski masks entered Le Q pool hall on East 12th Street, where a noisy crowd of beer-drinking teen-agers surrounded several billiards tables. All three men pointed semiautomatic handguns at a cluster of Asian-American teen-agers and fired more than 15 shots, the police said at the time.
James Rou, 17, was killed instantly. Four others were injured. The three gunmen, aged 19, 20, and 21, were caught trying to escape and identified by the police as members of the Tung On Boys.
The police were surprised to discover that the victims were not members of the Ghost Shadows, as the gunmen believed. Rather, Mr. Rou was simply a studious teen-ager from Queens who attended Stuyvesant.
Each of the gunmen later pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 19 years. None are charged in the current indictment, but prosecutors say it was information from that incident that began a long investigation into the Tung On Boys and the association behind it.
With the cooperation of several gang members, investigators were able to piece together evidence on a total of 10 killings, including the 1987 murder of two men in a livery cab in Brooklyn that had remained unsolved. The February 1992 shooting, they found, was ordered by Mr. Wong; Paul Lai, the leader of a second tong, the Tsung Tsin, and four members of the gang.
Mr. Mei, the gang leader, relayed the order to his underlings that "blood must flow," according to the indictment.
The shooting, intended to kill a member of a rival gang that was trying to encroach on a gambling operation, instead hit an innocent teen-ager.
In the end, Mr. Wong, who depended on the loyalty of gang members for years, lost it. He was arrested at at 3 A.M. one day last December, as he emerged from a Chinatown restaurant.

NAME: Clifford Wong

LOAD-DATE: June 1, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photos: Members of the Tung On in Chinatown say their association is merely a place where tea is drunk and mah-jongg played, but prosecutors have charged the tong president with heading a criminal enterprise that has caused 10 killings and other crimes. Men played mah-jongg last month. (Steve Hart for The New York Times); Clifford Wong, the association's president, has been charged with leading a criminal enterprise. (Associated Press) (pg. B5)

TYPE: Biography

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The New York Times

June 1, 1994, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

METRO DIGEST

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

LENGTH: 519 words


NEW YORK CITY
 
CHARGES THREATEN AN INSTITUTION
A few dozen elderly men gather each day in the main hall of the Tung On Association to drink tea and play mah-jongg. Members like to say that their association is as innocent as their gatherings. But Federal prosecutors have charged Clifford Wong, the Tung On's longtime president, with leading a criminal enterprise that killed 10 people and participated in armed robbery and heroin trafficking. A1.
 

PARKS DEPT. ALTERS POLICY AFTER MELEE
A day after 20 concertgoers were arrested in a bottle-throwing clash with the police in Tompkins Square Park, the Parks Commissioner said that his department would make it more difficult for promoters to obtain permits for concerts in public parks. B3.
 
CROWN HTS. SETTLEMENT TO BE OFFERED
The lawyer for a group of Hasidic leaders in Brooklyn said that he would propose a settlement in the Federal lawsuit against the city and former Mayor David N. Dinkins stemming from the racial violence in Crown Heights in 1991. B3.
 
CHASED BY OFFICERS, A MAN DIES
Two undercover investigators seeking inmates who absconded from state prison work-release programs spotted a man in Brooklyn who they believed closely resembled one of the escaped inmates. After a chase, the man fell to his death from a building roof, the police said. B3.
 
POLICE TO GATHER DATA ON THE DISTURBED
The Police Department is beginning a pilot program to improve how it gathers information about people with serious emotional problems who are taken to hospital emergency rooms. B5.
 
COMPTROLLER WARNS OF EXCESS OPTIMISM
City Comptroller Alan G. Hevesi said that Mayor Giuliani's proposed budget includes measures that may fall hundreds of millions of dollars short of the Mayor's anticipations. B5.
It was the work of the devil when someone broke into the shop of the angels. B3.
 
REGION
 
EAGLE BREEDERS SET A RECORD
Giving eaglets a beak-to-talon medical exam is not all that difficult; the tricky part is getting them down from their nest atop a 75-foot pine tree. That is how Lawrence J. Niles, of New Jersey's Division of Fish, Game and Wildlife, came to be scaling the tree, and lowering two six-week-old eaglets, one at a time, in a blue canvas gym bag. B4.
 
FORMER COMPANION KILLS WOMAN
A woman who had obtained two orders of protection against her former companion was killed when the man broke into her home, shot her in the head and then killed himself in front of their two sons, the Suffolk County police said. B4.
 
EX-INSPECTOR FOR F.D.A. GUILTY IN BRIBERY
A former inspector for the Federal Food and Drug Administration was convicted of paying and conspiring to take bribes to allow tons of rotting seafood into the country. B4.
 
BIKE HELMET LAW IS FOUND TO SAVE LIVES
In the first full year of New Jersey's bicycle helmet law, bicycle-related fatalities among the youngsters covered fell 80 percent, from 10 deaths to 2. C10.
The authorities have learned the identities of the teen-agers killed in the crash of a stolen car. B4.
 About New York by Michael T. Kaufman B3

LOAD-DATE: June 1, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Graph: "PULSE: Office Rent" shows the average annual asking rent in dollars per square foot. (Source: Edward S. Gordon Company)

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June 1, 1994, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Public & Private;
The Nurse Paradigm

BYLINE: By ANNA QUINDLEN 

SECTION: Section A;  Page 21;  Column 1;  Editorial Desk 

LENGTH: 735 words

An apple a day keeps the nurse away? Don't worry, you'll get used to the idea.
Because one of the most revolutionary parts of health care reform in America is bound to be the burgeoning role that nurses will play, including providing many of the services that were once confined to physicians. Their new prominence will benefit patients -- and raise some questions about the importance of tender loving care and the economic value of medical services. 
 Exhibit A in what the president of Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in New York City calls "a major paradigm shift" is that hospital's decision to give its nurse practitioners admitting privileges, further blurring the line between what doctors do and what nurses can.
This shift is apparent in many areas of the medical center, from the geriatric floor where Shelly Dubin is overseeing the treatment of a group of elderly patients to the primary care clinic in which Lisa Henderson is diagnosing childhood ear infections and prescribing antibiotics. Neither likes to be called doctor, because they aren't. They have seen the future, and in it nurse practitioners can order diagnostic tests, immunize and deliver babies, perform physicals, now even admit patients to the hospital.
Like a corporation that doesn't work, medicine -- or health care, as those dedicated to reform prefer to call it -- is being forced to change because of dissatisfaction from both within and without. Physicians will still be involved in specialty treatment of serious medical conditions, as they are today, but nurses may well step into the primary care and preventive medicine breach. Some say that they've been surreptitiously providing such care for years, along with the caring some patients complain doctors lack.
One issue surrounding an expanded role for nurses is whether it will save money or become an opportunity for long-overdue salary increases. Since studies show that nurses spend more time with patients, savings may be eroded by fewer patient visits per day -- or realized at the cost of the humane treatment some find such a signal part of nursing. And since nurses are one of the largest groups of female professionals in the nation, using them to cut costs raises troubling questions about equal pay standards, particularly if they are providing services once provided by doctors.
"I won't frame this as an economic argument," said Martha Orr, executive director of the New York State Nurses Association. "Nurses have long been under-recognized and under-appreciated, economically and otherwise, and that should change.  But quality of service is where we should put the emphasis. And we can provide all kinds of care in a more humane and a cost-effective way."
Dr. William T. Speck, the president of Columbia-Presbyterian, says that in his hospital, which is both a prominent teaching and research center and the health care nucleus of a sprawling urban area, giving nurse practitioners more authority simply made good sense.
For years doctors and nurses played a hierarchical game in which nurses could only suggest treatment that only a doctor could give. ("Doctor, it appears that the patient is dead" is one of the bitter little examples nurses use to illustrate this dance of deference.) But more recently nurse practitioners have been providing a range of medical services, both in rural areas and in inner-city hospitals, like Columbia-Presbyterian, where there simply were not enough primary care providers -- or enough interest in poor patients -- to go around.
"It was always clear that the nurses knew as much about some things as the doctors, and more about others," said Dr. Susan Spear, the medical director of community health services for Columbia-Presbyterian. "But they were artificially prevented from doing all they could for patients."
That simply won't do anymore.  While the use of nurses and nurse practitioners in growing areas of patient care will require some adjustment for patients and doctors and some thoughtful resolution of salary issues, it is clearly the future of health care in a system that must be reconfigured around needs, not job titles. To watch the nurse practitioners at Columbia-Presbyterian go about their appointed rounds is to see the necessary being done competently by the qualified. And if some patients call them doctor -- well, they'll learn to say nurse soon enough.

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LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

TYPE: Op-Ed

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June 3, 1994, Friday, Late Edition - Final

Fleet Week, More Nostalgic Than Ever

SECTION: Section C;  Page 26;  Column 3;  Weekend Desk 

LENGTH: 1026 words


Fleet Week
 
Regattas, concerts, street fairs and exhibitions will all be part of Fleet Week in New York City this weekend. Here are the events open to the public. Admission is free unless otherwise noted. Information for most events: (212) 245-0072.
Today
 
COAST GUARD AND NAVAL SHIP TOURS, Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum, Pier 86, 12th Avenue at West 46th Street, Manhattan. A tour of ship interiors; 1 to 4 P.M. 
 
COAST GUARD AND NAVAL SHIP TOURS, Naval Station, Stapleton Pier, Staten Island; 1 to 4 P.M.
 
50TH-ANNIVERSARY SALUTE TO D-DAY, WQEW-AM (1560). Radio broadcasts with recorded music from the war years, reminiscences of World War II by celebrities and radio listeners, and live interviews with Freddie Roman, comedian (tomorrow at 4 P.M.), and Maureen McGovern, singer (Sunday at 4 P.M.). Continuous through Monday evening.
 
Tomorrow
 
TUNA YACHT CLUB REGATTA, Great Kills Harbor, Staten Island; Homeport, Pier 1, Stapleton, S.I. A "Farewell to the Navy" regatta, with 100 private ships, will sail from Great Kills Harbor to Homeport, Pier 1, where fireboats and other boats join in, and then head back to Great Kills Harbor, where there will be a blessing of the fleet; 8 A.M. to 1 P.M. From 2 to 6 P.M., a street fair with rides and food will be held along Mansion Avenue in the Great Kills Harbor area.
 
EASTERN FRONT COMMEMORATION, Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum. A salute to Russians who fought on the front, with remarks by the Russian Ambassador and other diplomats; 11 A.M. Admission: $7; $6 for the elderly and veterans; $4 for children under 12.
 
NEWPORT NAVY BAND CONCERT, Armed Forces Plaza, Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum. A performance by the Navy Band from Newport, R.I.; 1 P.M.
 
FLEET WEEK REGATTA, Battery Park City, promenade south of North Cove Marina. A race in New York harbor between boats provided by members of the Manhattan Yacht Club and sailed by crew members from visiting ships; 1:30 P.M.
 
SHIP TOURS, Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum. A viewing of ship interiors; 1 to 4 P.M.
 
VOLLEYBALL TOURNAMENT, Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum. Games between teams from each of the visiting ships, on the flight deck of the Intrepid; 1 to 4 P.M. Admission: $7; $6 for the elderly and veterans; $4 for children under 12.
 
NAVY BAND CONCERT, Snug Harbor Cultural Center, 1000 Richmond Terrace, Livingston, S.I. A performance by the Navy Band from Newport, R.I. Awards will be given to those on Staten Island who have helped in the project to build the Homeport; 8 P.M.
 
Sunday
 
LIBERATION OF ROME COMMEMORATION, Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum. Ship bells and church bells will ring for three minutes to commemorate the liberation of Rome and the Vatican City. The Vatican representative to the United Nations will bless the fleet in the harbor; Noon.
 
INTERNATIONAL NAVAL CUISINE COMPETITION, Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum. "The best chow in the Navy" will be prepared by the ship's cooks and judged by chefs from some of New York City's restaurants; 12:45 P.M.
 
MILITARY BAND CONCERT, Armed Forces Plaza, Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum. A performance by the Fort Hamilton Band from Brooklyn; 1 P.M.
 
COAST GUARD AND NAVAL SHIP TOURS, Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum. Viewing today includes the USS Kearsage, an amphibious assault ship, which will be open for viewing from 1 to 3 P.M. Viewing hours: 1 to 4 P.M.
 
COAST GUARD AND NAVAL SHIP TOURS, Stapleton Pier, Staten Island; 1 to 4 P.M.
 
GOVERNORS ISLAND TOUR. A tour of the historic buildings on the island and the interiors of Coast Guard ships. Noon to 4 P.M. Free ferry service to the island is available every 15 minutes, beginning at noon, from the Coast Guard Ferry terminal at South Ferry in lower Manhattan.
 
TUG-OF-WAR TOURNAMENT, Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum. Matches between teams from visiting ships; 3 to 4 P.M. Admission: $7; $6 for the elderly and veterans; $4 for children under 12.
 
Monday
 
D-DAY, LANDINGS AT NORMANDY, Destroyer Edson, Pier 86, Hudson River at 46th Street, Manhattan. Wreaths representing each Allied nation that fought in Europe will be dropped into the water from the Destroyer Edison by a member of the armed forces from the country; 11 A.M.
 
COAST GUARD AND NAVAL SHIP TOURS, Piers 86 and 88, Hudson River at 46th and 48th Streets, Manhattan; 1 to 4 P.M.
 
COAST GUARD AND NAVAL SHIP TOURS, Stapleton Pier, Staten Island; 1 to 4 P.M.
 
Tuesday
 
COAST GUARD AND NAVAL SHIP TOURS, Piers 86 and 88, Hudson River at 46th and 48th Streets, Manhattan; 1 to 4 P.M.
 
COAST GUARD AND NAVAL SHIP TOURS, Stapleton Pier, Staten Island; 1 to 4 P.M.
 
Wednesday
 
SHIP DEPARTURES, lower New York Harbor. Visiting ships leave Piers 86 and 88 and travel down the Hudson River to the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge and out to sea; 8 A.M. Best viewing sites: Liberty and Ellis Islands. In Manhattan: Battery Park, Battery Park City and the Greenwich Village piers. In Brooklyn: Shore Road in Bay Ridge, Gravesend Bay and 69th Street Pier in Gravesend section. On Staten Island: Staten Island Ferry and Terminal, South Beach Boardwalk, the Naval Station in Stapleton and Richmond Terrace. In New Jersey: Liberty State Park; Exchange Place in Jersey City; Castle Point Lookout in Hoboken, and Boulevard East in Weehawken.
 
Other D-Day Events
 
Tomorrow
 
100-GUN SALUTE, Belvedere Castle, Central Park, entrance at Central Park West and 79th Street. A ceremony by the Veteran Corps of Artillery in observance of the 50th anniversary of D-Day; noon.
 
Tuesday
 
"WORDS OF WAR: DOCUMENTS OF WORLD WAR II FROM THE FORBES MAGAZINE COLLECTION," Forbes Magazine Galleries, 62 Fifth Avenue, at 12th Street, Greenwich Village. An exhibition that includes a personal letter from Gen. Charles de Gaulle to Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower asking for help from the Allies and a handwritten log that includes an eyewitness account of the bombing of Hiroshima by Robert Lewis, the co-pilot of the bomber Enola Gay. Through September 1995. Hours: Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays, 10 A.M. to 4 P.M. Free. Information: (212) 206-5549.

LOAD-DATE: June 3, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

TYPE: Schedule

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June 4, 1994, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

THE D-DAY TOUR: THE OVERVIEW;
Honoring G.I.'s in an Unsung Campaign

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

SECTION: Section 1;  Page 6;  Column 4;  Foreign Desk 

LENGTH: 1155 words

DATELINE: NETTUNO, Italy, June 3

Surrounded by the graves of 7,862 Americans who fell during the drive to liberate southern Italy half a century ago, President Clinton urged his countrymen this morning "not only to praise their deeds but to pursue their dreams."
"We are the sons and daughters of the world they saved," the President said at the high point of a brief, dignified ceremony that marked not only the Allied entry into Rome on June 4, 1944, but also the fierce fighting in Sicily and up and down the boot of Italy. 
 It is the job of Americans today, he added, to make "common cause" with other countries "to ensure a world of peace and prosperity for yet another generation."
Seated before him were survivors of the Italian campaign, old men and women now, a few leaning on canes or using wheelchairs, many wearing hearing aids, some spry. One had hooks where his hands had once been.  Most wore once again the blue-and-white stripes of the Third Infantry Division or the golden Thunderbird of the 45th, both of which struggled in the bitterly contested Anzio beachhead.
 
Grim Memories of Anzio
 Four Senators who fought in Italy were there -- Ernest F. Hollings, Democrat of South Carolina; Claiborne Pell, Democrat of Rhode Island; Bob Dole, Republican of Kansas, and Daniel Inouye, Democrat of Hawaii. Mr. Inouye lost an arm to a German hand grenade. Mr. Dole was grievously wounded in the shoulder by machine-gun fire.
John Shirley of Livermore, Calif., a retired veterinarian who served as a sergeant at Anzio, spoke before the President, telling of the grimness of the struggle there, with 100,000 men and women packed together in soggy foxholes and dugouts in miserable weather, desperately clinging to a dangerously constricted strip of sand.
"It was cold and difficult and dangerous," he said with soldierly understatement.
Neither he nor anyone else mentioned the dark secret of Anzio -- that in the first hours and days of the invasion, in January 1944, the road to Rome lay wide open, unpatrolled by German forces, as confirmed in the memoirs of Siegfried Westphal, the German chief of staff in Italy. But the American corps commander, Maj. Gen. John P. Lucas, who brought ashore more than 18,000 vehicles, waited too long to exploit his advantage and allowed the enemy to regroup.
 
Hell's Half Acre
 For his timidity, he was relieved of command. The British, Canadians, Americans, New Zealanders and others barely managed to avoid being pushed back into the sea, and there would be no breakout until late spring, when the dash for Rome began. In the meantime, hundreds died inside the perimeter.
So many casualties poured into one of the field hospitals that they christened it Hell's Half Acre, a former nurse recalled.
Churchill later wrote, "I hoped that we were throwing a wildcat onto the shore, but all we got was a stranded whale."
The long delay meant, among other things, that Rome was not freed until June 4. The lead elements of the 88th Infantry Division entered the Piazza Venezia, in the heart of the capital, at 7:30 that evening, only 24 hours before British and American paratroops began dropping into Normandy.
As Mr. Shirley noted today, the invasion in northern Europe quickly stole the limelight and led many veterans of the fighting in Italy to consider theirs "the forgotten campaign." The same thing will happen on Saturday, he said, when the President travels to Britain for three days of events there and in France, marking the 50th anniversary of D-Day.
 
Briefly in the Spotlight
 "But for today," Mr. Shirley added, to nods of approbation from many of the old soldiers, "the world's attention is focused on this American cemetery, and the Italian campaigns are not forgotten."
An American band played the Sailor's Hymn and Canadian bagpipers added their plaintive laments, underlining the solemnity of the speakers' words. Near the end, when buglers sounded taps and the band swung dolefully into the Dead March from Handel's "Saul," men wept.
But then jet fighters screamed low overhead, breaking the tension, the Italian formation trailing red, green and white smoke.
The cemetery, with its brightly blooming oleanders and its towering cypresses and Roman pines, had been groomed like a championship golf course for the occasion. At each of the headstones, arranged in gently curving lines, lay a single red or peach-colored carnation. At each, marked either by a white marble cross or a white marble Star of David, fluttered small Italian and American flags.
Fifty years ago, it was part of a stunted, treeless battlefield that "ran with the blood of those who fought to save the world," as Mr. Clinton said.
The President quoted Gen. Ernest Harmon, who commanded the First Armored Division at Anzio, as having said, "All of us were in the same boat.  We were there to stay or die. I have never seen anything like it in the two world wars of my experience."
 
'Italy Was Secondary'
 John W. Vessey Jr., who came ashore as a 22-year-old first sergeant and won a battlefield commission here, rose to be Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and negotiated with Hanoi on prisoner-of-war issues. He was on hand today, and he described Anzio as "the closest thing to World War I trench warfare as we ever got in World War II -- no mobility, a war of position, a few yards gained at a time."
He said that even at 22 he had known that "Italy was secondary, because the big battles were going to take place in France and later inside Germany."
"But that doesn't mean that what we did here wasn't important," the retired general added. "Some of their best divisions -- parachute divisions, crack troops -- were pinned down in Italy, which meant they weren't in Normandy. It taught us lessons that we put to good use later, and it cemented the alliance that has lasted, in most respects, up to this day."
William Robertson of Tuscaloosa, Ala., a private first class at Anzio, remembered that it was impossible to move except after dark, "because the Germans held all of the higher ground, and if they saw you, they shelled you."
 
A Spy in Rome
 But none of the German attacks succeeded, in part because of the exploits of agents of the Office of Strategic Service, the predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency. One of them, Peter Tompkins of Washington, now 75, also here for the ceremonies, said he had planted a mole inside the headquarters in Rome of Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, the German commander in Italy, who "told us when every assault was coming, where, with how much."
They were all "people ready to fight and sacrifice their own lives for the liberty of others," declared Oscar Luigi Scalfaro, the President of Italy.  "For this, Mr. President, my personal gratitude and that of the Italian people; for this, a profound, silent prayer to the God of Peace."
"Too many Americans," Mr. Clinton said, "do not know what that generation did."

LOAD-DATE: June 5, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: The front page of The New York Times for June 5, 1944, described the liberation of Rome.
 
Map of Italy showing location of Nettuno.

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June 5, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

The Value of Laughter, Especially in Older Age

BYLINE: By ROBERTA HERSHENSON 

SECTION: Section 14WC;  Page 23;  Column 1;  Westchester Weekly Desk 

LENGTH: 864 words

DATELINE: ARDSLEY

THE aging process may be nothing to laugh at, but growing older can provide rich opportunities for laughter.
This was the premise of a humor workshop held here recently that resembled nothing so much as a group therapy session. It was led by Izzy Gesell, a writer and humorist from Northampton, Mass., who takes his calling so seriously that he has formed a company called Wide Angle Humor to spread the word. 
 In his opening remarks at the free afternoon program, sponsored by the Town of Greenburgh Arts and Culture Committee and the Steinberg Senior Center, Mr. Gesell spoke of the perspective and balance a sense of humor can provide. He encouraged the 70 people in their 50's through 80's gathered in a room at Anthony Veteran Park here to notice what strikes them as funny in their daily lives and to use that self-knowledge to lighten their spirits.
To be successful at finding the humor around them, he told the group, they would need to take an honest look at themselves. "People see a stylized image of themselves when they look in the mirror," he said. "We don't want to see ourselves as less than perfect. But self-esteem is closely related to a sense of humor, and we need to be able to laugh at our imperfections."
Mr. Gesell, a balding, sad-eyed 46-year-old with a mustache, made it plain that the world frustrates and maddens him: there is aggravation at the supermarket, where the checkout clerk can't tell lettuce from rutabaga, and more on the highway, where other drivers are either idiots or maniacs. "The idiots drive more slowly than you do and the maniacs drive too fast, so there's always someone to be mad at," Mr. Gesell said.
But people needn't be victims of gut-wrenching stress, said Mr. Gesell, who holds a bachelor's degree in psychology and a master's degree in education. They can lift their own moods the way he lifts his, he said -- by doing something silly, like donning a pair of Groucho Marx eyeglasses with nose attached, or by summoning a particularly happy or funny memory. Everyone has these, he said, and the elderly have had time to gather more of them.
He asked his listeners to close their eyes and smile, and then he reminded them of psychologists' recent findings: when the facial muscles employed in smiling are exercised, pleasant feelings follow. Or, as Mr. Gesell put it, "Your body says: 'She's smiling -- she must be happy. I'm going to release the happy stuff.' "
To help the audience become more self-aware, he divided the group into pairs and asked people to tell each other the things that caused them stress. Some answers were dishonesty, taxes, family members, health problems, selfish people, driving, noise and shopping. Then he asked them to name the things that made them happy.
Suddenly the room buzzed loudly as people discussed their pleasures: food, sex, grandchildren, music, liquor, financial security.
"I have news for you," Mr. Gesell said. "There was a much higher level of intensity when you talked about your joys than about your stresses. Even thinking about your pleasures brings you pleasure."
 
Humor Is a Risky Business
 Mr. Gesell has conducted similar workshops with members of the United States House of Representatives and at many corporate headquarters.  He stresses that each life is an accumulation of buried jewels that can be uncovered to bring renewed joy. "To the emotion, the memory is as real as the actual event," he told the audience here.
On a more practical level, he urged people to remove their souvenirs and old photographs from storage boxes or albums and keep them in view. "Use photos of people, places or events that make you happy and spend your time connecting with them in your memory," Mr. Gesell said. "When you are feeling down, go through your stuff and find things that have happy memories for you."
"Can't memories make you melancholy?" a man asked.
"That's a danger," Mr. Gesell answered. "Humor is a risky business and always operates in ambiguity." But, he pointed out, sadness passes, and besides, "It's good to grieve."
 
It's All in the Delivery
 He had promised to teach the group how to tell a joke, and now it was time. Jokes also operate in ambiguity, Mr. Gesell said. "They are always about the kinds of problems people face and the solutions to the problems, seen from a different point of view."
Many people have trouble remembering jokes because "we don't know if we will like a joke until it's over," Mr. Gesell said. But, he added, a joke need not be told verbatim so long as its three main elements are mastered: the setup, the problem or conflict and the solution or punch line.
The details can always be varied to the teller's own taste, Mr. Gesell said, urging listeners to learn a joke, practice it in front of a mirror and try it out on someone.
"In Florida, a lot of widows are looking for a man who can drive at night," a man called out, and the audience, made up about equally of men and women, laughed.
"What makes us happy changes throughout our lives," Mr. Gesell said, without missing a beat. "For instance, I chose my second wife because she has brains, beauty and a job with a health plan."

LOAD-DATE: June 5, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Izzy Gesell, a humorist, leads workshops on laughter. (Roberta Hershenson for The New York Times)

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June 5, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Suspect in Queens Carjackings Is Arrested in North Carolina

BYLINE: By NORIMITSU ONISHI 

SECTION: Section 1;  Page 43;  Column 1;  Metropolitan Desk 

LENGTH: 516 words

The two-month hunt for a man suspected of robbing at least eight elderly Queens residents with a silver pistol ended quietly in North Carolina early yesterday when the local police acted on a tip and arrested him in a bar.
The suspect, Gerald Jerome, 27, of Brooklyn, was arrested about 2 A.M. in Rocky Mount, 50 miles east of Raleigh, the authorities said. 
 Mr. Jerome was sought in a series of attacks in several Queens neighborhoods between March 25 and April 19, including carjackings and the pistol-whipping and shooting of a 74-year-old woman. The police said he had been identified by robbery victims from a bank camera photograph.
Knowing that he had friends in North Carolina and might try to hide with them as photographs of his face were distributed, the New York City Police Department alerted the Rocky Mount police, said Sgt. Anthony Barlanti, a New York police spokesman.
 
Caught in a Nightclub
 In the last two and a half weeks, the suspect had shuttled between New York City and Rocky Mount, a city of 50,000, where he stayed with a female friend, said Sgt. Silvio Jacob, who is investigating the case for the Rocky Mount police. The friend is not being charged, he said.
Mr. Jerome was known to have other friends in the area, and sometimes they met at Morgan's Lounge, a reggae dance-bar in Rocky Mount, Sergeant Jacob said.
"We had an officer who worked there part-time," he said. "The officer located the subject coming into the lounge and called in for backup."
The suspect, who was alone at the club, was unarmed and did not resist arrest, the sergeant said.
Mr. Jerome was being held without bail in Nash County and is expected to be arraigned there on Tuesday.
The Queens District Attorney's Office obtained a warrant for Mr. Jerome's arrest after the April 15 gunpoint robbery of a Nissan 300ZX in Bayside.
 
A History of Elderly Prey
 The authorities said Mr. Jerome had a criminal record dating to his youth. In October 1984, when he was 17, he was convicted of robbing an elderly woman in Nassau County, according to the State Division of Parole, and was imprisoned for more than two years.
This year, the suspect, whom investigators called the Silver Gun Carjacker, operated in several communities in Queens including Bayside, Whitestone, Flushing, Auburndale and Richmond Hill, the police said. He followed elderly women and frail men from banks, where he watched to see how much money they withdrew, and accosted them with a silver pistol in their driveways, cars or garages, the police said. The robber took money, credit cards, and sometimes cars.
On April 19, in Whitestone, when a 74-year-old woman refused to surrender her money and car keys, the police said, the robber pistol-whipped and shot her. That same day, they said, he drove the woman's car to Richmond Hill, where he robbed a 79-year-old man and took his car.
Around that time, a camera at a bank in Flushing took a photograph of the suspect and several of his victims identified him. Detectives later matched the photograph with photographs from Mr. Jerome's record.

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June 5, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

District Attorney Offers Tips to the Elderly

BYLINE: By MERRI ROSENBERG 

SECTION: Section 14WC;  Page 21;  Column 1;  Westchester Weekly Desk 

LENGTH: 959 words

DATELINE: YONKERS

LIKE participants in some kind of support group, nearly all of the dozen elderly people gathered at the Jewish Community Center in Yonkers for a meeting on crime had a story to share.
Gertrude Kaufman, who lives in the southwestern section of the city, showed a visitor the safety pins she uses to keep her identification cards attached to her clothing in an effort to avoid loss should she be mugged. Hannah Goldberg, whose wallet was stolen from her bag at a supermarket, described her fear of taking the bus from her neighborhood to the Cross County Shopping Center or to downtown White Plains. 
 One 70-year-old woman, a lifelong resident of the same Yonkers neighborhood who declined to give her name, nearly wept as she chronicled her frustration at not being able to walk through a small park on her way to and from errands. And Rose Goldrich bemoaned the fact that a park, formerly a popular spot for the elderly to sit and sun themselves, had been taken over by loiterers.
"It isn't fair that you can't go out and sit in the parks anymore," Mrs. Goldrich said. Mrs. Goldberg, echoing a common concern, added: "Things are getting worse. I'm scared to take a bus, but why should I be so frightened?"
 
Hourlong Session
 The litany of distress and fear that so many of these elderly women expressed struck a poignant if familiar note to Peter Gormanly, an assistant district attorney who was meeting with the group as part of the Community Relations Program started by District Attorney Jeanine Pirro earlier this spring.
"I've done about five meetings so far, and this is very representative of the elderly's concerns," Mr. Gormanly said. During the hourlong session, he listened to complaints about high school students who harass the elderly at shops and about the fear many older people feel going back and forth to the bank alone. He also heard about the frustration that the threat of crime imposes on their daily lives.
He cautioned them about common ploys that criminals use to gain entry to their homes and offered suggestions as to how the elderly might protect themselves against fraud.
District Attorney Pirro had said earlier: "We want to address the specific law-enforcement concerns of a group, whether it is the P.T.A., Rotary Club, local business bureau or senior citizens. Then we can come back with some sense of what is going on in those communities.
"When we deal with senior citizens, we sense a tremendous amount of frustration, fear and concern. A big concern we are hearing has to do with home repairs and push-in burglaries. These are legitimate concerns. The elderly are afraid to walk the very streets they built.
"The world we live in is so different from the world they were raised in. They feel vulnerable. They fall prey to muggings, push-in burglaries and scams, whether it is telecommunications scams or home contractors. The assistant district attorneys are going to the public, talking about real crime-prevention tips and what individuals can do to minimize victimization -- although we are not placing the blame on the victim by any means."
 
A Different Statistical Picture
 The Community Relations Program, which is concerned primarily with providing an opportunity for members of the District Attorney's office to listen directly to citizens about crime in their communities and to offer specific tips, will be an ongoing process. The assistant district attorneys, who meet with community groups on their own time, will have conducted about 150 of these meetings from April through June.
Mr. Gormanly said: "We want to let you know that the District Attorney's office shares your concerns. We are listening to what you have to say, and we want you to know what we are doing so we are in a position to better serve you. I'm in court during the day, not in Shoprite, so we need you to be our eyes and ears. We have a commitment to you that the victimization of seniors has to stop. We will use all our resources to prosecute these people who make a living out of victimizing you."
Statistics indicate that the elderly are less likely to be victims than young adults, but their perception of crime has nevertheless affected their quality of life. According to a 1992 report from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, a Federal agency that is part of the National Institute of Justice, those 65 and older were victims of violent crime far less frequently than people 12 through 24. In the older group, 4 out of 1,000 people or households were victims, compared with 64 out of 1,000 in the younger group.
Still, Robert Maccarone, director of the county's Criminal Justice Services Department, said, "With the elderly, there is more of a perception of crime because they are more vulnerable." In a paradoxical illustration of the problem the meeting was designed to address, the relatively low turnout at the May 18 session reflected some elderly people's reluctance to confront the topic.
May had been designated National Senior Citizens Month, and "we thought it was something that would be of interest to older adults," said Linda Last, director of special projects for the Jewish Community Center-on-the-Hudson. "We scheduled it in daylight hours for senior citizens, because they won't come out at night, but many of the elderly don't want to deal with it and don't like to be reminded of unpleasant things. I think there is also a sense on the part of many of the elderly that there have been lots of promises made in the past, but nothing happens." The District Attorney's office said the community outreach program is designed to counter that perception.
"When the elderly are pushed around, the whole community suffers," Mrs. Pirro. "We want to try to make them feel safe."

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June 6, 1994, Monday, Late Edition - Final

From Retiree, a Legacy of Volunteerism

BYLINE: By KATHLEEN TELTSCH 

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

LENGTH: 695 words

Winifred Brown had a talent: She found volunteers willing to work without pay for New York City.
Now, after serving in five administrations as director of the Mayor's Voluntary Action Center, Miss Brown, 71, is retiring. 
 The city's mayors, past and present, agree she made municipal government run a little more smoothly.
"She brought help to New York when the city needed it," said John V. Lindsay who created the volunteer center in 1967 and often said it "revived the American tradition of neighborliness." Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani said, "No one has done more to promote volunteerism than Winnie Brown."
Over the years, Miss Brown and her staff found tax specialists willing to advise low-income residents on filing their tax forms, recruited lawyers to compile a handbook on the criminal-justice system and trained 5,000 census-takers. Retired teachers returned to schools to serve as mentors, police officers were recruited to work with adolescents and an army of younger volunteers went to work in parks, museums and centers for the elderly.
As director of the center at 61 Chambers Street, she operated from small, uncarpeted offices decorated largely with hand-me-down furnishings and overlooking an unimpressive rear view of City Hall. But she liked the location: Dodging traffic and using an outdoor rear staircase, she could be in City Hall in minutes.
 
The Discreet Miss Brown
 Miss Brown, whose last day on the job was Friday, is discreetly silent about the nonpublic side of government she glimpsed and how she regarded the mayors. "The Lindsay administration was so young it made all of us feel old," is all she will say.
But she does not mind talking about her own experiences, including a few near-disasters linked to another important part of her job: serving as a clearinghouse for goods donated to the city.
There was the time that a major food producer, who had generously provided thousands of meals for the homeless, asked her to take 3,000 pounds of garlic, for distribution, but not resale.
"We wound up giving it away in neighborhoods we knew liked spicy food," Miss Brown said. "For weeks, I walked the streets imagining I smelled garlic everywhere."
 
The Unmatched Shoe Fad
 On another occasion, an apparel maker gave her a carload of sample shoes, none of them paired. "We tried to start a fad among teen-agers of wearing unmatched shoes," she said. "It didn't take."
The center had no difficulty disposing of 37,000 children's books from Barnes and Noble, which it distributed last year to 128 city and nonprofit agencies serving disadvantaged youth.
And its clothing bank has given away three million items worth an estimated $30 million donated by manufacturers who wanted to unload heavy inventories and got a tax break as part of the bargain.
"We were brokers but we also learned to be scavengers," said Miss Brown. "When a hotel was redecorating, we asked for beds and bedding."
 
Helping the Jobless
 One of the center's major accomplishments involved helping the jobless acquire work skills, said former Mayor Edward I. Koch. As part of the training, the center set up classrooms resembling personnel offices to prepare job-seekers for interviews. The seventh "model office" opens today at Baisley Bay High School, Linden Boulevard and 142d Street in Queens.
"Winnie Brown was an incredible person," Mr. Koch said. "She helped create a whole class of New Yorkers, most of them young people who then were able to apply for jobs in the private sector."
She came to the volunteer center in 1969 with a resume that traced her life through many New York City neighborhoods. She was born in Washington Heights, went to school in Flushing, graduated from Queens College, and received a master's degree in English from Columbia University. She worked for the Junior Red Cross and the Camp Fire Girls in New York.
Now that she is leaving, she will be honored at a private reception tomorrow night at Tweed Court House. After that, she said, "I'll take a holiday and then I want to be a volunteer. I've been on boards of directors; now I want to do hands-on work, like helping adults to read."

NAME: Winifred Brown

LOAD-DATE: June 6, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Winifred Brown is retiring after serving as director of the Mayor's Voluntary Action Center through five administrations. (William E. Sauro/The New York Times)

TYPE: Biography

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June 6, 1994, Monday, Late Edition - Final

THE MEDIA BUSINESS: Advertising;
As baby boomers near 50, Keds goes after a new niche: casual footwear for today's 'mature' woman.

BYLINE: By Glenn Collins 

SECTION: Section D;  Page 8;  Column 3;  Financial Desk 

LENGTH: 755 words

O.K., advertising strategists of America, here are two demographic certainties: (1) The leading edge of the baby boom is turning 50. (2) Women of the baby-boom generation will not tolerate the conventions that many of their older Eisenhower-era sisters were accustomed to.
The big picture? There will be seismic changes in family relationships, employment patterns and the equality of opportunity for women. But advertisers, to be sure, are more interested in the small picture. The one that gives them a niche opportunity. 
 Such as? Well, baby-boom women want to be well grounded. Quite literally: They don't want to wear heels all the time. Unlike their older sisters, they won't willingly wear shoes that pinch. They are really, really tired of wearing sneakers to the office and they don't much like rummaging through a drawerful of work shoes in the desk.
They constitute a niche with a name: the mature casual footwear market, with revenues of $3 billion a year. While sales of dress shoes have been declining 5 percent a year, casual footwear sales have been growing by the same amount.
Enter the Keds Corporation.
Keds?
Today the company will attempt to establish a toehold in the older women's casual-shoe market by introducing a new line, Facets: shoes that can be worn to dinner or for a walk; for shopping or in an office where casual is not a dismissible offense.
"You wouldn't wear them on a five-mile run or at a formal dinner, but you'd wear them a lot of places in between," said Mindy Peterson, director of marketing and product development for the Facets brand. There will be 68 styles of Facets shoes; leather shoes will retail for about $50 or under, and canvas and linen models will sell for under $30 retail.
Ms. Peterson insists, as she must, that the Facets shoes will have all the comfort that cushioned rubber soles and latex-foam inner construction afford, but they will also provide the stylishness that baby-boom women are now demanding, she says. According to Ms. Peterson, the women's casual footwear market is quite fragmented, and no brand owns more than 6 percent of it.
Still, Keds may have a tough time. Easy Spirit has its canvas-ish sneaker collection; Nine West has its Calico and Spa lines of casual and dressier comfort shoes. Other major players are Rockport, Hush Puppies and Naturalizer.
The agency? Kirshenbaum & Bond, which at its debut in 1987 handled the Kenneth Cole shoe account, and has also represented Thom McAn footwear, as well as Snapple Beverage, Coach leather goods and Citibank.
The agency no longer handles Kenneth Cole. And to avoid potential conflicts with the Facets account, Kirshenbaum & Bond agreed to move its Thom McAn account in July to Mad Dogs & Englishmen, an independent agency partly owned by the Kirshenbaum & Bond principals, Jonathan Bond and Richard Kirshenbaum.
Kirshenbaum & Bond, with annual billings of $140 million, has done serious and it has done wacky. "We did wacky for Thom McAn, which needed to be jump started," said Bill Oberlander, the creative director for Facets. "There was a need for a young, irreverent voice."
But no wacky for Facets. "The campaign will be empathetic, upbeat, spirited, stylish," Mr. Oberlander said. Facets will reveal its campaign on June 24, and television ads will be rolled out in 7 to 10 spot markets when the shoes are introduced in the spring of 1995.
Mr. Oberlander said the campaign would get across the message that "there are scores of shoes that are incredibly comfortable but painful to the eye, and others that are stylish and painful to the foot." He added: "Facets is good to the eye and the foot." Sounds like a miracle ginseng derivative.
The Facets woman? She's between the ages of 40 and 60. "Her kids are now grown, she doesn't wake up in the morning and wonder how she can provide for her family," Mr. Oberlander said. "She is re-achieving the freedom she had in her adolescence. She can focus more on her own fulfillment."
And on her casual shoes.
"Lots of ads make fun of older women while marketing to younger people," Ms. Peterson said. "Or they advertise to older women in a way that's not life affirming." Facets ads will, instead, celebrate the older woman.
"These will not be the old Geritol ads," Mr. Oberlander said.
As Lieutenant Columbo likes to say, one more thing: Nowhere will the advertising mention the Keds name.
"Facets will stand on its own," Mr. Oberlander said. "That blue label skews a little too casual for this market."

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June 7, 1994, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

THE D-DAY TOUR: RUSSIA;
Exclusion of Soviet Veterans From the Ceremonies Is a Source of Resentment

BYLINE: Special to The New York Times 

SECTION: Section A;  Page 9;  Column 1;  Foreign Desk 

LENGTH: 439 words

DATELINE: MOSCOW, June 6

To many Russians, the absence of Soviet veterans at the ceremonies marking D-Day is another reminder of what they see as the West's reluctance to embrace the new Russia with much more than lofty words.
"The overall success of the Allies was due to the fact that the Soviet Union helped to accelerate the defeat of fascism," said Ivan Yershov, a 73-year-old retired colonel. "Now, the absence of our veterans at the ceremonies strikes a blow to the honor and worthiness of the alliance as a whole." 
 Mr. Yershov speaks for a varied group of Russian veterans who believe that post-Soviet Russia, relatively democratic and free, deserves more acceptance from the West on the 50th anniversary of D-Day, which was the opening of the second front that Stalin, the West's ally in World War II, had demanded for so long.
Russian nationalists have also been making an issue of the supposed slight to Moscow, suggesting that the West cannot cope with an independent Russia as an equal partner.
President Boris N. Yeltsin seemed to signal his compatriots' indignation over the D-Day issue on Friday when he told the Greek Foreign Minister, Karolos Papoulias, "Russia occupies half of Europe, but until now it is not even considered as part of Europe."
The Allied landing in Normandy on D-Day -- carried out mostly by Americans, Britons and Canadians -- is not regarded here with the same awe as elsewhere.  Russians tend to focus on the role that the Red Army, fighting in battles and sieges from Stalingrad to Moscow to Kursk, played in helping defeat the Germans.
In a nation that lost more than 20 million people in the "Great Patriotic War," as many elderly citizens still call World War II, some veterans resent their exclusion from the commemoration in France.
"This issue has been entirely muted in the Western press," said Mr. Yershov, the retired colonel, who served in the early years of the war as an operations planning officer on the Belarussian front.
"It is well known to everyone that the Soviet Union was bearing the heaviest burden in the struggle against fascism, primarily in Europe," said Gen. Dmitri A. Volkogonov, a military adviser to Mr. Yeltsin. General Volkogonov, who heads a joint Russian-American commission investigating the fate of American and Soviet servicemen missing in the cold-war era, said he considered D-Day a "common victory over fascism" for Russia and the Western Allies.
"We are all people of the planet Earth and this is our spacecraft that we happen to be traveling on," he said. "Therefore this victory over the Nazis is our common heritage and this is our joint victory."

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June 8, 1994, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Clinton in Normandy: Hands Across a Generation

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

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

LENGTH: 1389 words

DATELINE: PARIS, June 7

It was the soldiers whom people will long remember. Mostly brittle old men now, no longer the lusty youngsters who "saved the world," they were touching in their simple eloquence, heartbreaking in their heartache for their lost comrades.
Like the old men of the Grand Army of the Republic, veterans of Bull Run and Vicksburg and Antietam who lived through the direst days of their century, the survivors of the first momentous hours on the Calvados coast half a century ago have become icons for today, the symbols of courage and conviction that democracies crave. 
 Lincoln at Gettysburg said the world would "little note nor long remember" what he said there, dedicating a cemetery for the fallen in the most awful battle in America's most awful war. What he meant was that no words, not even his, had power adequate to the task of memorializing the deeds of those whose graves lay around him.
President Clinton succeeded in his D-Day speeches not because he made speeches worthy of comparison with Lincoln's or perhaps even with Ronald Reagan's "These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc . . ." of 10 years ago. He succeeded because with the help of many others he managed to keep attention focused on the veterans, not on himself and his problems.
 
A Plea to the Young
 Fully aware that their hour on the world's stage is nearing its end, many of them appealed earnestly to those they will leave behind, denizens of a world that sometimes has a lot of trouble telling right from wrong, to remember the values that inspired the heroism of their international band of brothers in Operation Overlord.
Amid the barbed wire and the artillery craters of Pointe du Hoc, a former Ranger, Richard Hathaway, said on Monday:
"Nations can and should unite to form the strongest possible bonds, devoted to all mankind so that they may enjoy freedom from oppression, freedom from fear, freedom from want, freedom of expression and freedom of religion. We leave this to you, for only by this can you and your descendants enjoy a free society of all mankind, devoid of such destructive forces as were exhibited here."
Many of the veterans fear that the young, President Clinton perhaps included, are all too prone to turn away from trouble abroad. So they were pleased with the repect that he bestowed on them and their ideas, not only by coming but also by urging members of his generation to learn the lessons of their struggle and sacrifice.
"It's an honor," Mr. Clinton said to almost every one of the hundreds of World War II veterans he met during his European tour.
 
Evocative Ceremonies
 For one aging onlooker at least, the ceremonies were most evocative. The old planes, the parachutes descending again near Ste.-Mere-Eglise, on whose church steeple Pvt. John Steele dangled for hours before being cut down, the coffin-shaped boats back at Omaha Beach, the stories the veterans told -- all rekindled the emotions stirred by the broadcasts of George Hicks, the radio networks' pool man on a ship out in the English Channel on June 6, 1944.
With very nearly every American household tuned in, with the big naval guns drumming behind him, Hicks reported the thrilling news: "The landing craft have been disembarked from their mother ships and are moving in irregular lines toward the horizon of France. All over the surface of the sea they can be seen cutting and zigzagging and heading toward the ribbon of land that's the coast of Normandy."
Fifty years later, the politicians did their part, secular priests in a secular age, in the solemn rites commemorating the D-Day landings. President Clinton found a few eloquent phrases for the preliminary ceremonies, then produced a gem of a speech late in the day for the main event at the American cemetery above Omaha Beach.
It would have been unseemly for anything to outshine the ordinary men who discovered such extraordinary things within themselves in the storms of fire they found on Normandy's cliffs and beaches.
"For a few days," said Lane Kirkland, the head of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., who was a merchant seaman in World War II, "the spirit of World War II lived again. I tried to give a tip to a cabdriver in London, and he refused to take it. 'No,' he told me, 'You saved us.' "
 
'Didn't Disgrace Himself'
 Called upon by the workings of the calendar to lead what will probably be the last ceremonies on such a vast scale, the President began with three strikes against him, but he refused to accept that he was already out. He is the first President since the World War II to have played no military role. He avoided the draft in Vietnam.  He had a tough act to follow in Mr. Reagan, one of the great orchestrators of national emotion, a master of nostalgia and the might-have-been.
"He didn't disgrace himself, and that's what counts," said a senior American official in Europe. "If he had seemed callow, or ill informed, or lacking in respect, if he had grandstanded, that would have been terrible for him and the country.
"As it was, he gained some respect from the older generation, I think, by showing them the deference they deserve and insisting everywhere that their experience shows us where we ought to go. I doubt that that struck much of a chord with the younger generations, but that's not his doing."
Mr. Clinton will return to the United States after meetings and speeches in Paris today and a return to Oxford on Wednesday that is sure to revive talk of his antiwar sentiments during his days as a student there. It seems likely that in domestic terms he has been neither strengthened nor weakened by this second European tour of his 16-month-old Administration.
 
Clinton's Burdens
 No one can convincingly suggest any longer that the big ceremonial moments are beyond Mr. Clinton. He demonstrated that he can put aside his compulsively, sometimes exuberantly informal style for occasions requiring dignity and restraint. If his youth and inexperience sometimes deny his words the weight he would like them to carry, if the imagery he and his aides choose often seems forced or corny, he has shown himself capable of addressing complex issues involving many countries with varied interests and histories.
But health care is still in trouble, the more so with the indictment of Representative Dan Rostenkowski; the Democrats are still back on their heels in electoral politics, having lost almost every election before the off-year balloting in November, and the civil lawsuit brought against Mr. Clinton by Paula Corbin Jones still throws a long, foreboding shadow.
If he passed the test in the ceremonies in Britain and France, the President came a cropper, to a degree, in Italy. He felt that he had to honor the veterans of the "forgotten campaign" to liberate Rome as well as those who served in northern Europe, his aides reported, but in Italy itself and much of the rest of Europe he was seen as simultaneously celebrating the defeat of Fascism and condoning the entry of its offspring, the neo-Fascist National Alliance, into the new Italian Government.
 
On the Agenda
 What the Europeans wonder about is his strategic sense. It was clear, a top French politician said today, that Mr. Clinton was having more trouble than he should in balancing economic and political considerations, as on China, and in deciding where and in what kinds of situations American strength and prestige should be committed.
The President will be back on the Continent this month for the annual meeting of the seven biggest industrial powers, a meeting, this time in Naples, that will focus more than ever before on question of trade, now seen as the key to the domestic economic problems of the big nations.
After that, Mr. Clinton is to meet with President Boris N. Yeltsin of Russia, also in Italy, and then will spend about 36 hours in Bonn and Berlin. In Berlin, he will hold a meeting in the Reichstag, walk through the Brandenburg Gate and ceremonially disband the Berlin Brigade -- powerful symbols of the end of Berlin's time as a ward of the West and its central new role in a unified Germany.
Those will be important days for Mr. Clinton and for his country, for it is trade, not war, and Germany and Russia, not so much Britain and France, that hold the key to future relations between the United States and Europe.

LOAD-DATE: June 8, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

TYPE: News Analysis

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June 8, 1994, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Personal Health;
Chronic illness need not sap the vitality of life.

BYLINE: BY Jane E. Brody 

SECTION: Section C;  Page 11;  Column 1;  National Desk;  Health Page

LENGTH: 1203 words

MILLIONS of Americans know firsthand that, as President Jimmy Carter said, "Life is not fair." Despite the many miracles of modern medicine, it is still far from preventing or curing a host of ailments that strike prematurely and compromise the quality of a life.
Infants still succumb mysteriously to sudden infant death syndrome. Babies are born with debilitating chronic illnesses like congenital heart disease, cystic fibrosis or epilepsy. Children get cancer and die, or live for years under the Damoclean sword of cancer in remission. Young adults get multiple sclerosis, AIDS, diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis or cancer. Middle-aged and elderly people are prone to heart disease, cancer and stroke. And anyone at any age can suffer an injury that causes substantial deterioration of health and permanently alters the course of that person's life. 
 A chronic or potentially fatal illness or injury in a loved one can also substantially and permanently affect the life of everyone else in the family. Far too often, the impact of these events is even more disruptive to the affected individual or the person's family than the actual medical problem warrants. Most people are ill equipped to cope with the effects of chronic illness on their emotional and social well-being.
Some may hide their torment, only to have it take its toll in ugly, self-destructive or family-disruptive ways.
Others may rage against their fate, wasting precious energy and pushing away those who could help them live more constructively.
Still others may try to struggle bravely through on their own, unaware of potential sources of assistance that could smooth their way and expand their opportunities.
 
A Better Approach
 When someone in the family develops a chronic, disabling, incurable or life-threatening disorder, everyone in the family is likely to get "sick" as well. Aspirations and plans of the spouse and children, as well as the affected person, must often be readjusted and roles within the family structure must be redefined. Communication patterns change, and not always for the better, and the resulting emotional and physical and financial stresses can strain even the most stable of relationships.
But as one therapist learned through bitter personal experience, the damage of chronic illness can be mitigated and for some, a long-term disorder can even become a growth experience. Irene Pollin, a social worker in Bethesda, Md., lost an infant son and a teen-age daughter to a congenital heart problem, and, as if that were not traumatic enough, both of her parents died within a year of her daughter's death.
When Mrs. Pollin sought psychotherapy to help her understand and cope with the resulting emotional devastation, she was given tranquilizers and urged to explore her early relationship with her mother. After nine years of sedation, she was no better.
To Mrs. Pollin, the need for a more appropriate, short-term, directed approach to dealing with irreversible medical problems was obvious. In working with chronically ill patients and their families, she developed what she calls Medical Crisis Counseling: eight, maybe 10, sessions with a trained therapist who focuses on how the medical problem affects the person's life and how the resulting obstacles -- emotional, professional, interpersonal -- might be overcome.
She also established the Linda Pollin Foundation, named for her late daughter and administered by Children's Hospital in Boston, to teach mental health professionals how to deal with patients and families caught in the entangling web of a chronic medical crisis.
Recognizing that many patients and families do not have access to trained psychotherapists, Mrs. Pollin also wrote a book, "Taking Charge: Overcoming the Challenges of Long-Term Illness" (with Susan K. Golant and published by Times Books, 1994, $22) which sensitively and graphically describes strategies to help patients and families cope on their own.
 
The Challenge
 As one of her disciples, Dr. Gerald P. Koocher, chief psychologist at Children's Hospital in Boston, put it: "When you're dealing with the emotional consequences of chronic illness, you need someone to help you cope with real-life problems triggered by the diagnosis of chronic illness. Lots of people are living and living longer with chronic illness, but the medical profession is ill-equipped to help them cope with it."
Typically, he said, after the diagnosis of a chronic illness, "self-image is permanently altered, people worry about being stigmatized, their angry feelings are buried so they can cope with day-to-day problems, they fear isolation and abandonment and they feel out of control, as if they were coming unglued."
This reaction does not represent mental illness, he emphasized, but is "a normal response" when chronic illness strikes.
Mrs. Pollin realized that the fears and feelings touched off by chronic illness need an appropriate release so they do not result in misplaced anger and depression. "Rather than losing control when you release pent-up pressure, you'll find yourself back in charge, calm, organized, able to think clearly and make good decisions," she maintains.
Too often in families struck by long-term illness, the lines of communication get crossed. One dynamic, independent woman who suffered a stroke that affected her speech "retired" from nearly all her activities, including the frequent dinners she had given and even from the stimulating conversations she often had with her husband. The devoted husband left his business to help care for her, took over her chores and tried to make her the woman she once was.
Through brief counseling, the couple learned that it was the husband's smothering devotion and determination to "get his old wife back" that had stymied her progress. She knew she was not and could not be the same women as before her stroke and so was reluctant to try anything. Once the husband accepted her limitations, she was able to regain her self-confidence and resume activities at her own pace, eventually becoming the spokeswoman for the local stroke support group.
Mrs. Pollin cautions patients and families against making drastic decisions, like changing jobs or moving, soon after discovery of a chronic illness. "Your medical condition may not be as bad as you anticipate," she tells patients.
This, in fact, was the happy fate of a 28-year-old unmarried woman who held an exciting job and was finishing law school at night when she discovered that she had multiple sclerosis. Counseling helped her overcome her reluctance to become a lawyer and her belief that now that she was "damaged goods" no man would want her. Not long after, she met and married a fellow lawyer who loved and accepted her with her illness. She went on to have two children and continued to pursue the demanding life she had led before the diagnosis.
As time goes on or illnesses progress, Mrs. Pollin said, patients and families may need to return to counseling to help them readjust to changing circumstances. But regardless of what happens, she has found that with a little help, people can "remain in control, even while their lives have been changed forever."

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June 9, 1994, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

In Largest Drug-Law Takeover, U.S. Seizes New York City Hotel

BYLINE: By SETH FAISON 

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

LENGTH: 1325 words

Federal authorities seized a filthy, dilapidated residential hotel near Gramercy Park yesterday, saying that drug dealers used it to operate "a virtual supermarket for crack cocaine." The owner, prosecutors said, did nothing about it.
Roving bands of drug dealers and addicts took over whole floors at the Kenmore Hotel, the largest single-room occupancy hotel in New York City, regularly robbing and sometimes killing elderly residents for a few dollars, prosecutors said. With unlighted stairwells, broken toilets in common bathrooms and prostitutes plying their trade in the hallways, the hotel "was permeated with violence," said the United States Attorney, Mary Jo White. 
 In a late-morning raid, Federal agents and the New York City police arrested 18 people and took control of the 22-story red-brick building at 145 East 23d Street, where the writers Nathanael West and Dashiell Hammett once lived. A private company will manage the hotel until a court rules on the seizure.
Federal prosecutors said their takeover of the hotel represented the largest seizure ever made under a little-used 1984 law that allows the authorities to take a building being used in the sale of narcotics. The law, different from one commonly used to seize the possessions of drug dealers, allows the authorities to take someone's property if they can show there was a pattern of drug offenses at the site and repeated arrests failed to stop the trafficking.
The hotel's owner, Tran Dinh Truong, was not charged with any crime. Yesterday's action was the first step in a civil suit, but prosecutors said that he was well aware of the crimes taking place on the premises and failed to respond to repeated warnings from New York City building and law-enforcement authorities over the last two years.
Mr. Tran has bought at least five New York City hotels since he immigrated in 1975 from Vietnam where, as a shipowner, he is said to have earned millions of dollars hauling cargo for the United States military. Prosecutors said they did not know the hotels' annual profit. But they said Mr. Tran received $2 million each year solely from tenants on public assistance in the Kenmore, about 20 percent of the tenants in the hotel, which has 621 rooms.
"The guy had a cash cow," said Christopher Marzuk, an assistant district attorney from the New York City Special Narcotics Prosecutor's office. "Money was pouring in through the front door, but he didn't give a damn about anyone who lived inside."
In an interview in February, Mr. Tran said he was losing $50,000 a month at the Kenmore and could not afford the property taxes. He said 125 of 370 long-term tenants were not paying rent, and he had 16 eviction suits pending.
Mr. Tran's lawyer, Alan Lichtenberg, did not respond to repeated messages yesterday, and Mr. Tran could not be reached for comment.
Neighborhood residents have protested the hotel's deterioration for years, expressing impatience with the legal system for taking so long. In 1993, the Kenmore was cited for 362 violations by the New York City Buildings Department, the Department of Housing Preservation and Development and the Department of Health.
The Manhattan District Attorney, Robert M. Morgenthau, said that Bac Tran, apparently a relative of Mr. Tran, was convicted of bribing a New York City building inspector in 1992 in the Hotel Carter, on West 43d Street, which Mr. Tran also owns. The conviction was overturned on appeal.
Mr. Morgenthau said his office turned its investigation of the Kenmore over to Federal authorities because state forfeiture laws are relatively weak.
In a court complaint, Ms. White, the United States Attorney, argued for seizure by saying that although the police had made 122 drug-related arrests in the hotel since 1991, dealers were easily replaced and drug trafficking continued.
"Many of the individuals arrested for selling narcotics worked as security guards at the Kenmore Hotel," Ms. White said in court papers. The guards, hired by Mr. Tran and his employees, often charged drug customers $1 to $20 to enter the building.
As recently as June 4, a security guard told a police informant that he had collected $ 200 that day from people who wanted to enter the hotel. But that was minor, compared with other crimes: an 86-year-old woman was robbed, strangled and her body left in a bathtub, last month, the police said.
Officer Scott Kimmins, who has patrolled the area for eight years, said yesterday that he typically entered the hotel twice a day and was continually stunned at what he called horrendous living conditions.
"A lot of elderly people live here, but you rarely see them because they're so terrified," he said. "They live in tiny rooms, like living in their own prisons. Today's a great day. The Marines came in."
Prosecutors said in court papers that Officer Kimmins received death threats from drug dealers. They sometimes tried to figure out his schedule to avoid him, prosecutors said, and discussed making an anonymous complaint on him to the Police Department's Internal Affairs Division in the hope of removing him.
Mr. Tran and his staff deliberately left some rooms unlocked so that crack dealers could work there, prosecutors said. One room cited in court papers was "the pigeon room," named because a broken window allowed birds to nest and live there.
"Embedded in the pigeon excrement on the floor are dozens of crack vials," prosecutors wrote.
A Federal Bureau of Investigation agent, Kenneth R. Weiss, said in court papers, "The Kenmore Hotel, the largest commercial single-room occupancy hotel in New York City, is a virtual supermarket for crack cocaine, where crack is sold freely in various brands.".
 
A Check by Officers
 Late yesterday morning, police officers and Federal agents brought suspects out in pairs and trios, asking each group to look across the street, so undercover officers in a car could say whether they were among those observed in drug sales.
The 15 men and 3 women arrested yesterday will all be charged in Manhattan Supreme Court. Fourteen face drug charges, and four also have to answer bench warrants for previous arrests.
Prosecutors noted that Mr. Tran had filed more than 500 eviction notices against tenants for failure to pay rent since he took over in 1985, but none based on narcotics activity.
Authorities could not identify the building's value. Mr. Tran took out a $2.5 million mortgage when he bought it in 1985, and although the overall condition has deteriorated badly, improvements have been made by some tenants who rent storefronts along 23d Street.
Melvin Buffill, 55, who has lived in the Kenmore for four years, said that more than one neighbor was killed at the hotel.
Mr. Buffill, who said he is disabled by bronchitis, arthritis, high blood pressure and diabetes, said he gets $54 a month in disability checks, $ 498 a month from Social Security and $112 a month in food stamps. He rents his room on the ninth floor for $360, doing what he can to insure his safety.
"I put my bed up against the wall at night," he said. "I have a knife, I have a big pipe and I have some Mace."
Les Vanderfecht, director of the Community Lounge for Senior Citizens on 22d Street at Gustavus Adolphus Lutheran Church, said the elderly people his program serves have complained for years of conditions in the hotel and even those who do not live there have been intimidated and victimized by the element it has attracted.
"It has been a real threat. This is a target population for thugs," he said.
A commercial tenant, Allan Menkin, who runs Bazaar East in a storefront on the hotel's ground floor, said Mr. Tran rarely performed even basic repairs and maintenance.
"We've had flooding in my store from broken pipes 32 times since Jan. 1," said Mr. Menkin, who posted a sign in his front window thanking the authorities for their action. "I only wanted to know what took so long."

LOAD-DATE: June 9, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Roving bands of drug dealers that made the Kenmore Hotel "a virtual supermarket for crack cocaine" and life for its residents terror filled were stopped yesterday with the seizure of the hotel by Federal authorities. The front desk was being run by United States marshals. (Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times) (pg. B3)
 
Table: "POLICE BLOTTER: A Month at the Kenmore Hotel"
 There were 189 drug related activities and arrests at the Kenmore Hotel from January 1991 to May 1994. Chart shows the record of individual cases from the U.S. Attorney's Ofice for May 1994. (pg. B3)

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June 9, 1994, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

Experts Urge More Calcium For Adults

BYLINE: AP 

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

LENGTH: 529 words

DATELINE: BETHESDA, Md., June 8

Half of America's adults are not getting enough calcium, and that is contributing to a plague of brittle bones and fractures that produce $10 billion a year in medical bills, a Federal committee said today.
The committee of experts, assembled by the National Institutes of Health, said the current recommended daily allowance for calcium is too low, leading to weakened bones among children, adults and especially elderly women. 
 "Calcium is an essential nutrient for developing and maintaining strong bones," the committee said.
Yet, said Dr. John P. Bilezikian, a professor of medicine at Columbia University and the chairman of the committee, most Americans are deficient in calcium.
"Recent nutrition surveys have shown that the average diet of Americans has a calcium intake considerably below the recommended daily allowance," Dr. Bilezikian said at a news conference.
Without proper levels of calcium, the panel said, children enter adulthood with a weakened skeleton, increasing their risk later for osteoporosis, the brittle-bone disease. Inadequate calcium in later years aggravates the problem.
Osteoporosis affects more than 25 million Americans, causing an estimated 1.5 million fractures and leading to medical costs of about $10 billion, said Dr. Bilezikian.
New studies, the committee found, show that recommended levels of calcium now carried on most food labels is far below what nature requires for strong bones. In its report, the panel recommended these levels of calcium, with the currently recommended daily allowance in parenthesis:
*Children and young adults, 11 through 24 years old: 1,200 to 1,500 milligrams (1,200).
*Women, 25 to 50: 1,000 milligrams (800).
*Men, 25 and older: 1,000 milligrams (800).
*Postmenopausal women: 1,000 to 1,500 milligrams (800).
*Women over 65: 1,500 milligrams.
Bone absorption occurs in women for up to eight years after menopause because of the drop in levels of the hormone estrogen, the panel said. Increased calcium does little to reduce this bone loss, but it can be controlled with hormone therapy. An increase in calcium levels to 1,500 milligrams after the age of 65, however, "may reduce the rates of bone loss in selected areas of the skeleton, such as the neck," the committee said.
The panel said that during the adolescent growth spurt, calcium can accumulate in bones at the rate of 400 to 500 milligrams a day.
 
Calcium Supplements Needed
 "Peak adult bone mass is largely achieved by age 20 years, although important additional bone mass may accumulate through the third decade," the study said. As a result, "optimal calcium intake in childhood and young adulthood is critical to achieving peak adult bone mass."
The committee said that foods, mainly dairy products and green leafy vegetables, are the best sources of calcium, but that most Americans might need to supplement their diet with calcium pills or processed foods enriched with calcium.
Almost all Americans can safely take calcium supplements of up to 2,000 milligrams daily, Dr. Bilezikian said. Higher doses are not recommended. Even this dosage can cause problems for people who have kidney stones.

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June 10, 1994, Friday, Late Edition - Final

Health Legislation Advances in Senate

BYLINE: By ADAM CLYMER,   Special to The New York Times 

SECTION: Section A;  Page 1;  Column 6;  National Desk 

LENGTH: 1544 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, June 9

National health insurance took two major strides forward in the Senate today as one committee approved a bill, guaranteeing a Senate vote on the issue, and another, perhaps more crucial, committee shifted from general discussion to serious work on new legislation.
By a comfortable 11-to-6 margin, Senator Edward M. Kennedy's Labor and Human Resources Committee adopted the Senator's more generous version of President Clinton's health care proposal. It is the first Congressional committee to act, and its vote insures that the full Senate will confront the issue this summer. 
 At the Finance Committee, whose close partisan and ideological divisions parallel those in the full Senate, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the chairman, sought support for a detailed new proposal that he showed his colleagues today. It is a less generous plan than Mr. Clinton's.
Mr. Moynihan's proposal eliminated several politically popular benefits in the Clinton bill, like prescription drugs and long-term care for the elderly and government insurance for early retirees. Mr. Moynihan's willingness to eliminate those provisions, in a year when he is running for re-election, made it clear that he was seriously pushing for health care legislation and not just acting for show. He is also making known his worry that if the cost cannot be controlled, the bill cannot be passed.
The Clinton, Kennedy and Moynihan plans all rely on employers to buy health insurance for their workers and to pay most of the premiums. Mr. Kennedy's bill would exempt employers with 10 or fewer workers; Mr. Moynihan's would exempt employers with 20 or fewer workers but only for several years.
Mr. Moynihan, who has been skeptical of the Administration's financing estimates, proposed much higher taxes than the other bills did. He would raise the tobacco tax from 24 cents a pack to $2 and impose a 1 percent payroll tax on companies of 500 or more employees. Mr. Clinton proposed a tobacco tax of 99 cents, and Mr. Kennedy suggested a tax of $1.74.
All three measures would seek economies by enabling individuals to buy health insurance through purchasing cooperatives called health alliances. Mr. Clinton would make participation compulsory for almost all Americans, while Mr. Moynihan and Mr. Kennedy would make it voluntary while also giving the alliances much less authority than Mr. Clinton would. The provision to make participation voluntary should make the proposal more palatable to opponents of the Clinton plan in both parties.
The Labor Committee move was steeped in history, for Mr. Kennedy has campaigned for national health insurance for a quarter-century. But the bill moved out of his committee today was the first that was more than a political statement and that could perhaps become law.
President Clinton hailed the Labor Committee vote, saying it "gives me great confidence that Congress will pass legislation this year that meets the expectation of the American people: guaranteed private insurance for every American that can never be taken away." Referring to other measures in Congress, the President said, "For the first time in our history, committees in both the Senate and the House are seriously moving forward on health care reform."
Just before the vote, Mr. Kennedy told his committee, "Comprehensive health reform is a defining issue for this Congress."
He went on: "Comprehensive health reform has never been easy, or it would have been enacted long ago.  The time for action is now. This committee is the first in the Senate or House to vote out comprehensive reform, but others will not be far behind."
There was drama of a different sort at the Finance Committee, as Mr. Moynihan ended the months of suspense about where he stood. He has fueled the uncertainty by speaking kindly about Republican ideas and by his occasional outbursts about parts of the Clinton plan that he thought were badly conceived.
 
'This Is Where You Begin'
 Mr. Moynihan was far more cautious in discussing his bill. Talking to reporters after his committee met, he said: "This is where you begin. You have to begin."
By proposing tax increases and an employer mandate, Mr. Moynihan was not reaching out to Republicans, who offered a range of comments, from negative to noncommittal.
Senator Bob Dole of Kansas, the minority leader, said, "It doesn't look very good to me." Senator John C. Danforth of Missouri said, "I think it's a piece of paper, and we all need a piece of paper." But he added, "It's an awful lot of taxes."
More hopeful, Senator Dave Durenberger of Minnesota said, "This is more realistic" because it requires less Federal regulation than Mr. Clinton's plan. But he also said, "This is not yet a middle-of-the-road bill."
Two Democrats whose votes Mr. Moynihan will need if the committee's nine Republicans oppose his efforts were also cautiously negative. The committee has 11 Democrats.
One of these pivotal Democrats, Senator David L. Boren of Oklahoma, said, "I think the worst thing we could do for the country is press forward with a bill that's not on a bipartisan basis." The other, Senator John B. Breaux of Louisiana, said the bill had too much government and too many mandates.
In the House today, the Ways and Means Committee began going over the proposal of its new acting chairman, Representative Sam M. Gibbons of Florida. His plan would provide more benefits than the Clinton plan with fewer taxes. But he said his proposal was not final because he did not yet have a cost analysis by the Congressional Budget Office. He said he did not know when he would get that analysis but would not hold any votes until he did.
In addition, a subcommittee of the House Committee on Education and Labor voted in favor of a single-payer health plan, like the Canadian system. Under this plan, payroll taxes and others would replace insurance payments, and the Government would then pay all medical and hospital bills.
A subcommittee can send as many bills as it wants to a full committee, and this subcommittee has already approved a bill patterned on Mr. Clinton's but with more generous benefits. The full Education and Labor Committee will begin discussing that bill on Friday morning.
In approving the Kennedy bill, one Republican on the Senate Labor panel, James M. Jeffords of Vermont, joined the committee's 10 Democrats. The other six Republicans on the panel voted no.
The Kennedy bill would broaden the ability of individuals to choose health insurance beyond President Clinton's plan by allowing them to enroll in the Federal Health Benefits Program, which offers a variety of options to Federal employees, including members of Congress.
It also sought to meet widespread complaints about the potential effect on small business of requiring employers to pay for insurance. It would allow employers of 10 or fewer workers not to pay for insurance, though those who employed one to five workers would have to pay a 1 percent payroll tax and those with 6 to 10 workers would pay a 2 percent tax.
Mr. Clinton's plan had no such exemptions, though it offered subsidies, as Mr. Kennedy's does, to small employers.
The Moynihan bill is initially more generous to small business and eventually tougher on them. His plan would allow employers of up to 10 workers to pay a 1 percent tax and employers of 11 to 20 workers to pay a 2 percent tax.
But it would eliminate those exemptions and require all employers to insure their workers if by 1998 this system had not resulted in the insurance of 97 percent of employees and their dependents. Mr. Moynihan would raise the standard even higher by the year 2000, requiring all employers to insure all workers if 98.5 percent of workers and dependents were not insured.
The taxes in the Moynihan proposal drew some sharp attacks. Senator Bob Packwood of Oregon, the senior Republican on the Finance Committee, said, "It's a Burger King bill, a Whopper, $190 billion in taxes." He said that was "the Democrats' way out: tax and tax and spend and spend."
 
Concern About Deficit
 Mr. Moynihan expects final revenue and spending estimates from the Congressional Budget Office by late next week. But his proposal leans away from some expensive benefits and calls for more in taxes because of his fear about increasing the deficit.
All three measures are intended to reduce the soaring rate of health care costs by instituting more competition among providers. And all declare that their formulas will guarantee that all Americans have health insurance that cannot be canceled and that cannot be denied because of pre-existing medical conditions.
All three would insure people primarily through employers but would require individuals not covered either directly or as dependents to buy their own insurance. Each would offer much larger tax benefits than are now provided for such insurance and provide large subsidies for those with low incomes.
All three bills would leave the Medicare system of health care for the elderly as it is, while providing insurance under the new systems to those now covered by Medicaid, which serves the poor.
All three bills would enable states that preferred a single-payer system to adopt one for themselves.

LOAD-DATE: June 10, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photos: As the Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee approved a version of President Clinton's health care proposal yesterday, another, the Senate Finance Committee, was offered an alternative by its chairman, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Listening to Mr. Moynihan, standing, in shirtsleeves, were, seated from left, Senators Donald W. Riegle Jr., Dave Durenberger, and John C. Danforth. (Paul Hosefros/The New York Times); Representative Dan Rostenkowski, who had to give up his chairmanship of the House Ways and Mean Committee after he was indicted on corruption charges last week, conferred with Representative Charles B. Rangel of Manhattan as the panel met yesterday on health care. (Stephen Crowley/The New York Times) (pg. A18)
; Charts: "At a Glance: The Three Plans"
 
The Clinton Plan:
 Universal health insurance coverage.
 Mandatory enrollment in regional insurance purchasing alliances.
 Employers required to pay at least 80 percent of premiums.
 Would raise cigarette tax to 99" from 25" a pack.
 
Kennedy Plan:
 Universal health insurance coverage.
 Participation in alliances is voluntary.
 Employers required to pay premiums or a payroll tax in the case of small businesses.
 Would raise cigarette tax to $1.74 a pack.
 Adds benefits to those in Clinton plan.
 
Moynihan Plan:
 Aims at universal health insurance coverage.
 Participation in alliances is voluntary.
 Employers required to pay premiums or a payroll tax in the case of small businesses.
 Would raise cigarette tax to $2 a pack.
 Overall, offers fewer benefits than Clinton plan. (pg. A1)
 
"POINT BY POINT: Comparing the Clinton, Kennedy and Moynihan Visions of Health Care"
 
BENEFITS:
 
Clinton: Basic benefit package includes doctor, hospital and emergency services; some coverage for mental health and substance abuse; prescription drugs; rehabilitation services; hospice, home health and extended nursing care services; preventive care; lab and diagnostic services.
 
Kennedy: Follows outlines of Clinton package but provides additional benefits for women, children, the disabled, low-income individuals and for mental health and substance abuse. Provides increased coverage for preventive exams and additional benefits for long term care.
 
Moynihan: Follows outlines of Clinton package with more generous mental health benefits but no coverage for long term care or prescription drugs for the elderly.
 
ALLIANCES:
 
Clinton: Most Americans would be required to get their coverage through regional insurance purchasing alliances. All firms with 5,000 or fewer employees would have to purchase coverage through an alliance.
 
Kennedy: Individuals could purchasing insurance from private insurers, participating in consumer health purchasing cooperatives established by the states or participate in the Federal Employees Health Benefits Plan, the existing plan forFederal workers.

Moynihan: Participation in alliances would be voluntary. People working for companies with fewer than 500 employees, self-employed people and those not connected to the work force could buy insurance through a cooperative. Companies with 2 to 10 workers could enroll employees in the Federal Employees Health Benefits Plan.
 
EMPLOYER MANDATE:
 
Clinton: Employers would be required to pay about 80 percent of the costs of the average health insurance plan in their area for a single person or about 55 percent of the cost of the average family plan, but no more than 7.9 percent of payroll. Companies with 75 or fewer employees and average annual wages under $24,000 a year would be eligible for subsidies. Individuals would pay up to 20 percent of the premiums.
 
Kennedy: Would exempt small businesses with 10 or fewer employees and average annual wages under $24,000 per worker. Employers of one to five workers would be required to pay a 1 percent payroll tax instead. Employers of 6 to 10 workers would pay a 2 percent tax. Employees of exempted small businesses would be required to buy their own insurance, but with very substantial subsidies. Some companies would be elibigle for subsidies based on, depending on the wages of individual workers.
 
Moynihan: All employers with more than 20 employees would have to pay at least 80 percent of the average premium for the standard health plan. Employers of 20 or fewer workers could, as an alternative, pay a payroll tax: 1 percent for companies with 1 to 10 employees and 2 percent for those with 11 to 20 employees. As in the Kennedy plan, employees of exempted small businesses would be required to buy their own insurance, but with subsidies. "Trigger" mechanism would require small employers to pay premiums if specified percentages of workers nationwide did not have coverage from employers by certain dates.
 
TAXES:
 
Clinton: Requires a 1 percent payroll tax on companies with 5,000 or more workers. Raises the current 24 cents a pack cigarette tax an additional 75 cents for a total of 99 cents.
 
Kennedy: Requires companies with 1,000 or more employees to pay a 1 percent payroll tax. Increases the cigarette tax 75 cents above the President's plan to $1.74 per pack.
 
Moynihan: Requires companies with 500 or more employees to pay a 1 percent payroll tax. Increases the cigarette tax to $2.00 a pack. Raises the current 11 percent tax on handgun ammunition to 50 percent. Imposes a new tax on health insurance premiums. (pg. A18)

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June 10, 1994, Friday, Late Edition - Final

Kenmore Hotel: The Place at the End of the Line

BYLINE: By RICK BRAGG 

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

LENGTH: 1237 words

One old woman walks through the Kenmore Hotel and spells her name over and over, as if she is afraid of losing it somewhere down the long, dark hall. Another woman, her cheeks rouged a candy-apple red, goes from person to person in the lobby, asking people she has never seen before what they would like for dinner.
On the eighth floor, a man sits amid jumping fleas, crusted dirt and six-month-old newspapers, screaming that he should not have to live like this because he is an American. 
 Down the hall, a transvestite whose only possessions are a purple party dress and a fake fox fur with a hole in it talks about how the Kenmore is really not as bad as it looks, as the water backs up in the sink for the fifth straight day and a rat runs past a pile of garbage in the hall.
And on every floor, single mothers and families and other hard-working people are just trying to survive amid the craziness.
It is a blessing to be a little mad in the Kenmore, say some of the people who live there, held prisoner by their poverty and victimized by criminals who prosecutors say controlled whole floors of the building.
The 621-room Kenmore, a red-brick residential hotel at 145 East 23d Street, was seized by United States marshals on Wednesday under a little-used 1984 law that allows the authorities to take over a building being used in the sale of drugs. It had become a bizarre warehouse for crack dealers, prostitutes, robbers and extortionists, said both Federal investigators and people who live there. The criminals did not go outside. They worked the halls, said the residents.
"You know what I'd like to do? I'd like to live in the suburbs," said Phillip Yee, standing in one hall, his bare feet dirt encrusted. "I like the suburbs. In the suburbs, your neighbors don't light fires in the hall."
Residents said the hotel owner, Tran Din Truong, a Vietnamese immigrant who prosecutors say used the Kenmore as a "cash cow," allowed the building to fall apart, the filth to collect and the toilets to overflow, even as he allowed it to become a haven for criminals.
Rent that is considerably less than the usual Manhattan rate -- $ 200 a month for a room the size of a closet, with the bathroom down the hall, or $ 400 for a slightly bigger room -- has filled it over the years with elderly residents; poor people with physical, mental and emotional problems; welfare mothers, and others who cannot afford anything better.
"This is what I have to live in," said John Grant, 38, who sat on a bare narrow mattress in a filthy hole, five feet wide and about eight feet long. His voice became higher, shriller, as he talked. "Look at me. I'm dying in here. I'm dying."
He said he was unemployed, disabled and had lived in the Kenmore for 14 years. He does not own any pictures or keepsakes. The walls of his room are covered with yellowed newspaper photos that he likes to look at.
"It's not fair," he said, almost screaming. "It's not fair."
The Kenmore has been a rundown apartment house for as long as anyone can remember, but when the predators moved into the building and sold their drugs and stole from people who had almost nothing to give, when the prostitutes started having sex with clients in the stairwells and halls, the quality of life dipped even lower. The old people suffer most, said Kirk Mickels, 39, who lives on the 19th floor.
"Some are afraid to come out of their rooms," he said. "Some shouldn't be here. Some have mental problems. Some have health problems, and these people prey on them."
Dennis Brady, 43, studied music at Lehman College in the Bronx and once dreamed of being a concert pianist, but eviction from a building that went co-op, loss of a hotel job and injuries he suffered from being run over by a soda-delivery truck landed him in the Kenmore. He said he has neck, head and back pain, but he worries more about the old people there who may never get to live anywhere else.
His tiny room is crowded with books like "The Tibetan Book of the Dead" and "Celtic Heritage." One of his favorites is "Purity of Heart," by Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard, he said, would find hope in the lives of the people there, but he would want society to help them.
Others have lived worse than this already.
 
A Way Station
 For Mr. Mickels, 39, his little room is just a place to catch his breath.
"I've been told this is the last stop, but I don't believe that," said Mr. Mickels, bouncing his visiting 2-year-old grandson, Eric, on his knee.
Mr. Mickels moved into the $120-a-week room in March, shortly after being released from prison after serving six years for a crime he would rather not discuss.
"A lot of us make mistakes, and a lot of us recover," said Mr. Mickels, who grew up on Wyona Street in East New York.
Each morning he sweeps his room and then sweeps the hallway, he said, explaining that there has not been any janitorial service for a long time.
On the wall of his room, just to the left of an immaculate porcelain wall sink, are button-photos of Malcolm X and Marvin Gaye, and a photograph of Mr. Mickels, as an inmate, coordinating an entertainment event at Sing Sing Correctional Facility in Ossining, N.Y.
"I want to do prison counseling," said Mr. Mickels, who is in a training program run by the Fortune Society, a nonprofit organization that helps former convicts.
He said that when he leaves the Kenmore, he doesn't want to travel far from needy people, explaining that "I want to live in the ghetto. A little place. A little car. And some food in the house would be nice."
On the hotel's eighth floor, two dark rooms are joined a by a small bathroom, and for four years this suite has been home to Lonie Houng, 40, her four young children and her husband, Steven Kaplovich, 59, who makes $24,000 a year as a handyman in a Sutton Place apartment building.
The children -- Max, 5; Joey, 6; Jonathan, 9, and Juliana, 8 -- sleep on mattresses on the floor of a main room with cracked and peeling walls. The toilet does not work; water has to be poured from a bucket into the tank to flush it.
There are vermin, "lots of mice," Ms. Houng said. The family's cat, Con Mel, lies purring in a dresser drawer, asleep. He is the first line of defense, when he is awake.
"I don't mind this that much, but I feel bad for the babies. They sleep on the floor and they have asthma," Ms. Houng said. "We can survive with no problem, but they need space and they can't eat good food here. I cook on a hot plate."
Conditions at the hotel are better, in some ways, than those she left when she was brought to the United States at 14 by an American airman who became her first husband.
"There was shooting," she said of her childhood in Pleiku, where she was raised by her father, Vu Quang Trong, whom she described as "the second most famous painter in my country."
A year ago, Ms. Houng was robbed by a man in the hallway who tried to stab her. He missed when she sank to the floor, she said. "We would move," she said. "But it is hard to find people to take us with four children."
Mr. Yee said people who live in the hotel should expect life to be hard. He said people get what they pay for.
Down the hall from him, residents point to a metal exit door that has been dented several times. One resident explained that it happened when one man repeatedly clubbed another man in the head with a baseball bat but missed several times and hit the door.

LOAD-DATE: June 10, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photos: Lonie Houng, her husband and four children live in two small rooms at the Kenmore Hotel. "I don't mind this that much, but I feel bad for the babies. They sleep on the floor and they have asthma," Ms. Houng said; Dennis Brady, 43, sitting on the bed in his room next to a piece of his door, which was forced open by law enforcement officers. (Photographs by Ed Quinn for The New York Times) (pg. B2)

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June 12, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

7 Victims Identify Suspect As the 'Gentleman Bandit'

BYLINE: By DENNIS HEVESI 

SECTION: Section 1;  Page 24;  Column 5;  Metropolitan Desk 

LENGTH: 411 words

Seven victims have identified a man arrested on Thursday night as the so-called Gentleman Bandit, suspected of committing more than 40 robberies in the neighborhoods surrounding Manhattan's Central Park over the last three months, the police said yesterday.
The suspect will be placed in more police lineups for other victims to view in the next several days, officers said. 
 The suspect, Dwane Hill, 29, of 1484 Inwood Avenue in the High Bridge section of the Bronx, was arrested at about 9 P.M. Thursday in front of an apartment building at 34 West 65th Street, said Sgt. Anthony Barlanti, a police spokesman. Mr. Hill faces robbery charges in connection with seven crimes so far, the sergeant said.
The suspect in the robberies had been dubbed the "Gentleman Bandit" because he usually was polite, saying please and thank you to his victims. "But I don't consider somebody who robs people polite," said Officer Merrie Pearsall, a police spokeswoman.
Sergeant Barlanti said that two officers, James Triola and Paul McMahon of the 20th Precinct anti-crime unit, became suspicious of Mr. Hill after they saw him follow a woman into the 65th Street building and then leave a few minutes later. They believed that he matched the description of the man who had stolen money and jewelry from 43 victims, most of them elderly women, since March 28. They initially charged Mr. Hill with trespassing.
But the officers later found the 54-year-old woman who had been followed into the building. She told them that she had become wary after Mr. Hill followed her onto the elevator.
"She became suspicious and got off the elevator while it was still on the first floor," Sergeant Barlanti said. "He then exited the building and was arrested by the officers."
The officers then notified detectives from the Manhattan Robbery Squad, who began calling in the robbery victims.
All of the robberies took place between East 70th and East 85th Streets or between West 62d and West 105th Streets, Officer Pearsall said, with the last occurring on June 6, on East 77th Street.
The crimes followed a pattern. "The suspect follows the victim into the building, robbing her in the lobby or the stairway," Officer Pearsall said. "Or, on the elevator, he always presses the second-floor, pretends he has a gun in his pocket, takes money and jewelry and flees down the stairs while the victim goes up in the elevator." All the robberies occurred between 4 and 8 P.M.

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June 12, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

NEIGHBORHOOD REPORT: NORTH BRONX;
First, Surveys. Then, Plan to Change Bus Routes. Now, Protests.

BYLINE: By RANDY KENNEDY 

SECTION: Section 14;  Page 9;  Column 1;  The City Weekly Desk 

LENGTH: 491 words

After conducting detailed surveys and interviews to find out how to improve bus service in Co-op City, the Transit Authority recently announced a plan to alter several routes that serve the sprawling complex.
There is one small problem, however: It seems that no one in Co-op City wants the changes they supposedly requested. Residents by the hundreds have called officials at Community Board 10 to complain, and about 2,000 signatures have been collected on a petition to leave the routes untouched, Co-op City officials say. 
 Transit Authority planners say the changes will save riders time by eliminating numerous stops within the complex, where about 65,000 people live in 35 high-rise buildings.
But residents contend the changes are simply a way of saving money.
"This is a favor?" asked Iris Herskowitz Baez, board president of the Riverbay Corporation, which runs Co-op City. "Don't do us a favor, then, is what I want to say to them. Does it sound like a favor if everybody is yelling?"
The plan reduces the number of stops on two busy lines, the BX26 and the BX28, both of which now go to all five sections of Co-op city.
In the new routes, the BX26 bus, which runs along East Gun Hill Road past Montefiore Medical Center, would stop only in the south end of Co-op City. The BX28, which runs along Allerton Avenue, would serve the north. Riders who want to use a bus line that does not stop in their end of the complex would have to transfer where the two lines overlap.
Kevin Desmond, chief of operations planning for the Transit Authority, said eliminating the stops would save some people about 15 minutes of traveling time but would make it more difficult for others, who must transfer.
"We're inconveniencing some people," Mr. Desmond said. "We're not trying to hide that."
He also said part of the motivation was to make the lines more efficient and to save money. But the money, he said, would then be used reinvested to create other lines in the area, including a proposed rush-hour shuttle from Co-op City to the Pelham Bay subway station, which is at Dyre Avenue and Gun Hill Road.
Arthur Taub, who heads the municipal services committee of Community Board 10, said he believed the changes were being made to benefit younger rush-hour commuters at the expense of older residents, who make up a large portion of Co-op City. The older people, many of them retired, generally do not mind spending a little extra time on the bus if the stops are convenient; what they do mind, he said, is getting on and off and having to wait for another bus.
"In all my years on this board, I've never gotten as many calls on one issue as on this, and all of them saying no," Arthur Taub said.
Mr. Desmond said transit officials still believed the plan would work, but he added, "If in the long term this firestorm of protest doesn't go away, then the T. A. will have to reconsider the proposal."   RANDY KENNEDY

LOAD-DATE: June 14, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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The New York Times

June 12, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Navigating the Health Swamp: A Primer

SECTION: Section 4A; Page 3; Column 1; Editorial Desk

LENGTH: 1317 words

Nearly everyone agrees that the U.S. health care system needs fixing. But how much, and how to do it? This guide to the problems and the main proposals before Congress was prepared by Diane Rowland and Peter Long of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, a national health care philanthropy.
 
PROBLEMS
 
The Uninsured: 37 Million
Millions of Americans become uninsured each year, most of them because they do not get insurance on the job and cannot afford to buy it. In 1992, 37 million Americans -- 15 percent of the non-elderly population -- were uninsured on any given day. Because the elderly have Medicare coverage and the very poor and disabled generally have Medicaid, the overwhelming majority of the uninsured (84 percent) are full- or part-time workers and their families.
The high cost of insurance limits coverage. Seven in 10 uninsured Americans make less than $30,000 a year. Although the uninsured do get care, they get less, get it later and end up sicker than people with insurance.
 
The Vulnerable
While most Americans have insurance, changing jobs can often mean losing coverage: two-thirds of companies with fewer than 25 employees do not offer coverage. In the course of a year, one in five Americans -- more than 50 million people -- will be uninsured at least temporarily and one-third will be without insurance for at least a year. Only 7 percent of uninsured adults say they are uninsured by choice. Six in 10 say they cannot afford coverage and 22 percent cite loss of a job or lack of on-the-job insurance. Three percent can't get coverage because of health problems.
 
The Cost of Care
The U.S. is the only major industrial nation that does not provide universal health coverage, yet it spends far more than any other country on health -- more than $800 billion a year, 14 percent of the gross domestic product. And the portion is growing: without cost-containment measures, it is expected to top 18 percent by the year 2000. From 1988 to 1993, the average family premium for employer-based group health insurance doubled, from $2,500 to $5,200. Families wanting to buy health insurance directly from an insurer can spend as much as $10,000 a year.
 
CHOICES
 
Single-Payer
The single-payer plan would create a universal public system of health insurance coverage with comprehensive benefits financed by income and payroll taxes instead of premiums. All Americans would be covered, in much the same way the elderly are now covered by Medicare. Employerbased coverage, private insurance, Medicare and Medicaid would be replaced by a single plan. Costs would be controlled through administrative simplification and by a national budget with Government-regulated payment rates for doctors and hospitals. (Example: McDermott-/Wellstone bill.)
 
Employer Mandate
Employer-based approaches build on the already extensive system that provides private insurance to two-thirds of the non-elderly population. To achieve universal coverage, all employers would have to offer insurance to employees and help pay the premiums. The Government would provide coverage or help pay for private insurance for nonworkers; Medicare would be kept for the elderly.
To contain costs, some plans would regulate prices and set spending limits; others would expand use of managed care, and promote increased competition among health insurance plans. Some plans call for regional alliances, which would spool the purchasing power of small business and promote price competition among plans. (Examples: Clinton plan, House Ways and Means Health Subcommittee bill.)
 
Individual Mandate
This approach places the responsibility for obtaining coverage on individuals and families, rather than employers or the Government. To achieve universal coverage, people would be required to obtain insurance either through their employers or by buying it on the private market. The Government would subsidize premium costs for low-income individuals and families. Employers could cover some of the premium costs, but would not be required to.
Costs would be controlled by promoting increased consumer consciousness, greater use of managed care and greater competition among health plans. (Examples: Thomas-Chafee bill, Stearns-Nickles bill).
 
No Mandate
Voluntary plans build on the existing system by providing incentives to expand coverage and control costs, but do not mandate coverage. Expanded coverage would be encouraged through reforms in the private health insurance market (Like eliminating ineligibility for those with pre-existing conditions), subsidies for low-income people and alliances to help small companies and individuals buy insurance.
This approach would control costs and make coverage more affordable by increasing competition among proivate insurance plans and cost consciousness among consumers. (Examples: Cooper-Breaux bill, Michel-Lott bill.)
 
ASSESSING THE PLANS
 
Single-Payer
All Americans would have comprehensive health benefits through a single system, regardless of income or employment. This approach would reduce much of the complexity of the present system, but it would shift most of the financing from employers and the private sector to the tax system. It would virtually eliminate a role for private insurance and would concentrate control of the health care system under the Federal Government. It would greatly expand the role of the Government in health, but also provide Government with greater purchasing power to control costs.
 
Employer Mandate
Employer-based approaches expand insurance coverage with the least disruption to current arrangements and would minimize change for most Americans. They rely on employers to cover workers and on the Government to provide coverage for nonworkers. Employers and their employees, rather than the Government, pay most of the cost for insuring all workers and their families.
Employer mandates would mean higher health insurance costs for some businesses, especially small companies that do not offer insurance today. Government assistance to businesses could help avoid wage cuts, job losses and other potential effects.
The mobility of the work force makes this approach administratively complex and requires explicit mechanisms to assure continuous coverage. Cost control based on greater use of managed care and competition among health plans would require much restructuring of the market, without assured effectiveness.
 
Individual Mandate
Making individuals responsible for insurance would break the link between employment and insurance coverage -- easing the mobility of the labor force, but also potentially removing business as a source of financing and a force in controlling costs.
Government subsidies could be directed to low-wage workers and low-income families rather than more broadly applied to businesses, but the loss of employer contributions would mean substantial tax increases for Federal subsidies to make insurance affordable, without adequate subsidies, coverage could remain beyond the reach of many Americans.
An individual-based program would substantially alter current insurance arrangements, and would be complicated to administer and hard to enforce. Increasing consumer awareness could help restain costs, but unless they join alliances, consumers would lack the purchasing power that big employers have now.
 
No Mandate
Voluntary approaches provide incentives for cost control and for reaching the uninsured and the vulnerable, but no assurances that these problems will be fully addressed. Market reforms and expanded coverage for low-income people would reduce the number of uninsured but not assure universal coverage.
Expanded coverage of low-income people would require additional Federal revenue. Cost containment would depend largely on the success of free-market competition in restraining premium increases.

LOAD-DATE: July 8, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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219 of 457 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times

June 15, 1994, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Metropolitan Diary

BYLINE: By Ron Alexander 

SECTION: Section C;  Page 2;  Column 1;  Living Desk 

LENGTH: 662 words


GENERATIONS
 
 My grandfather (who I
 called Popsy)
 was a Bricklayer from Bayonne and
 wore spats and smoked stogies
 and at five foot four
 could expand any room with grins
 and goodness.
 And my father (who I
 called Pops)
 was a C.P.A. in Suburbia,
 wore pleated pants and smoked Camels
 and at five foot nine
 could stretch any house with smiles
 and sincerity.
 And my kids' father (who they
 call Pop)
 is a Shrink in the City and
 wears well-worn memories and chews gum
 and at six foot one
 hopes for the same wide warmth that Pops
 and Popsy had to fill his family's hearts.   ROGER GRANET


 	 	 
	.  .  .	 
It was one of the city's more enchanted evenings, with some 6,000 music lovers, including a tot or two, filling the Cathedral of St. John the Divine and spilling out on the lawn, to hear Kurt Masur conduct the New York Philharmonic in a free performance of Mahler's Symphony No. 9. It was one of those all-too-infrequent occasions when one would not have lived in any other town.
But even the most diehard Mahler-ites allowed themselves to be pleasantly distracted by the pajama-clad lad of 2 or so sitting attentively alongside his young dad who conducted silently from his seat, a smile on his face, an occasional whisper-finger to his lips. When he conducted gently, his son did likewise. When he used more aggressive movements, the youngster was equally enthusiastic.
Such shared delight between father and son did not go unnoticed by their neighbors. When at the conclusion of the second movement, the youngster left with a young woman, all nearby eyes were on Dad, who realized an explanation was in order.
"Oh," he said. "He really only likes the first two movements."


 	 	 
	.  .  .	 
Place: Corner of Bank and Greenwich Streets, Manhattan.
Dramatis personae: Man walking a large black Rottweiler; woman walking small black French poodle; Elisa DeCarlo, just listening.
Woman, with nod toward big black Rottweiler: Does he get enough exercise?
Man: I walk him twice a day; we have a yard and stairs. He gets plenty of exercise.
Woman: But does he get enough exercise emotionally?
Dear Diary:
I recently performed my stand-up comedy act at a center for the elderly in Chelsea. I'm in my 20's and it was no small task to gear my routine to a group with an average age of, say, 85. They seemed to like me; only a few fell asleep. After my act, a woman -- probably in her 90's -- approached me. "You, come here," she demanded, much as my grandmother does when she wants attention.
Who was I to argue? A fan's a fan.
"You're the comic, right?"
I nodded proudly.
"Well, I want you to know that I saw Milton Berle when he was your age."
"Yeah . . . wow!" I gasped in mock sincerity.
"Yes," she snapped. "And he was no good either. So stick with it."
There are no easy gigs in New York.   BILL GORDON


 	 	 
	.  .  .	 

 
Dear Diary:
A balmy close-to-summer night. Jeanne T. Rhee and her boyfriend are strolling along Broadway. On the block between 73d and 74th Streets, Ms. Rhee sees a father carrying his daughter, about 4, atop his shoulders. The girl is adorable, with white-blond hair and a silliness that reminds Ms. Rhee of herself when she was young.
Unbeknownst to her father, the girl is forming rabbit ears with her fingers on top of his head. When she sees that Ms. Rhee has discovered her secret, she gestures "shhh" with her other hand. Both cover their mouths to suppress laughter.


 	 	 
	.  .  .	 

 
THE EGG CREAM
 
 There were ten stools
 Covered in red vinyl
 That always felt loose
 As you twirled around
 Waiting for the owner
 To begin the process
 That was as near to heaven
 As you could get
 From the contents of a 10-ounce glass;
 A practiced sleight of hand; some syrup;
 A dash of milk; a spritz of seltzer;
 And once upon a time
 Some part of an egg.   ELLEN FUCHS

LOAD-DATE: June 15, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Sketchbook drawing.

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220 of 457 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times

June 15, 1994, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Personal Health;
The war on brittle bones must start early in life.

BYLINE: By Jane E. Brody 

SECTION: Section C;  Page 9;  Column 1;  National Desk;  Health Page

LENGTH: 1195 words

A CONFERENCE of experts is not needed to tell Americans that their bones are in jeopardy. All they have to do is look at the huge numbers of older people who have developed rounded backs and lost inches in height because their spinal vertebrae have collapsed, or the millions who have suffered debilitating fractures, particularly of the hip, which too often end in death.
More than 25 million people have osteoporosis, the bone-loss disease that results in more than 1.5 million fractures a year in people over 50 at an expense to society of more than $10 billion a year. Yet this costly problem has what appears to be a very inexpensive solution: Get every American to consume more calcium, the mineral that is the primary contributor to the density and strength of bones throughout the body. 
 Last week 32 experts on calcium and its effects presented telling facts to the National Institutes of Health Consensus Development Conference on Optimal Calcium Intake. The expert reports prompted the consensus panel to conclude that millions of people in the United States are not getting nearly enough calcium in their diets and that the current Recommended Dietary Allowances (R.D.A.'s) for calcium are inadequate for most age groups.
While this finding is hardly a surprise to anyone who has been paying attention to the problem of osteoporosis, the details of the panel's 25-page statement are likely to raise serious questions about current efforts to counter the problem.
 
Start With a Full Deck
 If you took a trip in a car that had a slow leak in the radiator, you would be likely to get stuck sooner if you left with the radiator half full than if you had filled it to the brim before starting out. The same holds true with your bones. The process of bone-building occurs almost entirely during childhood and adolescence. By the age of 20, your bones have become just about as big and strong as they will ever be, and after 30 they stop growing and start slowly losing the minerals that give them strength.
At menopause, bone loss in women accelerates at a dizzying pace for six to eight years, a process that the panel said can be slowed only by estrogen replacement therapy. Then the rate of loss declines, but the weakening of bones continues inexorably. By 65, men and women are losing bone at equal rates, and elderly men join women as the victims of fractures resulting from osteoporosis.
Like the car with a half-full leaky radiator, the more feeble your bones are by the third decade of life, the greater and sooner will be the impact of bone loss after midlife.
Participants in last week's conference, which sought a consensus on the ideal amount of calcium Americans should consume, were told that the need for calcium is greatest between the ages of 9 and 18, when youngsters lay down 37 percent of their total adult bone mass. According to Dr. Velimir Matkovic, director of the bone and mineral metabolism laboratory at Ohio State's Davis Medical Research Center in Columbus, the amount of calcium consumed in childhood can make a difference of 5 to 10 percent in adult bone density, which would translate into more than a 50 percent difference in hip fracture rates later in life.
Daily intakes of up to 1,500 milligrams of calcium -- the amount in five eight-ounce glasses of milk -- have bone-building effects in children, with no evidence of unwanted side effects, said Dr. Charles W. Slemenda, an associate professor of medicine at Indiana University Medical Center in Indianapolis.
Yet at every age, the Recommended Dietary Allowance (R.D.A.) for calcium is lower than the amount shown to increase youngsters' bone mass. And, as if that were not bad enough, after infancy, when soft drinks largely replace milk in youthful diets, most American children -- and especially teen-age girls -- fall far short of consuming even the R.D.A. for calcium. In fact, calcium intake among girls actually declines at puberty, just when they need it most.
 
Containing the Losses
 Several diet-related factors besides calcium intake contribute to the problem, Dr. Robert P. Heaney of Creighton University in Omaha noted. Most important is the amount of protein and sodium in the diet. When people consume these nutrients in excess, as nearly every American does, they seriously deplete the body's calcium supply by increasing the amount of calcium lost in urine.
"At low sodium and protein intakes, the calcium requirement for an adult female may be as little as 450 milligrams a day, whereas if her intake of both nutrients is high, she may require as much as 2,000 milligrams a day to maintain calcium balance," Dr. Heaney said. On the other hand, two nutritional factors people often worry about, caffeine and fiber in the diet, have very small effects on calcium balance. The reduced absorption of calcium associated with drinking one cup of coffee, for example, can be compensated for by adding a tablespoon or two of milk, the expert said. He also pointed out that the oxalates and phytates in some vegetables (spinach, rhubarb, beans and whole wheat, for example) only block absorption of the calcium in those foods, not calcium in other foods consumed.
Calcium supplements, which have become a crutch for millions of American women who spurn calcium-rich foods, are far from the ideal solution. First, supplements do little or nothing to slow the rapid bone loss that afflicts virtually all women in the decade after menopause, unless they take estrogen replacement. But calcium supplements can be used to enrich a calcium-deficient diet both before and after menopause and some studies indicate that after the age of 65 supplements can reduce the risk of fracture in both women and men. For most people, supplements of up to 2,000 milligrams a day are considered safe.
Dr. Bess Dawson-Hughes, a bone and calcium specialist at the Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University in Boston, said the type of supplement taken makes little difference in the amount of calcium absorbed. But the body uses supplements best when the dose does not exceed 500 milligrams, and calcium carbonate (the type found in Tums) is best absorbed when taken with meals, Dr. Dawson-Hughes reported. For those who cannot or will not swallow pills, she recommended chewable tablets, those that bubble up in water and calcium-supplemented fruit drinks.
Another crucial factor in stemming adult bone loss is having enough vitamin D in its activated form. This vitamin is crucial to the body's ability to absorb dietary calcium and to use it to make bone. Older people are especially at risk of a vitamin D deficiency and may require supplements to enhance their ability to use calcium.
Still, Dr. L. Joseph Melton 3d of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., pointed out, using supplements to increase bone mass in later life may do little to repair the destruction of bones' internal architecture and thus may not reduce the risk of fracture. Calcium, he said, is most effective at preventing, rather than at correcting, bone loss, which means that the proper time to worry about calcium intake is as children and young adults.

LOAD-DATE: June 15, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


GRAPHIC: The 15-member consensus development panel that studied calcium concluded that for some age groups, the currently recommended daily intake of calcium is not adequate to achieve optimal peak bone mass in children and young adults and to prevent bone loss later in life. The panel recommended that the RDA's for calcium be replaced by optimal calcium intake levels, as follows:


 	 	 
	Optimal Daily Intake	 
Group	(in milligrams of calcium)	R.D.A
 	 	 
Infants	 	 
 birth to 6 months	400 (250 if nursing)	400
 6 months to 1 year	600	600
Children 1 to 10 years old	800	800
Teen-agers	1,200 to 1,500	1,200
Men	 	 
 25 to 50	800	800
 51 to 65	1,000	800
 over 65	1,500	800
Women	 	 
 25 to 50	1,000	800
 over 50	1,500 (1,000 if taking estrogen)	800
 Pregnant and nursing women	Additional 400	1,200

 
"Good Food Sources of Calcium"


<	 
 	 
	Calcium
Food	(milligrams)
 	 
Breast milk, 8 ounces	79
Skim milk, 8 ounces	302
Whole milk, 8 ounces	291
Buttermilk, 8 ounces	285
Low-fat chocolate milk, 8 ounces	287
Low-fat plain yogurt, 8 ounces	415
Nonfat plain yogurt, 8 ounces	452
Low-fat fruit yogurt, 8 ounces	314
American cheese, 1 ounce	174
Cheddar cheese, 1 ounce	204
Low-fat cottage cheese, 1 cup	155
Feta cheese, 1 ounce	140
Goat cheese (hard), 1 ounce	254
Part-skim mozzarella, 1 ounce	183
Grated Parmesan cheese, 1 tablespoon	69
Canned salmon with bones, 3 ounces	203
Sardines with bones, 3 1/2 ounces	351
Broccoli (cooked), 1 cup	178
Collards (frozen, chopped), 1 cup	357
Dandelion greens (chopped, cooked) 1 cup 147	 
Kale (frozen, chopped), 1 cup	179
Mustard greens (chopped, cooked), 1 cup	103
Chocolate pudding, 1/2 cup	161
Rice pudding, 1/2 cup	152
Vanilla ice cream, 1/2 cup	85
Vanilla soft-serve ice cream, 1/2 cup	113
Chocolate soft-serve frozen yogurt, 1/2 cup	106

Charts: "Calcium: How Much Do People Need?"

Copyright 1994 The New York Times Company



221 of 457 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times

June 16, 1994, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

U.S. Says Empire Blue Cross Billed Improperly

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

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

LENGTH: 854 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, June 15

Federal auditors said today that Empire Blue Cross and Blue Shield, the biggest health insurer in New York State, owed the Government $200 million because it had improperly billed Medicare for claims that the company should have paid.
Empire is both a private insurer and a Government contractor, reviewing and paying claims to elderly people enrolled in Medicare. While this arrangement is legal, it contains potential conflicts of interest, and the auditors said that Empire had shifted costs from its private lines of business to the Government. 
 The auditors said that Empire had improperly billed the Government for medical services to people who were enrolled in Medicare but also had private coverage from Blue Cross and Blue Shield. In these cases, under Federal law, Empire should have paid the bills.
The findings are included in a report signed on Tuesday by June Gibbs Brown, the inspector general of the Federal Department of Health and Human Services.
Her report says that Empire tried to put off Federal investigators with "delays and diversions" and refused to supply documents until the Government issued two subpoenas for the relevant records.
"In conducting this audit, our efforts were often impeded by resistance and a lack of cooperation from Empire," Ms. Brown wrote.
The audit took more than five years. Federal officials said it could have been completed in 18 months if Empire had cooperated.
John F. Kelly, a spokesman for Empire, acknowledged that the company owed money to the Government, but said it was much less than $200 million.
Empire probably could not pay the $200 million if the Federal Government demanded the money all at once. But the terms of payment may be negotiated with officials at the Department of Health and Human Services, who said they were aware of Empire's financial problems.
In its most recent financial report, filed with the New York Insurance Department in April, Empire said it had set aside $30 million to cover the cost of its dispute with the Government over Medicare. The company can take its case to court if it cannot reach agreement on the amount to be paid to the Government.
Empire told Federal investigators it was not responsible for compliance with the Medicare law in question. Rather, it said, the Government and Empire customers are responsible.
Under the law, Medicare does not usually pay for the medical care of workers 65 and older if they or their spouses have private health insurance coverage through their employers or former employers. In such cases, the private insurers are supposed to be the primary source of insurance. Medicare will cover part of the unpaid balance in some cases.
Congress established these rules in 1982 to help save the Government money. It has tightened the rules several times since then to increase the liability of employers, employees and private insurers.
 
Nunn Was Concerned
 The findings of the audit support concerns expressed last year by Senator Sam Nunn of Georgia, the chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, who has been studying problems of Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans across the country.
The audit says that "Federal law and regulations provide that Empire has primary responsibility for compliance," despite Empire's contention to the contrary.
Empire provides private health insurance to seven million people in New York State. In addition, under contract with the Government, Empire administers the Medicare program, reviewing and paying claims for people in New York.
Ms. Brown, the inspector general, compared Medicare payment data and the enrollment records of Empire's private health insurance contracts. She and her aides used computers to scrutinize 13 million claims paid by Medicare for 327,000 elderly people who also had private coverage from Empire.
As a Medicare contractor, she said, Empire has "a fiduciary responsibility to the Federal Government to assure that only appropriate Medicare payments are made."
The inspector general has identified similar problems with private insurers, including Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans, that serve as agents for Medicare in other parts of the country. But the amount of the Federal claims against Empire far exceeds the amounts in dispute in the other cases, most of which were settled with the cooperation of the companies.
The board of Empire Blue Cross and Blue Shield forced the resignation of the company's top executive, Albert A. Cardone, in May 1993, after an internal inquiry disclosed deep management and morale problems. Since then, Empire has hired a new team of managers. But Federal officials said the company had not displayed any greater willingness to cooperate with Government auditors.
Empire says most of its financial problems were caused by its providing coverage to all applicants, including many with expensive medical conditions.
 
$75 Million a Year
 The Government pays Empire $75 million a year to handle more than $8 billion worth of Medicare claims from doctors, hospitals, laboratories, nursing homes, hospices and suppliers of medical equipment.

LOAD-DATE: June 16, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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The New York Times

June 17, 1994, Friday, Late Edition - Final

G.O.P. IN THE HOUSE IS TRYING TO BLOCK HEALTH CARE BILL

BYLINE: By ADAM CLYMER,   Special to The New York Times 

SECTION: Section A;  Page 1;  Column 6;  National Desk 

LENGTH: 1230 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, June 16

At the urging of Representative Newt Gingrich, their deputy leader, House Republicans are trying to keep health care legislation from reaching the floor in a form that could pass.
Despite criticism from Democrats and even from one Republican who accused him of putting partisan politics first, Mr. Gingrish said today that Republicans should vote against amendments that might broaden the support for a bill that the House Ways and Means Committee is considering. 
 A few hours later, Republican committee members followed that prescription; all 14 opposed an amendment to soften the bill's impact on small businesses by providing tax credits to offset their new insurance costs.
But Mr. Gingrich's hardball strategy backfired when previously divided Democrats closed ranks and voted unanimously for a series of amendments, even though some made clear that they did not like them and might alter some later. Several said Mr. Gingrich's move had unified them.
Mr. Gingrich's comments confirmed in part accusations of obstructionism that Democrats had leveled at Republican leaders, saying they were muzzling moderates in their party and blocking compromise on any health care bill. But the Democrats had never provided specifics.
"It's becoming clearer and clearer that they are interested in frustrating action," Representative Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri, the House majority leader, said today. Although Republicans have often said they desired bipartisan cooperation, he said, "their real intention is to, unfortunately, not do anything." He said Republicans were acting like "robots."
In an interview today, Mr. Gingrich, of Georgia, responded, "I think it is very sad to see Gephardt reduced to a Clinton level of dishonesty." He said that Republicans had repeatedly offered to work with Democrats on health care legislation but that "what they mean by bipartisan is us caving in." He said members of his party were resisting "selling out your principles to pass one bill."
Mr. Gingrich said he had told Republican members of the Ways and Means Committee that "they should do what they think is effective in minimizing the prospect that the Gibbons bill will pass." The committee's bill was proposed by its acting chairman, Representative Sam M. Gibbons of Florida.
The Gibbons bill would seek to provide health insurance for all Americans by requiring employers to pay most of the cost of premiums for their workers and by creating a new form of Medicare, the existing health program for the elderly, to include the unemployed and others not reached through employment.
"There is no point in improving it so it will pass," Mr. Gingrich said. "It's a bad bill, and it's wrong." He said the bill would cause "bigger government, bigger bureaucracy and higher taxes for worse health care."
Mr. Gingrich, who is all but certain to become minority leader after the November elections, confirmed a complaint made on Wednesday by Representative Fred Grandy, Republican of Iowa. In a meeting of the committee, Mr. Grandy said Mr. Gingrich had urged that an amendment suggested by Mr. Grandy not be offered because the taxes it involved might be used as an issue against Republican candidates.
Mr. Grandy agreed not to propose the amendment in the committee meeting, but he said today, "To see health care pre-empted by politics, even in the short run, is unsettling."
Senators have not made similar complaints in public. But if they are guaranteed anonymity, some senators of both parties say Presidential politics and a desire to deny Mr. Clinton success have driven Republicans to oppose compromising on health care.
Others insist that they merely feel very strongly that Mr. Clinton's proposal for national health insurance and the spinoffs offered by Mr. Gibbons and Senators Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York would be bad for the country. They usually focus on the damage to small business they foresee if employers are required to buy insurance for their workers, an element these bills have in common.
 
Unity Above All
 But at least one important player, Senator Bob Packwood of Oregon, cited Republican unity as a reason for going against his own preference. Mr. Packwood, the senior Republican on Mr. Moynihan's Finance Committee, said today that while he personally favored an employer mandate, for example, he would not vote for one.
"If you're going to go against your party, you do it either out of conscience or constituency," he said. "You do not do it over a matter of convenience." He said that he thought requiring contributions from employers would enable the nation to insure all Americans but that it could be done, though more slowly, without that requirement. Republican unity is worth a little delay, he said.
A group of Democrats held a news conference today to try to rally support for Mr. Clinton's call for universal insurance coverage and required employer payments to achieve it. Mr. Kennedy, chairman of the Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee, said he was confident the full Senate would support employer payments once it had debated the issue, because "you don't get to universal coverage without an employer contribution."
The Senate Democratic leader, George J. Mitchell of Maine, told reporters this morning, "We will be on the Senate floor with a health care bill in July." He said he was not dismayed by the disagreements that had stalled action in the Finance Committee. "I've been through dozens and dozens of bills where you start with disagreement and end up with agreement," he said.
The embattled Finance Committee held two closed meetings today, discussing what benefits should be included under any national health insurance plan. It also discussed what sort of national board should deal with changes in the package. The committee will meet, again in a closed meeting, next Tuesday.
 
Grandy Would Tax Benefits
 The Grandy amendment that started the House dispute is actually one that Democratic leaders like Mr. Gephardt oppose bitterly, though some members of both parties like the idea. It would tax health care benefits above those in a minimum insurance plan, both to discourage wasteful use of health care resources and to raise money to subsidize insurance for the poor. Labor unions have made the defeat of any version of this idea a top priority.
Mr. Gingrich told Mr. Grandy that his amendment could hurt Republican candidates, because Democrats could label it a tax increase on the middle class. Mr. Grandy said he understood, though he was disappointed.
This afternoon the Ways and Means Committee's Democrats, who were bickering last night over a patchwork series of amendments that would reduce proposed tobacco taxes, give tax credits to small businesses and delay the availability of long-term-care benefits, stood together and voted without dissent for each of them.
In a caucus this morning, Democrats encouraged one another to stand against the Republican enemy.
Mr. Gingrich's title is Republican whip, which means it is the Republicans whom he is supposed to keep united. But Representative Jim McDermott, a Washington Democrat who swallowed his unhappiness with details of the amendments and voted for them, said Democratic antagonism toward the Republican leader meant that "Mr. Gingrich was our whip today."

LOAD-DATE: June 17, 1994

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GRAPHIC: Photo: Following the leadership of Newt Gingrich, the Republicans are trying to keep legislation on health care from going before the full House if it has a chance of passing. Mr. Gingrich worked in his office yesterday.  (Kirsten Bremmer for The New York Times) (pg. A14)

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June 18, 1994, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

Medicare Inquiry Subpoenas 100 Hospitals

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

SECTION: Section 1;  Page 11;  Column 4;  National Desk 

LENGTH: 996 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, June 17

Federal agents have issued subpoenas to more than 100 hospitals around the country as part of a broad investigation of claims filed under Medicare and Medicaid for the use of new medical devices not approved by the Food and Drug Administration.
The inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services, June Gibbs Brown, issued the subpoenas as part of an examination of the use of all sorts of devices. A copy of one subpoena, obtained by The New York Times from a hospital, shows that investigators are also examining claims for a wide range of surgical procedures, many of which involve cardiac catheters, flexible tubes used in the treatment of heart disease. 
 Fredric J. Entin, senior vice president and general counsel of the American Hospital Association, said today: "The subpoenas appear to be extremely broad. They cover an extraordinary length of time, 10 years. The Government is asking for documents that may no longer exist. We are very concerned."
In general, Medicare, the Federal health insurance program for the elderly and the disabled, and Medicaid, the program for low-income people, will not pay for the use of medical devices that have not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration.
 
Not Considered Necessary
 The Medicare manual for hospitals, issued by the Federal Government, says "payment may not be made for procedures" using such devices because they are not considered necessary for the diagnosis or treatment of illness or injury.
Among the hospitals that received subpoenas are St. Francis Hospital in Roslyn, L.I., and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. Doctors at both hospitals perform large numbers of cardiac procedures. Lucille P. Danaher, a spokeswoman for St. Francis, said, "We are cooperating with the investigation and complying with the subpoena." Ronald L. Wise, a spokesman for Cedars-Sinai, said the hospital would "respond appropriately," but he refused to give details.
Catheters are used for a variety of diagnostic purposes and treatments. Cardiac catheters are inserted into blood vessels in the arm or the leg and pushed up into arteries of the heart to remove plaque blocking the flow of blood needed to nourish the heart muscle. Another kind of cardiac catheter is also used to diagnose and treat wildly erratic heartbeats, which can kill people of any age.
Medical technology is changing rapidly. While many cardiac catheters have been approved by the F.D.A., many of the newer devices have not. One of the world's largest manufacturers of medical devices, C. R. Bard Inc., pleaded guilty last year to 391 criminal charges related to the sale of untested heart catheters. The company acknowledged selling the devices without F.D.A. approval, illegally experimenting on people and concealing problems with the devices from the Government.
 
What Investigators Wants
 Federal investigators are trying to determine whether hospitals submitted claims to Medicare and Medicaid for procedures involving such unapproved devices. The subpoenas say the Government is investigating the "submission of false or improper claims to, and their payment by, the Medicare and Medicaid programs." Under Federal law, there are criminal and civil penalties for filing false claims, and hospitals that file such claims may be excluded from Medicare and Medicaid.
The treasurer of Bard, Earle L. Parker, said he suspected that the Government was investigating cases in which hospitals had billed Medicare for purchase of devices that they received as samples, free of charge, from various manufacturers. Federal agents are also studying whether Medicare was improperly billed for clinical trials evaluating new devices.
Dr. Steven J. Evans, a cardiologist at Long Island Jewish Hospital in New Hyde Park, said: "Although some cardiac devices are investigational, they really have become standard accepted medical technique across the country and the world. They are much less expensive and less risky to patients than alternative therapies like cardiac surgery."
The Federal investigation is being coordinated by the Inspector General's field office in Seattle. The subpoenas direct hospital officials to deliver records to the Seattle office by July 1.
One type of information sought by the Government is a "listing of all procedures performed from April 5, 1984, through March 31, 1994, involving devices that were not approved by the Food and Drug Administration for marketing, including the use of approved devices for nonapproved purposes."
For each procedure, investigators want to know the patient's name, the date on which the procedure was performed, the company that made the device, the price of the device and the name of the doctor who performed the service. They also demand copies of financial records, hospital bills and insurance claims for each procedure.
In addition, the subpoenas ask for "a listing of any and all persons employed as the director of the cardiac catheter laboratory, supervisor of the electrophysiology department, the cardiac nursing supervisor, the operating room nurse or any other person responsible for preparing the charge slips in connection with the procedures."
Among other things, Federal agents are investigating payments for the use of catheters to correct irregular heartbeats. In this procedure, doctors pinpoint a small area of heart tissue responsible for wildly erratic heart rhythms, and they insert a catheter into the heart. They heat the tip of the catheter so that it will destroy the cells in that area of the heart.
Barbara T. Dreyfuss, a vice president of Prudential Securities who follows health policy issues, said: "If the Inspector General cracks down on hospitals' ability to get reimbursement from Medicare, hospitals may be less willing to pay the device manufacturers. It could be hard for small companies to do clinical trials." Such trials are usually required before new devices can be put on the market.

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June 19, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

NEIGHBORHOOD REPORT: SPUYTEN DUYVIL;
Quietly, a Slice of Bronx History Disappears

BYLINE: By ROSALIE R. RADOMSKY 

SECTION: Section 14;  Page 10;  Column 1;  The City Weekly Desk 

LENGTH: 365 words

A piece of 19th-century history vanished last week.
Until it was boarded up about nine months ago, the dilapidated two-story stucco house at 2975 Independence Avenue was the thrift shop of the Frances Schervier Home and Hospital. The building, which occupied a small section of the home's nine-acre complex, was leveled because it was unsafe. Grass will be planted and the site will be used as a park for elderly residents of the home and children in the day-care program. 
 But historians are mourning the loss of the Italianate structure, whose foundation was part of a Revolutionary War fort; the house was also a contemporary of the Hudson River villas in the Riverdale Historic District.
Peter J. Ostrander, president of the Kingsbridge Historical Society, said the house was built around 1860 for a family named Strang and first showed up on an 1867 map of Yonkers. He said his hopes had soared last month when the house was spray-painted. But it turned out that the coating had been applied only to keep lead and asbestos from flying during demolition.
"We lost the oldest house in Spuyten Duyvil," said Mr. Ostrander, "but we don't have to lose everything. Maybe this is a wake-up call for other historic sites."
An attempt to secure landmark status for the house failed in 1982 because it did not qualify architecturally, said Anthony Robins, a staff member of the Landmarks Preservation Commission.
Katrinka Walter, a spokeswoman for the Frances Schervier Home and Hospital, which is part of the Franciscan Sisters of the Poor Health System, said the organization had been unaware of the history of the building, which once housed staff members.
The house was on the site of the Revolutionary War Fort No. 1, which was built in 1776 by the Dutchess County militia, Mr. Ostrander said.
William C. Muschenheim, owner of the Astor Hotel, lived in the house in 1910. The Franciscan Sisters bought the house and land in the early 1930's.
Mr. Ostrander said the cleared site might provide opportunities for history buffs. An archeological dig could "give something back to American Revolutionary history and back to the community," he said.   ROSALIE R. RADOMSKY

LOAD-DATE: June 21, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photos: The two-story Italianate structure at 2975 Independence Avenue, top, was the oldest house in Spuyten Duyvil until its demolition. After the clearing, it will be used as a park by the Franciscan Sisters of the Poor.(Rolf von Hall (top); Steve Hart for The New York Times (above)

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June 22, 1994, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Veterans Changed Colleges' Attitudes

BYLINE: By WILLIAM CELIS 3d 

SECTION: Section B;  Page 7;  Column 2;  National Desk;  Education Page

LENGTH: 490 words

The G.I. Bill went well beyond enrolling millions of Americans in higher education; it forever altered teaching styles and attitudes about older students in colleges and universities.
"For the first time, you had people in classes who had had real life experiences and had much to share," said Connie Odems, senior vice president of the American Association of Community Colleges, a group of 1,200 two-year colleges. "It was not all textbook learning anymore." 
 If the G.I. Bill helped change the way courses were taught, it also introduced the concept of continuing education. At colleges and universities, the push to accommodate these older students resulted in a much broader and more sophisticated menu of vocational job-training courses.
This was particularly true at community colleges, which grew tremendously in the years immediately after World War II and well into the 1970's, to accommodate veterans of the Korean and Vietnam Wars.
And the veterans generally enjoyed academic success, dispelling the fears voiced when the G.I. Bill was debated 50 years ago. Leading academicians had criticized Federal efforts to open colleges and universities to classes of people who, under the circumstances of the time, would not have pursued college educations.
"The first thing it did was indicate to college administrations and faculty that these people could learn, even though they didn't come from the best high schools or from the top of their graduating classes," said Henry Spille, the vice president and director of the Center for Adult Learning at the American Council of Education, an association of 1,700 colleges and universities. "The maturity and persistence that they brought turned around the thinking of many people on the ability of older persons to learn at the college level."
As more veterans entered colleges and universities, the institutions scrambled to find new ways to assess the academic potential of their students. As a result, standardized testing, which had been used on a limited basis, saw unparalleled growth.
"It created a whole new industry in education," said Mr. Spille, acknowledging that standardized testing today is widely criticized as being less-than-accurate barometers of an individual's potential. "Standardized testing served its purpose then, however, because institutions needed the information to make a lot of judgments."
The G.I. Bill's most lasting gift to higher education, however, may have been as a forerunner to Federal student loan programs. Never before had the Federal Government been involved to such a degree in financing college educations for students, a role that continues 50 years after the G.I. Bill became law.
Last year, 4.4 million college students, most of them from families with incomes of less than $25,000 a year, received college grants of up to $2,500 a year under the Federal Government's largest college loan program, the Pell grant.

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June 23, 1994, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

Study Finds That Weight Training Can Benefit the Very Old

BYLINE: AP 

SECTION: Section A;  Page 16;  Column 3;  National Desk 

LENGTH: 421 words

DATELINE: BOSTON, June 22

Even among the very old, it is never too late to benefit from getting in shape, a new study suggests.
The study found that frail people in their late 80's or their 90's get around more quickly, climb stairs better and sometimes even throw away their walkers after a few weeks of lifting weights to strengthen their legs. 
 "People have an unduly negative attitude about what can be done with those at the end of their lives," said the study's director, Dr. Maria A. Fiatarone of the United States Department of Agriculture's Human Nutrition Research Center at Tufts University here. "We need to be more optimistic."
 
A Follow-Up Study
 The work is a much larger follow-up to a groundbreaking study four years ago by the same team. That report showed that working out strengthens aging muscles. This one found that extra strength improves people's lives.
The new study suggests that one reason the elderly grow chair-bound is that their muscles are weak from lack of exercise.
Dr. Evan Hadley, associate director for geriatrics at the National Institute on Aging, recommended that nursing homes start exercise programs similar to the well-supervised routine used by the Tufts group.
"If done the way this was, this could benefit substantial numbers of older people," he said.
 
Weight Lifters in Their 90's
 The earlier study was conducted on just 10 people, and some experts were skeptical about whether the findings of such a small experiment could be applied to all old people.
The latest study, being published on Thursday in The New England Journal of Medicine, involved 100 men and women who lived at the Hebrew Rehabilitation Center for the Aged in Boston. They appeared to be typical of frail nursing home residents.
Their average age was 87, and about a third of them were in their 90's. Half were demented, and many suffered from a variety of other ills, including arthritis, lung disease and high blood pressure.
They were randomly assigned either to participate in ordinary nursing home activities or to work out vigorously for 45 minutes three times a week. Those assigned to work out used exercise machines to strengthen their thighs and knees.
The exercising residents increased their walking speed by 12 percent and their ability to climb stairs by 28 percent. Four who had needed walkers to get around became able to walk with just a cane.
The people who worked out were also less depressed and more likely to walk around on their own and take part in nursing home activities.

LOAD-DATE: June 23, 1994

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GRAPHIC: Photo: Sara Chiller, 89, a resident of the Hebrew Rehabilitation Center for the Aged in Boston, works out on a leg-strengthening machine. A study there demonstrated the benefits of weight training among the elderly. (Associated Press)

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June 24, 1994, Friday, Late Edition - Final

Arthritis Rises as U.S. Ages

BYLINE: Reuters 

SECTION: Section A;  Page 13;  Column 1;  National Desk 

LENGTH: 317 words

DATELINE: ATLANTA, June 23

As the nation's population ages, the percentage of Americans who say they have problems from arthritis has increased, and it will rise even more over the next 25 years, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said today.
The centers, an Atlanta-based branch of the Department of Health and Human Services, said in its weekly report on health issues that a 1990 survey of nearly 60,000 people found that 15 percent of all Americans, or about 37.9 million people, said they suffered from arthritis. That compared with about 14.5 percent of the population five years earlier. 
 About 3.4 percent of the people surveyed said their ability to engage in everyday activities was limited in some way by arthritis. According to the study, 49.4 percent of all Americans over 65 said they had arthritis.
By the year 2020, the centers estimated, about 18.2 percent of the population will suffer from arthritis, said Dr. Chad Helmick, chief of the epidemiology section of the centers' aging studies branch.
"This is purely a function of the aging of the population," Dr. Helmick said. "Older people tend to have arthritis more than younger people, and there will be more older people in 25 or 30 years."
Dr. Helmick said arthritis was defined for purposes of the study as encompassing a number of conditions, including "gout, lupus, carpal tunnel syndrome, tendinitis and bursitis," as well as medically diagnosed forms of rheumatoid arthritis.
"We wanted a definition that would include the conditions most people would understand as joint problems," he said. "What we excluded were back problems, tumors and injuries."
Women were more likely than men, by a margin of 17.1 percent to 12.5 percent, to report arthritis. And although the rates of arthritis for blacks and whites were roughly equal, blacks were more likely to report limitation in their activities resulting from arthritis.

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June 26, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Volunteer Advocates Helping Those in Need

BYLINE: By ELISABETH GINSBURG 

SECTION: Section 13NJ;  Page 7A;  Column 5;  New Jersey Weekly Desk 

LENGTH: 1478 words

LIKE many Essex County homemakers, Janet Klein and Patricia Sherman spend their days tending to the needs of children, husbands and homes. But the women also spend several hours each week filing medical claim forms, resolving disputes with housing officials and hacking through the bureaucratic thickets that surround government entitlement programs.
Mrs. Klein and Mrs. Sherman are volunteers in the Friend Advocate program of the Community Health Law Project in East Orange. Each works with a single elderly person, helping to sort through paperwork and find solutions to the problems that sometimes accompany old age and infirmity. 
 The Friend Advocate program is one of several around the state that train volunteers to serve as advocates for and advisers to the poor, the elderly and the handicapped. Typically these volunteers help resolve problems with entitlement programs, housing or the legal system.
Rather than taking the place of counselors, social workers and lawyers, they provide additional services to the elderly. Often they are the human bridges that keep their clients from falling through the cracks in the social welfare system.
 
Getting Control of Things
 Mrs. Klein assists an alert, independent 82-year-old woman who lives in a building for the elderly in East Orange. In the last year she has had problems settling a dispute over heat in her apartment, handling medical bills and arranging for the home health aide she has needed since being hospitalized for heart problems.
The elderly woman, who insisted on not being identified, said Mrs. Klein, who has been a Friend Advocate since August 1993, has "gotten things under control."
Mrs. Klein said, "I feel passionate about helping elderly people." This passion translates into tenacity when problems arise. "I sift through it," Mrs. Klein said, alluding to the voluminous documentation required for Medicare.
A strong relationship has developed between the two, and Mrs. Klein said she admires the elderly woman. "She knows her rights," she added.
Mrs. Sherman assists a 61-year-old woman. Since their first meeting two years ago, Mrs. Sherman has helped the woman, a widow, determine what entitlement programs she is eligible for and helped explain changes in program rules. The woman recently received a diagnosis of cancer, and Mrs. Sherman said she was "trying to stay on top of checks and payments" for medical services.
Like Mrs. Klein, Mrs. Sherman said she and her client had developed "a real bond."
Volunteers in the Friend Advocate program, which started in 1984 in Essex County and 1985 in Union County, receive two nights of training and orientation, during which they are given information on programs for which elderly people may be eligible. Barbara Havlik, director of the Community Health Law Project, said that during the training, the instructors also try to "teach what it means to grow old."
New Friend Advocates start out armed with some knowledge, but both Mrs. Klein and Mrs. Sherman said they had learned a great deal on the job.
Once advocate and client are matched, "the job can be as big or as small as you want it to be," Mrs. Sherman said. The two women visit their clients once or twice a week, and both have taken their own young children along on occasion. Mrs. Sherman saidsuch visits have been "wonderful" for her 8-year-old daughter, Allison.
Mrs. Klein volunteered for the Friend Advocate program as a first step in a transition from full-time homemaking back to the work force.  Next fall, she expects to begin studying law at Seton Hall University. Her experience as a Friend Advocate has persuaded her to set her sights on specializing on the legal problems of the elderly.
Melanie Morris of Lawrenceville is also planning a legal career. For three months, she has been a volunteer for Womanspace, a shelter for battered women in Mercer County. Working two days a week with Jesse Manning, Womanspace's Family Court liaison, Ms. Morris counsels women, and sometimes men, before they make scheduled court appearances to seek restraining orders against abusive spouses.
"When you are dealing with victims one on one, every situation is individual," she said. Most of the women referred to Ms. Morris cannot afford lawyers.
There are times, she said, when the plaintiffs with whom she speaks go to court determined to drop their complaints. In such cases, part of Ms. Morris's job is to determine that the individuals are sure of their decisions.
Clients with legal problems are referred to Womanspace's volunteer lawyers. In her capacity as advocate and adviser, Ms. Morris also tells women which agencies and organizations can provide specific kinds of help. Though she cannot speak for her clients in court, Ms. Morris can accompany them into the courtroom to provide moral support.
Ms. Morris expects to continue her volunteer work at Family Court until she leaves for an out-of-state law school next fall. Though she is not paid for her services, Ms. Morris said she felt as if she received "a pat on the back" whenever she was able to help a battered spouse.
 
Citizen Advocacy Program
 Another program that usees volunteer advocates is the Citizen Advocacy Program sponsored by the Arc of New Jersey, an organization that helps people with developmental disabilities. The people aided by the program, who are mentally retarded or have cerebral palsy or epilepsy, are counseled by paid social workers, but may also be assigned to volunteer advocates.
Cathilyn Pappano, coordinator of the Citizen Advocacy Program in Mercer County, has a staff of seven volunteers, some of whom are college students majoring in special education. Ms. Pappano said that while some advocacy problems are handled by the organization's professional staff, volunteers may also help resolve welfare problems and give information about legal rights in various situations.
Ms. Pappano remembers one instance in which an advocate intervened with the County Division of Social Services on behalf of a woman who had put an incorrect name on an application form and was having trouble getting the error corrected.
"Sometimes government agencies don't have a lot of experience dealing with people who have these disabilities," Ms. Pappano said.
Leo Slatus, 81, is a volunteer advocate who spends his time smoothing out bumps in the Medicare system.  Mr. Slatus is a volunteer in the Chimes (Counseling on Health Insurance for Medicare Enrollees) program sponsored by the Senior Service Corporation of Orange. He advises and intercedes for people who have problems with Medicare, supplemental insurance policies and long-term-care insurance.
Mr. Slatus set up the program that evolved into Chimes 11 years ago at the Senior Service Corporation, a nonprofit social services agency in Orange, and he refers to it as "my baby." The program's 39 volunteers work at sites around Essex County including libraries and centers for the elderly.
Rosalie Karl, the director of Chimes, said the volunteers include "retired executives and C.P.A.'s, housewives and nurses." All receive four days of intensive training, after which they are certified for two years. Once trained, volunteers must commit to work for at least six months for a minimum of three hours a week. "Many do more," Ms. Karl said.
Ms. Karl said that the most common problem for Chimes clients are managing health care-related paperwork, selecting from among the 10 federally approved "medigap" insurance policies and making choices about whether to buy long-term-care insurance. Chimes volunteers offer an informed, impartial explanation of insurance alternatives. "All people need is someone to discuss things with them," Mr. Slatus said.
In a more direct advocacy role, Chimes volunteers also help clients with medical claims and coverage disputes. When a client is billed for medical charges in excess of those allowed by Medicare and cannot pay, Mr. Slatus or a fellow volunteer may call the client's doctor in an effort to resolve matters.
"We do not browbeat doctors," Mr. Slatus said, adding that after talking with the volunteers, some doctors are willing to limit their remuneration to the amount covered by Medicare.
When a Medicare claim is denied, Chimes volunteers may also file for a hearing to appeal the decision. At such a hearing, the volunteer appears before the judge to testify as to the specifics of the particular case. There are no guarantees as to the outcome of these hearings, but the volunteers can offer both legitimacy and impartiality to the proceedings, Mr. Slatus said.
Armed with knowledge, tenacity and time, volunteers can wade through paperwork and get through to bureaucrats. Mrs. Klein's client said she wished her friends and neighbors could find advocates like Mrs. Klein. "A lot of people are hurting," she said.

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June 26, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Volunteers Enrich Students' Lives

BYLINE: By MERRI ROSENBERG 

SECTION: Section 13WC;  Page 15;  Column 1;  Westchester Weekly Desk 

LENGTH: 1471 words

DATELINE: ARDSLEY

THE 16 children clustered on the rug in Judy Berg's kindergarten class offered up an exuberant Hola! in response to Harriet Barnett's Spanish greeting one recent morning. As Mrs. Barnett reviewed colors and introduced the youngsters to the names of farm animals in Spanish, the students practiced their new words and squealed when chosen to imitate animal sounds.
This wasn't a regularly scheduled language class at the Concord Road Elementary School here, where formal foreign language instruction is not part of the official curriculum. The kindergarten students were benefiting from the fact that Mrs. Barnett had come to the class at the behest of Mrs. Berg, one of whose students, Matthew Bakal, had introduced the teacher to his grandmother. 
 "I had started an elementary language program like this in Dobbs Ferry, where I had been a foreign language teacher for 35 years," said Mrs. Barnett, whose four other grandchildren live in Ossining and New Jersey. "This is a comfortable fit for me. Matthew loves it, seeing Grandma in his classroom once a week, and I love it. I miss having every day in the classroom."
Mrs. Barnett's weekly half-hour Spanish lesson is a highlight for Mrs. Berg's students. "Mrs. Barnett came in as a guest reader, and I realized what a command she had of the group," Mrs. Berg said. "This class absolutely loves it. They have learned so much."
 
A Testing Outlet
 Nor is Mrs. Barnett alone in her volunteer efforts. Although it sometimes seems as if older residents and the schools have an adversarial relationship, there are many older adults who actively support the schools. Some are readers for library storytelling sessions; some assist in the classroom or tutor children who need extra help, and still others simply volunteer wherever needed.
Leon Weisburgh, a retired computer-industry executive, drives from Stamford twice a week to work with children at Dows Lane Elementary School in Irvington. Mr. Weisburgh is developing a computer program to teach children how to read, and he works with the Irvington first graders to test his program.
"I had reached the time in my life where I wanted to do something for society," Mr. Weisburgh said. "I wanted to teach children how to read."
Many other volunteers want to help children overcome obstacles. Herbert Nechin, a retired City College psychology professor who lives in Hartsdale, has been involved at the Springhurst Elementary School in Dobbs Ferry for two years. He devotes an hour a week to work with an individual student. He sometimes also substitutes for a teacher or helps in an office.
 
A Source of Patience
 "This year I am working with a very shy little girl in third grade," Professor Nechin said. "She has marvelous ideas but has trouble putting her ideas on paper. I help her with the mechanics of writing, and she has been making tremendous progress. I have not done anything, except to be there for her. Essentially, it's the relationship and attention that have caused this kid to bloom.
"I'm all for having seniors come into the classroom. Because of our experiences, we may have more ability to understand that a kid may have difficulty learning. Hopefully, we have more patience and we have time to devote one-on-one to a particular child. I've seen the way the children respond to Grandparents' Day here -- they love grandparents. I enjoy giving back something to these children. What I'm getting is the experience of being a grandparent that I haven't had yet."
For the schools, in many cases hard pressed to find parent volunteers since so many mothers are working, the addition of older adults is welcome.
"A lot of schools are realizing the benefit of having older people around," said Sarah A. Britton, director of the Retired and Senior Volunteer Program of Westchester. As part of a national volunteer program, this nonprofit White Plains-based organization helps match older adults with volunteer opportunities.
"More and more schools are realizing the benefits of intergenerational programs," Mrs. Britton said. "Many of the students don't have grandparents nearby, so this helps fill in the grandparent gap. Those who want to work with children feel that it keeps them young. It's particularly gratifying for them to work with kids, because they see the results right there."
 
A Math Tutor in Yonkers
 One of the R.S.V.P. volunteers, Mary Lokay of Hastings-on-Hudson, helped at the Hillside Elementary School even before she became older. "I had done volunteering for 17 years before I was a senior citizen," she said. "I will keep doing it until I get it right! I go in every Tuesday morning for two or three hours and help the children with reading or math. I love it -- the children are just so nice. It opens up a whole new world for me on Tuesday mornings. My parents had always said that you are not a whole person until you give part of yourself to others. The kids give so much back to us."
Another R.S.V.P. volunteer, Edna Weinger, has been a tutor at Public School 26 in Yonkers for 21 years. Mrs. Weinger, who did volunteer work with her husband until he died last fall, has continued to go to the school every week to offer help in math. "I enjoy being with children," Mrs. Weinger said. "Both my children taught math, and I think I'm a frustrated teacher. I get as much, or probably more, out of it as the children do."
In Mamaroneck, a program begun in March has paired older volunteers with first-grade students at the Mamaroneck Avenue Elementary School for weekly read-aloud sessions. "It's not to teach them to read," said Madeline Longo, the school's library teacher. "The idea is for them to have a literacy relationship in which both become enriched. Children love the security and the personal attention they get."
Some grandparents volunteer at their grandchildren's schools. "Now a lot of parents are working full-time and would love to volunteer but don't have the time," said Jean Schon of Edgemont, a licensed schoolteacher who does library work at the Concord Road school in Ardsley where 2 of her 10 grandchildren are in second grade. "My daughter used to do it when she worked three days in the city, but now she works five days a week and can't. Since her daughters go to Ardsley schools, I thought I'd help there, but every school needs help. I never see my granddaughters when I'm there, but I love to see the little kids here in the library, to see what they are reading and see how they are learning to do reports and research. I want to keep in touch with children and the teaching role."
Not every volunteer focuses on academics. Irene Gifford, who is not herself elderly, is the coordinator of the senior citizens program at the Hillside School in Hastings. "Our senior citizens do a sewing project with students in grades one through five," Mrs. Gifford said. "Every grade gets one turn a year. They make stuffed animals, like stuffed rabbits or fish, that the children get to keep. The senior citizens love it, and every class writes a thank-you note."
In the Rye Neck School District, Louis Intervallo is active in a number of projects in the district's three schools. Sometimes he is tapped to accompany a class on a field trip. During the football season, he helps run the snack stand, and during the Christmas holidays he helps younger children prepare seasonal baskets.
A valued volunteer at the F. E. Bellows Elementary School in Rye Neck is Fran Braiotta, cashier for pizza lunches on Wednesdays. Although she had been an active parent when her own five children attended the district's schools, it wasn't until her grandson started in the second grade that Mrs. Braiotta became involved in the pizza program. "I like to be around children," Mrs. Braiotta said. "Some of them call me Nana and come to me for a hug."
For many children, that kind of nurturing is exactly what they need -- and precisely what older adults can offer. Grace Mittleman, a retired hospital administrator, works with learning-disabled youngsters at the Dows Lane School in Irvington. "During the time the teacher is giving the lesson, I am helping with the children," Ms. Mittleman said. "The children don't have an individual who is there for them, first and foremost. A senior citizen can give them that more than anything else. The minute you show them attention, they do respond."
Maria Harris, the learning specialist at Dows Lane, added: "She's an emotional support to the kids and to me. She is a very gentle soul and takes signals beautifully. I'm academically demanding, and the days Grace comes in, they love the nurturing and the gentleness she provides. It has just been great. I am a strong supporter of having senior citizens help in the classroom. With their vast experience, they add a dimension to class that I can't."

LOAD-DATE: June 26, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Harriet Barnett, one of many older adults offering time to schools, has kindergartners repeat Spanish phrases while playing patty-cake. Her partner is Matthew Bakal, grandson. (Susan Harris for The New York Times)

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The New York Times

June 27, 1994, Monday, Late Edition - Final

Some Contractors Say Special Help Is No Favor

BYLINE: By THOMAS J. LUECK 

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

LENGTH: 1012 words

As a woman born in Puerto Rico, and as a construction contractor in the blighted blocks of the central Bronx, Olga Perez Martinez is a model of the kind of business owner that the city's affirmative-action contracting program was intended to help.
Forming her company, PrimAlto Development and Construction, in 1989, Ms. Perez Martinez started small and grew slowly. The company's first job was to renovate a bathroom. Then came a sprinkler system that it installed at a center for the elderly, then a small renovation for a medical center, budgeted at $300,000. 
 Now, because of the city's affirmative-action program, Ms. Perez Martinez could race into the big leagues of New York City construction by teaming up with larger white-owned construction companies that would be eager to use her status as a woman and minority-group member to win special consideration from the city.
But Ms. Perez Martinez is still moving slowly.
"I want to be in control," she said. "My biggest nightmare is to become involved in a typical joint venture for city work and just fade away behind some other entity."
 
Fears for Independence
 Participating in a joint venture is one of three ways that women- or minority-owned businesses can benefit under the city program. They can also bid to become prime contractors or subcontractors. But none of the options seems attractive to Ms. Perez Martinez. Her company is too small to win large prime contracts, and she says she fears that a subcontract or a joint venture would not give her enough control.
Her reservations about joint ventures are shared by many business people, who say that the program, while assuring that more work goes to firms owned by minorities and women, limits their independence.
Sometimes, they say, it also makes them vulnerable to financial exploitation by their business partners.
"The minority gets a piece of the work, but he can also find it difficult getting paid," said Leslie Levy Jr., a black contractor in Brooklyn, who owns the Livel Mechanical and Equipment Company. He is still smarting over his experience as subcontractor on a job during the late 1980's for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey when, he said, the white-male-owned prime contractor shortchanged him for his work.
 
Intended to Forge Links
 Mr. Levy, like Ms. Perez Martinez, is certified to take part in New York City's affirmative-action program.  But he has decided not to. "I don't need the headaches," he said.
When the minority contracting program was created by Mayor David N. Dinkins, it was intended to forge strong links between small minority- and women-owned firms and far larger and more experienced companies owned by white men.
Under the rules of the program, large companies owned by white men can seek out joint-venture partners from among the hundreds of construction firms that are certified as minority- or women-owned, and receive special treatment by the city when bidding for city work, because of their smaller partners. The larger company need give only 35 percent of the work in the program to the smaller partner.
In exchange, the larger joint-venture partners are supposed to provide advice, equipment and other professional support to their minority and women colleagues. More important, the larger partners provide the financial resources and experience to obtain bonding, the insurance coverage that is required for large-scale construction and that normally cannot be obtained by small companies.
 
Getting Their Own Bonding
 Bonding insures that a project will meet its specifications when it is complete, and that the work will be performed on time. In what has always been something of a Catch-22 for small contractors, the private companies that provide bonding will do so only for contractors that are large enough to meet their criteria.  But without the ability to obtain bonds, many small companies are unable to grow.
Therein lies another goal of the affirmative-action program: helping minority- and women-owned firms develop the experience and financial strength to get their own bonding.
But according to Ms. Perez Martinez, minority participants in the joint ventures, instead of gaining respect, are assumed to be totally reliant on the skills of their majority partners.  "We are stigmatized," she said.
Other critics agree, saying that the program has only reinforced the traditional barriers that prevent women- and minority-owned contractors from competing directly with larger companies owned by white men.
 
A Critical Threshold
 "A joint venture almost inevitably leaves the minority firm at the end of a job without a track record that is useful, and with little more than pocket change to show for it," said Kathy Wylde, the director of the New York City Partnership's housing program, who for years has monitored the success and failure of women- and minority-owned construction firms.
Ms. Perez Martinez said her company reached a critical threshold last year when she decided to bid on a project to renovate 32 city-owned low-income apartments on Monroe Street, just a few blocks from her office in the central Bronx.
But the project, budgeted at $1.3 million, required that its contractor be bonded, and Ms. Perez Martinez could not qualify on her own. So she formed a joint venture, but did so in her own way.
She approached a plumbing contractor in Queens who qualified for bonding. But she insisted on being the managing partner on the project, that the work and profits be split evenly between the two companies, and that the finances be managed through a joint bank account.
 
Only if She Is Boss
 Now, with the work nearly complete, Ms. Perez Martinez says she is seeking other large projects and will consider other joint ventures. But only if she is in charge.
"At some point every woman or minority business owner has to ask themselves a question," she said. "Are they going to make it by relying on somebody else or be independent business people?"
"I've decided," she added. "I'll make it on my own."

LOAD-DATE: June 27, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Olga Perez Martinez, right, president of PrimAlto Development and Construction, in an apartment in the Bronx that her company is renovating. (John Sotomayor/The New York Times)

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The New York Times

June 29, 1994, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Eating Well

BYLINE: By Marian Burros 

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

LENGTH: 1544 words

WHO can forget the calcium craze of just a few years ago: silhouettes of old women with dowager's hump, caused by osteoporosis, were used to scare everyone into taking more calcium, and manufacturers were fortifying everything from tea to cookies with calcium.
In fact, most people did forget or were distracted by something else. Since then, nothing has changed. No one has announced that Americans are suddenly getting enough calcium and have nothing to worry about. 
 On the contrary. At the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., earlier this month, a panel of 32 experts on calcium intake concluded that the current recommended daily allowances are inadequate for teen-agers, men who are middle-aged and older, and all women.
They suggested that the recommended daily allowances, which are set by the National Academy of Sciences, be increased. Women between the ages of 25 and 50, for example, should consume 1,000 milligrams of calcium daily instead of the currently recommended 800 milligrams, and women over 50 should consume 1,500 milligrams (1,000 if they are taking estrogen) instead of 800.
The experts also said that men between 51 and 65 should get 1,000 milligrams instead of 800 and that men over 65 should take 1,500 milligrams instead of 800.
These levels of calcium are necessary in part, the experts say, because excessive amounts of protein and sodium in the average American diet increase the amount of calcium lost in urine.
More than 25 million people, predominantly women, have osteoporosis, in which the bones lose density and become brittle. Preventing it is relatively simple: get enough calcium, especially before the age of 30. Everyone starts to lose calcium in the 30's (and for women, the loss increases markedly during and after menopause). Although losses cannot be replaced, continuing to consume calcium throughout life can prevent even greater loss.
Most people turn to the easy fix: calcium supplements. Except for dairy products and broccoli, most other significant sources of calcium -- kale, collard greens, sardines, okra -- are not common in the majority of American diets.
Some people turn away from dairy products because of concern about fat intake. But now that low-fat and nonfat dairy products are as common as whole-milk products, it's easier to increase calcium consumption through foods people like to eat.
Among products that provide significant amounts of calcium without serious loss of taste are skim milk and milk containing 1 percent fat; low-fat and nonfat buttermilk; nonfat yogurt, plain and with fruit; reduced-fat ricotta, and reduced-fat sour cream.
That's the theory behind the accompanying recipes: a risotto made with Swiss chard and Parmigiano Reggiano; spicy pork with tofu and broccoli; potato salad dressed with buttermilk instead of mayonnaise, and pasta with portobello mushrooms and a ginger cream sauce.

Risotto With Swiss Chard
 Total time: 30 minutes

 4 to 5 cups vegetable or chicken stock, the no-salt-added variety
 1 tablespoon olive oil
 1/2 cup chopped onion
 1 cup arborio rice
 1/2 cup dry white wine
 1/2 pound Swiss chard, washed well, trimmed of stems, leaves cut into strips
 1 teaspoon fennel seeds
 1/2 cup coarsely grated Parmigiano Reggiano.
1. In a medium pot, heat the stock until it simmers, and keep it hot.
2. Heat the oil in a heavy nonstick pot, add the onion, and saute over medium-high heat until the onion softens.
3. Stir in the rice, and mix well. Stir in the wine. Cook until the wine has almost evaporated.
4. Add 1 cup of the hot stock to the rice. Reduce the heat to medium-low, and cook the rice until most of the liquid has evaporated, stirring often.
5. Add more stock, a cup at a time, until the rice is almost tender.
6. Stir in the Swiss chard, fennel seeds and 1 more cup of the stock. Continue cooking and stirring until the chard is completely wilted and the rice is tender but firm. Stir in the cheese, and serve.
Yield: 2 servings.
Approximate nutritional analysis per serving: 640 calories, 20 grams fat, 40 milligrams cholesterol, 540 milligrams sodium, 25 grams protein, 85 grams carbohydrate.
 
Bean Curd and Spicy Pork
 Total time: 20 minutes

 1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil
 2 cloves garlic
 1/2 teaspoon hot pepper flakes
 2 tablespoons coarsely grated fresh ginger
 3/4 pound lean ground pork
 8 cups broccoli florets (about 2 pounds whole broccoli)
 1 pound firm tofu made with calcium sulfate, drained and cut into 1/2-inch cubes
 1 cup chicken stock, the no-salt-added variety
 1/4 cup dry Sherry
 3 tablespoons fermented black beans
 2 teaspoons sugar
 4 teaspoons soy sauce
 1/4 teaspoon salt
 2 teaspoons cornstarch.
1. In a nonstick skillet, heat the oil, and saute the garlic, pepper flakes and ginger over medium heat for 30 seconds, stirring.
2. Add the pork, and stir to break up, cooking until the pork browns.
3. Add the broccoli, and stir well.
4. Stir in the tofu, stock, Sherry, black beans, sugar and soy sauce.  Cover, and cook over medium-low heat for about 2 minutes, until the broccoli is tender but still crisp.
5. Mix the cornstarch with a little water to make a smooth paste. Stir into the skillet, and cook over low heat until the sauce thickens slightly. Season with salt. Serve over cooked rice.
Yield: 4 servings.
Approximate nutritional analysis per serving: 410 calories, 20 grams fat, 40 milligrams cholesterol, 625 milligrams sodium, 40 grams protein, 20 grams carbohydrate.

Buttermilk Potato Salad
 Total time: 20 minutes, plus cooking time for the potatoes. This will depend on their size.

 3 pounds new potatoes
 1 cup low-fat buttermilk
 1 medium red onion, about 6 ounces
 1tablespoon caraway seeds
 4 teaspoons Dijon mustard
 2 tablespoons lemon juice
 2 tablespoons grated lemon rind
 1/2 teaspoon salt
 Freshly ground black pepper to taste.
1. Scrub the potatoes, and boil until tender but firm. (For large potatoes, this will be about 45 minutes.) Drain. Do not peel.
2. Combine the remaining ingredients in a bowl.
3. Cool the potatoes slightly, and cut into 1-inch cubes. Stir gently into the buttermilk dressing. The salad can be eaten immediately but will be more flavorful if refrigerated for an hour or overnight.
Yield: 8 servings.
Approximate nutritional analysis per serving: 200 calories, 1 gram fat, 1 milligram cholesterol, 240 milligrams sodium, 5 grams protein, 45 grams carbohydrate.

Pasta With Portobello
 Mushrooms
Total time: 20 to 25 minutes

 1 pound pappardelle or fettuccine, fresh or dried
 2 tablespoons olive oil
 6 large shallots, finely minced
 1/4 cup coarsely grated ginger
 1 pound portobello mushrooms or any assortment of wild and common white mushrooms (champignons de Paris), cleaned, trimmed and sliced
 1 1/4 cups reduced-fat ricotta cheese
 1 1/4 cups nonfat plain yogurt
 1 tablespoon cornstarch
 1/4 teaspoon salt
 Freshly ground black pepper to taste
 1/4 cup chopped parsley
 1/2 cup coarsely grated Parmigiano Reggiano.
1. Cook the pasta in boiling water.
2. Heat the oil in a large skillet, and saute the shallots, ginger and mushrooms until the mushrooms soften and release their liquid.
3. Blend the ricotta and yogurt thoroughly. Then, thoroughly blend a little of the yogurt mixture with the cornstarch to form a smooth paste. Spoon the cornstarch mixture into the remaining yogurt-ricotta mixture, and blend thoroughly.
4. Reduce the heat under the mushrooms to very low. Stir in the yogurt mixture, and cook until the sauce is warmed, but not hot. If it gets hot, it will separate.
5. Season with salt and pepper, and spoon over the pasta. Sprinkle with parsley. Serve with cheese.
Yield: 4 servings.
Approximate nutritional analysis per serving: 710 calories, 20 grams fat, 12 milligrams cholesterol, 875 milligrams sodium, 35 grams protein, 105 grams carbohydrate.
 
Coffee Drinks And Calories
HEALTH-CONSCIOUS people who think that ordering a caffe mocha or a latte instead of ice cream or cake saves calories and fat while adding to their calcium intake are only partly correct.
When it comes to calories and fat, they are in for a shock. A survey of more than 50 varieties of coffee-based drinks from Starbucks, Gloria Jean's Coffee Bean and other coffee chains found that a large caffe mocha typically contains about 400 calories and 30 grams of fat, which is 100 more calories and three times the fat of a wedge of devil's food cake or 180 more calories and twice the fat of a serving of Haagen-Dazs superpremium ice cream.
The survey is reported in the July issue of The Tufts University Diet and Nutrition Letter.
The good news is that the amount of fat in drinks like these can be reduced considerably by using skim milk or 2 percent milk instead of whole milk. For example, the study found that a large cappuccino from Au Bon Pain has only 156 calories and 6 grams of fat when it is made with 2 percent milk.
As for the calcium, the experts say that drinking coffee is associated with reduced absorption of calcium. But adding one or two tablespoons of milk to the coffee is an easy way of compensating. Just don't use whole milk.

LOAD-DATE: June 29, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Drawing.

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The New York Times

June 30, 1994, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

THE HEALTH CARE DEBATE: SPENDING LIMITS;
House Panel Backs Health Cost Controls

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

SECTION: Section B;  Page 11;  Column 1;  National Desk 

LENGTH: 1093 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, June 29

The House Ways and Means Committee has endorsed legislation that would, for the first time, set annual limits on health spending for the nation as a whole and for each state.
If any state exceeded its limit, the Federal Government would enforce strict price controls on doctors, hospitals, prescription drugs and the rest of the private health care industry in that state. 
 The cost controls are part of a comprehensive measure to overhaul the nation's health care system. The bill seeks to slow the increase in per capita private health spending so it grows no faster than the economy as a whole; in recent years, it has been growing nearly twice as fast.
Other Congressional committees working on health care legislation have also included measures to slow the growth of health spending. But the Ways and Means Committee is one of the most influential, and its proposal is the most extensive.
The committee approved these cost controls on Tuesday over strenuous objections from the American Hospital Association and the American Medical Association, which said the new regulations would freeze in place all the flaws and inefficiencies of the existing health care system.
 
Hospitals' Objection
 Michael J. Rock, a lobbyist for the American Hospital Association, noted that the bill would slice up the nation's health care spending into 10 categories and set separate budget goals for each. This, he said, runs counter to trends revolutionizing the health care industry. Under these trends, consumers and employers typically pay a lump sum to an insurance company or a group of doctors or hospitals for all the care needed by a person or a group of people.
But supporters of the measure maintained that doctors and hospitals would not work seriously to keep costs down unless they faced the possibility of price controls.
Another potential problem is that the Federal Government has only rough estimates of health spending in each state. Under current law, the Government is not required to tabulate spending by state, and it has had no pressing need for such data.
But consumer groups and labor unions support the cost controls as precisely the type of shock therapy needed for the health care system.
 
Medicare as Model
 The price controls the committee envisions for the private health care industry are modeled after techniques already used to pay doctors and hospitals treating patients under Medicare, the Federal health insurance program for the elderly and the disabled. Representative Pete Stark, the California Democrat who heads the Ways and Means Subcommittee on Health, said these formulas had effectively slowed the growth of Medicare, a contention many Republicans vehemently disputed.
President Clinton proposed a different type of controls on health spending. Under his proposal, the Government would limit annual increases in health insurance premiums, on the assumption that insurers would then force doctors and hospitals to accept lower payments than they would otherwise get.
The Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources, headed by Edward M. Kennedy, follows the approach recommended by Mr. Clinton. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York, chairman of the Finance Committee, wants to set annual goals for increases in private health insurance premiums, but he would let Congress decide at a later date what steps should be taken if the actual increases exceeded the goals.
In the Ways and Means Committee, no aspect of health care legislation has generated fiercer debate than the plan for spending limits and "standby price controls."
Representative Michael A. Andrews, a moderate Democrat from Texas, proposed eliminating the entire cost-control regime. All 14 Republicans supported his effort, but he lost by 20 to 18. The failure of the proposal had the effect of endorsing the cost controls in the original bill, which is expected to come to a vote on Thursday.
The committee's acting chairman, Representative Sam M. Gibbons of Florida, won over a few wavering Democrats by giving Congress a chance to re-examine the issue in the year 2000. But if Congress did nothing, and if health spending in any state exceeded the goal for that state, then the price controls would take effect in that state in 2001.
Representative Nancy L. Johnson, Republican of Connecticut, described the spending limits as Draconian and said no industrial country had curbed health spending as severely as the bill would require.
But Gerald M. Shea, director of employee benefits at the A.F.L.-C.I.O., said a regulatory mechanism, including the threat of price controls, was needed to force providers to bargain seriously with the consumers and purchasers of health care.
"Even with all the competition in the world," Mr. Shea said, "we couldn't get costs in line as fast as we need for the good of the economy" if there was no threat of Government regulation.
 
H.M.O.'s Included
 Mr. Shea said his only regret was that the price controls in the Ways and Means measure could not take effect before 2001. Liberal Democrats agreed to defer price controls to that year to placate more conservative lawmakers and economists who asserted that the cost goals could be met by encouraging competition among insurance companies, doctors, hospitals and drug companies.
Under the Ways and Means bill, health maintenance organizations would also be subject to the price controls. The maximum premiums would initially be computed with the same formula used to calculate Medicare payments to H.M.O.'s enrolling elderly people.
Health maintenance organizations describe current Medicare payments as inadequate. Karen M. Ignagni, president of the Group Health Association of America, which represents 500 H.M.O.'s with 37 million members, said "it would be devastating" to use a similar formula in calculating payments to health maintenance organizations for private patients.  Private patients account for the vast majority of the 45 million people in health maintenance organizations. Medicare and Medicaid number fewer than five million.
Representative Benjamin L. Cardin, Democrat of Maryland, observed that several states had been regulating hospital rates for years, with none of the dire consequences foreseen by Republicans.
But Richard J. Davidson, president of the American Hospital Association, said state officials demonstrated much greater sensitivity to local concerns and the problems of particular hospitals than could be expected of Federal officials responsible for a vast national program.

LOAD-DATE: June 30, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: As the House Ways and Means Committee moved toward a vote on its health care bill yesterday, Representatives Michael A. Andrews, left, Robert T. Matsui, center, and Dan Rostenkowski conferred. (Michael Geissinger for The New York Times)

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The New York Times

July 1, 1994, Friday, Late Edition - Final

THE HEALTH CARE DEBATE: THE LEGISLATION;
Bill Passed by Panel Would Open Medicare to Millions of Uninsured People

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

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

LENGTH: 977 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, June 30

The bill approved today by the House Ways and Means Committee would open Medicare, the Federal health insurance program for the elderly, to millions of people who have no other source of insurance. If the proposal is adopted, Congressional experts say, nearly half of all Americans will be enrolled in Medicare within a decade.
The proposed new program, known as Part C of Medicare, was conceived by Representative Pete Stark of California, chairman of the Ways and Means Subcommittee on Health, who has long favored "Medicare for all" as the best way to guarantee coverage for all Americans. 
 "Medicare is simple: no new rules, no new bureaucracy," Mr. Stark said in an interview today.
But many Republicans and some Democrats, including some in the Clinton Administration, say the Ways and Means Committee bill relies too heavily on the Government to cover the uninsured. They say it would be better to help people buy private insurance, rather than creating a new Federal health insurance program as part of Medicare.
 
Emphasis on 'Private'
 In his State of the Union Message last January, President Clinton said he wanted to guarantee every American "private health insurance that can never be taken away." White House officials emphasize the word "private."
The Ways and Means Committee bill would generally require employers to buy insurance for their workers or to pay premiums for those who enroll in the new Part C of Medicare.
The new program would be open to part-time, temporary and seasonal employees, full-time employees of companies with 100 or fewer workers, people who are not employed, people receiving welfare benefits and people with incomes below certain specified levels. Most Medicaid recipients would be transferred to the new program.
Part C of Medicare would start in 1998. In that year, it would be open to people with incomes up to twice the poverty level. In 2003 and later, people with incomes up to 2.4 times the poverty level could qualify. The poverty level, now $14,764 for a family of four, is adjusted each year to reflect changes in consumer prices.
 
Health Coverage and Costs
 People in the new Medicare program could obtain a wide range of medical services, including prescription drugs and mental health care. Employers would be required to pay 80 percent of the premiums for their workers. People enrolling in the new program would have to pay the remaining 20 percent themselves, but could get Federal subsidies if they had low incomes.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates that 55 million people will participate in the new program in 1998 if the Stark proposal becomes law, and it sees total enrollment rising to 95 million in 2004. The Government expects that there will be 42 million people in the regular Medicare program in 2004. So 137 million people, accounting for nearly half of the nation's total projected population, would be in Medicare in 2004.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the cost of the new Part C of Medicare would rise from $175 billion in 1998 to $332 billion in 2004. A significant portion of this money, more than $50 billion a year, would be spent under current law for hospital care and doctors' services to Medicaid recipients.
Medicaid covers fewer than half of the nation's poor people. States have wide discretion in setting eligibility rules for Medicaid and welfare, and in many states the income ceiling for these programs is far below the poverty level. In addition, single people with no children have difficulty getting Medicaid in many states.
 
'Feasible' With 'Uncertainty'
 Joseph P. Newhouse, a professor of health policy at Harvard University, said the proposed Part C of Medicare was "an administratively feasible way to move toward universal coverage." But he added, "There is great uncertainty about how much it will cost and how many people will go into the program."
Many small businesses provide some health insurance to their workers now. Under the bill, Mr. Newhouse said, small businesses would be free to drop such insurance and enroll their workers in Medicare.
Representative Peter Hoagland, Democrat of Nebraska, said he could not support the new Part C of Medicare because it would become a huge government program. Moreover, he said, Medicare has done a poor job of controlling costs, and the new program would pay doctors and hospitals with the same fee schedules and formulas used by Medicare.
But Mr. Stark contended that Medicare had controlled costs much better than private insurers.
Gail E. Shearer, manager of policy analysis at Consumers Union, said the Ways and Means Committee bill would help many people who now had no health insurance. But she added, "We are concerned that there will be a multi-tier health care system, and Part C of Medicare could become a lower tier, for low-income people and high-risk consumers."
 
Concern Over 'Risk Pool'
 Representative Jim McDermott, a Democrat from Washington State who favors a "single payer" system of national health insurance financed with taxes, expressed similar concerns. He said Part C of Medicare would attract large numbers of people needing costly medical care who had no jobs and no connection to the labor force. Indeed, some of these people are unable to work because of sickness or disability.
From an actuary's point of view, Mr. McDermott said, it would be difficult to design "a worse risk pool."
The Senate has expressed little interest in expanding Medicare to cover the poor and the uninsured. Democrats trying to pass a comprehensive health care bill this year are doing all they can to win the votes of Senators like John B. Breaux, Democrat of Louisiana, and Dave Durenberger, Republican of Minnesota, who want to stimulate competition in the private health care market with a minimum of new government spending.

LOAD-DATE: July 1, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Chart: "HIGHLIGHTS: The Ways and Means Proposal"
 
MEDICAID RECIPIENTS and the uninsured could enroll in a new Part C of Medicare.
 
EMPLOYERS who enroll their workers in Medicare would be required to pay 80 percent of the cost: 84 cents an hour for every hour a single employee works, $1.63 an hour for a single parent and $2.22 for a married worker with children.
 
SMALL BUSINESSES would be eligible for subsidies, allowing them to pay as little as 42 cents an hour for health insurance for a single worker.
 
THE GOVERNMENT would set annual limits on health spending for the nation as a whole and for each state. The Government would impose Medicare-style limits on payments to doctors and hospitals in any state that exceeded its limit.
 
PRIVATE INSURANCE PLANS would have to provide at least the same level of benefits as Medicare Part C. Elderly people would gain prescription drug coverage.
 
FINANCING would come in part from a gradual rise in the current 24-cents-a-pack Federal tax on cigarettes, to 69 cents by 1999.

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The New York Times

July 3, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

NEIGHBORHOOD REPORT: CHELSEA;
Co-op Learns to Age Gracefully

BYLINE: By BRUCE LAMBERT 

SECTION: Section 13;  Page 6;  Column 5;  The City Weekly Desk 

LENGTH: 379 words

Disoriented people roaming the halls. Flooding from faucets that were turned on and then forgotten. Residents with unpaid rent bills -- and uncashed Social Security checks. A naked woman wandering onto a roof and freezing to death, apparently unable to find her way back inside.
These incidents took place at the Penn South housing cooperative in the 1980's. Why? Penn South had become something it was not intended to be: housing for the elderly. 
 It happened gradually. When the 10-building complex opened in 1962 along Eighth Avenue in the 20's, its first occupants were working people, without a single retiree. But the low-cost apartments proved so popular that many residents settled in for life. With the residents' advancing years came physical and mental impairment, along with growing isolation as spouses and friends passed away.
In 1986, recognizing the changing needs, the co-op's officers started a program for older residents that has become a model for other sites. It arranged for companion visits, medical care, home attendants, food delivery and other services to keep people functioning independently at home.
Citing Penn South's example, the State Legislature appropriated $1 million last month to encourage such efforts. Foundation grants are helping to start NORC programs -- the acronym stands for naturally occurring retirement community -- at the Warbasse Houses in Coney Island and Co-op Village on the Lower East Side. Penn South has relied on donations from the co-op, residents, charities and joint efforts with Selfhelp, the Jewish Home and Hospital and Hunter College.
Today, 75 percent of the co-op's 7,000 residents are older than 65, and in that older group the average age is 82. Most are women living alone.
"Things can be tough," said Karen Straus, a social worker at Penn South. "It's not always the golden years."
"People don't want to leave where they're living," said Ms. Straus, who directs the program's paid staff of 10, plus dozens of volunteers.
"I don't know what I would have done without the senior center," said Elaine Kagle, who is 74. "The nurse comes once a month for my injection, and I need my blood pressure taken once in a while." She remains active, she said. "I'm very happy here."   B. L.

LOAD-DATE: July 6, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Map of Manhattan showing location of Penn South Housing Cooperative.

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July 3, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Help in Knowing What to Ask a Lawyer

BYLINE: By PENNY SINGER 

SECTION: Section 13WC;  Page 8;  Column 3;  Westchester Weekly Desk 

LENGTH: 1383 words

IT was hit and run. He caught me off guard. I had no inclination that he wanted a divorce. I was totally unprepared. After all, he was my husband, and we had been married for 20 years."
The speaker, a professional woman in her early 50's who agreed to be interviewed only on condition that she not be identified for fear that her husband would sue her for libel, was still obviously troubled over the circumstances of her divorce, which had occurred several years before. She continued, "What was ironic is that my ex-husband is a matrimonial lawyer. He knew every trick in the book. I was in a daze, but I knew about LAW, and they and Diane White, saved my sanity. 
 LAW, the acronym for Legal Awareness of Westchester, is a nonprofit agency that acts as a clearinghouse for information on legal issues concerning family law, elder law and, most recently, a legal information service for teen-age parents.
The information is disseminated through several programs like the free telephone counseling service that offers callers legal information from trained counselors. The service receives more than 300 telephone requests for help every month. The organization also conducts workshops and seminars, including elder law seminars, which are held every month, and bimonthly legal clinics, which have matrimonial lawyers as guest speakers fielding questions from the audience. Some workshops carry a fee; otherwise, contributions are welcome. The telephone number is 472-2371. Counseling is offered Mondays through Thursdays from 9 A.M. to 4:30 P.M.
"I was very impressed with the lawyers at the clinics I attended," said the former wife of the divorce lawyer. "I could see that they were strong advocates of women. Women are very vulnerable going through a divorce, and too often lawyers seize this as an opportunity to take advantage of them sexually as well as financially. The lawyers at the LAW clinic covered such topics as distribution of property, child custody and support and alimony and debt, and they were generous with their time and energy answering all sorts of questions. Divorce is a minefield. They helped me with legal issues, which helped me sort out my options."
 
Seminars and Counseling
 Diane G. White, the group's founder and its executive director, said LAW has offered educational seminars and telephone counseling to more than 50,000 people since its founding in 1980. In addition to the family law programs, the elder law program offers information about legal issues of special interest to older people.
"We are the only group of our kind that helps people make informed choices in a growing, complex legal environment," Ms. White said. "And the organization started almost spontaneously. What happened is that I was at a meeting of Women of Westchester some years ago when it was the first woman's group in the county. We were asked to suggest areas that women especially needed help with. And I mentioned legal services. Ninety percent of the women at that meeting agreed that it was a top priority."
The response was so overwhelming, she said, that she was inspired to start Legal Awareness for Women. Several years later LAW evolved into Legal Awareness of Westchester, a name that better describes the group's services, which are available to everyone.
 
Some Constant Complaints
 Although LAW legal information telephone counselors are trained to give data related to divorce, equitable distribution of assets, child support, custody, domestic violence and the area of law that affects those older than 55 like health-care decisions, financial management, trusts, wills and estates, Ms. White emphasized that the organization is not engaged in the practice of law and that the information offered is not a substitute for legal counsel.
"Our function is to make sure people have access to the information they need to deal with lawyers," she said. "Take matrimonial law, for example. Excessive fees are a constant problem women complain about. Many are overcharged by their lawyers. Another common complaint is that they are not properly billed and not getting answers to their questions.
"And many are upset because they feel they are not being treated with respect by their lawyers. The legal information we give them focuses on things such as how to interview a lawyer, what questions to ask, the difference between a consultation and interview and the importance of the retainer agreement. That is so important that it's a subject at every seminar we run. There is literally no other place where people can get information on how to effectively deal with lawyers."
The benefits that come from being informed about the law are many, said a woman who after 42 years of marriage initiated divorce proceedings against her husband.
 
Lack of Economic Independence
 "Although I had already engaged a lawyer before I contacted LAW, the group was a tremendous help to me," said Dorothy W., who agreed to be interviewed on condition that her last name not be used. "It was at the seminars and through counseling over the phone that I learned how to talk to my lawyer and what questions to ask him and what I should expect him to do for me. And with the information, I kept him on his toes."
Observing that many women of her generation, who were married in the 1940's, were trapped in bad marriages because they had no economic independence, she said she was grateful that she had always worked. "It was my small pension that sustained me and gave me a measure of economic freedom that allowed me to proceed with the divorce," she said. "Although my former husband was verbally abusive to me for years, it still took a lot of courage for me to get a divorce. LAW helped me with advice on how to put my life together. I went back to school, got a master's in gerontology and eventually got a full-time job when I was in my early 60's."
Ms. White added that many women seeking advice from LAW are victims of mental violence.
"Husbands, by not allowing their wives to work, keep them under house arrest," Ms. White said. "We encourage women contemplating divorce to take courses and develop skills -- especially computer skills -- so eventually they can support themselves."
Every situation is different, though, she said, adding: "Every day we see a flood of calls from people who need advice. Seniors looking for information on living wills and health-care proxies and estate law. A mother will ask us if she could take her child out of state to protect her from an abusive father. The demand has increased tremendously over the years, but we have been forced to work with an ever smaller staff, now down to two full-time and two part-time counselors, and we've gone to a four-day week because of our severe funding problems."
Christine McCabe, president of LAW's board of directors, said nonprofit agencies have been especially hard hit by cutbacks in grants and government financing,
"This year has been the worst in LAW's history for funding, and yet the need is greater than ever," Ms. McCabe said. "We could operate seven days a week, and that would be barely enough for all the telephone counseling requests we get. It is remarkable to me that LAW, with a budget of less than $100,000, still manages to help more than 5,000 people a year. Diane White and her staff are remarkable. She has always worked for reforms in the law and has been an advocate for changes to bring about the passage of the 1980 Equitable Distribution Law, which established that marriage is an economic partnership. It is going to be very hard to replace her."
Ms. White, who is in her 70's, is retiring from the agency she organized 15 years ago. Last week she was honored at LAW's annual fund-raising event at the County Courthouse.
"Oh, I imagine I will miss my work, but I will still be around to act as a consultant," she said. "I really think it is time for a younger person to take over. My last hurrah is the Legal Information For Teens program, going by the acronym LIFT. It is beamed at young women who are pregnant and those men and women who are teen-age parents. The program has the support of the schools and has been given in many Westchester high schools. I think it's a good example of how LAW continues to change and grow."

LOAD-DATE: July 3, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Legal Awareness of Westchester sponsors seminars. Diane White and Paul J. Noto, a lawyer, led a recent divorce clinic. (Lenore Davis for The New York Times)

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July 6, 1994, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Sports of The Times;
A Soccer Shootout in The Shadows

BYLINE: By DAVE ANDERSON 

SECTION: Section B;  Page 9;  Column 1;  Sports Desk 

LENGTH: 753 words

DATELINE: EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J.

THEY were wearing all forms and all shades of green, white and red. Large flags were wrapped like a serape around their shoulders. Small flags were perched on the tall crowns of straw sombreros. Some had the colors painted on their faces, many on dozens of different T-shirts. Others were parading with red and green lettering on white bedsheets.
"Viva Mexico," one banner shouted. 
 In the hours before yesterday's World Cup game between Mexico and Bulgaria, south of the border in the parking lots outside Giants Stadium suddenly was south of the Vince Lombardi service area on the Nueva Jersey Turnpike.
Some had come from Mexico City on a $1,700 package tour. Others had driven in from all over the Northeast and the Midwest.
This is what the World Cup is all about: a true World's Fair of ethnic loyalty. Young parents with their kids. Elderly people holding hands. Teen-age soccer players posing for a team photo against a backdrop of World Cup logos.
"Ole, ole, ole, ole," they were singing. "Ole, ole."
Oddly enough, the Bulgarian colors were the same. Their flag had thick horizontal stripes of white, green and red. Mexico's had thick vertical stripes of green, white and red. But almost all the flags in the crowd were Mexican.
Maybe a thousand Bulgarians were among the 71,030 aficionados but few were obvious. Even when Hristo Stoichkov quickly put the Europeans ahead, 1-0, the groan drowned out the cheers. And when Alberto Garcia Aspe scored, the Mexicans were singing again.
But after 120 minutes (plus the injury time that included about six minutes for a broken goal net), the qualifier for Sunday's quarterfinal here against defending champion Germany would come down to what any American could appreciate: a penalty-kick shootout.
No passing, no tripping. Just five players from each team taking alternate shots from the white penalty spot 12 yards in front of the goal that is 8 yards wide and 8 feet high, with the goaltender not allowed to move from the goal line until the ball is kicked.
Near midfield now during the brief intermission, Boris Mikhailov sprawled on his back on the grass, a towel over his face.
"I was trying to switch on," the Bulgarian goalkeeper would say later. "Trying to exclude myself from the surroundings."
In the twilight, the sun had dropped behind the western rim of Giants Stadium as Jorge Campos, in his yellow-lime-vermillion-orange-and-black outfit that resembled a designer parrot, talked to his Mexican teammates. When the players turned toward the shadows across the east goal, his amigos were chanting, "Campos, Campos." Silently, one Bulgarian was seen crossing himself.
Mexico would shoot first. Garcia Aspe booted the ball high over the net, then covered his face with his hands. Campos embraced him.
On the goal line now, Campos crouched as Krasimir Balakov kicked to his left. Campos leaped and deflected the ball wide of the net.
Marcellino Bernal's low shot was blocked by Mikhailov, but Boncho Guentchev drilled the ball high into the Mexican net for a 1-0 lead. Only three shots remained for each team. When Jorge Rodriguez's low kick was blocked by Mikhailov, the groan could be heard in Acapulco.
"I was just looking at the foot of the players," Mikhailov, who wore a purple-and-black outfit, said later. "I try to move in that direction."
Moments later, Daniel Borimirov lifted Bulgaria into a 2-0 lead before Claudio Suarez scored. But now, if Yordan Lechkov scored, Bulgaria's 3-1 lead would be insurmountable. Quickly, he drilled the ball and the net sagged.
Bulgaria, a small Balkan nation that borders Romania, had won and Mexico had lost. So had all those Mexican voices that had been singing in the cantina.
In the Bulgarian celebration, Stoichkov, their only goal-scorer yesterday, was observed comforting Jorge Campos -- a sense of sportsmanship that is not always seen in the "just win, baby" American cauldron.
"I think he is a great goalkeeper and he should have his dignity in helping the Mexican cause," the Bulgarian said. "They're all my colleagues and I have respect for them."
Bulgaria joined six other European nations in the round of eight: Germany, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Romania and Sweden. The only non-European nation still alive is Brazil. But if Bulgaria is to advance to next Wednesday's semifinals at Giants Stadium, it must upset Germany. Not that Boris Mikhailov is intimidated by Germany's reputation.
"Germany plays soccer," the Bulgarian goalkeeper said. "And so do we."

LOAD-DATE: July 6, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Jorge Campos (Barton Silverman)

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July 10, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

NEIGHBORHOOD REPORT: BROOKLYN;
The Liberation of 'Pigeon Park'? A Neighborhood Divided

BYLINE: By DENNIS HEVESI 

SECTION: Section 13;  Page 9;  Column 3;  The City Weekly Desk 

LENGTH: 428 words

The cobblestone triangle where Fourth and Fifth Avenues merge in Bay Ridge is officially called Fort Hamilton Memorial Park, dedicated to the fallen of the First World War. But over the years, as elderly people met there during the day and fed the local fowl, a new name came into common use -- Pigeon Park.
In the late 1980's, however, other folks began congregating in Pigeon Park at night. And many residents were not pleased. 
 "The last stop on the R train is right there," said Martin Golden, president of the Fifth Avenue Board of Trade, representing about 500 businesses in the community. "Vagrants are forced out at the stop and spend the night there. It's like a summer resort for the homeless, the same people year after year."
In addition, Mr. Golden said, drugs were being sold in the park and alcohol was consumed. "It's supposed to be for the community, but people are fearful," he said.
The Board of Trade decided to adopt Pigeon Park. And at the urging of City Councilman Sal F. Albanese, a $430,000 rehabilitation of the park was included in the city's capital budget. The work, including new benches, restored cobblestones and landscaping, is expected to be completed by next June.
Well and good. Then last month, the Parks Department erected an 8-foot-high fence around the park perimeter. Lorelei's Restaurant, a member of the business group, assumed the tasks of opening the park and closing it at sundown each day, as well as keeping it clean. And Harbor Car Service agreed to pay for lighting.
Some in the neighborhood, though, have not been happy with the efforts. The fence, they complain, is unsightly. And although the manager of Community Board 10, Mary Sempepos, is in favor of having Pigeon Park adopted by the business group, she said the board had not been notified about the plans.
Nicholas Kastanis-Tsarnis, a member of the community board, said the chain-link fence "looks horrendous, like some kind of prison camp, and the park's dirtier now because the wind blows papers and other garbage against it." Mr. Kastanis-Tsarnis also voiced concern that the fence will merely "push the druggies and alcoholics" to other parks in the area.
An assistant to Councilman Albanese, Michael Behlen, agreed that the fence isn't "esthetically compatible with the neighborhood, but it does provide security until funds become available for a nicer looking wrought-iron enclosure."
Said Mrs. Sempepos: "The fence went up overnight. Now we're watching to see that the merchants keep their word and maintain the park."   D.H.

LOAD-DATE: July 13, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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July 10, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Four New Yorkers, Four Journeys of Discovery: BENJAMIN SOLOMOWITZ;
Learning the Horror of the Holocaust

BYLINE: By CONSTANCE L. HAYS 

SECTION: Section 13;  Page 11;  Column 1;  The City Weekly Desk 

LENGTH: 455 words

Benjamin Solomowitz grew up comfortably middle-class in Brighton Beach, graduated from dental school in 1983 and set up a practice in Jackson Heights. Around that time he also became interested in genealogy, an interest that has helped him understand the horrors of the Holocaust.
While visiting Brody, the town in Ukraine where his maternal grandmother was born, a resident told him how the road leading past the local synagogue had caved in one day. 
 When it was being repaved, workers made the gruesome discovery that it was a mass grave, where the bodies of Jews from the town had been dumped after being shot in front of the building. As the corpses collapsed, so did the road.
"In every town we went to, it was the same story," Dr. Solomowitz said. "The Nazis came in, they put all the Jews into a ghetto, they took the women and children and the elderly and shot them. The men went to concentration camps." He saw graves of children's bones, and found synagogues destroyed or converted to other uses. Frequently, he said, there were only one or two Jews left in towns that had had hundreds of Jewish families. "Part of doing this is very sad," he said.
Since he began his search, he has discovered the graves of his great-grandparents closer to home, in Mount Zion cemetery in Queens. He has met an awful lot of cousins.
"We're all about the same age, and it's nice to renew these ties with them," he says. Now he thinks of what began as a hobby as his obsession. "Besides learning about your own family," he said, "there's also history and politics and geography and a lot of detective work."
Which has turned up his ties to a pair of New York City institutions: the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, which is in a building at 97 Orchard Street where his grandfather, also named Benjamin Solomowitz, lived in 1905, and former Mayor Edward I. Koch, to whom Dr. Solomowitz is related by marriage.
On a trip to France in 1990, he met one cousin who still lives in Paris. And on his trip to Ukraine, he visited Horodenka, the town where the ancestors of one of his cousins, Glen Koch, and Mr. Koch's ancestors crossed paths. The dentist and the former Mayor have never met.
But in Horodenka he found out that New Yorkers have been mispronouncing Mr. Koch's name all this time. "It's not pronounced 'kotch,' " he reports. "It's pronounced 'cock.' "
"Big deal," said Mr. Koch, when told of the connection. "And he should know that if he goes beyond me he will find my great-grandfather, who formed a band of robbers that would, like Robin Hood, rob from the rich and give to the poor. They were all Christians except for him, and he had one rule: that they couldn't rob anyone on the Sabbath."   C.L.H.

LOAD-DATE: July 13, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photos: Dr. Benjamin Solomowitz, a dentist in Jackson Heights, Queens, and a picture of his paternal great-grandfather, Avraham Schlomie Solomovits. (Rebecca Cooney for The New York Times)

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July 13, 1994, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Happy Event on Shuttle: Baby Fish and One Newt

BYLINE: Reuters 

SECTION: Section A;  Page 20;  Column 4;  National Desk 

LENGTH: 249 words

DATELINE: CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., July 12

The aquatic nursery aboard the space shuttle Columbia saw its first arrivals today, a red-bellied newt and several Japanese Medaka fish.
The newt, a kind of salamander, was spotted among four mother newts in an aquarium inside a shuttle laboratory where seven astronauts are carrying out a nonstop schedule of science experiments during a two-week flight. 
 A mission specialist, Dr. Donald A. Thomas, found the newt "swimming around in his little container" when he made a routine check of the water tank today, the mission's fifth day.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration said Japan's first female astronaut, Dr. Chiaki Naito-Mukai, discovered the Medaka minnows as she prepared to feed the adult fish. Two male and two female Medaka are the focus of the astronauts' animal reproduction studies.
Dr. Michael L. Weiderhold of the University of Texas said he would study the newt's inner ear to see how space flight affected the development of otoliths, stony internal-ear gravity receptors that newts use to keep their eyes pointing forward while swimming. "There will be no pull of gravity on these stones in space," Dr. Weiderhold explained, "so we want to see if these reflexes will develop normally."
The research applies to humans with balance problems, especially elderly people, because the ears of all vertebrate animals are similar, he said.
The international mission was launched from Florida last Friday.  Columbia is due back on Earth on July 22.

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LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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July 13, 1994, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

THE HEALTH CARE DEBATE: THE BUS TOUR;
Health Care Caravans To Deliver a Message

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

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

LENGTH: 1051 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, July 12

Supporters of President Clinton's proposal for national health insurance announced plans today for cross-country bus caravans that will deliver hundreds of people to Capitol Hill next month just as Congress begins to debate the issue.
Administration officials, while uncertain how much public excitement can be generated in the middle of the summer, describe the caravans as an effort to duplicate the successes of the Presidential campaign, when Mr. Clinton, Al Gore and their wives went on a six-day bus tour in July 1992, immediately after the Democratic National Convention in New York. 
 That trip featured rallies along superhighways and two-lane rural roads in eight states. It was such a success that the Clinton campaign staged other tours through the Southwest, the South and the Midwest.
But there is one complication to the health care caravans. Organizers are asking labor unions, businesses and other groups to finance the venture by paying $20,000 for each bus, and they are requiring the sponsors to promise, in advance, that they will support the bills recommended by the Democratic leaders of the House and the Senate.
 
Endorsement in Advance
 The bills have not yet been drafted, however, so prospective sponsors do not know all the details of the legislation they are endorsing. They organizers of the bus tour are confident that the bills will achieve the President's goal of health insurance for everybody.
The President, his wife, Hillary, and Mr. Gore are expected to address the bus passengers at various stops. Whether the Clintons and the Vice President will ride the buses is not yet known.
The main sponsors and organizers of the caravans are the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which has 1.3 million members; Families USA, an advocacy group founded by a Massachusetts businessman, and Health Right, which describes itself as "the people's lobby" for comprehensive health legislation.
Gerald W. McEntee, president of the government employees' union, said the bus caravans, known as the Health Security Express, would urge Congress to "pass the bill."
"At this point," he said, "we don't know exactly what bill will come from the leaders of the House and the Senate, but we will support it."
 
Legislative Melding
 He said he felt sure that the House majority leader, Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri, and the Senate majority leader, George J. Mitchell of Maine, would devise bills to guarantee health insurance for all Americans by requiring employers to pay most of the premiums, as the union wants.
Mr. Gephardt and Mr. Mitchell are melding health bills from several committees. The bills differ in the amount of new taxes they would impose, the subsidies they would offer to low-income people and the cuts they would make in the growth of Medicare spending for the elderly. Three of the bills would require employers to buy insurance for workers; the fourth, from the Senate Finance Committee, has no such requirement.
The Health Security Express buses will start from Boston; Dallas; Independence, Mo.; New Orleans, and Portland, Ore. They will pick up passengers along the way and will converge in Washington from Aug. 2 to Aug. 4. There will be at least four buses on each of the routes, organizers say, with at least 40 "reform riders" on each bus.
The passengers will include doctors, nurses, labor union members, retired people, politicians and entertainers. In their fliers, the organizers say they are particularly interested in finding "people with personal and professional stories of health care difficulties."
One caravan will pass through Russell, Kan., the hometown of the Senate minority leader, Bob Dole, whose health care proposals have been criticized as inadequate by Mr. Clinton and some labor unions.
 
Arranging the Logistics
 Logistics for the Health Security Express are being arranged by John H. Hoyt, a 34-year-old Democrat who has organized special events to assist Indian tribes, homeless people and environmental groups, and is president of Pyramid Communications.
The American Association of Retired Persons, the influential lobby for people who are 50 years of age and over, is not sponsoring any buses, though some of its members may participate in rallies. "We want to see what the two majority leaders develop," said Martin A. Corry, director of Federal affairs for the 33 million-member association.
Arnold Bennett, a spokesman for Families USA, said the bus tour had a budget of $1.4 million to $1.9 million. Each of the three primary sponsors is contributing $100,000 in cash and $100,000 worth of staff time, he said.
Other supporters, which have contributed $3,000 to $100,000 apiece, include the United Automobile Workers, the Communications Workers of America, the Alzheimer's Association, the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, Waste Management Inc. and the Service Employees International Union, Mr. Bennett said.
 
Bid to 'Relive Past Glories'
 Tony Blankley, a spokesman for the House Republican whip, Representative Newt Gingrich of Georgia, said the caravans were an effort to "relive past glories" of the 1992 campaign. "Public sentiment has crystallized against the Clinton health plan, and a bus tour won't change that," Mr. Blankley added.
For $5,000, contributors can sponsor a busload of reform riders for one day. For $500, they can sponsor one passenger on the Health Security Express for the full length of any route. For $100, a sponsor can buy a seat on a bus for one person for a day.
Groups sponsoring the tour will have their names displayed on buses and banners, and on T-shirts and baseball caps worn by the citizen-lobbyists.
Mr. Bennett, the spokesman for Families USA, said it was not enough for contributors and riders to support "health care reform" in general.
"The bus tour will be in support of the universal coverage bills put out by the leadership of both houses," he said. "We support the leadership bills. People who don't support those bills won't support the Health Security Express. We don't want to do all this work to give people a muddy message."
Mr. Bennett said he had turned down at least one cash contribution because the donor was unwilling to endorse the bills being drafted by Mr. Gephardt and Mr. Mitchell.

LOAD-DATE: July 13, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: At the Washington headquarters of Families USA, one of the groups organizing the Health Security Express bus caravans, workers were busy yesterday calling local news organizations along the planned routes. (Stephen Crowley/The New York Times)
 
Map/Chart: "ITINERARY: Caravans to Washington"
 Buses will also leave from the cities listed to join the main caravans to Washington. In addition, separate busses will proceed to Washington from Columbus, Ohio, New York City and Charlotte, N.C. The map/chart provides an itinerary for the Western, Midwest, Southern, and Northeast routes.

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July 13, 1994, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Make the Pools Safe for Everyone

SECTION: Section A;  Page 18;  Column 1;  Editorial Desk 

LENGTH: 389 words

Parks Commissioner Henry Stern says there is no real crisis in the city's public pools -- they are safer than the streets. So they should be. But in only 11 days, 10 young women have been the victims of sexual assaults or assault attempts in New York City pools. These incidents echo a nasty trend begun last summer with "whirlpooling," in which groups of young males surrounded girls and young women, rhythmically clapping and intimidating them, then assaulting them.
Betsy Gotbaum, who was Parks Commissioner at that time, insensitively referred to those incidents as "ordinary horseplay that got out of hand." Mr. Stern has shown that he is taking the problem more seriously. One idea he considered, but wisely rejected, was to segregate the sexes in the pools. Rather than deprive peaceful pool users of the pleasure of swimming with whomever they choose, he has opted to hold the thugs to civilized standards. A New York police officer is now constantly "on deck" at every intermediate- and large-size pool in the city. 
 Mr. Stern says he is considering creating "quiet zones" in which senior citizens or people who want a leisurely swim could enjoy the pools without having to deal with adolescent roughhousing. That is an idea worth trying, but it will not address the most pressing problem: the security of young women and girls in the city's pools. They should not have to retreat to feel safe. And in fact, most of the recent incidents have been charged to men well past adolescence.
Another suggestion is a revival of former Mayor David Dinkins's "Don't Dis Your Sis" campaign. That is a worthy slogan, but it trivializes the kinds of incidents that have plagued the swimming pools. There is a big difference between "dissing" and assault.
Arrests have been made in 8 out of the 10 cases reported so far. That should serve as a caution to men who might be tempted to prey on girls in the water. And Mr. Stern points to new signs posted at pools this year warning that disorderly conduct will be punished with prosecution.
That message, however, still leaves too much room for the traditional boys-will-be-boys attitude. All city pools need clear, unambiguous warnings as to what constitutes sexual assault, including the threat of jail. Young women have a right to feel safe in a place set aside for fun.

LOAD-DATE: July 13, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

TYPE: Editorial

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July 14, 1994, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

THE HEALTH CARE DEBATE: THE HOSPITALS;
Drive Is Opened to Fight Cuts in Medicare

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

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

LENGTH: 958 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, July 13

Hospital lobbyists today began what they described as an all-out fight to prevent Congress from making the kind of large cuts in the growth of Medicare that several committees have proposed as a way to finance health coverage for people who are uninsured.
Hospitals have generally supported President Clinton's effort to guarantee health insurance for all Americans, and they have endorsed many of his specific proposals to redesign the health care system. 
 But leaders of the American Hospital Association, the main lobby for the industry, said today that several Congressional panels, particularly the House Ways and Means Committee, had gone too far in tapping Medicare as a source of money to pay for new benefits and new coverage.
 
Mobilizing Hospital Workers
 Medicare finances health care for 36 million elderly and disabled people. The cost to the Government is $160 billion this year.
The lobbyists said they would mobilize hospital employees and trustees across the country, urging members of Congress to spare Medicare and find other sources of revenue. In many Congressional districts, hospitals are among the largest employers.
Richard J. Davidson, president of the American Hospital Association, said: "In its quest for universal coverage, Congress looks to Medicare as a huge source of money, a bottomless well. The Medicare cuts in the Ways and Committee bill are a farce. If Congress is serious enough to make a commitment to assure universal coverage, it should be serious enough to make the tough choices to pay for it.
 
Warning on Care
 "Members of Congress ought to quit kidding themselves. You cannot finance health care reform on the backs of hospitals and doctors who serve the elderly, or else you will harm the quality of care."
Representative Pete Stark, the chief architect of the Ways and Means Committee bill, rejected these complaints. "Hospitals," he said, "have always looked at Medicare as a bottomless pit to pay them.
"I'm dumbfounded by the hospitals' terribly narrow and parochial attitude," said Mr. Stark, a California Democrat who is chairman of the Ways and Means Subcommittee on Health. "One would think they might have some interest in the health of the community at large and not just in their own self-interest. This bill is a good deal for hospitals that are well-managed. It's not too good a deal for hospitals that want to make a huge profit off sick people."
The Ways and Means Committee would slice $110 billion, or 10 percent, from projected Medicare spending over five years. Nearly two-thirds of the savings would come from Medicare payments to hospitals. President Clinton proposed Medicare savings of $103 billion, including $70 billion from hospitals. The Senate Finance Committee bill would cut about half that amount.
The House bill would set annual limits on Medicare spending, and it would gradually slow the growth of the program, so that after four or five years Medicare would not be allowed to grow any faster than the economy as a whole.
 
Shifts in Kinds of Care
 Despite strenuous efforts by Congress to rein in medical costs, limiting doctors' fees and payments to hospitals for specific procedures, Medicare now grows more than twice as fast as the economy. Part of the reason is that medical prices have been rising rapidly, and the type of care provided to elderly patients is more complex than it was just a few years ago.
The Ways and Means Committee bill sets Medicare spending limits for 10 separate categories of services. Thomas P. Nickels, a lobbyist for the hospital association, said these limits would perpetuate recent trends.
Services that have been growing fast in recent years, like home health care and nursing home care, would get a bigger and bigger share of Medicare spending, he said, while services like hospital care, which has been growing slowly, would get a dwindling share of the total.
Hospital lobbyists are telling members of Congress that under the Ways and Means Committee bill, Medicare would pay only 67 cents for every dollar of costs incurred in caring for patients admitted to hospitals, down sharply from 95 cents at present.
"Losses of this size cannot be made up through increased efficiency," said Mr. Davidson of the hospital association.
Clinton Administration officials and many Democrats in Congress say hospitals should be able to absorb cutbacks in Medicare because people who are now uninsured will have coverage in the future and can therefore pay their hospital bills.
Carmela S. Dyer, a vice president of the American Hospital Association, acknowledged that universal coverage would generate new revenue for hospitals. But, she said, the care provided free to people who are uninsured is much less significant than the proposed cutbacks in the Medicare program, which accounts for 40 percent of hospital revenue.
Moreover, she said, in the future, it will be difficult for hospitals to offset Medicare's underpayments by increasing charges to private patients, as they have done in the past.
 
Market Forces at Work
 "Market forces are already reducing our ability to shift costs," she said, and the Ways and Means Committee bill would virtually eliminate such cost-shifting because it would impose stringent new constraints on private health spending.
In the debate over health costs, hospitals have generally avoided the wrath of White House officials and members of Congress, who were more likely to criticize insurance companies and drug manufacturers.  But if hospital lobbyists continue to mobilize their forces at the local level, they will immensely complicate the work of President Clinton and his allies in Congress, who want to squeeze large sums of money from Medicare.

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July 15, 1994, Friday, Late Edition - Final

Blast in Italy Kills 27 At Home for Elderly

BYLINE: AP 

SECTION: Section A;  Page 8;  Column 6;  Foreign Desk 

LENGTH: 232 words

DATELINE: MILAN, Italy, July 14

A home for the elderly collapsed in an explosion today while residents were eating breakfast, and 27 people were killed.
A gas explosion touched off by workmen repairing sewage pipes was blamed for the disaster in Motta Visconti, 20 miles southwest of Milan. 
 The explosion brought the roof down on the dining room and caused the building's walls to collapse, leaving a pile of reinforced concrete, plaster and beams.
About 40 people were eating breakfast at the time. Seven people were injured, one critically, and eight escaped unharmed.
"First I heard a rustling sound, then a hissing, then there was a big blast," said Maddalena Iacobellis, 35, a worker at the home.
"I looked out the window just in time to see a man fly through the air," she said from her hospital bed. "Then everything fell on top of me." She was pulled out of the debris about 30 minutes later suffering a fractured vertebrae.
One of the first police officers to reach the scene said rescue workers began digging frantically with their hands to locate survivors. Some of the injured were unconscious, the officer said, speaking by phone from the town.
Elveno Pastorelli, a civil defense official, said the explosion was "almost certainly" caused by a gas leak.  Sewage gas "had saturated the underground area, and this morning, at the start of work, a spark probably set off the explosion," he said.

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July 16, 1994, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

DISCOUNTS;
Deals for Older People If They Will Just Ask

BYLINE: By Andree Brooks 

SECTION: Section 1;  Page 36;  Column 1;  Financial Desk;  Your Money Page

LENGTH: 688 words

GROWING older has an upside for those who aren't shy about discussing their age.
More and more companies are trying to capture the elderly market by offering discounts and special deals to older people. The topic may bring early-bird dinner specials and movie discounts to mind, but much bigger returns are available. Financial services companies and even the Internal Revenue Service offer tax breaks based on age. 
 Many of the discounts go unclaimed because eligible people fail to speak up. "A ticket agent isn't going to ask, 'How old are you?' Neither is your insurance agent," said Joan Rattner Heilman, author of "Unbelievably Good Deals and Great Adventures That You Absolutely Can't Get Unless You Are Over 50" (Contemporary Books, 1994, $7.95). Reticence about telling your age is likely to hurt your purse more than your image, Ms. Heilman added, because the definition of older people keeps expanding to include younger people. No longer tied to the Social Security benchmark of 62 years, discounts for older people are often available at age 50.
Consider Thrifty Car Rentals. It used to limit its 10 percent discount to members of the American Association of Retired Persons. In March, it began offering the discount to anyone over 55.
Geico Insurance of Washington goes a step further. Policyholders over 50 who are retired receive a discount of 5 to 25 percent on homeowner and automobile insurance premiums, depending on the policy. Retirees are loosely defined as people working fewer than 20 hours a week.
An additional 10 percent off auto premiums is given to older people willing to take an accredited defensive driving training course (offered in many communities by the American Automobile Association). All of Geico's auto discounts end at age 74.
A veritable bonanza of deals can be found in the travel industry. The most widely known are the airline programs. Coupon programs for older travelers have been expanding as rapidly as frequent flier programs did in the early 1980's. "It's one of the really great deals," said Ed Perkins, editor of Consumer Reports Travel Letter.
Once confined to a handful of major carriers, coupons are now available from smaller airlines, like Kiwi. Older people can buy books of 4, 8 or 10 coupons in advance, good for travel anywhere in the continental United States. On average, the cost works out to $270 for each round-trip flight, generally lower than promotional fares, Mr. Perkins said.
Though travel may be limited to weekdays and advance booking may be requried (or waived for anyone willing to fly standby), the fares do not require a Saturday night stay, the mainstay of most promotions.
In a new offer, Continental Airlines announced this week that it would give people over age 62 up to 75 percent off full-price coach fares. Under the program, those eligible will pay $314 for a one-way trip from New York to Los Angeles, versus $693 for a younger traveler. Other airlines offer flat discounts of 10 percent for people of a certain age.
 The Internal Revenue Service gives the elderly a break, too. In 1993, the standard deduction for a single taxpayer over 65 was $4,600, compared with $3,700 for others. Married couples over 65 who filed jointly were allowed a standard deduction of $7,600, instead of $6,200. If one spouse was younger than 65, the deduction fell to $6,900.
Figures for the 1994 tax year are not yet available, because they are adjusted for inflation at the end of the year. Taxpayers who itemize are simply out of luck.
Some states have gotten on the bandwagon. New Jersey, for example, permits any taxpayer over 65 to determine taxable income and then subtract $1,000 before calculating taxes owed. (New York and Connecticut do not offer elderly discounts.)
Credit card issuers, including American Express, reduce annual fees; municipalities cut fees for recreational use; hotels discount rooms; colleges lower tuition. Considering the wide range of discounts, it may be worth making it a practice to ask about age breaks. For people who may be embarrassed, the extra money in the bank may ease the sting.

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July 17, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

F.Y.I.

BYLINE: By ANDREA KANNAPELL 

SECTION: Section 13;  Page 2;  Column 5;  The City Weekly Desk 

LENGTH: 494 words


Mailbox on the Move
Q.  I would love to know why the mailbox at 96th Street and Amsterdam Avenue keeps moving. It moves from the north side to the south side of 96th Street from time to time, and sometimes lands on the Amsterdam side of the corner instead of the street side. It would seem not an easy thing to do -- to pull up a mailbox from its moorings, fix the holes it leaves, and then re-install it. So why?
A.  Well, first of all, you're quite right. That mailbox has been moving around, said Andrew Sozzi, a postal spokesman. 
 Up until a year ago, he said, the box was located on the northeast corner of 96th and Amsterdam. Because the box needed maintenance (which is quite common -- "people paste bills all over them, trucks hit them, people start fires in them," Mr. Sozzi explained), it was taken to a workshop at the General Post Office.
It just so happened that the work coincided with a grassroots campaign to have the mailbox moved so that a number of elderly people who lived on the south side of 96th wouldn't have to cross the street. "So we obliged them," Mr. Sozzi said. "Then we found out there were a couple of reasons that didn't work. One, there were complaints from elderly people on the other side of 96th Street."
And there were safety problems, because picking up the mail along Amsterdam meant blocking traffic, causing concerns for the carrier as well as motorists and pedestrians.
"Really," Mr. Sozzi said, "we did this with all good intention in mind every time."
As for the other moves you have noticed, it is possible that the Postal Service moved the box because of changing patterns of use, which it monitors carefully, or that a maintenance crew brought back a box after reconditioning and placed it a little off the mark.
 
 
Orphan A-Frame
Q.  There's a tiny A-frame building on stilts at the southern end of Roosevelt Island. What is it?
A.  From 1968 till 1988, it was the Delacorte Fountain, said Lynne Abraham, spokeswoman for the Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation.
As such, it made a nice decorative spray of East River water that apparently killed some of the vegetation on the island. "So that was possibly a tree-killing fountain you had there," Ms. Abraham said. But the fountain broke in 1988, and now it's just another condemned building waiting to be dismantled.
 
 
Runaround Runaround
Q.  I've been getting the runaround when it comes to ascertaining the correct mileage of the southernmost track in Central Park. Specifically, how long is the loop that goes from Columbus Circle up to East 72d, crosses over to West 72d and completes itself at the Circle again?
A.  The Road Runners Club has measured all the park's loops for its various races, said Kelly Harvey, a receptionist there. So here's a handy map incorporating Road Runner figures not only for the lower loop, but also the other commonly used loops. Somebody oughtta make a T-shirt.   ANDREA KANNAPELL

LOAD-DATE: July 20, 1994

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TYPE: Question

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July 17, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

NEIGHBORHOOD REPORT: UPPER WEST SIDE;
Housing for the Elderly, or Maybe the Over-40s

BYLINE: By RANDY KENNEDY 

SECTION: Section 13;  Page 6;  Column 1;  The City Weekly Desk 

LENGTH: 375 words

After several months of accusations about bad promises and hidden intentions, neighborhood groups opposed to plans for Euclid Hall, a large single-room-occupancy hotel at 86th Street and Broadway, will get a chance to take their case to City Hall this week.
The seven-story hotel, with more than 290 rooms, has been at the center of a fierce campaign since residents in the area discovered last year that the nonprofit manager, the West Side Federation for Senior Housing, did not intend to stick to its original intention to house only people over 50 years old with no special problems with drugs or mental illness. 
 The age requirement, neighbors believed, would prevent the hotel from joining other notorious SRO hotels that have become magnets for drugs and other problems in the area.
Deputy Mayor Fran Reiter, in charge of city planning, has agreed to meet this Friday with representatives from several groups, said her chief of staff, David Klasfeld.
"This is not something that we can completely throw the brakes on now, so we have to find a way to make it work for everyone," said Mr. Klasfeld.
While it has long been unclear why the age specifications were dropped, Mr. Klasfeld said that since the Koch administration agreed to renovate the hotel for the large population of elderly homeless, that population has dwindled considerably.
"To state it simply, we couldn't fill the building," said Mr. Klasfeld.
The hotel plans to take 60 percent of its occupants from city shelters, using mostly city funds, and another 40 percent from other facilities. The West Side Federation did not return phone calls seeking comment on Friday.
The compromise that the deputy mayor hopes to reach with opposition groups, Mr. Klasfeld said, is to persuade them to allow the hotel's manager to drop the age limit to 45 years or perhaps to 40 to find enough eligible applicants.
Opponents, however, will not be easily persuaded, said Joseph H. Levie, an attorney who is representing people opposed to Euclid Hall. "I can tell you right now that I doubt there will be any interest," said Mr. Levie. "To walk in and tell people that we can't find people over the age of 50 who don't need housing help in this city is ridiculous."   R.K.

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July 17, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

NEIGHBORHOOD REPORT: BLISSVILLE/LONG ISLAND CITY;
Don't Blink, Or You Might Miss the Bliss

BYLINE: By NORIMITSU ONISHI 

SECTION: Section 13;  Page 7;  Column 1;  The City Weekly Desk 

LENGTH: 469 words

Before cars and highways bred suburbs and bedroom communities, people often lived and worked in the same neighborhood. In a collection of 14 blocks at the eastern edge east of Long Island City, the idea was pushed to its limits for generations, as immigrants, most of them Polish, lived in stark, two- and three-story houses wedged between small factories and auto repair shops.
Today, about 200 residents of varying ethnicities still coexist with truck drivers who block the streets and mechanics who fix cars on the sidewalks and sometimes spill oil in the open. On a recent morning on Van Dam Street, two elderly men, oblivious to the industrial din, played cards outside a house. 
 Outsiders may not know its name, and even those who work there may think they are in Long Island City, but its natives are fiercely attached to their 153-year-old home: Blissville.
"I keep my door open here," said Diane Ballek, 42, whose children are the fourth generation of her family to live in the area. "Someone gets robbed, everybody knows who did it."
Speaking of Maspeth, where her mother moved a few years ago, she said: "There people just wave. In Blissville, people stand and talk and go for coffee."
The Queens Historical Society said that Blissville was named after its founder, Neziah Bliss, a Brooklyn businessman who had helped develop Greenpoint. Until 1869, when the Borden Avenue bridge was built, Blissville was only accessible by boat.
Through the years, it was home to oil factories, whisky distilleries, a fertilizer plant and various small manufacturers. The second borough president of Queens, Joseph Cassidy, hailed from Blissville. And it even has its own, small-scale version of the Flatiron building.
Ms. Ballek, the president of the Blissville Block Association, said she remembers growing up with a bakery and barber shop in the neighborhood. Her mother, who is 75, attended a public elementary school on Greenpoint Avenue, which a Best Western Motel now occupies.
Today, Blissville also has four delis, though residents must cross the Long Island Expressway into Sunnyside for other services.
Though most of its houses are well maintained, some look like little more than trailer homes that have not budged in decades. Rents are cheap: $500 for a two-bedroom apartment.
Blissville has seen little redevelopment in recent years, except for a loft building that was built on 35th Street in 1990. It is shared by woodworking and building-services companies, said Penny Lee, the project director for Long Island City with the City Planning Department. Because the city regards the area as a manufacturing zone, she added, no new residential housing can be built in Blissville. But, of course, the people who are living there can stay as long as they want.   NORIMITSU ONISHI

LOAD-DATE: July 20, 1994

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GRAPHIC: Photos: Blissville's mini-Flatiron Building, at 35th Street and Van Dam, above, and the full-scale version. (Rebecca Cooney for The New York Times)
 
Map of Blissville, Queens

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July 17, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Weekend Volunteers Pitch In to Repair Neglected Houses

BYLINE: By SUSAN KONIG 

SECTION: Section 13LI;  Page 10;  Column 1;  Long Island Weekly Desk 

LENGTH: 1170 words

ON a tree-lined street in Glen Cove sits a dilapidated house, its paint peeled away by the ravages of time. A section of the roof is warped, as are several window frames. The outer front door hangs askew.
Neighbors say the house was once among the prettiest on the block. But now the owners, who are in their 60's, live on a fixed income. The husband, a laid-off service worker, has not found steady work. Their child, who is disabled, struggles to balance college classes and a part-time job. 
 The house will be saved, however, as have 11 others on Long Island this year, because of the Summer Work Assistance Program, sponsored by the Nassau South District Council of the St. Vincent de Paul Society.
Last month the council and other volunteers conducted the third two-weekend session of painting and rehabilitation to help the sick, elderly and disabled restore their homes and, the volunteers add, their dignity.
"We try and keep the homeowners' identities anonymous," a coordinator of the program, Nancy Dwyer, said.
 
'Everyone Has Their Pride'
 "They often get embarrassed," said Jim Nicklas, a high school teacher who helped organize the project in Glen Cove. "Sometimes we have to twist their arms to let us help. Everyone has their pride, and it can be difficult to accept help. But usually they do, and I think they're glad they did."
This year, 125 people volunteered, painting 12 houses and 16 rooms, repairing 4 roofs, installing 2 floors, building a wheelchair ramp and initiating yard cleanups.
"The houses we choose display many years of neglect," Mrs. Dwyersaid. "It is a source of concern to the homeowner, who is distressed to see his major financial resource literally falling down around him."
Neighbors, too, are concerned.  Nearby property values may decline.
"But this is something that can happen to anyone," Mrs. Dwyer said, "if you are elderly, if a family member gets sick or if you lose your job.  Long Island's population is getting older, and so are their houses. We can only look at these people and say,'Hey, this could be any one of us.' "
The program, which began in the 80's in East Patchogue, extends across the Island. Many groups contribute. Organizations like Parish Outreach of Queen of the Most Holy Rosary Church in Roosevelt, Habitat for Humanity, the Black Data Processing Association and Christmas in April, a group of volunteer crafts workers, are involved this year.
The Chase Manhattan Bank sent volunteers and a donation for supplies. Home Depot donated a power washer and other supplies. Lilco sent volunteers through the Long Island Volunteer Enterprise to paint and improve insulation. Many other businesses sent money and supplies.
"It's unbelievable how this program has mushroomed," Mr. Nicklas said. "At first volunteers came mainly from East Rockaway and Roosevelt. But every year more people and businesses get involved. It just keeps growing, which says a lot for Long Island."
 
'To Give Something Back'
 The Glen Cove project extended into a third weekend, because it was a pilot project, a chance for the northern district to observe the process before starting a program of its own.  The expansion, Mr. Nicklas said, indicated "that the project does as much for the volunteers -- if not more -- than it does for the homeowners."
Al Eusini, an engineer at Northrop Grumman, observed, to help start the program in the northern district next summer. "It's exciting to see this happen," Mr. Eusini said. "And it's great fun to do, very satisfying. My wife will probably kill me for saying that, because I don't paint much around the house. But I've lived in Nassau County for a long time, and it's been good to me. This is my chance to give something back."
"You have to give back," Justin Connolly, a customer-planning representative from Lilco, said from atop a ladder as he applied primer. "I'm fortunate to make a comfortable living, and I think this is the least I can do."
Lilco helps find people who need help, another coordinator, Mary DeMott, said. The consumer affairs department identifies customers who have chronic difficulty paying bills.
The utility also sends employees to weatherize houses, checking windows and boilers, as well as determining eligibility for the Summer Work Assistance Program. "Our consumer advocates find government funding for new boilers for people who need them," a volunteer, Bob Allgor, an energy packer at Lilco, added. "We find that people who can't afford to replace their boilers will use electric heaters and subsequently run up huge bills."
Candidates for the program "aren't always easy to find," Mr. Allgor said, adding: I think it's a matter of pride. People don't like asking for help."
Candidates have to be unable physically or financially to do the work that is needed and cannot be qualified for Government-financed programs to carry out the work, Mrs. Dwyer explained.
Of the 12 volunteers who re-vamped the Glen Cove house, none complained about the 85-degree temperature. Thomas Bates, 15, of Glen Cove, was helping a friend. "It's a lot fun," he said. "The hard work feels very good. I'm not even tired."
"I really like to get things done, instead of just talking about them," said Mr. Nicklas, who, at noon, was taking his first break in four hours.  "With the number of people we have here we can accomplish some major renovations in just a day or two. It's incredibly satisfying to see immediate results."
A 16-year-old neighbor, who walked over to investigate, also began painting, regretting that he could not spend the entire day because he had to go to a wedding.
Alexei Roschak, 4, did his part, too, scraping paint, hammering nails and painting the front porch alongside his mother, Sue, a Lilco employee.
The residents expressed their gratitude. "It's wonderful what they are doing," the child said. "My mother is extremely happy."
"It can really change the lives of these families, far beyond esthetics." Mrs. Dwyer said. "Last year we painted the house of a single woman who was raising nine children and grandchildren. Once the overwhelming work was out of the way she continued to improve her home. Her granddaughter fixed up an enclosed porch, and she finally felt comfortable inviting friends over to play."
 
Continuation of Improvements
 Most homeowners continue to make improvements after the volunteers finish their work, Mrs. Dwyer said, adding:
"I think they get a renewed sense of well-being. We encourage them to get involved from the start, if they are physically able. We want them to experience the feeling of accomplishment and camaraderie."
"An important thing to remember," Mr. Nicklas added, "is that hard times can happen to any one. We may not think of Long Islanders as having difficulty keeping up their homes, but the number of jobs we've done shows that they do. This is something that really happens. But it's also something that people -- a lot of people -- want to work hard to try and fix."

LOAD-DATE: July 17, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photos: Al Eusini, an aircraft engineer, on ladder, and Mike Fusco at work in Glen Cove. Right: Thomas Bates, 15, of Glen Cove and Debra Ieraci, president of the Lamplighters Association, paint porch. (Photographs by Linda Rosier for The New York Times)

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July 17, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final
Correction Appended

If You're Thinking of Living In/New Providence;
A Commuter's Delight, With 2 Stations

BYLINE: By JERRY CHESLOW 

SECTION: Section 9;  Page 3;  Column 2;  Real Estate Desk 

LENGTH: 1601 words

WITH the luxury of two train stations in just 3.6 square miles, the borough of New Providence in Union County, N.J., is the quintessential bedroom community. During the day, most of its adult population empties out -- some commuting to Manhattan and others going to their jobs just across the borough line to Bell Laboratories in Berkeley Heights.
Perhaps because of the attraction of the easy commute to Manhattan, housing prices did not decline much during the slump of the last five years. The houses are on winding tree-lined streets that follow the contours of the lower ridges of the Watchung Mountains. 
 Residents say they are seeing a generational turnover of housing, as elderly residents, who make up 14 percent of the population, sell to young families.
Many elderly residents, including Ann Chovan, the borough historian, complain that many of their number are being forced to sell because they can no longer afford the rising taxes. Mayor Harold Weideli Jr. acknowledges that taxes have been going up and blames the rising cost of solid-waste disposal.
"Over the past year alone, I've seen three houses on my block sold by older people to young families," said Christine Tafel, who moved into a three-bedroom split-level house on Woodbine Circle from nearby Livingston two years ago. "That makes for a welcoming town."
Mrs. Tafel says that she and her husband Robert, both florists, chose New Providence after seeing more than 100 homes in surrounding towns.
"It's a cozy, grass-roots place," she said, "where people are more concerned with family life and less concerned with keeping up with the Joneses. There are block parties on most streets in the summer and you often see parents riding their bikes with their children."
Mrs. Tafel's 7-year-old son, Chris, plays T-ball in the borough-sponsored league and Mrs. Tafel is the coach. The Tafels' 10-year-old daughter, Katie, plays softball in a local league.
About three-fourths of the dwelling units in the borough are single-family homes. At the low end of the scale, a three-bedroom Cape Cod on Brook Road recently went for $184,000. The most expensive house in the borough, a six-bedroom restored 1905 Georgian colonial on more than three acres with a large pool and a carriage house, is on the market for $1.885 million. In general, the more expensive homes are to the south of the New Jersey Transit railroad tracks. Among the more representative upper-end houses, a five-bedroom expanded ranch south of the tracks recently went for $502,000.
According to A. Michael Del Ducca, a broker with Burgdorff Realtors in the Murray Hill section, the mid-market New Providence home is a three-bedroom split level like the one bought by the Tafels. Such houses go for $250,000 to $280,000.
There are roughly 800 apartments in town. The two largest garden-apartment complexes are the 172-unit Murray Hill Apartments off Southgate Road across from the Murray Hill train station and the 231-unit New Providence Gardens, off Springfield Avenue. One-bedroom units in both complexes rent for $715 and two bedrooms for $840 a month.
There are about 100 condominiums in the borough. The largest complex is the 55-unit Murray Hill Manor on Floral Avenue near the Murray Hill train station. The complex was patterned on historic buildings in northern New Jersey and in Colonial Williamsburg. The units range from about $120,000 for some one-bedroom apartments up to the upper $300,000 range for some four-bedroom town houses.
The first Europeans -- English Puritans from Long Island -- arrived in the 1730's and settled on land bought from the Leni Lenape Indians. Originally, the area was called Turkey because of the abundance of wild game birds. It was renamed New Providence in 1778, when the partly finished balcony of the Presbyterian Church collapsed onto the congregants. The incident caused no serious injuries but convinced the worshipers that Divine Providence was watching over them.
ALTHOUGH no Revolutionary War fighting was waged on the soil of New Providence, 48 soldiers who served in the Continental Army are buried in the cemetery of the Presbyterian Church on Springfield Avenue. The original church burnt and was rebuilt in 1834.
New Providence was part of the neighboring Township of Summit until 1869, when Summit broke away by act of the state Legislature.
"There were a lot of wealthy New Yorkers in Summit and they wanted their own community," said Mrs. Chovan, the historian.
The first railroad station was built in New Providence in 1884 on land donated to the township by Carl Schultz, a businessman known as the Seltzer King of New York.
"Mr. Schultz, who built his country home in New Providence, made one stipulation when he donated the land," Mrs. Chovan said. He wanted the section to be known as Murray Hill, after the Manhattan neighborhood where he had his regular home."
The Italianate railroad station on Southgate Road in the Murray Hill neighborhood in the south-central section is on the New Jersey Register of Historic Places and is under consideration for inclusion in the National Register. Originally operated by the Lackawanna Railroad, the station is now part of the New Jersey Transit system. The second train station is on Springfield Avenue on the east side of the borough.
A number of other buildings in the borough date from the 18th and 19th centuries, including the Historical Society Saltbox Museum on Springfield Avenue. It is a small house, built in the saltbox style, with a slanted rear roof and eyebrow windows close to the eves. It is open every Thursday from 10 A.M. until noon and every first and third Sunday from 1 to 3 P.M. Besides its regular collection of 19th century furnishings, costumes, fireplaces and documents dating to the mid-1700's, it is now exhibiting a teapot collection dating to the 1840's. Admission is free.
The main business district is the intersection of Springfield Avenue and South Street, site of the Village Shopping Center and the Adams Shopping Center. There are two supermarkets, several clothing stores, a Mailboxes Etc. store, a post office, five banks and two video stores. Among the best-known restaurants are Chez Z (continental) and Chen's (Chinese) in the Village Shopping Center and Fabio's (Mexican) on South Street. By local ordinance, which Mrs. Chovan says has been in force in one form or another since the area was settled, no alcohol can be served in public in the borough.
The closest mall is the Short Hills Mall in Short Hills, five miles to the northeast.
The largest recreational complex is the three-and-a-half-acre Oakwood Park off Commonwealth Avenue. It has two baseball diamonds, a combination soccer-football field, playground equipment, a picnic area and two open fields that are flooded in winter to form ice skating rinks. Among the other widely used town areas are eight tennis courts on Springfield Avenue and the adjacent New Providence Community Pool, which has an olympic-sized pool, a 25-yard pool and a kiddie pool. Annual family memberships cost $250.
According to a recent report issued by the borough, the majority of the residents "occupy professional, managerial or other executive positions."
"We're a well-educated town," said Borough Administrator Edward M. Bien. "Ninety percent of the people over the age of 25 have high school diplomas and 49 percent have college degrees."
The residents overwhelmingly support the New Providence Public School District, which has 1,503 students. There are two 450-student elementary schools for kindergarten through sixth grade. The New Providence Middle School, for grades seven and eight, and the New Providence High School occupy the same building on Pioneer Drive.
Ninety percent of the 103 graduating seniors are going on to higher education. Among the 150 colleges and universities to which they were accepted are Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Georgetown and Penn State. The senior class won a total of 117 scholarships. The most prestigious ones were the National Science Foundation Scholarship and the National Merit Scholarship. One of each was awarded.
New Providence also has one Roman Catholic parochial school for kindergarten through eighth grades, Our Lady of Peace, on Passaic Street.
WHILE many New Jersey municipalities defeated their school budgets last year, New Providence's passed by a 2-to-1 vote along with a $2 million bond referendum for upgrading the schools.
According to the Superintendent of Schools, David A. Sousa, the average class size is 18. He says that the system encourages the students to get involved in sports and the arts, as well as academics. He noted that although there were only 380 students in the high school, it fields 32 sports teams.
As for academics, Dr. Sousa says, "we stress more than the traditional three R's. We are helping the students develop communications, problem solving and critical thinking skills."
As an example of the school's approach, elementary school students are asked to work out alternative endings to stories they read in class. And science experiments are not recipe-type experiments, where the result is predetermined, but discovery experiments in which students manipulate variables and get different results.
Computers are introduced in the first grade with simple keyboarding and graphics programs. Each classroom in the elementary schools has at least one computer and each school has at least one computer laboratory. Dr. Sousa says the high school library is one of the most advanced in the state, with much of the information on CD-ROM's.

LOAD-DATE: July 17, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

CORRECTION-DATE: July 24, 1994, Sunday

 CORRECTION:
An article and a picture caption last Sunday about living in New Providence, N.J., misidentified a condominium complex on Floral Avenue and misstated its size. The complex is Murray Hill Square, and it has 56 units, not 55. The article also misstated the location of Our Lady of Peace School. It is on South Street, not Passaic Avenue.

GRAPHIC: Photo: The New Providence Community Pool, with Olympic-sized, 25-yard and kiddie swimming areas. Annual family memberships cost $250. The Murray Hill Apartments. (Photographs by Eddie Hausner for The New York Times); On the Market -- 4-bedroom Cape Cod with full unfinished basement at 108 Union Avenue, $183,900. 4-bedroom bilevel with 2-car garage at 57 Pittsford Way, $269,000. 6-bedroom Georgian colonial with tennis court at 163 Oakwood Drive, $1.89 million.
 
Chart: "GAZETTEER"
 
POPULATION: 11,439 (1990 census).
 
 AREA: 3.6 square miles.
 
 MEDIAN HOUSEHOLD INCOME: $62,420 (1990 census).
 
 MEDIAN PRICE OF ONE-FAMILY HOUSE: $285,000.
 
 TAXES ON MEDIAN PRICE HOUSE: $5,200.
 
 MEDIAN PRICE A YEAR AGO: $270,000
 
 MEDIAN PRICE FIVE YEARS AGO: $285,000.
 
 MEDIAN PRICE OF TWO-BEDROOM CONDOMINIUM: $230,000.
 
MEDIAN PRICE ONE YEAR AGO: $220,000.
 
MEDIAN PRICE FIVE YEARS AGO: $230,000.
 
 MEDIAN RENT ON TWO-BEDROOM APARTMENT: $840.
 
 GOVERNMENT: Mayor (Harold Weideli Jr. Republican) elected to four-year term and six council members elected to three-year terms.
 
PUBLIC-SCHOOL EXPENDITURE PER PUPIL: $9,035.
 
 DISTANCE FROM MIDTOWN MANHATTAN: 25 miles.
 
 RUSH-HOUR COMMUTATION TO MIDTOWN: 45 minutes on New Jersey Transit train to Hoboken: $5 one-way, $42.50 weekly, $140 monthly, then 10 minutes by PATH, $1 or $40 for 46 trips.
 
 CODES: ZIP, 07974; area, 908.
 
 SALT BROOK: During the Revolutionary War, residents feared that the British would invade New Providence. Therefore, they poured salt in their brook to deny the Redcoats water. The British never came, but Salt Brook is on the borough seal, along with a turkey and the local Presbyterian Church.
 
Map of New Providence.

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July 18, 1994, Monday, Late Edition - Final

More 'Ethnic Cleansing' by Serbs Is Reported in Bosnia

BYLINE: By CHUCK SUDETIC,   Special to The New York Times 

SECTION: Section A;  Page 2;  Column 1;  Foreign Desk 

LENGTH: 648 words

DATELINE: BELGRADE, Yugoslavia, July 17

Armed Serbian nationalists have rousted hundreds of Muslims from their homes in the northeastern Bosnian district of Bijeljina in recent days and have begun driving them across a battlefront to Bosnian Government territory, residents and aid workers said over the weekend.
A Serb from Bijeljina who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisal said that, starting Thursday and possibly even earlier, Muslims had been picked up from Bijeljina's streets and detained outside the town by members of a local Serbian militia known as the Panthers. 
 The militia is notorious for operations to clear villages and towns in northeastern Bosnia of Muslims.
A spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Cross in Belgrade said the organization had heard of "problems" in Bijeljina on Friday morning, had complained on Saturday to nationalist Serb leaders, and had asked for permission to visit detainees. She refused to comment on details of the roundup.
 
Meeting on Peace Plan
 The incident comes on the eve of a meeting by the Bosnian Serbs' self-styled parliament in Pale on a proposed peace settlement that would divide Bosnia among the warring factions. The Serbs have signaled that they will reject the proposal, which would require them to give up a third of the land they hold. The Serbs now control about 70 percent of Bosnia.
The authors of the plan -- the United States, Russia, Britain, France and Germany -- have given the Serbs and a federation of Croats and the Muslim-led Government until Tuesday to accept or reject the settlement. Bosnian Government officials have said they will accept the peace proposal.
In April 1992, just as the war in Bosnia was beginning, Serbian militiamen, in an organized campaign, emptied the Bijeljina district of most of its Muslims. Only a few thousand Muslims -- mostly women, children and elderly people -- had remained.
Before the war, about a third of the district's 97,000 people were Muslims, while the town of Bijeljina had a Muslim majority.
 
Exchange for Prisoners?
 Under the peace proposal to be considered on Monday, the Bijeljina district would go to the Serbs. Townspeople speculated this weekend that the latest "ethnic cleansing" operation was aimed not only at terrorizing Muslims but using them as a means of exchange for Serbian fighters captured by the Bosnian Government.
"They've rounded up about 800 Muslims," said a 45-year-old woman from Bijeljina who said she feared to give her name because she is a member of a minority -group and is desperate to leave. "They're saving them for exchange. They're being dropped at the front line."
"We can't survive here," she said. "We have no choice but to leave."
The Serbian man said he heard from witnesses that members of the Panthers refused to obey local police officers, saying they had "orders."
A United Nations aid worker reported that he heard today from a Bosnian Army brigade commander in the village of Satorovici that Serbian militiamen pushed about 135 Muslims, mostly women, children and elderly people, across the nearby battlefront at 7 P.M. Saturday, said Kris Janowski, a spokesman in Sarajevo for the United Nations refugee relief agency.
The army commander said all but seven of the Muslims were from Bijeljina and Janja, a village that was entirely Muslim before nationalist Serbs drove out half of its population and replaced it with Serbs, Mr. Janowski said.
"The people were reportedly rounded up from their houses," Mr. Janowski said. "They were reportedly told that they were going abroad and instructed to sign papers renouncing title to their property."
"They were taken to the front line in trucks," he said, citing the commander's account. "They were forced to give up their personal possessions, such as jewelry and money. And shots were fired in the air to prod them over the confrontation line."

LOAD-DATE: July 18, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Map of Bosnia and Herzegovina showing location of Bijeljina.

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July 19, 1994, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

METRO DIGEST

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

LENGTH: 507 words


HARDSHIP FOR OLD IN HAVEN FOR YOUNG
For the first time, more people over 65 are living in the New York region's suburbs than in its cities, small towns and rural areas combined. The growth of the suburban elderly population is presenting an array of disturbing new problems for local governments, social service agencies, medical workers, businesses and families, all being forced to deal with the aging in a setting created for the young. A1.
VALLONE PRESSES FOR A POLICE MONITOR
City Council Speaker Peter F. Vallone said that he wants a permanent independent agency to monitor corruption in the New York City Police Department, and Council leaders said that he has the votes to push it through. A1.
 
 NEW YORK CITY
 
 LOOKING ELSEWHERE
FOR A TOWER SITE
An over-the-fence squabble between two powerful Bronx neighbors cooled a bit when Fordham University agreed to look for a different place to put its new radio tower, other than directly across the road from the New York Botanical Garden. B3.
TRANSIT POLICE VETO PROPOSED CONTRACT
The union for transit police officers rejected a tentative contract that the city and union leadership had announced last week, making it likely that the dispute will go before a state arbitration board. B3.
ANOTHER LEGIONNAIRES' CASE SUSPECTED
Another traveler on a New York cruise ship to Bermuda has been hospitalized with the symptoms of Legionnaires' disease, and the condition of two of the three of those with confirmed cases has worsened, New Jersey health and hospital officials said. B2.
 
 REGION
 
 BIKER CLASH
LEAVES 2 DEAD
Perhaps 150 motorcycling enthusiasts were gathered in the picnic grove of an Elks Lodge in Hackettstown, N.J., on Sunday afternoon when arguments started near an outdoor beer and liquor stand. "In rapid succession, it went from fists to knives, and from knives to guns," said the Warren County Prosecutor, John J. O'Reilly. The violence that erupted between two motorcycle clubs at the charity barbecue left two men dead and three wounded. B4.
YOUTH'S KILLING ATTRIBUTED TO ROUGH SEX
The youth accused of strangling his 12-year-old classmate at a school for emotionally disturbed children told detectives he put his hands around the boy's neck as the two engaged in rough sexual intercourse, investigators testified during a preliminary court hearing. B4.
DETECTIVES PLEAD GUILTY IN $10,000 THEFT
Three grim-faced former detectives of the Mount Vernon Police Department, who were videotaped in May stealing $10,000 in an F.B.I. sting operation, pleaded guilty in Federal District Court in White Plains to charges of theft and conspiracy. B4.
LAW ON HASIDIC DISTRICT CHALLENGED
New York's state school boards association, which persuaded the Supreme Court to abolish a school district that was created specifically to accommodate ultra-Orthodox Jews, announced that it would return to court to challenge a new state law that was designed to circumvent the court ruling. B2.
 
 Chronicle B5
 Our Towns by Evelyn Nieves B4
 

LOAD-DATE: July 19, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Chart: 'Pulse: Subway Crime'
The number of reported felonies in the New York City subway for the first four months of 1993 and 1994.
1993 -- 3,778
1994 -- 3,147
Decrease of 16.7%
(Source: Transit Police Department)

TYPE: Summary

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July 19, 1994, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final
Correction Appended

Empty Lawns: Aging in the Suburbs -- A special report.;
Elderly Find Hardship in Haven for Young

BYLINE: By ESTHER B. FEIN 

SECTION: Section A;  Page 1;  Column 2;  Metropolitan Desk 

LENGTH: 2630 words

They moved out to the suburbs in the decades after World War II in record numbers with all the promise and trappings of youth, with bicycles and station wagons, baby strollers and basketball hoops.
They raised families there, had careers and now, in record numbers, they are growing old there. Across the United States, more older people are living in the suburbs than ever before. The trend is especially prevalent in the New York area. For the first time in the region's history, more people over 65 are living in suburbs than in cities, small towns and rural areas combined, an analysis of the 1990 Census shows. 
 The growth of the suburban elderly population is expected to continue, experts say, and it is presenting an array of disturbing new problems for local governments, social service agencies, medical workers, businesses and families, who are all being forced to deal with the aging in a setting created for the young.
"Suburbia was always geared toward youth and this huge new population bulge is radically altering life here," said Stephen M. Jones, director of the Suffolk County Planning Department. "These are people who are not into Little League or Cub Scouts, and they require their own services that governments and businesses now have to accommodate."
Medicaid expenditures in Westchester County, for example, have gone up 52 percent since 1989. Officials say that more than half of the growth was needed to cover the rising cost of caring for elderly people in nursing homes, which reached $218 million in 1993, from $147 million four years before.
In Hackensack, N.J., the Visiting Homemaker and Home Health Aide Service of Bergen County, a nonprofit agency that focuses on the elderly, has tripled the size of its home health aide program over the last five years, opened a branch office and added new programs.
An elementary school in Commack, L.I., that was closed down for lack of students was bought by a private organization, renovated and expanded into the Gurmin Jewish Geriatric Center, which has a 300-bed nursing home and an adult day care center.
And, in some places, entrepreneurs have seen an opportunity in meeting the needs of older suburban residents. In Glen Rock, N.J., a woman started a car service to shuttle older people on errands after she noticed the trouble they had getting around when they could no longer drive.
"I can't drive anymore and I can't walk far, so I can't get anywhere on my own," said Cornelia McDonald, a 77-year-old widow who has lived for 36 years in Fair Lawn, N.J., raising four children in a 10-room house that she reluctantly gave up for a three-room apartment after her husband died two years ago.
"Everything is so far away," she said. "I used to like that. I used to like not being crowded by neighbors and everything. But now I'm having a hard time managing. I don't want to leave because everything is familiar and I like it here. But it's really very hard to cope."
For older people who are healthy, still able to drive and able to care for their homes, the pleasures of space and privacy that drew them to the suburbs remain.
But for an increasing number of the suburban elderly, the houses and lawns that once seemed barely big enough to contain the giggles and the games are now oversized and overwhelming to maintain. The two-story and split-level homes that once seemed a triumph over the crowded apartments they had fled are now torturous to negotiate with walkers and arthritic knees. Driving to supermarkets, libraries and shops, once a routine of daily life, is now simply impossible.
 
A National Phenomenon
 The aging of the suburban population is a reflection of general demographic shifts in the country. The United States Census Bureau predicts that by 2030, the over-65 population will grow two and a half times, to more than 70 million people, and older people will make up 20 percent of the population, up from 12.6 percent.
But the trend is particularly stark in suburbia. In 1980, people over 65 made up 10.8 percent of the population in the suburbs of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. They now account for 13.3 percent, and demographers say that share is growing. In the same period the percentage of old people in the cities of the three states has declined slightly, from 13.3 percent to 13.1 percent.
The surge of the suburban elderly population also coincides with a growing desire among many older people to remain at home -- rather than in nursing homes or other institutions. As a result, vast numbers of people are aging in suburban houses designed for young families and in communities ill-equipped to deliver services older people need.
"Old people are simply not part of the raison d'etre of the suburbs, so it's psychologically harder to accept being old there," said Marjorie Cantor, a gerontologist at the Fordham University Graduate School of Social Services. "Everything there is geared toward young people, young families.
"In the city, the difference between being old and young is not so acute. Older people can find their niche more easily. They can find things to do more easily. And in rural areas, older people are still part of the natural cycle of life. But in the suburbs, despite their numbers, they become invisible because they basically withdraw."
 
The Isolation
The Homebound Suffer in Privacy
 The route that volunteers for the Visiting Nurse Association of Long Island drive as they make food deliveries to the homebound elderly in the Port Washington area is like a map of troubles older people face in the suburbs.
A brick house with peeling trim is an unwieldy asset for one older woman whose inability to drive leaves her stranded and dependent on home-delivered meals. A rundown Victorian with a neat lawn is home to a man whose children have moved on, as so many do, whose friends have died or become disabled and who knows none of his neighbors. A basement apartment on a quiet street is the only affordable alternative for a vibrant 80-year-old woman, tethered to an oxygen machine, who cannot get into a subsidized housing complex for the elderly.
Five days a week, volunteers for the Visiting Nurses and four other organizations financed by Nassau County's Department of Senior Citizen Affairs deliver a hot lunch and a cold supper to nearly 2,000 elderly people -- more than twice the caseload of 10 years ago. Dozens more are on a waiting list.
 
Suddenly Defenseless
 Many of the elderly say that they never thought ahead to their later years when they bought houses with staircases and lush yards. The distance between them and their neighbors, a zone of privacy they once treasured, is now a gulf that makes them feel alone and defenseless.
"I'm trapped," said one 73-year-old woman in Port Washington who, like many of the elderly living alone in the suburbs, said she felt too vulnerable to have her name printed in an article. "And I don't really know anybody in the neighborhood. Who would even hear or know if something happened to me?"
Since she became ill with cancer of the thymus gland and with a nerve disorder, and can no longer climb stairs, she has lived on the bottom floor of her two-story house, sleeping in her son's childhood bedroom.
The basement was flooded months ago, but she has been unable to do anything about the mess. The various medications she takes cause severe hunger, yet she can no longer drive to the supermarket, and there are none in the area that deliver.
"At first, I didn't want to sell because I was comfortable here," she said, her voice a whisper. "Now the property taxes are half my income and I'm spending more every month than I'm taking in. I know I'm going to have to sell, but I'll lose a lot of money."
She gets out occasionally to church, she said, but only when friends drive her. "There are a lot of people there with walkers and wheelchairs," she said. "I guess we were all young once here. We all fit in once."
For Susan Millman, the suburbs are still peaceful, not isolating, still engaging, not intimidating.
She is 77 and can drive to meetings of the Rye (N.Y.) Historical Society in Westchester and to shopping centers. She can walk down to the beach that borders the house she has lived in for 43 years, a house she chose because it was near good schools and open spaces where her two children could play.
She said she never worried about maintaining the two-story house, or tending the juniper, lilac and apple trees in the yard.  Then her husband suffered three strokes and became paralyzed on his right side. In September, unable to care for her 84-year-old husband herself, Mrs. Millman placed him in a nursing home in nearby Larchmont.
"Until my husband got sick, I never worried about the house, never worried about money," said Mrs. Millman, a retired occupational therapist. "Now I'm worried. Do I paint the house this year or not? Do I get out now? It has come to the point for me physically where this and this I can do and this and this I can't. I can do the laundry in the basement and I learned how to change the filter on the furnace. But I can't mow the lawn or shovel snow or paint the basement or wash windows."
Mrs. Millman is in many ways typical of the suburban elderly in the New York area: she's married, living in her own home, still able to take care of herself and to get around without help. Myna Lavine, an 80-year-old widow living in Bergenfield, N.J., illustrates the increased dependency and loneliness suburbanites face as they live longer.
She had to give up driving several years ago when glaucoma clouded her vision and arthritis slowed her movements. She leaves her small brick house only to sit on the front porch and water the lawn. Once a week, a social service worker goes to the supermarket and then unloads the groceries into Mrs. Lavine's cupboards.
"See, I love living here," Mrs. Lavine said. "I'm out on my porch almost every day watching the traffic go by. Sometimes people stop at the fence and say 'hi.' But I'm alone here."
 
The Obligations
Governments Face Growing Burden
 The strain of aging is felt not only by older people. Local suburban governments also grapple with the pressure of the growing elderly population on their resources.
In Nassau County, for example, the general population has decreased over the last 20 years by nearly 10 percent, while the population of people 65 and older has increased by 54 percent and with it the need to finance services for the elderly, like centers and housing complexes, special transportation and medical care.
As with most local governments, most of the money Nassau County spends on the elderly goes to finance its portion of the Medicaid costs for nursing homes and home health programs.
Since the Medicaid program, which provides care for poor people, is required by Federal and state law, the county is obligated to finance part of it. To do so, officials said, they are often forced to cut other services.
"Medicaid costs are driving our budget," said Fred Parola, the Nassau County Comptroller. "The costs are so incredibly high that they have literally forced cutbacks in the system, like in the parks department, youth programs."
Over the last 10 years, Medicaid expenditures in Nassau County's Social Services Department rose 167 percent, to $126.2 million from $47.2 million, with officials saying that a growing portion went to cover care for the elderly. The Department of Senior Citizen Affairs, which is financed through Federal, state, county and some private money, increased its spending in that time 77 percent -- to $10 million from $5.7 million.
During the same period, the parks department budget was cut 26 percent, to $26.5 million from $36 million.
Complicating the budget juggling, Mr. Parola said, is the fact that most older people are on fixed incomes and have "tremendous antagonism toward tax increases" that could be used to pay for the services they need.
Increasingly, the county is trying to encourage businesses to meet the elderly's needs. In one program, developers who build housing for the elderly and restrict their own profits do not have to pay property taxes.
What keeps many older people independent and sane in the suburbs, they say, is driving. "The suburbs has a lot to offer an older person," said Mrs. Millman, of Rye, "if you can get places."
To keep up her skills, and to get a 10 percent discount on her insurance, Mrs. Millman has twice taken a driving course called 55 Alive offered by the American Association of Retired Persons. The instructors offered tips to compensate for the slowing of reflexes that often comes with age: don't drive at rush hours, at night or on highways; leave several car lengths between your car and the next; don't start making a left turn too early and don't start braking too late.
But she said that too few of her friends were as diligent as she. "Some of them shouldn't be driving, but they do," she said. "Their reflexes aren't what they used to be. But they're all terrified of being stuck in their houses. A friend of mine just had to give up her car and she's very depressed."
Transportation, experts say, is one of the greatest problems older people face in the suburbs. It affects their ability to eat, to get medical treatment, to work and socialize.
"How do you connect people to services in a setting where things are so spread out?" said Jane Gould, the director of New York State's Office for the Aging. "People assumed isolation of the elderly in rural areas and planned for it. We didn't assume it in the suburbs and it's very, very prevalent. And then there is the problem of older people hanging on to cars long after they should give them up. They say: 'How will I get to the doctor? How will I get to the store?' Meanwhile, they're a danger to themselves and to others on the road."
New York State is experimenting with new colors, sizes and placement of road signs to help older drivers, many of whom live in the suburbs, compensate for poor vision and reflexes and drive more safely for longer.
Advocates for the elderly have lobbied against any requirements that older drivers be retested and recertified, saying such efforts represent age discrimination. Younger drivers, they point out, have the highest accident rate. But insurance and transportation experts say that older people are involved in more accidents per miles driven, making their overall crash experience similar to that of the under-25 group.
Physical impairments also prevent older people from using the limited public transportation that is available in the suburbs. While most counties provide some sort of door-to-door van service for the elderly and the disabled, officials say that resources are severely limited and fall far short of the growing need.
Roberta Feinberg watched two widowed aunts in New Jersey struggle to get around the sprawl of suburbia. When she would help out by driving them, she said, their thanks were embarrassingly profuse.
Looking around her own neighborhood in Glen Rock, N.J., she said, she could see many more older people like her aunts with few transportation options. So eight years ago, she started Companion Express, a company she and her patrons describe as "more than a car service."
"A taxi could take them to the doctor," said Ms. Feinberg, who charges $16 an hour and now has about five other drivers working with her. "But I talk to them, I sit with them. I help them into the car. I help them to the bathroom. A taxi is not going to do that."
County and state planning officials say that despite the growing market of elderly people, businesses like Mrs. Feinberg's are few. Despite demographic shifts, most entrepreneurs in the suburbs still focus on the young.

LOAD-DATE: July 19, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

CORRECTION-DATE: July 21, 1994, Thursday

 CORRECTION:
An article on Tuesday about the problems of elderly people in the suburbs misspelled the name of a nursing home in Commack, L.I. It is the Gurwin Jewish Geriatric Center, not Gurmin.

GRAPHIC: Photos: Susan Millman was unable to care for her ill husband, Herbert, and was forced to place him in a nursing home in Larchmont, N.Y. (William E. Sauro/The New York Times)(pg. A1); "See, I love living here," said Myna Lavine. Hampered by arthritis and glaucoma, she rarely leaves her Bergenfield, N.J., home. "I'm out on my porch almost every day watching the traffic go by. Sometimes people stop at the fence and say hi. But I'm alone here." (William E. Sauro/The New York Times)(pg. B2)
 
Graphs: "CLOSE-UP: Old in the Suburbs" shows the elderly population in N.Y., N.J. and Conn. "COMPARISON -- Old and Older: A Changing Profile" shows some stark differences in people over the age of 65 and those over the age of 85. (Source: Dr. Andrew Beveridge, Sociology Department, Queens College)(pg. B5)

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The New York Times

July 21, 1994, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

Corrections

SECTION: Section A;  Page 2;  Column 6;  Metropolitan Desk 

LENGTH: 31 words

An article on Tuesday about the problems of elderly people in the suburbs misspelled the name of a nursing home in Commack, L.I. It is the Gurwin Jewish Geriatric Center, not Gurmin.

LOAD-DATE: July 21, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

TYPE: Correction

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The New York Times

July 22, 1994, Friday, Late Edition - Final

METRO DIGEST

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

LENGTH: 492 words


BACKING OFF ON PRIVATIZING SCHOOLS
The Board of Education in Hartford is preparing to hire a profit-making company to manage the city's 32 schools, but fierce opposition from teachers and questions about the financial arrangements have caused the school board to reject the company's bid to take full control. A1.
Education Alternatives, a Minneapolis company, was operating at a loss. Then it took over nine Baltimore public schools. B6.
IMMIGRATION INQUIRY FINDS FRAUD
Elaine Wilson's wedding plans collapsed when colleagues of the prospective groom -- an undercover agent of the Immigration and Naturalization Service -- arrested Ms. Wilson and two others on charges of participating in a marriage fraud ring aimed at illegal immigrants. A1.
 
NEW YORK CITY
 
KINGS COUNTY HOSPITAL IN DISARRAY
The head of the Health and Hospitals Corporation said he would appoint a new executive director to oversee Kings County Hospital Center because it is in danger of losing its medical accreditation. B3.
INQUIRY INTO TALKS ON CON ED VIOLATIONS
The Speaker of the City Council said a task force would investigate the circumstances surrounding Con Edison's negotiations with the state to settle environmental charges. B3.
ASSISTED SUICIDE LAW CHALLENGED
Two men in the terminal stages of AIDS, a woman dying of cancer and three physicians who care for such patients filed suit seeking to strike down New York's prohibition against assisted suicide. B3.
A group of retired police officers said they would establish a hot line to report corruption. B3.
A Columbia University official is nominated to head the Child Welfare Administration. B7.
 
REGION
 
SHIP TRAVELERS BEGIN TO RETURN
Some suntanned, some steaming, passengers from the ill-fated cruise ship Horizon arrived in New York City, their vacations scuttled by an outbreak of Legionnaires' disease. B4.
The first symptoms hit John Silivanch as he worked in his backyard. B4.
COLLEGE STRUGGLES TO STAY OPEN
Debt-burdened, its enrollment shrinking, its accreditation slated to be revoked, its faculty unpaid for a month, Upsala College will nevertheless remain open for at least another semester while it looks for a way out of its crisis. B6.
CONFESSION DESCRIBES SHOOTINGS
Using the clinical language of medicine, a 22-year-old premedical student charged with murder in a carjacking told investigators that he shot his two victims in a moment of panic. B4.
7 SICKENED BY TAINTED MEAT
In what health officials fear may be the first of many cases, six children and one elderly person have become ill in New Jersey from eating tainted hamburger that might have come from the same source. B4.
LEADING THE SCHOOL FINANCE CHALLENGE
Marilyn Morheuser still believes in the rallying cries of the 1960's. Why else would she have gone before the State Supreme Court to argue again that New Jersey has failed to do right by its impoverished students? B9.
 
Chronicle B8

LOAD-DATE: July 22, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Graph: "Manhattan Mortgages" shows average interest rates for 30-year fixed-rate and 1-year adjustable-rate loans for Manhattan co-ops and condominiums (Source: Manhattan Mortgage Company)

TYPE: Summary

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The New York Times

July 22, 1994, Friday, Late Edition - Final

Mary Lasswell, 89, Novelist, Is Dead

SECTION: Section B;  Page 18;  Column 4;  Cultural Desk 

LENGTH: 197 words

Mary Lasswell, an author whose humorous novels about life in Southern California and Texas were popular in the 1940's and 50's, died on Tuesday in the nursing unit of the Solvang Lutheran Home in Solvang, Calif., where she resided. She was 89.
The cause was Alzheimer's disease, said her husband, Dr. Dudley Winn Smith, a surgeon. 
 Her first book, "Suds in Your Eye," published by Houghton Mifflin in 1942, was described as "a crazy, funny story" about three impecunious elderly women. It was unlike most of the novels coming out of Southern California, wrote Beatrice Sherman in The New York Times Book Review on Dec. 13, 1942. A Broadway play in 1944, based on the book, was dramatized by Jack Kirkland.
Among her other books were "High Time" (1944); "Mrs. Rasmussen's Book of One-Arm Cookery" (1946); "Wait for the Wagon" (1951); "I'll Take Texas" (1958); "Let's Go for Broke" (1962), and "Tio Pepe" (1968).
Miss Lasswell, who was born in Glasgow, Scotland, of American parents, on Feb. 8, 1905, grew up in Brownsville, Tex.
She is survived by her husband, who lives in the Solvang Lutheran Home in Solvang, and a brother, Clyde Lubbock of Pensacola, Fla.

LOAD-DATE: July 22, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

TYPE: Obituary (Obit); Biography

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July 23, 1994, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

THE HEALTH CARE DEBATE: THE DEMOCRATS;
Clintons Ask Senate Leader To Insist on Coverage for All

BYLINE: By ADAM CLYMER,     Special to The New York Times   

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

LENGTH: 1062 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, July 22

President Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton appealed to the Senate majority leader on Thursday to stand firm for the idea of health insurance for all Americans, rather than make concessions before debate begins, two leading Democrats said today.
The Clintons came away from the Thursday meeting encouraged to believe that Senator George J. Mitchell of Maine, the majority leader, would do as they urged, said the two Democrats, who have been closely involved in developing health care legislation. 
 House leaders also came away from a later White House meeting with the President, Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Mitchell believing that the bill Mr. Mitchell plans to unveil late next week would seek to insure all Americans and would probably rely ultimately on requiring employers to help pay workers' premiums if other approaches did not work, Congressional aides said.
The decision to propose such an approach is not easy for Mr. Mitchell because many in the Senate, including some Democrats, say they will not support sweeping measures. But it matters very much both to the Clintons and to House leaders.
If Senate Democrats are not seen by House members as fighting for a strong bill, the effort to pass a similar bill in the House may cave in. And if the Senate proposal seems soft and the President supports it, his own determination would be questioned.
Mr. Mitchell and his House counterpart, Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri, are developing their proposals mainly from the bills approved by two committees in each house, although they may add some provisions. Mr. Mitchell is especially likely to do so.
Mr. Mitchell declined to comment either on his conversation with Mr. and Mrs. Clinton or on what his still-unfinished bill would embrace. But he said today that it was essential to provide "health insurance for all Americans, and that means not only providing health insurance to those who do not now have it, but also providing security to those who now have it but fear losing it."
House leaders have already made it clear that they expect to follow the lines of a House Ways and Means Committee measure. That bill would require employers to provide insurance and would put uninsured Americans into a new segment of the Medicare program, which now mainly insures the elderly. The committee bill would impose its requirements from 1996 to 1998, but the leaders plan to suggest proceeding more slowly.
In the House, Speaker Thomas S. Foley of Washington would not say today how long a delay in achieving universal coverage would be proposed. But he said at a news conference, "I think we are talking about some slight, not forever and ever, but some slight delay in phasing it in."
 
Mitchell's Pessimism
 Although some House Democrats strongly dislike the Medicare approach and others fear that disputes over abortion coverage will unravel the alliance behind the bill, House leaders are reasonably optimistic that they can assemble the 218 votes they need to pass a bill, so long as a debacle in the Senate does not scare off their troops.
But Mr. Mitchell is far less confident of mustering a majority for any bill, especially one that relies on mandatory employer payments. Supporters of that approach have worried aloud this week that Mr. Mitchell was being unduly pessimistic and have pressed him to go for employer payments, a plea also apparently made by the Clintons.
Among the options that have been discussed are lowering the required employer payments from 80 percent of the cost of insurance premiums to 50 percent. Eighty percent is the standard in Mr. Clinton's proposal and in one Senate bill and two House measures. Another alternative is requiring employer contributions only if other measures, like changes in insurance laws, fail to increase coverage sufficiently.
When the leaders said on Thursday night that their bills would be "less bureaucratic, more voluntary, and will be phased in over a longer period of time" than Mr. Clinton's original proposal, they were establishing symbolic distance from a plan that has been widely criticized despite popular support for its broad aims.
But they were also restating the obvious. Mr. Clinton's legislative proposal has not been the operative bill for several months. Most remakes of it have dropped the mandatory inclusion of most Americans in insurance purchasing alliances, its most unpopular feature. Mr. Clinton has praised several bills that did that.
 
Exit Lines
 The President took credit today for the words the Congressional leaders used as they left Thursday's meeting. Mr. Clinton said today at a news conference that when Thursday's meeting ended, the leaders asked what they should tell reporters waiting outside the White House.
Mr. Clinton said he replied: "Well, I have been saying for four weeks we have agreed to dramatically change this plan. We're going to string it out, we have to have a longer phase-in, we have to have less bureaucracy, we have to have totally voluntary small-business alliances, and we have to give a bigger break to small businesses to get them to buy into it. I'll bet if you go out there and say it, it will be treated as news.
"And that is exactly what happened," Mr. Clinton added. "And I'm glad that it finally is going out to the American people."
 
A Plea for More Time
 Meanwhile, Republicans were complaining that the legislation was getting patched together too quickly for serious consideration by Congress.
Representative Newt Gingrich of Georgia, the No. 2 House Republican, urged that the House use August to study the bill Mr. Gephardt will introduce, as well as an unwritten "bipartisan substitute."
And Senator Bob Packwood of Oregon, the senior Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, asked for a week's delay after Mr. Mitchell produces his bill. "With a 500- or 1,000- or 1,500-page bill that we've got no report on, no language, no estimates, I would hope at that stage we would be willing to take a one-week recess before the recess and say, 'All right, let's everybody look at this for one week,' " he said. " This is the most important piece of legislation we've had in 25 years. It is not fair to start on it on one or two days' notice."
Mr. Mitchell, mindful of the Senate's deliberate pace, said, "We expect there will be plenty of time for people to review and analyze the bill."

LOAD-DATE: July 23, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH  

GRAPHIC: Photo: Senator George J. Mitchell was urged from several directions this week to stand firm on universal coverage. (Paul Hosefros/The New York Times) (pg. 8)

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July 23, 1994, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

Observer;
The Beethoven Defense

BYLINE: By RUSSELL BAKER   

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

LENGTH: 672 words

California, which is in the vanguard of practically everything, has started using classical music as a teen-ager repellent.
Apparently nothing works like a dose of Beethoven quartet for driving a horde of teen-agers out of your neighborhood, unless it's a Bach fugue. All the masters are powerful juice, however: Haydn, Mozart, Wagner, Brahms . . . The pity is they can't be sprayed out of a can. 
 In California, severe infestations of teen-agers occur, as in the East, in malls and around convenience stores. Biologists believe teen-agers are lured by the combination of generous parking space and chilled soda pop.
These, say the scientists, combine in mild weather to intensify a terrifying teen-ager lust for noise. At one time this could easily be gratified by a small car radio, or so it was believed by early teen-ager-ologists.
How wrong they were. Apparently the teen-ager has always had an ear organ -- ironic word for it in view of teen-ager detestation of Bach's magnificent organ music -- which creates an insatiable craving for decibels.
Only recently has electronic technology reached the stage where it can even begin to provide the decibels the teen-ager is capable of absorbing without pain.
In a laboratory test 97 of 100 teen-agers tolerated the sound of power saws ripping through every piece of plumbing in a 30-story building, while also carrying on what scientists took to be intelligible conversation, which they interrupted from time to time to complain that the amplifiers were too weak.
Industrial-strength electronic weaponry now being sold can make life insupportable for neighbors of open-air businesses like convenience stores experiencing a teen-ager infestation.
Malls can police teen-ager noise better than convenience stores, but they find that teen-agers nevertheless tend to scare older customers who associate them with noise capable of deafening the innocent for miles around.
Teen-agers say there aren't any innocents for miles around anymore and, in view of the unspeakable world their elders have created, leaving them nothing but hopelessness and despair, people for miles around, and everybody else for that matter, would be better off if they couldn't ever hear anything anyhow.
What excites the teen-agers to such sass? Scientists believe the fury results when a teen-ager hears what he regards as music referred to as "noise."
Experiments at the Institute of Teen-Ager Sturm und Drang suggest that the teen-ager does, in fact, believe that sound capable of blowing out eardrums eight blocks from its source is, as one specimen teen-ager called it, "the sweetest music this side of Heaven."
California malls, like most malls, provide incessant broadcast music which is theoretically supposed to stimulate the money-spending juices of their prototypical customer, a well- heeled baby boomer who is going on 50.
He is thought to be fetched for spending by rock music, not the bone-chilling variety that takes the teen-ager to paradise, but still rock.
To a teen-ager any rock is better than no rock. So the malls have been providing a rock to stay the teen-ager's hunger until he can get to a convenience store and turn up the sound to the point where it scares the hurricanes back to the horse latitudes.
California malls now find they can clear them out fast by replacing baby-boomer rock with the classics. Teen-agers simply can't stand it.
Four notes of a Mozart piano concerto affect them the way DDT used to affect earwigs. Scientists believe teen-agers instinctively fear that classical music is a deadly threat to their health, just as the boomer generation believes cigarette smoke will do them all in.
This could mean a grim future for people who are not already deaf, because teen-agers, who invariably get older, are bound to be in charge eventually. We could end up a nation of malls vibrating to unbearable sounds and of social outcasts huddled in lonely alleys listening through ear plugs to heavily taxed tapes of Verdi's "Requiem."

LOAD-DATE: July 23, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

TYPE: Op-Ed  

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July 24, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

SUNDAY, JULY 24, 1994;
Saving Frequent Fallers

SECTION: Section 6;  Page 6;  Column 1;  Magazine Desk 

LENGTH: 223 words

At last, an invention for old people, and one that has nothing to do with in-line skates. It's a floor -- to be tested early next year at a nursing home in Pennsylvania. "The home is a typical facility, with 225 residents," says Peter Cavanagh, who teaches biomechanics at Penn State. Somebody falls down at the home roughly once a day, and "about once every other month, one suffers a broken hip."
That's because the floor is so hard, thought Cavanagh and one of his colleagues, Donald Streit, a mechanical engineer. What if, when someone collapsed, the floor did, too? They call their creation dual stiffness flooring. It's a kind of sandwich, two plastic sheets separated by plastic columns, all of it about an inch thick and designed to break the force of a fall by as much as 30 percent. Then it bounces back. 
 There is a drawback, however. Cavanagh says it costs more than three times as much as ordinary linoleum or carpeting. But he and Streit are also social engineers. "A minority of residents account for most of the falls at this home," says Cavanagh. "It should be fairly simple to establish which residents are at high risk, and use the expensive stuff only in a 'falls wing.' "
Actually, the floor would also be great for people of any age who are frequent fallers. Maybe it does have a use in Rollerblading.

LOAD-DATE: July 24, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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July 24, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

YOUR HOME;
Changes To Help The Aged

BYLINE: By ANDREE BROOKS 

SECTION: Section 9;  Page 5;  Column 1;  Real Estate Desk 

LENGTH: 1144 words

AS the nation's population ages, there has been an increased consciousness of innovations designed to permit an increasing number of older Americans to live comfortably and safely in their own homes well into later life.
They range from new ideas for structural modifications to inexpensive hand-held electronic gadgets that can be readily purchased from a neighborhood store. 
 Moreover, rather than detract from the appeal of the home the changes could make it more valuable because they are also useful for families with young children.
Items on such a list, say brokers, include the newer bathroom faucets with automatic temperature controls to prevent scalding; levers instead of doorknobs; kitchen cabinets and appliances that can be readily reached and operated from a wheelchair (and thus also by a child).
And any parent who has ever pushed a toddler in a stroller will appreciate the value of an attractively landscaped ramp in place or in addition to the (often deteriorated) steps that traditionally lead to the entrance of a suburban house -- especially if that ramp has been artfully concealed with a berm and a brick facade to cover the concrete.
Even items for the disabled such as ramps and grab bars no longer carry a stigma, said Ted Bobrow, a spokesman for the American Association of Retired Persons. He attributed this in part to better design and colors.
But, he added, they have also become more socially acceptable after having been installed in public buildings such as hotels and offices as a result of the new Federal disability laws.
No wonder the most recent surveys taken by AARP show less psychological resistance to needed changes even by the older people themselves.
First, some background reading. "The Perfect Fit: Creative Ideas for a Safe and Livable Home" is a 42-page illustrated booklet from AARP that provides practical, low-cost suggestions while stimulating the reader's own creativity through easy exercises. It's available free by writing for booklet #D14823, AARP EEO768, 601 E Street N.W., Washington, D.C. 20049.
Its recommendations include moving the customary end-of-driveway mailbox to the front door or constructing a mail slot actually in the door so the older person doesn't have to go outside; installing automatic garage-door openers for greater safety and ease of movement and adding an open shelf between high kitchen cabinets and the countertop so regularly used objects can be easily seen and grasped.
The recommendations also include a useful listing of catalogue companies (with their toll-free numbers) that supply residential devices for the elderly. Lumex Inc. of Bay Shore, L.I. for example, produces reclining chairs with wheels for easier shifting around that can be custom covered in the client's own fabric.
Equally helpful is the "Home Safety Guide for Older People: Check It Out/Fix It Up," a checklist of potential hazards and possible solutions developed by gerontologists. Send $13.95 to Serif Press, 1331 H Street N.W., Suite 110, Washington, D.C. 20005 or order by phone at (800) 221-4272.
Jon Pynoos, associate professor of gerontology at the Andrus Gerontology Center at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, suggests starting with simple changes. In particular he favors levered door handles that -- in gleaming brass -- have become a standard fashion accessory in newer expensive homes. Not only do they add a touch of class to an older home but levers are also critical, he said, for anyone suffering from arthritis.
He also recommends any number of the newer remote-control gadgets. Mr. Pynoos said he recently provided his aging father-in-law with a device that allowed the man to turn on the interior lights before going indoors.
Technology is helping in other ways. Stair lifts can now be installed for curved stairways while certain models have dropped as low as $4,000 fully installed. Electronic sensors can be installed to turn lights on and off automatically as the person enters or leaves a room, eliminating fumbling and forgetting.
William K. Wasch, president of William K. Wasch Associates of Middletown, Conn., a contractor, said that any plan to modify the house might well include the creation of an accessory apartment on the second floor or basement for a live-in care giver -- an adaptation that local zoning codes normally permit whenever the home owner is elderly.
Planned changes should also permit the elderly person to live entirely on the first floor, which may mean creating a full bathroom out of a half bathroom or laundry area.
This bathroom (or any bathroom modification), say the experts, should ideally include a separate shower stall designed for wheelchair access. Also useful is a bench and a hand-shower in the shower stall so someone who cannot easily walk or stand can still maintain a modicum of independence and dignity. Special benches and rails that help someone get into and out of a bath are also proliferating.
Most of these items can now be found at hardware stores and home improvement centers in addition to hospital supply retailers and through catalogues.
An attached garage, said Mr. Wasch, is best modified for easier access to the main house by creating an inside ramp along a side wall of the garage and curving it around to cover the connecting stairs at the far end. Building a front-facing ramp directly over those stairs, he said, shortens the garage space and could end up with too steep a grade.
A small bench might also be placed along an inside garage wall, added Mr. Wasch, so the older person can put down groceries and other purchases while unlocking the connecting door.
The entire garage, he noted, should be brightly lit. Too many auxiliary areas, like staircases and passageways, he warned, are normally lit only with the dimmest lights even though these are the most hazardous areas of the home.
Screen doors, say these experts, should be removed if they have become an entryway hazard. Staircases (including basement steps) should have hand rails on both sides.
Side-by-side refrigerator-freezers are easier to reach than those with the freezer on top. Pull-out shelves should replace any of the drawers and cabinets that have fixed shelving. And simply taking a door off its hinges can become a quick and easy way to permit wheelchair access through tight doorways.
Finally, Evan Jeske, director of the Manhattan Household Management Program, which provides volunteers, companions and light housekeeping help for the elderly, believes in cleaning out the clutter and removing unnecessary items like scatter rugs that increase the probability of tripping.
Too many home-based accidents by the elderly, she said, could be eliminated if the dangers were identified and corrected in advance -- not left "until after something terrible has happened."

LOAD-DATE: July 24, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Drawing

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July 24, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

THEATER;
Love Among the Risk Takers and Risk Averse

BYLINE: By ALVIN KLEIN 

SECTION: Section 13CN;  Page 17;  Column 1;  Connecticut Weekly Desk 

LENGTH: 570 words

IT seems they stood and talked like this before. She remembers, instantly, where (the Isle of Capri overlooking the bay of Naples) and when (22 years ago). It isn't long before he remembers, too. Now on a veranda with a drop-dead view of Boston Harbor, surrounded by stars as if in possession of them. And yes, they are thinking of asking for the moon.
In "Later Life" A. R. Gurney establishes his most romantic setting yet. The scenic designer for the production at Westport Country Playhouse, Richard Ellis, has lived up to his part of the celestial bargain. 
 And Austin (Frank Converse), who is divorced, and Ruth (Maureen Anderman), who is separated, are not only available -- "relatively free and clear" -- but connecting. That, Ruth observes, is "something very rare in this world that is falling apart." Who among the audience isn't rooting for the final clinch?
In the best of all possible fantasy worlds, Mr. Gurney would oblige. But it is his sense of missed second chances that has made him write a ruefully truthful play rather than a satisfyingly dreamy one.
Austin and Ruth had their brief encounter after college and before marriage. Austin, then a Navy man, is still at sea. On the surface, he is shipshape. This is, remember, a Gurney play.
"A prince of a man" in the Groton School yearbook, he came from one of Boston's finest families, married the boss's daughter (from one of Boston's finest families), became a banker -- and remained a perfect gentleman.
But inside Austin is raging. All the top-drawer values that defined his breed are dying out. This is, remember, a Gurney play, a darker and deeper one than ever. Austin, overcome by a sense of dread, cannot move. Even Austin's psychiatrist misunderstands him.
In a coup of casting, concept and good economic sense, the inimitable Carole Shelley of the original Off Broadway cast and John C. Vennema, an Off Broadway replacement, play motley guests at the cocktail party inside. Under David Saint's graceful direction, they come onto the veranda to eavesdrop on Austin and Ruth. Mr. Vennema is a recovering smoker, a computer junkie and a crotchety elderly man asking to go to his retirement home in Florida.
Ms. Shelley is his wife who won't go. They are an overly gregarious couple, just moved to Boston, determined to show off their multicultural tolerances. Ms. Shelley also performs the roles of a hilarious series of snooty besotted and bewildered women.
As the overpriviledged Austin with a "Puritan sense of damnation," Mr. Converse, all pent up with pursed lips and furrowed brow, is made to look like a cloning of Charles Kimbrough, the play's original star. This is bothersome for Mr. Converse is giving a deeply felt attractive performance. Ruth, whose life has been a catalogue of disasters, in contrast to Austin's success, stability and sheer luck, is nevertheless a spirited risk taker, even if it means she is bent on destructiveness. Married four times to three men, she is on the run from an abusive ne'er-do-well.
Ms. Anderman, recreating her original role, wears the camouflage of charm and elegance perfectly. Her passion for life surfaces, but so what?
Ruth keeps on dancing. Austin goes on standing there. If his psychiatrist cannot understand why, who can?
"Later Life" by A. R. Gurney at Westport Country Playhouse, 25 Powers Court, off Route 1. 227-4177. Performances through Saturday.

LOAD-DATE: July 24, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Maureen Anderman, left, Carole Shelley and John C. Vennema in a scene from A. R. Gurney's "Later Life," appearing at the Westport Country Playhouse through Saturday. (Jayson Byrd)

TYPE: Review

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July 27, 1994, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

THE HEALTH CARE DEBATE: THE OVERVIEW;
Democrats Issue Draft of Health Plan

BYLINE: By ADAM CLYMER,   Special to The New York Times 

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

LENGTH: 1239 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, July 26

House Democratic staff members have drafted a summary of health insurance legislation for their leaders to discuss with other Democrats, but the preliminary document does not resolve many delicate issues, like timing.
As expected, the seven-page summary, widely circulated on Capitol Hill today, closely follows the lines of the bill adopted last month by the House Committee on Ways and Means, which aims to provide health insurance to all Americans, financed in large part by mandatory payments by employers. 
 Additions include allowing small businesses to enroll their workers in the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program, the same plan that covers members of Congress. Two Senate committees had also provided for opening that program to non-Federal employees. Some other provisions appear to be taken literally from the Ways and Means bill, although they concern issues on which the leaders remain open to compromise.
 
A 'Work in Progress'
 For example, the document speaks of requiring employers to pay 80 percent of workers' insurance premiums, while the Speaker, Thomas S. Foley of Washington, made it clear today that he would be open to reducing this to a 50-50 split between employers and employees.
Nevertheless, Representative Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri, the House majority leader, is using at least some parts of this document as talking points with other Democrats.
Laura Nichols, Mr. Gephardt's press secretary, said tonight that the document was a "work in progress." She said it was prepared so leaders "can begin to not only educate members but talk them through what we could do in improving what the committee had done."
Ms. Nichols said the most sensitive issues, like how to structure the required employer payments toward workers' premiums, had not been resolved. The document, for example, does not discuss the possibility of exempting very small businesses, saying only, "In general, all employers would be required to contribute toward the cost of private health insurance for all employees."
She said, "The big policy decisions have yet to be made."
But as their leaders worked to turn legislation passed by committees into proposals for consideration on the House and Senate floors, Democrats were also busy using the health care issue to attack the Republicans.
Mr. Foley said the recent Republican National Committee meeting showed that Republicans wanted to defeat any health bill. He said their desire to "see any bill defeated is a remarkable confession of their putting politics above the interests of the people."
 
Issue of Medicare
 And Vice President Al Gore, addressing the National Council of Senior Citizens, said legislation proposed by Senator Bob Dole of Kansas, the Republican leader, would "raid Medicare," provide "virtually no help with costly medications" and allow insurance companies to go on charging "older people four times as much as younger people" for health insurance. He said Democratic bills, unlike the Dole version, banned discriminatory rates and provided for prescription drugs and long-term care for the elderly.
Mr. Dole replied in a statement: "One day they attack me. The next day they attack employers. The next day it's insurance companies. It's politics as usual at the White House. They are looking for enemies instead of solutions."
And Representative Newt Gingrich of Georgia, the No. 2 House Republican, said Mr. Foley was wrong in accusing the Republicans of opposing all health legislation. "We are working very hard to write a bill that can be passed," he said. "In a city where Rabin and Hussein spoke from the same microphone, we might even have the Democratic and Republican leadership work together."
Mr. Gingrich said he had repeatedly offered to work with the House majority leader and had been rebuffed. He contended that Republicans wanted to pass a moderate bill. "It's not just an effort to upstage and defeat the President," he said.
House Republicans have insisted that they would not consider any bill that would require employers to pay part of the cost of their workers' insurance. Democratic leaders regard that as an essential ingredient.
The attack on Mr. Dole in particular has been a determined Democratic strategy for the last few days. Rather than argue against compromise measures that have some bipartisan support, the Democrats have taken Mr. Dole's bill, which relies on insurance law changes and subsidies for the very poor but would leave many people uncovered, as the enemy. They have attacked it sharply, seeking to define the nation's choice as between their universal coverage measure, whatever it turns out to be, and his minimal measure.
In a day of heavy lobbying by the disabled and the elderly, New York City also weighed in, when hospital executives, labor leaders and Gov. Mario M. Cuomo traveled to Washington to demand that any bill provide universal coverage and not leave New York worse off than it is today.
Lieut. Gov. Stan Lundine, Kenneth E. Raske, president of the Greater New York Hospital Association, and Dennis Rivera, president of Local 1199 of the hospital workers union, were among a group who called on Mr. Gephardt. They warned him that proposed cuts in Medicare and Medicaid payments for graduate medical education and for hospitals providing a disproportionate share of care to poor people would badly hurt New York's teaching and public hospitals, especially if legislation did not include coverage for everyone.
 
Lobbying by Cuomo
 In midafternoon, Mr. Cuomo made many of the same points at a meeting with the White House chief of staff, Leon E. Panetta, before going off to see Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York and the dean of the state's House delegation, Charles B. Rangel of Manhattan. Mr. Cuomo said he had told Mr. Panetta that he thought that not enough Americans understood that universal coverage was not merely an altruistic goal but the linchpin on which successful change depended, even if it took several years to achieve.
"I think many of the people in the country misperceive the rationale for universal coverage," Mr. Cuomo said. 'They think it is purely a matter of compassion and concern for 36 or 37 million uncovered people. And that leads some of them to believe that you are asking the covered people to give up wealth for the benefit of the uncovered people, when the better rationale is in order to protect the covered people -- at least eventually -- you have to get the uncovered people into coverage, because they're receiving health care, but it's too expensive and the burden of that expense falls on the shoulders of the premium-payers, which is the rest of us."
Ross Perot said today that he was disappointed that the television networks had refused to sell broadcast time to the Republican Party for half-hour advertisements on health care. He said he had been willing to spend more than $1 million for the Republican commercials. Echoing what some leading Republicans are beginning to say, Mr. Perot added: "Right now there's this feeling that if you don't pass it during the election, all life on the planet will stop. We should take our time and do it right."
Mr. Perot said he would not have appeared in the Republican commercials and simply wanted them to be an even-handed analysis of health care options. But he made clear his belief that employer mandates would be a grave mistake.

LOAD-DATE: July 27, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Representative Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri, at right, discussing health care yesterday with a delegation from New York including, at left, Representative Charles E. Schumer of Brooklyn, Dennis Rivera, president of Local 1199 of the hospital workers union, and Lieut. Gov. Stan Lundine. (Kirsten Bremmer for The New York Times)
 
Chart: "DIARY: Health Care Developments"
 
YESTERDAY
 As a proposal drafted by Democratic staff members of pivotal House committees began circulating on Capitol Hill, Republicans and Democrats criticized the ideas and tactics of their rivals.
 
CONGRESS
Democrats and Republicans traded barbs over rival proposals. Speaker Thomas S. Foley said Republicans were "putting politics above the interests of the people," while Senator Bob Dole of Kansas, the Republican leader, said Democrats "are looking for enemies instead of solutions." The Congressional Budget Office said it would be unable to deliver an assessment of a legislation approved by the Senate Finance Committee on July 2 until staff members finished writing its precise language. The plan relies on changes in insurance regulations and Government subsidies to low-income families to provide insurance coverage to about 95 percent of Americans; its backers hope that the budget office report will strengthen their argument that the plan would be effective and affordable.
 
WHITE HOUSE
Vice President Al Gore criticized Republican health care proposals as shortchanging the elderly, and his wife, Tipper, pressed for universal health coverage, including virtually unlimited coverage for mental illness. She spoke at the National Press Club.
 
LOBBYING
New York politicians, hospital executives and labor leaders from Gov. Mario M. Cuomo down descended on the Capitol to emphasize the need for universal coverage and to insist that any health care bill take account of New York's historically rich system of health care benefits and its large population of poor sick people and not leave it worse off.

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July 27, 1994, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Wrong Drugs Given To 1 in 4 of Elderly

BYLINE: By GINA KOLATA 

SECTION: Section C;  Page 8;  Column 5;  National Desk;  Health Page

LENGTH: 937 words

CLOSE to a quarter of all Americans 65 or older were given prescriptions for drugs that they should almost never take, a study has found.
Some of the drugs can produce amnesia and confusion, others can cause serious side effects like heart problems or respiratory failure. And, the investigators said, there is no need to prescribe these drugs to older people, either because safer alternatives are available or because the drugs are simply not needed. 
 The study, by Dr. Steffi Woolhandler of Harvard Medical School and colleagues, examined data from a national survey that included more than 6,000 older people who were not in nursing homes and that determined what medicines they were taking. The researchers used a list of 20 drugs that a panel of experts had said should not be prescribed for older people. The survey was conducted in 1987, but the data were only recently made available for analysis, the researchers said, and no similar studies have been conducted since then.
In their paper, being published today in The Journal of the American Medical Association, the investigators found, for example, that 1.8 million older people had prescriptions for dipyridamole, a blood thinner that, the researchers say, is useless for all except people with artificial heart valves. Yet only 36,000 Americans, half of them over 65, had heart valves put in in 1987.
More than 1.3 million older Americans had prescriptions for propoxyphene, an addictive narcotic that, the authors say, is no better than aspirin in relieving pain. More than 1.2 million were taking diazepam or chlordiazepoxide, which are long-acting sedatives and sleeping pills that can make people groggy, forgetful and prone to falls.
 
Problem May Be Worse
 The authors wrote in their paper that they were conservative in selecting the 20 drugs that should not be prescribed. "Standard published sources support the view that the 20 drugs in our primary analysis should virtually never be prescribed for the elderly," they stated.
Dr. Jerry H. Gurwitz of Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, who wrote an editorial accompanying the paper, said in an interview that he hoped the study would serve as "a wake-up call" to America's doctors. "I hope that the medical community will take it as seriously as the general public, I think, will," he said.
But Dr. Gurwitz said the new study might have understated the problem. It did not consider drug interactions or drugs, like sleeping pills, that may be appropriate for short periods at low dosages but that are often taken for months or years at dosages that can make people groggy, confused and forgetful during the day.
Dr. Judith Ahronheim, a geriatrics specialist at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in Manhattan, said the new study was "the tip of the iceberg." Even drugs not on the list are often inappropriately prescribed or are taken when they are not needed, causing serious side effects along the way, she said, adding, "I see that every single day."
"This kind of article should not give a false sense of security about the other drugs that are out there," Dr. Ahronheim said. She said her rule of thumb was to stay away from sedatives in the elderly and "to use as few drugs and in as low a dose as we possibly can."
Other geriatrics specialists, including Dr. Woolhandler, said they were disturbed, but not surprised, by the study's findings.
"Based on my own clinical practice, I knew it was a problem," Dr. Woolhandler said. "I have had elderly people call up who had taken a Valium and started falling or who had gotten home at night and not known where they were in the day because of amnesia. I have seen patients after a heart attack who were so drugged that they couldn't function at all. I had a lady who almost died from a fainting spell after she took a muscle relaxer that she shouldn't have been given."
"A lot of the problem is that doctors frequently ascribe side effects of drugs to old age," she said. "If a patient loses memory or loses balance, they say it's old age."
Dr. Robert Butler, chairman of the department of geriatrics at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, said older people also attributed severe side effects to old age.
Dr. Butler said he often conducted what he called a brown bag test with elderly patients, asking them to bring in every medication they had in a brown bag. "You'd be shocked," he said. "Sometimes Mrs. Jones next door got a good result with her arthritis medication so our patient will take Mrs. Jones's drug. Some are taking medications that are five or six years old." And, he added, many older people do not take their medicines at the right time or in the right doses.
Dr. Robert Kane, a researcher at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health, said pressures on doctors might lead to inappropriate prescriptions.
 
Patient as Own Advocate
 "As physicians feel under pressure to spend less and less time with their patients, they often don't spend the time needed to take a thorough drug history," Dr. Kane said. "And one of the most common ways to terminate an interaction with a patient is to write a prescription. There is a tendency to substitute the use of drugs for time and attention."
In an ideal world, doctors would change their ways, but Dr. Kane and others suggested patients and their families might have to play a role .
Dr. Kane suggested that older people take lists of their medications to their doctors and ask about interactions and side effects. "There are things that older people can do to help themselves and I think they should do them," Dr. Kane said.

LOAD-DATE: July 27, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


GRAPHIC:  The numbers and percentages of noninstitutionalized people 65 or older who were using prescription drugs that are inappropriate for the elderly, based on the 1987 National Medical Expenditure Survey conducted by the Federal Agency for Health Care Policy and Research.


 	 	 	 
	Number	Percent	Number of
Drug	receiving drug	receiving drug	prescriptions

 
SEDATIVE OR HYPNOTIC AGENTS


 	 	 	 
Diazepam	798,946	2.82	1,547,111
Chlordiazepoxide	552,784	1.95	1,135,497
Flurazepam	355,090	1.25	578,459
Meprobamate	232,786	0.82	538,278
Pentobarbital	33,093 0.12	60,696	 
Secobarbital	8,486	0.03	25,459

 
ANTIDEPRESSANTS


 	 	 	 
Amitriptyline	886,629	3.13	1,966,922

 
NONSTEROIDAL ANTI-INFLAMMATORY DRUGS


 	 	 	 
Indomomethacin	747,729	2.64	1,300,212
Phenylbutazone	80,023	0.28	83,327

 
ORAL HYPOGLYCEMICS


 	 	 	 
Chlorpropamide	589,218	2.08	1,68,666

 
ANALGESICS


 	 	 	 
Propoxyphene	1,367,478	4.83	2,412,308
Pentazocine	85,641	0.30	104,105

 
DEMENTIA TREATMENTS


 	 	 	 
Isoxsuprine	87,088	0.31	221,376
Cyclandelate	71,847	0.25	198,835

 
PLATELET INHIBITORS


 	 	 	 
Dipyridamole	1,822,300	6.44	4,832,889

 
MUSCLE RELAXANTS OR ANTISPASMODIC AGENTS


 	 	 	 
Cyclobenzaprine	198,731	0.70	263,671
Methocarbamol	117,806	0.42	134,589
Carisoprodol	108,298	0.38	149,108
Orphenadrine	93,609	0.33	174,069

 
ANTIEMETIC AGENTS


 	 	 	 
Trimethobenzamide	77,022	0.27	99,990

 
*ANTIHYPERTENSIVES


 	 	 	 
Propranolol	1,774,370	6.27	4,995,358
Methyldopa	1,280,297	4.52	3,663,512
Reserpine	597,655	2.11	1,467,226


*Many doctors classify these drugs as effective but with possible adverse side effects for the elderly.
 
Source: Journal of the American Medical Association
Table: "Wrong Prescription for the Elderly"

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July 30, 1994, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

The Failed House Health Bill

SECTION: Section 1;  Page 18;  Column 1;  Editorial Desk 

LENGTH: 521 words

The health-care bill that the Democratic leadership will take to the full House for debate early next month would do more harm than good. Though it starts off correctly -- achieving universal coverage by requiring employers to pay for most of the cost of insuring their workers -- it proposes insurance "reforms" that would bury the most innovative, cost-effective plans that many Americans routinely choose today.
The bill would be a victory for highly paid physicians and would reward those in Congress who want to control the huge health-care industry. But it would be a defeat for patients who expect high-quality care at a reasonable price. 
 The leadership bill, announced yesterday, would create Medicare C, a public, fee-for-service plan, to enroll the poor and otherwise uninsured. That might sound like a sensible way to provide fail-safe insurance to relatively few families because it would build upon Medicare, the existing plan for the elderly. But Medicare C, unlike the program limited to the elderly, threatens to trigger an inevitable roll toward government-run medicine for most Americans.
The Government cannot supervise treatment provided under Medicare. The only way it can control costs is to clamp down on prices it pays providers. Medicare pays doctors and hospitals less than their costs; that forces providers to make up the loss by jacking up prices to private patients. This "cost shift" is already widespread. But the leadership bill would add to Medicare the poor, who are now covered by Medicaid, as well as the unemployed and other uninsured people; that would bring 50 percent of the population under Medicare, according to Congressional staff estimates. The cost shift to the remaining patients would become devastating. Fees to private patients would skyrocket, driving premiums up and private insurers out of business through no fault of their own.
Other detrimental features of the leadership bill are provisions that render illegal the approach used by most existing managed-care plans -- which charge enrollees a fixed annual fee regardless of medical need in exchange for limiting care to a fixed panel of doctors and hospitals. The leadership bill would, for example, require most plans to hire any qualified doctors who apply -- thereby eliminating the plans' ability to control the quality and cost of treatment by closely supervising a small panel of doctors. Most managed-care plans would have to hire specialists, like chiropractors, that they believe are unnecessary.
But the special interests were too powerful for the leadership to resist. The effect of the bill's anti-managed-care provisions is to lock in fee-for-service medicine that lies at the core of the existing system's penchant for wasteful and often inappropriate care.
The leadership did not have the gall to forthrightly propose a government takeover. But it has proposed a bill that would achieve the same end through stealth. When it comes to the floor, the bill's provision for universal coverage through an employer mandate is worth fighting for. Much of the rest deserves to be scrapped.

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July 31, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

The Nation;
New Role for Presidents Cuts 2 Ways on Health

BYLINE: By ADAM CLYMER 

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

LENGTH: 1185 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON

WHEN Congress considered Medicare in 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson had made the bill a major priority, and he was continually involved in twisting arms to get it passed. Yet his name rarely appeared in newspaper or television accounts of its progress on Capitol Hill.
 Neither the bill's occasional setbacks nor ultimate passage were generally thought of as good or bad for Johnson. There was fierce debate, to be sure, but it was about whether a government-paid system of medical care for the elderly was a good idea.
 
 President Clinton, though far less involved in the day-to-day details and ready from the start to accept anything that could plausibly be called "universal coverage," is a constant visual presence in the debate over national health insurance. And that's the problem.
Of all the enemies health care legislation must confront, one of the least obvious but most powerful is a change in capital culture, one that puts the President in the center ring for every act. That position draws attention, but also makes it impossible to shrug off attention. It can bring support, but it inevitably solidifies and energizes opposition.
 This phenomenon did not start with Mr. Clinton. It probably started with Ronald Reagan, who personalized issues with great success. From the start, Mr. Clinton developed his plan in Democrats-only secrecy, and he has made it clear he was staking his Presidency on this issue. And the President, Hillary Rodham Clinton and a White House staff, many of whom have never held a non-political job, have run their campaign for legislation like a bitter primary. They have been looking for enemies, finding some, making more.
 One could argue that the continued focus on the President throughout the legislative process reflects a nationally diminished understanding of the Constitution, whose First article begins, "All legislative powers shall be vested in a Congress."
 Over the two centuries since those words were written, the Presidency has come to share those powers, but chiefly in the sense of setting an agenda and suggesting solutions. Charles D. Ferris, a Washington attorney who served for years as a top Senate aide, recalled last week that even with a President as powerful as Lyndon Johnson, the understanding in Washington was that "it is the Congress that has the power to decide."
 
Why an Erosion?
 A major reason that understanding has eroded, in the view of two of the medium's foremost academic students, is television, with newspapers not far behind.
 Thomas E. Patterson, professor of political science at Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Citizenship, faults television for personalizing everything, covering the Presidency because it is easier to explain than Congress. "Once you start personalizing these things, institutional roles go into a secondary category," he said. "Most of the time, the Presidency is talked about alone. When Congress is talked about, in most cases it is Congress in terms of the Presidency."
 He said all this reflects a change since the Sixties: "I think there was a better understanding at that time of how this constitutional system was supposed to operate."
 Kathleen Hall Jamieson, the dean of the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School of Communications, said that the change has come about because the "natural structure of television is to take two things and set them against each other." In this setting, she said, "Compromise is considered a weakness."
 In her study of this year's news coverage, she said, perhaps two-fifths of all reports focus on "what will this Congressional action do to Bill Clinton's ability to get re-elected." That, she observed, "is not very helpful information to the American people whose health care is ultimately going to be affected."
 As one veteran network correspondent put it last week, "It's what we do worst: covering something for its effect on Clinton rather than its effect on people."
 But Washington is not merely captive of simplistic reportage; it encourages it. These days, within the White House and without, "It's all viewed in campaign terms," said Thomas E. Mann, director of governmental studies at the Brookings Institution. "The Clintons carried the campaign mode to governance."
 They brought dedication and understanding of the health industry care to the issue. Without that investment, the legislation would be dead. But they brought the combative techniques of the campaign "War Room," too, and without them, the bill might be more robust. They began by designating the insurance industry as the enemy. The industry fought back, with television ads that helped discredit not merely the parts of the Clinton plan it disliked, but the whole thing.
 From time to time, the Administration has announced initiatives by the Democratic National Committee. Not only have they been failures, they have legitimized Republican counterattacks. Those have been at least as mean-spirited, and often as clumsy, as Democratic partisanship, as when Senator Bob Dole of Kansas, the Republican leader, said Thursday: "If you want to see a health care crisis, go to Sarajevo, or go somewhere in Rwanda. We don"t have a crisis in America."
 In an election campaign, especially in a primary, you try to destroy your opponents. But dealing with Congress involves a different kind of politics in which today's enemy is tomorrow's ally. A major argument the Clintons have used is that the public should get insurance as good as Congress gets. It's a very catchy argument, especially to a public sure that Congress thrives on perks. But it angers members of Congress.
 Charles O. Jones, president of the American Political Science Association, says that the media tendency to look at everything in Presidential terms is "amplified by a President who so personalizes the Presidency." He said Bill and Hillary Clinton "run it as a campaign, me against them."
 
Different Bureaucrats
 So it is hardly surprising that the dialogue is not over how cost-efficient a tax on expensive insurance policies might be, or even whether substituting government bureaucrats for insurance bureaucrats would be as bad as some people say. Instead, Republicans and Democrats in the House crabbed at each other Friday over the Democratic leadership's new bill. "Different from Clinton," claimed the Democrats. "Is not," said the Republicans. "Is too. . ." Sometimes it seems the debate is about how health care legislation will affect elections.
 Joseph A. Califano Jr., who worked on health care in two administrations, said he found the focus on the President "remarkable because Clinton is really irrelevant to the details of this bill" because he was elected with only 43 percent of the vote and brought no swarm of supporters with him to Congress. Mr. Califano is troubled by the process: "Never has our health care system been in such peril. You have two people, Clinton and Dole, their Presidential ambitions are tied to this bill. You have a feeding frenzy among the special interests. There is a lot of room for mischief."

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July 31, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

THE HEALTH CARE DEBATE: THE ADVOCATES;
Many Health Groups Fight House Democratic Leaders' Plan

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

SECTION: Section 1;  Page 24;  Column 3;  National Desk 

LENGTH: 1127 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, July 30

A broad assortment of doctors, hospitals, private insurance companies, health maintenance organizations, state officials and big employers said today that they disliked a central element of the House Democratic leaders' health plan, which would more than double the size of the Federal Medicare program.
Under the proposal put forward Friday by the House majority leader, Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri, the Government would create a new Part C of Medicare, open to people who are unemployed, receive welfare, work part time or hold jobs at companies with fewer than 100 employees. The new program is one of the Democratic leaders' main tools to guarantee health insurance for all Americans. 
 Mr. Gephardt's proposal differs from President Clinton's plan because it calls for a new Federal program. The President's plan calls for private health insurance.
Democratic aides to the House Ways and Means Committee estimated that 40 million to 60 million people would join the new program. Experts at the Congressional Budget Office said enrollment might exceed 90 million in the year 2004. Medicare already finances health care for 32 million elderly people and 4 million who are disabled.
 
A Concern of Businesses
 The new Part C of Medicare is intended to solve one type of concern created by requiring all employers to buy health insurance for their employees. But in trying to minimize business opposition to the bill, House Democratic leaders have left some supporters of universal coverage deeply unhappy.
The National Governors' Association, the American Medical Association, the American Hospital Association, the Health Insurance Association of America, the Group Health Association of America and the Association of Private Pension and Welfare Plans, a trade group that represents many Fortune 500 companies, criticized Mr. Gephardt's proposal to expand Medicare.
The proposal for a new Part C of Medicare confronts these groups with difficult questions of tactics and strategy. On the one hand, the groups share Mr. Gephardt's desire to expand coverage and control health costs, and they will fight to achieve these goals. But their deep reservations about the new Medicare program may cool their enthusiasm at a time when the White House is counting on them to lobby aggressively for the overall bill.
 
Option for Some Employees
 Mr. Gephardt's bill offers another option to people who work for companies with fewer than 100 employees: they can sign up for a private health plan offered through the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program. The conservative Heritage Foundation described that program as "a showcase of consumer choice," and Senator Bob Dole of Kansas, the Republican leader, said today that he liked this feature of the Gephardt bill.
But Mr. Dole scorned the proposal for a new Part C of Medicare, saying it would enlarge the Government's role to an unacceptable degree. Nearly half of all Americans would be enrolled in some type of Medicare program, he said.
Mr. Gephardt's hopes for success depend on moderate Democrats. Representative Jim Cooper, a conservative Tennessee Democrat, said: "In many respects, the leadership bill is more liberal than the Clinton bill. Part C of Medicare would lead to a single-payer system for about half the U.S. population." In a single-payer system, the Government raises taxes to pay medical bills, and there is little role for private insurers.
 
Hospitals' Opposition
 Richard J. Pollack, executive vice president of the American Hospital Association, said there were several arguments against Part C of Medicare. First, he said, hospitals are rushing to link up with doctors, clinics and other hospitals in health care networks that can provide a full range of services to customers.
"The new Medicare program moves in the opposite direction," he said. "It perpetuates the fragmented fee-for-service system" in which hospitals are paid separately for each admission and patients can go to virtually any doctor.
Moreover, Mr. Pollack said, hospitals have had 12 years' experience with a process in which Congress sets Medicare payment rates, and they do not like it.
"Medicare rates are set in the middle of the night behind closed doors, based on what's necessary to meet deficit-reduction targets that have nothing to do with health policy," he said.
 
Same Method of Payment
 Under the new Medicare program proposed by Mr. Gephardt, doctors and hospitals would be paid in the same way they are now paid under the regular Medicare program.
Dr. James S. Todd, executive vice president of the American Medical Association, said the new Medicare program "would perpetuate cost-shifting to the private sector" because Medicare pays less than most private insurance plans.
If the new Medicare program was limited to companies with fewer than 20 employees, he said, "it would be more palatable, though not necessarily acceptable."
Supporters of the Medicare C plan say it is crucial to the political and practical success of the bill.
 
No Haggling With Insurers
 It does give small employers a relatively easy way to get insurance for their workers; they will not have to haggle with private insurers. And it gives people a way to pool their purchasing power without forcing them to join the purchasing cooperatives, or alliances, proposed by President Clinton.
The main argument for Part C of Medicare is that it is simple to administer and easy to understand because it is modeled on Medicare, which has become immensely popular with beneficiaries since it was created in 1965. "Medicare is simple: no new rules, no new bureaucracy," said Representative Pete Stark, Democrat of California, the chief architect of Part C.
But Mary Nell Lehnhard, senior vice president of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, criticized Part C of Medicare as "a huge expansion of a Government program." It "fragments the market and picks people out of the big insurance pools we are trying to build," she said.
 
'Insurer of Last Resort'
 Mr. Gephardt and Mr. Stark evidently believe that "the Government needs to establish an insurer of last resort, a safety net available to small employers," said Ms. Lehnhard. But, she said, that view was wrong because the health care legislation moving through Congress would require insurers to provide coverage to all applicants at standard rates, regardless of any medical problems they might have.
When the Federal Government imposes such requirements, she said, "every health insurance company, every managed care company will be an insurer of last resort."
The National Governors' Association criticized the Gephardt plan on the grounds that it would limit states' flexibility to deal with health care costs.

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July 31, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

On Sunday;
First Banana: A Welcome To a New Land

BYLINE: By FRANCIS X. CLINES 

SECTION: Section 1;  Page 33;  Column 1;  Metropolitan Desk;  Second Front

LENGTH: 771 words

FOR some reason, when the tired, the poor and the wretched look back after an immigrant's lifetime in America, they often linger on the long-ago memory of seeing and eating their first banana.
The shipboard misery of migration is always detailed to interviewers, of course, and the glowing greenness of the Statue of Liberty's welcome is never forgotten. But, too, a reliably recurring episode in many sagas remains "my first banana": How it came to be wondered at and finally possessed, then puzzled over until shy observance of veteran Americans revealed the need to peel it before that first taste of sweet substance set memory's measure of the New World's exotica. 
 "The banana seems to become a metaphor for what was new and how they approached it," says Janet Levine, an oral historian on Ellis Island, the fabled place where the immigration heyday peaked 70 years ago. She is busy searching out those innocents who were bedazzled by bananas and more back then. She records their best hour's worth of remembrances as they near the end of earthly migration.
"Even today, I can eat 10 or 12 bananas because it's nothing to me," says one old man after happening on the memory with Ms. Levine. She scrupulously never asks leading questions about bananas but cherishes their frequent surfacing from the past, gleaming naive-yellow as a daub from Grandma Moses' scenes from memory. The man recalls the muscular uncles who preceded him to America dandling him with delight after he cleared Ellis Island and suddenly producing an entire stalk of the curved unknown.
"Eat them, son! They're the American fig," he was instructed, and the uncles roared with laughter when he took one unpeeled toward his lips. "Take off the skin." The uncles were measuring their own sophistication in the new land, maybe envying the boy's innocence. "Better eat all of them by tomorrow," one wise-guy uncle instructed the lad, whose stomach took that and much more across the decades.
Ms. Levine, gifted at questioning and listening, has heard so much of so many lives -- the island's collection is 1,200 interviews and counting -- that she is unsurprised by tales of families' having unraveled as much as prospered here, or even by a rare vivid recollection of homicide. An old woman reaches back into her girlhood and tells of sisters suffocated by her mother in the old country because male offspring were preferred. "How can a mother be so mean?" the aged daughter asks down the ages as her voice joins the tape archive.
Families still crowd wonderingly and line up on Ellis Island, enacting parody before this national monument's cornucopia of cafeteria snack foods -- Greek salads, Italian pizzas, American hot dogs and other global manna. No banana splits in sight, a missed bet as humanity feeds from past into present.
Upstairs, Ms. Levine prepares a field trip to the mainland, a scattering of fading old-timers she's tracked to city apartments and Long Island nursing homes. She estimates a 50-50 chance of taping something strong and crisp. "I've got a stowaway from Italy," she says, looking forward to his looking back.
Ms. Levine was a prison psychologist who became fascinated with the creative possibilities of interviewing and switched careers to oral history. As much as content, she savors the sounds of memory, the feast of terseness, for example, offered by Scandinavian immigrants in Maine. Her New World dream is to search back in the old countries and find untold stories that have no premium in American history, the failures after Ellis Island, "those who came, saw and left without being successful in their own eyes."
She works with Paul Sigrist in amassing the collection, which was started 20 years ago by Margo Nash, a thoughtful park ranger at the Statue of Liberty who found visitors sparked to recollection. There's a downside: "Sometimes I feel like I'm taking their stories, using them, and it's not a good feeling," Ms. Levine admits.
But she is rounding off the lives of old people who recount bitter prejudice as their grounding on the island and beyond. "Now they're being esteemed," she agrees in recording them for time beyond them.
Whatever the travails of listening, Janet Levine always has her banana tape to pop into play as a break from migrant memories. Forty-five minutes of pure recollections of first banana encounters. Post-steerage magic realism spinning waywardly into history. An old woman recalling the girl she was venturing forward in this strange place:
"Ma, can I have a nickel?"
"What for?"
"I want to buy that long thing over there."
"What is it?"
"I dunno."

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August 1, 1994, Monday, Late Edition - Final

Mitchell Urges Action on Health Now

BYLINE: By ADAM CLYMER,   Special to The New York Times 

SECTION: Section A;  Page 12;  Column 4;  National Desk 

LENGTH: 1097 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, July 31

Seeking to rally organizations behind his unfinished national health insurance bill, Senator George J. Mitchell of Maine is warning them that "if this effort goes down, it's going to be a long time before any American President takes this issue on again."
Mr. Mitchell dismissed as insincere appeals by Senator Bob Dole of Kansas, the minority leader, and other Republicans for time to study the bill. "What they want is time to generate opposition to the bill, of course," he said in an interview today. Earlier he said on the CBS News program "Face the Nation" that the Senate vote on his bill would be "very close." 
 Mr. Mitchell, the majority leader, also revealed in the interview that the bill he would unveil on Tuesday would include prescription drug coverage for the elderly under Medicare and provisions for long-term home care, with precise details still being settled. Those provisions are essential for winning the support of organizations representing the elderly, and were backed by the Senate Labor Committee but not the Senate Finance Committee. The House leadership bill presented last week includes them.
At a meeting on Friday afternoon with representatives of about 150 unions, churches, civil rights groups, health organizations and the elderly, Mr. Mitchell said, "I think ultimately we will get a good bill." But he added, "It is not as strong as I would wish, and I know it is not as strong as you would wish."
 
Women and Children First
 Mr. Mitchell's bill would start by providing insurance to several million children and pregnant women who have no coverage. "I want to do that as soon as possible," he said today. That would probably involve making a new tax on tobacco effective as early as next year, while other taxes to pay for other parts of the program could be phased in later.
But his bill would not require employers to help pay for their workers' health insurance before 2002, and only then if the subsidies and insurance law changes have not brought the share of Americans with health insurance to 95 percent from the current 85 percent.
Even then his bill would require employers of 26 or more people to contribute only 50 percent of premiums. President Clinton, the Senate Labor Committee and the House leadership have all recommended an 80 percent employer payment, at various years between 1996 and 1999. The employer share, the delay in implementation until 2002 and the still-unspecified cost-containment provisions of his bill are sure to leave some potential supporters unhappy.
"I told them they should not let the perfect become the enemy of the very good," Mr. Mitchell said in the interview today. He also told the group, according to participants in the meeting, that if the Senate passed a strong bill, it could be improved in a House-Senate conference, but if the Senate passed nothing or a weak bill, the chance for substantial change would be lost.
 
'An Immense Task'
 In the interview, Mr. Mitchell said the chance would be lost well into the 21st century.
"There is one thing that seems very clear," he said. "This is such an immense task that this effort would not have gotten to first base without a total commitment from the President, Mrs. Clinton and the entire Administration. Even with that commitment, it is very difficult."
"Look at the terrible abuse that man and his wife are taking because they are trying to do something they believe is right and good for the country," he said. "If this effort goes down, it's going to be a long time before any American President takes this issue on the way this President has."
Several lobbyists at Friday's meeting were lavish in praising Mr. Mitchell's two-hour presentation and response to questions. Gerry Shea, director of the employee benefits department at the A.F.L.-C.I.O., said the Senator "was impressive in his generosity of time and eloquent in stating his case. Even if you are nervous, as we are, about parts of what he is putting together, it was a very good meeting."
 
'Deeply Respectful'
 John C. Rother, legislative director of the American Association of Retired Persons, said, "He did an amazing job of appealing to people on the basis of what he was going to propose was the only realistic way to achieve the goals that everybody shares." Mr. Rother said most people at the meeting "would prefer a faster timetable, a more certain route to universal coverage and the employer mandate. But the mood in the room at the end was certainly deeply respectful and sympathetic to Mitchell."
In turn, Mr. Mitchell made two requests of the lobbyists. He asked them to give his bill "the strongest possible support that you in good conscience can put forth," one participant said.
"The crescendo has already begun from the other side attacking what we are trying to do," Mr. Mitchell said, "and it will only get more intense. If we are to have any chance of succeeding, your crescendo must be just as loud." He told them that Democratic senators sometimes complained to him that there was more intensity among the opponents of universal health care than there was among its supporters.
He also told them, the participant reported, "I hope you will exert the influence you can upon senators and ask them to agree to oppose the Republican effort to strike the employer mandate."
Mr. Mitchell made it clear to the lobbyists that he did not have a majority yet for his proposal. But he predicted that when the time came to cast votes on the floor of the Senate, some uncommitted senators would "rise to the occasion," said Bob Chlopak, who runs the Health Care Reform Project, an umbrella group of health care providers, companies, unions and other organizations supporting universal health insurance coverage.
Someone asked if it was true that one reason he had turned down a nomination to the Supreme Court was to avoid conflicts with getting health care legislation passed. He told the group that was "the reason." He said he could not be dealing with senators to get a bill passed while seeking their votes for his confirmation, nor could he manage a bill after he had been confirmed but not sworn in.
He said his aides and officials at the Office of Management and Budget were using computers today to calculate how much various options in coverage and subsidies would cost and how much could be raised how soon by various taxes. He said he would make his final decisions on Monday, announce them on Tuesday and present the Senate with a bill in legislative language by Wednesday. The bill will be debated next week.

LOAD-DATE: August 1, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: The Senate majority leader, George J. Mitchell, yesterday predicted a close vote on his health plan. He spoke with reporters after a television interview. (Associated Press)
 
Chart: "DIARY: Health Care Developments"
 
THIS WEEKEND
The Senate majority leader, George J. Mitchell of Maine, said the bill he would present to Congress this week would include prescription drug coverage for the elderly under Medicare and provisions for long-term home care. Two more health care bus caravans set out for Washington.
 
THE WHITE HOUSE
The four bus travelers of the 1992 Presidential campaign -- President Clinton, his wife, Hillary, Vice President Al Gore, and his wife, Tipper -- went to Independence, Mo., on Saturday to meet the "Health Care Express" bus caravan. While Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Gore tore into the opposition, Mr. Clinton appealed to Americans to set aside fears and divisiveness. On Sunday, Mrs. Clinton went to Boston to address passengers on another caravan.
 
THE CONGRESS
Senator Mitchell plans to produce his bill on Tuesday. In the House, leaders will begin seeking votes on the bill that Representative Richard A. Gephardt, Democrat of Missouri, put forward on Friday. The bill is based largely on a measure passed by the House Ways and Means Committee; that measure, in turn, is much like the President Clinton's original proposal. Many who have followed the debate say progress in the House will depend in large part on how representatives view the prospects of Mr. Mitchell's bill. They will be unwilling to go out on a limb for a proposal that they fear has little chance of success in the Senate.
 
LOBBYING
Representatives of a wide assortment of doctors, hospitals, insurance companies and state officials expressed concern about a central component of the Gephardt bill that would expand Medicare as a way to cover the uninsured.

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August 4, 1994, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

HORSE RACING;
Throwback to the Days of Yore

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

SECTION: Section B;  Page 16;  Column 6;  Sports Desk 

LENGTH: 829 words

DATELINE: SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y., Aug. 3

The most popular race horse in Saratoga isn't Holy Bull or Tabasco Cat or Sky Beauty or any of those television stars. It's the 9-year-old gelding named Fourstardave, who gets a standing ovation every time he races, which is often. And in a sport increasingly marred by frailty on the track, he is a constant: He has won at least one race at Saratoga each year for the last eight.
In human terms, he would be an athlete in his 60's. But when he ran at Saratoga two weeks ago, he zipped a mile in 1:353/5 and won by five lengths. He got the customary standing ovation, even from rival owners and trainers, and he entered the winner's circle for the 21st time in a career of almost unthinkable range: 93 races, 21 victories, 18 times in second place, 15 times third. 
 At Saratoga, he has won 9 of 17 starts and run second in three others. Over all, he has run in the money 54 times and banked $1.6 million, and he is by no means finished.
 
A Few More Campaigns
 "With a little bit of luck," his trainer, Leo O'Brien, said today as he sat outside the great old horse's stall, "he'll go another two or three years.
"It'll be a sad day when we retire him. He loves racing. He comes off the farm every spring ready to run. He's never really had an injury. He never sulks. He always gives you a good race. You bet $2 on him, you get a run for your money."
Fourstardave even looks the part. He is tall and powerful at 16-plus hands, with a deep chestnut color and a white stripe down his face. He shows no signs of aging, even though he is the grand old man of Saratoga and, except for some senior citizens of steeplechase racing, probably the best old horse still winning anywhere in America.
In these days when race horses tend to be pampered, he is a throwback to the horses who made history.
The great John Henry raced when he was 9 years old in 1984, won six of nine races that year and even won $2.3 million in purses. He now is the star of the show at the Kentucky Horse Park in Lexington, where he resides with another titan, Forego, who was named Horse of the Year three times and who raced as an 8-year-old in 1978. And Kelso raced until he was 9 years old in 1966, and he was named Horse of the Year five straight years, the last time in 1964 when he was 7.
 
Focused on Racing
 All of them, like Fourstardave, were geldings who were castrated at an early age because they had limited breeding potential and considerable racing potential, and they needed to focus their spirits on the business of racing.
"Dave was gelded as a baby," O'Brien said. "He was tough. And he was by an unknown sire, Compliance, and the dam was Broadway Joan. He wasn't well bred. I don't think he's as good as John Henry. I saw John Henry run, and he was phenomenal. He got better as he got older.
"But you could see from the start that Dave was going to be a runner. He has a huge heart, bigger than that tree. He loves being a race horse. He has had a dozen jockeys, and he's run for them all: Mike Smith, Jose Santos, Jean Cruguet, Richie Migliore, Randy Romero, Angel Cordero. And Declan Murphy even rode him once in Hong Kong.
"He runs on grass and on dirt, and he's carried 126 pounds. He never jumped -- not yet, anyway."
 
Fourstars Galore
 Around Barn 61 at Saratoga, he is the superstar of a family of thoroughbreds that includes his two full brothers: Fourstars Allstar, still racing at 6, and Fourstar Brother, just now going to the races at 2. They are all owned by Richard M. Bomze, who publishes sports information sheets and magazines and who awards stars for the best information he supplies. In his lexicon, four stars is -- well, four stars.
O'Brien, who presides over this empire of racing brothers and their stablemates, is something of a legend himself. He is a rosy sprite of a man at 5 feet 2 inches who tended horses on a farm in County Dublin before migrating to the United States 30 years ago.
He now has 29 horses in his barn, which he runs with his 26-year-old son, Keith, and his wife, Joan, who keeps the books. Their 23-year-old daughter, Leona, works in the press-relations office and is engaged to the jockey John Velasquez.
 
Window on His Brother
 O'Brien was sitting in front of his barn in a green shirt the other morning sorting through his horse folders while Fourstardave frisked around inside his stall.
"He fell in love with the cool and the quiet of Saratoga when he came here at 2," O'Brien said. "But he's a stall walker, he almost has claustrophobia. So, we cut a window with a screen in the side of the wall in his stall, so he could see his brother Fourstars Allstar in the next stall. No kidding, we even put their feed tubs next to the window so they can eat side by side.
"We also give him a vacation every winter, and that's the key to his longevity at the races. Four or five months down in Florida, where he can run and roll around in the fields. After that, he comes off the farm ready to run."

LOAD-DATE: August 4, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Fourstardave has won at Saratoga for eight straight seasons. He got ready for a workout there yesterday. (Associated Press for The New York Times)

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August 7, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Ideas & Trends: Government Health Insurance;
An Idea Whose Time Has Come? It Came in 1965.

BYLINE: By ROBIN TONER 

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

LENGTH: 1107 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON

OF the many strange experiences in the health care struggle of 1994, several lawmakers have found this to be among the strangest: an angry encounter with an elderly constituent, railing against the idea of government involvement in the health care system, declaring categorically, as one woman did to Representative Louise Slaughter, "I don't want government messing in health insurance."
 The elderly are, of course, beneficiaries of a government health insurance program, one of the most popular domestic programs around, signed into law 29 years ago after a long debate on the very question of whether government should be involved in guaranteeing health care to a vast segment of the American people. Sometimes, a frustrated group of Democratic lawmakers say, it as if the debate over Medicare never happened; how else to explain why it is happening all over again?
 
 Many people do not even think of Medicare as a government program, according to the American Association of Retired Persons. Many people clearly do not see the argument over government involvement in health care -- or, for that matter, an array of other social needs, from unemployment to pensions -- as a settled issue, or even one with much of a history. And, judging from the polls, many people seem achingly vulnerable to slogans like "socialized medicine," "billion-dollar bureaucracies" and a "government takeover of the health care system." The past, as William Faulkner put it, is not dead. It isn't even past.
 The debate now raging on Capitol Hill is, to a striking extent, often simply variations on the themes set forth in the Medicare struggle of the 1960's, not to mention President Harry Truman's unsuccessful effort to win national health insurance in 1949 and the debate over Social Security in the 1930's. Shortly before the final passage of Medicare, the American Medical Association was warning in full-page newspaper ads of "long waiting lines at doctors' offices," of "mountains of red tape" and of "delays of weeks and months for needed surgery."
 The association concluded, with all the urgency and solemnity at its command: "Even at this late hour, we cannot -- in good faith to our patients -- stand silent as Congress prepares to start this nation on a dangerous adventure in government medicine, the end of which no one can see, and from which the patient is certain to be the ultimate sufferer."
 That was a trace more formal than the warnings of "Harry and Louise," the current television spokescouple for the Health Insurance Association of America, but the thoughts are much the same. "Long waits for health care and some services not even available," Louise fretted as she pored over a health care proposal in one commercial. Anxious Harry chimed in, "Government-controlled health care."
 Then as now, the role of government was central to the debate on Capitol Hill. In 1965, leading House Republicans also pushed for a "voluntary" approach to the problem, arguing that only those who wanted to participate in Medicare should be required to pay premiums. Democrats pushed for an all-inclusive system financed by a payroll tax. (In today's parlance, a mandate.) Conservatives in both parties warned that the country was poised at the crest of a slippery slope. "Let us not take this first step toward socialized medicine," Representative Joe R. Pool, Democrat of Texas, pleaded on the floor of the House.
 Last week, Senator Phil Gramm of Texas, surrounded by several of his Republican colleagues, stood on the lawn of the Capitol and declared that if the advocates of universal health care rallying in Washington that day "want socialized medicine," they could have it. But Mr. Gramm vowed to fight it tooth and nail. "I know the First Lady is passionate about this," Mr. Gramm declared. "I know it's the President's dream to take over and run the health care system. The future of America is at stake in this bill."
 This debate dismays many advocates of health care restructuring, who had hoped by this point to be engaged in a discussion of alternative means to an agreed-upon end, rather than a replay of an ideological gutfight. Bob Blendon, an expert on public opinion and health issues at Harvard, said that the fears and the rhetoric about "socialized medicine" are not nearly as vehement nor as widespread as they were in the past, particularly in the jittery post-war America of 1949.
 But the fears about government have a rich and fertile context of their own in the current debate: Since the passage of Medicare, Mr. Blendon noted, there has been a 30-year trend of diminishing faith in government.
 Conservatives are keenly aware of this. "The liberal-social democratic agenda ultimately won the battle from the end of World War II through the mid-60's, and Medicare was part of that victory," said William Kristol, a conservative theoretician who has closely tracked the health care issue. "I think you could make the case that the liberal-social democratic agenda has been in retreat for the last 15 or 20 years. Clinton is trying to reverse it, and he is running into great skepticism."
 Mr. Kristol sees the health struggle as an opportunity to define the Republican Party "as a party that resists further advances of the welfare state, and ultimately of relimiting government."
 The flip side to this, of course, is the Democrats' struggle to reclaim their image as the party that uses government to deliver popular new benefits to the middle class. Given both parties' strategic imperatives, it was almost inevitable that this would become an ideological debate about government.
 Beneath the partisan positioning, though, some analysts see an enduring contradiction in the American psyche. Lawmakers fight these battles again and again because they can never be resolved.
 "Americans have in their heads a contradiction," said Stan Greenberg, the White House pollster, "disliking government and strongly supporting individualism, at the same time they're very strong supporters of a whole range of things we do together as a people, from Social Security to unemployment compensation."
 Even Mr. Gramm seems to harbor this contradiction. After railing about the evils of government involvement in health care last week, he was asked how he would have voted on Medicare in 1965.
 "I don't have the foggiest idea because I wasn't part of the debate," the former economics professor replied. "I would surely have been concerned about the costs, which turned out to be off by a factor of 10. But not having been there, I don't know."
 And yes, Mr. Gramm's mother is covered by Medicare.

LOAD-DATE: August 7, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Chart: "They Were There," The last time that member of Congress had a sweeping piece of health-care legislation before them was 29 years ago, when the Medicare program won approval. Here are the 1965 votes of those legislators who were in Congress then and now face a new health-care vote.
 
Photos: Senator Kennedy in 1965; Senator Dole in 1970.

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August 7, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Attention City Shoppers! Kmart Bucks Retail Trend

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

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

LENGTH: 913 words

DATELINE: NEW HAVEN, Aug. 4

When the first ceremonial shovels of earth were tossed this week for the construction of a super-sized Kmart store here, the score was undeniable: City 1, Suburb 0.
Kmart, a company whose fortunes mirrored the rise of the suburbs, as it transmogrified from the downtown five-and-dimes of S. S. Kresge to its empire of bargain bins and blue-light specials, is inching back here toward its roots. It may not be a trend, but next spring, the company will close its 1970's vintage store in East Haven, a neighboring suburb, and build a 172,000-square foot new superstore in New Haven. The store will sell everything from fresh baked bread and Oreo cookies to motor oil and beach chairs and will be the largest Kmart in New England. 
 In a state and a society where cities so often take it in the teeth from suburban rivals, this is news. New Haven lost its last major department store, Macy's, last year.
 
Values in Urban Civilization
 "If you look at Kmart's decision to come here," Mayor John DeStefano of New Haven said, "it bespeaks why cities not only have been important, but why cities will continue to be important. Cities remain places of commerce -- the traffic that goes through the cities and the concentration of people living and working together is what creates commerce."
Kmart officials said their decision reflected no sudden rediscovery of urban shoppers. Indeed, the store -- while situated on a city bus route and within walking distance of a large senior-citizens housing complex -- is nearly two miles from downtown, and store planners say they hope to draw shoppers from throughout Connecticut who can pop on and off nearby Interstate 91.
They said that good locations are where you find them, and that selecting sites involved a case-by-case analysis, allowing little room for generalizations about demographic trends.
"It depends on the individual city," said David L. Leonard, Kmart's district manager for the Northeast. "Obviously, this city has moved in the direction where it's favorable for us to be back in this proximity. But there's many cities where we're not saturated outside the city yet -- we don't want to move back into that city because we can still move out of it."
 
Other Discounters' View
 Other retailing experts say that in many areas, the suburban march of the bargain center may have ebbed, as discounters like Bradlees, Caldor and Marshalls have saturated the market. And the 40-acre New Haven site, an undeveloped field used by generations of local teen-agers as a park, was vacant and just as close to the interstate highway 20 years ago when Kmart built its last wave of centers and ignored New Haven.
"The cities are basically an untapped market," said David J. Handera, the project manager for the New Haven super Kmart.
Yet despite the statement of Kmart officials that each store site is a case-by-case matter, industry analysts who track the company's decisions over time see a trend.
They said the New York metropolitan area, in particular, has been a kind of laboratory for the company as it began moving into more densely populated areas, beginning on Long Island in the early 1990's. A store opened in Fresh Meadows, Queens, in 1992, and another is under construction in the Bronx. Other big discounters, like Wal-Mart and Price Club, have opened urban stores as well.
Retailing has survived better in downtown New Haven than in some other Connecticut cities, if at the level of small stores and boutiques. Compared with Hartford, for instance, where big office buildings have overshadowed more and more empty stores on Main Street, culminating in the loss of that city's last big department store, G. Fox, New Haven seems positively vibrant with its outdoor cafes and bookstores.
Still, local business leaders say the new Kmart does not mark the return of urban department store shopping, which they concede may be gone from this city.
"You can't buy toilet paper in downtown New Haven," remarked Matthew Nemerson, president of the Greater New Haven Chamber of Commerce. "You can't buy oil in downtown New Haven. Where do you buy them now? You're buying them in Hamden, in East Haven, in North Haven."
 
Staying Competitive
 Behind the commercial competition, communities, too, are finding themselves in competition. In New Haven, where the local property tax rate is nearly three times as high as the two other towns where Kmart looked for a site, Orange and Wallingford, city officials said that the $300,000-a-year tax abatement given to the company was necessary to make the city competitive.
In return, Kmart agreed to a jobs quota: 35 percent of the roughly 650 employees at the new store must live in the city.
Across the border in East Haven, city officials are wondering about the 84,000 square foot building that will be left when the old Kmart closes next spring. But Kmart, they said, is only one of their anxieties. In Branford, the next town, Walmart has obtained approval to build a store, and some local residents and businesses are mounting a vocal protest to stop the company. With such winds blowing from every side, retailers and their real estate agents are being cautious.
"People are treading a little light just now," said Louis A. Zullo, East Haven's director of administration and management. When businesses look at empty sites, they're tentative. "They say, 'Are we filling a void, or is the market so tight we're not going to be successful here?' "

LOAD-DATE: August 7, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Shovels marking the site of a ground-breaking ceremony in New Haven last week, where Kmart will open a 172,000-square-foot store. (Carl David LaBianca for The New York Times)

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August 8, 1994, Monday, Late Edition - Final

THE HEALTH CARE DEBATE: THE SENATE;
Am Emphasis on Subsidies and Assuring Insurance Coverage in Mitchell's Health Plan

BYLINE: By ADAM CLYMER,   Special to The New York Times 

SECTION: Section A;  Page 13;  Column 1;  National Desk 

LENGTH: 1511 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Aug. 7

When the Congressional debate on national health insurance legislation formally begins on Tuesday, the Senate will be considering a bill that relies mostly on subsidies to cover more people and on enhanced competition to control costs.
The bill, proposed by the majority leader, George J. Mitchell of Maine, would provide the most new help to children and pregnant women. It would also initiate two programs that advocates for the elderly have sought for years: prescription drug coverage under Medicare and Federal support for home and community-based long-term care. 
 But the parts of his bill that would affect the most Americans, if something like it becomes law, are a variety of changes in insurance law. They are intended to make the 85 percent of Americans who already have health insurance more secure that they will not lose it or find its price suddenly doubling or tripling.
 
'Frustrations of the Debate'
 "It's one of the frustrations of the debate," Mr. Mitchell complained in an interview today, "that those who have insurance are unfortunately being persuaded by some that there is nothing in it for them."
The legislation that the House will consider, starting next week but probably finishing sooner than the Senate, has many of these same provisions.
But it also requires employers to pay 80 percent of the cost of their workers' insurance policies and puts the unemployed and workers for small companies into a new branch of Medicare, not into insurance purchasing cooperatives that would buy commercial policies as in the Senate plan. If each house passes something like the legislation proposed by its Democratic leaders, a House-Senate conference to reconcile their differences will "be a fairly tough conference," Speaker Thomas S. Foley, Democrat of Washington, said today on the CBS News program "Face the Nation."
But in the Senate, when debate actually focuses on the legislation itself -- and avoids the partisan heights and depths that will turn up on the evening news -- there will be little direct quarrel with any of Mr. Mitchell's objectives.
 
Criticisms of Bill
 There will be complaints, both genuine and political, that the bill tries to do too much and risks too much Government involvement in health care. At its extreme, the argument was made today as Senator Phil Gramm, Republican of Texas, contended on the same CBS News program that with Mr. Mitchell's bill "we are moving the Government into the position of actually running the health care system."
Specific changes in insurance law, in one form or another, are in most bills from either party. Indeed Republicans often suggest that Congress should be satisfied with them and leave the harder problems for later.
At higher or lower levels, insurance subsidies are a part of some Republican bills and all the Democratic measures. The case against them and against new benefits like prescription drug plans will basically be that the country cannot afford them, although the Mitchell bill has a budgetary fail-safe mechanism that should cut spending and with it additional coverage if costs seem about to outrun estimates.
The argument over cost control will probably be institutionally disingenuous. One senator after another will express disappointment that firmer measures were not included. But the insurance premium limits that President Clinton proposed fell to conservative opposition.
 
Tax on Some Policies
 For cost controls the Mitchell bill relies first on a modest tax on insurance policies whose rates go up much more quickly than the national average.
Then it hopes that by standardizing health insurance benefits it can promote competition among insurers that is based on price. And by requiring employers to offer workers different kinds of policies -- from traditional fee-for-service plans to membership in health maintainance organizations -- at different prices it will make consumers price-conscious.
This kind of price competition has already started curbing increases in the costs of health care as big employers and insurance companies insist on what are effectively volume discounts.
Mr. Mitchell said today that he agreed with the theory that "competition would serve to hold down the rate of increase in health costs," although no one could be sure how much.
And his bill establishes health insurance purchasing cooperatives for small employers, so they could get some of the bargaining power of big ones. It denies insurance companies the right to pick and choose to get healthy customers. That will save millions.
The first big argument is likely to be over the provision that, by a thread, has enabled both Senator Mitchell and President Clinton to describe this bill as one assuring universal coverage. It would require employers to pay 50 percent of cost of premiums for their workers and families, starting in 2002.
 
Intermediate Steps
 But it would take effect only if the earlier subsidy and insurance moves had not raised insurance coverage from its current 85 percent to 95 percent by the year 2000. Even then, the employer requirement would not be automatic. A commission would first recommend to Congress legislative steps to "cover the remaining uninsured population." Only if Congress did not enact such legislation would the 50 percent payment requirement take effect, and then only in states where 95 percent coverage had not been achieved.
The commission is also charged with recommending what to do to reach universal coverage if the percentage does reach 95 percent. But in that case, if Congress does not act, there is no fallback requirement.
But most of the increased coverage is expected to come from these four subsidy programs, which would take effect in 1997:
*Low-income families would receive a subsidy for the full cost of an average health insurance policy in their area if they have incomes of up to the Federal poverty level, or $14,764 for a family of four. The subsidy would be gradually phased out, stopping at twice the poverty level, or $29,528.
*Children under 19 and pregnant women would have full subsidies up to 185 percent of the poverty level, or $27,313, gradually phased out and stopping at three times the poverty level, or $44,292.
*Temporarily unemployed workers would be eligible for up to six months of subsidies if they have been insured for six months before losing their jobs by not having most of their unemployment benefits counted as income.
*Employers who expand their insurance coverage of their workers could be eligible for up to five years of subsidies so they would pay no more than 50 percent of the premium or 8 percent of a worker's wage, whichever is less.
The new benefits for the elderly would take effect later. But starting on Oct. 1, 1997, the Federal Government would help states pay for services that would enable the disabled and mentally impaired to live at home. By the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1, 2001, the total provided to the states would rise to $15.4 billion annually.
The Medicare prescription drug benefit would begin on Jan. 1, 1999. After paying a deductible of about $500, Medicare recipients would be reimbursed for 80 percent of their prescription costs. Once their payments in a year reached $1,275, Medicare would pay the entire bill. The bill calls for the exact figure of the deductible to be determined by the Secretary of Health and Human Services.
 
Changes in Insurance Law
 The insurance law changes would be the first go into force. As soon as the bill became law, insurance companies would be required to guarantee that policies could be renewed.
On Jan. 1, 1995, they would be required to issue policies to all applicants and barred from dropping customers or raising their rates if they get sick.
Starting Jan. 1, 1995, the bill would impose increasingly tight limits on the ability of insurers to exclude from coverage pre-existing conditions, like a trick knee or a cancer. At that time, conditions that had been diagnosed or treated in the previous six months could be excluded for another six months. On Jan. 1, 1997, only conditions diagnosed or treated in the previous three months could be excluded, and on Jan. 1, 2002, no pre-existing condition exclusions would be allowed.
Moreover, starting in 1995, someone who had been continuously insured under one policy for at least three months could not have a pre-existing condition excluded when signing up for a new insurance plan.
Many health insurance policies now carry lifetime limits on reimbursement, often at $1 million. Lifetime limits would be prohibited, effective Jan. 1, 1997.
Beginning six months after the law is enacted, a system of "community rating" would be established that would charge all individuals in a region the same premium, except that premiums for people 65 years old could be twice as much as those for 18-year-olds. Age differentials now sometimes reach four times as much for the elderly as for the young. These age differentials would be gradually phased out and eliminated in 2002.

LOAD-DATE: August 8, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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August 9, 1994, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

Card Game Helps Trump Old Age;
Five Times a Week, Six Ladies Find a Comforting Anchor

BYLINE: By ESTHER B. FEIN 

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

LENGTH: 1241 words

The table was loaded with money, piles of money, as the six players sat down for their regular Monday night game of poker. There were raises, calls, a flurry of furtive glances and finally, a show of hands.
"Full house," said Martha Diasparra. "I win." 
 "That's not a full house," said Jeanette Smith. "It's five of a kind."
"So I made a boo-boo," said Mrs. Diasparra. "Anyway, regardless."
"I'm going to tell you something," said Joan Cox. "If you were in a real game, you'd have lost your hand."
"Oh," said Rose Giordano, host of the evening's game. "Suddenly, we're playing a real game."
Theresa Saragaglia pushed the money across the table to Mrs. Diasparra.
"Geez," she said. "Imagine if they were all dollars instead of pennies."
And on it goes in Sunnyside, Queens, six old friends around a poker table, using cards and wit to huddle close and face the ghosts and pains of their old age.
They have been playing together more than 20 years, and for them, the game has become an anchor. Five times a week, it gives them a place to go, steady conversation, a reason to do their hair and put on lipstick, a comfort born of familiarity and time.
"We've got a routine, just like when we worked," said Teresa Karsch, a retired secretary from Woodside and, at 67, the youngest of the group.
They came together not in their youth, when dreams were lavish and felt within reach, but when they were older and all too aware of life's gambles and losses. Mrs. Cox had already buried her husband when they first sat down to play; so had Mrs. Smith. Now all the husbands are gone.
Their older years have brought them not only the aches and the problems, but the simple rewards of family and friendship -- and the occasional trip to Atlantic City.
 
'We're Not Hurting, Girls'
 While most attention paid to the elderly focuses on the frailest and most dependent, most people over 65 are like these six friends from Queens: neither their needs nor their means are extreme.
"We're not hurting, girls," said Mrs. Giordano, after winning with a royal flush. "And right now, I'm hurting the least of all of you."
Three times a week they play rummy at the Self Help Senior Center in Maspeth. They arrive about 10 in the morning and sit, always in the same order, around a table up on the stage.
Their real passion, however, is poker, and twice a week they play in someone's house -- after church on Sundays at Mrs. Cox's and Monday nights at Mrs. Diasparra's, although in the summer they usually move that game to Mrs. Saragaglia's because she has air-conditioning.
A cardsharp could lose his shirt trying to keep up with the confusing variations they play. There is "Pushy-Pushy," in which the dealer gives everyone two cards face down, then starts the third round dealing a card face up. If the first player doesn't want it, she pushes the card off to the next, who can push it off to the next one, and so on. Whoever pushed the card off has to accept the next card. Then the pushing starts anew.
The game is usually accompanied by squeals of "Don't give it to me," and "I'm not taking that" -- sounding charmingly like children examining food at a cafeteria.
Other varieties are "Follow the Queen," in which queens are wild and so is the next card that is dealt after a queen, and "Power," where the low card in each player's hand is wild for that player.
Hard to follow? Don't ask about "No Peeking" and "Vegas 2-4-6-8."
"My husband thought we were stupid," Mrs. Diasparra said. "He used to say, 'That's not poker, no matter what you call it.' "
All but one of the women are widows; Miss Karsch never married. They live alone in their own homes or with relatives. They all worked, some in offices, some in factories, and are now retired.
They do their own housekeeping, shopping and gardening. Only now, the women pause for breath more often and take a day to do chores that used to take a few hours.
"I was in my nightgown and duster today until 4 o'clock cleaning my house," Mrs. Saragaglia, 74, confessed as they gathered for a Monday night game. "Finally, I said to myself, 'Theresa, it's time to get dressed.' Imagine."
Dealing steadily so the game wouldn't lag, Mrs. Cox said, "One thing about all of us, we keep a nice house."
 
Poker and 'The Piano'
 As they deal they talk, about their families, their houses, their health, movies, what they ate for supper the night before. One day, Miss Karsch came in flustered after seeing the movie "The Piano" on pay-per-view television.
"Whoa, was it dirty!" she said.
"How dirty?" asked Mrs. Cox, who delights in her own bawdy sense of humor.
"Filthy," Miss Karsch said. "I couldn't believe it. That was the first time I ever saw a movie where they show the man fully nude in the front."
"It's getting to be too much," Mrs. Saragaglia said.
"I thought that movie was more like a concert," Mrs. Smith said.
"It's not," Miss Karsch said.
 
Breaks for Coffee or Pills
 As the game wears on, the women break for a cup of coffee, a trip to the bathroom, to take their pills.
All are on various medications for ailments like high blood pressure, angina, stress ulcer, bronchitis. "We all have a little something wrong with us," said Mrs. Diasparra, 81.
Several of the women have had frightening brushes with serious illness. Among them they have had breast cancer, an aneurysm, two hip operations and a heart attack. Mrs. Saragaglia had open-heart surgery twice and two operations on her carotid artery.
"The last time, we didn't think Theresa would make it," Mrs. Cox said. "But she wasn't good enough to go up there, and she wasn't bad enough to go down there, so they threw her back at us."
Mrs. Saragaglia said: "When I was feeling a little better, they all came by to play cards. It felt good."
 
Neither God Nor Men
 Sometimes as they play, they ponder their futures, talking as if they are exhorting God to give them an easy exit from Earth.
"I hope I get a big heart attack and go just poof," said Mrs. Cox, her eyes shifting from her cards upward.
Mrs. Giordano, who is 73, nodded in agreement. "I say, 'Dear God, just give me a heart attack, not a stroke," she said. "I just don't want to be dependent on anybody."
But it would be foolhardy for anyone to think that the game is just an aside to the conversation.
One morning at the senior center, Mrs. Cox nearly missed her turn in the rummy game when she paused to flirt with one of the few men there.
"Would you please play the game," Mrs. Diasparra said.
"There's a man here," said Mrs. Cox. "How can I play the game when there's a man here?"
"Play the game," Mrs. Diasparra repeated.
"Play the game," echoed Mrs. Smith, who is 86 and the oldest and most attentive player in the group.
 
Song, Recipe, Misdeal
 The other night, in the midst of a game of "Pushy-Pushy," Mrs. Cox went off on a nostalgic tangent about how she learned as a teen-ager to cook gefilte fish and sing Yiddish songs when she kept house for a Jewish family in Canada. But in between the recipe and the lyrics for "Ich Bin a Mama" she dealt a card to the wrong person. The offense did not go unnoticed.
"You talk too much," said Mrs. Diasparra. "And you don't know what you're doing."
Mrs. Cox threw her a sideways glance, sharp as a spade. "Why do you get so excited?" she said. "It's only a card game and it's only for pennies."
Then they clasped hands, laughed -- and anted up two cents apiece.

LOAD-DATE: August 9, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Six friends from Sunnyside, Queens, have been playing cards together for more than 20 years. Among those who play are, from left, Theresa Saragaglia, Jeanette Smith, Joan Cox, Martha Diasparra and Rose Giordano. (Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times)

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August 9, 1994, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

Educating Elderly On AIDS

BYLINE: Special to The New York Times 

SECTION: Section A;  Page 14;  Column 1;  National Desk 

LENGTH: 1283 words

DATELINE: MIAMI, Aug. 8

The frank sex talk was right out of a college orientation program, but the men and women who gathered here in a community center lunchroom several weeks ago to hear about AIDS were far beyond their freshman year.
Juaquin Abaroa, 76, earnestly wanted to know if he could get AIDS from oral sex. Eugenia Astiazarain, 80, coyly asked if she could take some condoms home with her. And when 78-year-old Natalia Arzuaga walked off with a dozen, 68-year-old Obdureo Garcia called after her, "Natalia, save one for me!" 
 The playfulness brought a ripple of nervous laughter. Sex, after all, was not a topic these 40 or so older adults were used to discussing so publicly, in this case at the Eugenio Maria de Hostos Neighborhood Service Center as part of a program financed by local governments. And to talk about AIDS as something that might affect them, well, that was something entirely new.
But they were eager to know more about the disease. It had struck some of their friends, and now they were learning that they, too, were not immune. As Lisa Agate, the AIDS coordinator for the Broward County Public Health Unit, put it, "A lot of people in this age category don't believe they are at risk."
 
Fraction of AIDS Cases
 Older AIDS patients have always been a tiny -- and little discussed -- fraction of the total AIDS population. Nationwide, of the 349,701 AIDS cases reported through 1993, 10,440, or 3 percent, were of people 60 or older, according to the Federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
But the number of cases among the elderly is rising at a faster rate than among other age groups, Federal officials say. Dr. William Adler, chief of clinical immunology at the National Institute on Aging in Maryland, a division of the National Institutes of Health, said that from 1990 to 1992 the number of new AIDS cases dropped 3 percent among those 30 and younger while increasing 17 percent among people 60 and older.
As a result, AIDS educators are making greater efforts to reach older people, particularly in South Florida, home to a large retirement population. There, a strong social service network is allowing health educators to establish several outreach programs quickly. From Palm Beach to the Florida Keys, advocates for AIDS patients have joined those who care for the elderly to hold seminars, train peer counselors, educate physicians and distribute condoms.
It couldn't have happened sooner, Dr. Adler said. "The educational programs seem to be working in the younger community," he said. "Maybe there needs to be better education in the older group."
 
Risk for the Widowed
 The elderly have been infected with H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS, mainly through blood transfusions and male homosexual sex, although in the last few years the number of cases attributed to transfusions has dwindled as the blood supply has become safer, Federal officials said.
While male homosexual sex is still a leading cause of AIDS among people 65 and older, accounting for about 36 percent of the new cases in 1992 among this group, the proportion of elderly getting H.I.V. through heterosexual sex has increased, and is slightly higher than that of the general population, according to C.D.C. statistics reported by Dr. Jonathan Ship, a former investigator for the National Institutes of Health who is director of the hospital dentistry program at the University of Michigan.
While just 2 percent of all AIDS cases in the United States can be attributed to heterosexual sex, that has been the mode of transmission in 9 percent of all AIDS cases reported among those 60 and older, Dr. Ship said. And he sees an upward trend in that category. In 1992 alone, he said, heterosexual sex accounted for at least 15 percent of the new AIDS cases among those 65 and older.
The risk among the heterosexual elderly often increases when people become widowed, said Ms. Agate, of Broward County. "A lot of them are seeking sexual experiences that are unconventional," she said. One sexual outlet that the elderly, particularly men, may turn to, she said, is prostitution, which because of AIDS is riskier than it was in their youth. "Back then, all they had to worry about was syphilis," she said.
In Florida, the number of recorded AIDS cases among the elderly has risen from 6 in 1984 to 1,341 through 1993, or nearly 4 percent of the state's cases, said Stephen Kindland, spokesman for the state's AIDS program.
Given those relatively low numbers, Mr. Kindland believes that special programs for the elderly may not be worth it. "We've only got so much money and we've got to set priorities," he said.
"Older people are at less risk," said Marcia Ory, chief of social science research at the National Institute on Aging, "but they are at some risk, especially those who engage in risky behaviors. Of those older people who are at risk, they are much less likely to have gotten the safe sex message."
 
Symptoms Can Be Confused
 In the Institute on Aging's $400 million budget for the 1994 fiscal year, $750,000 has gone for AIDS and aging, Ms. Ory said. Some of that money is used to educate doctors, who researchers say often confuse AIDS symptoms with signs of aging.
Doctors and AIDS advocates report that a common misdiagnosis is to say that a patient has Alzheimer's dementia when he actually has an AIDS-related illness. "It is a problem and it's growing because people are going to their doctors and they're not looking for symptoms," said Arlene Kochman, the executive director of Senior Action in a Gay Environment, a New York group.
In 1989, Ms. Kochman's group started an AIDS program for the elderly, an effort originally intended to provide services to older gay men who felt out of place at AIDS agencies geared toward younger men. Now, Ms. Kochman said, she is beginning to reach a heterosexual audience, advising programs in South Florida and receiving requests for assistance from groups in Nebraska, Wisconsin and Ontario.
Leonard Kooperman, a professor of public administration at Golden Gate University in San Francisco who has published studies on AIDS in the older population, said the most sexually active heterosexual elderly are found in Florida and Arizona retirement communities. "They don't like to use condoms," Professor Kooperman said. "It's probably the most difficult behavioral change in AIDS education."
The Century Village retirement complexes in Broward County recently sponsored a talk by Paul Withrow, the coordinator of public outreach for Center One, an AIDS service agency.
"It's unfortunate, but a good portion of the community thinks that the elderly are not at risk," Mr. Withrow said. "They believe that once you pass 65 years of age you are not sexually active."
Although older people are sexually active, many are uncomfortable speaking about sex at public meetings, said Susan Palomino, supervisor of AIDS prevention at Family Counseling Services of Greater Miami, a private agency that gets government financing.
"They're a little hesitant with the condoms," Ms. Palomino said. "They'll pick them up and say it's for their grandson."
Vincent Delgado, who organized the talk at the Eugenio Maria de Hostos center, in northwest Miami, said that getting the elderly to accept that they could be at risk of AIDS was only half his job as chairman of the AIDS and Aging Task Force for Dade and Monroe County, a South Florida nonprofit group financed by local and state governments.
"I'm having a lot of trouble getting funding for the task force because some foundations don't consider the elderly at risk," Mr. Delgado said. "They say, 'No matter what, they're going to die.'
"That's not right."

LOAD-DATE: August 9, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Vincent Delgado distributing condoms to elderly people at the Eugenio Maria de Hostos Neighborhood Service Center in Miami. Although older people make up a small percentage of the total number of AIDS patients, AIDS educators are trying to reach people who live in retirement communities. (Tom Salyer for The New York Times)

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August 10, 1994, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Personal Health;
Strength workouts can help keep aging at bay.

BYLINE: By Jane E. Brody 

SECTION: Section C;  Page 8;  Column 1;  National Desk;  Health Page

LENGTH: 1127 words

IN just 10 weeks of a strength-training program, 50 frail men and women in their 80's and 90's were able to increase their weight-lifting ability by 118 percent, their walking speed by 12 percent and their stair-climbing ability by 28 percent, according to a study published last month in The New England Journal of Medicine. This study and previous work by the same researchers at Tufts University shows that strength training can help the elderly be more active and remain more independent.
Impressive though these accomplishments are in stemming some of the costly and debilitating incapacities of old age, they pale in comparison with what strength training can do for younger people who want to maintain or improve physical prowess even as their biological clocks keep ticking toward decline. 
 Strength training is a fancy way of describing the process of building muscle power by lifting free weights or working out against resistance, by using equipment like Nautilus or Universal machines or by working against large elastic bands. While "aerobics" was the exercise catchword of the 1970's and 80's, strength training is the trend of the 1990's, hailed as a critically important complement to aerobics in a total fitness program. In 1990, the American College of Sports Medicine revised its exercise guidelines to recommend a more balanced fitness program that includes both aerobic workouts and strength training.
 
Variety of Benefits
 Before you start thinking "enough already -- I have no time for any more activities," consider these established benefits of strength training: improved performance in other sports, like tennis, golf, basketball and even swimming; greater endurance and stamina in both recreational activities and the chores of daily life, like carrying groceries, children or a suitcase; loss of body fat and gain of lean muscle tissue, resulting in a dramatic improvement in body composition; more energy and self-confidence; a greater sense of power, both physical and emotional, and well-being, and a reduced risk of heart disease, diabetes, osteoporosis, back problems and joint injuries. Strength training can help reduce total cholesterol levels and raise the level of the desirable HDL cholesterol, keep blood sugar in balance and build bone strength better, it is thought, than weight-bearing exercises like walking.
Probably most enticing of all, strength training can make it easier to shed unwanted pounds and lose the inches you need to slip into those slender jeans. By helping you build muscle tissue and lose body fat, strength training revs up your metabolic rate, so you burn more calories whatever you are doing, even when sitting and sleeping. More muscle and less fat also mean fewer inches and smaller sizes, because fat takes up more room than the same weight of muscle tissue. After age 45 or so, sedentary people -- and even many who do aerobic exercise -- rapidly lose muscle mass and, consequently, strength. For every pound of muscle lost, the resting metabolic rate drops by nearly 50 calories a day. The lost strength largely accounts for the difficulty many elderly people have in rising from chairs, climbing stairs and carrying groceries.
You may not have to add any minutes to your current exercise schedule to make room for strength training. The current recommendation to achieve balanced fitness calls for aerobic workouts four times a week with strength training on the remaining three days.
The beauty of strength training is that it can be done by almost anyone, no matter how old or feeble, in a wide variety of circumstances and at little or no added expense. To do most of the recommended exercises, you need nothing fancier than a few full cans from the supermarket or plastic bottles filled with water or sand. And while women who work out with weights or against resistance can gain strength and muscle tone at the same rate as men, they need not worry about developing bulging muscles unless they also dose themselves with an extra shot of testosterone.
 
A Balanced Workout
 The goal is to work different muscle groups to achieve overall fitness and balanced muscular strength. Muscular imbalance increases the risk of injury. For example, cycling builds the quadriceps at the expense of the hamstrings, running strengthens the hamstrings at the expense of the quads and neither does anything for the upper body. To correct imbalances with strength training, you should work on the muscle groups that are otherwise neglected.
You can use a set of free weights, like barbells, dumbbells or add-on ankle and wrist weights; cans of different weights; elasticized exercise bands, which come in different resistances; a home gym, or the calibrated resistance machines found in commercial gyms. Experts say you can get a full workout in just 30 minutes. The basic rule is to start light and gradually increase the stress on your muscles so they will grow stronger.
Through trial and error, pick a weight that you can lift 10 to 15 times but no more. Or pick the heaviest weight you can lift once and then drop back to one that is 60 to 80 percent of that maximum weight. In each workout, begin with the large muscle groups of the legs, chest, back and shoulders, then move to the smaller ones of the arms and abdominals. Figure on doing at least 8 to 10 different exercises each session.
Start each session with a 5- or 10-minute warm-up (perhaps jogging in place) and gentle stretching, then do two or three sets, each with 10 to 15 repetitions, for each type of exercise, resting a bit between sets of the same exercise. After a few weeks, increase the weights you are working with by 10 to 25 percent. You may have to drop down to 8 to 12 repetitions, which is fine. As your strength increases, continue to add more weight.
People with high blood pressure or heart disease should avoid working with heavy weights or resistance, and anyone with a chronic illness -- arthritis, diabetes, heart disease, etc. -- should consult a physician before starting a strength-training program.
Be sure to breathe evenly throughout the exercises, exhaling at the point of maximum exertion. Holding your breath can cause a dramatic rise in blood pressure. Lift the weight smoothly and release it gradually so your muscles, not the weight itself, do the work. If anything causes pain, stop doing it right away, but muscle soreness the day after a workout is to be expected, especially if you are a beginner or have just increased the weights you are using.
Muscles grow by being torn -- microscopically -- and rebuilt, so they need a day between strength-training workouts to recover. It is best to space out your workouts, interspersing them with aerobic activities.

LOAD-DATE: August 10, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Chart/Diagram: "Muscle by Muscle: A Complete Strength-Training Workout" illustrates exercises that strenghten various muscle groups.

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August 10, 1994, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

In America;
Punishing the Victims

BYLINE: By BOB HERBERT 

SECTION: Section A;  Page 19;  Column 5;  Editorial Desk 

LENGTH: 716 words

There is a raging epidemic of medical incompetence and malpractice in this country, but as the national debate over health care intensifies, the most powerful elements of the health-care industry are engaged in a cruel campaign to limit the legal rights of malpractice victims.
Lobbyists for doctors, hospitals, the insurance industry and others claim that they are fighting on behalf of malpractice "reform," but that is not so. True reform would be an effort to prevent malpractice. This so-called reform effort is geared solely toward preventing victims (or their survivors) from collecting the damages they deserve for the dreadful injuries they have suffered. 
 The carnage from malpractice is astonishing. If you add up all the deaths each year from crime, from motor vehicle accidents and from fires, they will not equal the estimated 80,000 people who die in hospitals annually from some form of medical negligence or malpractice. That is a conservative estimate and it applies only to hospital foul-ups. It does not take into account those who die at the hands of incompetent health providers in clinics, Medicaid mills, doctors' offices and elsewhere.
Scores of thousands of patients each year are left paralyzed, brain-damaged, blind or otherwise horribly disabled from malpractice. Most are never adequately compensated. Yet virtually all the health-care reform bills that are growing like weeds in Congress contain provisions that would hinder the ability of malpractice victims to recover damages. The exceptions are the single-payer bills in both the House and the Senate.
The health-care bill that emerged from the Senate Finance Committee was particularly egregious in its approach to malpractice victims. That bill would put a $250,000 cap on damages that could be awarded for pain and suffering; would limit attorneys' fees for plaintiffs (but not for defendants), and would have required that 75 percent of all punitive damages go to the state, not the plaintiff.
Those are insidious proposals and they are still making the rounds in Congress. Caps on pain and suffering hurt the people most vulnerable to low-quality care -- women, the elderly and low-income people. There is no cap on compensation for lost income, which is a significant measure of protection for wealthy victims of malpractice. But others, without the cushion of wealth, would be limited to the maximum of $250,000 for even a lifetime of suffering.
Mern Horan, an attorney with Public Citizen, a health advocacy group in Washington, said, "What they're saying is that if you don't make a large income we're not concerned about your disfigurement, your paralysis, your inability to bear children or the fact that you're in extreme pain and living on morphine for the rest of your life."
Medical industry representatives have complained for years that malpractice lawsuits have been a major factor in the surge of health-care costs. It is a bogus argument. Doctors, on average, spend 2.9 percent of their gross income on malpractice insurance, just a shade over the 2.3 percent they pay for "professional car upkeep."
Meanwhile, the insurance companies are cleaning up. Figures from 1991 showed that malpractice policies earned the companies $1.4 billion in profits.
Big-time operators throughout the medical industry are cleaning up. Top executives of the leading health-care companies often earn millions of dollars annually -- in some cases, tens of millions.
But medical malpractice victims are not cleaning up. Only 1 out of 16 victims gets anything in the way of compensation. Many refuse to sue because they don't want to fight the phalanx of doctors who are sure to come to the aid of the defendant. Some victims of malpractice don't even know they have the right to sue.
Of those who sue and are awarded damages, very few receive payments that are unjustified, according to a study published two years ago in the "Annals of Internal Medicine."
Nevertheless, under the umbrella of reform, the assault on malpractice victims continues.
As the consumer advocate Ralph Nader noted, "All these health-care bills have some sort of restriction on malpractice victims, and none of them have anything in the way of malpractice prevention, which tells you where the balance of power is."

LOAD-DATE: August 10, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

TYPE: Op-Ed

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August 11, 1994, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

THE HEALTH CARE DEBATE;
CLINTON DECLARES A MINIMUM DEMAND ON UNIVERSAL CARE

BYLINE: By ADAM CLYMER,   Special to The New York Times 

SECTION: Section A;  Page 1;  Column 6;  National Desk 

LENGTH: 1498 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Aug. 10

President Clinton said today that he could not accept health care legislation with less of a guarantee of universal coverage than Senator George J. Mitchell's bill, which would require employers to pay half the cost of their workers' health insurance if other measures did not reach 95 percent of Americans by 2000.
The majority leader's bill has been criticized by some liberals as moving too slowly toward universal coverage from the current level of 85 percent. But the President said in a telephone interview that he accepted the bill's premise that "if you can get 95 percent by the year 2000, that's evidence you can get to universal coverage without a mandate" requiring employers to pay. 
 But, he insisted, "you have to have some sort of backup mechanism in case that fails." Asked if there were any other approach that would substitute, he replied: "Everybody sat around here breaking their brains over what other alternatives were available. None emerged before he put his bill in. I can't imagine -- I just don't know what other alternatives there are."
He and Mr. Mitchell got a major assist today when the American Association of Retired Persons endorsed the Mitchell bill as well as the more-sweeping House leadership bill.
The influential organization, which had held back from formal endorsement of any proposal until today, said neither bill was perfect, but it was time to make "difficult choices." It cautioned, "If either bill is defeated, health care reform will be dead for years to come." [Page A20.]
The endorsement is likely to produce a torrent of phone calls and letters to Congress from the 33 million elderly people who are members of the group.
On Capitol Hill, the Senate debated the Mitchell bill for a second day, with Senator John H. Chafee, Republican of Rhode Island, striking a particularly conciliatory note. "I firmly believe that the Senate has the courage and the wisdom to put partisanship aside, to enact health care reform with broad support, for the good of our country," he declared. [Excerpts, page A21.]
Mr. Chafee, the leader of a bipartisan Senate group that has been struggling to find a compromise on health care, praised Mr. Mitchell's handling of the employer payment issue, but he identified several areas where he believed Mr. Mitchell should shift. When he finished speaking, Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, an important Mitchell ally, went over to his desk and they talked earnestly for about 15 minutes.
But other Republicans repeatedly criticized what they called an excessive government role in the Mitchell bill. And they complained that Mr. Mitchell had presented them today with an altered bill, just when they had finished reading the last 1,410-page version.
 
Reprieve for Residencies
 The most significant of the changes was one of considerable importance to New York City -- deletion of a provision that would have sharply reduced the number of residencies that hospitals were allowed to offer medical school graduates. A limit may be set later, but no number is established in the bill.
In the House, where debate is scheduled to begin next week, the effort to introduce a bipartisan substitute was coming to a rocky conclusion. Its sponsors were trying to devise a program with benefits sufficient to attract Democratic votes but without the need to pay for them with taxes, an idea that Republicans could not stomach.
On the Senate floor, Democrats lauded employer mandates in Hawaii, which established them 20 years ago. Hawaii requires employers to pay 50 percent of their workers' insurance costs; as a result, 96 percent of the state's residents have insurance and the state enjoys better health standards and lower insurance rates than the mainland, despite its generally higher living costs.
Senator Daniel K. Akaka, Democrat of Hawaii, disputed assertions that an employer mandate would cripple small business. His state, he said, is the most attractive in the nation for small companies.
Hawaii was on President Clinton's mind, too. In the telephone interview he described a meeting today with the state's governor, John Waihee 3d, and said he was surer than ever "that the closer you move to universal coverage, the more you achieve the other goals of the health care system, which are higher quality and lower cost."
 
Republican Bureaucracy
 Mr. Clinton said he intended to "keep hammering home" the story of Hawaii's success. With those arguments, he said, "we might be able to do some good with some of the wavering Democrats."
He also criticized Republicans who complained of bureaucracy in the Mitchell bill. He said those provisions were required by Mr. Mitchell's efforts to accommodate die-hard Republican opposition to employer mandates. If Republicans are willing to accept a system like Hawaii's right now, he said, "you can do that with no bureaucracy at all."
He added, "The only thing you have to do is say to every state that they will have to organize buyers' co-ops, and make it voluntary" for small businesses to purchase insurance through such an alliance.
"If you fight the mandates until the last dog dies," he continued, "it puts Mitchell in the position of doing what he did. You had to have some system by which you would try to induce small business to buy into a health insurance program."
Mr. Clinton did not say what he would do if presented with a bill that has a lesser commitment to universal care than Mr. Mitchell's proposal has. But there is no prospect that the Democratic leaders, if unable to pass a bill he would agree to, would go to the trouble of passing a lesser measure. Instead, they would blame the Republicans for deadlock.
 
Wavering Coalition
 Despite all the calls today on Capitol Hill for bipartisanship, the group of moderate House Republicans and conservative Democrats did not prove immune to the fundamental problem that has hampered all bipartisan efforts this year: the Democrats' desire to increase coverage balanced against the Republicans' unwillingness to raise taxes.
Potential Democratic supporters were briefed on the joint measure on Tuesday night but gave it a chilly reception, some participants said. They said the bill would raise coverage only from 85 to 88 percent.
Representative Fred Grandy, Republican of Iowa, disputed those numbers, saying the bill would produce 90 percent coverage. He said it would do so by subsidizing insurance purchases by Americans up to family incomes of $29,528, or twice the Federal poverty level for a family of four. It would be financed largely through savings in Medicare and Medicaid and would seek to keep prices down through insurance law changes intended to encourage competition.
Mr. Grandy acknowledged that this bill would "not do as much as fast" as the bill he originally proposed with Representative Jim Cooper, Democrat of Tennessee. Mr. Cooper said the architects of the new measure were still trying to find ways to sweeten the plan, with such devices as a tax credit for purchasing insurance covering long-term care.
 
Out of Patience
 In the Senate, the early arguments today centered on Republican objections to Mr. Mitchell's revising his bill overnight. "I'm telling you, I've reached the limit of my patience," said Senator Bob Packwood, Republican of Oregon.
When Mr. Mitchell took the floor to say that at least he had produced a bill some time ago, while the Republicans had promised one for weeks and delivered it only this week, Mr. Packwood rejoined that the Senate's legislative staff had given priority to drafting the Finance Committee's bill.
For Mr. Mitchell to accuse the Republicans of delay, Mr. Packwood said, "borders on a bit of hypocrisy."
Then Senator Pete V. Domenici, Republican of New Mexico, complained that Mr. Mitchell's bill was "such a piecemeal project, I believe we would be back in six months with major surgery," and that rather than reducing costs, it would increase them.
"As we move to improve the physical health of Americans, I believe it is imperative that we preserve our fiscal health," he said.
Senator Kennedy replied, "Bipartisanship requires coming at least halfway."
Senator Chafee spoke next, and for the rest of the afternoon the tone was more conciliatory. The senators are expected to continue making statements tomorrow.
Senator John D. Rockefeller 4th, the West Virginia Democrat who supports the Mitchell bill though it moves more slowly toward universal coverage than he had wished, pleaded for bipartisanship.
"If too many Senators treat this debate upcoming as only a chance to score points," he said, "their win is the American people's loss."
Senator Bob Kerrey, the Nebraska Democrat who opposes Mr. Mitchell's bill, also called for bipartisanship.
"The question before us is whether we have the capacity to bridge the differences between Democrats and Republicans and pass a bill that's urgently needed by the people, urgently needed," he said.

LOAD-DATE: August 11, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Republican leaders are assailing the Mitchell health care bill as having an excessive government role. Discussing strategy yesterday were, from right, Representative Robert H. Michel, the House minority leader, Senator Bob Dole, the Senate minority leader, and Senator Bob Packwood of Oregon. (Stephen Crowley/The New York Times) (pg. A20)

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August 11, 1994, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

THE HEALTH CARE DEBATE: THE ELDERLY;
2 Bills in Congress Backed By Association of Retirees

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

SECTION: Section A;  Page 20;  Column 5;  National Desk 

LENGTH: 902 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Aug. 10

The American Association of Retired Persons today urged its 33 million members to support the health care bills offered by the Democratic leaders of Congress, Representative Richard A. Gephardt and Senator George J. Mitchell, but did not express a preference for one bill over the other.
The association's action, coupled with its promise to lobby and advertise for the legislation, was a big boost for the Gephardt and Mitchell bills -- and for President Clinton, who has endorsed them. 
 Eugene I. Lehrmann, the president of the association, said, "Although neither bill is perfect, we conclude that these bills provide the foundation for comprehensive health care for all Americans."
Mr. Lehrmann, a retired supervisor of vocational education programs in Madison, Wis., said, "If either bill is defeated, health care reform will be dead for years to come."
 
Bills With Differences
 In February, the association spurned pleas by President Clinton to endorse his health care plan, although it did support many elements, including the goal of guaranteeing health insurance for all Americans.
The association is now backing two bills with major differences. The Gephardt bill, which aims to cover all Americans by 1999, relies primarily on a requirement that employers pay 80 percent of the cost of insuring their workers. Senator Mitchell says his bill would cover 95 percent of Americans by the year 2000, mainly by offering Federal subsidies to help people buy private insurance. If that goal was not met, employers would be required to pay half the cost of their workers' coverage.
Mr. Lehrmann said the choice for Americans was not between the two bills, but "between health care reform and the current health care system." Accordingly, he said: "We want to get on the bandwagon for both of these bills. Our members want health care reform, and they want it now, not only for themselves, but for their children as well."
The association's support for the Mitchell bill surprised some members of the organization and lobbyists for other groups with which it is often allied. Many labor unions and consumer groups have harshly criticized Mr. Mitchell's bill on the grounds that it would not necessarily achieve universal health insurance coverage and would not immediately require employers to contribute to the cost of insurance for their employees.
The A.F.L.-C.I.O., for example, strongly prefers the Gephardt bill. It said the Mitchell bill "would not solve the root causes of the current health care crisis" because it had "no effective cost controls."
 
2d Group Backs Gephardt Bill
 Another group that represents elderly people, the National Council of Senior Citizens, with five million members, also favors the Gephardt bill, saying it would control health costs much more effectively than Mr. Mitchell's proposal. Elderly people, already covered by Medicare, have for years sought Federal limits on what they pay for prescription drugs, doctors' services and hospital care.
The American Association of Retired Persons praised the bills for adding prescription drug coverage to Medicare and for starting a long-term care program for people with disabilities. Mr. Lehrmann said his organization could accept other elements of the two bills, which would cut projected spending in Medicare and triple Medicare premiums for retirees with six-figure incomes.
Mr. Rother said that 600,000 of the 32 million elderly Medicare beneficiaries would pay the higher premiums. The premium is now $41.10 a month.
John C. Rother, the chief lobbyist for the association, explained today's decision by saying, "We support the strongest bill in the Senate and the strongest bill in the House."
Peter L. Ashkenaz, a spokesman for A.A.R.P., said the group was expressing no preference between the Mitchell and Gephardt bills.
The association represents people 50 and older; half the members are under 65. Membership dues are $8 a year. The association offers health insurance, auto insurance, mutual funds and travel discounts to its members. The organization sways many votes in Congress, but has become much more cautious in its political advocacy in recent years.
 
'Have to Pragmatic'
 Leaders of the organization were burned by their experience with the Medicare Catastrophic Coverage Act of 1988, which expanded Medicare to cover the cost of catastrophic illness. The association lobbied for passage of that law. But after elderly people realized that they would pay the bill, through higher taxes and premiums, they rebelled against leaders of the organization and forced Congress to repeal the law a year later.
In explaining why the association expressed equal degrees of support for the Gephardt and Mitchell bills, even though they differ in many respects, Lena L. Archuleta of Denver, a member of the board of the organization, said, "We have to be pragmatic."
She said the association wanted to see bills passed by the House and the Senate, so lawmakers could strike a compromise in a conference committee of negotiators from the two chambers. "If we don't get these bills to a conference committee, we'll lose the battle," Ms. Archuleta said.
Medicare would initially remain a separate program under the Gephardt and Mitchell bills. But under both bills, states could eventually combine Medicare with private health insurance programs for people under 65 years old.

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August 11, 1994, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

World of Opportunities For Tirelessly Retired

BYLINE: By ENID NEMY 

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

LENGTH: 1625 words

ORMAN W. KETCHAM put on a wig, stuck two enormous "beaver" teeth between his lips, went out on stage and danced his version of the Charleston. His recent performance was as much a surprise to him as it was to the audience, many of whom summed it up with their favorite word -- awesome. Mr. Ketcham, 75, is a retired judge of the Juvenile and Superior courts of the District of Columbia.
The audience in the big rustic cabin on the scenic shore of Lake Vanare in upstate New York consisted of 82 critically ill and severely handicapped children between ages 6 and 16. They were spending eight days at the Double "H" Hole in the Woods Ranch, founded last year by Paul Newman, the actor, and Charles R. Wood, a philanthropist, in Lake Luzerne, N.Y. 
 Mr. Ketcham was one of 19 men and women, all over 60, taking part in a new program sponsored by Elderhostel, a Boston-based nonprofit organization started in 1975 to offer older adults modestly priced learning opportunities with accommodations in academic settings. Last year, some 290,000 men and women took part in the 12,000 programs held at 1,800 sites around the world, about 1,000 of them in the United States and Canada.
The educational aspect of Elderhostel was extended two years ago to include service programs, but this was the first season that working with sick and handicapped children in the 300-acre camp was among the choices. (A similar site, "The Hole in the Wall Gang Camp" in Ashford, Conn., was founded by Mr. Newman and Mr. Wood in 1988.) A large majority of the campers, who are looked after by a staff that includes 36 young counselors, chosen from some 800 applicants, have cancer or serious blood disorders; a few suffer from neuromuscular impairments.
The hostelers, each of whom paid $550 for the eight days' room and board and the privilege of working, were on call for everything from shampooing the youngsters, baking cookies and helping with the camp's horses, goats, ducks, rabbits, ferrets, donkey and snake to teaching swimming, working in the infirmary ("Paul's Body Shop") and serving as mentors.
"We had a lot of apprehension, but it's a natural mix," said Max J. Yurenda, the administrative director of the ranch. "The children are responding to them like one of the family." In fact, although some of the youngsters referred to the hostelers as "the elders," others called them "the grands" or "the grandmas" and "the grandpas."
"These people are neat, because you think older people act old and these don't," said Adam Jed, 12, of Pleasantville, N.Y., who contracted a blood disease when he was 4 and spends most of his time in a wheelchair. Adam, who plans to be a lawyer, added, "They aren't like grandfathers and mothers; they're like friends -- after a while they get tired or something but they all act pretty young."
Participants in other Elderhostel programs throughout New York State agreed that, in addition to the programs, their enjoyment stemmed from the caliber of discussion among fellow participants.
"You never see pictures of grandchildren at these things," said Kaye Tobin, 64, a real estate broker and grandmother of two from Huntington Beach, Calif. "No one is on a diet, no one talks about doctors and they don't talk about themselves. They talk about places and things." She had traveled by bus across the country with her sister to attend a new program at Fordham University in Manhattan.
The program offered dormitory accommodations and lectures in the arts and literature of New York City. The five Fordham programs this season, each for 50 hostelers, were sold out, as were the two "Hole in the Woods" programs.
Ms. Tobin has seven children, each of whom, she said, sends her $300 a year. The gifts have paid for past Elderhostel programs and will go to future ones.
The cost for almost all the five-and six-day programs generally ranges from $275 to $355 for accommodations, meals and lectures. In most cases, participants stay in double rooms on campuses, in conference centers and commercial centers, with meals taken in cafeterias and dining halls.
At Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y., Max E. Lourie, 85, a former mathematics teacher from Bayonne, N.J., was taking part in the type of program on which Elderhostel was built. He was living in a dormitory on the 1,200-acre campus, eating in the cafeteria and attending lectures on "The Thinking Person's Hamlet," "The Fate of the Family" and "Prints and Printmaking."
"I went to New York University and there's no campus there," he said, explaining his attraction to the traditional type of program. "I've always been jealous of friends who went away to school and had a campus, and I was determined to have one. This is my sixth Elderhostel, and I always choose programs on campuses -- they're so beautiful, you're inspired."
Mr. Lourie's wife was at home. "We have a philosophy that's lasted 50 years," he said. "She says, 'You row your boat and I'll row mine.' She can't see herself standing in line for food or using a communal bathroom."
Single men, or men who attend without their wives, are an exception at most Elderhostels. Women, single, widowed, divorced or with husbands at home, and married couples make up the bulk of the enrollment.
Elizabeth Belmonte, 64, was also alone at Hamilton, although she had attended several Elderhostels with her husband, whom she met while she was with the British foreign service. She had found, she said, that being on her own led to getting to know more new people than she might have as part of a couple.
In fact, part of the Elderhostel appeal is its comfort factor for single women. Almost all the women traveling alone commented on the ease of making friends and the feeling of inclusiveness. Many campus programs offer activities like visits to nearby places of interest, sports centers, movies and square dances. There is also mingling at meals.
Despite some initial trepidation among hostelers, the opportunity of spending a reasonably priced week in Manhattan ($355), combined with lectures on the city's attractions and history, accounted for the waiting lists for the Fordham programs.
"My fear factor of New York has gone down," said John Lees, 67, of Melbourne, Fla., a lawyer and former company tax officer. He and his wife, Mollie, who is 64 and a former biology teacher, "hit two Elderhostels a year," he said, adding, "They're congenial and affordable and on average the people are politically more liberal and more articulate than most."
Blanche Frenaye, 84, of Auburn, Calif., had a similar reaction to New York. "When I first came here, I didn't like the noise and the sirens," she said. "Now it's like a lullaby."
Mrs. Frenaye was a center of interest when word got out that she had met her husband at an Elderhostel in California nine years ago -- and that she is 13 years older than he.
"I had been married 51 years and was a widow and I thought 'it's all through,' " she said. "Then I met Bill." She had to gather her courage to tell him her age, she said, but his reaction was everything she could have hoped for. "Now, I'm invariably approached by single women who ask, 'How did you do it?' "
Mrs. Frenaye had attended several Elderhostels before her initial meeting with her husband, but it was his first. Both Californians, they were married two years later, after corresponding and getting together halfway between their two homes. In the interim, she went to more Elderhostel programs; he didn't.
"We didn't think it proper to go together if we weren't married," said Mr. Frenaye, a former student financial aid director who had been twice divorced. Since their marriage, they've attended five together.
For Mr. Ketcham, who lives in Chevy Chase, Md., a highlight of his time at the Hole in the Woods Ranch (smash stage performance aside) was hearing various children call, "Hey Orm, come sit with me." He added, "It's been worthwhile."
Marcella Rueda, 7, from New Rochelle, N.Y., was pleased at having braved, safely harnessed, a wire walk 40 feet above ground. That was only half the project -- she then had a long sloping slide back to the ground, into the arms of an elder. Three words summed up her thoughts on the hostelers. "I like them," she said.
When a friend telephoned Miriam Holt, 69, a retired nurse from Gibsonberg, Ohio, and suggested applying for the Hole in the Woods program, Mrs. Holt said she would think about it. "Then I read my devotional for that day and it said, 'Take your part in suffering.' " she said. "I thought, 'All right,' and I called my friend right back."
Frank and Eileen Entwisle of Cooperstown, N.Y., aren't new to service programs. Both 76, he a retired psychologist and she a retired dietician, they have had 30 previous Elderhostel programs, including working with a high school in Jamaica and teaching English in Poland. Still, they agreed it would take a lot to match their week at the ranch.
"After retiring, you're inclined to feel totally selfish," Mrs. Entwisle said. "This is a way to give back to the world. It's nice to feel useful."
There were nods of agreement when Judith Papier, 64, a former teacher in Beach Haven, N.J., said she was "getting more out of this than the children are."
Mary Vandergrift, 65, from Toledo, Ohio, summed up what her fellow participants expressed in a number of different ways.
"I'm very thankful I have five healthy grandchildren," she said.
On the final evening of their stay, the children made little boats out of twigs and vines, put a wish written on a piece of bark and a lighted candle in each boat and placed them in the lake to sail away into the unknown. The wishes could only be guessed.
Information is available from Elderhostel at (617) 426-8056.

LOAD-DATE: August 11, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photos: Florence Hein of Elmwood Park, N.J., helping Christopher Puglia from New Hampshire to swim at the Double "H" Hole in the Woods Ranch. (pg. C1); Nicole Maynard, left, a ranch counselor, and Janet Brown, an Elderhostel volunteer, assist Tiffany Clevenger. (pg. C8) (David M. Jennings for The New York Times)

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August 12, 1994, Friday, Late Edition - Final

THE HEALTH CARE DEBATE: THE CONSTITUENCIES;
Directors' Vote of Support Angers Members of Retiree Group

BYLINE: AP 

SECTION: Section A;  Page 18;  Column 1;  National Desk 

LENGTH: 629 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Aug. 11

Calls from angry senior citizens clogged switchboards at the American Association of Retired Persons today after the group's board of directors stated its support for Democratic health care bills.
Most of the callers were incensed that the president of the association, Eugene Lehrmann, without first surveying the group's 33 million members, announced support for bills sponsored by George J. Mitchell of Maine, the Senate majority leader, and Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri, the House majority leader. 
 "It's just being ramrodded down our throats," said Lucette Worrel, 69, of Bay St. Louis, Miss., a member of the association for about seven years. "I've never been as riled up."
Ms. Worrel, who said she would not renew her membership "because of this one thing," was among those who called the association's national office in Washington. She also complained to her Congressman, two members of Congress from Louisiana and the television station and newspaper in her town.
"This health care has really gotten me," she said. "I don't believe the people really want it. I don't want my insurance to change. Maybe that's selfish, but damn it, I feel I have earned the right to be selfish."
An association spokesman, Peter Ashkenaz, said hundreds of calls had come into the headquarters, virtually all from angry members. Mr. Ashkenaz could not give a firm number, but the group's phone line was busy for hours this afternoon.
 
Not Enough Phone Lines?
 "Even if 1 percent of our membership starts calling," he said, "I don't know any organization with enough phone lines to handle that."
Most of the callers said they believed that the A.A.R.P. had endorsed President Clinton's plan, or they simply did not agree with the Democratic bills, Mr. Ashkenaz said.
Stan Smith, 53, who lives near Raleigh, N.C., said: "I will cancel my membership as soon as I can get in touch with them. I can't believe they would give that kind of support to anything without polling the membership. I don't care what it's for; it's inappropriate."
But some members voiced support for the health care proposals.
"The budget hawks are going to cut Medicare," said Stan Robinson of Cheney, Wash. "We'll either have it cut intelligently with health care reform, or we'll have it cut indiscriminately, to our hurt."
The association's 21 directors had resisted President Clinton's personal overtures to endorse his plan earlier this year, despite considerable arm twisting, including a meeting at the White House. They instead praised his bill and spent $3 million on advertisements promoting universal coverage, cost containment, prescription drug coverage for seniors and help with long-term care.
 
Out of Touch or on Target?
 Mr. Ashkenaz said his board had simply recommended that A.A.R.P. members support the Mitchell and Gephardt bills. "The board went into it understanding, agreeing they cannot speak for all 33 million members," he said.
Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, said the association's board was "grossly out of touch" with its members.
But Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California, defended the A.A.R.P. and accused Senator McCain of "trying to scare senior citizens, much like Republicans did in the years when Medicare was brought into being."
"It's not surprising that the American Association of Retired Persons would endorse this," she said. "They get to keep Medicare exactly as they like it, and they get two new things" -- prescription drug coverage and help with long-term care.
Senator Boxer said her mother had died in a nursing home after having her savings wiped out paying the costs of her care. People should be calling Congress "in droves" demanding the new long-term-care benefits in the Mitchell bill, she said.

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August 12, 1994, Friday, Late Edition - Final

THE HEALTH CARE DEBATE: THE LEGISLATION;
Bipartisan Health Care Bill Gets Quick Industry Support

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

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

LENGTH: 992 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Aug. 11

The health care bill unveiled today by a bipartisan group in the House of Representatives would offer billions of dollars to low-income people to help them buy private health insurance, but it would not raise taxes or require employers to contribute to the cost of coverage for their employees.
The bill won immediate endorsements from the American Medical Association and a coalition of five big insurers: Aetna Life and Casualty, Cigna, the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, the Prudential Insurance Company of America and the Travelers Corporation. 
 White House officials denounced the bill, saying it came nowhere near President Clinton's goal of guaranteeing health insurance for all Americans.
Lorrie McHugh, a White House spokeswoman, said: "This bill does not help hard-working middle-class people, older Americans or small businesses. It does not control costs. It does not add prescription drug coverage to Medicare. It keeps insurance companies in the driver's seat."
But members of the bipartisan group said that at the moment their proposal could probably command more votes than the much more ambitious bill offered by the majority leader, Representative Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri.
The chief architects of the bipartisan bill are Representatives J. Roy Rowland of Georgia, Michael Bilirakis of Florida, Jim Cooper of Tennessee and Fred Grandy of Iowa. Mr. Rowland, a family doctor, and Mr. Cooper are Democrats. Mr. Bilirakis and Mr. Grandy are Republicans.
Mr. Rowland said the bill would cover at least 90 percent of Americans by 2004. At present, 85 percent of Americans have health insurance.
 
Subsidies for the Poor
 In the first five years, Mr. Grandy said, the bill would provide $117 billion in Federal subsidies to help people buy private insurance. In the second five years, subsidies would total $223 billion. The money would come mainly from savings in Medicaid and Medicare.
Low-income people who now receive doctors' services and hospital care through Medicaid would buy private health insurance with the Federal subsidies. Sponsors of the bill said the subsidies would cost less than the current Medicaid program, in part because some people now covered by Medicaid would be ineligible for subsidies. Those people have incomes well above the poverty level but also have high medical expenses.
The sponsors said they were confident that subsidized private health insurance plans would operate more efficiently than Medicaid.
The House Republican leader, Robert H. Michel of Illinois, introduced the final version of his health care bill on Wednesday. It resembles the bipartisan measure but would provide less money for subsidies to low-income people.
In general, subsidies would be available to people with incomes up to twice the Federal poverty level. Subsidies would also be available to children and pregnant women in families with incomes up to 2.4 times the poverty level. (A family of four was classified as poor if it had income of less than $14,764 last year.)
The bill would prohibit insurers from discriminating against people with medical problems. There would be a penalty for those who put off buying coverage until they were sick: insurers could refuse to cover such conditions for six months.
Employers would have to offer at least two health insurance plans to employees but would not have to pay any of the cost.
 
A Provision for Cooperatives
 Under the bill, state government agencies and private groups could establish insurance cooperatives to pool the purchasing power of consumers and small businesses. If farm bureaus, chambers of commerce and other private organizations did not form such purchasing pools by 2000, states would have to establish them. No one would be required to buy insurance through such purchasing pools.
Insurance policies would have to cover doctors' services and hospital care under the bipartisan bill. But insurers would have more discretion in setting benefits than they would under the Gephardt bill or the measure proposed by Senator George J. Mitchell of Maine, the Senate majority leader.
The bipartisan bill would give doctors some relief from malpractice lawsuits. It would set a limit of $250,000 on damages that could be awarded for the pain and suffering of a patient injured as a result of a doctor's negligence. Doctors have long sought such limits, but consumer groups have vehemently opposed them.
Some members of the American Medical Association said that, in supporting the bipartisan bill, the organization had retreated from its commitment to health insurance for all Americans. But James H. Stacey, a spokesman for the association, said the doctors were still committed to universal coverage, and Dr. P. John Seward, chairman of the organization, said the bipartisan bill "is a substantial first step toward that goal."
 
Stark's Objections
 Representative Cooper, who seized the spotlight last year with his uninhibited criticism of President Clinton's health plan, said that under the bipartisan bill, "everyone will have access to high-quality, affordable health care."
But Representative Pete Stark, the chairman of the Ways and Means Subcommittee on Health, said the bipartisan bill would leave 27 million people without insurance and would lead to sharp increases in premiums for people who already had coverage.
Mr. Stark, a California Democrat, said that to cope with the proposed cuts in the growth of Medicare and Medicaid, doctors and hospitals would have to raise their charges to privately insured patients. Insurance premiums would increase as a result of such cost-shifting, he said.
The bipartisan bill was drafted over the last month by a group of 10 lawmakers. The other Republicans were Porter J. Goss of Florida, Dennis Hastert of Illinois and Bill Thomas of California. The other Democrats were Dave McCurdy of Oklahoma, Mike Parker of Mississippi and Charles W. Stenholm of Texas.

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GRAPHIC: Chart: "DIARY: Health Care Developments"
 
YESTERDAY
As House Democratic leaders indicated that they may postpone debate on health legislation, a bipartisan group of House lawmakers offered a more modest proposal.
 
CONGRESS
House. The bipartisan bill seeks to expand coverage through insurance changes, subsidies for the poorest of Americans, an expansion of community health centers and tax changes. Representative Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri, the majority leader, delivered his bill as the pace of the health debate appeared to slow in the House. Speaker Thomas S. Foley told reporters that the chamber's schedule depended on the Congressional Budget Office's ability to review competing bills so that lawmakers have access to detailed information. Senate. A bipartisan group met to consider what an acceptable bill should contain. Leading Democrats hope that some changes in the bill put forward by the majority leader, Senator George J. Mitchell, could win their support.

WHITE HOUSE
The White House said that President Clinton expects the Senate to amend Mr. Mitchell's bill but that he could accept changes as long as the legislation included workable provisions to guarantee coverage.
 
LOBBYING
Members of the American Association of Retired Persons jammed its switchboard with irate calls after the group's board of directors endorsed Democratic health bills. Peter Ashkenaz, a spokesman for the organization, said many callers mistakenly believed that the group had endorsed President Clinton's original proposal. Hillary Rodham Clinton criticized the private health insurance industry, saying it is "spending a whole lot of premium dollars trying to prevent anything from happening" that would advance health care legislation. In a Hartford, Conn., radio interview, she lumped insurance companies with other powerful interests that she said were opposing change because the current system "puts money into their pockets."

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August 13, 1994, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

NEWS SUMMARY

SECTION: Section 1; Page 2; Column 5; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 785 words


International   2-4
 
AN ACCORD WITH NORTH KOREA
After a week of negotiations, the United States and North Korea signed an agreement that includes steps toward full diplomatic relations and a promise by the North to open its nuclear installations to inspections and seal off a nuclear fuel reprocessing laboratory.  1
EXODUS FROM RWANDA
Confirming the fears of relief officials, a second outpouring of refugees has begun from Rwanda to Zaire. They are Hutu running from their fear of Tutsi-led forces who will move into the Rwandan safe zone when the French leave.  1
Fears are voiced that Zaire will be the next Gaza Strip.  2
HARMONY ON MEXICO ECONOMY
The fault lines separating the candidates in the Mexican elections are many, but they are on the same firm ground as far as the economy is concerned.  3
A HARD LINE ON CUBA
News analysis: Washington is balancing Florida's interests, Fidel Castro's threats and its own political fears in taking a hard line against another Cuban boatlift.  3
A STEP TO THE RIGHT, THEN LEFT
President Yeltsin is taking a number of steps as he moves to the political center in an attempt to consolidate power and straighten out relations with the former Soviet lands.  4
 
A hard life grows harder for Haitians.  3
Cabinet member's comment creates more trouble for Italian leader.  4
Karbala Journal: Patching over the damage and the truth.  4
 
National   6-10
 
SIGNS OF COMPROMISE ON HEALTH
In a step toward compromise on health care, the Senate majority leader said issues raised by bipartisan moderates seemed negotiable.  1
OMINOUS SIGNS IN HOUSE
News analysis: The latest delay on health legislation announced by House Democratic leaders was particularly ominous.  9
ANGER AT A.A.R.P.
Two days after the retirees' association endorsed Democratic health plans, some members vented anger at a stand they said was not representative of older citizens.  9
CLINTON COUNTERATTACKS
The President accused House members who voted Thursday to shelve the crime bill of betraying violence-weary Americans.  1
CRIME BILL REVIVAL PLANNED
Democratic leaders promised to revive the crime bill that the House sidetracked on Thursday.  10
GIULIANI OFFERS PRESIDENT HELP
New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, a Republican, offered to help the Clinton Administration's efforts to revive the crime bill.  10
FUROR BUILDING OVER STARR
Criticism of the appointment of Kenneth Starr as Whitewater special prosecutor intensified into partisan furor over his political activities.  1
FEDERAL CHARGES IN CLINIC DEATHS
The man charged with murdering a doctor and his escort was also indicted under the new Federal law protecting access to abortion clinics.  6
FLAMMABLE SKIRTS ARE RECALLED
The Government announced the largest-ever clothing recall: 250,000 rayon skirts from India that burn faster than a newspaper.  6
CITADEL RULING IS REVERSED
A Federal appeals court temporarily prevented Shannon Faulkner from entering The Citadel cadet corps.  6
PHOTOS WITHHELD IN SIMPSON CASE
The judge in the O. J. Simpson case refused to let reporters see photos of the bodies of the victims.  6
SEX INQUIRY ABOUT CONGRESSMAN
Investigators are considering charging a first-term Chicago Congressman with sexual assault of a minor and obstruction of justice.  7
 
Fragrance-free services for aromatically sensitive churchgoers.  10
 
Sports   29-34
 
MEDIATION FOR BASEBALL STRIKE
On the first day of the baseball strike, Donald Fehr, the players' leader, and Richard Ravitch, the owners' chief labor executive, accepted an offer of assistance from the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service.  1
Baseball: Showalter shows up in vain.  29
Small businesses feel effect of strike.  29
Column: Vecsey on baseball strike.  29
Football: Giants' defenders are confused.  33
Golf: Price leads P.G.A.  29
Horse Racing: Lure takes the Baruch.  30
Tennis: Martina to miss U.S. Open.  29
Metro Digest 23
Business Digest 37
Arts/Entertainment 11-17, 49
The Bastille Opera dismisses its music director.  11
A Getty wants to save a statue from the Getty Museum.  11
Brian Friel's new play may turn things around.  17
Music: Mozart's "Abduction." 11
Television: "Parallel Lives." 49
Obituaries 28
Editorials/Op-Ed 20-21
Editorials
Back to basics on the crime bill.
The unyielding AIDS epidemic.
The right to walk a street.
Press freedom, Indonesian style.
Letters
Anna Quindlen: In her defense.
Russell Baker: Living it down.
Milton Friedman: Once again -- why Socialism won't work.
Peter H. Schuck: Share the refugees.
Bridge 14
Chronicle 22
Crossword 16

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LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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August 13, 1994, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

THE HEALTH CARE DEBATE: THE ELDERLY;
Some Voices In A.A.R.P. Criticizing Leadership

BYLINE: Special to The New York Times 

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

LENGTH: 1114 words

DATELINE: SUN CITY CENTER, Fla., Aug. 12

Phillip Hampson, the local shuffleboard champion and a member of the American Association of Retired Persons, peered intently at the disks spinning across the court and considered his view of the organization.
It was not a warm assessment, because two days earlier, Eugene I. Lehrmann, president of the A.A.R.P., announced support for the Democratic leadership's health care bills in the Senate and House. "The guy just comes out and says, 'We're for it,' out of a clear blue sky," said Mr. Hampson, a 68-year-old retired accountant from New Rochelle, N.Y. "He didn't poll anybody, or anything," he said. 
 Murmurs of agreement came from fellow players. "I'm not going to stay in it if they do this nonsense," said Doris Butterworth, 74. "They should not speak for 33 million people."
 
Anger Flourishing
 Anger at the A.A.R.P. flourished today in the balmy south Florida breeze in Sun City Center, a sprawling retirement community of 8,327 people about 30 miles south of Tampa.
On Thursday, the association's headquarters in Washington was flooded with angry telephone calls because of the organization's stand. Today, those sentiments were echoed here, where A.A.R.P. members are as common as golf carts.
The organization's chief lobbyist in Washington, John Rother, contended that the response would have been different in a less well-to-do area than Sun City Center, with its immaculate lawns and sweeping palm trees.
Frances FitzGerald, describing Sun City Center in 1983 in a book called "Cities on a Hill," depicted it as a heavily Republican, self-contained place of some affluence.
Mr. Rother said the phone calls on Thursday were "entirely unrepresentative," adding: "We have a very good picture of where our membership stands. It's behind health reform."
That assertion, Mr. Rother said, was based on "10 or 12" telephone polls conducted among members. Still, in the face of the torrent of calls on Thursday, the organization felt the need to take out newspaper advertisements today explaining its position.
"We did not want to be the victim of sound-bite television," Mr. Rother said. "We wanted to have a chance to explain directly to our members." He said calls to the organization on Friday had been more balanced regarding its stand.
 
More Affluence in Sun City
 A member of the group's national board of directors who lives in Florida, Dr. Beatrice Braun, agreed that the elderly in Sun City Center might be more affluent than most older people and therefore less receptive to a health care overhaul. But she said it "would really be very difficult to say" whether a majority of the organization's 2.3 million members in the state supported changes in the health care system. The group's total membership is 33 million.
Some Republicans in Congress have criticized the A.A.R.P.'s leadership as being out of touch with its membership. Today, the group's representative in the 13th Congressional District here, Walter Williamson, asserted, "I know hundreds and hundreds of people in Sun City Center who are absolutely in favor of health reform."
But out of more than two dozen A.A.R.P. members interviewed at random here, more than two-thirds were critical of the organization's position. Several said they thought members had not been adequately consulted.
"I object to this," said Bob Blackwood, 67, a retired Montgomery Ward employee. "They did this without surveying the members. My first reaction was, how the hell can they do that. They didn't ask any people any questions."
Many said they were happy with the health coverage they now have, typically a combination of Medicare and private insurance provided by the companies for which they worked.
"I think we have a good system," said Connie McCarthy, 72, a retired AT&T worker who was walking through the sprawling pink clubhouse, with its rooms for pinochle, bridge and other hobbies. "I think the people that don't have coverage do get what they need."
And most expressed confusion and apprehension as well as opposition to the health care bills before Congress. These feelings may mirror those of the elderly in Florida, where 26 percent of the population is over 60. "We see a large group of individual seniors who are confused about the variety of proposals," said June Noel, deputy secretary of the Florida Department of Elder Affairs. "That confusion is causing a lot of apprehension."
But when residents here were asked why they objected to the health bills, none pointed to specific provisions. Instead, their hostility was based on two general fears: the potential cost and the prospect of "more people working for the Government," as Mr. Hampson put it.
"I don't think anybody's ever read the whole darn thing," said Tom Minke, 67, a retired postal carrier playing shuffleboard, when asked about the bills."I don't know, how, really, it's going to affect me. They haven't come out and said how much it's going to cost the American people. Who is going to pay for the 30 million uninsured?"
Down the bench, Richard Sprenkle, 77, who ran a streetcar in Pittsburgh, commented: "It just seems like there's too much Government getting into everything these days. They don't leave anything alone."
 
Opposition to Medicare, Too
 The criticism of Government interference came even though many here, perhaps the majority, benefit from Medicare. A local historian, Phil Lange, said the average age in this community was between 70 and 75.
"I think to have socialized medicine is going to be a total disaster for this country," Ms. McCarthy said. "They should never have passed Medicare. The Government shouldn't be controlling doctors."
Still, the precise degree of opposition among the elderly here over a health care overhaul was difficult to gage. None of those interviewed mentioned calling or writing their Congressman on the issue. Many seemed more absorbed in the normal round of activities here -- golf, swimming, shuffleboard, card games -- than by the health care debate. Questions addressed to a room of about a dozen card players elicited only three responses, two hostile to the A.A.R.P. The players quickly went back to their game.
Several others interviewed, however, said they had recently left the organization because they were unhappy with the direction it was taking -- a direction confirmed, they suggested, by the group's endorsement of the Democratic leadership's health care bills. And a few said they were contemplating a quick departure from the organization.
"I would never give the A.A.R.P. one penny, never again," said a 76-year-old woman, lying by the swimming pool. "My blood pressure goes so high when I think about."

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GRAPHIC: Photo: In Sun City Center, Fla., where many people belong to the American Association of Retired Persons, that group's support for the Democrats' health bills is generating a lot of discussion. Many comments are from disgruntled members, like Marion Guyer, 77, left, John McCollum, 66, and Pearl Lowe, 65. (Peter Cosgrove for The New York Times)

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August 14, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

TRAVEL ADVISORY;
Museum Offers a Look At Dinosaurs' Evolution

SECTION: Section 5;   Page 3;   Column 4;   Travel Desk  

LENGTH: 146 words

The Field Museum in Chicago has opened a $4 million, 16,000-square-foot, permanent display, "DNA to Dinosaurs," that tracks the course of evolution over 3.5 billion years, from the emergence of the first single-celled life form to the age of dinosaurs. The exhibit uses 648 fossils, interactive computers and videos to explore biology, geology and the Earth's climate. Walk-through environments recreate sea life of the Paleozoic era 400 million years ago, and a 300-million-year-old Coal Age forest. In the fall, the museum plans to follow up the dinosaur exhibit with an ambitious re-creation of the evolution of mammals and humans during the Ice Ages. 
 The Field Museum, Roosevelt Road and Lake Shore Drive in Chicago, is open from 9 A.M. to 5 P.M. every day. General admission is $5,and $3 for students, senior citizens and children 3 to 17. Call (312) 922-9410.

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GRAPHIC: Photo: Copy of a Herrerasaurus fossil. (John Weinstein/The Field Museum)

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August 14, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

THE HEALTH CARE DEBATE: THE LOBBYISTS;
Mitchell Bill Puts Liberals In a Quandary

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

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

LENGTH: 796 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Aug. 13

For groups that have led the push for national health insurance, the current Senate debate on the issue raises exquisitely difficult questions of political tactics.
The biggest question is whether to lobby energetically for a bill they view as severely flawed, but which may also represent the only vehicle for achieving their goals. 
 Liberal lobbyists now find themselves in the awkward position of defending a bill they dislike against amendments they dislike even more.
Labor unions, consumer groups and advocates for the elderly had always seen the Senate Democratic leader, George J. Mitchell, as an ally in their campaign for universal health insurance. Since he first entered the Senate in 1980, Mr. Mitchell has shown a keen interest in health care issues.
But in the bill he laid before the Senate on Tuesday, Mr. Mitchell made so many concessions to conservative Democrats and moderate Republicans that he undercut his base, confusing and dividing his old allies. On Friday, Mr. Mitchell said he was open to even more negotiation, and it appeared that some of his liberal allies, like Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, would go along.
 
Long-Term Care Cited
 Stephen R. McConnell, a senior vice president of the Alzheimer's Association, said he supported the Mitchell bill because it would create a new program of long-term care. But he added: "If the bill is not all you would like, it's hard to go to your constituents and say, 'Rev up the engines.' It takes more explanation to mobilize your members."
The ambivalence and divisions among liberal groups and labor unions contrast with the unity of purpose among business organizations. Big and small businesses have coalesced in opposition to the Mitchell bill, for many of the same reasons they opposed President Clinton's plan. They fear it will vastly expand the powers of the Federal Government and rob them of the discretion they now have to design and manage their own health plans.
Robert A. Chlopak, coordinator of the Health Care Reform Project, a broad coalition of groups supporting national health insurance, said that one-third of its members supported the Mitchell bill, one-third opposed it and the remainder had not taken a firm position.
William H. Bywater, president of the International Union of Electronic Workers, scorned the Mitchell bill, saying it "seeks mild reforms in the vain hope they will lead to universal coverage." The A.F.L.-C.I.O. said, "The Mitchell bill has no effective cost controls."
 
U.M.W. Sees Dangers
 Leaders of the United Automobile Workers say that passage of Mr. Mitchell's bill would aggravate tensions between employers and employees in their industry.
The Big Three auto makers now pay the full cost of health insurance premiums for union workers. Mr. Mitchell's bill would give the Government's blessing to a much smaller employer contribution, requiring companies to pay at least 50 percent of health insurance premiums, but only in states where more than 5 percent of the people were uninsured in the year 2000.
Alan V. Reuther, legislative director of the auto workers union, said: "The 50-50 standard would create tremendous pressures at the bargaining table. Employers could argue, 'The Government has endorsed that standard, so let's cut back coverage.' The Mitchell bill would lead many employers to drop or reduce coverage. We don't agree with the notion that you pass a bad bill just for the sake of passing something."
Louise Novotny, a health policy analyst at the Communications Workers of America, said: "We have been pushing for broad national reforms with global goals like universal coverage. But the Mitchell bill could backfire on our members, who have coverage now and are battling in every set of labor negotiations to hold on to it. We spent several decades getting to the point that telephone companies now pay 100 percent of the health insurance premiums for our members. The Mitchell bill would undermine the progress we've made."
On the other hand, some of the early advocates for health care legislation, like the American Association of Retired Persons, Families USA and the Catholic Health Association, do support the Mitchell bill as a way to keep the legislative process alive.
"We support the Mitchell bill as the best political vehicle for moving the process forward, with the hope and expectation that the bill will be improved in conference," said Ronald F. Pollack, executive director of Families USA, the advocacy group that organized cross-country bus caravans in support of health care legislation.
William J. Cox, vice president of the Catholic Health Association, which represents 600 Roman Catholic hospitals and 300 nursing homes, supports the Mitchell bill for similar reasons.

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August 14, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Bilingual Ballot Law Fails to Help Chinese-American Voters

BYLINE: By ASHLEY DUNN 

SECTION: Section 1;  Page 39;  Column 1;  Metropolitan Desk 

LENGTH: 1038 words

Two years after the passage of Federal legislation requiring bilingual ballots for Chinese-American voters in parts of Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens, the city has failed to comply with the law, citing the inability of its printers and aging voting machinery to handle the task.
The city has been able to print sample ballots in Chinese, provide interpreters at polling station, and translate job titles, party titles and proposals on ballots to help the city's growing population of Chinese-American voters. 
 But despite repeated criticism from the United State Department of Justice, the city has yet to come up with a ballot that contains both the English names of candidates and a transliteration of the names in Chinese characters -- a deficiency that the Justice Department believes makes it "extremely difficult, if not impossible, for these voters to understand."
In a letter to the city in May, the Justice Department said the city's voting procedures were inadequate in meeting the requirements of the law and opened the city to possible legal action.
 
A Problem of Mechanics?
 Members of New York City's Board of Elections say the problem of providing bilingual ballots is not an issue of politics or policy, but simply mechanics -- the ballot slots on the voting machines are just too small to accommodate English and Chinese characters.
"There is no human way this can be done," said Commissioner Paul Mejias. "It's not because we don't want to do it. We all want to do it. But look at the machines. It just won't fit."
Dozens of Chinese-American community groups, including the Chinatown Voter Education Alliance and the New York Chinatown Senior Citizens Center, have joined together to try to force the Board of Elections to provide bilingual ballots for the Sept. 13 primary.
The groups argue that the translations are critical for Chinese-American voters because English letters are so different from Chinese characters. They say they believe the translations can be placed on the ballots and the board is only balking out of ignorance and an unwillingness to change.
"Chinese-American voters are not able to participate in the same way as other voters. There are Chinese-Americans who have been disenfranchised," said Margaret Fung, executive director of the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund. "When there is already so little participation in the voting process, this is an important issue."
 
The Voting Rights Act
 The changes to the Voting Rights Act require that bilingual ballots be provided in counties where more than 10,000 residents speak the same foreign language and are not proficient in English.
Prior to the law's passage, counties were required to provide bilingual ballots only if a group with limited English ability made up 5 percent of the voting-age population.
Under the old requirements, Spanish-language ballots were provided in several parts of New York City. Chinese-Americans, who make up 3 percent of the city's total population, did not qualify for bilingual ballots.
The new law requires that Chinese-American voters receive bilingual ballots in about 160 election districts in Chinatown in Manhattan, in Flushing, Queens, and in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. There are about 54,000 Chinese-Americans of voting age in the three boroughs who have limited proficiency in English, according to the 1990 census.
The new requirements have caused problems across the country, particularly in areas that have had to print ballots in Asian and American Indian languages.
 
Los Angeles' Difficulties
 For example, Los Angeles County has provided sample ballots in English, Chinese, Tagalog, Japanese, Vietnamese and Spanish, but has yet to find a way to print all those languages on the actual ballots.
"We would have to change our whole voting system," said Rosa Garcia-Viteri, head of Los Angeles County's multilingual voting. "I don't think there's any machine out there that could accommodate all those languages."
New York City's problems have proved difficult to resolve, in part because of the sheer enormity of the task.
With more than 5,000 election districts in the city and 3.3 million registered voters, translating material and coordinating its distribution has been a major undertaking.
But what has deadlocked the issue is the limitations of the city's voting machines, which were introduced about 30 years ago.
Both printing companies contracted by the city to produce the ballots for the machines agree that there is not enough room to add Chinese characters to a single ballot space.
But they add that the translation could be done if more space was used for each candidate's name, although they would have to develop some new methods.
 
Space Is Limited
 There are a limited number of spaces on the voting machines and using two spaces for each candidate would open the possibility of running out of room to list all the candidates.
In addition, several commissioners say that using two spaces would only complicate the already intricate process of printing ballots for hundreds of different election districts. For example, on ballots last year, the city erroneously printed the Chinese character for "no" as a translation for "yes."
Naomi R. Bernstein, spokeswoman for the Board of Elections, said that the problem in translating candidates' names will be resolved in a few years when the city begins using a new electronic voting machine that can display up to five languages at one time.
The machines were demonstrated in last year's primary and general election in the Bronx and could be used for the first time in an election next year. The machines are expected to be phased in throughout the city over the next four to five years.
"We won't have any problems then," Ms. Bernstein said. "We're asking the Chinese community to be patient and bear with us."
But Ms. Fung said that too much time has already elapsed. "I think the Chinese-American community has already been too patient and too willing to accept the excuses of the Board of Elections," she said. "They've had more than enough time. They have constantly said that if we just wait, it will happen. Well, we've waited and nothing has happened."

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GRAPHIC:  Federal law requires local officials to print ballots in other languages if enough voters lack proficiency in English. Here are the affected areas in the region and the languages that must be accommodated.
 
CONNECTICUT
Chart: "AT THE POLLS: Speaking the Voter's Language"
SPANISH: Towns of Bridgeport, Hartford, New Britain and Windham.
 
NEW JERSEY
SPANISH: Essex, Hudson, Middlesex, Passaic and Union Counties.
 
NEW YORK
SPANISH: Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens; Suffolk and Westchester Counties.
CHINESE: Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens.
MOHAWK: Franklin County. (Source: Justice Department)
 
"BALLOTTING IN TWO LANGUAGES" shows a sample ballot from last November's election in English and Chinese. On the actual voting machines, there are two slots beneath each candidate's name, leaving no room for the Chinese characters.

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August 16, 1994, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

Social Security Now Independent Agency

BYLINE: AP 

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

LENGTH: 265 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Aug. 15

Using Franklin D. Roosevelt's pen, President Clinton today signed into law a bill to make the Social Security Administration an independent agency.
"We are strengthening those things which Social Security ought to do and taking precautions to make sure it does not do things which it ought not to do," Mr. Clinton said. 
 The House and Senate had voted unanimously for the legislation separating the $325 billion program from the Department of Health and Human Services. The intent of the law is to shield the agency, created in 1935, from political manipulation. The law will also restrict benefits paid to substance abusers.
With 64,000 employees and 1,300 field offices, the agency will be one of the largest in the Federal Government. More than 40 million elderly and disabled Americans receive Social Security benefits and 135 million pay into the fund.
Mr. Clinton signed the bill at a Rose Garden ceremony 59 years and one day after Roosevelt signed the historic legislation that created the agency.
The new law is intended to build public confidence in the Social Security Administration and fortify its leadership after two decades of upheaval and declining services. Under the new law, Presidents will appoint commissioners to six-year terms, removable only on grounds of wrongdoing. In the past, commissioners have been political appointees who have lasted as long as their White House patrons.
In addition, the Social Security agency will take its budget requests straight to Congress, rather than through the Office of Management and Budget at the White House.

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August 16, 1994, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

COMPANY NEWS;
Humana Unit Rejected for Florida Area

BYLINE: By THOMAS J. LUECK 

SECTION: Section D;  Page 4;  Column 6;  Financial Desk 

LENGTH: 519 words

Humana Inc. said yesterday that it had been denied accreditation for a health maintenance organization it operates in South Florida, and it acknowledged that a separate health care program it operates for elderly people throughout the state was being investigated by the Health Care Financing Administration, a Federal agency that regulates Medicare and Medicaid programs.
Humana, based in Louisville, Ky., said its South Florida H.M.O., with 330,000 members in Broward, Dade and Palm Beach counties, had been denied accreditation by the National Committee for Quality Assurance, an industry oversight group. 
 The South Florida H.M.O. was acquired by Humana in 1987 from the failed International Medical Centers Inc. Humana said it had not sought accreditation in the past, and had done so this year because of a two-year-old Florida law that requires health maintenance organizations in the state to be accredited.
"We are committed to being accredited within a year," said Greg Donaldson, a spokesman for Humana, which operates H.M.O.'s in 13 states. He said the company believed accreditation had been denied because of questions about the "process of monitoring" its service, rather than the quality of that service.
Mr. Donaldson added that Humana was in negotiations with health officials in Florida about improvements, and expected to "get a determination any day now."
 
State Officials Noncommittal
 However, Florida officials said yesterday that it was unclear what, if any, penalty Humana would pay for being denied accreditation. John Black of the Florida Department of Insurance said the company might be barred from accepting new members for its South Florida H.M.O., or might have to shut it down unless it gains accreditation.
In Washington, officials of the Health Care Financing Administration said it was investigating allegations of substandard service by Humana's Gold Plus Plan, which has 217,000 members throughout Florida.
Dr. Rodney Armstead, director of the agency's office of managed care, said in an interview that the investigation had been prompted by reports on Humana by a peer-review organization in Florida. He declined to describe details of the inquiry, but said it focused on "the quality of service" provided to elderly Floridians who had chosen the Humana plan.
Dr. Armstead also declined comment on allegations against the Humana plan in an article in The Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel on Friday. The report said the Federal agency was investigating whether Humana had falsified records of its flaws in medical treatment, and had ignored elderly patients' grievances.
Mr. Donaldson, the Humana spokesman, said the company believed the Federal agency was looking into charges that dozens of doctors were deeply in debt to its Florida H.M.O.'s because they had provided care costing more than what Humana had budgeted for them.
He also said the allegations were exaggerated. Of 250 doctor-owned medical centers that are associated with Humana's Florida H.M.O. programs, "only 13 are in debt to the company," he said, adding, "That's not a problem."

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August 17, 1994, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

THE HEALTH CARE DEBATE;
Excerpts From the Senate Debate on the Mitchell Health Care Legislation

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

LENGTH: 1763 words

Following are excerpts from statements made yesterday on the Senate floor in the seventh day of debate over the health care bill, as transcribed by The New York Times from a broadcast on C-Span:
 
STATEMENT BY SENATOR MURRAY
 What is most troubling to me is some of the statements that I have heard about how bad Government is: Government has taken over everything, isn't that awful? 
Well, Mr. President, I am very afraid for this country if we continue to denigrate Government as we have heard over and over again. If the people of this country don't make the decisions for ourselves through a representative democracy, let us ask, who will make the decisions? Large corporations? Our insurance companies? The wealthy?
It is time for us to be a part of that representative democracy and forge a bill together that assures all Americans have access to health care reform. That's the kind of democracy I believe in. That's the kind of government I believe in. And I believe that's what this debate is all about.
And "bureaucracy" -- what a word. It's intimidating, it's frightening, it's scary. But I submit to you, Mr. President, one man's bureaucracy is another woman's assurance to quality health care in this country.
I hear the word "bureaucracy" thrown out, and I look in this bill to what we are referring to, and perhaps we're talking about the long-term health care provisions in this bill that provide grants to states, matching grants, so that they can put in place long-term health care for our elderly citizens so that instead of having to go to a nursing home as they get older or become sick that they can stay in their homes and have the kind of care that will provide them the dignity that they deserve.
Mr. President, I believe it's time to remember the American people. I came here to bring change, and change means we listen to the American people.
Maybe change isn't comfortable for everybody, but it does mean renewed hope for thousands and thousands of American citizens. And we should take some risks and put a program out there to provide hope for thousands of Americans today.
People are tired of waiting, because the current system does not work for too many of us.
 
STATEMENT BY SENATOR D'AMATO
 I think, Mr. President, that there probably is no area that is more important than the area of health care as it relates to us individually, as it relates to our family, as it relates to the American people. It's an area that no one can doubt needs reform; we need to improve it.
But despite its flaws, Mr. President, it is still the best health care system in the world, bar none. The best. I dare say that if the poorest of the poor in this country had a problem that they would get better medical treatment here than Boris Yeltsin in Russia. Indeed, if Boris Yeltsin had a severe medical problem, he'd probably come to this country, if he could, to get medical treatment.
So let's not take that choice away from Boris Yeltsin. And more importantly, let's not take that choice away from the American people.
I have a piece of advice because I've been hearing lots of people offering advice. I want to say to the President and the First Lady, passing bad legislation that the American people don't want is not good politics, and it's not good government. . . .
And I say we weren't sent here by the people to surrender good judgment on the altar of political expedience, or blackmail, or threat of being kept in. We were sent here to work and to achieve and to bring about a better system if possible. But not to destroy the best system that exists in the world. . . .
It's a flawed bill, deeply flawed. Whichever bill you choose, the result is the same: more taxes, more new entitlements and much more Government intrusion into our health care system. . . .
And I ask to submit this as a representation of the calls that have come into our office from Aug. 8 to Aug. 16 up to 12:00.
New York City is against implementing a health care bill this year. And, by the way, most of these people have expressed that they want reform, but they say: Do it right, don't rush it this year, wait till next year and then go ahead.
Against 475, in favor of going ahead and enacting the Mitchell bill, 291. Even in New York City the ratio is clearly 3 to 2 against going forward.
Rochester, N.Y., 162 against, 12 for; 14 to 1 against going forward. Our Washington, D.C., office, 691, most of these people called from New York City, 258 for going forward. Almost 3 to 1, almost 3 to 1, against going forward. Albany, N.Y., 190 against going forward, 25 for, a ratio of 7 1/2 to 1 against. Buffalo, 563 against going forward and adopting this bill.
And I tell you, if we begin to examine this bill in the kind of detail that it should in terms of discussion of just the issues, some of the issues that I've brought up here, you will find that these numbers will go off the chart.
 
STATEMENT BY SENATOR DORGAN
 We must do something. There are too many people out there without coverage, too many people who are sick, for whom health care is not readily available. And we must especially do something about cost.
We respond when the issue is skyrocketing costs in health care by talking largely about coverage. And that, I think, is a weakness of our approach. . . .
People want something done to bring down the cost of health care. And we're telling them that with a new program, we can increase the coverage of health care now. But can we do that without controlling costs? No, I don't think so. I don't think it's possible. . . .
How did hospital prices increase 413 percent from 1980 to 1991? The average total charge per day inpatient care for hospitals in Medicare in this country is $1,230 a day. And yet a third of the hospital beds are empty, and even many of those that are not full are expanding and building. In 1993, a study found hospital expenditures per day to be over $1,000 in this country, in the United States, $400 in Canada, less than $250 a day in France, Germany, Japan and Great Britain.
And physician fees, well, that's a lot of cost as well. In 1989, U.S. physicians on average had incomes more than three times their British, French, Swedish or Japanese counterparts. . . .
Physician fees, hospital costs, prescription drug costs, people are worried about prices. The cost of health care keeps rising. . . .
Let me credit also the majority leader for bringing the plan to the floor. The easiest possible thing is to bring nothing to the floor and say, Let's obstruct, let's wait, let's do nothing.
But most important to me is, Let's do the right thing. And the right thing is to do something to put the brakes on skyrocketing costs.
None of the plans that are now discussed, none of them, effectively do that. . . .
The solution is for us to do something and to do the right thing. The right thing, in my judgment is two steps:
Decide together that the market system doesn't work to control health care costs and define an effective way -- fair to everyone, fair to providers and fair to consumers -- to put us on a course of restraining, in an adequate way, health care costs.
And second, and importantly, make sure that when we finish, we are on a track to give every American family the assurance that they will have health care coverage, coverage they can afford and coverage that represents quality health care.
 
STATEMENT BY SENATOR MITCHELL
 I hope very much that we can have a good debate on this bill. But I hope it will also be accurate. . . .
Over and over and over again the statement has been made that this bill provides for a Government-run health insurance system. That's been said dozens, if not hundreds, of times: a Government-run health insurance system.
I make two points on that.
First, the bill does not so provide. It does not provide for a Government-run health insurance system. It provides for a voluntary system in which Americans would purchase private health insurance. Indeed, in that respect, my bill does the opposite of what's been suggested, because right now there are 25 million Americans who receive coverage under Medicaid, which is a Government program, and under my bill that portion of Medicaid would be abolished and those individuals would be encouraged and assisted in the purchase of private health insurance.
So they would receive health insurance coverage in the private market on the same basis that other Americans are now receiving it. So it actually reduces one of the largest Government programs and has those people enter into the . . . private insurance market. And so I hope that people will look beyond the slogans.
I know that the mood in our country today is that a popular way to attack anything is to say, It's Government-run. And to suggest somehow that it is therefore inefficient.
Of course, our colleagues who make these statements all support the Veterans Administration health care system. It's the largest health care delivery system in the country, and it is a Government-run system.
Not only do they support it, Mr. Chairman, they go around to veterans parades and veterans facilities and veterans meetings, and they tell the veterans how they're going to protect their health care system. And they run television ads when they're up for re-election saying how they're going to protect the Veterans Administration health care system.
They don't go around in their states and say, "I'm against Government-run systems, and the Veterans Administration system is a Government-run system so we are to abolish it." They say just the opposite.
The same is true of Medicare. Medicare is a Government-run system. Not one of our colleagues who stood here and said, "I'm against Government-run health programs" goes back home and says to the elderly citizens, "I'm against Government-run health insurance systems so I favor abolishing Medicare." They say just the opposite. . . .
And, of course, the largest Government-run program in the country is Social Security. It's a Government-run program, and it includes health insurance with Medicare Part A. Not one of our colleagues goes back to their states and goes around to senior citizens centers and says to the people there, "I'm against Government-run programs so I'm going to vote to abolish Social Security." They say and do just the opposite. . . .
And I conclude by saying the arguments made today are almost word for word the arguments made against Social Security. And almost word for word the arguments made against Medicare. Almost word for word.

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PATTY MURRAY
 Democrat of Washington. Ms. Murray is a member of the mainstream Democratic group that strongly supports the Mitchell bill. But she says she wants to be sure that no bill interferes with the law in the State of Washington, which guarantees universal health care.
 
ALFONSE M. D'AMATO
 Republican of New York. Senator D'Amato is a vocal opponent of the Mitchell bill, which he says is being advocated for political reasons by the Democratic majority in Congress and the Clinton Administration. He says that most Americans do not want such a law and that Congress ought to be responsive to them.
 
BYRON L. DORGAN
 Democrat of North Dakota. Senator Dorgan opposes the Mitchell bill in its current form, as well as all of the alternatives, on the ground that they would not halt the steadily rising costs of health care. He advocates agreement on a bipartisan solution that will rein in costs as its first goal and move toward universal coverage as its second.
 
GEORGE J. MITCHELL
 Democrat of Maine. The majority leader of the Senate, Mr. Mitchell is the principal advocate of the Democratic side of the debate and the author the bill before the Senate.

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August 20, 1994, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

If Budget Is Not Agreed On, Yonkers Must Cut Spending

BYLINE: By JACQUES STEINBERG,   Special to The New York Times 

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

LENGTH: 815 words

DATELINE: YONKERS, Aug. 19

This city always seems to do things the hard way.
Torn by racial and political divisions, Yonkers has been under a court order to desegregate its housing since 1988 and has teetered on the brink of bankruptcy three times in the last 20 years. 
 Now, seven weeks into the city's new fiscal year, Mayor Terence M. Zaleski and the City Council have yet to agree on a budget that will satisfy the state agencies charged with overseeing the city's financial health since 1984, when it almost went broke.
One of those agencies, the State Emergency Financial Control Board, has ordered the city to cut its spending by 30 percent if a budget is not in place by Sept. 1. To comply, Mr. Zaleski's aides have said that the Mayor would be forced to lay off 350 city employees; reduce garbage collection from twice a week to once a week and close libraries, centers for the elderly and parks. The city has so far avoided layoffs by simply not paying many of its bills, mayoral aides said.
 
Political Differences Cited
 With the differences between the Mayor and the City Council relatively narrow -- the gap between their competing budget proposals has closed to $1.3 million, or three-tenths of 1 percent of the budget -- the squabble is more firmly rooted in the city's governance structure.
In 1989, voters replaced the city's 50-year-old form of government, headed by a city manager who was appointed by the City Council, with a "strong mayor" who would be elected. Mr. Zaleski, the city's first strong mayor under the new charter, was elected to a four-year term in 1991. Mr. Zaleski, a Democrat, and the seven-member City Council, which has a Republican majority, have grappled ever since for control of the state's sixth-largest city, with the budget only the latest sticking point.
On April 15, the Mayor proposed a $420.6 million budget with a 9.75 percent increase in property-tax rates. In June, the Council responded by passing its variation of the Mayor's budget, with $410.7 million in expenditures and a property-tax increase of 5.25 percent. Mr. Zaleski vetoed the Council plan. Then the Council, by a vote of five to two, overrode his veto.
According to state law, the Yonkers budget cannot take effect until it has been approved by the control board and certified by the State Comptroller, H. Carl McCall. Last month, Mr. McCall rejected the Council's budget. Among other factors, he cited the budget's heavy reliance on surplus funds, insufficient financing for the public schools and underestimation of the city's contribution to the state's police and fire retirement funds.
On July 15, the Council sued the Comptroller in State Supreme Court, seeking to compel him to certify its budget. At the same time, under the auspices of a lawsuit that it had filed against the control board earlier this year, the Council moved to prevent the board from imposing its spending cuts on the city. Both suits are pending.
But in recent days, many of the issues that have divided the Council and the regulatory authorities appear to have been resolved, although the Council appears to be headed for another showdown with the Mayor.
 
Conceding to Requests
 The Council's budget consultant, Nicholas DeSantis, said the Council had agreed to increase the city's contribution to police and fire funds from $8.9 million to $9.8 million, at the Comptroller's request. Mr. DeSantis said the Council, the Mayor and the Board of Education had agreed on an education budget of $222 million, $13 million less than the school board had sought but $5 million more than the Council's initial offer. And he said that the Council had reached agreement with the control board to draw about $10 million from the city's surplus fund as a budget revenue.
Gail S. Shaffer, the Secretary of State and the chairwoman of the control board, and Mr. McCall said in separate interviews today that substantial progress had been made, particularly after a nine-hour meeting on Thursday involving all the parties.
"We think we're moving toward a resolution," Mr. McCall said.
Still, sharp differences persisted today. Council leaders said their revised, $415.6 million budget, which might come to a vote as early as Tuesday, would require Mr. Zaleski to eliminate three top appointees, including one of his two deputy mayors.
Jim Surdoval, the Mayor's chief of staff, who said that Mr. Zaleski had revised his most recent budget to $416.9 million, countered that the Mayor would veto any budget that compelled those layoffs. Council leaders vowed to override Mr. Zaleski's veto again and send their budget to Mr. McCall for certification.
Mr. Zaleski could, at that point, ask the courts to block the Council's budget. But Mr. Surdoval said that the Mayor would be reluctant to do so.
"The Mayor might do a novel thing in the City of Yonkers," Mr. Surdoval said, "and choose not to sue."

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August 20, 1994, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

A Place to Call Home

BYLINE: By Robert F. Wagner Jr. and Julia Vitullo-Martin;   Robert F. Wagner Jr., New York's former Deputy Mayor and Board of Education president, died last November at the age of 49 in San Antonio, where he was doing research for a Twentieth Century Fund book, with Julia Vitullo-Martin, on the future of American cities. This article -- adapted from City Journal, the quarterly magazine of the Manhattan Institute -- is Mr. Wagner's last. It was completed by Ms. Vitullo-Martin, former director of the Citizens Housing and Planning Commission.

SECTION: Section 1;  Page 23;  Column 3;  Editorial Desk 

LENGTH: 814 words

Public housing was born during the Great Depression, a time of despair and hope. It was viewed then as young, innovative, forward-thinking, attracting the country's best architects and thinkers. Today, public housing is seen by many as dismal, tired, corrupt. Huge projects have deteriorated beyond habitability in many cities and are being torn down in Newark, St. Louis, Providence, R.I., and elsewhere.
 Now several energetic, even charismatic local leaders are trying to bring about a renaissance in public housing. In Chicago, for example, Vince Lane, who has led the nation's second-largest housing authority since 1988, has won national attention for his efforts to revive the projects he oversees: rehabilitation programs that train and employ tenants, conversion of abandoned lakefront apartments into mixed-income housing, establishment of a private school headed by the pioneer educator Marva Collins, and aggressive police searches for illegal tenants, weapons and drugs. 
 But Mr. Lane and other public housing leaders must contend with a web of Federal laws and regulations that constrain their efforts to improve the way their projects are run. Here are a few:
 * A Federal law intended to keep public housing affordable requires tenants to pay 30 percent of their income as rent. This creates two perverse incentives: tenants on welfare are discouraged from working, since they would automatically forfeit 30 percent of their wages, and those who do work have every reason to move out as their earnings increase and their rents rise.
 * The Government's "minimum design standards" are, for all practical purposes, maximum standards that effectively mandate the dreary character of much public housing. The Department of Housing and Urban Development refuses to pay construction costs for work that exceeds the minimum standards, so if a local authority wants to builds attractive housing that fits inconspicuously into its neighborhoods, it must somehow find local funds.
* Urged on by advocacy groups, HUD pressed the New York City Housing Authority to reserve half its vacant apartments for homeless families, pre-empting its waiting list of 282,900 poor people.
 * Since 1979, to reduce the concentration of public housing in poor neighborhoods, HUD rules have forbidden new construction in "impacted" areas. As a result, housing authorities are forced to hold on to grossly deteriorated buildings. They cannot simply replace them on the same site, since HUD regulations forbid new construction. "Non-impacted" -- that is, middle-class -- communities are seldom willing to accept public housing.
 * By Federal regulation, public housing for the elderly must be open to disabled tenants; this includes the mentally ill, including many people damaged by drug and alcohol abuse. Many housing authorities now have large numbers of young disabled single males in buildings intended for elderly people. "The life styles just clash here," Mr. Lane says. "Both groups are unhappy. If the priorities emphasize housing the hard-to-house in existing projects, you'll risk making the whole project, and the surrounding neighborhood, fall apart. Why are we doing this? Because HUD tells us we must."
 Public housing innovators like Mr. Lane face a rigid antagonist in the HUD bureaucracy, which bars most deviations from the rules. Yet HUD has been known to recognize the local character of public housing. When Boston's housing authority went into receivership, HUD, cooperating with the court, granted the receiver extraordinary powers to revive the projects, enabling a return to local control.
 But a housing authority should not have to hit bottom before being granted the flexibility to reinvent itself. Authorities should have this freedom under normal circumstances as well. Modest revisions in the regulations are not enough.
 Thus, HUD needs a drastic overhaul: throw out all regulations (making exceptions for housing authorities with records of incompetence and corruption) and then discuss which rules should be restored.
 Public housing has some things going for it that it didn't have a few years ago. Housing Secretary Henry Cisneros cares about public housing and wants reform. In Assistant Secretary Joseph Shuldiner, former general manager of housing authorities in New York City and Los Angeles, he has an executive with extensive on-the-ground experience.
 On Capitol Hill, Senator Barbara Mikulski of Maryland, chairwoman of the appropriations subcommittee that oversees HUD, is also a champion of public housing. Congress has responded favorably to an Administration proposal to delay rent increases for newly employed tenants.
 But real reforms will only come at the local level. The best thing the Federal Government could do is to free innovators like Vince Lane from regulations that have all too often been counterproductive.

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August 21, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

The Nation;
Full of Sound and Fury, Signifying. . .Well, Something

BYLINE: By ADAM CLYMER 

SECTION: Section 4;  Page 3;  Column 1;  Week in Review Desk 

LENGTH: 1284 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON

TO Broadway, Washington is a small place, a tryout city where some plays are tested, reworked, and sometimes allowed to die. But today, the capital is playing out the melodrama of health care, which each side presents as tragedy (if it loses), on several stages at once.
Washington's biggest audience, the voters, is barely engaged. It worries about health care, all right, but is unimpressed with the Congress and the various plans. It does not believe this show will last. 
 But this is a city of specialized audiences. Lobbyists for thousands of interests turn thumbs up or down on each rewritten plan. The elderly, the handicapped and labor descend on Capitol Hill, passing insurance agents and doctors and drug manufacturers.
On all sides there is a recognition that this week will be critical, that the time is coming for deals to be struck -- if they can be -- and for a final script.
But that is not happening on stage in the ornate Senate chamber, where intermittently eloquent speeches are given, and the players use the simplest props in pursuit of public opinion. Republicans laboriously lift thick copies of the bill itself as a metaphor for the complexity and bureaucracy they fear. Democrats wave their own government health insurance cards and say they want every American to have one just as nice.
Except for the House chamber, booked right now for the Great Crime Show and uncertain when Health Care will open, the other theaters are smaller -- and more critical. Most lack any seats for spectators at all. For that reason, there is less hamming it up and more serious tension in them all.
For the last few weeks, "Mainstream Coalition" was playing in Senator John Chafee's Capitol hideaway, which has a view of tourists lining up to look at their Congress, and, through the trees, of the Supreme Court and the Library of Congress. They were trying to write a plan that would save the country some money, insure more Americans than the current 85 percent and, above all, pass. The floating bipartisan cast of a few regulars like Mr. Chafee and Senator John Breaux (Bill Bradley quit the cast Friday just before curtain time, saying the mainstream had shifted to the right bank) was augmented by others who came and went as they pleased.
Some of the playwright-actors in this merry band hope their message will prove so compelling that veterans of other versions of the health care saga, like George Mitchell and Bob Dole, perhaps even Ted Kennedy, will embrace the Mainstream script and volunteer for the bit parts, so all can take it to the Senate triumphantly.
Others are ready for still more rehearsals. They are ready to endure Mr. Dole's grumbling at their presumption in seizing the role he seems to have abandoned. They will even listen to Mr. Mitchell arguing that a finale in which all Americans can wave health cards is as important -- and more appealing -- than the green-eyeshade number these deficit-cutters want to close on.
These stages are the Capitol suites of the two leaders, stately rooms with polished tables, Presidential portraits and grand views of the Mall and the Monument. And sometimes there is action in the Oval Office, where President Clinton, on days when he isn't playing Statesman or Crime Fighter, plays the Salesman, trying to win Mr. Mitchell or House leaders a vote here or there.
 
Warehouse Chic
 If those surroundings embody the hopes of health care reform, perhaps the dumpy atmosphere of the Congressional Budget Office a few blocks away conveys its fears. Not since World War I-era temporary buildings on the Mall were torn down in the late 1960's have important government functions been conducted in such shabby surroundings, the warehouse chic of a former F.B.I. building. There, Robert Reischauer and his weary staff ponder the costs and consequences of one proposal after another. A C.B.O. analysis is the equivalent of a license for Congressional presentation. The House cannot take up its versions of health care legislation until Mr. Reischauer presents his findings.
All these efforts affect each other. Start with the public messages offered on the Senate floor. The Republicans' major message is that Mr. Mitchell's legislation intended to insure all Americans must lead to a bureaucratic "government takeover" of medicine. And bureaucracy worried the 20 or so senators in the bipartisan Mainstream Coalition. Of all their complaints, those will be the easiest for Mr. Mitchell to accept.
The secondary G.O.P. theme is that Congress ought to put the issue off until next year. Republican senators lift the three editions of the Mitchell bill and say they cannot be expected to understand them all in so short a time. Hams like Alfonse M. D'Amato even throw them to the floor in disgust.
Democrats respond with their handier symbol, the health care card they carry in their wallets, and occasionally ask Republicans if they have one, too. Again and again they ask why, if the Senate's employer, the American people, will pay 72 percent of their health insurance costs, why shouldn't the bosses of other Americans do the same? To the arguments for delay, Democrats respond that the issue has been studied for decades, and the American people want action now.
Neither side mentions a critical subtext: the expectation that Republicans will win lots of seats in the November elections, especially if Democrats cannot claim credit for passing a health care bill, and so waiting until next year means waiting for less. Proponents of national health insurance legislation chose to wait for an election once before and were disappointed; in 1974 they rejected President Richard Nixon's bill (more generous than anything they are likely to get today), anticipating sweeping victories in that year's election. They got the victories, but lost the focus on health care for two decades.
 
You Mean It Costs Money?
 Mr. Reischauer's intervention affected the direction the Mainstream Group was taking. They shifted away from seeking greatly expanded insurance coverage after they emerged grimly from a meeting with him and said they were "shocked, shocked" to learn that it costs a lot of money to buy health insurance for millions of people.
That is a lesson that non-senators without certification as brain surgeons absorbed many months ago. Moreover, that issue might usefully have been pondered before most Mainstreamers scornfully dismissed the very idea of requiring employers to pay part of their worker's insurance premiums.
Even the crime bill affected health insurance. On Aug. 10, the day before the House blocked it, President Clinton said in an interview that once it was passed, the public could focus on health care. He said the "focus they will be able to bring to the debate could change the dynamics considerably in our favor." If crime was out of the way, he said, "I think we have a real shot to do something really fine on health care that will work." Crime is still not out of the way.
Of course, each side says the audience is with them. Republicans cite a Newsweek poll that seems to show that 65 percent of the public thinks Congress should "start over next year." But that question offered a reason to start over, and none for pressing ahead. When a CBS News Poll asked a different question, including the warning that it "might be harder to pass" next year, 53 percent wanted action this year.
Ten days of Senate debate have given the House few clues of its direction. A grand total of seven amendments have been passed to Mr. Mitchell's bill, none of them controversial. And so, after one consecutive week of Saturday health care matinees, the Senate chamber was dark yesterday.

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August 21, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

FLIGHT FROM CUBA: THE VOICES;
Cubans, Stay Home, Many Floridians Say

BYLINE: New York Times Regional Newspapers 

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

LENGTH: 487 words

DATELINE: TALLAHASSEE, Fla., Aug. 20

For Al and Gladys Ros, President Clinton is making the right move in trying to limit a new exodus of refugees from Cuba.
Mr. and Mrs. Ros, who fled Cuba in 1961, two years after Fidel Castro came to power, question the motives of those who are taking to boats now. "We left because of ideals," said Mrs. Ros, 67, of Plantation Key. "We didn't want to live in a Communist country. But now they are leaving because they are hungry. If Fidel gives them food, they would stay." 
 It would be a mistake for the United States to encourage another mass migration of Cubans, said Mr. Ros, 67. He added that keeping discontented Cubans at home would keep more pressure on Mr. Castro.
Although their reasoning was different, more than 30 Floridians interviewed here, nearly 500 miles north of Miami, expressed support for Mr. Clinton's plans to pluck Cuban refugees from rafts and transfer them to detention camps in Guantanamo Bay.
Marian Miller, 70, said she wanted a stronger immigration policy. "We've had such a time with them down in Miami that I really think something ought to be done," she said. "I don't like the completely open-door policy."
She said exceptions should be made only in cases where immediate family members were being reunited. "Our taxes are going up unless we have really big help from the Federal Government," Ms. Miller said.
Bill Leskanic, 38, a Tallahassee ambulance driver, said the refugees should stay in Cuba. "They need to straighten out their country," he said.
Fred Campana, 55, of Marco Island, said: "I don't think we should have to pay for them. I think they should straighten up their country and get rid of Castro."
Mr. Campana's wife, Chris, 56, added, "He wants Castro shot and a new government put in."
Rodney Gray, a 51-year-old mechanic from Medart, a small community south of Tallahassee, was one of the few residents who said he generally supported the resettling of Cubans in the state. "There's only so much you can take," he said, "but this country was founded on people coming over."
Bobby Scott, a 54-year-old retiree from Chattahoochee, said: "We've got about all that we can take care of as it is. I think they ought to have some way to slow them down. I'll tell you we've been doing this for years and years and years. It looks like you've got to draw a line sometime."
At a senior citizens center in Naples, a community on Florida's lower Gulf Coast, anti-immigrant sentiments ran high.
"We can't get into Cuba, but they can get into America," said Catherine Tomasic, 77, who moved to Florida from Pittsburgh two years ago. "It's not fair. And then they end up on welfare. And who pays for it? The taxpayers."
Dolly Scott, 71, suggested that immigration should be suspended until living standards for poorer Americans are elevated. "There are people here who need help, and we're giving it to them," she said, referring to Cuban and Haitian refugees.

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August 21, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Learning To Live It Up At Last

BYLINE: By SUSAN SHEEHAN;   SUSAN SHEEHAN is a staff writer at The New Yorker.

SECTION: Section 5;  Page 33;  Column 1;  Travel Desk 

LENGTH: 1188 words

WHEN I was very young, I traveled with my parents to assorted destinations of their choice. Their choices were usually long weekends in the "country" -- places like the Delaware Water Gap -- a few hours by car from our apartment in Manhattan: my stepfather was an Ob-Gyn and always on call. Occasionally Mother and I went somewhere on our own; my first plane trip, in 1948, back when flying was still a real adventure, was to Corning, N.Y., for a cousin's christening. In my late teens, I traveled alone to places of my choice, going ever farther as jet planes replaced props.
After I became a journalist, I traveled with the song to faraway places with strange-sounding names, once to get married (in Jakarta), occasionally just to admire a cathedral or a mosque, but increasingly to write an article about a person who lived at destination X or an event that had occurred at destination Y. For many years my husband, Neil, and I lacked the money and leisure to travel for pleasure, and no matter: I had more adventures away from home when I was working than when I was sightseeing. At 15, I had flown to Switzerland to take funiculars up the Alps. At 50, I went to Cully, a small town on Lake Geneva, to write about a woman who had had her daughter stolen from her at birth by trickery and found her child alive and beautiful some 47 years later. Researching this fairy tale was more captivating than the scenery. 
 And suddenly I was 55. I hadn't fretted about previous milestones -- I was too busy. Two untoward events occurred after my 55th birthday. Neil (we are close in age) went to a pharmacy we don't customarily use and was given a 10 percent senior citizens' discount on a prescription: we hadn't planned on the dark privilege until we were 65. I received a form letter from the National Institutes of Health Marrow Donor Center stating, "with regret," that, because of age, I was being removed from their database.
Money had become less of a concern: one daughter was on her own, the other would graduate from law school the next year. We could have flown around the world annually for half the sums we had been sending bursars for a decade. We began to regard time from a different vantage point. Friends in their 50's, 60's and 70's had become infirm -- they had worked too hard and waited too long to travel for fun.
Around 9:30 on Sunday evening, March 20, 1994, during one of public television's fund-raising periods, I turned on the TV. "Carreras, Domingo, Pavarotti in Concert" had begun. I wound up listening, for two hours I didn't have, to the three tenors singing separately and together. The program was filmed in Italy in 1990 and used by PBS for fund-raising ever since. I had admired their voices for years, but on that particular Sunday I fell in love with Luciano Pavarotti's power and resonance. During a program break, I learned that the three tenors would be performing together again soon -- in summer, in California.
Ever since Neil's visit to the pharmacy, he had been saying "Once around the track." The four words were contagious. Self-denial gave way to self-indulgence. I acquired my first Burberry raincoat (rationalized as a Christmas present) and my first Vuitton duffel bag (an anniversary gift). In April, I faxed a friend in Los Angeles who is an amateur pianist and follows the world of music. Could he get me a ticket for "Encore! The Three Tenors," to be staged on July 16, at Dodger Stadium? He called back the following day. I sent him a check for an exorbitant sum. My birthday is in August.
Not that I had ceased fretting about extravagances or lost days. Workaholics don't become ne'er-do-wells in a year. I reminded myself that I had a free ticket to anywhere in the United States that would expire in August. (I had been bumped from an overbooked flight the previous summer.)
By the time my outsize concert ticket arrived in June, so much had appeared in the press about the conjunction of the opera extravaganza with the World Cup soccer finals that I was pleased simply to have the 6-by-10-inch multicolored piece of cardboard in hand. By then, good seats were available only from scalpers.
I FLEW to Los Angeles on Friday, July 15, and went with friends on a late-afternoon hike through Will Rogers State Park. On Saturday, I spent some agreeable hours in the rooms and gardens of the Getty Museum and rode from one end of Sunset Boulevard to the other. I reached my folding chair, situated in the vicinity of second base, at 7:50 P.M., shortly before Zubin Mehta picked up his baton to conduct the Los Angeles Philharmonic -- in deepest center field.
The best thing about the concert was simply being there, program in hand, with no emcee to distract me from the singing with gratuitous comments. Jose Carreras came to the podium first, and sang "O Souverain!" from "Le Cid" by Massenet under a pale blue sky with a few white and pink clouds close to the horizon. Placido Domingo didn't sing "Vesti la Giubba" as his first solo ("Program subject to change," the program stated), and Pavarotti's first aria was a substitute, and then I stopped even looking at the program and was carried away by the night and the music. By intermission, the sky had darkened, the air had grown cooler. The elderly couple on my left chatted softly in Italian. The young couple from West Virginia on my right went to the refreshment stand and returned with glasses of white wine and a box of popcorn.
At the end of the program, there was a standing ovation, and the first encores. To have seen and heard the three tenors on stage singing and gamboling through "La Donna e Mobile," "O Sole Mio" and "Libiamo" was joyful. The concert was to have ended at 10:30. The tenors didn't stop singing until 11 P.M.
When I came home on the evening of the 17th, I watched the concert on video. For me it was marred by Itzhak Perlman's sports lingo ("First up to bat is Jose Carreras"), close-up shots of Henry Kissinger and Tom Cruise, and routine household turbulence -- the telephone ringing, the cat coming in on three paws, the fourth having been injured in a fight. Most surprising was the absence of the last half-hour.
In my youth, I was wise enough to value experiencing life firsthand. I went to the theater, opera and ballet wherever I landed. Somehow in my middle years, caught up with raising children and working, I started living part of my own life vicariously. Instead of going to baseball games, Fourth of July fireworks and movies, I tended to watch them on TV. I even persuaded myself that it was sensible to avoid crowds.
With a limited number of years left when I will be fit to crisscross a continent in 56 hours for a concert, I realize that sensible is the wrong outlook. It is time to be profligate. I recently bought a plane ticket to London for October, and shall walk Roman roads and climb stiles in Sussex with friends. I have promised myself that if, in 1998, the three tenors again share a stage in France, where the World Cup soccer matches will be held, Neil and I shall be there. He doesn't want to miss out on the last half-hour either.

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August 21, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Mormon Ranks Grow One by One by One

BYLINE: By ANN COSTELLO 

SECTION: Section 13WC;  Page 1;  Column 3;  Westchester Weekly Desk 

LENGTH: 1621 words

ROSA JONES still remembers what brought her to the Mormon Church four years ago. A single woman with no children to visit her, she was sitting alone in the tenement apartment in southern Yonkers where she had lived since she moved there as a 20-year-old nurse's aide in 1960. It was a hot Sunday summer morning, and she was watching television.
"Do you know where you were before you came into this world?" asked a voice on an advertisement from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, commonly known as the Mormons. Ms. Jones wrote down the 800 number printed on the screen and called it. To the operator who answered, she replied, "I want to know where I came from." 
 Told she would receive a book in the mail in four weeks, explaining this and other Mormon beliefs, she was surprised to receive, instead, a telephone call from a missionary who was among 24 church members between the ages of 19 and 21 living temporarily in Westchester to spread the word about their faith. They were hoping for converts who would be baptized, would adhere to a strictly observant life style in keeping with the church's teaching and who would, in turn, bring in more converts. Many young adult Mormons who have grown up in Westchester also interrupt their education or careers for two years to be trained as missionaries in Utah and then live a Spartan and somewhat nomadic life wherever they are assigned.
 
Wards Are Growing
 Westchester has four Mormon wards -- much like parishes -- with approximately 300 to 500 members in each ward. Three wards, two English-speaking and one Spanish-speaking, are based at a church on Wayside Lane in an upscale residential area of Scarsdale. The fourth ward is combined with the headquarters of the church's larger organizational unit -- a "stake" -- in a contemporary church building on semirural Kitchawan Road in Yorktown. These four wards are growing at a rate of 6 percent to 10 percent a year, which is a faster rate than other denominations, said the bishops heading the Westchester wards.
They added that the greatest growth was being experienced in the most urban areas, especially in Yonkers. A new "branch" -- smaller than a ward -- is scheduled to open soon in north-central Yonkers.
Ms. Jones was told by the missionary who called her to expect a visit by two "elders" the next day. She was impatient when they were late for their appointment, but she told herself that, in the extreme heat, the two old men were probably overwhelmed. When the two visitors turned out to be a 20-year-old from Utah and a 19-year-old from California, she was flabbergasted, she recalled recently.  "You're kids!" she blurted out. "What can you tell me?"
They told her that in a previous life in a "spirit world" she had made a choice to come to live in this world on her own. This was such a revelation, she said, that she immediately set about to learn all she could about the Mormon Church, with the intention of joining. Legally blind, suffering from diabetes and weighing 350 pounds, Ms. Jones was unable to work at the two health-care jobs she had juggled over the years.
Up to that time, she had believed that her disabilities were punishment for her own sins or those of family members. The elders told her otherwise -- that God does not punish anyone. They told her that she had volunteered to leave the spirit world and take on whatever trials and tribulations would come her way.
"No wonder," she exclaimed. "I knew I should have kept my hand down!" After laughing with relief, she asked the elders to come back every day to give her lessons.
"They told me to pray, and I did," she said. "I felt a burden had lifted."
She read the entire "Book of Mormon," which the elders left her. Mormons describe this book as another "Testament of Jesus Christ," and they add it to what they feel are the less accurate Old and New Testaments. Mormons believe that their founder and prophet, Joseph Smith, responded to a divine revelation and then dug up and translated ancient golden plates on a hillside in the upstate New York town of Fayette in 1830 and that this translation is the "Book of Mormon."
 
Made Her Feel Useful
 The book details the migration of ancient Hebrews to North America in 600 B.C. and Jesus' visit to these lost tribes six centuries later. A member of a local Methodist church when she made the phone call, Ms. Jones had often felt pitied there because of her disabilities, she said. In stark contrast, the Mormons at the Scarsdale church, where she now worships each Sunday, immediately made her feel useful. Ms. Jones was greeted with open arms. On Dec. 23, 1990 (Joseph Smith's birthday), Ms. Jones was baptized there in the customary immersion ceremony and was put to work. She was given several small jobs, which she has performed with pride. The Latter-day Saints have no paid clergy, and all members expect to be "called" to a variety of tasks to help run the church.
Richard Bushman, a professor of history at Columbia University, a practicing Mormon and the author of the book "Joseph Smith and the Beginning of Mormonism," recently commented on the experience of Rosa Jones and others like her. In the more urban, less affluent parts of the suburbs, "there are those looking to move up, to gain a new life," he said. "The Mormon Church has always appealed to people crossing social, racial or ethnic boundaries."
He added: "The church is a wonderful place to cushion this process. The Mormon Church gives them small jobs to do, and they gain a new set of skills." He added that those who persevere and succeed are given "a leg up in society."
Ms. Jones, who credits the church with helping her lose more than 100 pounds, said, "The Mormons have given me back my self-esteem."
She has spoken in church twice to the women's Relief Society and three times in the communion or "sacrament service." She has also helped coordinate the transportation program, in which long-time members from Scarsdale drive the newer, and often minority, members from Yonkers and other parts of lower Westchester to and from church. Ms. Jones has also performed the most important of all Mormon jobs: she has brought in one new member and continues to spread the word to anyone who will listen.
She has visited the closest Mormon Temple, in Kensington, Md., for her "endowment" ceremony -- one of the denomination's closely guarded secret rituals that can only be performed in these large and specially consecrated churches, which are closed to the public. Because of membership growth in the Northeast, a new temple is planned for Hartford.
Bishop Paul Clayton, who has presided over the Scarsdale wards for 14 years, is a professor of medical informatics (a computer-related medical specialty) at Columbia University's medical school when he is not volunteering for the church. In a recent interview, in which he discussed the growth of his church, especially among minority groups, Dr. Clayton said: "Our ward complexion has definitely changed. We love that. It's good for us."
 
Volunteers on a Worldwide Mission for Their Church
THE two young Mormon elders who called on Rosa Jones in Yonkers and answered her questions about their religion were volunteers. They belonged to a cadre of 49,000 missionaries worldwide sent out by the church's 8.7 million members.
Last year, these missionaries helped convert more than 300,000 members, with their biggest gains in Latin America.
A high birth rate (Mormons discourage birth control) and conversions, makes the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints one of the world's fastest-growing denominations.
Some who study the church claim that the approaching year 2000 -- the millennium, "the beginning of the end" -- is the reason for the Mormons' avid proselytizing, advertising and public relations campaigns, but several local Mormon leaders and lay members play down that idea.
Nevertheless, there are suddenly 4.4 million Mormons in this country, making the denomination the sixth largest, behind Catholics, Baptists, Methodists, Lutherans and members of the Church of God in Christ. There are also more Mormons than Jews, with 4.3 million practicing Jews living in the United States. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is still mostly a Western states' religion in this country, with 34 percent of its members living in Utah, but it is rapidly branching out worldwide.
Mormons vicariously baptize the ancestors of each of their converts so that many generations of the family may enjoy the much-anticipated days of glory, when they believe that Christ will reappear and Zion will be re-established in this country.
Family-tree enthusiasts of all religions may use the church's genealogical records, which, for Mormons especially, are a valuable link to the past and to eternity.
Mormons were recently in the news when their former president, Ezra Taft Benson, died at the age of 94 and was replaced by the president of the church's Council of 12 Apostles, Howard W. Hunter, 86, a former corporate lawyer. It was Mr. Benson's predecessor as president and living prophet of the church, Spencer W. Kimball, who received a divine revelation in 1978, the kind of message from God that Mormons firmly believe in and are encouraged to listen for.
This particular revelation cleared the way for all Mormon men, when they reach the age of 12, to be ordained to the priesthood "without regard for race or color." Up to that point, only white males could be priests.
Women are still excluded from the priesthood and from the entire church hierarchy. Motherhood and support for one's husband is still the ideal, with strong and large families being the goal.   ANN COSTELLO

LOAD-DATE: August 21, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Westchester County has four Mormon wards with 300 to 500 members in each. Rosa Jones, left, converted to the faith four years ago, wanting to know "where I came from." (Chris Maynard for The New York Times)

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August 21, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

NEIGHBORHOOD REPORT: ELMHURST;
Senior Center's Long Search For a New Home

BYLINE: By NORIMITSU ONISHI 

SECTION: Section 13;  Page 9;  Column 1;  The City Weekly Desk 

LENGTH: 504 words

For two decades, the Elmhurst-Jackson Heights Senior Center has been a second home to hundreds of elderly men and women who gather there daily. But the center's lease expires at year's end, and efforts by city and center officials to find a new site have become, well, very complicated.
The center occupies the basement and first floor of 87-11 Whitney Avenue, a two-story, red-brick building in Elmhurst. Since the Christian Testimony Church bought the site three years ago, the church has used the top floor, and church officials have pressed for the use of the other floors for its congregation. 
 That, along with the lease deadline, set the city's Department of General Services, which finances the center, to looking for another site. The department found one at 78-14 Roosevelt Avenue and drew up a lease agreement with the owners, said Charles Walker, a spokesman for the department.
But early this year, the owners, who had incorporated themselves as 78-14 Roosevelt Avenue, failed to make their mortgage payments, Mr. Walker said. And the property was seized by the lender, the Korean First Bank of New York.
Last week all the parties met. The center hopes to lease the building from the bank, according to terms agreed upon with the former owners. The bank is reviewing the matter, and Mr. Walker said he thought a decision might be forthcoming at the next scheduled meeting in two weeks.
"We're not going to allow these seniors to be tossed out on the street," he said.
Some of the center's employees say that a move from the current location is overdue. Old men and women must climb down a flight of steps to go to the basement cafeteria; the center's caseworkers are in makeshift offices in a large, noisy auditorium, and the center has no air-conditioning.
The center has 1,352 members, said Lucy Bermudez, the assistant director, and an average of 500 visit every day, to socialize and to eat breakfast or lunch, at 50 cents a meal. Chinese and Hispanic members, many of whom are recent immigrants and speak little English, make up the majority of the membership. The center is operated by the Institute for the Puerto Rican/ Hispanic Elderly.
The other members of the center are Koreans, Filipinos and those who remain from the time when Elmhurst was chiefly white and European.
The Elmhurst-Jackson Heights Senior Center is one of only two centers -- the Newtown Senior Center is the other -- that provide daily services to the elderly in Elmhurst, said Rose Rothschild, district manager of Community Board 4.
"We have a big senior citizen population," Ms. Rothschild said. "The longtime residents are getting older, and the new immigrants have parents and aunts and uncles."
The new site, which formerly housed some small stores, is near public transportation and accessible to the disabled, Ms. Rothschild said. "We couldn't find any other place," she said. "We really don't have any empty buildings. Landwise, we're a really small district, but we have a lot of people."   N.O.

LOAD-DATE: August 24, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photos: About 500 people gather daily at a center for the elderly in Elmhurst, to play mah-jongg, above, and keep physically fit. (Photographs by Rebecca Cooney for The New York Times)

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August 21, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Offering Youths Role Models and Hope

BYLINE: By MERRI ROSENBERG 

SECTION: Section 13WC;  Page 13;  Column 1;  Westchester Weekly Desk 

LENGTH: 1150 words

DATELINE: PEEKSKILL

IN an effort to direct young black and Hispanic men away from the dangers of the streets, a new program from the Peekskill Area Health Center is marshaling community resources to offer positive alternatives.
"Minority males are at risk disproportionately for a whole gamut of health problems like heart disease, H.I.V. infection, diabetes and substance abuse," said Roberta Marcus-Leiner, associate vice president of community initiatives for the center. "We're looking to help the community use its own strengths to redraft that imbalance." 
 Toward that end, the new program, the Minority Male Youth Empowerment Project, was started in December, supported by a $50,000 grant for salaries and other expenses from the Federal Department of Health and Human Services.
The center contacted members of Peekskill churches and social and service clubs to find adult mentors for the program.
Twenty-five volunteers, including some women, are being trained at the health center to act as mentors and will be working in the fall with young men in the community who could benefit from such attention.
Earlier this year some mentors went into the Peekskill schools during lunch hour to offer advice and assistance to those who were struggling with personal problems. Others will be available in the future to offer help with career planning.
 
Missed by Other Programs
 "One of our goals is to offer 10- to 25-year-olds something that would help them to get better life skills and give them somebody to stand behind them and support them," said Pearl Woods, coordinator for the Minority Male Youth Empowerment Project.
The program is particularly interested in identifying adolescents and young adults who would be overlooked by other programs.
"We're trying to reach out to the kids out there in the streets, those who have dropped out and are hanging out on the street corners," said Clarence Washington, director of the Martin Luther King Jr. Institute for Nonviolence, a nonprofit organization based at Manhattanville College. "These youngsters are not in church; they are not in the Boys' Clubs, and they may have more difficulties. We hope to help them establish better communications skills."
Many of the young men are being raised in single-parent households and have little contact with adult males who could be positive role models.
 
'Reach Back and Help'
 "It's unfortunate that these kinds of situations have to be planned, where older adults interact with younger people," said one of the mentors, Don Bennett, a sales manager for WLNA radio in Peekskill.
"When I was growing up in the projects in Baltimore, I had a grandfather, father and an uncle to help me as well as other adult males at my church," Mr. Bennett recalled.
"This is something that should have been natural, but I'm hoping that it will help show some of our young people that there is an alternative to anger and that there is a system to follow," he said.
"It's time to reach back and help the people who were left behind," Mr. Bennett continued. "There's an African saying that it takes an entire village to raise a child. Because of slavery, we got away from that, but we want to get back to that idea. Making a donation by way of a check won't cut it anymore. Being the ears for a young child during lunchtime is more important."
Besides the mentor program, the project also features peer leadership and education. During the summer, two local 17-year-olds have worked daily at the health center with up to a dozen youngsters who drop by after day camp.
"One day we just sat down and played cards with them," said one of the peer leaders, James Roberson 3d, who will be attending Valley Forge Military Academy in Pennsylvania in September. His father is the associate minister at the Mount Lebanon Baptist Church in Peekskill.
"We talk with them, but we don't try to tell them what's right or wrong," James Roberson said. "We are not like Big Brothers, Big Sisters or big whatever.
"If they want to talk about something, fine. They brought up domestic violence, so we talked about it. What we do is show them the consequences of some of their choices and try to build up their self-esteem."
 
Help to Relieve Stress
 For his colleague, Eric Bannister, who will be attending Hampton University in Virginia in the fall, the main purpose of his work is to provide a safe and secure place for the youngsters.
"James and I have an understanding of what's going on in the community," he said. "We are here to help them relieve stress. It's not meant to be formal."
During the summer, 19-year-old Deronn Jones, who will be a student at Westchester Community College in September, helped organize various programs, including educational sessions on H.I.V., AIDS and drug and alcohol abuse.
One recent steamy evening, when the rumbles from just-finished thunderstorms still echoed in the damp air, 10 youngsters gathered in the basement offices of the health center to talk about drugs. The free-ranging discussion, which included the personal testimony of a recovering addict and graphic slides of addicts injecting themselves with heroin, appeared to have an impact on its audience.
Reginald Austell, 16, of Peekskill, who attends the Harvey School in Katonah, said he "knew a lot of this stuff -- but it was good."
He added: "I learned a lot about the effects of drugs. A lot of people don't know what drugs are doing to them."
Keeping the messengers, and the message, close to the community is one of the project's goals. "A lot of young blacks have nothing to guide them," said Terry Harris Sr., a senior maintenance worker at Friedman Rehabilitation Institute for Children in Ossining who was interviewed at a previous mentor program about spirituality.
"They need people to be there in the community. I really hope a lot of people come and see how minorities are helping each other," Mr. Harris said.
 
Keeping Students in College
 Minority males often need extra support and help when they enter college.
A two-year-old program to help such students stay in school has helped the College of New Rochelle win national recognition. About 200 students out of a population of 1,800 are enrolled in the program at two of the college's seven campuses.
"We have had a retention program for everyone since 1988, but in 1992 we targeted minority males," said Dr. Bessie Blake, dean of the college's School of New Resources, which is geared to adult students.
"We offer tutorials and academic support, but we also do stress management and personal-finance issues with these students," she said.
Dr. Blake continued: "We added a male support group because those students who had dropped out said they could have used it. This program has had a positive impact for the female students involved because it often helps get their significant other involved."   MERRI ROSENBERG

LOAD-DATE: August 21, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Taking part in mentor training session of Peekskill Area Health Center program for minority male youths: from left, Richard Sabune, adviser; Jeannette Phillips, executive vice president; Terry Harris, mentor; Eric Bannister, peer leader, and Larry Hilton, mentor. (Susan Harris for The New York Times)

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August 23, 1994, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

CHRONICLE

BYLINE: By ENID NEMY 

SECTION: Section B;  Page 4;  Column 5;  Style Desk 

LENGTH: 190 words

ANN JORDAN of Lake Ronkonkoma, L.I., is planning to go to college this fall, but she can't make up her mind what to study. She is considering taking history, but that's not written in stone. Originally, she had thought about computers but "it didn't seem sensible," she said. She then considered law but, in her own words, "I wouldn't live long enough to graduate."
Ms. Jordan is 92, and the classes she hopes to attend at Dowling College in Oakdale, L.I., will be her first college experience. A high school graduate, she retired from Con Edison 30 years ago after 35 years there as a secretary. 
 Her adventure in higher learning was partly prompted by the Gershow Recycling Corporation of Brookhaven, L.I., which earlier this year established an informal scholarship program for senior citizens. Kevin Gershowitz, a vice president of the company, said the $500 contribution to Ms. Jordan was a way of "giving back something to senior citizens who have contributed so much to all of us."
Ms. Jordan said that she is in "fine health" and that she has a sister who is 95. "We didn't smoke cigarettes," she added.   ENID NEMY

LOAD-DATE: August 23, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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August 24, 1994, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

HEALTH WATCH;
Exercise Prevents Hemorrhage in the Elderly

BYLINE: AP  

SECTION: Section C;   Page 8;   Column 3;   National Desk;   Health Page

LENGTH: 775 words

THE potential benefits of regular physical exercise for older people continue to mount: reduced risk of heart attack, high blood pressure, arthritic pain, fractures from falls, among others. Now a research team from the National Institute on Aging and the University of Iowa has found in a three-year study of more than 8,200 people 68 and older that regular moderate activity like walking or gardening can reduce the risk of severe gastrointestinal hemorrhage.
The research team, headed by Dr. Marco Pahor, who has since gone back to Rome, reported that those who took frequent walks were half as likely to develop this often-fatal condition as were inactive people of the same age. They suggested that exercise prevented hemorrhage by improving the flow of oxygen-rich blood to the gastrointestinal tract. This, in turn, can reduce the risk of bleeding caused by insufficient oxygen under a variety of circumstances, including the body's usual reaction to stress. Furthermore, by stimulating bowel function, exercise may reduce a person's chances of developing several intestinal disorders, including ulcers and diverticulosis, all of which increase the risk of hemorrhage. 
 Although only a small percentage of participants in the study regularly took part in vigorous activity, the researchers found no special benefit in preventing bleeding associated with activities more strenuous than walking. The study findings were published in today's issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association.  JANE E. BRODY
 
 
Poor Sleep in Smokers
 Smoking not only can kill but also detracts from the quality of life. A survey of more than 3,500 adults in Wisconsin found that people who smoked were more likely than nonsmokers to suffer from a variety of sleep disturbances, including difficulty falling asleep, difficulty waking up, daytime sleepiness and nightmares.
The researchers, David W. Wetter and Dr. Terry B. Young of the University of Wisconsin at Madison, suggested that smoking's effects on sleep could trap smokers in a vicious cycle, with the symptoms of sleep disturbance -- depression, fatigue and impaired ability to think, which resemble the effects of nicotine withdrawal -- possibly motivating the desire to smoke. Their findings were published last spring in the journal Preventive Medicine.
Both men and women who smoked were more likely than nonsmokers to have trouble falling asleep and waking up. Women who smoked more often found themselves plagued by daytime sleepiness, and men who smoked were more likely to have disturbing dreams, including nightmares. The researchers suggested that various effects of smoking, including the stimulant effects of nicotine, nightly nicotine withdrawal and breathing difficulties associated with smoking, might increase the risk of sleep disturbances among smokers.
It is also possible, they wrote, that frequent sleep disturbances may increase a person's desire to smoke, since those trying to cope with the problems of nonrestorative sleep, difficulty waking up and daytime sleepiness findings, may turn to smoking as a "remedy." JANE E. BRODY
 
 
Exercise and Fat
 Dr. Jorge Calles, an endocrinologist at the University of Vermont, offered what he called the first carefully controlled study to show that fat burning increases significantly with exercise, even if people overeat.
He reported his findings yesterday at the Seventh International Congress on Obesity.
It is well known that people burn more fat if they begin to exercise while keeping their food intake constant.
The study supports the idea that exercising can help people lose weight, which has been the subject of debate among obesity specialists, Dr. Calles said. "There's no question about the cardiovascular benefits, and no question exercise is helpful for people with diabetes," he said. "But for treatment of obesity, there is a debate."
Dr. Calles's study involved 20 people. Some were overfed by 1,000 calories a day without being allowed to exercise, while others were overfed and assigned to do just enough exercise to compensate for the excess calories.
In those who were overfed without exercise, the amount of fat burned dropped from the equivalent of 518 calories a day to 97 calories. The burning of carbohydrates rose.
In those who were overfed and who exercised, fat burning rose from the equivalent of 406 calories a day to 685, while the burning of carbohydrates fell.
The studies so far have been done on people with normal weights, said Dr. Calles, who plans to do similar studies with obese subjects to see if they react differently to exercise.   (AP)

LOAD-DATE: August 24, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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August 27, 1994, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

FLIGHT FROM CUBA: THE DRAGNET;
Cubans Rescued From Rafts Ask Simply, Where To Now?

BYLINE: By MIREYA NAVARRO,   Special to The New York Times 

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

LENGTH: 1298 words

DATELINE: ABOARD U.S.C.G.C. GRAND ISLE, off Florida, Aug. 26

Less than three hours after setting out from Key West amid thunder and under darkening skies, the Coast Guard cutter Grand Isle encountered a first raft in the Florida Straits. It was empty except for what appeared to be a dead dog, its brown coat shiny wet.
Over the next six hours on Thursday, the cutter found nine occupied rafts among many more "empties" and rescued 56 Cuban refugees who had been at sea as long as four days. They included two elderly men, six women and a 2-year-old boy sucking on a blue pacifier and wearing sagging diapers and a red T-shirt emblazoned with the words "Atlantic Ocean" over a maritime scene. 
 The first question the refugees asked was always the same: Where were they going? Most, according to interpreters on board, thought they would be taken to the United States, just like thousands of other Cuban refugees for so many years before them. Some asked how long it would take to get to "the base in Florida."
The officers who replied made no mention of the refugees' destination: the United States naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. All that the crew of 16 coastguardsmen and 4 marines would tell them was that they would be transferred to another ship. Then, as a precaution against unrest, their compasses were confiscated, an effort to keep them from recognizing that they were not headed north.
The 56 refugees picked up by the Grand Isle were among more than 1,600 plucked from the sea by American vessels on Thursday as the exodus from Cuba continued despite worsening weather that made the refugees' voyage increasingly life-threatening.
But the weather, which has grown progressively stormy over the last three days, has begun to have some effect, however temporary, on the refugee flow. The Coast Guard said this evening that only 414 Cubans, about a quarter of Thursday's total, had been lifted from their rafts today as of 6 P.M.
Conditions in the Florida Straits were made all the worse by winds that blew from the east, bucking the current of the Gulf Stream and causing whitecaps that swelled to 10 feet. The waves dumped water on makeshift rafts and made seaborne rescue harder than it had been in recent days.
For search aircraft, too, the job became more difficult, because their crews had a hard time distinguishing between the whitecaps and the tiny rafts, which were already tough enough to see. And not only did drifting squalls kick up winds as high as 40 knots, their curtains of rain shrouded parts of the seascape from the airborne searchers.
 
Specks From Nowhere
 From the deck of the Grand Isle on Thursday, rafts seemed to appear on the horizon out of nowhere, carrying bobbing figures barely discernible through binoculars.
Once on board the cutter, the refugees were frisked by officers wearing rubber gloves, and their bags were searched. Knives, wrenches, syringes and other potential weapons were confiscated. The Cubans were given water, blankets and plastic cups of rice and red beans.
Sitting close to one another as the marines kept watch and tended to requests for more water or a trip to the bathroom, the refugees resembled a docile, quiet school class, clad in orange life vests provided by the crew. One young couple talked in low voices, the man's arm wrapped around the woman's shoulders. Two men took drags off the same cigarette, passing it back and forth. A woman counted money that she had taken out of a small plastic bag.
Most wore long pants and long-sleeved shirts, by now dirty, many of them shredded. Many men were barefoot. Their faces burned brown and orange by the sun, they looked dazed and fatigued but kept alert to the crew's every move.
Asked what had prompted him to get on a raft in an effort to cross at least 90 miles of perilous sea, one of the men, Roberto Ruiz, 34, answered in one word: "Hunger."
 
Many Empty Rrafts
 The 110-foot Grand Isle, whose home port is Gloucester, Mass., was on her second trip sweeping the water for rafts. On her first mission, earlier in the week, she had picked up nearly 300 "migrants," as the officers call the refugees, in 30 hours of patrolling just off Key West.
This time she swept to within 16 miles of the Cuban coast, and the blip on the radar screen or the speck through the binoculars that caused her constantly to switch direction or slow her speed usually turned out to be a raft that was empty. Because other cutters were in the area, the crew's assumption was that the unoccupied rafts, the occasional lone inner tube or the square of foam that floated by like discard signaled earlier rescues and not death.
Although the rafts are generally occupied by no more than three or four people each, the Grand Isle encountered one carrying 15 men on Thursday afternoon. The ensuing rescue was one of her most difficult. The men kept missing the lifeline that the crew tossed to them, and, with strong winds and seven-foot waves, the seas were too rough to launch the cutter's 12-foot inflatable motorboat.
"Grab it; come on, guys, that's it," Petty Officer Bryan Miller mumbled as he looked down from the bridge. "It's unbelievable what they're putting themselves through."
Finally, on the fourth attempt, the men managed to tie the lifeline to metal on the violently rocking raft, and it was pulled alongside the cutter. Four of the men did not wait for life vests to be tossed to them before grabbing a cargo net and clambering on board. There were no injuries, only complaints of pain and seasickness.
 
Staccato of Drama
 Over the Grand Isle's radio, communications from other cutters blared snippets of drama played out elsewhere at sea:
"A pregnant woman, four to five centimeters dilated."
"Two broken arms."
"Four migrants -- three adult males, one adult female. Inner-tube-tied raft. We lost visibility in rainswell. You want to head over and check them out?"
The Grand Isle was directed to some rafts by other cutters and, in the case of the 15 men, by airplane pilots from the volunteer group Brothers to the Rescue.
Two levels below, on the mess deck, as they took breaks and played video games, some rescuers tried to reconcile the excitement, even the fun, of their mission with their feelings for the people whom they saw taking such risks.
"Unless you're here grabbing them, you don't have a grasp of how vast it is," said Petty Officer Bill Cutchens, a deck supervisor. "Their desperation is awesome. We as Americans cannot fathom it because we don't have anything to compare it to."
As the sun set shortly after 6 P.M., the Grand Isle approached the Clark, a Navy frigate that would take the refugees to Guantanamo, on Cuba's southeastern coast, where they would be held indefinitely. Navy officials say it is in such transfers between ships that the refugees are first told where they are going, although otherCoast Guard cutters report that more and more of the refugees already know their destination when they set out from Cuba on their rafts.
The group on the Grand Isle -- almost all of them men, almost all in their teens, 20's or 30's -- lined up for the transfer, blankets in plastic wrap under their arms. They carried few belongings, and a man looked frantically for an orange "tube" where, he said, he had carried all his legal papers. Without finding it, he crossed over to the frigate, where a white tarpaulin on the deck sheltered him and the others.
By order of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, contact between the press and the refugees was kept at a minimum. But as he left the cutter, one of the refugees, Mr. Ruiz, was asked what he hoped for.
"To uplift myself," he said.
"To improve," whispered the man behind him, unsolicited.
The 2-year-old boy just pointed to the gigantic gray ship above, his green eyes opened wide.

LOAD-DATE: August 27, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photos: When the Coast Guard cutter Grand Isle encountered 15 Cuban refugees on a single raft on Thursday afternoon, rough seas made it difficult to rescue them. Finally, though, after four attempts to throw them a lifeline, they clambered on board. There were no injuries. (Pool photo by Mike Stocker); Empty rafts, like these two spotted yesterday south of Key West, are a common sight to Coast Guard crews on patrol off Florida. And it is not always evident whether the refugees they carried were rescued or died. (Keith Meyers/The New York Times)(pg. 4); Cuban refugees on a makeshift raft fighting high seas about 40 miles south of Key West yesterday. (Keith Meyers/The New York Times)(pg. 1)

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August 27, 1994, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

Stranded, for Security's Sake;
Bridgeport Residents Cry Racism as Mall Limits Bus Service

BYLINE: Special to The New York Times 

SECTION: Section 1;  Page 25;  Column 2;  Metropolitan Desk;  Second Front

LENGTH: 1106 words

DATELINE: TRUMBULL, Conn., Aug. 26

On a winter's night last year, the illusion of security that shopping malls treasure was shattered when gunfire broke out between teen-agers at a bus stop outside the 200-store Trumbull Shopping Park here.
Now, in an effort to restore that sense of security, the mall has decided to prohibit buses from stopping on mall property on Friday and Saturday nights after this weekend, effectively halting bus service from inner-city neighborhoods of Bridgeport at those times. 
 The move has prompted charges of racism, but mall officials say they have little choice.
"Customers are afraid to come to the mall because of the hundreds of young people who congregate here, particularly on Friday and Saturday nights," said the mall's general manager, Gary Karl.
 
Transit District to Go to Court
 "Merchants are losing business," he said, "and our goal is to reduce large numbers of youth coming at the same time simply to hang out at the mall. Eliminating the buses during those peak times is just one part of a multifaceted program we are undertaking."
But the Greater Bridgeport Transit District, which operates the bus service, said the decision discriminates against the disabled, the elderly and members of minority groups. It said that the move would cost the district $100,000 a year in lost revenue, and that it planned to seek a temporary injunction in Federal court early next week to retain the bus service.
The Transit District's lawyer, Thomas J. Weihing, said eliminating the bus service would violate the constitutional protections of freedom of assembly and equal protection under the law.
"How do you get elderly people and handicapped people down the hill and to the mall without the bus service?" Mr. Weihing said. "I guess they've got to be pretty desperate to try something like this."
One Transit District board member, Wilfred Murphy, said: "This is flat-out racism. Most of the people who use the buses come from the inner city and it is their only means of transportation. It's a subtle apartheid that is really going to hurt the handicapped and elderly the most. The kids will still find a way to get to the mall anyway."
All the buses to the mall come from Bridgeport. Eliminating the stop at the mall would mean that passengers would have to walk about a quarter-mile on a hill, with no direct walkway to the mall.
While large groups of teen-agers pose a problem for malls throughout the country, curtailing bus service has not been tried before, said mall security consultants and a shopping center trade group.
"There are malls that have restrictions and codes of behavior, but I've never heard of a mall trying to keep anybody out by eliminating bus service," said Mark Schoifet, a spokesman for the International Council of Shopping Centers, a New York-based trade association representing 1,800 enclosed regional malls.
"Malls everywhere are in a real quandary regarding this issue," Mr. Schoifet said. "Teen-agers visit malls more than any other demographic group and are its future customers, but their presence in very large numbers has also become a major concern because some can at times be bothersome to other customers and employees."
John T. Horn, senior marketing director for Kroll Associates, one of the largest private security companies in the world, said there are more conventional ways to solve the problem, including increased security, electronic surveillance and strict behavior codes.
"Curtailing access to the mall seems to be contrary to what the merchants would want," said Mr. Horn, who has been in the security consulting business for 35 years. "These things don't develop overnight, and the problem is not going to go away overnight, either. You need a long-range plan."
 
Additional Plans
 Mr. Karl said that curtailing bus service is part of a long-range plan that includes beefing up security and enrolling the guards in a new training program run by the state police, as well as hiring local police officers as guards and adding an upgraded $100,000 electronic security system.
Mr. Karl said the shooting last year, in which a Bridgeport youth shot another youth in the leg, as well as continued disruptive behavior by teen-agers, led to the decision to limit the bus service. An earlier plan to eliminate bus service after 5 P.M. was abandoned last year.
"The shooting led to a feeling that we needed to study the entire issue of teen-agers congregating in the mall," Mr. Karl said. "We felt it was not reasonable to allow the public or our employees to feel they are in any kind of jeopardy."
Some merchants said business had dropped sharply since the shooting and pointed to the increasing presence of roaming youths as one of the reasons.
"Business was off nearly 25 percent in the first half of the year," said Ted Healy, owner of Gloria Jean's Gourmet Coffee, "but it's coming back directly as a result of the mall security program. The new security measures, combined with better managing of the bus traffic, should help the merchants and make it better for customers and employees."
 
'Who Else Uses These Buses?'
 But some customers and employees said curtailing the bus service would hurt riders who need the service most, while having little impact on the number of teen-agers in the mall.
"When they cut down on the buses, I'm going to have to stop shopping here," said Tracy Jackson of Bridgeport as she waited at the mall for a late-afternoon bus home. "The problem is the people in Trumbull don't want blacks and Puerto Ricans coming to their mall. Who else uses these buses?"
Sondis Green, 21, of Bridgeport, who works at a shoe store in the mall, said he would probably have to quit if the bus service is curtailed. "I don't have a car and I have no other way to get to work," he said. "It would be pretty devastating to lose this job. It would hurt a lot of people who work here, a lot of people who have no other way of getting home."
Teen-agers at the mall said curtailing the buses would not prevent them from getting there.
"The kids who come here regularly will find a way, you can bet on that. They'll walk, get rides, do whatever it takes," said 14-year-old John Leonetti of Milford. He said that malls have become modern-day gathering places for teen-agers.
"I come here three or four times a week, to hang out with my friends, to meet girls and to just have a good time," he said. "They say they don't want us to be here, but they have the arcade, the food court and the movies. Who are they trying to kid? Without us, they would have no business and we would just be hanging out on the streets."

LOAD-DATE: August 27, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: In an effort to restore a sense of security to shoppers at the Trumbull ( Conn.) Shopping Park, the mall has decided to prohibit buses from stopping there on Friday and Saturday nights. Youths caught the bus home from the mall. (George Ruhe for The New York Times)

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August 29, 1994, Monday, Late Edition - Final

FLIGHT FROM CUBA: THE CUBANS;
Cuba Patrolling Beaches to Keep Children Off Unseaworthy Rafts

BYLINE: By MARIA NEWMAN 

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

LENGTH: 1265 words

DATELINE: HAVANA, Aug. 28

For the first time since thousands of Cubans began to flee the country by boat more than two weeks ago, President Fidel Castro's security forces were patrolling the beach today, warning departing Cubans not to take children aboard their rickety boats.
The order to keep children from risk came in a message from Mr. Castro published today in Juventud Rebelde, Cuba's only Sunday newspaper. 
 He said he would send border guards and internal police to patrol the beaches because "despite repeated warnings to people not to leave the country with children and adolescents aboard insecure boats, some people have continued to do so."
He said the guards would work on land to "persuade" people not to take children of high school age or younger on boats that were not seaworthy.  If the would-be refugees persisted, the guards would use force if necessary, but they would not resort to using arms, the message said.
Mercedes Pichardo, 35, said today that she was approached on Cojimar beach by a guard in camouflage uniform carrying a pistol. "He told us that it was prohibited to take children, pregnant women or old people on our boat, and if we did we would get four years in prison," she said.  She added that her children are 19, 15 and 10 and the younger two will stay behind with their grandmother.
"It is very dangerous for children, so we leave them at home, but people are going to go anyway," she said.
Mr. Castro's message also said the forces would patrol Cuban waters in search of those who chose to defy the warnings on land.
Cubans who live near the coast and others who have been camping out on the beaches preparing to flee said that, until today, no security forces had interfered with the surge of people making their way to the Florida Straits after Mr. Castro relaxed his measures to keep Cubans from fleeing and President Clinton tightened his policy on admitting Cuban refugees.
The patrols were not stopping every attempt to leave the island. Just before sunset five men carrying a raft on their shoulders walked toward the harbor in downtown Havana, near where anti-Castro protests on Aug. 5 set off the current exodus of refugees. As the men approached the shore, about 3,000 people poured out of their apartment buildings to cheer them on. Police officers appeared and demanded the credentials of foreign journalists, but did not interfere with the crowd. No arrests were made and in the confusion, the men pushed out to sea.
The mass migrations began after a speech by Mr. Castro after the protests, when he told Cubans that if they wanted to leave, he would not stop them. Cuba has allowed some people to travel outside the country, but every year some escape illegally by taking to the sea and evading the naval patrols in coastal waters.
Since the speech, the United States Coast Guard has reported picking up nearly 17,000 fleeing Cubans. No one knows exactly how many people have perished in the seas, but officials say children were certainly among them.
The new patrols arrived as word spread up and down the beaches and throughout Havana that President Clinton agreed on Saturday to talks with Cuba on immigration issues.
On the rocky beaches of Cojimar, where Cubans eager to put to sea were waiting for better weather, the news blared out of Raquel Perez Ruiz's house, where she had her radio tuned to Radio Marti for all to hear.
"I am so happy," said Mrs. Perez, who is 61 years old. "They should have talked a long time ago. There has already been so much Cuban blood shed."
The stormy weather that had kept people from fleeing this weekend did not improve, but some people waiting on the beaches said the news of the talks was one more reason to speed their departure, for fear that the political climate would change.
"They say that if they talk, Mr. Castro will close off the coast," said Mayoris Ramirez Ochoa, hurrying to gather up her meager belongings. "So everyone is talking of leaving today."
 
Negotiations Bring Hope
 For others, however, the idea of talks represented hope for Cuba. Perhaps now, they said, there was at least a wedge in the door that the United States long ago closed on relations with Cuba, a policy that many here believe has led to hardship. Perhaps now there would be no need to go.
"This is a disgrace, for people to be throwing themselves into the ocean in search of a better way of life," said Ana Rosa Hidalgo, 39, as she sat on a rubber inner tube on the beach.
"Both of them, Mr. Clinton and Fidel Castro, have the means to come up with a better immigration policy to avoid all these deaths.
"If I were there," said Mrs. Hidalgo, who worked as a guard on a military base, "I would ask Mr. Clinton why he is imposing this embargo on us. It is not hurting Castro's people but only the common people of Cuba."
News reports about the talks were sketchy in this country where the Government controls communication. Yet as the word spread, Cubans were debating whether the talks had come about as a result of strong leadership on Mr. Castro's part as his country faces its toughest economic challenge in three decades.
 
'A Good Plan' by Castro
 "It was a good plan on Castro's part if there is now going to be some dialogue," said Alberto Ruiz, Mrs. Perez's grandson, who is in the military. "If what I hear is true, the United States was not allowing as many Cubans to visit as they had visas to give."
He also said he hoped the talks would lead to negotiations on other matters, like the United States trade embargo against Cuba.
In Havana, Maria de la Caridad Cabrera, a day care worker, strolled down a Havana street with her granddaughter today, the Sunday before the start of the school year.
"All the people here are glad that the two sides are going to talk," she said.
 
Building Boats at Home
 At a garden restaurant, children celebrated a birthday. And at a restaurant that accepts only dollars, young Cubans in fashionable sports clothes munched on cheeseburgers and sipped TropiColas. At the same time, the sounds of construction were everywhere as people worked feverishly to build boats, some working in their front yards. Construction was underway in downtown Havana and for miles along the shore east of the city.
"Cuba is hungry," Mrs. Cabrera. "There is no food here. We don't have enough shoes or clothing for the young people." .
"Everyone would stay if there were enough food and clothing and medicine in Cuba," she said.
Mrs. Cabrera said the country is much worse off than before the revolution. But she said that this is partly a result of the damage done by the embargo. Mr. Castro, she said, has done his best.
"I am a Fidelista," she said. "We must have patience with him, because he will come through for us."
 
'A Circus, a Farce, a Disaster'
 But others were more bitter, compaining that Mr. Castro has led the country into severe food shortages, declining medical care and routine fuel shortages.
"What do you know, my love?" a man, who said his name was Rene, asked angrily. "Do you know what it's like to live under a dictatorship?"
"You outsiders come and you stay in your good hotels and you eat your food that most Cubans can't eat and you don't see that this is all a circus, a farce, a disaster," he said.
Rene, who works as a lineman for the Government electrical company, said the reason there is not more protest against Mr. Castro is that people are afraid to speak up.
"Remember that Mr. Castro is an intelligent man," he said. "He has created the most perfect system of repression in the world."

LOAD-DATE: August 29, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photos: This field of tents at Guantanamo Bay naval base, photographed on Saturday, is home to thousands of Cuban refugees picked up at sea. (Pool photo by Joe Marquette)(pg. A6); On a beach near Havana, a tearful Ana Rosa Hidalgo tried to persuade her son, Jose Mared Hidalgo, not to risk his life fleeing on a rickety boat. (Wesley Boxce/JB Pictures, for The New York Times)(pg. A1)
 
Graph: "TALLY: Fleeing Cuba" shows cuban refugees picked up by the Coast Guard each day from Aug. 1st to the 28th and Cuban refugees housed at Guantanamo bay each day from Aug. 24th to the 28th. (Sources: Immigration and Naturalization Services, United States Coast Guard)(pg. A6)

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August 29, 1994, Monday, Late Edition - Final

Stamford's Elderly Keep Fighting for a Center

BYLINE: Special to The New York Times 

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

LENGTH: 835 words

DATELINE: STAMFORD, Conn., Aug. 28

Most communities in Connecticut have senior citizen centers, but this Gold Coast city, headquarters to many international corporations, is not one of them.
For more than a decade, older residents have been fighting for a center, and even though the city has agreed to provide a former Board of Education building as a site and has set aside $1 million for renovations, the fight continues. 
 Last month 200 people turned out for a rally at the city's Government Center, where older residents, shouting slogans like "You'll be our age some day," called on the city to open a center.
But the Board of Finance has refused to provide the operating funds. With taxes going up 13 percent this year because of revaluation, board members say the city cannot afford the $160,000 the center would cost in its first six months of operation.
"It's not that I'm against the senior center," said Robert Harris, a Board of Finance member who voted against the center, "it's just that we cannot in good conscience provide funding for it in a year when we had to lay off 23 municipal workers."
 
'It's Always Something Else'
 Of Stamford's 108,000 residents, 20,000 are senior citizens. Still, one city administration after another has killed plans for a senior center.
During the early 1980's when Stamford had the money to operate a center, advocates say, it lacked the space. Now that it has the space, it lacks the money.
"It's always something else," said Velma Carter, 72, a retired nurse who has lived in Stamford for almost 50 years. "But the fact is we need a center so badly. Stamford is supposed to be so affluent, but we can't get something done for our seniors that is crucial to our health and well-being."
Mrs. Carter attends a limited senior program one day a week at a church and is a member of the Senior Citizens Council, a coalition of 30 groups fighting for the center. "We have some small programs," she said, "but it is an absolute disgrace for a city of this size and wealth not to have a comprehensive center. A lot of people are staying home watching television because they have nothing else to do."
Cynthia Matthews, executive director of the State Commission on Aging, agrees. "They need a center there," she said, "because there are a lot of moderate- and low-income people in Stamford who are isolated and need both the medical attention and socialization that such centers provide."
Such a center would offer health and nutrition programs, exercise classes, education, lectures and a variety of counseling programs, said William Rosenfield, 80, president of the Senior Citizens Council and co-chairman of the Senior Advisory Committee for the proposed center.
"We've been getting a raw deal in Stamford for a long time and things are actually getting worse," said Mr. Rosenfield, a retired dentist who has lived in the city since 1946. "We have visited a number of senior centers across the state and it's very disheartening to see the wonderful kinds of services elderly people are receiving just about everywhere else but Stamford."
One of those places is Stratford, a mostly blue-collar Fairfield County town half the size of Stamford, which operates one of the state's most comprehensive senior centers, the Baldwin Center. It provides an array of programs for between 400 and 500 people a day, said its director, Judith Henchar, former program director for Stamford's Commission on Aging.
She led the battle for a senior center in Stamford for nearly a decade.
"The whole thing is so pathetic and frustrating and after many years of feeling like we were hitting one dead end after another, I decided to accept this job in Stratford a few years ago," said Ms. Henchar, who still lives in Stamford and serves as an adviser to the senior council.
"After working here I am even more angry because in a smaller town with a much lower per-capita income than Stamford, this center is able to provide so many vital programs for seniors that should be happening in Stamford. It's a game of political football and the seniors in Stamford are the victims," she said.
City officials said the issue has become politicized, with the latest battle now going on between Mayor Stanley Esposito, a Republican who has reversed his earlier position and now supports the senior center, and the Republican-controlled Board of Finance, which recently cut proposed financing for the center and then refused the Mayor's request to transfer money from elsewhere in the $257 million fiscal 1994-95 budget or from a $2 million city emergency contingency fund.
"That fund is for unforeseen emergencies and this is not unforeseen and it is not an emergency," said the board's chairman, William McManus. "The Mayor knows the city can't afford to fund that program this year because of the budget he put together."
But Mayor Esposito says the blame does lie with the finance board. "We tried a number of ways to do it, but their minds are closed and now they're trying to blame me."

LOAD-DATE: August 29, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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August 30, 1994, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

Budget Office Sees Flaw in G.O.P. Health Plan

BYLINE: AP 

SECTION: Section A;  Page 18;  Column 4;  National Desk 

LENGTH: 680 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Aug. 29

The health care legislation proposed by House Republican leaders could have the unintended consequence of raising the cost of standard insurance plans and threatening their existence, the Congressional Budget Office said today.
Representative Robert H. Michel of Illinois, the Republican leader, is pressing Democrats to use his plan as the basis for Congressional action now that Speaker Thomas S. Foley, Democrat of Washington, has conceded that Congress is unlikely to pass the kind of broad-based plan proposed by President Clinton. 
 But the budget office said a crucial feature of the plan offered by Mr. Michel and Senator Trent Lott, Republican of Mississippi, "could result in rising premiums for standard policies."
Mr. Michel proposes expanding the availability of catastrophic health insurance plans that would pay for specified medical expenses exceeding $1,800 a year for an individual and $3,600 for a family. To cover out-of-pocket expenses, his proposal would allow people to establish tax-sheltered medical savings accounts.
 
Attractive to the Healthy
 The budget office said such a plan could be attractive to relatively healthy people, who expect few out-of-pocket expenses but still want insurance in case they become seriously ill.
The people left in standard plans, however, would be relatively sicker and older, driving the premiums for those plans so high that even sick people would find it cheaper to choose minimal-coverage plans to deal with catastrophic illnesses, the budget office said.
It concluded that in the long run, a catastrophic-insurance plan with an option for a medical savings account "that would be attractive to a large number of people could threaten the existence of standard health insurance."
The agency said that Mr. Michel's plan would be good for the budget deficit, reducing red ink by $11.3 billion over 10 years but that it would do almost nothing to curb growing health care expenditures and little to expand insurance coverage. At present, about 85 percent of Americans have insurance.
The analysis said an additional 2 percent of the population -- five million poor children and two million other poor people -- could acquire coverage as a result of subsidies proposed by Mr. Michel.
 
Self-Employed Deduction
 The Republican's plan also would allow self-employed people to deduct all of their health insurance premiums. It would limit awards for medical malpractice, require employers to offer, but not pay for, insurance, and restrict the right of insurance companies to deny coverage to sick people.
It would pay for the subsidies and tax benefits by increasing the Medicare premium for high-income elderly people, by making about one million legal aliens ineligible for Social Security and Medicaid and by limiting Social Security benefits for abusers of drugs and alcohol.
In a letter to Mr. Foley, Mr. Michel said the budget office report supported his contention that his bill was "the most reasonable, straightforward and realistic health reform proposal on the table."
"We still have the most appropriate bill to undertake the reforms that can be enacted this year," he wrote. "It should be the basis for action in the House and Senate in September."
In the meantime, Senator George J. Mitchell of Maine, the majority leader, said today that he remained optimistic that Congress would enact significant health care legislation. But Mr. Mitchell acknowledged that such legislation would fall short of the Clinton Administration goal of full coverage for all Americans.
"I think we can make a substantial amount of progress toward that goal and set us on the right path, and that's what I'm going to try to do," he said at a news conference in Portland, Me.
President Clinton's spokeswoman, Dee Dee Myers, said the President had not concluded that he could not get comprehensive health care legislation enacted.
"We're still hopeful that some sort of health reform will be passed this year," she said on Martha's Vineyard, Mass., where Mr. Clinton and his family are vacationing.

LOAD-DATE: August 30, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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August 30, 1994, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

Study Suggests Tests Can Predict Alzheimer's

BYLINE: By The Associated Press 

SECTION: Section C;  Page 3;  Column 5;  Science Desk;  Medical Science Page

LENGTH: 510 words

ELDERLY people who take a series of standard psychological tests can learn whether they have high or low risk of getting Alzheimer's or a similar disease, a study suggests.
The tests, given to outwardly healthy people, identified one group with an 85 percent rate of developing intellect-robbing dementia within four years, and another group who went on to get dementia at only a 5 percent rate over that time. 
 That means the tests can distinguish between those who should get a more detailed evaluation and make plans for their future care, and those who can be reassured that they have little short-term risk, said the lead author of the study, Dr. David Masur.
"If you score well on these tests, we can confidently say that over the next four years you probably won't be getting dementia," he said.
Dementia basically refers to significant declines in intellectual abilities like memory and reasoning. Alzheimer's disease is the most common kind of dementia.
Dr. Masur is an associate clinical professor of neurology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and the Montefiore Medical Center, both in the Bronx. He and colleagues reported on the results of the study in the August issue of the journal Neurology.
While other scientists are doing similar work, Dr. Masur's result "is probably the best in terms of predictive value so far," said Dr. Leonard Berg, chairman of the Alzheimer's Association Medical and Scientific Advisory Board.
"It's good work and it's important work," said Dr. Berg, a neurologist who directs the Alzheimer's Disease Research Center at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.
Dr. Masur and Dr. Berg called the tests useful for people in their 70's and 80's who are generally healthy and free of multiple medications that could impair their performance on the tests.
The study involved 317 healthy people whose average age was 79 and who at first showed no sign of dementia. Researchers gave them a battery of psychological tests and then followed them for four years. Then they went back and identified four tests that best predicted dementia.
In an interview, Dr. Masur noted that the tests did better at identifying people who would remain free of dementia than at pointing out those who would develop it.
He noted that 202 of the 253 participants who avoided dementia had high test scores predicting that outcome, while of the 64 people who became demented only 11 had shown a high risk by getting low test scores.
Of the 212 people with high test scores, 202 remained free of dementia, for a 95 percent predictive accuracy, whereas 11 of the 13 with poor test scores developed the condition, for an accuracy of 85 percent. The other 92 participants scored in a gray zone that did not allow a firm prediction of getting or avoiding dementia.
The two best-performing tests focused on memory for words and objects. Another called for rapidly naming as many items as possible from a category, like vegetables. The fourth involved rapidly finding and copying a series of symbols.

LOAD-DATE: August 30, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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August 30, 1994, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

Researchers Find a Diverse Face On the Poverty in New York City

BYLINE: By CELIA W. DUGGER

SECTION: Section A; Page 1; Column 5; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 1037 words

Challenging the stereotype of the poor as single mothers on welfare who soak up more and more tax dollars, a new study has found that only one in four poor households in New York City is headed by a single parent and that spending on welfare in the city, when adjusted for inflation, has declined by 20 percent since 1975.
In fact, the report, released yesterday by the Citizens Budget Commission, found that Medicaid, not welfare, had been the prime engine of growth in public spending on the poor in the city, particularly in the exploding costs of medical care for the disabled and the elderly poor. 
 In 1992, the most recent year studied, expenditures by the city, the state and the Federal Government for Medicaid in New York City amounted to $10.2 billion, far more than for any other antipoverty program and about three times as much as the total spending on welfare and food stamps combined.
The authors of the study say the results raise questions about whether government spends too much on medical care as compared with food, shelter and other basic needs. Runaway health care costs and eroding welfare benefits have skewed spending toward the elderly, and away from children in poor families, they say.
Citing United States census figures, the researchers noted that nearly one-third of the city's children lived in poverty in 1990, while 13 percent of the elderly were poor.
"Certainly the elderly are taking up the lion's share of the poverty spending," said Philip Thompson, an assistant professor of political science at Barnard College. He conducted the study with Charles Brecher, research director for the budget commission and a professor of public administration at New York University.
The budget commission, a nonprofit city government monitoring group that usually focuses on financial matters, decided to venture into the poverty debate after the 1992 riots in Los Angeles. The commission's trustees decided that the riots showed the dangers of ignoring the dispossessed, said Ray Horton, president of the commission.
The portrait of the poor that emerges in its report, "Poverty and Public Spending Related to Poverty in New York City," is a varied one. One-quarter of poor households were headed by single parents. Another quarter were headed by an elderly person, one in five consisted of single adults, one in six were headed by a disabled adult and one in eight by a couple.
"I certainly would have guessed a larger portion of households were single-parent families," said Mr. Brecher, who had previously specialized in the financing of city government, not in poverty. "The extent to which different kinds of households were represented among the poor was news to me."
The researchers also report that the poor are ethnically varied, though clearly minorities are disproportionately represented. Among poor households, 31 percent were headed by blacks, 28 percent by non-Hispanic whites, 20 percent by Puerto Ricans, 14 percent by others of Hispanic heritage and the balance by people from other minorities. Almost half the poor households headed by an elderly person were those of non-Hispanic whites.
 
Variance Among Boroughs
 The profile of the poor varied widely by borough. In the Bronx, which has the city's highest concentration of poor people, more than one-third of the poor households were single-parent families. In Manhattan, the largest group of poor households -- 30 percent -- consisted of single adults. In Queens, households headed by the elderly made up the largest group, representing 26 percent of the poor.
The study noted that government cash payments to the elderly lifted most out of poverty. In 1990, the poverty rate among households headed by the elderly would have been 63 percent without Social Security and other cash benefits. With those benefits, only 21 percent were classified as poor.
But a negligible number of poor families were lifted above the Federal poverty level by welfare payments. Because welfare is so politically unpopular, lawmakers in New York State and elsewhere in the country have refused to increase welfare payments to keep up with inflation.
As a result, between 1970 and 1992, the inflation-adjusted dollar value of welfare benefits in New York City declined by 30 percent, to $2,206 per person, according to the report. In 1992, overall spending on welfare in the city was 20 percent lower than in 1975 after adjustment for inflation, while the number of families on welfare increased by 6 percent during the same time.
Like many others who have studied the growing phenomenon of homelessness among families, Mr. Thompson suggests that the declining value of welfare payments to poor families is closely connected to their inability to pay the rent.
 
New York Is Typical
 Despite the Dickensian contrasts of wealth and poverty in the city, the study also found that the New York metropolitan area was about average nationally in the proportion of its households that were poor -- 11.7 percent. The diversity of the city's poor people was also mirrored in the national data.
Mr. Brecher said he had assumed that all social problems were different or worse in the New York area, and was surprised that it was actually quite typical in most ways.
The researchers did find, however, that poverty in the New York metropolitan area is more concentrated in the city than in every other large metropolitan area except San Antonio, making the contrast between city and suburb more pronounced than in other parts of the country. More than two-thirds of the New York metropolitan area's poor population live in the city itself.
In 1992, the city spent $4.8 billion of its own money on the poor, about 28 percent of all locally financed spending, the commission found. Each year from 1970 to 1992, the proportion of local spending devoted to the poor ranged between 25 and 29 percent.
From 1985 to 1992, the city-financed portion of Medicaid spending more than doubled, to $2.1 billion, about 45 percent of total city-financed spending for the poor.
The rapidly rising city spending on Medicaid highlights the importance of the city's push to have the state take over local Medicaid costs, Mr. Brecher said.

LOAD-DATE: September 15, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Graphs: "Poor in New York City" shows number of people below poverty level in each borough from '70 to '90; The amount of public assistance to the poor from '70 to '92; Who heads poors housholds in each borough (pg. B3)

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September 2, 1994, Friday, Late Edition - Final

The Real Truth of Poverty

SECTION: Section A;  Page 24;  Column 1;  Editorial Desk 

LENGTH: 492 words

Demonizing welfare mothers has become political sport, with politicians everywhere blaming them for moral decline, budget deficits and even poverty itself. A report this week by New York's Citizens Budget Commission challenges this stereotype in useful and enlightening ways. It shows that women on welfare make up a far smaller percentage of the poor than popular wisdom would have it. It also confirms what previous studies have shown: Medicaid, not welfare, is the prime source of runaway spending on poverty.
Welfare mothers are routinely portrayed as slackers who make up the bulk of the poor and soak up more money every year. The fact is that only one in four poor households in New York City is headed by a single parent; welfare payments, when adjusted for inflation, have actually declined by 30 percent since 1972. 
 The poor in New York are also more ethnically diverse than commonly supposed. Among the elderly, for example, nearly half of all households in poverty are headed by whites. Like earlier studies, the commission's report suggests that the failure of welfare payments to keep pace with inflation contributes to homelessness.
For years, Gov. Mario Cuomo has proposed that New York State assume the share paid by local governments for Medicaid, the program of medical insurance for the poor. That is because New York is one of the few states that makes local governments pick up part of the tab for Medicaid. The Governor's plan foundered partly because he would take back local sales or income taxes in exchange for picking up Medicaid, a prospect that worried many suburban legislators.
Medicaid siphons off money that might be devoted to education, training, infrastructure. Because it has a large poverty population, New York levies onerous state and city taxes that become a major factor in persuading businesses to locate elsewhere. This, over time, erodes the tax base.
New York City will spend about $2.5 billion on Medicaid in 1995. It ought to pay nothing. The nation's poor should be a national responsibility, with Washington paying the entire tab. Short of that, the state should pay Medicaid bills for all its poor citizens.
The commission's report provides a fresh rationale for a state takeover of Medicaid. Medicaid, it says, is the "largest and most rapidly growing expenditure for the poor." Again, welfare mothers and their children account for far less spending than one might think. The elderly and disabled make up less than a quarter of New York's Medicaid population but account for nearly 60 percent of total Medicaid costs.
New York City taxpayers have been hit hard by the need to pay for programs that cater to a large poverty population. But welfare mothers are not breaking the city's back. The costs of providing housing, education and police protection to an economically disadvantaged population are huge -- as are the runaway costs of health care for the elderly and disabled.

LOAD-DATE: September 2, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

TYPE: Editorial

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September 4, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

NEIGHBORHOOD REPORT: CO-OP CITY;
The Latest in Security: Spoke and Sprocket Patrol

BYLINE: By NORIMITSU ONISHI 

SECTION: Section 13;  Page 6;  Column 4;  The City Weekly Desk 

LENGTH: 357 words

The city police do it. So do the housing police. And as of last week, so do four private security officers in Co-op City: patrol on bikes.
Co-op City is hoping to draw the same benefits from the bicycle patrols reported by the larger police forces -- increased visibility, mobility and interaction. Co-op City, a sprawling community of high-rises and town houses, with its own shopping centers and schools, is the first private force in the Bronx to try bicycle patrols. Stuyvesant Town in Manhattan is thought to be the only other development in the city with a private force on bikes. 
 Despite a decline in reported crimes in the last year, many residents had complained that officers were not visible enough in the community, which is also patrolled by police officers from the 45th Precinct. So, shortly after becoming director of the 100-member force in June, Adrian Rosario introduced the bicycle patrols.
"It's good for public relations and visibility," Mr. Rosario said. "Every time I attend a public meeting, these issues come up." Whether the program, which cost about $3,000 to set up, will grow has not been determined yet, he added.
In the development's Bartow Mall the other day, mounted on white Raleigh mountain bikes, Officers Michael Scudder and Henry Sabater were keeping an eye on a group of teen-agers.
Officer Scudder, one of four officers who went through a weeklong bicycle patrol course, said: "I'm 36 and the perp's probably at least 10 years younger. So if I have to chase him, this gives me a better chance." On a bicycle, he said, he could get places cars can't go, like the narrow spaces between buildings.
Officer Sabater, in sporty blue shorts, made comparisons to regular duty: "You're in a car all day. How many people do you say hello to?"
A group of elderly men nodded to the officers. "Hey, no bike riding in the mall," one of them chided.
Lee Stein, a resident for 23 years, said he was reserving judgment. "It's too early to tell. But it's nice to see them floating around."
"They should all be carrying guns," another man grumbled. "They need guns out there."   NORIMITSU ONISHI

LOAD-DATE: September 8, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Henry Sabater, Anthony Schiffano, Johnny Rodriguez and Michael Scudder on patrol in Co-op City. (Susan Harris for The New York Times)

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September 5, 1994, Monday, Late Edition - Final

Serbs Drive 800 More Muslims From Homes

BYLINE: By CHUCK SUDETIC,   Special to The New York Times 

SECTION: Section 1;  Page 5;  Column 1;  Foreign Desk 

LENGTH: 577 words

DATELINE: SARAJEVO, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Sept. 4

Bosnian Serb militiamen stepped up the pace of "ethniccleansing" in Bijeljina today, driving about 800 Muslims, mostly women, children and elderly persons, across a battle-front, a Red Cross spokeswoman said.
"They were forced to walk through a no man's land, about two kilometers of woods and fields," said Lisa Jones, the Sarajevo spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Cross, adding that the refugees crossed into Government-controlled territory near the village of Djokici, in northeastern Bosnia. 
 Tension is also rising around Sarajevo, where Serbian fighters have increased small-arms and anti-aircraft fire on trucks and cars along the only supply route into the capital, a mountain road to the suburb of Hrasnica that links up with a tunnel under the United Nations-controlled airport.
United Nations officials said that in two incidents today, snipers fired at peacekeepers near the Olympic speed-skating rink where Pope John Paul II is to celebrate Mass during a visit here scheduled for Thursday. A United Nations spokesman said the first sniper fire originated from a Serbian rebel position, while the second probably came from a building held by the Bosnian Army.
 
400 Driven From Banja Luka
 This morning's expulsions from Bijeljina, the largest from the town since the Serbs first seized it on April 1992, came a day after the Serbs forced about 400 Muslims and members of other minority groups out of Banja Luka, in northwestern Bosnia, Ms. Jones said.
The Serbian militia has uprooted more than 4,000 Muslims from their homes in Bosnia since mid-July, despite protests from the leaders of the Bosnian Serb "republic" and the International Red Cross, Ms. Jones said.
"We have exhausted every avenue we had," she said. "Nothing has changed."
Ms. Jones said the Red Cross had used four-wheel-drive vehicles to ferry elderly people and children from the no man's land outside Bijeljina to a first-aid center behind Bosnian Army lines. From there, the displaced persons were being transported to a reception center in Tuzla, she said.
Muslims from Bijeljina said the "ethnic cleansing" is being carried out by Vojkan Djurkovic, a local Serbian militia leader who collects "fees" from the people expelled.
 
Draft-Age Men to Camps
 The Serbs have separated draft-age men from the other Muslims being expelled and have instead sent them to labor camps in Lopare, Piperi and other nearby villages, an International Red Cross official said, adding that the Serbs have refused to allow Red Cross delegates access to the camps.
"The young men had to pay 1,000 German marks and the others between 100 and 200 marks," Ms. Jones said, referring to the Muslims expelled today. "It didn't matter for the young men. Even the ones who paid were taken off the trucks and buses and taken away in the direction of Majevica."
Majevica is a mountainous area northeast of Tuzla where, Red Cross officials have said, the Serbs run labor camps.
Ms. Jones also said Bosnian Army officials were conscripted draft-age Muslim men in the group that had been expelled on Saturday from Banja Luka. The women, children and elderly people from the group were transferred to a shelter in the town of Bugojno, she said.
Ms. Jones said "they had to pay 20 German marks for a 'exit visa' " from the Serbs controlling Banja Luka. "They were allowed to take about 300 marks with them, plus some personal possessions," she added.

LOAD-DATE: September 5, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Map of Bosnia and Herzegovina showing location of Bijeljina.

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September 5, 1994, Monday, Late Edition - Final

Age Cannot Wither the Magic of Theater

BYLINE: By DIANA JEAN SCHEMO 

SECTION: Section 1;  Page 9;  Column 3;  Cultural Desk 

LENGTH: 1257 words

A small, soft-voiced woman of 80-odd years, cautiously bundled in a winter coat on a summer night, Hannah Smepvangers ignored the rain that fell in broken lines over the Delacorte Theater on Wednesday. Isabella Leniz disregarded the fatigue from holding a finger to her hearing aid, the only way to stop its strange tendency to whistle "Jingle Bells" and let her hear the rapid-fire parries of Shakespeare's Verona. Catherine O'Regan leaned closer in her front-row wheelchair, defying the arthritis that had been plaguing her 79-year-old bones all week long, to be captivated by a recalcitrant pup and dubious nuns parading before her.
Not all of them noticed the nudity or the mustaches on the nuns, or even the motor scooter that the director Adrian Hall dropped on "The Two Gentlemen of Verona." The next day, some did not even remember having been at the performance. But art's power to cheat time, to transport the spirit from earthly aches, was perhaps never so starkly demonstrated as by the elderly and infirm seizing what they could from this outdoor stage. 
 "On my floor, everyone is crippled up in the wheelchair," said Mrs. Leniz, who is 94. She tipped an ankle toward her walker, nicknamed "Hopalong Cassidy," and said: "Maybe I won't be able to do it tomorrow, because of my age. But as long as I can, I want to do everything."
The three women were part of a group from the Mary Manning Walsh Home for the elderly in Manhattan who went to see the "The Two Gentlemen of Verona" last week. The trip was organized by Hospital Audiences Inc., a nonprofit group that connects people in nursing homes, hospitals and mental health programs with New York's cultural life, either by bringing performers to the institutions or by taking patients out to parks, theaters and concert halls.
 
By Bus to the Delacorte
 This summer, the group has got tickets and arranged transportation for a different group to attend each of the performances in Central Park: Shakespearean plays, opera and classical music. It secures a place near the stage for wheelchairs and gurneys and transports patients in a 38-seat bus that can accommodate 10 wheelchairs or 5 beds and is outfitted with special shock absorbers that ease the ride over the city's bumpy streets.
The group was started by Michael Jon Spencer, who began by playing piano in state psychiatric hospitals 25 years ago. A graduate of the Mannes School of Music, Mr. Spencer's background was more music than medicine. When patients told him, "You're better than Thorazine," Mr. Spencer did not catch on at first. "I thought they meant Vladimir Thorazine, a pianist who had just been there," he said in his office.
Mr. Spencer calls culture "the chicken soup of the soul," and links the hunger for a song, a dance, a painting or a poem to a yearning for health itself. Music, researchers have suggested, can be reminiscent of the rhythms of the womb and the mother's heartbeat. Based on proportion and structure, music can serve as a kind of psychic antidote to the bodily disorders that illness represents, Mr. Spencer contends.
The organization provides other diversions as well, bringing performers into nursing homes, hospitals and shelters, taking blind people to museums that allow them to touch the works, supplying companions or cassettes to describe the scenes to blind people through a special headset they can wear to Broadway plays. It uses role-playing to teach people in shelters about AIDS prevention, job hunting and interviewing for an apartment, and runs workshops in painting, sculpture and dance. "The purpose isn't therapy; it's creativity," Mr. Spencer said.
 
And Also at Christmas
 At Christmastime, Mr. Spencer's group loads up the bus with patients and points it down Fifth Avenue, making it probably the only vehicle whose passengers pray to get stuck in traffic. A slow crawl turns out to be just the right pace for taking in department store windows, the lights at Rockefeller Center and the shopping throngs. The bus ends up at the World Trade Center for a light show just after sunset.
Mr. Spencer estimates his organization used its $3.6 million budget to expose some 357,000 people, the vast majority of them mentally ill, to the arts, or to take them on decidedly nonartistic, but hugely popular, trips to Bear Mountain or the races at Belmont Park over the last year.
It is in regularly taking people out of all sorts of confined settings that Hospital Audiences does what no other organization in New York does, and it is this -- allowing people to escape the monotony of institutional life -- that health experts sayis the strongest medicine against the assaults of age and illness. Even in the best of nursing homes, the sameness of a patient's room, a schedule that usually varies little from day to day and diets that are typically bland all combine to flatten the days, rendering them indistinguishable, said Honey Shields, director of recreational therapy at New York University Medical Center.
"You need that change to keep that sense of time," Ms. Shields said. "For many people who have Alzheimer's or short-term memory loss, social contact is the key to keeping their mind going."
 
It Takes One Night
 Jeanne McPartland, director of recreational therapy at Mary Manning Walsh, noted that outings like Wednesday night's create a buzz that livens the residents long after the trip ends. "You could hear about it straight for a week, that it's the best thing that's happened to them," she said. "It would be like us going to Europe for six weeks. One trip does that for them."
Elizabeth McCormick, a resident who jokingly gives her age as 40, praised Mr. Hall, the play's director. Ms. McCormick said that she worked in the theater in her younger days. "He introduced bits and pieces of Americana, modern feeling, that made it delightful," she said.
At Mary Manning Walsh, the schedule is peppered with classes on painting and ceramics, hobbies that Catherine O'Regan, for one, did not have the time to pick up while she was caring for her husband of 45 years, who died last year. Nor had she ever been to a Shakespeare play before.
Mostly, she plays Scrabble and watches television. She was napping, in fact, when a klatch of other residents roused her to alert her about the trip. (Ms. McPartland had kept it a secret, because rain threatened and she did not want to disappoint the residents with a last-minute cancellation.)
Mrs. O'Regan just had time to fix her hair and put on a bit of lipstick before heading out. She has to use a wheelchair because of her arthritis, though she hopes to get back to using a walker. She fights the arthritis and tries therapy to bring some strength back to a right arm left paralyzed by a stroke 16 years ago.
 
'A Part of It'
 She deemed the play "great," and said she "really felt a part of it." Then she paused a moment, as if trying to get to the heart of her thought. "I hope I never lose control up here," Mrs. O'Regan said, and tapped her temple. "Then I'll be lost altogether."
For some, the adventure proved too strenuous. Catherine O'Leary, who is 82 years old, watched the scattered rain with a worried eye before the play started. As Proteus set out for Milan, she fell asleep, her head dropping forward in her wheelchair. Ms. Smepvangers kept watch over her, fearing she would fall down; each time her head dropped, she touched Mrs. O'Leary's elbow to wake her, reaching for her in the silent camaraderie of women escaping death in the New York night.

LOAD-DATE: September 5, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Enjoying the show, Catherine O'Regan and Elizabeth McCormick of the Mary Manning Walsh residence. (C. M. Hardt for The New York Times)

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September 7, 1994, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

BUSINESS TECHNOLOGY;
Health Net Takes Interactive Plunge

BYLINE: By SABRA CHARTRAND,   Special to The New York Times 

SECTION: Section D;  Page 5;  Column 1;  Financial Desk 

LENGTH: 736 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Sept. 6

When -- if -- the interactive television future arrives, what might viewers do besides order movies and pizzas?
How about researching the symptoms of gallstones?
That is the idea with Health Net, an interactive television system demonstrated here today by a start-up company with technical assistance from the Microsoft Corporation and financial backing from the David Sarnoff Research Center. The Sarnoff center, formerly the research arm of the RCA electronics and broadcasting empire, is now an independent laboratory that conducts commercial research in telecommunications and computer technologies.
 
Data Base Building
 Although the system is still only a rough prototype, the developer, Interactive Health Network Inc. of Princeton, N.J., has compiled a computerized data base of text and videos on health topics for consumers: information about diseases and injuries, fitness and nutrition, preventive medicine and mental health. 
 The system shows cartoon-like faces across the bottom of the television screen -- a child, man, woman and an elderly person. Viewers with a remote-control device can select from these icons using a simple remote control with arrow keys and an enter button. Choosing the woman's face brings another list to the screen: updates, nutrition, fitness, breast cancer, menopause and stress. And choosing breast cancer brings informational videos to the screen that describe the disease's causes, symptoms, complications and treatments.
The Health Net system was demonstrated for the first time publicly today at a Washington conference on the "national information infrastructure," held by the Council on Competitiveness, a nonprofit industry group.
Steven B. Schlossstein, a former investment banker who is president, chief executive and founder of Interactive Health Network, is hoping that Health Net will get picked up by one or more of the five cable television or telephone companies planning to begin interactive television systems within the next year: the Bell Atlantic Corporation, Tele-Communications Inc., Time Warner Inc., U S West Inc. and Viacom Inc. The Health Net data base would be stored on centrally situated "video server" computers, from which viewers would download their choices.
 
Baby Boomers a Target
 The prospective audience for Health Net, Mr. Schlossstein said, includes the 81 million baby boomers just entering middle age, when health care concerns grow.
Already, computer networks like Compuserve Inc. and America Online Inc. have become increasingly popular forums in which subscribers using their personal computers and modems share information about health care. And several companies, including Hughes Communications Inc. are developing interactive video and computer information systems for hospitals, clinics and doctors' offices.
On the other hand, Whittle Communications L.P. last month canceled its Medical News Network, a video network for doctors, after testing the system for 18 months with 5,000 physicians. That service was not "interactive," however, and Mr. Schlossstein contends that the real market will be in providing medical information to consumers.
"Once people are described as being at risk or having a disease, they become highly focused on wanting to learn about that condition," Mr. Schlossstein said. "We've developed a system to give patients an additional source of information, or make patients more informed when they go to the doctor."
The system could raise a host of ethical questions, such as whether interactive television companies should practice medicine. Mr. Schlossstein sees the day coming when two-way cameras will let viewers at home show an injury or symptom to a doctor or nurse for a tele-diagnosis.
The advent of interactive television is comparable to the birth of shopping malls, said Larry Plumb, a spokesman for Bell Atlantic, which will begin hooking up homes in the Washington suburbs of Arlington and Alexandria, Va., to test systems by next year.
"A developer had the idea that shopping malls would be successful if he lined up anchor stores," he said. "You can open the shopping mall and have 40 or 50 little stores left to fill. Our test in Virginia is really with the anchor stores like video-on-demand.
"Once we get into homes with those, what will we fill up the other slots with?" Mr. Plumb said. "Health care is absolutely something we're considering."

LOAD-DATE: September 7, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: "We've developed a system to give patients an additional source of information, or make patients more informed when they go to the doctor," said Steven B. Schlossstein, founder of Interactive Health Network. (Dith Pran/The New York Times)

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September 9, 1994, Friday, Late Edition - Final

Grandparents Lack Child Aid

BYLINE: AP 

SECTION: Section A;  Page 22;  Column 5;  National Desk 

LENGTH: 288 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Sept. 8

Americans bringing up their grandchildren have trouble obtaining help from state welfare caseworkers even though many are clearly eligible for assistance, according to a report issued today by the American Association of Retired Persons.
The study by the A.A.R.P., the nation's largest organization of elderly people, documents the hardships faced by grandparents who are being asked to raise their grandchildren, often at a time when their own health is failing and their financial security at risk. 
 The group found a rising number of three-generation families, with homes headed by grandparents that included children under age 18 increasing by more than 50 percent in the last two decades, to 3.34 million in 1993 from 2.2 million in 1970.
In most cases, the mother of the children was living with the family. But in one-third of such families, neither parent was present.
The group based its study on Census Bureau data and its own telephone survey of a small sample of the estimated half-million Americans age 45 or older who are caring for a grandchild without the help of the parent.
These families, the study found, tended to be poor. More than half had annual incomes of less than $20,000, and more than a fourth lived at or below the poverty line. By comparison, 10.6 percent of families with two parents are below the poverty line.
Twenty-eight percent of the grandparents in such families collected welfare benefits. But the organization said others had difficulties when they sought Aid to Families With Dependent Children, the state-Federal welfare program.
The association said the problem was largely due to state welfare workers who "violate the law by refusing to follow Federal guidelines."

LOAD-DATE: September 9, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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September 9, 1994, Friday, Late Edition - Final

For the New York State Legislature

SECTION: Section A;  Page 26;  Column 1;  Editorial Desk 

LENGTH: 659 words

The New York State Legislature's poor record this year on budgetary and social issues leaves no doubt that Albany could use some shaking up. But who will do the shaking? The paucity of quality challengers taking on incumbents in next Tuesday's primary voting for safely Democratic Senate and Assembly seats is a disappointment. Some of the least worthy incumbents face no challenge.
Here are our endorsements in several of the livelier contests in New York City districts where a primary victory virtually guarantees election. 
 SENATE -- 27th District, Manhattan: The retirement of Manfred Ohrenstein, the Senate minority leader, has produced a three-way race. The most promising candidate is Catherine Abate, a respected Commissioner of Correction during the Dinkins administration. Ms. Abate has knowledge of criminal justice issues, and the resourcefulness to get things done.
Her opponents, Charles Dworkis, a former district assistant for Mr. Ohrenstein, and Anne Compoccia, president of Community Board 1, know the district and generally share Ms. Abate's progressive views. But they cannot match her experience.
ASSEMBLY -- 33d District, Queens: Barbara Clark, an eight-year Assembly veteran, has been most active on education and child care issues. Though she sometimes needlessly alienates her would-be allies, she has generally been an effective advocate for her constituents. Neither of her opponents, Harvey Elwood, a school counselor, or Stephen Jackson, a promising political newcomer, has made the case for unseating her.
37th District, Queens-Brooklyn: In her decade in the Assembly, Catherine Nolan has emphasized family and transportation issues, fighting for increased subsidies for mass transit. Her challenger, Pamela Fisher, the director of a senior citizens' center, seems capable, but she has not made a compelling case for dumping a reasonably effective incumbent.
47th District, Brooklyn: The challenger, Joseph Cardieri, a former District Attorney now in private legal practice, insists that the 22-year incumbent, Frank Barbaro, is out of step with the times and the district. But Mr. Barbaro has used his seniority to push issues of concern to his constituents. He deserves re-election.
51st District, Brooklyn: The incumbent, Javier Nieves, became vice chairman of the Black and Puerto Rican Legislative Caucus in his first term. But he can point to few other achievements and has alienated community leaders with his unpredictability. The challenger, Felix Ortiz, a former budget analyst for the city, has a firmer grasp of the issues and promises to be a more effective consensus builder. We favor Mr. Ortiz.
54th District, Brooklyn: Darryl Towns, another first-term incumbent, is off to a good start, actively promoting much-needed economic development efforts in his district. His opponents, F. Louis Caraballo, an attorney, and Anibal Ortiz, a former police officer, do not make a case for denying Mr. Towns a second term. We support Mr. Towns.
55th District, Brooklyn: In this race a lackluster 12-year incumbent, William Boyland, faces two challengers. Reginald Bowman, a community activist and school board member, is smart but can be divisive. Beatrice Jones, another community activist who runs a day-care center, is sincere but might not be effective in the rough-and-tumble world of Albany. Mr. Boyland gets our lukewarm endorsement.
68th District, Manhattan: After nearly 20 years in the Legislature, Angelo Del Toro's record should be more impressive. Although chairman of the Education Committee for four years, Mr. Del Toro only recently became energetic in pushing reforms on school custodians and teacher discipline. His opponent, Nelson Antonio Denis, is an attorney who speaks articulately about economic development and the need for expanding youth programs. While Mr. Denis is untested in office, he offers the possibility of much-needed change. We endorse him with hope.

LOAD-DATE: September 9, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

TYPE: Editorial

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September 12, 1994, Monday, Late Edition - Final

SENATE OPTIMISTS OFFER SOME HOPES FOR A HEALTH BILL

BYLINE: By ADAM CLYMER,   Special to The New York Times 

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

LENGTH: 1327 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Sept. 11

As they return from a two-week recess that began with universal health insurance legislation dead and incremental measures in critical condition, determined Senate optimists are still working to pass a measure that would insure about half the 39 million Americans who currently lack coverage.
The senators themselves will not be meeting until later in the week, but their staffs spent most of the time their bosses were away looking over the details of the plan offered by the self-styled mainstream coalition, a bipartisan group of about 20 senators, and making line-by-line comparisons with Democratic bills. 
 Senator John H. Chafee, the Rhode Island Republican who has led the bipartisan group, said on Friday that those talks had been going "quite well." Senator Edward M. Kennedy, the Massachusetts Democrat who has been the Senate's leading voice for national health insurance since 1970, said there were fewer sticking points than he had expected.
"We are much closer to agreement on many of them than had seemed possible," Mr. Kennedy said.
Still, a very steep uphill path lies before them. It is made especially difficult by the lack of enthusiasm for health care legislation that many Democrats have encountered at home, the fact that they would prefer campaigning for re-election to possibly futile efforts on health care and the pressure on President Clinton to take a firm position and make it clear that when he said he would veto a bill that fell short of universal coverage, he meant it.
But those are not the questions of the moment. Both Mr. Clinton and the House Democratic leaders are waiting to see what Senator George J. Mitchell of Maine, the majority leader, and Mr. Chafee think they can come up with before taking a position on their efforts.
Before the senators can agree, they have to find a way around the differences their aides have identified, including the unwillingness of the mainstream group to give states much leeway in trying changes, or the insistence of most Democrats that because a major source of money for the bill will be reductions in Medicare payments, some substantial new benefit for the elderly must be included.
If senators can overcome these, they will also confront two other hurdles: the antagonism of liberal groups that wanted more done and the parliamentary devices that could be used by Republicans who want even less, including the minority leader, Senator Bob Dole of Kansas.
"Life would certainly be made easier if Senator Dole found some parts of this, or all of it, acceptable," Mr. Chafee said wistfully. But Mr. Dole, appearing today on the CBS News program "Face the Nation," dismissed the mainstream plan as more than Congress could deal with this year.
 
Seeking at Least 30 Votes
 So, the simple fact is that Mr. Chafee's group needs at least 30 more votes to have a majority. And of senators outside their ranks, Democrats are far more likely than Republicans to shift their way, which in turn makes it inviting for the mainstream group to move a bit in the Democrats' direction.
Even if the senators conclude they can assemble a majority, and they could need 60 votes if die-hard opponents filibuster, it is far from clear that either the President or House Democrats will want the effort to go forward. One consideration for them is plainly that the longer this issue is kept alive this year, the more obvious and politically painful any ultimate failure would become. If the issue is to be buried, politics dictates burying it as soon as possible.
But both Mr. Clinton and Speaker Thomas S. Foley of Washington have said they could accept legislation that fell short of their original hopes of universal coverage, as long as it made progress in that direction and did not cause more harm than good.
Mr. Mitchell, also appearing on "Face the Nation," said today that Mr. Clinton had not given him any signals on what would be acceptable. He said that when he last saw the President on Labor Day, "What he told me was 'Go ahead and do the best you can, and then I'll take a look at the results.' And I think that's the approach he ought to take."
Even before Mr. Mitchell sits down on Wednesday with Mr. Chafee, who will return to Washington only after his primary on Tuesday, a campaign is underway to define their work as inevitably inadequate.
 
Opposition in Advance
 Various groups have begun holding press conferences to denounce incremental change -- as the Clinton Administration did when it thought it could get a bill that would insure everybody.
On Friday, for example, the Consumers Union warned that more harm than good could result from even well-intentioned moves like subsidies for the poor, the route the mainstream plan pursues to increase insurance coverage to about 92 percent of the population by the year 2004 from the current 85 percent. Gail Shearer, Consumers Union's manager of policy analysis, said such subsidies would provide incentives for people to stay poor.
Senator Paul Wellstone, an advocate of "single payer" systems in which the government levies taxes to replace insurance premiums and uses them to pay all medical bills, sent a letter on Thursday to other advocates of such universal coverage warning against partial steps.
Mr. Wellstone, a Minnesota Democrat, attacked the mainstream proposal as "an unworkable retreat" that imposed deep cuts in Medicare "with no corresponding promise of improvements for current Medicare beneficiaries."
That is plainly not Mr. Mitchell's view. "I'm hopeful that we are going to get a good bill," he said Friday, adding there were some differences "we've got to figure out a way to resolve those."
Some solutions have already suggested themselves. Mr. Mitchell's bill, which is technically before the Senate but is not going anywhere, has $48 billion in it for long-term care for the elderly and handicapped, while the mainstream proposal has only $10 billion. But aides to the mainstream group said they had been informally advised that their bill not only achieved the deficit reduction they sought by $100 billion but also saved another $85 billion over 10 years. Some of that could easily be used to sweeten the pot for long-term care.
Senator Kennedy said that as aides examined the details of the mainstream proposal on such issues as denying insurance coverage to people with pre-existing medical conditions and allowing associations who had insurance programs to continue them, the mainstream plan seemed much less menacing than they had initially thought. "The clarification of language in those areas has really been quite impressive," he said.
Even so, time remains a serious obstacle. The earliest that Mr. Mitchell, Mr. Chafee and other mainstream senators could reach an agreement is late this week. If a deal could be done that fast, there would still be only four weeks left until Congress is expected to quit for the year. Some Republicans would certainly try to filibuster.
But the current hope is for the Senate to act first, the House to act on the Senate bill, perhaps considering a few amendments on the floor, then not necessarily taking the time to go to conference, a step especially vulnerable to stalling tactics.
If the House is slighted by this approach, that is one part its own nervousness about taking a stand the Senate could later undercut, and one part Mr. Chafee's design. His group always feared that even if their bill made it through the Senate, House members in a conference would make the measure much more generous.
Mr. Chafee asserted that Senate Democrats understood his concern. "There is a recognition that whatever is done in the Senate, has absolutely got to hold in the House, and there has got to be a guarantee of that," he said.
That approach, of course, may just add to the difficulties of getting the House to act at all. Still, what the Senate is worrying about now is whether it can find its own path to agreement.

LOAD-DATE: September 12, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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September 13, 1994, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

Gene Study Suggests Why Cancer Is a Disease of the Elderly

BYLINE: By GINA KOLATA 

SECTION: Section C;  Page 5;  Column 1;  Science Desk 

LENGTH: 605 words

CANCER is overwhelmingly a disease of the elderly, and molecular biologists think they know why. As people age, the scientists theorize, they accumulate genetic errors in their cells that may eventually send them careering down the path to cancer.
But proof of this hypothesis has been hard to come by. Now one group of investigators, led by Dr. Gino Cortopassi, a molecular biologist at the University of Southern California, has found evidence consistent with the aging hypothesis for one common cancer of the blood cells: non-Hodgkins lymphoma. Cells with mutations that can lead to this cancer are 13 times more common in old people than in young people, Dr. Cortopassi and his colleagues have found. 
 Dr. Cortopassi and his colleagues are reporting their work today in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Non-Hodgkins lymphoma strikes about 37,000 Americans a year. Nearly all are elderly. In children under 5, fewer than one in 100,000 develop the cancer. Among 40-year-olds, the incidence is 1.2 per 100,000. But in 80-year-olds, there are 50 cases per 100,000.
 
Gene Linked to Cancer
 One gene that is associated with non-Hodgkins lymphoma is BCL2, a gene that when mutated, makes cells immortal. The idea is that a white blood cell has a BCL2 mutation that prevents it from dying after its usual life span of a few weeks. As the mutated cell remains in the bloodstream, it may accumulate other mutations and eventually pile up enough errors in its genetic material that it becomes cancerous.
Dr. Cortopassi and his colleagues looked at the rate of BCL2 mutations as people age. They examined blood from people, unafflicted by cancer, whose blood was being drawn for other reasons at the university. In addition, they examined spleens obtained on autopsy at the Los Angeles County Hospital. None of the spleens were from lymphoma patients.
The blood was from people ranging in age from newborn infants to those in their 70's. The spleens were from people who ranged in age from stillborn infants to an 85-year-old woman. Using polymerase chain reaction, a tool of molecular biology that enables researchers to pick out one mutated gene in one cell out of a million, Dr. Cortopassi and his colleagues looked for BCL2 mutations.
They found that there were 0.3 mutations per million cells in blood from people 20 and younger as against 3.93 mutations per million cells in those 65 and older. They found no BCL2 mutations in the spleens from the youngest autopsy patients but found 146 per million cells in the spleens from people over 60 when they died.
Dr. Cortopassi said these mutated cells persisted, as might be expected if the mutations made the cells immortal. He said he found the same mutated cells a year later when he looked again at blood from the same people.
 
Words of Caution
 Although the new data are consistent with the mutation theory of aging and cancer, some experts advised caution. The study did not prove cause and effect, they said. And individuals with BCL2 mutations may never develop cancer.
Dr. Arnold Levine, a cancer researcher at Princeton University, warned that "the consequences of these genetic mistakes is unclear." He added, "It's not so simple as to say that just because there is a mistake, you get cancer." In fact, he said, none of the dead people whose spleens were examined had had cancer, yet many had BCL2 mutations.
Nonetheless, Dr. Levine said, Dr. Cortopassi's work does support the genetic injury theory of cancer and aging. "It's an interesting idea," Dr. Levine said. "It doesn't prove it, but it is consistent with it."

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September 13, 1994, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

President Leads Swearing-In Of New Corps of Volunteers

BYLINE: By WILLIAM H. HONAN,   Special to The New York Times 

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

LENGTH: 820 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Sept. 12

Raising his right hand and beaming like a proud scoutmaster, President Clinton swore in a group of the first 15,000 members of Americorps, the domestic Peace Corps that he promised in his campaign and that was authorized by Congress a year ago.
The members, most of whom will receive educational grants in exchange for their service, will begin work around the country in programs ranging from immunization efforts for children and the elderly to recycling, tutoring, crime prevention and urban revitalization. 
 Some 850 were inducted as more than 2,000 dignitaries and supporters took part in the ceremony on the North Lawn of the White House. They were kept sweltering there for more than two hours, and an elaborately synchronized satellite television transmission was thrown awry because of the crash of a light plane early this morning on the South Lawn, where the event was supposed to have taken place.
Mr. Clinton swore in five members in the Oval Office, and this ceremony was broadcast to more than 50 places around the country where members of the Cabinet, governors and mayors swore in groups of volunteers.
 
Not a Question of Money
 "Any of us could get a job that pays much more," said Russell C. Teter 3d, a 22-year-old from Middletown, N.Y., who will work in a psychiatric hospital for veterans. "I'm young, not married -- no children. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to give something to my country."
For his part, Mr. Clinton seemed to exult in an opportunity to seize the moral high ground. In recent weeks, a rebellious Congress has apparently shelved his ambitious plan for expanding health insurance coverage, and he has had a difficult time in several areas of foreign affairs.
"I will get things done for America to make our people safer, smarter and healthier," the President said, leading volunteers in an oath written for the occasion. "Faced with apathy, I will take action. Faced with conflict, I will seek common ground. Faced with adversity, I will persevere. I will carry this commitment with me this year and beyond. I am an Americorps member, and I am going to get things done."
 
Favorite Clinton Idea
 The idea of a national service agency has been a favorite of Mr. Clinton's ever since he proposed it at a meeting of the Democratic Leadership Council in May 1988.
Both Mr. Clinton and his aides were eager to link the National Service Corps with such warmly remembered predecessors as Franklin D. Roosevelt's Civilian Conservation Corps of 1933 and John F. Kennedy's Peace Corps, which was created in 1961 and is still going.
"We hope our program will delight Americans in the same way that the Peace Corps has," said Eli J. Segal, chief executive of the Corporation for National Service.
Mr. Segal emphasized that the program had bipartisan support and took pleasure in ticking off a list of Republican governors and mayors, like Mayor Richard J. Riordan of Los Angeles, who officiated at swearing-in ceremonies around the country.
Kimberly Barnes O'Connor, an aide to Senator Nancy L. Kassebaum, the ranking Republican on the Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources who led the fight against authorizing the program last year, said: "There has always been bipartisan support for the general concept. We would have preferred a slower growth rate, less Federal control and a few other things, but now it's the law and we hope it succeeds."
Senator Don Nickles, Republican of Oklahoma, is less reconciled. "This program gives a lot of help to people who don't need it," he said.
 
'An Opportunity to Serve'
 Mr. Segal disputed the view. "This is not a jobs program or primarily a financial aid program, but an opportunity to serve," he said. "We never thought it wise to ask any one income group to perform national service.
"You might say we're doing two things at once. We're asking people to serve their country and in the process helping them with the cost of higher education at a time when those costs continue to skyrocket."
Under the present program, members will receive $7,500 a year for their living expenses and an education award of $4,725 a year for a maximum of two years to help finance their college education or vocational training, or to pay back their college loans. There are no restrictions on age.
Educators around the country said they were generally pleased with the program. Ernest L. Boyer, president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, said: "It's the right program for the right time. Young people feel disengaged, but there are many signs that they're ready to be inspired by a larger commitment.
"The numbers are small, but the message is significant. Of course, it doesn't begin to solve the problem of college costs. That requires another solution."
The Corporation for National Service is sponsoring 350 programs in more than 700 communities around the country.

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GRAPHIC: Photo: President Clinton talking with the audience at the swearing-in for the corps of volunteers that was established last year. Groups totaling 15,000 were sworn in yesterday at the White House and in 50 cities. (Stephen Crowley/The New York Times)

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September 14, 1994, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Foley Urges Republicans to Meet With Democrats on Health Care

BYLINE: By ADAM CLYMER,   Special to The New York Times 

SECTION: Section A;  Page 13;  Column 1;  National Desk 

LENGTH: 680 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Sept. 13

Speaker Thomas S. Foley suggested today that House Democratic and Republican leaders meet to see if there was any sort of incremental health insurance legislation they could agree on, but Republican leaders promptly disagreed among themselves about accepting the offer.
The House Republican leader, Representative Robert H. Michel of Illinois, "is receptive to the idea," a spokesman said. "He will be meeting with the Speaker to discuss it." 
 But Representative Newt Gingrich of Georgia, who is all but certain to succeed Mr. Michel after his retirement at the end of this Congress, scoffed at the suggestion. "I don't want to be suckered," he said. "I do not trust them."
In the Senate, George J. Mitchell of Maine, the majority leader, sought to ease the fears of some of the more liberal Democrats who feared that any partial steps would do more harm than good.
 
Critical Meeting
 He met with a group of senators committed to universal coverage, the goal that all concede has been lost for this year, to reassure them about his discussions with the self-styled "mainstream coalition," a bipartisan group of about 20 senators who have been working on a relatively modest health care plan. It would use subsidies to increase insurance coverage to about 92 percent by 2004, from the current 85 percent, and cut the Federal deficit by at least $100 billion.
Mr. Mitchell will have a critical meeting on Wednesday afternoon with the leaders of the coalition, Senators John H. Chafee, Republican of Rhode Island, and John B. Breaux, Democrat of Louisiana. Their staffs have been meeting during the last two weeks, trying to narrow differences between the coalition proposal and the earlier, more expansive plan put forward by Mr. Mitchell.
But now it is time for the senators themselves to deal with the remaining, significant differences, like how much latitude to give states to experiment with broadening health coverage, and what sort of taxes should be used to finance the plan.
On all sides, these discussions are seen as the best of the fading hopes for some action on health care in this Congress. But if they fail, some Democrats who are hoping to find Republican allies may put forward an even slimmer scheme that intends to insure all children and pregnant women, providing community- and home-based long-term care for the elderly and the disabled, and making a number of widely supported changes in insurance laws.
 
'Sticker Shock'
 Even so, the idea of taking partial steps that would produce changes in insurance law but not provide universal coverage drew a sharp warning of "sticker shock" from the Health Insurance Association of America today. It warned that seemingly benign changes in insurance laws, like prohibiting exclusions for pre-existing medical conditions, could lead to sharply higher premiums for people who now have insurance, and they might choose to drop their coverage.
While most Senate Democrats are ready to give Mr. Mitchell a chance to cut a deal with the Senate coalition, there is less tolerance for such an idea in the House, which is traditionally impatient with the Senate and where Democrats are less impressed with the utility of incremental steps than their Democratic colleagues in the Senate. Even so, like President Clinton, House leaders say they are waiting to see what Mr. Mitchell can come up with.
In that context, Mr. Foley's offer, made in a news conference, was little more than a formal courtesy. Mr. Michel seemed to treat it as such. His aides said that while he was always willing to explore compromises they doubted very much that the Democrats would give enough ground on serious differences like the limiting of awards in malpractice lawsuits.
But Mr. Gingrich, signaling the tone that the Republicans increasingly strike in the House and that he can be relied on to echo next year, would have none of it. Saying he feared that liberal Democrats would somehow get hold of any measure and make it more liberal than House leaders might agree on, he said, "I don't want to be set up."

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September 14, 1994, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Still a Chance on Health Care

SECTION: Section A;  Page 18;  Column 1;  Editorial Desk 

LENGTH: 486 words

When Congress left town last month, the health care debate simmered down. But the staffs of the Senate majority leader, George Mitchell, and the bipartisan Mainstream Coalition continued to talk and have reportedly reached substantial agreement. Though the emerging bill would be incremental -- leaving some individuals uninsured -- it would improve health care for most Americans. Incremental reform would be substantial reform.
Why, then, does passage seem so distant? Standing in the way are political calculations by Robert Dole, the minority leader of the Senate, and Richard Gephardt, the majority leader of the House. They have yet to decide whether to go for limited reform this year or use defeat as an election-year strategy. Health care security for millions hangs in the balance because no one expects Congress to rebound from total defeat this year to pass reform next year. 
 The bill emerging from the Senate discussions would do much to improve medical markets. The coalition would guarantee everyone, including the seriously ill, the ability to buy coverage. There would be standardized policies and report cards so customers could judge prices and quality. Small companies and individuals could join large purchasing cooperatives. The bill would provide subsidies to poor families and would require individuals who choose lavish policies to pay the extra cost largely out of their own pockets.
These provisions would transform the health care industry with minimal bureaucracy. Of course, the bill contains flaws. It fails to require employers to pay for workers' premiums -- guaranteeing that tens of millions will remain uninsured. But no flaw appears so grave that it could make make matters worse or difficult to correct in the future.
Congress is two steps away from victory. Negotiators must first resolve remaining differences. Mr. Mitchell wants to give an expensive drug benefit to the elderly even though the Federal budget already heavily subsidizes this group. The coalition says, correctly, that individuals should win this new benefit only if they choose to drop Medicare and use a Federal voucher to buy into a private health plan -- the best way to subject Medicare to competition. The hardest problem seems to be settling how much flexibility states should have in taxing large companies that cover their workers.
The second step is political. Senate negotiators cannot budge unless they are assured that the deal will not unravel in the House. That requires Mr. Gephardt to back, unequivocally, the bill that emerges from the Senate; here President Clinton can apply pressure. Also moderate Republicans in the Senate need to lean on Mr. Dole and their House colleagues.
The problem is no longer health care architecture but election-year politics. Neither Mr. Dole nor Mr. Gephardt has decided whether to back the most important domestic legislation in a generation.

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September 18, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

The Soup Kitchen Is Not Just a Phenomenon of the Cities

BYLINE: By BILL RYAN 

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

LENGTH: 1140 words

THE center of scenic Old Saybrook, a popular shore town that more than doubles its population in summer, is always busy on Saturdays no matter what the season. Cars pass in endless streams along both sides of its wide and divided Main Street, a pattern only broken when one veers swiftly into a just-vacated parking space. The street has an aura of late 20th-century commercial bustle and prosperity coupled with the earlier American charm of three stately churches and some homes that date to the 18th century.
It also has two soup kitchens. 
 That fact would probably amaze casual visitors to the town, and even some of its residents. The soup kitchens do not receive a great deal of publicity and certainly do not fit into a Chamber of Commerce image of the community.
Soup kitchens in Old Saybrook? Next thing you know, there will be one in Essex, the even more upscale town just up the river. As a matter of fact, there are four soup kitchens in Essex now. And another in quaint little Chester, also upriver, where some residents proudly display a bumper sticker: "Chester, We Know Where It Is." And another in Clinton, a town down the shore a piece from Old Saybrook.
The soup kitchens are modest affairs compared to those in cities like Hartford, New Haven and Bridgeport. None of them operate full time and they have clientele that differ in major respects from those in the cities. But they do illustrate a major point about life in Connecticut today: In the midst of plenty, there is also poverty.
"The people who come to us are not homeless or addicted, although we have a few who are alcoholic," said Robert P. Little. "A lot of them are just unemployed, or unemployable. Thirty percent of them are senior citizens, mostly women whose husbands did not leave them well enough off to survive without help. We have single mothers, some with many children."
And some, he said, are the people who are hurt first when the economy goes bad: the undereducated, the illiterate, the untrained, the poor who just get poorer. Towns like Old Saybrook and Old Lyme do have, he said, pockets of poverty tucked here and there, out of sight.
Mr. Little is a retired executive from the Southern New England Telephone Company. For the past two years, he has been the volunteer, unpaid chairman of Shoreline Soup Kitchens. The board is made up of four Protestant clergymen, a rabbi, six lay people and Mr. Little, who is Catholic. "We're an interfaith group and we have a simple aim. We chose to feed the hungry," he said.
Shoreline Soup Kitchens began five years ago, said Eleanor LaPlace who has been one of its leaders from the start, when First Baptist Church in Essex solicited suggestions on programs the church should undertake. The only one that survived, she said, was for a soup kitchen, to be held once a week, on the theory that some people might be hungry in a town with a reputation for affluence. "And people actually were hungry," she said. "These are the poor that people ignore because they don't see them."
The first meal served at the church only attracted seven or eight people, Mrs. LaPlace recalled. But the need was obviously there and the figures kept growing.
 
A Hot Meal Every Day
 Today, anyone who is hungry can get a hot meal every day of the week at one of the eight churches in the area that participate in the soup kitchen program: Sunday at 5 P.M. at Church of Christ in Chester, Monday at 5:30 P.M. at First Baptist in Essex, Tuesday at 5 P.M. at St. John's Episcopal in Essex; Wednesday at noon at Grace Episcopal in Old Saybrook and at United Methodist in Clinton; Thursday at 5 P.M. at Our Lady of Sorrows in Essex; Friday at noon at Trinity Lutheran in the Centerbrook section of Essex; Saturday at noon at St. John's Catholic in Old Saybrook.
About 350 meals are served in all during the week. Some people eat every day at one of churches. Some, particularly those without cars, only eat out one day of the week at the nearest participating church.
 
Distributions Made
 Saturday is the big day for the soup kitchen organization. After the meal is served in Old Saybrook at St. John's, bags of food are distributed. At this time of the year, about 200 people arrive each Saturday to get bags of food, Mr. Little said. Demand goes up radically in the heart of the winter.
No one is asked questions about need, Mr. Little said, either at the church meals or when bags of groceries are distributed. The only question is about how big a family is. Bigger families get more bags of food. "The 200 people who come each Saturday for bags of food represent 900 family members," Mr. Little said. "We distribute about $100,000 in food a year now." Forty percent is donated, by residents and local stores, he said. The other 60 percent must be paid for by church revenues.
On any Saturday at noon, the soup kitchen operation continues at the grammar school in back of St. John's Church where three rooms have been used for food storage and for meals for the past two years. The building has been mostly unused but this fall it will reopen as a parochial school. Mr. Little said he had been assured that the soup kitchen operation could stay.
People, mostly in family groups but occasionally by themselves, filter in quietly for lunch. Most have come by car, some sharing rides. Mothers with toddlers join people well into their 80's or more. All are dressed perhaps not stylishly but certainly cleanly. Certain people stand out. One is an older man, impeccably groomed, who looks as if he could be a resident of Fenwick, Old Saybrook's enclave of old money. Two little girls look as if they were dressed for a recital.
The face of the needy in Old Saybrook does not have the face of defeat of a more urban soup kitchen. It would be impossible to separate the volunteers serving food from those getting food and sometimes, indeed, they are both. "Some of the volunteers are also clients," Mr. Little said.
But he is very conscious that some people regard the Saturday meals as a demeaning experience. "Some wait outside and send their kids in for their bags of food," he said. "We try to ease people in, and then they find out that others here are in the same boat."
 
A Social Occasion
 Some seem to regard the Saturday lunch as a social occasion. Two old brothers come each Saturday from a nursing home in Essex, complaining that the food is terrible there. Children play with other children they see each week.
Mr. Little says grace, then the chatter starts. It is more like a church supper than a soup kitchen and a visitor is likely to forget the reason people are there is that they need, really need, the food. It is a quiet drama that unfolds each Saturday. And a few hundred feet away, the cars pass by in a steady stream on Main Street, in another world.

LOAD-DATE: September 18, 1994

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GRAPHIC: Photos: At St. John's in Old Saybrook, food for all generations. A bad economy still widens its grip. (Pg. 1); Art See, left, and Don Gillis organize groceries to be handed out at the St. John's Church soup kitchen in Old Saybrook. (Pg. 5) (Bruce Johnson for The New York Times)

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September 18, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

NEIGHBORHOOD REPORT: BUSHWICK;
2-Family Subsidized Housing Almost Sold Out

BYLINE: By BRUCE LAMBERT 

SECTION: Section 13;  Page 8;  Column 3;  The City Weekly Desk 

LENGTH: 341 words

The rebuilding of Bushwick, one of Brooklyn's most troubled neighborhoods, is taking another step forward with the construction of 68 two-family homes to be occupied by low- and moderate-income families. The homes, part of a housing program called Bushwick Green, are expected to be completed by early next year. Most are already sold.
The construction has two parts: 28 buildings known as Linden Gates, on a site bounded by Linden, Gates, Central and Bushwick Avenues, and 40 buildings known as Madison Park, bounded by Broadway, Bushwick Avenue, Gates Avenue and Madison Street. 
 Work began early this year on the two-family buildings, each with a three-bedroom apartment upstairs and a two-bedroom apartment downstairs.
All the Linden Gates buildings and all but eight of the Madison Park buildings have been sold. The owners will live on one level and rent the other to help pay the mortgages.
The buildings cost about $196,000 each in Linden Gates and $205,000 to $210,000 in Madison park. A qualified applicant can receive up to $80,000 in subsidies, reducing the price to as little as $116,600 in Linden Gates and $125,677 in Madison Park.
The subsidies come from Borough President Howard Golden, the City Housing Preservation and Development Department and the New York State Affordable Housing Corporation.
The maximum family income allowed is $53,000. The minimum down payment is 5 percent. The home owners also benefit from an abatement in property taxes, which will be phased in over 20 years.
The New York City Housing Partnership is assisting the project, and the homes are being sold by the Ridgewood-Bushwick Senior Citizens Council.
The Bushwick Green program, announced in 1989 by Mayor Edward I. Koch to follow up on an earlier campaign promise to revitalize the community, originally called for homes for 650 families but was later cut. The first phase, 49 two-family homes called Bushwick Estates, was built in 1989. More homes are being planned after the latest projects are finished.   BRUCE LAMBERT

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GRAPHIC: Photo: Madison Park houses, which are under construction in Bushwick. (Photographs by Adam Fernandez for The New York Times)

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September 19, 1994, Monday, Late Edition - Final

Felisa Rincon de Gautier, 97, Mayor of San Juan

BYLINE: By ERIC PACE 

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

LENGTH: 466 words

Felisa Rincon de Gautier, Mayor of San Juan, P.R., from 1946 to 1969 and the only woman to hold that post, died on Friday in a nursing home in San Juan, where she had lived in recent months. She was 97.
She died after suffering a heart attack, The Associated Press reported. 
 She was appointed Mayor in 1946 to replace an incumbent who had resigned, and she was elected to office in later years. Running for another four-year term in 1964, she said, "After this term I want to lead my own life," and she did not run for re-election in 1968. Her other political work included membership on the Democratic National Committee.
Even before she became Mayor, Mrs. Rincon de Gautier, widely known as Dona Fela, worked on behalf of social causes, including the campaign to win Puerto Rican women the right to vote, which succeeded in 1932.
It was then that she went into politics, going on to press for child-care programs, centers for the elderly and legal aid for the poor. Her political power came in large part from the support of the city's poor residents, whom she organized within her Popular Democratic Party.
She worked hard to please the electorate. "My opponents campaign just before elections and then they disappear," she once said. "I start campaigning the day after the election and never stop."
She was also good at political repartee. After detractors said she had given city jobs to too many of her relatives, she replied: "I wish I had 20 more nieces. They work better -- for less."
As Mayor, she had a highly personal style that included enchanting local children by flying in planeloads of snow for Christmas parties. She maintained that personal touch even as San Juan grew, from a population of 180,000 when she first took office to 600,000 by 1961, when she was still meeting once a week with residents who needed advice or assistance.
But she also attended to larger matters, like public works. She was proud of having provided the city with well-equipped and hospitably managed dispensaries, as well as new schools and housing projects with nurseries and other amenities.
After stepping down as Mayor, she maintained her interest in politics. In 1992, at the age of 95, she was the oldest delegate to the Democratic National Convention, which was held in New York.
The eldest of eight children of a lawyer, she was born in Ceiba, 33 miles southeast of San Juan. She had to leave school at age 15 to care for her siblings.
Early in her life, she was a supporter of independence for Puerto Rico, but her views changed, and she went on to support the United States Commonwealth Constitution that came into effect in 1952.
In 1940, she married Jenaro A. Gautier, a lawyer who was secretary general of the Popular Democratic Party at the time. He died in 1971.

NAME: Felisa Rincon de Gautier

LOAD-DATE: September 19, 1994

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GRAPHIC: Photo: Felisa Rincon de Gautier (Gertrude Samuels, 1955)

TYPE: Obituary (Obit); Biography

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September 20, 1994, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

Senators Hope for a Deal on Health Today

BYLINE: By ADAM CLYMER,   Special to The New York Times 

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

LENGTH: 728 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Sept. 19

Senator George J. Mitchell, the majority leader, and a bipartisan group of senators trying to pass health insurance legislation that would extend coverage to more than half of those now uninsured met again today and said they hoped to strike a bargain on Tuesday.
In the session today, they discussed the issues that still divide them, like whether to provide the elderly with new benefits for prescription drugs or long-term care. They also took up procedural questions of how to try to get a bill through the Senate and the House in the three or four weeks that remain before Congress adjourns in mid-October, discussing, for example, how much debate should be allowed before supporters try to force a vote. 
 "My objective is to pass a bill this year," Mr. Mitchell, Democrat of Maine, said after the two-hour meeting.
A few hours earlier, in a speech at a Washington hotel, Senator Bob Dole of Kansas, the minority leader, contended that there was no more hope for anything except perhaps a minimal bill. "Time has almost run out," he said. "I don't see anything happening this year."
Mr. Dole's opposition has been a given for almost all members of the self-styled "mainstream coalition." But efforts to pass any version of their bill this year must also contend with an uncertain quantity of opposition from the left, from senators who say the proposal does not go far enough.
Mr. Mitchell and the leaders of the group were encouraged that the threat of armed conflict in Haiti had evaporated, a development that might allow the Senate to take up other matters, including health care. Although Mr. Mitchell was twice called out of the two-hour meeting to discuss Haiti, he said he was sure that fighting would have meant much more of a distraction.
Senator Dave Durenberger, Republican of Minnesota, went further. He said that if there had been fighting in Haiti, then health care would have been dead. "Now," he said, "at least there is a hope."
After a morning meeting of the bipartisan group, whose fluctuating membership is around 20 senators, Senator Kent Conrad, Democrat of North Dakota, told reporters that the Congressional Budget Office had estimated that their system of subsidies and changes in insurance laws would increase insurance coverage from the current 85 percent to about 94 percent by the year 2000. That was somewhat higher than the group's own estimate.
But he said the budget office also said the plan would reduce the Federal deficit by about $56 billion over 10 years, well under the $100 billion the group had hoped to achieve.
That issue is closely tied to one of the main remaining differences: the question of how much money can be saved by reductions in the future growth of Medicare spending. That, in turn, is connected to the strong desire by Mr. Mitchell and other Democrats to offer the elderly some new benefit to compensate for cuts in Medicare.
Another important unsettled issue, Senate aides say, is just how much flexibility to allow the states in developing their own efforts to broaden health insurance coverage. In general, Mr. Mitchell and most Democrats favor giving the states more leeway than the mainstream group does.
Nor have the two sides agreed on how to deal with the issue of malpractice litigation. The mainstream group favors limits on awards; Mr. Mitchell opposes them.
Mr. Mitchell and Senator John H. Chafee of Rhode Island, the Republican leader of the mainstream group, refused to discuss what they had settled today and what disagreements remained.
Mr. Mitchell said, "We did reach general agreement on a couple of major issues tonight." He said another meeting will be held on Tuesday afternoon. "We are moving on this just as fast as possible," he said.
Senator Bob Kerrey, Democrat of Nebraska, began a tactical campaign to protect the group's proposal from the accusation that it was a belated, last-minute effort, an assertion Republicans and Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Democrat of New York, are beginning to make.
He said the ability of Mr. Mitchell and the group to agree on so much so quickly was evidence that the issues were thoroughly understood. "We have debated this sufficiently," Mr. Kerrey said. The task supporters of the legislation now face, he said, was to persuade the American people to back their efforts and "get to the obstructionists."

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GRAPHIC: Photo: Senator George J. Mitchell, right, the majority leader, meeting with members of a bipartisan group searching for a health care compromise that can pass Congress before adjournment. Clockwise, from Mr. Mitchell, were Senators John B. Breaux, Democrat of Louisiana; Bob Kerrey, Democrat of Nebraska; Dave Durenberger, Republican of Minnesota, and John H. Chafee, Republican of Rhode Island. (Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times)

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September 20, 1994, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

OUR TOWNS;
A Rare Find: A Doctor Who Makes House Calls

BYLINE: By Joseph Berger 

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

LENGTH: 831 words

DATELINE: TARRYTOWN, N.Y.

ELIO J. IPPOLITO is a relic, as rare and obsolete as a Philco radio, and as cherished. He is a doctor who makes house calls.
Stocky and rumpled, with the burdened but ever-hopeful trudge of a door-to-door salesman, he spends eight hours a week visiting the homes of the old and frail in the polyglot warrens of Tarrytown. Other doctors may tell invalids to summon an ambulance and make an office visit at government expense, but Dr. Ippolito, 61, thinks of home visits as he does the remedies in his plump black satchel. They can be curative. 
 "When you walk into a house, you see how people live," he said in a voice that is gravelly but spirited. "You see if they're in a cramped bedroom. If the mother and daughter don't get along, you'll see that better at home than in an office. You'll see if they're clean or filthy, if there's enough light or ventilation, if there's food in the refrigerator, if they're taking their medicine."
Others family practitioners know these benefits, but they eschew house calls as a losing proposition. Medicare pays $58 for a home visit, the same as for an office visit, whether the home is down the street or miles away.
Sure, Dr. Ippolito, who began his practice in 1961 delivering babies of Cuban refugees, shares his colleagues' anger with the idiocies of bureaucracies. He is often frustrated by patients as well. They'll eat too much salt or fail to tell him about lumps in their breasts until it is too late. Those are the burdens that silently weigh on his soul.
But he never takes his eye off what counts, the same values that drove him toward medicine a half-century ago as he worked in his father's drugstore after school.
"I enjoy taking care of the elderly, and I have vowed not to change my attitude, no matter how little I get paid," he said. "I feel home care is part of medical care."
ASTETHOSCOPE protruding out of his jacket pocket, Dr. Ippolito started a round recently at the home of Manuel Flores, a 74-year-old widower. Mr. Flores could not easily visit his office. Circulatory blockages had forced both legs to be amputated. He lay under a blanket in a dim, airless room lighted by a shaded bulb and a votive candle. A Spanish Bible rested on the night table and a portrait of Jesus looked down from the wall.
But he seemed to cheer instantly when Dr. Ippolito entered with his hoarse "Buenos dias!" Dr. Ippolito took Mr. Flores's blood pressure and listened to his chest.
"Is he coughing?" he asked Mr. Flores's son, Albert.
"He's coughing a little bit," Albert replied.
Dr. Ippolito renewed Mr. Flores's prescription for blood-pressure medication and ambled out.
"He takes care of me," the younger Mr. Flores told a visitor. "He takes care of my father. He takes care of my brother. Anytime my father wants, he's here right away."
AT Dr. Ippolito's next stop, James Hunt, a 79-year-old widower, was waiting sullenly in a narrow kitchen adorned with magazine photographs of Martin Luther King Jr. and Lucille Ball. Because of diabetes, Mr. Hunt had lost a leg, and grumbled about the fit of a prosthetic leg that cost $1,495. Dr. Ippolito can do nothing about such endemic injustices. Prosthetic legs are often painful. "Sorry, James" was his gentle response.
He was there to give Mr. Hunt a flu shot, then he checked four medicine vials to make sure there were enough pills, something he could not have done in an office. "You call me in a month and I'll get another sugar test," he said, turning toward the door so he could visit the home of Frances Yozzo, five miles away.
Dr. Ippolito drives his weatherbeaten Chevrolet Corsica as if Westchester's back streets were a test track, banking his turns screechingly and jolting from drive into reverse. "When I was younger, I could make five house calls and be back in the office in an hour," he said. "Time is all I've got. Time and experience."
Of course, his patients will implore that he sit down to dinner, and he generally obliges even if he knows his wife, Elisabetta, will unfailingly have dinner waiting whenever he comes home.
"Usually, I'm in a hurry, but if you don't do it, they're offended, so I stay and have a cup of coffee."
Mrs. Yozzo, 87, and suffering from heart failure and arthritis, was sprawled in a green armchair, her legs over an ottoman, watching a soap opera in an apartment where the curtains were drawn at midday. Dr. Ippolito examined her right calf.
"This feels cold," he said. "You've got poor circulation. If that leg starts to turn color and you get any black spots, I want to know."
He has been her doctor for 15 years and, in that time, she has visited his office just once. Her family long ago cultivated a sense of ownership of Dr. Ippolito, and she echoes Mr. Flores in praising Dr. Ippolito: "He took care of my husband. He took care of my daughter. Now he takes care of me."
As he headed put, this dinosaur among doctors said: "Call me in a month, honey. If there's any problem, call me before."

NAME: Elio J. Ippolito

LOAD-DATE: September 20, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photos: Dr. Elio J. Ippolito, left, paying a visit to James Hunt, a 79-year-old widower who lost a leg to diabetes. Dr. Ippolito gave Mr. Hunt a flu shot in Mr. Hunt's kitchen and checked to make sure he had enough medication in the house, which the doctor could not have done from the office. Dr. Ippolito, arriving at the home of a patient in Tarrytown, N.Y., said home visits can be curative. (Photographs by Susan Harris for The New York Times)

TYPE: Biography

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The New York Times

September 22, 1994, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

Meredith Monk Looks Into Roosevelt Island's Past

BYLINE: By JENNIFER DUNNING 

SECTION: Section C;  Page 17;  Column 1;  Cultural Desk 

LENGTH: 1014 words

Roosevelt Island is a strip of land in the East River with ghostly remnants of history at its northern and southern tips. Meredith Monk is a composer and choreographer who specializes in creating and exploring archetypal memories. And Dancing in the Streets, a group that presents performances in nontheatrical outdoor spaces, is devoted to the proposition that the city is full of places in need of a little extra history of their own. Those are the ingredients that have gone into "American Archeology No. 1: Roosevelt Island," a two-part piece to be performed outdoors on the island tomorrow through Sunday afternoon. (Reservations are necessary.)
The island's first settlers were probably Indians from the Leni Lenape tribe. From the late 1600's to 1828, the place was known as Blackwells Island, named after the family that lived and farmed there and whose rebuilt house still stands, dwarfed by high-rises. New York City bought the island in 1829 and began sending its castoffs to live on what became known as Welfare Island, in prisons, poorhouses, hospitals for people with infectious diseases and asylums. Legend has it that inhabitants of these institutions included the newspaperwoman Nellie Bly, Typhoid Mary and Mae West, who is said to have been imprisoned for obscenity. 
 In the mid-1970's, the island was rebuilt as a model community, though two hospitals for the incurably ill and a ghostly abandoned nursing home remain, with the ruins, as links to the past.
"American Archeology" will begin at the northern end of the island in Lighthouse Park, near the remains of a 19th-century madhouse that Charles Dickens wrote of and a small stone lighthouse said to have been constructed by a madhouse inmate.
"That part deals pretty much with the community as it is now on Roosevelt Island," Ms. Monk said in a recent interview. "There will be about 40 extras, children, office workers and senior citizens, a horse and my singer-dancer-actors."
Ms. Monk's performers will be dressed in 19th-century period costumes and will sing choral music she wrote for them. The cast of extras will also include doctors from Bird S. Coler Hospital and Goldwater Memorial Hospital.
After an intermission of about an hour, the audience will gather again at the island's southern end, normally not open to the public. The quiet is even greater here, a place of haunted-looking ruins, where scraps of grimy curtain still flap at gaping windows and ailanthus trees and tall grasses guard abandoned doorways. The second part of "American Archeology" will center around a jewel-like ruin of a building that used to be a smallpox hospital designed by James Renwick.
The audience will watch as performers gradually become visible in a dance of death that Ms. Monk has choreographed for actual hospital patients and members of her company, who play characters that include, as she put it, "three crazy doctors." "You wonder who the sane and the insane are," she said.
The dirt road the performers will move along was probably never a real street. But Dancing in the Streets, one of the producers of "American Archeology," is not literal about its name. The organization came into existence 10 years ago when a young choreographer named Elise Bernhardt innocently decided a piece of hers ought to be danced on the Brooklyn Bridge.
To do that, she was soon made to understand, she had to put together an impressive-sounding package. "I had never run anything," Ms. Bernhardt, 38, recalled recently. "I bought my first high heels and a new dress and walked into the offices of the Brooklyn Bridge Centennial Commission with a lot of diagrams. They asked me if I had backing."
She wasn't sure what that meant. Thinking it had to something to do with supporters, she went to all her friends and asked if they wanted to be in a festival. "Sure," they told her, "if you organize it."
City officials explained to Ms. Bernhardt about permits. A customer in the restaurant where she was a waitress taught her about budgeting and got the company where he worked to give her $10,000. And she was on her way. Today, Dancing in the Streets has a budget of a little over $500,000 and has presented performances at Wave Hill, Coney Island, Grand Central Terminal, the Apollo Theater and sites around the United States and Europe, among them a hydraulic bridge in Newcastle, England, run by a drunken operator in the midst of a fireworks display.
Ms. Bernhardt is now plotting to get City Water Tunnel No. 3 opened for a piece by Marty Pottenger, a construction worker who is also a performance artist. She is particularly proud of the relationships Dancing in the Streets has established with public schools in Queens and Brooklyn.
As a student at Sarah Lawrence College, she came under the influence of Bessie Schonberg, a teacher of composition, and Ms. Monk, with whom Ms. Bernhardt studied in a workshop that changed all her ideas about the interaction of music and art. "And then, last fall, I saw the ruins," she said. "Bingo. Meredith Monk. I always think matchmaking is my real job."
Ms. Monk said she was a little worried about imposing her vision on the place, "getting in the way of the space."
"I'm trying to stay out of the way of their beauty and poignancy," she said of the ruins, while still trying "to make them come alive so people will see them that way."
She has created dream landscapes before, but most often inside theaters. "It's a pleasure to work with a concrete space," she said of the island sites. "We really have shovels. We dig real dirt."
"This is a young country," she added. "We have a sense of the future, of speed, of not having to carry around on our backs a lot of the past. That leads to a fragmented and violent contemporary reality. The present moment has to incorporate the past. This is my attempt to do something about it, I guess."
For Ms. Bernhardt, the pleasure of the project is a little simpler. "One of the nicest things," she said, "is when people tell me, 'I will never see this place again without these dancers, that music.' "

LOAD-DATE: September 22, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Meredith Monk, second from right, rehearsing her "American Archeology No. 1: Roosevelt Island" with cast members. The piece will be performed outdoors tomorrow through Sunday. (Nancy Siesel/The New York Times)

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The New York Times

September 23, 1994, Friday, Late Edition - Final

Ideal Juror for O. J. Simpson: Football Fan Who Can Listen

BYLINE: By DAVID MARGOLICK 

SECTION: Section A;  Page 1;  Column 5;  National Desk;  Law Page

LENGTH: 1540 words

Men rather than women, black men if possible. Older people rather than younger. Discerning rather than deferential. Shepherds rather than sheep, football buffs rather than football widows, fans of "L.A. Law" rather than "NYPD Blue."
And though there are no longer any blank slates when it comes to O. J. Simpson -- "If you get people who don't know anything about this case, they must be total idiots," Gerry Spence, the high-profile defense lawyer, remarked -- it's better that they get their news from "MacNeil/ Lehrer" or Newsweek than "Geraldo!" or Star. 
 Among lawyers and jury consultants that is the consensus prescription for Mr. Simpson's ideal juror, the type his legal team should seek on Monday, when jury selection in the case is scheduled to begin.
Yesterday, the judge in the case described news organizations as "irresponsible" and said they were disseminating incorrect and "prejudicial" information to the public. [Page A16.]
Jury selection, experts agree, is perhaps the crucial phase of the case -- matched, said Roy M. Black, a prominent defense lawyer in Miami, only by Mr. Simpson's potential appearance on the stand.
"Everything else in the case is not even in the same universe," said Mr. Black, who successfully defended William Kennedy Smith against rape charges in 1991. "You've got to put people on the jury who are willing to listen to what he has to say."
But these rules of thumb on jury selection in this case, while widely shared, are by no means universally held. Jury selection remains one of the last refuges of ethnic, racial and sexual stereotypes, a process in which political correctness has no place. In deciding who will decide Mr. Simpson's fate, however, these stereotypes are often contradictory.
Women, particularly white women, particularly those who know bad marriages or abuse, may be more likely to empathize with the slain mother of two small children, but they could also be more likely to fall in love with a dashing male defendant. Blacks may be more wary of law enforcement, more inclined to think that Mr. Simpson was set up. But they may be just as inclined to resent such assumptions and assert their independence.
Law-and-order types may favor the prosecution, but they, more than others, could be offended by what the defense has characterized as bungling by the Los Angeles Police Department. Younger jurors may be more conservative than the aging alumni of Woodstock Nation, more inclined to see Mr. Simpson as huckster and hack actor than hero, but their minds are supple enough to attend to tedious testimony, and thereby spot cracks in the state's case. So would more intelligent jurors, but too much scientific sophistication may make them easily dazzled by the results of DNA tests.
"Anyone who tries to sell you on the idea that jury selection is a science is jerking your chain," said Robert Hirschhorn, a jury consultant in Galveston, Tex., and co-author of a leading text on the subject. "What you're trying to do is match your client, your case and your lawyer with your juror. At best, it's 20 percent science, 80 percent art."
In a sense, "jury selection" is a misnomer. It is more a matter of de-selection, damage control, forensic triage. Each side may challenge an unlimited number of candidates as being biased, but only 20 without explanation -- so-called peremptory challenges. "You're not selecting people but eliminating those you find offensive," said Gerry Goldstein of San Antonio, president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. "What you get is what's left over, the people who don't tell you very much."
Neither side is sparing any expense. The defense team, led by Robert L. Shapiro, has brought in Jo-Ellan Dimitrius of Pasadena, Calif., a veteran of the Rodney G. King, Reginald O. Denny and McMartin Preschool cases. The Los Angeles District Attorney's office has retained Decision Quest of Los Angeles, which assisted Pennzoil in its celebrated battle against Texaco.
To lawyers like Mr. Spence, it is a waste of money. Lawyers, he believes, can do the job just as well using little more than instinct. "I don't care whether jurors are rich or poor, black or white, male or female, old or young or what they do," he said. "I want to know if it's someone I can bare my soul to, someone who will listen to me, someone I can be a friend to, or if it's some cynic or jerk who's full of hate."
But to Mr. Black, it is money well spent. Because the case is so extraordinary, he said, all conventions about picking jurors are inapplicable. Candidates must be asked the standard questions -- about the people they admire, the books they read, the television programs they watch, the bumper stickers on their cars -- plus others particular to the Simpson case: their views on interracial marriage, for example.
They must also be asked questions about particular evidence, arguments or personalities in the case that emerge only by staging simulated trials before focus groups or mock juries, as the defense has presumably been doing and the prosecution did earlier this month in Arizona -- much to its chagrin when word of the panel's distaste for the prosecutor, Marcia Clark, and her case leaked out.
Just what all those questions will be, and who will ask them, remains to be determined. Both sides have submitted proposed jury questionnaires to Judge Lance A. Ito, highlighting the queries they deem most important. After consulting with counsel, he will amalgamate the two, and ask those candidates for whom three to six months of jury duty would not impose a disabling hardship to fill out the resulting form.
In many states, lawyers conduct the questioning process known as voir dire themselves. They use it not only to select jurors but also to establish rapport with potential panelists and lay out their cases. To the dismay of defense lawyers, who believe that by asking open-ended, touchy-feely questions, they plumb subterranean psychological strata that judges miss, a California law adopted by referendum four years ago authorizes courts to question jurors entirely by themselves.
But state law also authorizes judges to let the lawyers take part should the lawyers demonstrate "a significant possibility of bias because of the nature of the case or its participants." Judge Ito is expected to allow both sides to participate to some degree. For each it could be critical: for the prosecution, because a single Simpson sympathizer can produce a hung jury; for the defense, because of the need to ferret out subtle, pro-prosecution biases.
Mr. Hirschhorn and Mr. Black said Ms. Clark should seek out female jurors. "Women are more likely to bond with a female prosecutor and more likely to be sympathetic to the abuse angle of the case, particularly if they've had any problems with men -- and there are very few who haven't," Mr. Black said.
But Linda A. Fairstein, chief of the sex crimes prosecution unit of the Manhattan District Attorney's office and the prosecutor in the Robert Chambers "preppie murder" case, strenuously disagreed. "In general, and across all racial borders, when the defendant is attractive, articulate and a celebrity, women more than men tend, unfortunately, to base their verdict on external appearances," Ms. Fairstein said. "It's one of the saddest lessons I've learned in doing this work."
Female jurors, she added, tend to judge female victims harshly, a factor that could prove crucial in this case, where the defense is expected to depict Nicole Brown Simpson as a habitue of life's fast lane.
Mr. Hirschhorn joined Ms. Fairstein in also challenging the widely held notion that black jurors, feeling kinship with Mr. Simpson and disdain for the white establishment, would favor the defense. "If that's what the defense is thinking, O. J.'s going to go from Hall of Fame to the halls of San Quentin," Mr. Hirschhorn said. "African-Americans become leaders when other blacks are on trial, and they may very well judge them more harshly."
Mr. Black advised the defense to stay away from young jurors. "People who went through the 1960's are probably a lot better, and older people would know O. J. better," he said. "To people in their 20's, O. J. is ancient history."
Ms. Fairstein thought the prosecution should stay away from younger jurors as well, but for different reasons. "Young jurors have trouble putting people behind bars for a long incarceration," she said. "And young jurors tend to waffle. They're not leaders in the jury room."
However long it lasts and however much they may participate, the voir dire will provide the lawyers a chance to shape -- or reshape -- their images. Ms. Clark, for example, can humanize herself, Mr. Hirschhorn said, thereby avoiding the fate of Moira K. Lasch, the wooden, icy and ultimately unsuccessful prosecutor in the William Kennedy Smith rape case.
And if he were defense counsel, Mr. Hirschhorn said, he might want to abolish some of the polish. "I'd be a little worried about coming across as slick," he said. "I would not wear double-breasted suits, I would not wear a shirt of any color other than white or blue, I'd stay away from the power collars, cuff links, tie bars and pinkie rings."

LOAD-DATE: September 23, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Linda A. Fairstein of the Manhattan District Attorney's office says women are more likely than men to base a verdict on appearances. (Jill Krementz); But Robert Hirschhorn, a jury consultant, says little is certain in jury selection. (F. Carter Smith for The New York Times)

Copyright 1994 The New York Times Company



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The New York Times

September 25, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

New & Noteworthy Paperbacks

BYLINE: By Laurel Graeber 

SECTION: Section 7;  Page 40;  Column 1;  Book Review Desk 

LENGTH: 910 words

THE QUEEN AND I
By Sue Townsend. Soho, $11.
There are those who believe that Britain's royal family has always lived on its subjects' charity; in this comic novel it is literally so. After Queen Elizabeth and her kin end up in public housing, the author "takes what we think we know about the royals and lets them act according to our preconceptions," Michael Elliott said here last year. "So they have a marvelous familiarity." 

THE FOUNTAIN OF AGE
By Betty Friedan. Touchstone/Simon & Schuster, $15.
The author who tackled "the feminine mystique" turns to "the age mystique." Debunking the image of the years after 65 as a time of inevitable decline, she offers a view of this period as one of enhanced creativity and greater freedom from sex roles. Last year our reviewer, Nancy Mairs, said: "I can't imagine a more heartening gift for a woman of any age. . . . Or a man, for that matter." Ms. Mairs's own exploration of the journey of life, ORDINARY TIME: Cycles in Marriage, Faith, and Renewal (Beacon, $12), includes reflections on aging, as well as on her experience with multiple sclerosis and her husband's with cancer. Detailing her reluctant but persistent embrace of religious belief, it "is a remarkable accomplishment: a confessional book that avoids . . . narcissistic pitfalls," Kathleen Norris said here last year. The effects of aging are also examined in OLD FRIENDS, by Tracy Kidder (Richard Todd/Houghton Mifflin, $10.95), which focuses on two elderly men in Linda Manor, a Massachusetts nursing home. Last year our reviewer, Mary Gordon, said, "We see Linda Manor clearly, from the piano in the lobby to the flowered carpet that causes problems for the impaired minds of some of the patients."
PICTURES AT AN EXHIBITION
By D. M. Thomas. Carroll & Graf, $10.95.
This novel by the author of "The White Hotel" features a Jewish doctor and inmate at Auschwitz who agrees to treat a Nazi physician. Years later, one of the men resurfaces under a different name -- but which one? "Mr. Thomas's construction of a narrative puzzle . . . is masterly," Frederick Busch said here last year.
LIFE FOR ME AIN'T BEEN NO CRYSTAL STAIR
By Susan Sheehan. Vintage, $11.
Crystal Taylor, the daughter of drug addicts and a drug abuser herself, gives birth at the age of 14. This book describes Crystal's and her son's journeys through New York City's foster care system and their eventual reunion. Last year our reviewer, Samuel G. Freedman, said the book "should disabuse any reader of utopian fantasies about 'family preservation.' " Drug-shadowed lives are also explored in SIX OUT SEVEN, by Jess Mowry (Anchor/Doubleday, $12.95), a novel about a teen-age gang in Oakland, Calif. "Few authors capture the slang and terrors of inner-city streets the way Mr. Mowry does," Michael Upchurch said here last year.
WHOREDOM IN KIMMAGE: Irish Women Coming of Age
By Rosemary Mahoney. Anchor/Doubleday, $12.95.
In 1991 the author hobnobbed in Irish pubs, interviewed Ireland's first female president and reported on feminism. Last year our reviewer, Peter Finn, praised her "wonderful ear" and "alert, cutting sensibility."
DIVINE INSPIRATION: A Homer Kelly Mystery
By Jane Langton. Penguin, $5.95.
Boston church organs and organists fall victim to foul play in this ecclesiastically inclined whodunit. The novel's "affectionately drawn characters make church going a memorable, if not entirely spiritual, experience," Marilyn Stasio said here last year.
The FBI
By Ronald Kessler. Pocket Star, $6.50.
J. Edgar Hoover gave this Government agency an identity that it has been trying to shake ever since the former director's death. This book includes the F.B.I.'s expansion into undercover work, high-technology methods and investigation of white-collar crime. Last year our reviewer, John P. MacKenzie, called it "an informative study by a resourceful student."
THE FORMS OF WATER
By Andrea Barrett.
Washington Square/Pocket Books, $12.
This novel chronicles the declining fortunes of several members of the Massachusetts Auberon family, whose land and happiness have been destroyed by the advent of the Stillwater Reservoir. "Ms. Barrett nicely details the quiet agonies of people who have fallen from grace," Jennifer Howard said here last year.
NO BREATHING ROOM: The Aftermath of Chernobyl
By Grigori Medvedev. Translated by Evelyn Rossiter. Basic Books, $11.
The engineer who wrote "The Truth About Chernobyl" describes his attempt to warn the public about the potential danger in the years before the disastrous 1986 nuclear-reactor accident. Last year our reviewer, Felicity Barringer, said the book offered "tantalizing glimpses of the stolid bureaucracy of censorship."
GOLDMAN'S ANATOMY
By Glenn Savan. Bantam, $8.95.
A lovers' triangle develops when Arnie Goldman, a disabled gem dealer, suddenly becomes host to Redso, his former best friend and a kooky aspiring playwright, and Redso's neglected girlfriend. The result is "a fast-paced comic romp," Andrea Barnet said here last year.
PARADISE OF THE BLIND
By Duong Thu Huong. Translated by Phan Huy Duong and Nina McPherson. Penguin, $9.95.
A young Vietnamese woman's widowed mother and her aunt battle for her loyalty in this novel, which examines the damage the country's Communist regime inflicts on family life. Last year our reviewer, Anne Barnard, said the characters' emotions are revealed in "sudden, searing glimpses."   LAUREL GRAEBER

LOAD-DATE: September 25, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Betty Friedan. (ICHAEL SHAVEL)

TYPE: Review

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The New York Times

September 25, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Harriman Suit: Misconduct, Or Just Bad Luck Investing?

BYLINE: By JAN HOFFMAN with MATTHEW PURDY 

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

LENGTH: 2182 words

It was when the trust fund checks stopped coming last fall to the elderly daughters of Gov. W. Averell Harriman, the railroad heir and financier, that the family began to sweat.
A son-in-law had already been dispatched to make discreet inquiries. The family discovered that funds that had once held $25 million had dwindled to scarcely $3 million. The fortune had been overseen by their patriarch's widow, Pamela Harriman, now the United States Ambassador to France, and his legal adviser, Clark M. Clifford, the Washington power broker. 
 In place of their cash, the Harriman heirs found that they owned a brown behemoth deep in rural New Jersey: the Seasons Resort and Conference Center (nee the Playboy Hotel), a 560-room hotel on 43 acres, which was on the verge of bankruptcy.
In a lawsuit that landed in Federal Court in Manhattan this month, three generations of Harriman heirs contend that Mr. Clifford, Mrs. Harriman and others not only frittered away the fortune that Mr. Harriman had set aside for them, but also deceived them about the sorry state of the investments.
The defendants are essentially saying that the beneficiaries were informed throughout and that, unhappily, a prudent investment went awry in the real-estate crash.
But what the next months and probably years of Harriman family litigation comes down to is this: "It's a terrible way to live out your last years," said a party to the litigation, referring to the principals, who are in their 70's and 80's. "That's what the children and Mrs. Harriman and Mr. Clifford are facing."
By all accounts, the Harriman heirs -- who include two elderly daughters, six grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren -- are severely allergic to the spotlight.
"They're the least litigious people in the world," said Peter Duchin, the society orchestra leader who was raised in the Harriman household and who has made no secret of his animosity toward Pamela Harriman. "They're old-fashioned, classy people with a good sense of values who believe that civilized people should be able to air differences without lawyers. They must be mad as hell."
By contrast, Pamela Harriman's English cream complexion bloomed under decades of the spotlight. She was a society column fixture known for her husbands, companions, money and power. She has a son named Winston Churchill, after her first father-in-law, and until recently, she owned the royalties to "The Sound of Music" as a result of her second marriage, to the Broadway producer Leland Hayward.
She attracts admirers and detractors of equal intensity. Mr. Duchin is married to Mr. Hayward's daughter Brooke, who chronicled her bitter battles with her former stepmother in her 1977 autobiography, "Haywire."
But George Trescher, a New York fund-raiser, said Mrs. Harriman's riveting charm made her "the best person a man could sit next to at dinner."
Her 1971 marriage to Mr. Harriman, when he was 79 and she was 51, made her the pre-eminent hostess and fund-raiser within the Democratic Party. Through a political action committee nicknamed Pampac, she raised millions for Democratic candidates, including Bill Clinton.
Mr. Harriman doted on her, and when he died in 1986, the lawsuit says, he left her $33 million of his $65 million estate, plus a trust valued at $11.6 million. He named her executor, giving her vast power over his numerous investments.
 
Trust Funds For the Heirs
 The other descendants were virtually shut out of the Harriman will.
"I have intentionally refrained from making substantial provision for my beloved daughters," Mr. Harriman wrote, "not from any lack of love and affection for them but because I know them to be otherwise well provided for."
From 1935 through 1971, he had set up trust funds for his daughters, grandchildren and successive generations, which paid them income.
The beneficiaries say that scarcely $3 million in cash remains in the trusts, and they are seeking at least $30 million in damages.
Although Mary Fisk, one of the daughters, is said to ride city buses when she is in Manhattan, that is a matter of preference rather than penury. Both daughters married comfortably, and Mr. Harriman gave them gifts during his lifetime. In recent years, Mrs. Harriman also gave the heirs about a million dollars, her lawyers say.
The grandchildren relied to greater and lesser degrees on the trust checks: one is a storefront lawyer in Washington, another works in a rehabilitation clinic near New York, a third is a developer in Palm Beach, Fla.
While reports vary about the tone of the relationship between Mrs. Harriman and the Governor's descendants -- "She was very, very fond of some of them," said her friend, Kitty Carlisle Hart -- the lawsuit and the plaintiffs' recent efforts to freeze Mrs. Harriman's and Mr. Clifford's New York assets have caused a deep rift.
 
Complete Confidence In an Administrator
 In 1984, Mr. Harriman, who in his long career had been Governor of New York, an Ambassador to the Soviet Union and to Britain, and Commerce Secretary, asked Mr. Clifford and Paul C. Warnke to be unpaid trustees for those trust funds. Mr. Clifford was Defense Secretary under President Lyndon B. Johnson, and Mr. Warnke was the chief arms negotiator under President Jimmy Carter.
A trustee has a basic obligation to research investments diligently and give prudent advice to beneficiaries.
The men pooled the various funds, which totaled nearly $13 million, into two investment partnerships. Mr. Clifford, Mr. Warnke and, as of 1986, Mrs. Harriman were the general partners, the lawsuit says, giving them control over the funds and responsibility for the investments.
The money was directly administered by a New York office run by William Rich 3d, who is also named as a defendant in the lawsuit.
Mr. Clifford said in an interview that Mr. Harriman placed complete confidence in Mr. Rich. "Harriman said, 'He's a lawyer, he's worked with me, he's exceedingly intelligent and wise,' " Mr. Clifford said. "He told Pamela: 'Don't interfere with Bill Rich's judgment. It has proved itself again and again.' "
Initially, the trusts flourished along with the stock market. From 1984 to 1989, the $12.9 million grew to approximately $25 million. But after the 1987 stock market slide, Mr. Clifford said, a decision was made to diversify the family's holdings.
Real estate, they thought, was the answer.
A $1.4 million real-estate investment in Queens arranged by a New Jersey financier, Eugene W. Mulvihill, had been a winner for the Harrimans, turning a $3.1 million profit, according to a defense lawyer in the case. So when Mr. Mulvihill soon after offered a fresh investment opportunity -- a hotel in Sussex County, New Jersey -- Mr. Rich, with the approval of Mr. Clifford and Mrs. Harriman, grabbed at it, investing $4.4 million.
The resort, which opened as the Playboy Hotel and Resort at Great Gorge in 1971, had been only intermittently successful when a company controlled by Mr. Mulvihill bought it in 1988. By 1989, when the Harriman investment was made, the company was hungry for cash.
But Mr. Mulvihill exudes optimism and is a consummate self-promoter who tosses off comments like, "The smartest people in the country invest with me." He is also a convicted felon.
In 1984, he pleaded guilty to charges that he set up a fake insurance company after investigators found he had paid himself premiums to give the appearance that he had insurance on a ski area that his company owned near the resort. As a result, he was barred from the securities business.
One of Mr. Mulvihill's partners in the hotel was Robert E. Brennan, a brash securities dealer who piloted his helicopter in television ads during the 1980's for his company, First Jersey Securities.
In 1984, without admitting wrongdoing, he resolved Federal securities fraud charges by agreeing not to violate such laws in the future. He is currently on trial in New York on charges of inflating stock prices.
Mr. Brennan's travails were widely covered in the press, and Mr. Mulvihill's were detailed in a corporate annual report just months before the Harriman investment was made. "Back in 1989," Mr. Clifford said, "neither name meant anything to me."
 
Pouring More Money Into a Faltering Hotel
 With the Seasons Resort needing renovation and real-estate values plummeting, the Harrimans' investment faltered. To shore up the initial investment, the trust kept pouring money into the hotel. In 1991, the Harriman partnerships bought the hotel outright from Mr. Mulvihill's company.
By 1993, the lawsuit contends, the trusts' investments were hardly diverse: $21 million had gone into the hotel. Mrs. Harriman, according to one of her lawyers, William J. Perlstein, also lost more than $3 million of her own money in the hotel.
The only investor to be made whole, the lawsuit says, was First American Bank of New York, whose $5.5 million loan to the resort was repaid. Mr. Rich was a director of the bank, and Mr. Clifford was president of the bank's parent company.
In 1992, Mr. Clifford was charged with fraud for concealing First American's ownership by the Bank of Credit and Commerce International. The charges against Mr. Clifford, who is 87, were dropped because of his ill health, and his law partner, Robert Altman, was acquitted of similar charges last year.
Despite the infusion of capital, the renovations were never completed.
"One person says, 'Let's cut our losses,' and another says, 'Put a couple more million in,' " said Sara Moss, Mr. Rich's lawyer. "They're two different opinions, but that's not chicanery."
She said the hotel received "positive appraisals from a serious investment bank and accounting firm that looked at it."
The hotel's value will be among the disputes in the litigation. A 1991 appraisal done for the Harriman trust put the hotel's worth at $45.1 million, pending completion of the renovations. But when the hotel declared bankruptcy in August 1993, the Harriman heirs who now control the property set the value at $9.3 million.
Another litigation issue is the heirs' claim that Mr. Clifford, Mr. Warnke and Mr. Rich misled them by concealing the extent of the investments in the resort and other ventures, like a start-up plastics company now nearing collapse. The suit says the heirs were paid from the funds' principal, to give the appearance that the investments were yielding a profit.
In the summer of 1992, Averell Mortimer, a Harriman grandson who is an investment banker in New York, asked that up to a million dollars of his trust money be placed in a fund that invests in distressed companies. According to the lawsuit, a letter signed by Mr. Clifford and Mr. Warnke discouraged the move, saying, "We have real concerns about the prudence of relying on such a high-risk investment fund for trust assets."
In truth, the lawsuit contends, Mr. Mortimer's money was not available: It had been pledged against an $18 million line of credit from Morgan Guaranty for the hotel.
Ms. Moss, Mr. Rich's lawyer, echoed the position taken by Mrs. Harriman through her lawyers and by Mr. Clifford when she said: "The beneficiaries were informed throughout about the investment in writing and orally."
 
Negotiations End Without Settlement
 Early last year, as Mrs. Harriman was preparing for hearings on her ambassadorial appointment, she resigned as general partner of the family's investment companies. Later that year, Mr. Clifford, who was under indictment in the B.C.C.I. case and in poor health, and his partner, Mr. Warnke, resigned as trustees. Mr. Rich assumed the post.
By late summer of 1993, Charles C. Ames, a Boston lawyer who is married to Mr. Harriman's granddaughter Kathleen, was looking into the management of the funds. Mr. Rich stepped aside as trustee this February. Mr. Ames and W. Nicholas Thorndike became the new trustees, and they are pressing the lawsuit on behalf of the Harriman heirs.
Negotiations began early this year, with Mrs. Harriman represented by Lloyd N. Cutler, the temporary White House counsel, who got approval to handle a few private matters when he accepted the position. Offers and counteroffers were made, but talks eventually broke down.
Formal responses by the defendants will not be filed for two months. Already they are trying to distance themselves from each other. Mr. Clifford has said that, at Mr. Harriman's behest, he relied solidly on the investment advice of Mr. Rich, who was in frequent contact with the beneficiaries.
Mr. Rich, through his lawyer, has said that while no duties were breached, his role was to give advice while the others had final responsibility.
Mr. Warnke, who did not return calls for this article last week, said earlier that he had not known the extent of the investment in the hotel.
And through her lawyers, Mrs. Harriman said that she had not been a trustee and that she had understood her role as general tax partner not to encompass investment responsibility.
Meanwhile, the Harrimans' hotel is open for business and has plenty of rooms available.

LOAD-DATE: September 25, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photos: The Seasons Resort and Conference Center in Vernon Valley, N.J., in which the fortune of three generations of Harriman heirs has been invested. The 560-room hotel on 43 acres is almost bankrupt. (Norman Y. Lono for The New York Times); Pamela and W. Averell Harriman in 1981, after 10 years of marriage, at a political fund-raising event to celebrate his 90th birthday. (United Press International/Bettmann, in "Life of the Party" by Christopher Ogden; @Little, Brown, and Co., 1994); Clark M. Clifford, who had been W. Averell Harriman's legal advisor, is also named in the lawsuit filed by Harriman heirs. (Associated Press) (pg. 46)

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September 25, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Welfare for Middle-Class Elderly?;
In Final Years, Many Transfer Assets to Qualify for Medicaid

BYLINE: By ESTHER B. FEIN 

SECTION: Section 1;  Page 39;  Column 2;  Metropolitan Desk;  Second Front

LENGTH: 1771 words

On a sunny floor in a New Jersey nursing home, two elderly women share a room, news about their grandchildren and a plight ever more common among their aging and ailing peers: both are poor, and their bills are paid by Medicaid.
But while one depleted her life savings in the first two months she spent at the nursing home, the other, a widowed homemaker debilitated by Parkinson's disease, intentionally reduced herself to poverty to qualify for Medicaid. Several years ago, she paid a lawyer to transfer $50,000 worth of stocks, bonds and cash to her sons and grandchildren. 
 For the last several years, thousands of middle-income elderly people, terrified that long-term health care costs could wipe out their savings, have transferred their assets to relatives to qualify for Medicaid.
The practice has created a swelling corps of lawyers who help people to pauperize themselves legally and has prompted an intense ethical debate over whether people with money should benefit from a medical program intended for the poor.
"It's a growing subterranean economy done with professional help," said Mildred Shapiro, associate commissioner of Health and Long Term Care in New York State's Department of Social Services.
Although the money is no longer in their names, the older people depend on a tacit agreement that those who control the assets will use some of the money to care for them. More importantly to many older people, such planning allows them to leave money to their heirs that would otherwise be depleted for health care.
But critics say that those who qualify for Medicaid through such financial preparations are getting middle-class welfare. They say that soaring Medicaid costs, which are paid through a combination of Federal, state and, in some cases, local dollars, are straining government budgets and that recipients should be limited to the truly needy.
"I don't believe the Medicaid system can sustain itself and serve the people it was intended to if it's being used this way by upper- and middle-income people," said Carl S. Young, president of the New York Association of Homes and Services for the Aged in Albany. "It's perfectly legal, and it's happening in the absence of any coherent public policy on how we're going to pay for long-term care."
The issue of such transfers has become so pervasive that both Gov. Mario M. Cuomo, and his Republican challenger, George E. Pataki, have had to answer questions about arrangements they made for their parents' long-term care.
In response to the criticism, Congress tightened some Medicaid rules last year to make it harder for wealthy and middle-income elderly people to qualify.
Supporters stress that the methods are legal and necessary, and not unlike tax planning that other lawyers perform. They say that while Medicare covers acute illnesses like heart attacks and cancer, it does not cover prolonged stays in nursing homes and largely neglects care for chronic, degenerative diseases like Alzheimer's or Parkinson's, forcing people to seek Medicaid's security.
"The real problem is that no one is forming a sound, workable policy for long-term health care at a time when demand for it is growing so quickly, so Medicaid becomes the answer," said Jane Gould, director of New York State's Office for the Aging.
Most Medicaid estate planning, as the practice is called, is being done with the help of a new cadre of lawyers who specialize in issues affecting the elderly. The Academy of Elder Law Attorneys, a professional society in Tucson, lists 4,000 members nationwide; 10 years ago, the group did not exist.
In the last few years, most state bar associations have started sections or committees on elder law, and law schools are beginning to offer courses on the subject.
"Our numbers are growing because health care costs are growing, the aging population is growing and nursing home costs are growing," said Peter J. Strauss, an elder law specialist with the New York firm Epstein Becker & Green. "People are afraid of becoming destitute."
Nationally, the cost of a nursing home, for example, is about $36,000 a year, and experts say that most people enter one after they have already had severe medical problems that have eaten away at their savings.
Private long-term care insurance is available, but its use remains limited, experts say. Although such insurance costs only a few hundred dollars a year for healthy people who sign up before they turn 60, it is unavailable to those who are already infirm, and the policies are often only good for a limited period.
The woman in the New Jersey nursing home who spent her savings paying for her own care, said it pained her to have worked her entire life as a seamstress, to have carefully set aside money for her grandchild only to lose it to poor health.
"I wanted to give my granddaughter a leg up," said the woman, who is 84 and partly paralyzed by a stroke. "Not to be able to leave her anything hurts." Like several other elderly people interviewed, she preferred to speak of her finances anonymously.
To be sure, many older people choose not to transfer their assets. Some feel degraded by accepting public assistance intended for the poor. Others are reluctant to cede control of their finances and worry that if relationships sour, their money will be jeopardized.
"Even those who think their money is safe find sometimes that it was used to pay for college or because some lazy son decided not to work for two years and to live off of it," said Rona Bartelstone, a geriatric care manager in Florida. "And the risk is not just losing the money, but losing the relationship when the older person realizes they've been swindled by someone they trusted."
But fear of poverty, experts say, is motivating a growing number of middle-income elderly people to shed their assets and assure their Medicaid eligibility.
"They're scared of being caught in a crunch," said Ruth Sabatini, a care planner with Loretto Senior Choices, a nonprofit social service organization in Syracuse. "They all want to know, 'How am I going to be cared for?' It's not necessarily verbalized, but it's what most of our conversations consist of."
To curb the growth of Medicaid estate planning, Congress approved legislation last year to limit the transfers.
For example, the Government can now check on any asset transfers made within 36 months of a person's application for Medicaid and penalize an applicant for resources transferred within that period. They may not, however, confiscate the transferred assets. The so-called look-back period used to be 30 months.
States are also required to recoup expenses from the estates of Medicaid recipients after they die. Since Medicaid rules allow people to keep their homes, personal property, a car and limited cash, there are often assets that can be sold to pay back the Government, although officials said enforcement of this was spotty.
Still, the Government's ability to take and sell these assets provides yet another impetus for older people to transfer them to their relatives.
The laws governing qualification for Medicaid are federally mandated, but they give states leeway in setting their own standards. New York, for example, has the most generous allowances for holding on to assets. Single people can keep $3,200, as well as property and limited money for funeral expenses.
In addition, the Government allows husbands and wives of Medicaid beneficiaries to keep money and other liquid assets without jeopardizing their eligibility. The amount varies by state, with New York, allowing about $73,000 per spouse. The intent is to keep spouses from becoming destitute in caring for their partners and to discourage people from hiding their wealth.
"But, there are still ways that you can get around the rules," said Sally Richardson, the director of the Medicaid Bureau in the Health Care Financing Administration, "and people are taking advantage of them."
Much of the growth of Medicaid estate planning, officials said, is because of more aggressive marketing and advertising by elder law specialists. Lawyers across the country regularly offer free seminars to urge older people to plan their financial futures and Medicaid eligibility.
Nursing home administrators say that lawyers increasingly prepare patients' applications to the homes and take care of filing the necessary forms with local Medicaid offices.
Many administrators have criticized the practice for creating a growing clientele of Medicaid patients in nursing homes. They say that since Medicaid reimbursement does not cover their costs, they depend on private-paying customers. The more Medicaid patients they have, the administrators say, the higher costs are for other patients.
"It's especially galling when Mother's Day rolls around and the kids come to visit mom who is on Medicaid in their chauffeur-driven limousines and B.M.W.'s," said the head of one Manhattan nursing home. Like most of his colleagues, he spoke anonymously because, he said, people tend to think that nursing homes gouge their clients.
Although there is some public perception that wealthy people are manipulating the system, government officials, lawyers and nursing home administrators say most people are trying to shelter modest amounts of money, from as little as a few thousand dollars to as much as a few hundred thousand dollars, with most around $50,000.
"You know who tends to come to me?" said Dean Bress, an elder law specialist in White Plains. "A middle-income person who sees a neighbor facing staggering costs because her husband is in a nursing home. Or one of the couple gets sick with the wrong disease and the other panics. Why should someone with a heart condition be covered and treated better than someone with Alzheimer's? They're afraid of getting stuck."
A retired teacher from Queens said she was embarrassed, but relieved, that she and her husband, who has Alzheimer's disease, had transferred almost all their liquid assets, about $60,000, to their two sons over the last decade, anticipating that her husband would soon need nursing home care they would be hard pressed to afford.
"I felt devious doing it, even though it was all technically legal," the woman said. "You think of yourself as comfortable, middle-class. You can afford a trip to Atlantic City when you want. A nice dinner in the city sometimes. Welfare, Medicaid, food stamps. That's for other people. For poor people. But then you look and realize, without this money, I am poor and this money will be devoured in a flash. I don't feel like I had a choice."

LOAD-DATE: September 25, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photos: "They all want to know, 'How am I going to be cared for?' " Ruth Sabatini, a care planner with Loretto Senior Choices in Syracuse, said of middle-income elderly people who fear poverty. She spoke with Roy Bernardi, a Loretto employee. (Mike Greenlar for The New York Times) (pg. 39); "People are afraid of becoming destitute," Peter J. Strauss, a specialist in elder law, said of the large numbers of middle-income elderly who have transferred their assets to relatives to qualify for Medicaid. (William E. Sauro/The New York Times) (pg. 47)

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September 25, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final
Correction Appended

NEIGHBORHOOD REPORT: LOWER MANHATTAN;
Vendors' Mall Draws Mixed Reviews

BYLINE: By MARVINE HOWE 

SECTION: Section 13;  Page 8;  Column 1;  The City Weekly Desk 

LENGTH: 402 words

A vendors' mall, intended to ease the sidewalk gridlock in lower Manhattan by luring peddlers to Sara D. Roosevelt Park, is to open next month. And despite the opposition of a major vendors' group, the project is already over-subscribed.
Michael Zisser, executive director of United Settlement, the nonprofit organization that will run the mall, Roosevelt Market, says he has 350 applications for about 100 stalls. "We will have no trouble getting vendors," Mr. Zisser said. "Anyone who knows real estate rates in Chinatown knows this is a good deal, with no hidden costs." 
 The mall will be located in an abandoned wading pool in the park, just north of Grand Street. In recent years, the site has been taken over by drug abusers and the homeless. The city's Parks and Recreation Department hopes the mall will clean up the park as well as the nearby sidewalks.
But the project has critics. On a busy stretch of sidewalk along the Bowery off Canal Street, Shiu Yee Tam proudly showed his vendor's license and said he had no plans to rent a stall at the market. "I pay for this sidewalk," he said, pointing to the area around his modest jewelry stand. "Parks should be for children and elderly people."
Mr. Tam is the vice president of the Chinatown Vendors Association, a group of nearly 300 licensed peddlers. Members of the association have refused to move to the mall, he said, because they cannot afford the extra cost and they doubt that customers will be drawn to the park, given its unsavory reputation. The monthly rental ranges from $125 to $350 depending on the booth's size.
Many Chinatown vendors fear that the recent ban on Grand Street vending and the opening of Roosevelt Market may be steps toward the elimination of vending in Chinatown, and for them, the loss of a treasured way of life.
Steve Goldman, a Manhattan lawyer who represents the vendors association, says that under current law, licensed vendors cannot operate in most of Chinatown where sidewalks are too narrow to comply with the ruling that requires vendors to be 20 feet from a business. "At this point," he said, "we feel there's no alternative; we will have to litigate to change the statutes."
The Roosevelt Market, originally scheduled to start Oct. 1, will open Oct. 10, said Ning Zhou Zhang, the director of the mall for University Settlement. It will operate daily from 7:30 A.M. to 7:30 P.M.   M.H.

LOAD-DATE: September 25, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

CORRECTION-DATE: October 2, 1994, Sunday

 CORRECTION:
A map with an article last Sunday about plans to open a vendors' mall in Sara Roosevelt Park in lower Manhattan gave incorrect locations for that market and some others proposed for Manhattan and Brooklyn. A corrected version appears on page 8.

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September 25, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Hooked on Philosophy

BYLINE: By John Vernon;   John Vernon is the author of the novel "Peter Doyle." His fourth novel, "All for Love: Baby Doe and Silver Dollar," will be published next year.

SECTION: Section 7;  Page 42;  Column 1;  Book Review Desk 

LENGTH: 1035 words


SOPHIE'S WORLD
A Novel About the History of Philosophy.
By Jostein Gaarder.
Translated by Paulette Moller.
403 pp. New York:
Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $19. 
NO wonder Euro Disney is a flop; Europeans are too busy reading philosophy. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari's "Qu'est-ce Que la Philosophie" (recently published in English as "What Is Philosophy?") was an unlikely best seller in France a few years ago. And "Sophie's World," by Jostein Gaarder, subtitled "A Novel About the History of Philosophy," is, according to Newsweek, "Europe's hottest novel."
There the resemblance stops. "What Is Philosophy?" was written by two elderly gentlemen who have been dubiously honored (by The Modern Review) as the Beastie Boys of current thought; the book is abstract, thick, difficult and brilliant. In the grand French tradition, it disdains bourgeois culture. "Sophie's World" is a tiptoe through the suburbs of the mind in search of eternal and universal truths that can be grasped by its 14-year-old heroine. Philosophy's search for truth, we learn, "resembles a detective story," a rule of thumb the novel takes literally. Thus the history of philosophy becomes inserted into the tale of a Norwegian Nancy Drew like an aspirin into a piece of cheese.
Sophie Amundsen arrives home from school to find two cryptic messages in her mailbox: "Who are you?" and "Where does the world come from?" Soon she is receiving lectures in the mail on ancient thought from an unknown correspondent. Then a dog begins dropping off the lectures. A videotape arrives in which her teacher reveals himself and narrates a tour of the Acropolis in Athens. The modern Acropolis becomes transformed, on tape, into the Acropolis of 402 B.C., and Plato introduces himself to Sophie on the screen. At last, Sophie and Alberto Knox, her mysterious instructor, meet in person, and his lectures continue in the form of one-sided Socratic dialogues at various locations in Sophie's hometown.
To Mr. Gaarder's credit, many of these lectures are lucid summaries of difficult thought. But many are canned to provide intellectual quick fixes. Democritus' atoms resemble Lego blocks; Plato's ideas are cookie molds. Mr. Gaarder's tour through the past of Western thought will perhaps have the good effect of encouraging some readers to seek out the real thing. But I suspect that most will be content with the bus ride; if it's Tuesday, this must be Descartes.
About midway through the novel, a further unexpected twist occurs, one designed to distract us while the philosophy drips steadily into our veins: Sophie and Alberto begin to suspect they are characters in someone else's novel. In fact, they are. The introduction of Bishop Berkeley's thought becomes a pivotal lesson enabling them to understand their uncertain metaphysical status as figments of an immaterial world imagined by a Norwegian major named Albert Knag, who is serving with the United Nations forces in Lebanon. Knag, it turns out, has been writing a novel called "Sophie's World" for the birthday of his daughter, Hilde, who is the same age as Sophie. Whether Sophie and Alberto will be able to escape this man's "gluey imagination," and what sort of daughter the U.N. major will find when he returns home from Lebanon, become the chief carrots luring us toward the climax.
Woven into the twist-run plot, the lectures on philosophy frantically approach the 20th century in order to conclude simultaneously with the story framing them. Mr. Gaarder discovers ingenious ways to make the thought of each philosopher pertain to Sophie's -- and Hilde's -- solution of her personal mystery. A climactic philosophical garden party becomes the novel's most comic and memorable set piece, inserting into this Norwegian book of virtues, with its homage to the Western intellectual canon and its spirit of common sense, a counterspirit of carnival and sexual anarchy.
In a sense, "Sophie's World" is an old-fashioned conduct book of the sort written by a father for his daughter's education. The function of such books used to be to produce a middle-class domestic woman who could occupy her leisure with uplifting activities and thoughts lest she desire something illicit. Mr. Gaarder updates such a supervisory project with feminist asides designed to empower his heroines. Alas, poor Sophie, empowered by philosophy, becomes more and more immaterial to the story -- literally so. Whether her alter ego, Hilde, will learn from Sophie's adventures to doubt, wonder and think for herself is the question we are left with once Sophie disappears into the world of fairy tales.
Mr. Gaarder, a high school philosophy teacher -- yes, Phyllis Schlafly, they teach philosophy in Norwegian high schools -- wrote his book for young adults. But adult adults made it a best seller. Whether the adults of America will do the same remains to be seen. It will surely be a plus that the novel makes few pretensions toward art; Mr. Gaarder undoubtedly suspected that such an added
virtue would only encumber a narrative already suffering from the kitchen-sink effect. As rendered by his translator, Paulette Moller, the novel's style is sturdy and unsubtle, plain as a box. The characters made to fit inside the box are tissue thin.
Moreover, there is enough about the wonder and magic of philosophy in "Sophie's World" to make some readers reach for their guns. The meat of the book -- its account of Western philosophical thought -- ranges in quality from philoso-Disney to a series of accurate and intelligent precis. Alberto the philosopher is a kind of latter-day Mr. Wizard; whether we swallow his generously sweetened bait and become hooked on philosophy depends on the philosophy being expounded. On Spinoza and Hume he is superb, but when he gets to Romanticism we see the supermarket encyclopedias lying open before his hidden God, Mr. Gaarder. As philoso-narrative, "Sophie's World" is a world above "Jonathan Livingston Seagull" but a universe below "The Magic Mountain." In my view, literate readers would do better to try Bertrand Russell's "History of Western Philosophy," which is shorter on magic but longer on wit, intelligence and curmudgeonly skepticism.

LOAD-DATE: September 25, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

TYPE: Review

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September 27, 1994, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

Sheelah Ryan, 69, Who Started Charity With Lottery Winnings

BYLINE: AP 

SECTION: Section B;  Page 14;  Column 5;  National Desk 

LENGTH: 254 words

DATELINE: WINTER SPRINGS, Fla., Sept. 26

Sheelah Ryan, who won a $55.2 million lottery prize in 1988 and spent the following years giving the money away, died on Saturday at her home in this Orlando suburb. She was 69.
The cause was cancer, said a friend, Nancy Damron. 
 Mrs. Ryan won the jackpot in the Florida Lottery on Sept. 3, 1988, and in December that year she set up a charitable foundation that donated to causes as diverse as stray cats and poor children in need of operations. The Ryan Foundation also built low-cost housing and paid overdue rent to spare single mothers and their children from eviction.
"I think it was by the grace of God I won," Mrs. Ryan said in 1989. "I realized there must have been a reason He gave me the money, so I decided to give some of it to senior citizens and the homeless."
With her jackpot, Mrs. Ryan became the largest individual lottery winner in American history, a distinction she held until a Wisconsin man won a $110 million prize last year. Mrs. Ryan's jackpot was payable over 20 years in annual installments, and she had received about $16.6 million. The remainder will go to her estate.
Pamela Ohab, who serves on the foundation's board, said it "will definitely continue."
"It's really her legacy, and that's what she wanted," Ms. Ohab said. "She left it very well funded." The foundation declined to say how much money it had given away.
Mrs. Ryan, who was born in New York City, worked part time selling real estate before she won the lottery.
A widow, she leaves several nieces and nephews.

NAME: Sheelah Ryan

LOAD-DATE: September 27, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

TYPE: Obituary (Obit); Biography

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September 29, 1994, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

Drugstore Chain to Provide Flu Shots for $10

BYLINE: AP 

SECTION: Section B;  Page 11;  Column 1;  National Desk 

LENGTH: 176 words

DATELINE: CHICAGO, Sept. 28

People who are unable to go to a doctor's office for flu shots will be able to get them at a drugstore, under a program announced on Tuesday by the Walgreen Company.
Nearly 2,000 drugstores will participate in the program, which seeks to make influenza prevention more convenient for elderly Americans or for those suffering from chronic illnesses. 
 The shots will be available at each Walgreen drugstore on at least one day from Oct. 1 through Oct. 22, the company said. The shots will cost about $10, and no appointment or prescription will be necessary.
Phil Schneider, a spokesman for the National Association of Chain Drug Stores, said it appeared to be the first time that a national drugstore chain had offered to provide flu shots for the public.
A spokesman for Walgreen, Michael Polzin, said the shots would be administered by nurses through individual disposable syringes.
The centers recommend flu shots for people 65 and older, nursing home residents, children with asthma and adults and children suffering from chronic disorders.

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LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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September 29, 1994, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

IN THE STUDIO WITH: Cassandra Wilson;
Singing a Song of the South

BYLINE: By CHARISSE JONES 

SECTION: Section C;  Page 1;  Column 2;  Home Desk 

LENGTH: 1461 words

CASSANDRA WILSON crafts her melodies in an apartment that looks out over the Harlem River.
It is a space imbued with the past, the same sense of memory that guides Ms. Wilson's spirit and shades her music. It is here that she practices jazz licks and smoky riffs under the watchful gaze of her elders. 
 They stare from photographs -- her father, Herman B. Fowlkes, a jazz guitarist who, while millions of blacks moved north, trekked the opposite way; the tenor saxophonist Dexter Gordon, caught on camera as he jammed in Jackson, Miss.; her maternal grandmother standing tall in front of the family home down south.
"It's really important to keep in touch with them," Ms. Wilson said on a recent sunny afternoon. "There's a line from the film 'Daughters of the Dust,' where the old woman says something like, 'It's up to the living to keep in touch with the ancestors.' It epitomizes how I feel about what we need to do in order to regenerate."
Not that Ms. Wilson is afraid of breaking with tradition. With nine solo albums to her credit, shehas been hailed by critics as the greatest female jazz vocalist of her generation. But she rejects category, choosing to call herself simply a musician. And her first album for Blue Note, "Blue Light 'Til Dawn," belies easy categorization, using folk and the blues as well as jazz to celebrate love and the preciousness of the past.
On the album, she reinterprets songs first sung by Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison and Robert Johnson. She recasts the Stylistics' "Children of the Night" and croons a slow, aching rendition of "I Can't Stand the Rain" to the backdrop of a steel guitar. She also wrote three of the album's selections, including the bluesy title tune, and "Sankofa," a haunting, a cappella song about the mythical Ghanaian bird of redemption. "Blue Light 'Til Dawn" has sold about 150,000 copies worldwide, making it one of the top-selling jazz records of the year and her own most successful recording.
In April, Ms. Wilson starred in Wynton Marsalis's epic concert piece on American slavery, "Blood on the Fields." She will sing in the Arnold Schwarzenegger film "Junior," due out at Thanksgiving; she performs on albums of songs by Van Morrison and the artist formerly known as Prince, and this month she will begin a concert tour.
But Ms. Wilson is not fazed by her rapidly rising star nor worried that she may lose her way on the road to commercial success.
"I continue to choose the path I take musically," she said. "And it's not motivated by becoming famous or having a lot of money, or any other pop aspiration."
Instead, Ms. Wilson said she records "because I have to be heard." "Sometimes I feel as if Cassandra Wilson on stage is a conduit," she continued. "I think music provides a language for us to communicate with each other and to the world of spirits."
This apartment that is now her studio was once her home. She was married then, and she and her husband chose this place on Edgecombe Avenue because a friend once lived here, and the apartment's rooms resonated with memories of lively parties where film makers, musicians and other artists mingled.
Later, Ms. Wilson, who is in her 30's but refuses to reveal her exact age, moved next door but kept the first apartment as a place to create and rehearse.
There are the necessary tools: a set of drums, a piano, her guitar. The apartment's edges are softened with white lace and pillows wrapped in African cloth. There is a black-and-white pencil drawing of Ms. Wilson, a painting of a pensive man and a chair covered in blue velvet, spotted brown from coffee stains and cigarette burns.
Compact disks stacked in the corner testify to Ms. Wilson's eclectic tastes, from Billie Holiday to Edith Piaf to the Gipsy Kings. And then there is Charlie Parker.
She once fantasized that she was the legendary saxophonist reborn. That was back in the early 1980's, when Ms. Wilson moved from New Orleans with her husband to New Jersey and she became part of New York's young jazz scene.
Asked to describe herself back then, Ms. Wilson said she was probably striving to be heir apparent to Betty Carter, personalizing jazz melodies with her smoky contralto but staying within the boundaries set by her predecessors.
"I listened to Sarah Vaughan, Dinah Washington and Nancy Wilson," she said, "and there was a time I romanticized that period and wanted to live through that music."
To tell the story of Ms. Wilson, one must venture across the Mason-Dixon line, to Jackson, Miss., where she was born and raised. There, the patois had the lilt of music, her grandmother brewed medicine from herbs and passed along family history, and her great-grandmother was born into slavery.
There is an earthy spirituality about Ms. Wilson, in the way she sashays in cool clothing, golden dreadlocks dangling down her back. It took a while for her to feel comfortable reshaping jazz to better fit her own musical contours.
"I have from time to time been worried about the quote-unquote jazz police," she said. "That's the musical community I grew up in. The worry was that somehow they would view it as turning away from the music."
Then she came to a realization. "I think people tend to forget what jazz was like in the beginning," she said. "It's not a form of music that came out canonized and etched in stone. It comes from people absorbing what they live. So I don't have a problem doing music that's popular. Billie Holiday and even Charlie Parker interpreted what was known as the popular music of that time. I don't see any difference between that and what I'm doing."
"Blue Light 'Til Dawn" is about the mating ritual, "my memories of it, and the way I feel about it," Ms. Wilson said. It is about paying homage to the elders of blues and jazz. "But it's also about something else -- a yearning and a longing to have that kind of life again down south," she added.
She is, at her center, a Southern woman. "I've been here 12 years, and there are some things about this city I refuse to adjust to," she said.  "I still speak to people on the street. I look at people. That's why I like this neighborhood. You have a strong sense of community."
As a child, Ms. Wilson studied classical piano and played the guitar. She briefly attended Millsaps College and then finished her education at Jackson State University, where she earned a degree in mass communications. Along the way, she took time out to play with a blues band called Bluejohn but eventually became a jazz singer. Later, when she moved north, she teamed up with M-Base, jazz musicians with whom she made her first recordings.
Since then, Ms. Wilson's life has undergone many changes, including separation from her husband and the loss of her father, who died last year.  He was from Chicago but went south while he was in the military. His was a family of so-called "blue-veined" people, blacks vaulted into an upper caste because of the lightness of their skin. But while in Mississippi, he fell in love with a dark-skinned Southern schoolteacher, Ms. Wilson's mother, and he decided to stay.
Because her father was a jazz guitarist and bassist, jazz was a part of Ms. Wilson's household. So were Motown and folk music, and she briefly sang in a folk trio while in high school. But she picked up the blues another way. It scented the air, emanated from the soil and in the midst of everyday living, pierced Ms. Wilson's soul.
Ms. Wilson noted the ambivalence many African-Americans feel toward the blues. Even her father, who recorded with Sonny Boy Williamson and played with Ray Charles, tried to shield the daughter he called Little Sis from the blues. She believes his efforts rose not from disdain but from concern that embracing the blues would stamp her as socially unacceptable in certain circles.
"It's something I think about a lot," she said of black people's relationship to the blues. "Some people say that the blues places limitations on us, on our experience, on our hopes as a people. Some people feel that it is what provides us our catharsis or maintains our connection with the past. And for some that past is very ugly and very painful. But I think ultimately we have to face that pain, deal with that pain and express it, in order to move forward."
A sense of the past, of traditions that helped Southern blacks live and thrive, seems to have eroded in the trek north, Ms. Wilson said. The essence of such spiritual fortitude is still there, she believes, but is sometimes obscured by the urban hustle.
Still, she looks for it in her neighbors' faces, writes about it in her songs, tries to pass it on to her 5-year-old son, Jeris. "You don't have to abandon those values, that culture in order to be successful," she said.

NAME: Cassandra Wilson

LOAD-DATE: September 29, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photos: "I choose the path I take musically," Cassandra Wilson says. (Andrea Mohin/The New York Times) (pg. C1); Cassandra Wilson at the JVC Jazz Festival last year. (Jack Vartoogian) (pg. C8)

TYPE: Biography

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September 30, 1994, Friday, Late Edition - Final

Study Offers Tips for Elderly On Reducing Risk of Falling

BYLINE: Reuters  

SECTION: Section A;   Page 17;   Column 3;   National Desk  

LENGTH: 401 words

DATELINE: BOSTON, Sept. 29

Elderly people can significantly reduce their risk of falling by monitoring blood pressure, taking prescription drugs carefully and using techniques to increase mobility, a study has found.
Falls are a major cause of death and disability among the elderly. The research, led by Dr. Mary Tinetti of Yale University, was published today in The New England Journal of Medicine. It contradicts earlier studies that suggested that nothing could be done. 
 "For an older person, this type of fall prevention strategy can mean the difference between being able to live safely and independently at home, or needing nursing-home care or other assistance," said Dr. Evan Hadley of the National Institute of Aging, which helped finance the study.
Nurses and physical therapists, under the guidelines of the study, visited the homes of 153 people who were 70 and older. Their purpose was to identify and resolve potential problems. An additional 148 volunteers were visited at home, but the health care workers took no actions to prevent falls.
After one year, 35 percent of the people in the intervention group had suffered falls, as against 47 percent of those in the nonintervention group.
Safer techniques for walking, climbing stairs and getting out of the bath were taught, as were exercises to improve balance. Doctors were asked to review drug prescriptions and dosages to make sure they were necessary.
Those at risk, researchers found, tend to use sedatives, take more than three prescription drugs a day and experience problems using the toilet or bathtub. They may also have an impaired gait and muscle weakness.
Treatment of fall-related fractures costs an estimated $10 billion in the United States, and unintentional injury, often caused by falls, is the sixth leading cause of death among people over 65.
The researchers found, however, that costs were not significantly different for prevention and for injury. Researchers estimated that it cost $12,400 to prevent each fall, while the typical charge for treating someone who has fallen is $11,800.
But they noted that the cost estimates did not take into account pain and suffering, or the loss of independence resulting from such falls.
"Falls can break self-confidence as well as bones," Dr. Steven Cummings and Dr. Michael Nevitt of the University of California at San Francisco, said in an editorial in the journal.

LOAD-DATE: September 30, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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October 1, 1994, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

Grief and Anger in City Where Friends Are Gone

BYLINE: By RICHARD W. STEVENSON,   Special to The New York Times 

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

LENGTH: 785 words

DATELINE: NORRKOPING, Sweden, Sept. 30

Right after hearing on Wednesday morning that a ferry had gone down en route from Tallinn, Estonia, to Stockholm, Majlis Alm rushed down to the senior citizen's center here, fearing the worst.
Mrs. Alm, a town council member who had previously run programs for elderly residents, knew that a group of local retirees were on a ferry trip to Tallinn. When it became clear that it was their vessel that had capsized and sunk, she summoned up the will to look at the list of their names. Six of the first eight names she saw were friends. Of the 56 people on the list -- all still missing and presumed dead -- she knew 20 well. 
 "I was reading the list and just crying," she said. "It was hard to be of much help to others."
In a country that has been knocked off its bearings by the loss of the ferry Estonia and more than 800 of its passengers, most of them Swedes, no town has taken a harder blow than Norrkoping, a placid port city of 120,000 people 100 miles south of Stockholm.
The 56 travelers from Norrkoping, including 14 married couples, were nearly all grandmothers and grandfathers, longtime residents with relatives and friends all over town. Bengt Malmstrom was known to all as the former chairman of the local health authority. Arne Engberg had long organized a popular bicycle race.
"The whole town is shocked and sad," said the Rev. Henrik Dareus, a local clergyman who has been counseling friends and relatives of the victims. "Wherever you are in the town, it's all anyone can talk about."
Today, red-eyed relatives besieged the town's crisis center with difficult questions. How could they accept and put behind them the deaths of loved ones if the vessel was not raised and the bodies recovered? How would they deal with the financial and other personal affairs of the victims? And with what counselors at the center said was growing forcefulness, they asked how such a tragedy could have occurred and who was to blame?
"They're alternating between sadness and anger," Mrs. Alm said.
Similar feelings appear to be common in many other communities. The city of Uppsala lost 26 court officials who had been on a trip to study the Estonian legal system. The town of Jonkoping was mourning the loss of 13 students and two teachers from a Bible school. Ericcson, the telecommunications company, lost 14 of its executives.
Swedes readily admit that they have little experience with tragedy on a large scale, that their nation of 8.5 million people, long neutral in world conflicts and known for the security of its cradle-to-grave social welfare system, has felt somehow insulated from many of the world's horrors. The exceptions -- like the assassination of Prime Minister Olof Palme in 1986 -- have left deep impressions on the national consciousness.
"What we thought could not happen, happened," the Svenska Dagbladet newspaper wrote on Thursday. "A ship cannot sink, not with hundreds of Swedes aboard. The thought is absurd, just as unreal as a Prime Minister being shot."
The air of unreality was clear today in the still-stunned looks on the faces of relatives of the Norrkoping victims. Reports from witnesses made clear that few of the very old or very young passengers on board had any chance of getting out or of surviving more than a few minutes in the frigid sea.
"In their minds, they know there is no hope," said Mr. Dareus. "But in their hearts, they don't believe it."
Standing in front of a piano draped with a white sheet and turned into a makeshift altar of flowers and candles at the crisis center, Margeveta Klausen, a 72-year-old member of the senior citizen's organization, said that she knew most of the victims, and that one, Elvy Hagstrom, was a neighbor.
"We can't find the words to describe what we feel," she said. "We can feel the sorrow, not just in this room, but throughout the whole town."
Mrs. Klausen said that seven of the victims were close friends and that most had left children and grandchildren.
"It's still a little strange to think that all these friends of ours are gone," she said.
A dozen Swedish flags flapped at half staff on a bridge on Drottningatan, the main street. Churches prepared for memorial services over the next few days. Although schools and businesses were open, there was little activity on the streets, and one elderly woman, asked about the tragedy, stared for a moment, shook her head and walked silently away.
Mrs. Alm said that for now, most of the victims' relatives and friends are getting plenty of support at the crisis center. But she said she feared how they would fare once the current flood of attention passes and they return to their normal routines.
"It will only get harder," she said.

LOAD-DATE: October 1, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Map of Sweden showing location of Norrkoping

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October 2, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

YOUR HOME;
Reducing Property Taxes

BYLINE: By ANDREE BROOKS 

SECTION: Section 9;  Page 5;  Column 1;  Real Estate Desk 

LENGTH: 1118 words

PROPERTY-TAX relief is traditionally won when an assessment appears out of line with comparable properties -- not simply because taxes are high. But homeowners need to be alert to special conditions that can also lower taxes. These include abatements for personal circumstances and environmental factors that may have altered the appeal of the property.
First, personal circumstances. Those over 65 should check to see if there is a program in their community for them. Taxes can often be lowered, suspended or frozen, although the specifics vary by municipality. 
 "We're constantly amazed at how many people who might have qualified never even knew about the opportunity," said Fred N. Perry, a lawyer in Dix Hills, L.I., who specializes in property-tax appeals.
For those with incomes around $23,000 or less, Mr. Perry said, the abatements on Long Island can save one-third of the amount due, in part because school taxes are not included.
He was recently contacted, for example, by an elderly woman in Uniondale, L.I., who would have been billed $3,569 this year had she not applied for her abatement. After it was approved, her tax bill was lowered to $2,408. Some 24,000 homeowners in New York City now receive abatements based on age and income, up from 17,000 in 1989.
Since initiatives to include more property-taxpayers by raising the income ceiling are constantly being proposed, no one close to the income ceiling should think of himself as disqualified for good. Paul Raffiani, tax assessor for the town of Edison, N.J., has even started a list of rejected applicants he plans to notify whenever the ceilings are raised.
Then there are the tax-deferral programs. Although available now only in a few places, they normally let people 65 and over defer some or all of their taxes until they sell their house. A lien is placed on the home to insure payment upon sale and interest is charged on the unpaid amount.
Though the taxes must eventually be paid, it does save taxpayers with substantial equity from being forced out because of high taxes. Westport, Conn., for example, offers this particular opportunity to taxpayers with a household income under $40,000. It currently has 110 homeowners enrolled.
Combat veterans also qualify for special treatment throughout the country, although the concession can be as little as $50. The widow of a qualified veteran should also qualify, provided she was still married to the veteran at the time of his death.
The environmental reasons for gaining property tax relief are only now beginning to emerge. Randy Airst is a lawyer with the Marga Environmental Corporation of Exton, Pa., a company that trains lawyers, lenders and assessors and other professionals on how to deal with environmental problems that affect properties.
He has documented an increasing number of successful appeals because problems inside or outside the property -- asbestos, lead, a nearby landfill or high-tension wires -- reduced the market value of the home.
Consider Edward McGrath, who has been living in Edison, N.J., only 50 feet from high-tension wires, for 36 years. "They haven't bothered me," he said, noting that he was now 70 years old and still in good health. But, he recalled, about three years ago he took action because "everyone was squawking and I figured it must have affected resale values."
He called George Yaeger, president of Real Estate Tax Reduction Inc. of Matawan, N.J., a consultant on property-tax relief, who won an assessment reduction of $10,000, thereby reducing Mr. McGrath's tax bill by about $170 a year.
But it's not all that easy. To mount a successful challenge in an external environmental situation it's usually best, experts say, to do so in cooperation with neighbors facing a similar situation because a reduction will have to made for all. "You can't make an exception for just one house," said Mr. Raffiani, the Edison tax assessor, who is facing a situation concerning the tax treatment of homes near a big gas-pipe explosion in Edison last February.
Eric Lukingbeal, a partner with Robinson & Cole, a Hartford law firm that has already handled such cases for commercial clients, noted that in Connecticut a change could be made only during a general re-evaluation, which takes place every 10 years, unless the condition (like lead paint) was present when the prior re-evaluation took place.
Further, assessors will demand the kind of detailed documentation that can be costly. It will be necessary, say, to show that other homes with the same problem actually sold for less -- not that the potential was lowered. "We can only work from history," Mr. Raffiani said, "not what might be."
The first step recommended by Mr. Airst is therefore to get together with neighbors to lower the cost of hiring expert counsel and because they will all be affected by the results.
Next, an appraiser should be selected. But not just any appraiser. Few have had training or experience in presenting environmental cases because the field is so new, Mr. Airst said. So it will need someone with background in this area.
A two-tier appraisal will be needed, Mr. Airst continued, one showing the value of these type of homes without the environmental problem and another after the problem arose.
Stigma alone -- even if the health impact is still being debated, as with high-voltage wires -- may be enough if it has already turned buyers away and thus lowered values. An engineer's report documenting the presence of toxic material could also help, he said. So could evidence from local real estate agents.
But what about the danger that any publicity surrounding the challenge may raise the red flag even higher with potential buyers?
It's no reason to hold back, Mr. Airst insisted. "They will find out anyway because lenders are requiring a lot more environmental information before they will agree to a loan," he said. Moreover, there's been an increase in data banks available to purchasers that highlight threatening conditions associated with particular properties or neighborhoods.
Another difficulty attached to these cases is that the assessor could suggest that certain problems, like lead paint, were deferred maintenance and therefore values were diminished only temporarily. If so, a temporary concession might be sought, Mr. Lukingbeal said.
That was indeed the approach of Douglas Layne, chief review assessor for New York City's Department of Finance. After a major storm in December 1992 seriously damaged 186 waterfront homes, the department reduced assessments, allowing each homeowner to pay about $100 less for the year. As they restore their homes the differential will disappear.

LOAD-DATE: October 2, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Drawing

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October 2, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

TRAVEL ADVISORY;
The Hudson Valley By Train and Minibus

SECTION: Section 5;  Page 3;  Column 4;  Travel Desk 

LENGTH: 213 words

Exploring some of the Hudson Valley's highlights without a car is easier this fall with the introduction of a new package by Metro-North. Called the Sleepy Hollow Excursion, the package provides round-trip rail fare from Grand Central Terminal to Tarrytown; minibus service between the station and three historic sites, and admission fees.
The sites are Sunnyside, the home of the author Washington Irving; Lyndhurst, the 1830's Gothic-revival mansion, and Philipsburg Manor, a Colonial-era farm and grist mill. Guided tours are provided at all three. 
 The package is available on Saturday and Sunday through Nov. 13. Trains depart Grand Central at 8:55 A.M., 9:55 A.M., 10:55 A.M. and 11:58 A.M., with frequent returns through the afternoon and into the evening; each site closes at 5 P.M., and the last minibus drops off passengers in time for the local train that leaves Tarrytown at 5:49. The express train takes 39 minutes, the local 51 minutes. The price of the package is $18.50, $14.50 for senior citizens 65 and over, $5 for children 5 to 11, free for those under 5. It must be purchased at Grand Central ticket windows and is not available from conductors on the trains.
For train information or details on the package, call Metro-North at (212) 532-4900.

LOAD-DATE: October 2, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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October 2, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

The Battle Hymn of a Republican

BYLINE: By Susan Lee;   Susan Lee is an economist. She is writing a book on the last 30 years of United States economic policy.

SECTION: Section 7;  Page 9;  Column 2;  Book Review Desk 

LENGTH: 827 words


DEAD RIGHT
By David Frum.
230 pp. New York:
A New Republic Book/Basic Books. $23. 

THIS is one tough book. David Frum, a former writer for The Wall Street Journal's famously fierce editorial page, is furious. He is not angry with, as might be expected, left-wing liberals and Whitewater conspirators, but with right-wing conservatives -- politicians and penseurs alike.
"Dead Right" is a look at what went wrong during the last 14 years of conservative politics as the message of economic conservatism was abandoned in favor of social conservatism. Simply put, Mr. Frum argues that the Republican right shifted away from its anti-big-government position because it was reluctant to keep pushing for a reduction in the growth of government and, as a consequence, to risk losing elections.
Unlike most conservatives, who feel that things were hunky-dory until the Bush Administration, Mr. Frum argues that things started going bad during the Reagan years. He attributes the problem to the failure of what he calls the Reagan gambit -- the promise that taxes could be cut, defense could be rebuilt and the budget balanced, all simultaneously. The gambit could have worked, he says, but the Administration allowed spending to zoom out of sight because it was unwilling to check the rise in social welfare spending. He is especially harsh on the Reagan Administration's decision to bump up Social Security payroll taxes -- a choice that eventually nullified Ronald Reagan's own income tax cuts. (As for the Bush Administration, Mr. Frum heaps scorn on its self-advertised legislative achievements, like the Clean Air Act and the Americans With Disabilities Act -- laws that will require, for compliance, enormous amounts of money.)
Mr. Frum offers suitably tart observations on many of the players on the right. In describing Jack Kemp, for instance, he says he found the man more of an "adept Jack Kemp imitator" than a real person. And he offers a bunch of great "gotchas," such as the difficulty faced by the right's intellectual -- and secular -- swami, Irving Kristol, when a guest at a conservative powwow asked him whether "intellectuals who lack religious faith can effectively advocate it for others."
But zingers aside, the book presents a powerful argument that the abandonment of economic conservatism is a big mistake: that is, one cannot change values without changing the economic structure to which those values are a response. "If the old American culture and the old American character were rational responses to the riskiness of life, you cannot alleviate that riskiness and expect the old culture and the old character to persist," he writes.
Consider that catchall category, family values. According to Mr. Frum, the old American attitude toward family -- caring for an aging parent, helping a cousin through a spate of unemployment, minding your sister's kids -- was based on the mutual glue of economic interests. That glue, he argues, loses its adhesive properties when government provides social welfare programs like Social Security, unemployment insurance and day care. Affection is now the only thing holding families together, and, Mr. Frum says, "affection is one of the most impermanent and weakest of human ties." Thus it is silly for conservatives to run around calling for programs to "support" the family when it is those very programs that undermine the economic self-interest that could reinforce family ties.
MR. FRUM is essentially correct in saying that when government policies reward failure and punish success they create perverse incentives. But when he launches into an analysis of the relationship between economic structures and social values, he does less well. For every instance of the sort Mr. Frum describes, in which economic changes have social consequences, one can point to another case in which changing social attitudes caused economic shifts, or to cases in which the two types of changes are almost inseparable -- as with the Protestant ethic and the rise of capitalism.
Moreover, Mr. Frum says the problem lies in the unpopularity of economic conservatism, but it isn't clear that economic conservatism is unpopular. True, polls show that voters want to have their cake and eat it too -- both to have less government and to keep the government programs that benefit them directly. But it is also true that the polls indicate most people don't expect middle-class programs like Social Security and Medicare to offer them the same level of benefits that obtain currently. This realistic mood allows considerable wiggle room for politicians who are fighting big government.
As for what should be done, Mr. Frum encourages the right to return to its message of minimalism -- less government spending, even at the risk of less electoral success. Although he is severe in his judgments and stern in his admonishments, perhaps he'll excuse me for calling his anger a form of tough love.

LOAD-DATE: October 2, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Drawing

TYPE: Review

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October 6, 1994, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

THE 1994 CAMPAIGN;
Democrats Taking Up Arms To Fend Off Voters' Apathy

BYLINE: By RICHARD L. BERKE,   Special to The New York Times 

SECTION: Section A;  Page 1;  Column 5;  National Desk 

LENGTH: 1257 words

DATELINE: OAKLAND, Calif., Oct. 4

Four evenings a week, about a dozen Democratic workers gather at a union office here on a mission that national party leaders say could be the difference between victory and defeat in November: motivating once-loyal party members who this year seem stuck in neutral.
But it is not an easy sell. 
 Throughout the country, the Democrats are beset by anti-incumbent fever and disappointment with the Clinton White House. On top of that, the prospect of a low turnout in the general election next month terrifies party officials.
At a phone bank in Oakland on Monday night, one of dozens in the state, Democrats called elderly party regulars to help get out the vote. But caller after caller found that many of the people on whom Democrats have always relied had grown too frail to participate.
"People are not making the time they did in '92," Saundra Andrews, a veteran volunteer, said as she was calling her latest prospect for the evening. "Two years ago, if someone was ill, we'd still get a volunteer out of their household. I'd have cases where they'd send their gardener to help. This year, they're not as enthused or excited."
Whether they are in poor health, soured on politics or just do not care, once reliable Democratic voters, young and old, are threatening to sit out next month's elections. In an extra complication, especially here in California, party strategists fear that television advertising may be wasted because the public is transfixed by the O. J. Simpson trial.
Turnout has generally been sagging since the late 1960's, but a study by the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate showed that about 19 percent of eligible Democrats voted in this year's primaries -- slightly less than four years ago -- while Republican turnout was a bit higher.
"We'd be in a lot of trouble if primary turnout in '94 is a predictor of turnout in the general election," said Don Foley, executive director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
To keep that from happening, party officials said they and individual campaigns alike planned to spend about $20 million for aggressive registration and get-out-the-vote drives to rouse the party faithful -- blacks, the elderly, women, union members, Jews, young people and some Hispanic Americans -- from their lethargy.
Republicans are also waging intense efforts to get out the vote, but they are less worried than Democrats. Republicans have historically been more inclined to vote. This year, moreover, Republicans have built-in incentives: the discontent in general with incumbents, who are largely Democrats, and with President Clinton in particular.
"The radical right's got people all stirred up, and the anti-Clinton sentiment on the Republican side has got people all stirred up," said Donald R. Sweitzer, political director for the Democratic National Committee. "We don't have a national emotional issue that moves our base."
Larry Grisolano, field director for the California Democratic Party, said his challenge was far greater than it was in the heat of the Presidential contest two years ago. "Ninety-two was like going fishing and having the fish jump in the boat," he said. "The interest this year hasn't been at a level that would indicate any enthusiasm."
There is the possibility that Democrats are making the situation sound more dire than it is to insure that Democrats go to the polls.
Nevertheless, party officials have demonstrated their nervousness by urging the President to attend more black church services in the coming weeks to help persuade one of the party's most partisan constituencies to vote.
As part of the effort, the Democratic National Committee has produced 25,000 glossy brochures for distribution in heavily black precincts. Among other things, they list the names of black appointees to the Administration, calling them "20 of the African-Americans who are making a difference."
Celinda Lake, a Democrat pollster, said Mr. Clinton's efforts to motivate voters was "one place where the President can be a big help because he's extremely popular with the base still."
As part of an effort to energize another loyal Democratic group, organized labor, Mr. Clinton is scheduled to campaign in Detroit next week for candidates and address a get-out-the-vote rally. And, to reach the elderly, Democratic candidates are contending that the platform espoused by Republican House candidates will lead to big cuts in Medicare and Social Security.
Besides California, the Democrats are channeling the most resources to the largest states with the most closely contested races: New York, Texas, Michigan, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Minnesota.
In New York, party officials said the fate of Gov. Mario M. Cuomo hinged on whether enough blacks in New York City and other urban pockets could be encouraged to vote. The officials said they had budgeted more than $1 million for such an effort, which is also targeting Hispanic and Jewish voters in the state. Overall turnout in this year's primaries in New York was 7.8 percent of the voting-age population.
Virginia is another nail-biter for Democrats. Officials said the turnout of black voters will determine whether Senator Charles S. Robb can fight off a challenge from Oliver L. North.
But nowhere are the Democrats' efforts at persuasion more aggressive than here in California, where the party is spending more than $8 million on their core voters. Nineteen percent of eligible voters went to the polls in the California primaries this year, compared with 21.4 percent in the 1990 primaries and 27.8 percent in the 1982 primaries.
Democrats are experimenting with an assortment of messages to get their rank-and-file interested. At a get-out-the-women's-vote rally in San Francisco on Monday, Vice President Al Gore's wife, Tipper, got a lukewarm reception at a half-filled outdoor plaza when she declared that it was in "women's self-interest, pure and simple" to vote for women.
But Josie Mooney, president of the San Francisco Labor Council, was more combative. She drew a much more enthusiastic response when she explained why women should support State Treasurer Kathleen Brown, the Democratic nominee for governor, over the incumbent, Pete Wilson. "I've been asked to say a few words about Pete Wilson," Ms. Mooney said. "How about short and mean?"
Ron Jackson, the Bay Area regional director of the state party's drive to encourage blacks to vote, said he got little mileage out of extolling the virtues of Ms. Brown. Instead, he said the best way to motivate black voters was to urge them to oppose a ballot initiative that would significantly stiffen jail sentences for three-time felons. "The one thing that turns on African-Americans is three-strikes-and-you're-out," Mr. Jackson said. "That issue goes to bed with them."
One of the most intense efforts is aimed at the 800,000 women in the state whom the party labels as occasional voters. Every woman who voted in 1992 but not in 1990 or in this year's primaries has been sent a letter from Hillary Rodham Clinton, who wrote, "Their silence could lose these elections and turn back our mandate for change."
Indeed, party officials hope their work will pay off better in November than it did here on Monday.
"My husband has cancer and I don't feel like talking about the election right now," one Oakland resident replied when she was phone by a party worker, Lisa Tucker.
"Sorry about that," Ms. Tucker replied. After hanging up, she conceded, "This was not our best list."

LOAD-DATE: October 6, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Graph: "OVER TIME: Voters Lose Interest in Midtown Election" shows turnout, as a percentage of voting-age population, in primaries held for each midterm election from '62-'94. (Source: Committee for the Study of the American Electorate) (pg. D22)

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October 6, 1994, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

Expelled From Villages, Bewildered Muslims Trudge to Sarajevo

BYLINE: By ROGER COHEN,   Special to The New York Times 

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

LENGTH: 571 words

DATELINE: SARAJEVO, Bosnia and Herzego vina, Oct. 5

The central image of the Bosnian war was repeated yet again in Sarajevo today when Muslim men, women and children expelled by Serbs from eastern Bosnia trudged across a city bridge clutching their only remaining possessions in a few ragged sacks.
Dazed and frightened, some of them in tears, they came slowly across the so-called Bridge of Brotherhood and Unity between the Serb-held Grbavica section of Sarajevo and Government-held territory. Then, as United Nations officials looked on, they were bundled onto city buses and taken off to one of the many refugee centers in the Bosnian capital. 
 "Serbian soldiers came to my house today and said I was to leave at once," said Fatima Potorkevic, aged 75, from the village of Burati, near Rogatica, in Serb-held eastern Bosnia. "I have no idea where I am going."
Sejdalija Mirvic said his village of Satorovici, near Rogatica, was entirely emptied of its remaining Muslims today. The Serbian authorities came to each Muslim household and told the families to prepare to leave. Then they were bundled onto buses to Sarajevo.
"I had three apartments in my house and a small farm with cattle," Mr. Mirvic, 56, said. "Now all I have left is in these bags." He pointed to two bundles on the floor of the bus.
Next to him a woman clutched a sleeping child, a young man stared vacantly into space and an old women wrapped shawls tighter against the gathering cold. The bewilderment on the faces of these uprooted Muslim farmers was that of a rural community thrust suddenly into the harsh lights of an unknown city.
The scene at the bridge seemed to capture the intractable suffering of the Bosnian war and the apparent powerlessness of international organizations to do anything about it, even after the forced eviction of an estimated 750,000 Muslims from the 70 percent of Bosnia held by the Serbs after 30 months of fighting.
The eviction of Muslim civilians came as Yasushi Akashi, the top United Nations official in the former Yugoslavia, secured an agreement on the reopening of the Sarajevo airport after a two-week shutdown in a meeting with the Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic.
Mr. Karadzic had threatened that his forces would shoot down any United Nations flights until the principle of Serbian ownership of the airport was accepted by Mr. Akashi. But the United Nations official said he had made no concessions in gaining Serbian agreement to the reopening.
Most of the food aid that reaches the city comes through the airport and the prolonged shutdown as winter approaches has caused food stocks to dwindle sharply and food prices to increase.
Mr. Akashi expressed satisfaction at the fact that a long-delayed prisoner exchange involving 115 Muslim prisoners of war and 160 Serbs had been agreed between the warring parties. Described by United Nations officials as a hopeful breakthrough, the planned exchange was largely overshadowed by the refugees' arrival.
Many international agencies were represented at the bridge --the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, United Nations peacekeepingtroops and the Red Cross. But they had little comment on the Muslim civilians crossing the bridge.
A local official, Azem Muzan, said 83 Muslims from the Rogatica area crossed into Bosnian Government territory. They have entered a city that is surrounded, short of wood and coal and psychologically exhausted after a 30-month siege.

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October 7, 1994, Friday, Late Edition - Final

Waiting Out Japan's Trade Surplus

BYLINE: By ANDREW POLLACK,   Special to The New York Times 

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

LENGTH: 1277 words

DATELINE: TOKYO, Oct. 6

Even as the United States struggles to reach new market-opening agreements with Japan, some foreign and Japanese economists believe that natural forces could eliminate Japan's huge trade surplus within the next decade or two.
"The trade surplus will disappear toward the end of the decade," Robert Alan Feldman, the chief of economic research for Salomon Brothers in Tokyo, predicted. Edward J. Lincoln, an economic adviser to the United States Embassy in Tokyo, said, "Certainly in the first decade of the 21st century it will disappear." 
 According to some economic theories, what will make the trade surplus disappear is the aging of Japan's population, which will bring about an economic and social transformation of the nation that could liquidate its current account surplus -- essentially the trade surplus adjusted for some other flows, such as foreign aid, gifts to relatives in foreign countries and earnings from foreign investments. This surplus measured $131.4 billion last year.
By the year 2020, about one in four Japanese is expected to be at least 65 years old, compared with about one in seven now, in large part because of a low birth rate. That could give Japan, which celebrates a national holiday every September called Respect-for-the-Aged Day, the oldest population in the world.
Older people tend to draw down their savings to support themselves. So as Japan's population ages, the nation's currently high private savings rate should decline.
Economists say that Japan's current account surplus is a byproduct of the fact that Japan saves more than it invests at home. That difference is what it invests overseas -- and by definition it equals the current account surplus. So if saving is replaced by consumption, and if there is not an equal drop in investment within Japan, the inevitable result will be a drop in the current account surplus.
Japanese households save about 14 percent of their disposable income compared with about 4 percent for Americans. This is partly because many Japanese remember the deprivation after World War II. They must also save for a long time for home down payments, which are extraordinarily large compared with those in America, both because housing is expensive and because mortgage lenders demand large equity cushions.
But Charles Horioka, a professor at Osaka University, predicts that Japan's savings rate will "decline very sharply, possibly approaching zero or even negative by 2010 or 2020." The rate has already dropped from a peak of 23 percent in 1974.
The Japanese Government has been citing such an argument to its trading partners out of self-interest. Tokyo has urged other countries to take a long-term view of its perennial trade surplus, because the problem will go away as Japan's working- age population shrinks. In the short term, some Japanese say, the trade surplus is needed so the nation must keep saving to prepare for the burden of caring for more and more elderly citizens.
"There is an aspect of preparing for the aging society in Japan's current account surplus," Motoshige Itoh, a professor at the University of Tokyo, wrote in "Misunderstandings about the Trade Surplus," a book published this year by the research institute of Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry.
Washington ran into this argument recently when it urged Tokyo to cut taxes to stimulate its economy, which would in turn increase imports. When the Japanese Government recently cut income taxes, it also decided to offset this by raising the sales tax, partly on the ground that it was worried about affording care for the aging population.
Even if Japan's trade surplus with the rest of the world falls away, it might not mean better trade relations with the United States, since the surplus with America could continue.
While the trade imbalance between the United States and Japan of roughly $60 billion a year has come to symbolize the larger trade problems between the two nations, pressure to correct it comes from American companies that have trouble selling in Japan.
"It's not just an issue of macroeconomics, it's also an issue of fairness," Ambassador Walter F. Mondale of the United States said at a news conference last week.
Even if Japan's trade surplus were to disappear, Western economic analysts say, there could still be complaints that Japanese markets are closed, just as there are complaints from other countries about trading practices of the United States, which runs a large trade deficit.
In fact, relying on theories alone is chancy, because Japan's trade surplus has defied other predictions and proved remarkably resilient. In the last two years, the surplus has soared to new records, partly because Japan's recession reduced domestic demand for imported goods.
Kenneth Courtis, an economic strategist at the Deutsche Bank in Tokyo, points out, moreover, that in the future Japan will have a huge stream of income from the investments it is now making overseas with its surplus savings. That income, he argued, will largely offset the decline in the current account surplus caused by an aging population.
Even those who expect the surplus to diminish say it may not take place soon. Yukio Noguchi, a professor of economics at Hitotsubashi University, has analyzed this question, and thinks the surplus will turn negative for Japan, but not until the year 2025 or so.
Clinton Administration officials agree that the recent agreements opening Japan's insurance, government procurement and flat glass markets will not shrink Japan's trade surplus very much by themselves. An agreement on automobiles and auto parts, which accounts for the largest part of the American trade deficit with Japan, could have far more effect, but over the long run.
Far more effective in reducing Japan's surplus, some economists say, has been the increase by roughly 25 percent of the yen against the dollar in the last two years. That makes Japan's exports less competitive abroad and the country's imports more attractive at home.
The rising yen, coupled with a resumption of economic growth in Japan, should reduce the nation's current account surplus to below 2 percent of economic output in a few years. This is one of the goals of the trade framework agreement signed by the United States and Japan last year. The International Monetary Fund predicted last week that Japan's surplus would fall to 2.9 percent of gross domestic product this year and 2.6 percent next year, compared with 3.1 percent last year.
But complete elimination of the deficit might have to wait until Japan grows older. The nation has the world's highest average life expectancy, with women likely to live for 82.51 years and men for 76.25 years. The Government reported last month that 5,593 Japanese were now at least 100 years old in a population of 125 million, up by 791 from last year.
Kazumasa Iwata, a professor of social and international relations at the University of Tokyo, said that a reduction in savings by the Government would go far toward eliminating the trade imbalance.
Japan has slipped into a national budget deficit, although it still has a surplus in its social security account. But as people get old and start drawing their social security payments, that surplus, too, will turn into a deficit.
The effect of demographic change on investment in the domestic economy remains unclear. With the labor force shrinking, some economists say, investment in new factories might decline. Or it might rise, as more automation is stimulated by the scarcity of labor.
"We do not know what will happen to investment," Professor Noguchi said.

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GRAPHIC: Photo: Saving habits of Japan's elderly may be key to the nation's trade surplus. Older women exercised in Tokyo. (The New York Times)
 
Graph: "View of a Less Rosy Future" shows the percent of population over 65 in 1990 and 2010, and Japan's household savings rate from '77-'92. (Source: Ministry of Health and Welfare, Japan)

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October 9, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

An Aging Generation Looks for Answers

BYLINE: By CHARLOTTE LIBOV 

SECTION: Section 13CN;  Page 8;  Column 5;  Connecticut Weekly Desk 

LENGTH: 1316 words

AS women seek to take more control of their health and their lives, conference organizers are finding that subjects like breast cancer, menopause and self-defense are drawing large audiences.
Many of the conferences are aimed at women over the age of 40, among them the baby boomers thought not to be content to go through the aging process without plenty of information. 
 Such interest comes as no surprise, said the television journalist and writer Linda Ellerbee, who will give the keynote speech at a conference titled "Health and Women Over 40: Prevention and Survival."
"My generation has always been a noisy one," Ms. Ellerbee said, "and one thing which we have made clear is that women's health is no longer going to be ignored."
The conference, which features speakers on breast cancer diagnosis and management, hormone replacement therapy, osteoporosis, exercise and humor, will be held from 3 to 9 P.M. on Thursday at the Marriott Hotel in Farmington. The program costs $55 (including dinner).
And the UConn conference is by no means the only such program this fall. Many community centers and hospitals offer similar programs.
Why are the programs so popular? One explanation is offered by Leslie Laurence, an author of the just published book "Outrageous Practices: The Alarming Truth About How Medicine Mistreats Women" (Fawcett) She believes that women become very interested when they are faced with the health issues associated with menopause.
"If a woman entering menopause is considering hormone replacement therapy and she asks her doctor about it, she'll find out that these is no real answer on whether or not she should take it," Ms. Laurence said. "She'll find out hormone replacement therapy hasn't been that well studied, we don't have a lot of definitive answers. When women find out their doctor can't really give them an answer, they're realizing that they have to become informed."
Older women's interest in health conferences does not surprise Dr. Cynthia Adams, associate dean of the School of Allied Health at the University of Connecticut, which is sponsoring the second women's health conference in Farmington, along with the University of Connecticut Health Care Center and Cigna Health Care Inc. (Information: 786-0007). Last year's session drew almost 500 women, and this year's is expected to be even larger, Dr. Adams said. "All the baby boomers are aging at the same time," Dr. Adams said, referring to menopause. "Since we are all getting into it at the same time, it's become more acceptable to discuss. I don't think women discussed it a decade ago, but now, it's in."
Dr. Priscilla D. Douglas, a professor of allied health at UConn, who will also speak at the Farmington program, said that women who are at this phase in their lives are a particularly good group to reach about making healthy life style changes.
"Young people often think they are immortal, but the middle-aged woman is in a different place," Dr. Douglas said. "She's seen people who have gotten ill. She should be aware of how things can be better for her. This is a group that is ready, willing and able to make changes in their lives."
Several breast cancer survivors, including Ms. Ellerbee, are expected to speak at the Farmington conference. Among them will be Lynn Wabrek, a Hartford-area psychotherapist who underwent a mastectomy and now includes her experience with breast cancer in her talk, "Sex at Midlife."
"I really feel it is my calling to provide information," Ms. Wabrek said. "When I talk to groups, I always mention that I am a breast cancer survivor, and I've had to cope with these things myself."
Ms. Ellerbee said that many women of her age were getting breast cancer and that they have looked at what gay men with AIDS have done to get attention and money for their disease. "There is a feeling that if we do not do this, we will be ignored," she said.
October is National Breast Cancer Awareness month, and many other women's health programs are focusing on the disease. Among them is New Milford Hospital, which will sponsor a free program on breast cancer at 7 P.M. Thursday at the hospital. The speakers will include Dr. Ann Walzer, a hospital radiologist, Dr. Linda DeMarco, a cancer specialist, and Yolanda Miller, director of the hospital's diagnostic imaging center. (Information: 350-7216).
The program is part of a wider effort this month. Hospital representatives will visit the Kimberly-Clark Corporation and Fidco Inc., a food research company, to provide information about breast cancer. In addition, the hospital is providing low-cost mammograms to women in the community, said Gretchen O'Shea Reynolds, director of community relations at the hospital.
"There are more and more health programs geared toward women, in part I think because there is a lot more information available on women's health now than there ever was before," Ms. Reynolds said.
Menopause will be the topic when the Hospital of St. Raphael in New Haven holds another in its series of free "Women's Health and Life Style Lectures" on Wednesday from 6 to 7:30 P.M. The program will feature Dr. Bonney McDowell, discussing "what women can expect as they approach menopause," said Sandy St. Pierre, hospital spokeswoman. This is the second in a series of three lectures on women's health; a program on breast cancer was held in September and, on Nov. 9, the subject will be osteoporosis, Mrs. St. Pierre said. Additional lectures are planned for the spring, including a program on eating disorders, a session for parents of teen-agers and a program about child care. (Information: 780-4304)
The lecture series is "something brand new for us," Mrs. St. Pierre said. The series was initiated by the staff at the hospital's obstetrics and gynecology department.
Last year, Rockville Hospital in Vernon created a Women's Center for Wellness that offers a year-round roster of courses on such topics as eating disorders, menopause, relationship issues and self-defense, said Anne Marie Capossela, director of marketing and program planning. This fall's schedule lists 37 courses, ranging from one-day events to hourlong sessions that run throughout the season. Most classes cost $5 a session, although some are free and others do cost a little more, she said.
"We surveyed women as to what they wanted and they said: 'Tell us more about our health. Tell us more about our well-being.' Women want more information and they've told us that very clearly," she said. The classes are not held at the hospital, but nearby, because the women surveyed said they did not want to take wellness classes in a hospital setting, she said (Information: 871-2046).
Another organization that sponsors women's health programs is the Women's Health Initiative at Yale, a joint program of the Yale School of Medicine and Yale-New Haven Hospital, which is designed to help integrate women's health care into its programs, said Dr. Florence Comite, the program's director.
The Women's Health Initiative recently held a dinner and health program in August as part of the SNET Classic Professional Women's Tennis Exhibition and last spring joined with the American Heart Association's Connecticut affiliate in presenting a program on women and heart disease, breast cancer, mental illness, and the controversy over hormone replacement therapy, Dr. Comite said. Tentative plans call for a spring fashion show for women with special needs, like those with osteoporosis or those who have undergone mastectomies, Dr. Comite said.
In Dr. Comite's view, these programs are not designed to substitute for a woman seeing a doctor, but to give her information so that she can work in concert with her doctor to get optimal medical care. "Women want to be able to help themselves," she said. "We're seeing that women are very hungry and devour the information we give them."

LOAD-DATE: October 9, 1994

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GRAPHIC: Photo: Health groups are offering more courses for women on issues ranging from cancer to self-defense. At the Women's Center for Wellness in Vernon, Donna Betancourt, an instructor, demonstrates a headlock on Peggy Chaffee. (George Ruhe for The New York Times)

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October 9, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

PLAYING IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD: RIVERDALE;
Flight Path: Hawks on the Wing

SECTION: Section 13;  Page 14;  Column 4;  The City Weekly Desk 

LENGTH: 180 words

"SUMMER is over and people think it's time to turn their backs on gardens," said David Manning, a spokesman for Wave Hill, the gardens in Riverdale, but "heading into the fall season the whole environment is even more spectacular as the leaves turn and garden colors start emerging."
Not to mention the hawk migrations: Wave Hill is along the hawks' autumn north-south skyway. "Because of the sweeping views along the Hudson," Mr. Manning said, "it makes a great place to watch for them." 
 On Saturday, Todd Miller, a naturalist, will point out rough-shinned, red-shouldered hawks to those gathered at the Pergola, the Italianate structure in the middle of the great lawn.
"The question is not whether or not you see any hawks, but what variety and how big and rare they are," said Mr. Manning.
He could also add, what other big birds might be around: last year, the hawk-watching group saw an eagle. Bring binoculars.
Wave Hill, 675 West 252d Street, Riverdale; admission to grounds: $4, senior citizens $2; hawk watch, Saturday, Oct. 15, 2 P.M.; (718) 549-3200.

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October 9, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Topics of The Times;
No Swearing Allowed

SECTION: Section 4;  Page 14;  Column 2;  Editorial Desk 

LENGTH: 228 words

Who says you can't legislate morality? The homey borough of Raritan, N.J., may soon enact an ordinance that prohibits "rude or indecent behavior," including profanity or "making insulting remarks or comments to others" on its quiet streets. The ordinance would outlaw not only the vagrancy other municipalities try to ban, but also "unnecessary congregating in groups . . . to the annoyance of other persons."
In short, no cussin' on Main Street, or any other unusual conduct the Raritan council might be worried about. Is there a problem that needs this remedy in that hamlet of 5,800 souls, mostly senior citizens? "Not now," says Mayor Anthony DeCicco, "This is just an ounce of prevention." 
 Also a ton of unconstitutionality, as Raritan's police chief, Joseph Sferra, has noted. The First Amendment protects the right of people to say things that annoy, even insult others if they do not threaten physical harm. The Constitution also has safeguards against laws so sweeping or so vague that ordinary people cannot tell when they are breaking them.
Mayor DeCicco, a genial official who operates a family bar, says the borough's lawyers will study the bill more deeply before Tuesday's scheduled council vote. The best advice would be to lose this bill, hold off on lawmaking until trouble arises and trust to the people's good sense and civility.

LOAD-DATE: October 9, 1994

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TYPE: Editorial

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October 11, 1994, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final
Correction Appended

At Last, Life Care Comes to New York

BYLINE: Special to The New York Times 

SECTION: Section B;  Page 7;  Column 4;  Metropolitan Desk 

LENGTH: 739 words

DATELINE: ITHACA, N.Y.

In 1989, Jim and Ceil Spero, both retired and in their early 60's, were invited to a meeting about a new idea for New York State: a retirement community that comes with a guarantee of health care at a predictable cost.
Ms. Spero did not want to go. 
 "I said to Jim, 'How can you possibly take me to a place like this?' The people in the room were so old. Ancient, in fact."
But after the Speros heard the pitch, they were persuaded. And in December 1995, they are to become residents of the state's first "life care community," which is being established here by the Kendal Communities Development Company, a Quaker-run nonprofit insurance company.
So will Alice Cook, who turns 91 in November.
"Ten years ago, I wasn't ready to think that far ahead," said Ms. Cook, a professor emeritus at Cornell University. "But I seemed doomed to live into my 90's. And I'm in a position to take care of myself."
What life care will provide here is a system to deal with the chronic health problems of the elderly. (Residents are required to have Medicare coverage plus supplemental insurance to pay for hospitals and specialists' fees.) There will be an on-site nurse practitioner trained in gerontology, and doctors will be available by appointment and on call. Coverage for residents will include annual physicals, routine health screening and prescription drugs. If they fall ill, there will be a variety of options for care, from home health care to a nursing home where each resident will have a private room. The health care package will also provide physical, occupational and speech therapy, nutritional counseling, psychological counseling and help with insurance billing.
Life-care retirement communities have been around since the 1960's in California, Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio and elsewhere.
But until 1989, life care was expressly forbidden in New York State because of nursing home scams in which people put their life savings in a non-refundable, prepaid 10-year nursing home contract. If they died before the contract expired, there was no way for the estate to get back unused money. To prevent such abuse, the Legislature passed laws that forbade prepayment of nursing home care more than two years in advance of need.
Life-care communities, however, require a substantial lump-sum payment and require sizable monthly maintenance charges.
The initial investment at the Kendal project ranges anywhere from $76,000 for an efficiency cottage or apartment to $240,000 for a two-bedroom cottage or apartment on the proposed 110-acre site in the Cayuga Heights area of Ithaca. Monthly maintenance charges are $1,415 for a single person in the smallest unit to $2,485 for a single person in the largest. Add another $830 for the second person in the same unit. (People sharing cottages or apartments need not be related.)
Until now, the only way for New Yorkers to buy life-care insurance was to move out of state -- with all their retirement money.
"Why should wealthy New Yorkers have to go to Ohio, where the weather really isn't any better, when we can keep people in New York?" said Assemblyman Marty Luster, a sponsor of the legislation allowing the care communities here. "It keeps money and people here. It creates temporary construction jobs and permanent jobs in administration, services, etc. You are buying housing, recreation, companionship and health care at all levels for the rest of your life. And you know what it's going to cost. So that's security."
Though the legislation was approved in 1989, it took until April 1994 to win passage of a bond measure essential for construction of the state's first life care community. Ground-breaking occurred on June 30.
Ms. Cook and the Speros will be among the first to move in. Ms. Cook has chosen a one-bedroom apartment in which she has invested $126,000. There will also be a $1,700 monthly fee to cover cleaning, repairs, taxes and the health care package. For her money, she also gets one meal a day in a restaurant-style dining hall; access to an indoor swimming pool, library, bank and beauty parlor, all within the community, and scheduled transportation to shopping and other outside activities.
The Speros are happy with their choice. "Do you realize that we have actually made plans for the rest of our life?" Mrs. Spero said. The couple's biggest problem now?
"Getting rid of our stuff that we know the kids don't want," she said.

LOAD-DATE: October 11, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

CORRECTION-DATE: October 15, 1994, Saturday

 CORRECTION:
An article on Tuesday about a retirement community in Ithaca, N.Y., that comes with a guarantee of health care at predictable cost referred incompletely to the history of such "life care" communities in the state. The Ithaca project, established by the Kendal Communities Development Company, will be the first to open. Another, the Glen Arden Life Care Community in Goshen, was the first approved, under legislation passed in 1989; its developers plan a groundbreaking by the end of the year.

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October 12, 1994, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Runners Far Ahead In Aging Healthfully

BYLINE: By JANE E. BRODY 

SECTION: Section C;  Page 11;  Column 5;  National Desk;  Health Page

LENGTH: 687 words

ACTIVE Americans do not wear out, but sedentary ones are likely to rust out, according to the findings of an eight-year study of nearly 800 people 50 and over. As they age, the study showed, those who regularly engage in vigorous aerobic exercise like running are much less likely to develop life-inhibiting disabilities.
The study, conducted by a research team from Stanford University and published in the current issue of Annals of Internal Medicine, followed the health of 451 members of a runners' club and 330 nonrunners living in the same community. All participants were 50 to 72 when the study began. 
 "Long-distance running, and presumably other regular aerobic exercise activity, is associated with preservation of good physical function in the later years of life, compared with persons with more sedentary life styles," the researchers concluded. They said their findings underscored the importance of promoting "regular lifetime physical exercise to improve the quality of life of the growing older population."
The study also showed, as have earlier ones, that the runners had a lower death rate than the nonrunners.
As one might suspect, at the time of enrollment the runners were in better shape than the nonrunners. When the study began, runners, who had already been pursuing their chosen activity for an average of 12 years, were leaner, had fewer medical problems and fewer joint symptoms, took fewer medications and were less likely to have experienced previous disability than were the nonrunners.
The researchers, headed by Dr. James F. Fries, a specialist in arthritis, suggested that the initial health differences could be the result of the previous years of running or it could reflect the fact that people in good shape initially are more likely to choose to be vigorously active. Nonetheless, in following the fates of the two groups of men and women for eight years, the researchers showed that the health differential persisted and further increased, even after taking the participants' initial health status into account.
The nonrunners, both men and women, were several times more likely to develop some form of disability during the eight-year period. This health difference persisted even when the data were adjusted for potential health influences like smoking, body weight, history of arthritis, age, sex and disabilities present when the study began.
"There was but a slight increase in disability in the runners and a substantial increase in the nonrunners during this period," the team reported. By the end of the study, the nonrunners reported three and a half times more disabilities than did the runners. Disability measures included the participants' ability to walk, arise from a straight chair and grip objects.
"These findings underscore the fact that people who are physically active will remain physically fit despite the process of aging and the chronic diseases that can accompany aging," said Dr. Ralph Paffenbarger, a professor of epidemiology at the University of California at Berkeley. "They are another argument for undertaking activities to promote flexibility and strength and to reduce the risk of fatal coronary heart disease and stroke and the risk of developing hypertension, osteoporosis, obesity and noninsulin-dependent diabetes."
To eliminate a possible bias that would result if some people had once been runners but gave it up because of health problems, the researchers divided the participants into "ever runners" and "never runners," and here they found an even greater difference in disability was found between the runners' club members and the entire nonrunning group.
The runners reported less frequent joint pain and swelling than did the nonrunners. But when X-rays of joints were taken of a smaller group of participants in the study, no differences in arthritic changes were found between the runners and nonrunners, suggesting that differences in disability rates were due to factors like improved conditioning and low rates of other health problems like heart disease, rather than a reduced incidence of arthritis.

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October 13, 1994, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

Campaign Briefs;
Democrats' New Ads Attack G.O.P. 'Contract'

BYLINE: Special to The New York Times 

SECTION: Section B;  Page 12;  Column 1;  Foreign Desk 

LENGTH: 226 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Oct. 12

The Democratic National Committee today announced a $2 million advertising campaign that portrays Republican candidates as intent on tax cuts for the rich, huge new spending for the Pentagon and "devastating cuts in Medicare."
The campaign reflects an effort by Democrats to turn the "contract with America," a list of promises embraced by Republican candidates for Congress this month, into a liability in the final weeks of the fall election campaign. "A trillion dollars in promises," an announcer in the advertisements declares. "How will they make up the spending gap? Explode the deficit again? Make devastating cuts in Medicare?" 
 The advertisements, one of which is specifically aimed at older Americans, argue that the Republicans are determined to resurrect the economic and fiscal policies of the Reagan years. "Why would we go back to that?" the commercials ask.
Republicans contended that Democrats were twisting the truth because they feared a Republican surge in November that could cost Democrats control of the Senate and perhaps even the House.
Representative Dick Armey of Texas, the chairman of the House Republican Conference, said, "The White House and Clinton Democrats in Congress have resorted to what's known in politics as the big lie to try to salvage some House and Senate seats in this volatile election year."

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October 13, 1994, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

THREATS IN THE GULF: THE KUWAITIS;
Hope and Anxiety for Kin Of Those Missing in Iraq

BYLINE: By CHRIS HEDGES,   Special to The New York Times 

SECTION: Section A;  Page 17;  Column 1;  Foreign Desk 

LENGTH: 1095 words

DATELINE: KUWAIT CITY, Oct. 12

The rumblings of war along the border with Iraq have heightened the hopes and anxieties of the hundreds of Kuwaitis who have relatives believed to be held in Iraqi prisons since the Persian Gulf war in 1991.
Senior Kuwaiti officials, who are lobbying hard to establish an exclusion zone in southern Iraq to limit future military movements, also say they will now press for a final accounting of 609 Kuwaiti citizens who vanished with retreating Iraqi troops during that conflict. 
 "When the Security Council sits down to discuss the future plan for Iraq, we will have two issues we will push," said Sheik Salem al-Sabah, the chairman of the National Committee for Missing and Prisoner-of-War Affairs and a member of the ruling family. "We will call for some kind of a security zone in southern Iraq, and we will ask that the Iraqi Government be pressed to inform us about the fate of our hostages."
"Many families hope that the coalition will hit Saddam and once he is finished off, our hostages will be released," Sheik Salem said, referring to the Iraqi President, Saddam Hussein. "Families are actually disappointed with the news of a possible Iraqi withdrawal. They believe they may have to wait for Saddam Hussein to be removed, and for a new government to take power, before those who are missing come home."
The 609 missing Kuwaitis include a large number of students, 8 women and 2 people over 80. Their plight has dominated the national debate in Kuwait since the war. Posters are plastered around the city calling for their release, and many establishments display yellow ribbons as a sign of solidarity with their cause. Huge signs, including one at the International Airport, call on Kuwaitis not to forget those who have disappeared, and Kuwaiti newspapers and television often have reports about the families waiting for news of their loved ones.
"Why would anyone want to detain senior citizens?" one poster says, showing an empty rocking chair. "Ask Saddam Hussein."
The committee for the return of the prisoners has its headquarters in a cavernous hall in a suburb called Sabaha Salman. The walls are covered with photographs, many of them studio shots of university graduates in black robes clutching new diplomas, or new brides or bridegrooms. There is a large replica of a jail cell, complete with a heavy chain, lock and black iron bars.
There are 740,000 Kuwaitis in the emirate, and nearly every family has a relative or friend who remains unaccounted for.
"The issue of the missing takes priority over everything else for the average Kuwaiti," a Western diplomat said, "including the demand for Iraqi recognition of Kuwaiti's sovereignty and the acceptance of a common border. The Government is under constant pressure to resolve this."
The Iraqi Government denies any knowledge of the missing Kuwaitis. But in September, as part of a diplomatic effort to appear cooperative with the United Nations, Iraqi officials handed over information in Geneva on 45 Kuwaitis on the list.
The Iraqis said the 45 had been arrested during the seven-month Iraqi occupation of Kuwait. They said 39 had disappeared in the chaos after the gulf war and that 6 were killed during the uprising by Shiites in southern Iraq. Sheik Salem dismissed the report as "inadequate."
Although the Iraqis maintain that they lack information about the missing Kuwaitis, there have been many reports from people released from Iraqi prisons saying that they had been held with some of the Kuwaitis and that some have passed on messages or personal items.
"The Iraqis have let us know through officials from Qatar and Iran that if we call for the lifting of the sanctions against Iraq, we will get information about our missing," said Abbas Habib Mounar al-Mussin, the chairman of the Kuwaiti Parliament's Defense and Interior Committee. "But we are refusing to be blackmailed."
The families waiting for information ride an emotional roller-coaster that often leaves them exhausted and depressed. They have been some of the country's most effective lobbyists abroad for the continuation of the sanctions against Iraq and often accompany Government officials on state visits.
Bahja Maraffi last heard from her 30-year-old daughter, Samira, in June 1991, when she passed on a message from a prison in Iraq through a released prisoner. The note was ominous. It said she and a few other Kuwaitis were being held on the orders of Oday Hussein, the President's son and designated heir.
"After this we heard nothing," Mrs. Maraffi said. "But I can feel in my heart that my daughter is alive."
Those who have lost spouses or parents struggle to create a presence out of memories and stories.
"I have a son who was born after his father was taken," Fawzia Abdullah said. "I show him his father's picture every day. When he sees a man on the street who looks like the photograph, he will run after him crying, 'Daddy, Daddy.' I have to sit him down and start to explain all over again."
Baghdad has often in the past denied knowledge of missing foreigners in Iraqi but then suddenly released them in good-will gestures or as part of a diplomatic campaign.
During a recent visit by Asif Ali Zardari, the husband of Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan, Iraq released eight Pakistanis about whom, they had said only days before, they had no knowledge. And after the eight-year war with Iran, the Iraqis freed more than 2,000 prisoners who were presumed dead.
Most foreigners now released from prisons in Iraq are interviewed by Kuwaiti officials, who travel to their home countries with portfolios filled with pictures of the missing.
The return of the Kuwaiti captives was one of the conditions of the cease-fire imposed on Iraq after American-led forces drove Iraqi troops from Kuwait. At least 5,727 civilians and prisoners of war were turned over to the International Committee of the Red Cross between March 1991 and December 1993.
Many Kuwaiti officials and Western diplomats now refer to those who remain missing as hostages, rather than prisoners of war. And while Kuwaiti officials expect that some of the 609 are dead, they also have no doubt that some are alive.
During a recent visit to the Kurdish-held security zone in northern Iraq, a Kuwaiti Foreign Ministry official, Abdul Hamid al-Awadhi, was handed the watch and prayer beads of a missing Kuwaiti by a Kurdish bus driver who had transported him to another prison.
"These people are being held as bargaining chips by Saddam Hussein," Mr. Awadhi said. "It is a familiar tactic."

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October 15, 1994, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

Consumer Prices Up Modestly

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

SECTION: Section 1;  Page 37;  Column 6;  Financial Desk 

LENGTH: 1117 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Oct. 14

Consumer prices rose modestly in September while retail sales climbed and industrial production slowed, the Government reported today.
Over all, the unusually heavy batch of figures portrayed an economy still expanding at a robust, but perhaps slackening, pace, while price pressures that have developed in various areas remained bottled up before reaching consumers. But even if that outlook continues, the Federal Reserve is still expected to raise short-term interest rates another time this year in an attempt to hold growth and inflation in check. 
 "We've got a healthy economy on our hands," said Joan D. Schneider, an economist in Chicago for BA Securities Inc., an arm of the Bank of America. "And we haven't seen the inflation rate yet pick up."
The Dow Jones industrial average rose 20.52 points, to 3,910.47, while the yield on the 30-year Treasury bond dropped to 7.83 percent from 7.85 percent. [Pages 38 and 48.]
Retail sales climbed six-tenths of 1 percent in September and sales were revised somewhat higher for July and August, the Commerce Department reported. The Federal Reserve found industrial production unchanged last month as the operating rate of factories, mines and utilities declined for only the second time since mid-1993.
The report on inflation, which followed Thursday's unexpected decline in prices received by the nation's producers, showed the Consumer Price Index for all urban consumers rose two-tenths of 1 percent last month.
As a result of the inflation report, some 50 million Americans receiving Social Security and other Federal benefits will get 2.8 percent increases for 1995, the third-slimmest cost-of-living raise since the payments were automatically coupled to inflation in 1975. [Page 35.]
The average monthly benefit for all retired workers is to rise $19, to $698, with an elderly couple who both qualify for benefits getting a $32 increase, to $1,178, the Social Security Administration calculated.
The Labor Department reports two consumer price indexes, the Consumer Price Index-U, for all urban consumers, and the Consumer Price Index-W, for all urban wage earners and clerical workers, which rose one-tenth of a percent last month.
The index for all urban consumers is the more widely followed of the two but the index for urban wage earners and clerical workers is used to calculate increases in the Federal benefit programs.
The impending 2.8 percent raise reflected how much the Consumer Price Index-W rose between the July-September quarters of 1993 and 1994.
The September increase of two-tenths of 1 percent in the more widely followed Consumer Price Index came after three straight months in which it climbed three-tenths of 1 percent. The so-called core rate, which leaves out the wide-swinging food and energy components, also rose two-tenths of 1 percent.
Over the last 12 months the index has advanced 3 percent, the performance of its main elements ranging from a 4.7 percent increase for medical care to a decline of three-tenths of 1 percent for clothes.
A downturn in energy prices last month was the chief reason for the slightly lower September advance but a stabilization in coffee prices, up about 22 percent in each of the two preceding months, also contributed. Gasoline and airline fares fell but the price of new motor vehicles rose five-tenths of 1 percent -- they were lower in the Producer Price Index -- while used cars rose 1 percent.
Automobile finance charges rose an additional 2.2 percent, to a point 15.6 percent higher than at the end of last year, the Labor Department's report also showed.
In the New York metropolitan area, one of five regions for which September figures were reported today, prices edged down one-tenth of 1 percent and now show a 2.4 percent rise over the latest 12 months.
The retail sales tally showed that consumers spent $188.43 billion in stores last month, six-tenths of 1 percent more than in August and 8.1 percent more than in September 1993. These figures are adjusted for seasonal and holiday differences but not for inflation.
Sales of durable goods climbed 1.1 percent, with home furnishings up 1.4 percent, automotive up six-tenths of 1 percent and the building materials-hardware-mobile home category up 1.6 percent.
In nondurables, up three-tenths of 1 percent over all, sales rose five-tenths of 1 percent at stores selling general merchandise, two-tenths of 1 percent at food stores, 1.1 percent at gasoline service stations, 1 percent at bars and restaurants and three-tenths of 1 percent at drugstores. The only decline was at stores selling clothing and accessories, where sales dropped 1.5 percent last month.
This retail spending, which accounts for about one-third of economic activity, was aided by a four-tenths of 1 percent rise in real average weekly earnings last month, the Government also reported.
The Fed's figures on industrial production, which include factories, mines and utilities, showed a slackening in production, with factory output up just one-tenth of 1 percent after a 1 percent August gain. A brief strike at General Motors was a negative factor but when motor vehicles and parts are excluded the gain was still just two-tenths of 1 percent.
Motor vehicle assembly was at a 12-million-unit annual pace, down from 12.3 million in August, and appliance production was down for the second straight month.
Output at mines and utilities each posted a third straight decline.
The operating rate for industry edged down to 84.6 percent last month, two-tenths of a point lower than in August and the first decline since April.
But analysts seemed not to find this persuasive evidence that the progressively greater strains on industry this year have eased.
"It doesn't change my overall impression that the amount of excess capacity as well as skilled and semiskilled workers is essentially used up," said Kelly K. Matthews, chief economist at the First Security Corporation in Salt Lake City.
Calculations by the Social Security Administration today showed a widowed mother with two children getting a $37-a-month increase, to $1,365; an elderly widow or widower $18, to $656; a disabled worker with a spouse and at least one child, $30, to $1,118.
A couple on Supplemental Security Income for needy aged, blind or disabled people will get an $18 increase in their monthly maximum, to $687.
A year ago it was announced that the average retirement benefit would rise $17, to $674, but the benefit actually turned out to be $679, today's report showed. A spokesman said the extra $5 reflected more higher-income people retiring during the year, one in which taxes were raised, than had been estimated.

LOAD-DATE: October 15, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Graphs: "Retail Sales" shows total retail sales from April 1993 to Sept. 1994. (Source: Commerce Department); "Industrial Production" shows index of total industrial production from April 1993 to Sept. 1994. (Source: Commerce Department); "Capacity Utilization" shows total output and a percentage of capacity from April 1993 to Sept. 1994. (Source: Federal Reserve Board); "Consumer Prices" shows percentage change in consumer prices from Oct. 1993 to Sept. 1994. (Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics)(pg. 48)

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October 16, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final
Correction Appended

Sports of The Times;
The Locker Room Was Less Hospitable Than Hanoi

BYLINE: By GEORGE VECSEY 

SECTION: Section 8;  Page 3;  Column 1;  Sports Desk 

LENGTH: 888 words

THE DAY she threw the wad of tape back at the football player, Kristin Huckshorn knew it was time to get out. Athletes had often lobbed missiles at her and made remarks, but she had assumed it was their quaint way of expressing befuddlement at seeing a female reporter in the locker room.
Now she had to move on. Huckshorn became a news reporter for The San Jose Mercury News in 1988, and recently she became the first American certified as a foreign correspondent by the postwar Vietnamese Government. 
 "I still say that covering sports was the most difficult thing I ever did," Huckshorn said the other day by telephone from Hanoi. "You feel so alone."
This is a journalist who has covered Bosnia and Somalia, yet many athletes, coaches and many male colleagues couldn't understand why she was asking questions about a botched third-down play.
These days, Huckshorn spends her mornings learning the intricacies of a language in which you either order a bowl of the national soup or insult somebody's ancestors, depending on the subtle intonations. This is a journalist who travels the length of that buffeted peninsula, living and dining with the people.
"I have eaten snake," Huckshorn said. "It tastes like chicken."
And most important, she writes about the heritage of America's involvement in Vietnam. Recently, she went to My Lai, the scene of that ghastly massacre a quarter-century ago.
"People in Vietnam are so kind, so gracious," Huckshorn said. "But one elderly woman who was injured at My Lai took me by the shoulders and asked me why America had come to Vietnam. I had no answer for her."
But Huckshorn feels the respect for her, as an American reporter sent to ask questions and write stories. She never felt quite that way as a sportswriter.
Because of the priorities of sports-page readers, most ambitious female sportswriters must take a shot at "the big three," as she calls them, football, baseball and basketball. But very quickly, many come to prefer sports where female athletes are prominent, and where the press corps is more equal -- tennis and Olympic sports and, to some degree, racing. (Bluntly, there is a higher level of conversation and camaraderie in those press boxes; the gene pool is bigger and therefore better.)
Even today, there is very little space for female athletes at the front of sports sections or magazines. Tomorrow, the Women's Sports Foundation will hold its annual celebration in New York, honoring achievers in every sport, and particularly Martina Navratilova, who is retiring next month. Navratilova is about twice as interesting as any male athlete today, yet she languished in the female-sports ghetto for a long time. Female sportswriters also debate just how far they've traveled.
"I wasn't even a pioneer," said Huckshorn. "When I started in 1979, most of the male writers in the Bay Area were tremendously supportive, but you'd go somewhere else and expect to get into the locker room, and the other men would glare at you as if to say, 'Why are you causing trouble for us?' "
Is it important that female journalists cover big-time men's sports? My answer is that we need different perceptions about men's personalities, men's rituals, men's games. There are female anthropologists. Why not female sportswriters?
After a few years on the job, Huckshorn and several colleagues formed the Association for Women in Sports Media (pronounced "awesome"). It is part professional association, part support group.
"There's nothing I've done in my career than has meant more to me than helping found A.W.S.M.," Huckshorn said from Hanoi.
Eventually, Huckshorn began to realize just how much she had been willing to play the game. In 1990, reporter Lisa Olsen of The Boston Herald was mistreated -- I would say sexually harassed -- by a few cretins in the New England Patriots locker room. By then a news reporter, Huckshorn wrote a column for The Mercury News: "Female Sportswriter Finally Rocks Boat."
Huckshorn's piece has been reprinted in a significant anthology titled "A Kind of Grace; A Treasury of Sportswriting by Women," edited by Ron Rapoport of The Los Angeles Daily News and published by Zenobia Press of Berkeley, Calif. (Yes, Rapoport is the first to concede the irony of a man's editing an anthology of women's sportswriting.) I counted 70 different bylines, some of the best and the brightest in sportswriting.
"I remember being reduced to tears by Indiana University basketball coach Bobby Knight," Huckshorn confessed. "I didn't complain. I might never again have been assigned to cover the team. I remember being hit with jockstraps, dirty socks, wads of tape, obscenities. I didn't snitch. Players might avoid me. I never rocked the boat." Of Lisa Olsen, Huckshorn wrote: "I wish she would shut up. She makes me wish that I hadn't."
On the phone the other day, Huckshorn sounded hopeful.
"I know that if Michelle Kaufman of The Detroit Free Press has a problem, she goes right to the front office and takes care of it," Huckshorn said.
In the last decade, many women have left sports after a few years. Is it because they couldn't stand the heat? No. It's because talent needs to keep moving. For Kristin Huckshorn, the trail led to My Lai, where an American female reporter can ask questions and nobody throws tape.

LOAD-DATE: October 17, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

CORRECTION-DATE: October 23, 1994, Sunday

 CORRECTION:
The Sports of the Times column last Sunday, about female sportswriters, referred incorrectly to the Vietnamese Government's admission of American news correspondents. Kristin Huckshorn of The San Jose Mercury News was not the first admitted; she was preceded by George Esper of The Associated Press.

GRAPHIC: Photo: Kristin Huckshorn, standing at center, with other sports journalists at a ball game in Oakland, Calif., in 1988. (Terrence McCarthy for The New York Times)

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October 16, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Death Before Dying

BYLINE: By Hilma Wolitzer;   Hilma Wolitzer's most recent novel is "Tunnel of Love."

SECTION: Section 7;  Page 20;  Column 1;  Book Review Desk 

LENGTH: 818 words


RECESSIONAL
By James A. Michener.
Illustrated. 484 pp. New York:
Random House. $25. 
 JAMES A. MICHENER seems to heed the old dictum to "write about what you know," which in his case is hardly limiting. In more than 40 books, published over the past 47 years, he's covered such diverse topics as wartime in the South Pacific, Alaska's social development and the space program. These heavily researched, fact-filled works are enormously popular, especially with readers who prefer their history and geography in the guise of fiction.
Now, in "Recessional," Mr. Michener, who was born in 1907, addresses the complex issues associated with aging in America. He has chosen to present what must be an intensely personal subject through the perspective of his novel's idealistic young hero, Dr. Andy Zorn. After enduring some nasty malpractice suits and a divorce in Chicago, the 35-year-old Zorn has abandoned his medical practice to become general manager of the Palms, a flagship facility in Tampa, Fla., for people too old and infirm to live independently.
At the Palms, terms like "nursing home," "hospital" and "hospice" are forbidden. Instead, residents are discreetly moved from the "Retirement Area" to "Assisted Living" to "Extended Care." Euphemisms and ironies abound. The book's epigraph explains that a recessional is "a hymn or other piece of music played at the end of a service while the congregation is filing out." And as Andy Zorn drives through Tampa, he notes a welcoming sign: "You are now entering God's Paradise. The O'Neill Crematorium. Complete Services $475."
Mr. Michener, whose own views (like Zorn's) on medical ethics appear to be liberal and humanistic, allows some of his characters to offer more conservative opinions. (Of the system of triage created by managed care, one man notes: "The budget, inescapable from the moment of birth till the instant of death, will have dictated the value decisions." Replying to the idea of a "therapeutic abortion" done, as a character explains, "to correct nature's accident," another responds that "God does not make mistakes.") In fact, "Recessional" provides a thoroughly informed overview of what happens to the elderly in this country (along with a survey of numerous other matters, from religion to politics), mostly through the impassioned discussions of a four-member tertulia, or informal debating society, that regularly convenes in the dining room at the Palms.
Unfortunately, the prose style and dialogue in this issue-driven novel are too often stilted and expository. Characters tend to speechify rather than speak, and even Andy Zorn's thoughts are rendered in unnaturally formal, coherent blocks of prose that halt and summarize the action. "Here I sit," he remarks early on, when informed of the Florida laws that regulate the Palms, "a certified doctor with these handsome facilities at hand, and I'm forbidden to use either my own skills or these wonderful lifesaving machines. I've thrown myself into a weird world."
The world of old age is indeed weird, and terrifying, as autonomy diminishes along with physical and mental well-being. Among the villains here (aside from nature) are greedy children, ambitious doctors and medical science itself, which manages to prolong life without sustaining its quality, "so the loved one who has died without dying lives on and on."
The best moments in the novel occur when the characters disclose what's in their hearts and minds with rueful, snappy humor. One Palms resident succinctly complains, "Television six hours a day, and the yogurt machine is never working." Another quips, "The two sorriest days in a man's life in this joint is when his wife dies and when he has to give up his driver's license. Not necessarily in that order." There are also some genuinely poignant passages. An articulate member of the tertulia finds himself mysteriously unable, one morning, to knot his own necktie. And an Alzheimer's patient who manages to elude her warders by wandering outdoors discovers "what she had sought from the moment she climbed out of bed, the freedom of the open air, escape from nurses and bells, the joy of striding along as the sun began to display its power in the east."
But the wordiness and melodramatic subplots of "Recessional" -- including Andy Zorn's romance with a beautiful young double amputee, the comings and goings of a mysterious Kevorkian-like figure at an AIDS hospice and the infiltration of the Palms by a spy from a fanatical organization called Life Is Sacred -- eventually swamp the essential drama of old age and how we deal with it. James Michener's own remarkable career, as it is intriguingly revealed in his 1992 memoir, "The World Is My Home," not to mention his continuing vigorous engagement with that infinite world, makes a much stronger argument against the isolation and disenfranchisement of the elderly.

LOAD-DATE: October 17, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

TYPE: Review

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October 19, 1994, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

THE 1994 CAMPAIGN: THE ADVERTISING;
Democrats Find a Target in G.O.P. 'Contract'

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

SECTION: Section B;  Page 8;  Column 4;  National Desk 

LENGTH: 792 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Oct. 18

They are filmed from a distance, moving in slow motion, and often in lockstep, sometimes with the whir of a camera's motor drive in the background and a threatening, ominous soundtrack. Visually, these scenes from Democratic commercials have the feel of an illicit gathering, recorded on the sly.
That, of course, is the Democrats' design: In advertisements running throughout the country in the final three weeks before the Nov. 8 election, Democrats are trying to turn the Republicans' "Contract With America" into a dark and frightening ceremony -- and along the way, meet some urgent political needs. 
 Democrats are hoping that the political extravaganza staged by Representative Newt Gingrich of Georgia on the Capitol steps last month, when 300 Republican candidates committed to the "contract" of political promises, can be used to galvanize core Democratic voters, strip away the Republicans' image as a party of outsiders and turn the political debate to a much less dangerous terrain.
Republicans scoff, but Democrats clearly scent an opportunity to at least blunt their losses. The Democratic National Committee is running $2 million worth of advertisements in nine states tied to the contract, and Democratic strategists estimate that as many as 40 Congressional candidates are either already broadcasting or about to broadcast their own versions of the commercials.
"When Republicans were the angry protest party, they were in a very strong position," said Stan Greenberg, President Clinton's pollster. "But once they begin to tell people what they're for, they've complicated this election."
Mr. Greenberg added, "These outsider candidates didn't need to be anything but vessels for people's alienation, and now they've taken on a form."
In fact, Democrats are trying to use the contract to cast Republicans in a form they are very comfortable campaigning against. The contract commits the Republican Party to an array of tax cuts, a constitutional amendment to require a balanced budget and a stronger military. As one Democratic Party advertisement puts it: "How will they make up the spending gap? Explode the deficit again? Make devastating cuts in Medicare?"
In several of the advertisements, as the announcer talks about the contract as a return to the Reagan years, the camera lingers on a headline: "Reagan's ax to cut Social Security." Republican strategists are crying foul, asserting that Democrats are up to old tricks: when in danger in a close election, try to mobilize the elderly by warning of Republican plans to cut Social Security or Medicare.
"They obviously don't want to run on Bill Clinton and the Clinton Congress, so they'll resort to lies or distortions to try to divert attention," said Barry Jackson, who runs the Contract With America office at the Republican National Committee.
"Tony Coelho was notorious when he was at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee for going in on the last 10 days and doing scare tactics on seniors," Mr. Jackson added, referring to Mr. Clinton's top political adviser.
Still, the economic promises in the Republican agenda have attracted critics from outside the partisan fray. The Concord Coalition, a bipartisan group devoted to reducing the deficit, said, "As is often the case, if it sounds too good to be true and it looks too good to be true, it probably is too good to be true." And Democratic consultants say the editorial response to the contract was so negative that they have the makings of another round of advertisements.
Peter Fenn, a Democratic consultant, said, "It seems to me the second wave in this campaign is the citing of editorials that call it a joke, that call it voodoo two, that criticize Republicans for the fact that they're not going to be able to pay for the program."
Still, it is the Washington imagery that is so attractive to so many Democrats, since they have been hammered this year for being part of the establishment.
"Three hundred Republican candidates flew to Washington, signed over their votes to the Republican leadership and then promptly returned to the states to accuse the Democrats of being insiders with an agenda out of step with their districts," said Anita Dunn, a Democratic consultant.
Bill McInturff, a Republican pollster, said that he understood what the Democrats were trying to do. But he said they were fighting major political forces.
"Midterm elections are instinctively a referendum on the President and the party in power," Mr. McInturff said, "and the Democrats are doing all they can to change the locus of the election to a different question."
He added, "As someone painfully caught in the backwash in 1982 and 1986, what we learned was doing this is enormously difficult."

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October 19, 1994, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final
Correction Appended

THE 1994 CAMPAIGN: THE AD CAMPAIGN;
Attacking the Republican 'Contract With America'

SECTION: Section B; Page 8; Column 1; National Desk

LENGTH: 441 words

CANDIDATE -- Representative Jolene Unsoeld, in a tough re-election race in Washington State, is one of many Democrats around the country broadcasting advertisements that attack the Republican "contract with America."
 
PRODUCER -- Fenn King Murphy Communications
 

ON THE SCREEN -- In slow-motion, the Republican challenger, State Senator Linda Smith, walks up to a table to sign the contract. She is highlighted, but in the background are clearly visible row after row of Republicans in suits -- a seeming tableau of the Washington establishment. The ad then shows headlines about the dangers of the Reagan Administration's economic policies superimposed over still pictures of women, children, elderly people and workers. Among the headlines: "Reagan's Ax to Cut Social Security."
 
SCRIPT -- "You're looking at Congressional candidate Linda Smith, taking the lead, signing a contract with the national Republican leadership. What's the deal she's agreeing to? More tax breaks for the wealthy, paid for by devastating cuts in Medicare. Or, increasing the deficit again. It's a contract to revive the failed 1980's.
"You remember -- trickle down economics, exploding deficits, slashing Social Security. That's what Linda Smith just signed us up for again. But why would we ever want to go back?
 
ACCURACY -- Democrats assert that the "contract with America," which promises a constitutional amendment to require a balanced budget, an array of tax cuts and an increase in military spending, will inevitably mean cuts in entitlement programs like Medicare, which make up more than half of the Federal budget. Republicans reject that charge, and Ms. Smith's campaign chairman, Bill Kinkade, says the candidate "has pledged never to cut Social Security or Medicare."
But many budget experts have long argued that achieving substantial, long-term deficit reduction is impossible without some pain. Warren Rudman, the former Republican Senator from New Hampshire and a founder of the Concord Coalition, the bipartisan group devoted to reducing the deficit, said, "You cannot get deficit reduction of any substantial nature without a huge tax increase, or significant means testing of all entitlement programs, including Medicare."
 
SCORECARD -- This commercial presents a non-incumbent, non-Washington politician as a tool of Washington elites. It also tries to galvanize voters who historically have voted Democratic; the fear of cuts in Social Security and Medicare is one of the most potent fears in American politics. The risk in such ads, some analysts suggest, is they may not reach beyond the Democratic core voter.

LOAD-DATE: October 19, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

CORRECTION-DATE: October 20, 1994, Thursday

 CORRECTION:
A picture yesterday with a summary of a campaign advertisement for Representative Jolene Unsoeld of Washington State was published in error. It showed an advertisement for Representative George Hockbrueckner of New York, one of many Democratic campaigns around the country that attack the Republican "Contract With America."

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October 23, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

CONNECTICUT GUIDE

BYLINE: By ELEANOR CHARLES

SECTION: Section 13CN; Page 10; Column 4; Connecticut Weekly Desk

LENGTH: 1251 words


SONO CENTER STAGE
 The attractions of South Norwalk will be on display next weekend beginning with a preview party on Friday evening from 6 to 9 P.M. at the Lockwood-Mathews Mansion, 295 East Avenue.
Reconstructed from a waterfront slum, Washington Street and the adjoining area have become an enclave of art galleries, restaurants and boutiques, enhanced by the Maritime Center around the corner on Water Street, a new railroad station two blocks away, and the restoration of the Lockwood-Mathews Mansion. 
 Mario Buatta is the honorary chairman of an antiques show to be held at the mansion on Saturday from 11 to 6, and Sunday from 11 to 5. Admission is $7. A tour of the elaborate 50-room Victorian home, built in 1868 by LeGrand Lockwood, a railroad tycoon, will be guided by Connie Beale, a Greenwich interior designer, on Saturday at 10 A.M.
A free walking tour of SoNo, led by Ralph Bloom, the city's historian, will begin at Hope Dock next to the Maritime Center on Saturday at 1 P.M., or on Sunday if it rains.
Hope Dock is where the Island Girl is berthed, offering cruises to the historic Sheffield Island Lighthouse and the Norwalk Islands on Saturday and Sunday at 11 A.M. and 1 P.M. Naturalists will be aboard to talk about the ecology of Long Island Sound and oystering operations in Norwalk waters. Cruise tickets are $9 for adults, $8 for those 62 and older and $7 for children under 12.
A new Imax film at the Maritime Center, called "Destiny in Space," is narrated by Leonard Nimoy and features space explorations that include flyovers of Mars and Venus -- spectacular when seen on the 8-story-high screen. Daily showtimes are 11 A.M., noon, 1, 2 and 3 P.M. and on Friday and Saturday at 7 and 8 P.M. Admission is $6 for adults, $4.50 for senior citizens and children under 12.
Street entertainment will be provided throughout the weekend and a Halloween costume party is scheduled at the Maritime Center on Saturday from 7 to 11 P.M., with costume competitions, entertainment, dancing and a cash bar. The phone number for tickets or more information is 852-0700.
 
MIDNIGHT GOTHIC
 "Gothic at Midnight," an evening of ghost stories for adults, will be presented at the Westport Arts Center on Thursday at 7:30. It's the first of three storytelling performances by Joshua Kane, known in the area as the Bard of Central Park.
Drawing on his acting and mime studies with Stella Adler, Marcel Marceau and the National Shakespeare Conservatory, Mr. Kane weaves his solo performances out of literary classics, myths, original stories and folklore. Sans costumes or sets, he portrays a daunting range of characters and narrates a prodigious repertory of tales, this week concentrating on the fantasies and horrors of Halloween. He will return on Feb. 23 with an evening dedicated to the stories of Edgar Allen Poe, and on April 27 the program will be based on "Time Machine," by H. G. Wells, traveling to the year 802,701 A. D.
Individual tickets are $15, subscriptions for the three shows are $39. The number for tickets or more information is 226-1806.
 
ARCHITECTS HUDDLE
 The Connecticut chapter of the American Institute of Architects will sponsor the national 1994 convention in Hartford on Saturday from 11 A.M. to 9:30 P.M. The event, titled "Accent on Design Convention and Exposition," will be held at the Civic Center and feature speakers from across the country. Aimed primarily at professionals, from architects to engineers to building officials, it will offer information of interest to home owners and prospective home buyers as well.
The morning seminar on "Seismic Design Requirements for Masonry Construction" may sound more applicable to the West than the East Coast, but New England is subject to its own breed of earthquakes and builders are concerned about providing an ounce or more of prevention.
New Connecticut building and fire codes, and five critical elements of environmental design will be the afternoon topics, and there will be a variety of demonstrations throughout the day.
Following a reception from 7 to 8 P.M., Fred Koetter, Dean of the Yale School of Architecture and a founding partner of Koetter, Kim and Associates, will discuss "The Future of Architecture." His firm advocates principles for urban design that include lively streets, mixed commercial and residential uses and accomodations for pedestrians.
The fee for all-day attendance $50, admission to individual programs is $10 and $20. A walk through the exhibits and demonstrations is free. Complimentary bus service for ticket holders will be provided from Norwalk, Bridgeport and New Haven. Call 865-2195 for tickets or more information.
 
FOCUS OFF PLANET
 Outer space is the focus of the new exhibit for children and adults at the Science Center of Connecticut in West Hartford. On view through Jan.  2, 1995, "The Endless Frontier" celebrates the 25th anniversary of the lunar landings and the Apollo program itself.
The principal element of the exhibit, which originated at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, is a 20-foot by 12-foot video wall featuring 22 color monitors tracing the history of America's space exploration programs and technology, including a day aboard the Space Station.
Current and future spacecraft models are on display, along with a vintage Apollo space suit, and a robot prototype of the ones that will be sent to Mars. A hands-on gyroscope exhibit that explains defying gravity in order to keep rockets on course, and a planetarium show titled "Moon Shadows," recapturing the astronaut-vs.-cosmonaut race to the moon, are additional attractions.
The center is located at 950 Trout Brook Drive, open Tuesday through Friday from 10 A.M. to 4 P.M.; Saturday from 10 to 5 and Sunday from noon to 5. Admission is $5 for adults, $4 for people 62 and older and children 3 to 15. Admission to the planetarium is an additional $2. For information or directions call 231-2824.
 
WORKSHOPS ON FLORA
 Three workshops at the Garden Education Center in Greenwich this week explore aspects of the plant world.
On Wednesday at 10 A.M. Edwin T. Morris of the New York Botanical Garden will talk about "The Plants of Vice." Botanical species that have been used down through the ages as aphrodisiacs or stimulants, or to bring about altered states, or intoxication, and as elements of strange rituals will not only be discussed in historical context, but also sampled, judiciously. The fee is $25.
The art of Japanese flower arranging will be tackled by Judith Hata on Thursday at 10 A.M., focusing on the Sogetsu school, in which the natural beauty of the flower is paramount. The class is suitable for beginners as well as more experienced practitioners. Participants must supply a container 10 to 12 inches in diameter and 2 to 3 inches deep, a pin flower holder at least 3 inches in diameter, and Japanese flower scissors or pruning shears, all of which may be purchased at the center's shop. The workshop fee is $35.
A free, drop-in, hands-on workshop that will cover everything anyone needs to know about orchids will be conducted by Carrie Raven on Saturday from 11 to 2. All aspects of growing and maintaining suitable conditions for orchids will be discussed and questions will be answered. A supply of phalaeonopsis orchids will be available for sale. The center is located on Bible Street in the Cos Cob section of town, and the phone number for more information is 869-9242.   ELEANOR CHARLES

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LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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October 23, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

THE 1994 CAMPAIGN: SENATE;
Castro Runs Against Moynihan, D'Amato and Her Childhood Image on TV

BYLINE: By FRANCIS X. CLINES 

SECTION: Section 1;  Page 40;  Column 1;  Metropolitan Desk 

LENGTH: 1385 words

Bernadette Castro always knew she had to get beyond that old Castro sofa-bed commercial from her girlhood to have a shot at a real political identity. But what can she do when a well-meaning fan like John Zero, a white-haired stalwart at the 58th Street Republican Club in Woodside, Queens, sidles up with a twinkle in his eye when she wants to talk big politics -- her hard-run but equally hard-to-notice United States Senate race -- and he wants to talk sofa beds?
"I want to know, do you still got that cute little nightgown you wore when you were 4 years old and used to open the Castro Convertible on TV?" Mr. Zero asked the other night. Thirty Republican senior citizens applauded Ms. Castro after she proved that she could be a surprisingly bracing clubhouse speaker, for all her inexperience. 
 "Oh sure, still got it," laughed Ms. Castro, 46 years after that ad made her famous -- back when television was in black and white and marketing specialists actually thought it was better suited to selling furniture than political candidates.
"I've got to get beyond that," she resolved later in a conversation. "I mean calling me 'the sofa heiress,' that sort of thing," groaned Ms. Castro, a 50-year-old Republican business executive, with a saucer-eyed look of exasperation that heightened her resemblance to Nancy Reagan.
But the very morning after Mr. Zero's nostalgia for her nightie, Ms. Castro showed every sign of finally inventing a heartfelt political identity. In a sudden burst of anger, she began complaining last week not so much about Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the Democrat she wants to unseat, as about Senator Alfonse M. D'Amato, the fellow Republican and money-raising master. She has fashioned his inattention to her candidacy into a homestretch whip in her excruciatingly long-shot race.
"I think we have a new song for Alfonse to sing in the Senate: 'A Bicycle Built for Two,' " she declared, road-testing a new sound bite at a news conference the morning after charging that there was a clubby deference by Mr. D'Amato toward Mr. Moynihan to steer campaign funds and attention away from her to the top of the G.O.P. ticket. The charge garnered the first front-page headline of her money-strapped, five-month-long campaign, and it has put fresh spring in her step.
"Women talk of the glass ceiling -- well, I'm facing a brick wall with two guys holding it up in the back," she complained, running spiritedly against New York's senatorial tandem as an "outsider" who has found her candidate's voice at last.
An untested, gravely underfinanced candidate after her initial political years as a low-key suburban fund-raiser, Ms. Castro turned out early to have the feistiness on the stump of a natural campaigner. But she was little noticed until she criticized "Alfonse."
Senator D'Amato has denied any scheming, noting that he has endorsed Ms. Castro but is preoccupied with the gubernatorial candidacy of his upstate protege, State Senator George E. Pataki. After her complaint made news, Mr. D'Amato insisted he had helped Ms. Castro raise money.
"Maybe Alfonse is confused," Ms. Castro tightly retorted after privately debating with her campaign aides whether he deserved a stronger word than "confused." "He's not made any effort to help me raise funds."
"I'm not backing down -- no way, no way," she said in a car ride to Binghamton Wednesday morning, surveying her audacity in trying to bell the combative Republican Senator and exploit the state campaign's most interesting subtext: the expectation that Mr. D'Amato might become the veritable kingfish of New York politics should Mr. Pataki defeat Gov. Mario M. Cuomo. "Had I not talked about this issue, would I have gotten any help?" she asked after hearing a mixed reaction from Republicans.
"I think Alfonse would understand," she said, hardly timorous at Mr. D'Amato's celebrated wrath as she identified with his own reputation as a scrappy, opportunistic underdog. The Senator made a point of hugging the candidate at a G.O.P. dinner after news reporters bombarded the two with questions.
This was not lost on the Moynihan campaign. "She's about four years early in her Senate run," said William Cunningham, the Democratic Senator's campaign chairman, relishing Ms. Castro's criticism of Mr. D'Amato as Mr. Moynihan enjoys double-digit leads in the polls.
Ms. Castro, who won Conservative Party cross-endorsement in a primary challenge, insists Mr. Moynihan is the ultimate target, if voters would only pay attention. Her latest charge is that the Democrats may be preparing a last-minute barrage of polls using negatively worded questions to "blindside" Ms. Castro. The Moynihan campaign denies this.
"Interesting that the prince of darkness and his forces are concerned about dirty tricks," said Mr. Cunningham, referring to Edward J. Rollins Jr., the Castro campaign strategist and Republican consultant who embarrassed himself with his tactics in the New Jersey governor's race last year. Since she raised the issue of party regularity in campaign financing, Mr. Cunningham accused her of inconsistency, citing public records that she once made contributions to a past campaign for Governor Cuomo.
The campaign's preoccupation with money was signaled when Ms. Castro was the surprise Senate nominee last May at the Republican State Convention. Party professionals expected her to dip freely into her family fortune in her campaign against the financially well-ensconced Mr. Moynihan. "The goal was to raise three to four million if she wanted to make this a competitive race, which she didn't do," said Howard C. de Martini, the Suffolk County Republican chairman who sponsored the candidacy of his friend from Lloyd Harbor, L.I. "That doesn't mean she can't win; it just makes it more difficult."
Ms. Castro says the greatest shock of her campaign baptism has been the news media's equation of a candidate's credibility with the size of the campaign war chest. Ms. Castro estimates she will donate $1.2 million of her own family money to a total campaign of $1.7 million, mostly for a late blitz of TV ads.
This is about half the minimum stake that professionals think is needed against Mr. Moynihan, who raised $5 million in his last race.
She was in the paradoxical position one recent night of being invited to a private fund-raising event for another candidate at Peter Max's elegant art studio in Manhattan. Invited to say a few words, she was polished in attacking the Democrat and casually noted that she owned an original Peter Max oil. This, along with her designer clothes and self-confident delivery, hardly made her seem the political mendicant she has become.
Born in the Bronx, Ms. Castro was raised in Mamaroneck and Florida and has a degree in broadcasting and a master's in education from the University of Florida. Married for 15 years to Dr. Peter Guida, a New York surgeon, she has four grown children from a previous marriage.
She rebuffs any questions about losing. Her years as a hands-on executive in the family business are on display with a passion each day as she travels the state virtually alone, looking for an open microphone for her message that, like her role model, Gov. Christine Todd Whitman of New Jersey, she can "take out" a well-financed incumbent.
"You used to know me as the little girl who put New Yorkers to sleep; well, now get ready for the woman who wakes New York up," she boomed the other night, drawing cheers at a Staten Island Conservative Party dinner.
Ms. Castro is single-minded as she drives from one campaign stop to the next, and the only thing that diverts her from her schedule is a chronic craving for french fries. She confided over a plateful: "Campaigning is like running a business in which all this preparation comes down to a one-day sale."
The challenge presented by Senator Moynihan remains formidable. But Ms. Castro's attitude has lightened as she enjoys the novelty of stirring some sensational attention as a politician, even if at the expense of Senator D'Amato. "I think Alfonse overdid it," Ms. Castro decided anew, comfortable with her new role in attacking "the insiders' club" as the fall foliage blurred past on the hustings. "I'm in this as a giant killer, and they're, like, cutting the bean stalk."

NAME: Bernadette Castro

LOAD-DATE: October 23, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Bernadette Castro, the Republican candidate for the United States Senate, greeted voters yesterday in the Dr. John Henrik Clarke House in Harlem. (Ed Quinn for The New York Times)

TYPE: Biography

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October 25, 1994, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

Deaf to Estrogen's Call: A Man's Strange Story

BYLINE: By NATALIE ANGIER 

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

LENGTH: 1896 words

HE was a towering young fellow, nearly 6 feet 8 inches, the sort of height that prompts strangers in elevators to ask, "Do you play basketball?" or "How's the weather up there?" But that wasn't the problem -- too tall is better than too short in this culture, right? And, yes, his feet and hands were unusually big; his size 18 shoes were beginning to pinch. But that wasn't what brought him to the doctor, either. No, it was his gait. His knock-knees were getting ever more knocked, the upper legs twisting inward so that his knees were too close together, his ankles too far apart, his feet splayed, his abnormal walk a growing embarrassment to him. So he consulted an orthopedic surgeon.
By the time his case had been reviewed in detail, his bones X-rayed, his blood sampled, his genes assayed and anatomized, he had overturned a long-standing medical paradigm, belied the endocrinology textbooks and defied scientific predictions merely by being alive. 
 The young man, whose identity is being kept confidential by his doctors, has a genetic defect never seen before in a human, one that is supposed to be so devastating that he should not even be alive. The cells of his body lack a component needed to allow them to respond to estrogen, a hormone once thought to be critical to life. He makes plenty of estrogen in his adrenal glands, his testes and elsewhere, as men normally do, but he lacks the receptor necessary to allow his body tissues to respond to all the estrogen he generates.
According to scientific presumption, a person without estrogen receptors should have died in the womb, or perhaps ended up with a grossly distorted central nervous system. Yet here he is, healthy in appearance and normal by most measurements, with a couple of outstanding exceptions. At age 28, 10 years after most males have reached their adult height, he is still growing. His epiphyses, the tips of the bones which are supposed to harden and fuse together at about 18 and thus spell an end to skeletal growth, remain soft and cartilaginous, as though he were a 15-year-old boy who is still upward -- and outward -- bound.
"He told me the other day that he just moved up to a size 19 shoe," said Dr. Eric P. Smith, a pediatric endocrinologist at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine. Dr. Smith and collaborators from several institutions describe the paradigm-smashing case in the current issue of The New England Journal of Medicine.
At the same time the young man's bones are elongating, they are also becoming progressively weaker and more porous. As it turns out, he suffers from osteoporosis of a degree that might be expected, said Dr. Smith, "in an elderly, postmenopausal woman."
The two symptoms together -- lack of epiphyseal closure and the degradation of the bone structure -- surprised all the researchers who took part in the study. The findings demonstrate that estrogen is as important to a man's bone strength and skeletal structure as it is to a woman's; in the past, doctors thought that male hormones, the androgens, controlled bone development in men.
The symptoms also suggest that estrogen acts directly on bone cells, rather than through an indirect mechanism, as had been proposed. The young man's bone cells, like all his other cells, lack the estrogen receptor and so are unable to benefit from the strengthening influence of the hormone coursing through his bloodstream. Without the estrogen signal, his skeleton is gradually demineralizing, the calcium dissolving away like chalk in water. The means for preventing further decay remain unclear: estrogen replacement therapy cannot help a man whose cells are deaf to estrogen's call.
Beyond its relevance to medical understanding of bone metabolism, the case of the man without estrogen receptors highlights science's profound ignorance about the role of the sex steroids, the estrogens and the androgens, in dictating human physical or psychological growth. Although estrogen is commonly thought of as a female hormone and testosterone -- the most famed of the androgens -- as a male hormone, in fact both sexes produce considerable amounts of the other's hormones. In addition to manufacturing estrogen, men also turn some of their circulating androgens into estrogens, which then act on the body's tissues in various ways.
The man without estrogen receptors may lead to a radical reinterpretation of how the male and female hormones independently influence the body and brain. Not only does he challenge the notion that estrogen responsiveness is fundamental to life, he also appears to contradict a widely accepted idea that estrogen is an essential signal for shaping the masculine brain and forming its sexual identity. According to this notion, which is supported by a considerable amount of data from animal studies, testosterone's effects on the male brain are actually carried out in large part through estrogen: When the androgen reaches the brain, most of it is transformed into estrogen by an enzyme called aromatase, and it then speaks to the brain cells via their estrogen receptors.
Testosterone also interacts directly with some parts of the brain, linking up with receptors designed to recognize the male hormone. But the two classes of hormones were thought jointly important in organizing the male brain during its development and in creating some of the behavior seen in most men, including a general propensity to like women as sexual partners, a robust libido, perhaps even a tendency toward aggressive, competitive behavior.
Even without estrogen, however, the man's brain appears to be perfectly normal. Moreover, says Dr. Smith, he seems to be your average heterosexual guy, who expresses avid interest in women and has nocturnal emissions and morning erections and the like. Certainly his male hormones have in every other way turned him into a man. He reached puberty at the normal age, around 12, he has a full beard, normal genitals, a deep voice and masculine muscle development.
Dr. Daniel D. Federman of Harvard Medical School, who wrote a commentary accompanying The New England Journal of Medicine report, said in an interview that he hoped others like the young man will be identified. By studying such cases, he said, science may begin to parse out the various effects of male and female hormones on the brain and behavior. "We look at the different ways in which men and women play sports and just generally compete in life, and we also notice that men are disproportionately involved in violence," he said. "We assume some of this is testosterone-induced, but if the brain can make estrogen out of testosterone, we always have to wonder which of the two hormones is really having an effect.
"If we had, say, 100 people with this sort of genetic mutation, people who had no estrogen receptors, we could begin to cleave the impact of one hormone away from the other," he added. In other words, people like the young man in the report could offer a reasonably clean portrait of how testosterone alone influences brain architecture and any number of behaviors. There is some indication from mouse studies that male animals without estrogen receptors are less aggressive than are normal male mice, but the results are highly preliminary, and in any case the relevance of mouse data to human behavior is questionable at best. Rodent brains develop in a very different manner than do those of humans and other primates.
It may not be difficult to identify other men with this mutation, the researchers said, now that the symptoms have been described. If doctors see men who are much taller than their parents and who do not have excess growth hormone production (a sign of a well-known disorder called acromegaly), such men might prove to have unresponsive estrogen receptors. One of the researchers on the report suggested that the National Basketball Association may be reasonable place to start searching.
However, the mutation is likely to be rare in the general population, and for it to have an effect it must be inherited in a double dose. The young man in the report, for example, is the son of parents who are third cousins, each a silent carrier of the mutation.
Dr. Frederick Naftolin, a neuroendocrinologist and chairman of obstetrics-gynecology at Yale School of Medicine, said that while he found the new report "extremely interesting," he cautioned that much remains to be resolved about this patient. He proposed that, even without working estrogen receptors, the man may still be responding to his inherent estrogen signals in subtle ways.
Some scientists lately have argued that estrogen can exert its potent and multifarious effects through means other than by coupling with the designated estrogen receptor, perhaps by hooking onto cell receptors meant for other hormones in the body or by changing the properties of the delicate cell membranes. Scientists have also argued that estrogenlike compounds in the environment end up having a broad range of ill effects on human health and fertility through just such unexpected and indirect mechanisms. Here, too, the man could prove a useful guinea pig, should he be willing; scientists could study him for evidence that estrogen can indeed bypass the traditional receptors and still get across some sort of stimulatory message.
Whatever the outcome of the discovery, the new work stems from a striking convergence of basic and clinical observations. The young man came to Dr. Smith's attention after it was discovered that his epiphyses were unfused and that his circulating estrogen level was high. He also had an elevated insulin concentration, suggesting a minor defect in sugar metabolism. It was an excellent medical mystery for a pediatric endocrinologist, who looks at hormone imbalances in children; despite the man's age, he seemed to have a child's bones. The elevated estrogen led Dr. Smith to suspect he was unresponsive to the hormone, and thus it lingered in the bloodstream uselessly. To test the possibility, he put the young man on a regimen for six months that raised his estrogen level tenfold. In most men, such a manipulation would have led to obvious problems like breast growth, headaches, weight gain and mood alterations. In this man, nothing happened.
Dr. Smith then heard about new results from experimental mice. Dr. Kenneth S. Korach of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences in Research Triangle Park, N.C., and his co-workers had bred genetically altered mice that lacked estrogen receptors. The fact that such mice survived astonished Dr. Smith as well as others in the scientific community, and he began to wonder whether his patient might be a human version of these receptor-free rodents. The researchers decided to collaborate.
On analyzing the young man's DNA, Dr. Korach discovered that, sure enough, both his copies of the gene that allows the body to create estrogen receptors were so defective that no receptors at all could roll off their chemical templates. He defied the dogma that such receptors were needed, and even grew to a supermasculine height. His growth is now slowing and is expected to stop fairly soon (although the osteoporosis may continue to worsen), and he might never have made medical history had his bones not proved incapable of supporting the house they had built.

LOAD-DATE: October 25, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photos: X-rays of left hand of normal 15-year-old boy, left, and that of patient with no estrogen receptors; bone stage is the same but bones are longer. (pg. C3) (University of Cincinnati College of Medicine)
 
Graph: "Bone Growth And Estrogen" shows normal growth patterns, and height of estrogen-deficient subject at different ages. (New England Journal of Medicine) (pg. C3)
 
Diagram: "How Hormones Sculpture a Male Body"
 Estrogen, converted from androgen, is as important for the male as it is for the female for normal bone growth and structure. (Source: Dr. Eric P. Smith/Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center)

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October 26, 1994, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

A Choice and an Echo

BYLINE: By Robert Eisner;   Robert Eisner is author of "The Misunderstood Economy: What Counts and How to Count It."

SECTION: Section A;  Page 27;  Column 2;  Editorial Desk 

LENGTH: 502 words

DATELINE: EVANSTON, Ill.

Just when the Democrats seemed to have something going with their attacks on the Republicans' "Contract With America," the Republicans have pounced on a counterweapon -- an internal Administration memo prepared by Budget Director Alice Rivlin. Titled "Big Choices," the memo is a list of largely unpopular options to hold the deficit in check and permit adequate financing of programs like the new national service corps, welfare reform and Head Start.
There is a fundamental difference, though, between the two documents. The Republican contract was signed by more than 300 candidates for Congress and presented by their leader, Newt Gingrich. The memo by Ms. Rivlin, a distinguished economist, is a set of hypothetical choices, with no endorsement from President Clinton or anyone else. 
 There is another difference: the Republicans tell us we can increase military spending, cut taxes and balance the budget at the same time and asks us to endorse that impossibility with our votes. Ms. Rivlin is at least honest. She says we have to choose.
But this does not necessarily mean that deficit reduction should be placed above all else. It is hardly clear that the tremendous deficit reduction Mr. Clinton has already achieved -- down this year to $203 billion from a Bush Administration forecast of $270 billion -- has won the Democrats many votes.
The Clinton Administration's focus on deficit cutting has caused it almost as much difficulty in enacting its programs as have Republican filibusters. The White House and the Congress are in a straitjacket that prevents them from spending more for one program without cutting something else. It is like telling your daughter that she cannot have a college loan and her education will have to be financed out of her brother's food money.
More important, curbing Social Security benefits is simply a bad idea, whether it is mentioned as a possibility in an internal Democratic laundry list or whether it is implicit in a Republican contract. Reductions in cost-of-living allowances would not only hurt the elderly, they would hurt the economy by reducing purchasing power just when our growth may be in danger of collapsing. And cutting Medicare or Medicaid, by leaving people sicker, would also undermine economic health.
Yet there could be a White House memo that the Democrats would be happy to see leaked. This one would set forth a comprehensive well-financed program to prevent and not merely punish street crime. It would include measures to bring up a new generation of educated citizens whowould be productive in a technologically advanced economy. It would include a program to support the basic research necessary for scientific and economic progress. It would include money for public investment on which economic growth depends.
I'll bet there are many such memos floating around the Clinton Administration. Perhaps if one or two were leaked, the voters could begin to see more clearly some of the real choices they have to make.

LOAD-DATE: October 26, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

TYPE: Op-Ed

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The New York Times

October 26, 1994, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final
Correction Appended

Mildred Natwick, 89, Actress Who Excelled at Eccentricity

BYLINE: By PETER B. FLINT 

SECTION: Section B;  Page 13;  Column 1;  Cultural Desk 

LENGTH: 627 words

Mildred Natwick, a versatile actress who created an engaging gallery of eccentric, whimsical and spunky characters in plays, films and television for more than 60 years, died yesterday at her home in Manhattan. She was 89.
Miss Natwick, a small woman with sharp features and a mischievous manner, was a familiar figure on the Broadway stage, where she appeared in some 40 productions. Among other roles, she played an idiosyncratic secretary in George Bernard Shaw's "Candida," an extroverted medium in Noel Coward's "Blithe Spirit" and a shrewish wife in Jean Anouilh's "Waltz of the Toreadors." 
 The New York Times critic Brooks Atkinson, in his review of the Anouilh play in 1957, characterized her performance as "protean" and one that "rides the whirlwind with a great sweep of venomous extravagance."
Miss Natwick's comic brilliance in Neil Simon's "Barefoot in the Park" prompted Walter Kerr to acclaim her in 1963 as "the most hilarious woman in the Western hemisphere." She further confirmed her versatility in 1970 in Harold Pinter's "Landscape" and in 1971 when, at the age of 62, she made her debut in a singing role in a John Kander-Fred Ebb musical, "70, Girls, 70," as the disarming leader of a circle of elderly people seeking self-esteem by stealing furs.
Among Miss Natwick's films were four directed by John Ford. She appeared as a prostitute in "The Long Voyage Home," a doomed mother in "The Three Godfathers," a hard-bitten Army wife in "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon" and a sly widow in "The Quiet Man."
In a 1990 interview, she praised Ford as a masterly director who needed just a few words to inspire actors and give them the right clue or insight for a scene. In contrast, she said, Alfred Hitchcock, in directing the comedy "The Trouble With Harry," told her and the other actors precisely what he wanted.
Miss Natwick concentrated her career on Broadway, saying she had always preferred plays to movies because "on the stage, you're in control for two hours, while in a film, you do bits and pieces, usually out of sequence."
She received an Academy Award nomination as best supporting actress for her work in the 1967 film version of "Barefoot in the Park." She also received several Tony and Emmy nominations and was awarded an Emmy for "The Snoop Sisters," a 1973-74 television series in which she and Helen Hayes played successful mystery writers who were obsessed with solving real crimes.
In an interview in her Park Avenue apartment, she said her main criterion for creating a role was to make a character as inseparable from herself as possible. Nearly everything, she remarked, "is hit or miss for a while, until it all comes together." She said her advice to young performers was: "Act every time you get a chance. At least in the beginning, go wherever acting is."
Miss Natwick, who was called Milly by friends and associates, was born in Baltimore on June 19, 1905, to Joseph Natwick, a businessman, and the former Mildred Marion Dawes. She graduated from the Bryn Mawr School in Baltimore and also from Bennett Junior College in Dutchess County, N.Y., where she majored in drama.
She began performing at the age of 21 with the Vagabonds, a nonprofessional group in Baltimore. She soon joined the celebrated University Players on Cape Cod, trading lines with such other young performers as Henry Fonda, James Stewart, Margaret Sullavan and Joshua Logan. She made her Broadway debut in the melodrama "Carry Nation" in 1932.
Among her films were "The Enchanted Cottage" (1945), "The Late George Apley" (1947), "Cheaper by the Dozen" (1950), "The Court Jester" (1956), "If It's Tuesday This Must Be Belgium" (1967), "Daisy Miller" (1974) and "Dangerous Liaisons" (1988)
No immediate family members survive.

NAME: Mildred Natwick

LOAD-DATE: October 26, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

CORRECTION-DATE: November 8, 1994, Tuesday

 CORRECTION:
An obituary on Oct. 26 about the actress Mildred Natwick referred incorrectly to her debut in a singing role in a musical. It was in "Stars in Your Eyes" in 1939, not in "70, Girls, 70" in 1971.

GRAPHIC: Photo: Mildred Natwick (1970)

TYPE: Obituary (Obit); Biography

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The New York Times

October 28, 1994, Friday, Late Edition - Final

Issues of Race Are Raised In Simpson Jury Selection

BYLINE: By DAVID MARGOLICK,   Special to The New York Times 

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

LENGTH: 936 words

DATELINE: LOS ANGELES, Oct. 27

Lawyers for O. J. Simpson asserted today that prosecutors were attempting, through needlessly persistent and provocative questioning, to keep blacks off the jury. Their accusations brought race to the surface of a case in which it has always lurked not far below.
The assertion, made in twin impromptu news conferences by two of Mr. Simpson's lawyers, followed a testy exchange between Deputy District Attorney William W. Hodgman and an elderly black man, one of six candidates screened today for the Simpson jury. "You're pumping me as if I'm on trial or something!" the man, a 71-year old retiree from South-Central Los Angeles, exclaimed. "I don't like that. You're sort of riling me." 
 Mr. Simpson's principal lawyers, Robert L. Shapiro and Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. were quickly out in the corridors, denouncing Mr. Hodgman's conduct. "We are very concerned about the tenor of questions and that they go after certain jurors," Mr. Cochran said. "In order for this jury to have credibility, it must have people from all walks of life and from all over the community."
In fact, the potential jurors who have survived the first round of questioning are an extraordinarily diverse group in which whites are a distinct minority. Jury selection was suspended late today as lawyers argued over whether poor supervision of Mr. Simpson's seized Ford Bronco should invalidate evidence taken from it in August. Judge Lance A. Ito put off a decision on the matter until at least Nov. 7.
A few minutes after Mr. Cochran spoke, and 12 floors below, Mr. Shapiro swung into action. He maintained that the prosecution was harassing black candidates, hoping they would talk themselves off the jury by betraying bias, and sparing the prosecution from having to use any peremptory challenges to remove them.
"It implies an insidious effort to try to get black jurors removed for cause because they are black, because they have black heroes and because O. J. Simpson is one of them," Mr. Shapiro said. "There's no other reason. I'm not saying they don't want them. They question them differently, and I don't think that's right."
The comments brought a quick and angry retort from Mr. Hodgman, who had pressed the unidentified jury candidate to elaborate on a number of statements he made on his questionnaire -- that he considered the Los Angeles Police Department "pushy," for instance; that he had read about the case in various supermarket tabloids and that he considered Nicole Brown Simpson's recorded 911 call to be merely "family matters."
Tension escalated when Mr. Hodgman pressed the man on whether he would convict Mr. Simpson were his guilt proved beyond a reasonable doubt, and the man just as repeatedly equivocated. It finally boiled over when Mr. Hodgman asked the man whether he had heard any discussion of polygraphs in the case -- Mr. Hodgman's colleague, Marcia Clark, recently talked of giving jury candidates lie detector tests -- then asked if he knew what a polygraph was.
Mr. Cochran said that question had not been asked of anyone else and called it "demeaning." And he said it was not the first time prosecutors had badgered potential jurors who are black, noting an earlier examination of a woman who broke down in tears when asked to discuss her brother's brushes with the law.
But at a news conference of his own, Mr. Hodgman accused the defense of bad faith. "This appears to be just the latest in a series of efforts to try to manipulate public opinion," he said. "And in the midst of jury selection, I think it is very inappropriate and unfair." Throughout his questioning, he said, he has attempted to insure "fairness and humanity for individual jurors."
Throughout the case, Mr. Simpson's lawyers have vowed not to introduce race as an issue, though they have said that the racist attitudes of one police detective assigned to the case may have prompted him to try to frame Mr. Simpson by transplanting a bloody glove to his property. It was unclear whether their statements today represented a change of tactics or simply the spin de jour.
Having just made the accusation, Mr. Cochran said he was not accusing anybody of anything but only sending a message to the Los Angeles District Attorney, Gil Garcetti. "Mr. Garcetti has said that his office is not going to exclude people on the basis of race, gender or ethnicity," he said, "and we are going to hold him to that."
It is widely but by no means universally believed that black jurors will be more sympathetic to Mr. Simpson, and that the defense is anxious to have as many of them as possible on the 12-member panel.
The juror questionnaire asked potential jurors whether they believed Mr. Simpson was guilty of the crime charged: murdering his former wife, Nicole, and her friend Ronald L. Goldman. "No," the black candidate questioned today wrote. "Let the law prove him guilty."
He was also among the few prospective jurors who, on the questionnaire, described racial discrimination in Southern California as "a very serious problem." Only questionnaires of potential jurors who have been examined have been released briefly to pool reporters.
It is unconstitutional to exclude jurors solely on the basis of race. But even if the prosecution offered race-neutral reasons to exclude black jurors, they would be unable to eliminate them all. In six days of questioning, 34 candidates have passed the court's muster, and of them, more than half are black. That included all three prospects approved today. Of the remainder, nine are white, three are Hispanic, two are American Indians, and two are of mixed ancestry.

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October 30, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

COPING;
Talking Politics in a Municipal Bad Mood

BYLINE: By ROBERT LIPSYTE 

SECTION: Section 13;  Page 1;  Column 3;  The City Weekly Desk 

LENGTH: 839 words

EVEN after 17 years in the city, Timothy Tate feels "politically transient"; he probably won't vote in this election. But Carol Roberto can't wait to vote for Gov. Mario M. Cuomo, "twice if you can figure out how I can do it." Eleanor Papa will be voting for George E. Pataki, because "a new broom sweeps pretty good at first, until it loses its fibers." Johnny Colon thinks "yelling in the streets" may be at least as effective as voting. And Daphne Maloney senses a confusion that she hopes won't translate into people sitting this one out, and then not even in her restaurant.
This pre-election poll may be as shallow as it is narrow -- only middle-aged or older registered Copers who have appeared at least once in this column were surveyed about the cityside impact of the gubernatorial election -- but it seems to echo the deep concern and the broad loss of optimism in current urban life. Nevertheless, most Copers say they will citizen on. What's the choice? Move? 
 Watching the city's economy from her cash register at Daphne's Hibiscus, a Jamaican restaurant on East 14th Street, Daphne Maloney can tell that "people are going out to dinner less, and there's more sharing of entrees."
"My main concern is crime, and then youth," she said. "Not enough is being done for them. What could the reason be for the little ones committing murder? No jobs, no hope. And people really do want to work. I had a young man, early 30's, come in two Mondays in a row to do some work, and I said I'd call him if I needed him again. He showed up a third Monday, just in case, made a long trip for a few hours work. I gave him something to do. All this would get worse with Pataki. A Republican Mayor and Governor would be a disaster."
*
 "I'm a very loyal Republican," said Eleanor Papa, a retired Bensonhurst schoolteacher. "The only time I cross party lines is for my State Senator, Marty Solomon, a Democrat. He was very helpful when I got knocked down by a bike on the sidewalk.
"People aren't really talking about the election a lot. But then I spend a lot of time with the elderly, and they're not so concerned about issues as about themselves. Oh, they'll vote; see them come out with their little canes while the young people sit home and watch TV.
"I believe in the death penalty, workfare, not welfare, and cutting entitlements. Take some things from old people and give it to youngsters, they're the future."
Carol Roberto, a retired interior designer who lives near Union Square, thinks Mr. Pataki isn't "concerned about people."
"Lower taxes never work, they just cut into education and services for the poor," she explained. "My heart belongs to Mario. A great mind, fair and honest. He's too smart for people, they are envious. It was courageous for Giuliani to endorse him. I might just vote for Giuliani next time."
People are getting fewer haircuts these days, said Timothy Tate, who cuts hair at Pentomo, on the Upper East Side. "You never talk about religion or politics, you can lose a client over a disagreement," he said.  "But I do listen. People are moving right-wing to justify their concerns about themselves, about making money for a second child, a first house out of the city.
"I'm not sure how political poorer people are, they're so busy just surviving. . . . Meanwhile, we're not getting the information we need. What about these Russian gangsters in New York? And where do all the guns in the ghetto come from? You give us the black persona of a street kid with a turned-around cap ready to steal, not the middle-class black person trying to embrace culture, live a life beyond race.
"I voted for Dinkins the first time, but would have voted for Giuliani the second time. I don't feel part of my times here as a black man without a college degree who is also not funky enough for SoHo. Giuliani's not good for me, but he's good for the city. He has a fixed purpose, he'll screw whole groups, get others off their butts to keep the city afloat." Mr. Tate has been spending more and more time lately at his computer, on-line. "I think of myself as non-aligned right now," he said.
Johnny Colon runs a music school and alternative high school in East Harlem. "You don't really hear a buzz up here," he said, "but that may be because people are apathetic. They've lost faith in the system, and rightly so.
"But getting up in politicians' faces, protesting, organizing on a grassroots level, is as important as voting. We have to get back out in the streets and make noise. Pass that old spark on to the kids.
"Cuomo's tired, he's fought the fight, but he wants to go out on top, with a bang for the city and the state. He wants people to feel about him the way they did when they talked about him for president."
Mr. Colon knows about fight and fatigue. A month ago, his longtime partner and wife, Stephanie Munoz, died. "The school and other nonprofits, we've got to get through the next couple of years, until things turn around again," he said. "Right now it's all about survival."

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October 30, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Sound Bytes;
Going Interactive, Creatively

BYLINE: By J. Greg Phelan 

SECTION: Section 3;  Page 7;  Column 1;  Financial Desk 

LENGTH: 686 words

WHEN she saw the first portable video camera in 1970, Red Burns recognized the potential of the new technology to enable people to make their own documentaries. It was a defining moment that changed her career from a film maker to a creator of interactive tools.
Over the next two decades, she used a grant from the National Science Foundation to create a two-way television system that allowed elderly residents of Reading, Pa., to interact with one another and "visit" community sites like the city center, Social Security office and local high schools. The system is still used. 
 In 1979 Professor Burns helped start the Interactive Tele-communications Program at New York University, where she is the chairwoman of a graduate program with 150 full-time students devoted to learning how to create new interactive media. The faculty is composed of adjunct professionals -- artists, designers, and software creators.
Professor Burns's projects include the production of a CD-ROM on Chaos Theory with HarperCollins and a research project with Nynex called the Electronic Neighborhood, an interactive television program combining narrowband (telephone) and broadband (cable) communications.
Question. What is the motivation for a program in interactive tele communications?
Answer. People come here for one purpose -- to understand the possibilities of this new form. I don't see them coming here as a prelude to a career. These technologies are going to change all the time. They're really going to have to understand the fundamental nature of the technologies and the possibilities. And we look for ways for the technology to be applied in very human ways.
Q. Is technical obsolescence a problem?
A. No, because it's not about technology. We're not a trade school. We're training people who have to learn to navigate in a world of change. If there's anything constant, it's change. It's not like you open somebody's head and pour in a skill.
Q. What characteristic do you look for in prospective students?
A. Curiosity. This field isn't here yet. It's just developing. You have to be an adventurer, an entrepreneur. We accept people who have never touched a computer, who have never looked at video. We're more interested in people's approach.
Q. How does the program contrast with traditional computer science?
A. We're in the Tisch School of the Arts, which is primarily interested in creative communication. In computer science, they might see the arts as frosting on the cake. We see the arts as absolutely essential in the mix that's going to create new form.  We don't have classes where a professor sits up at the front and teaches how to use a computer. People learn that in the labs on their own.
We're also a professional school. There are ethical and aesthetic issues, and ways of looking at how one creates an original piece of work.
Q. What do you think the "killer" application is going to be?
A. I don't think there is going to be one. It was McLuhan who said we always look through the rearview mirror. We're looking at what we've always looked at before, which was the big application or the big audience or the big statement, because we're basing our audience on cost per thousand.
What I'd like to see is a network that's open enough for people to be able to design their own uses, much the way they use the telephone. It's too early to talk about whether it's educational, whether it's social or whether it's entertainment. These categories that people feel the need to define really get in the way.
 
Red Burns
 
 Born: Ottawa; "in the predigital age."
 
 Education: Apprenticeship at National Film Board of Canada.
 
 Current position: Chairwoman of the interactive telecommunications program at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts.
 
 Noncomputer reading: "Six Memos for the Next Millennium," by Italo Calvino.
 
 Family: Four children: Wendy, Michael, Barbara and Catherine.
 
 Ideal vacation: Tuscany region of Italy.
 
 Favorite movie: "Grand Illusion."
 
 Computer: Macintosh.
 
 E-mail address: burns@nyu.edu.

NAME: Red Burns

LOAD-DATE: October 30, 1994

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November 1, 1994, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

THEATER REVIEW;
A Woman With an Eye For Talent and Revolt

BYLINE: By WILBORN HAMPTON 

SECTION: Section C;  Page 16;  Column 5;  Cultural Desk 

LENGTH: 685 words

"Mother of All the Behans" is one of those celebrations of Irish lore, song and dance that often tend to leave the uninitiated feeling a bit left out. Fortunately, the one celebrating is Rosaleen Linehan, who weaves the tale with such enchantment that she converts Kathleen Behan's rather ordinary life story into a one-woman music hall.
Ms. Linehan, warmly remembered for her brilliant performance as Kate, the eldest sister, in Brian Friel's "Dancing at Lughnasa," has brought the show to the Irish Repertory Theater with such a twinkle of eye and toe that she makes the audience wish it had personally known her subject, if only better to appreciate her portrayal. 
 Adapted from Brian Behan's book by Peter Sheridan, who also directed, with additional material by Miss Linehan, "Mother of All the Behans" is an affectionate biography of Kathleen Behan, the mother of the playwright Brendan Behan and a fireball in her own right, who bore seven children, three of whom, she is proud to say, ended up in English jails.
The monologue opens with Kathleen in a nursing home at the age of 95, more afraid of an earthquake striking Dublin than of dying, and still an unrepentant Stalinist. For Kathleen, who is described by her neighbors alternately as "Lady Behan" and "that Commie Fenian," Uncle Joe was always a friend of the workers, no matter what they say about him now.
Miss Linehan then throws the covers off the iron bedstead in which the aged Kathleen is ridden, adjusts her voice from that of a croaky nonagenarian to the lilt of a colleen, and recounts nearly a century of Irish history as filtered through her own special lens.
Punctuating her narrative with refrains from old Irish songs, and once or twice kicking up her heels in a jig, Miss Linehan carries Kathleen from a childhood in an orphanage to her first husband, through the Easter Rebellion to home rule and partition, from her employment by Maud MacBride to her marriage to Stephen Behan, whom she describes simply as "the drunkard."
Miss Linehan is especially funny in passages describing her new mother-in-law, a slum landlady who spent years receiving visitors in bed and kept her teapot filled with whisky. The best parts of the evening are in Kathleen's remembrances of the literary figures whose paths she crossed at Madam MacBride's or of her own son, Brendan, mainly because they are familiar to the audience, if only through their work.
Although she never met Joyce, she knew Nora Barnacle well (Miss Linehan's arched eyebrow speaks volumes) and shared some of their gossip. As for Yeats, she divulges that Madam MacBride (nee Maud Gonne, the love of the poet's life) always referred to him as "silly Willy."
One may forgive Kathleen's excuses for Brendan's drinking excesses and general antisocial behavior as a mother's prerogative. "He swung the world by the tail," she says with pride, and she recalls the gala opening of "The Hostage" in London, to which he flew her from Dublin, and the playwright's rapid decline and death.
If the accounts of Kathleen's brief encounters with early Irish rebels like Connolly, Pearse and the assassinated Michael Collins strike less of a chord, it could be because local heroes and patriots, like some local wines, simply don't travel well.
There are sections of Kathleen's story that would need a Frank O'Connor, a Joyce, a Yeats or even a Brendan Behan to turn into something more than passing interest. But Miss Linehan keeps the tale entertaining.
 
MOTHER OF ALL THE BEHANS
 
Adapted by Peter Sheridan from the book by Brian Behan; additional material by Rosaleen Linehan. Directed by Mr. Sheridan; set and costumes by Chisato Yoshimi; lighting by Tony Wakefield; production stage manager, Kathe Mull. The Irish Repertory Theater, Charlotte Moore, artistic director, Charlotte Moore; Ciaran O'Reilly, producing director. Presented by Jim Sheridan, Peter Sheridan, the Irish Repertory Theater Company and One World Arts Foundation, in association with Georganne Heller and Beverly Karp. At Theater Four, 424 West 55th Street, Clinton.
 
WITH: Ms. Linehan.

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November 2, 1994, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

INSIDE

SECTION: Section A; Page 1; Column 2; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 59 words


Cholesterol and the Elderly
A Yale University study finds that high cholesterol is not an accurate predictor of heart disease among those over 70. Health, page C12.

 
 
N.A.A.C.P. Is Out of Money
 Its cash reserves depleted and contributions drying up, the civil rights organization stopped paying most of its professional staff. Page A14.

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November 2, 1994, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

When the Investors Came Second

BYLINE: By KURT EICHENWALD 

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

LENGTH: 1985 words

Why is your pay so high, an elderly investor angrily asked Leonard G. Levine recently, when your real estate trust's misfortunes have cost so many people their life savings?
Mr. Levine replied that the problems leading to the huge losses were caused not by his management but rather by the previous managers, according to people who witnessed the exchange at the trust's annual meeting last June. Mr. Levine added that his team at the Banyan Management Corporation was merely trying to salvage the investment. 
 But Mr. Levine left out one important fact: He had also been an officer of the previous management, VMS Realty Partners. And he, along with the directors of other Banyan entities once controlled by VMS, had been named in a court document, recently unsealed from a class-action lawsuit, accusing them of helping to defraud investors in the partnerships and investment trusts once controlled by that company.
To hear Banyan's critics, the conversation with the shareholder is a telling example of how Banyan executives, putting their own interests first, have failed to tell the whole truth to the tens of thousands of investors in the trusts and partnerships the company manages. Since investing $1.2 billion, those investors have lost more than $600 million, after considering distributions, according to filings by various entities with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Now a group of powerful financiers, including George Soros, the famed hedge fund manager, contend in a lawsuit that Banyan's deception of investors extended to critical management decisions. At issue is 33 acres on the Florida coast at Key Biscayne, the major asset of a Banyan real estate partnership that the Soros group recently acquired.
The investor group contends in its lawsuit that before the Soros group's takeover of the partnership, Mr. Levine arranged for most of the proceeds from the sale or development of the property to be transferred to another company he controlled. That was done without the approval of both entities' boards, according to documents filed with the S.E.C.
Nor did Banyan disclose the Soros takeover bid to its investors when it was received, according to merger documents filed by the investor group with the S.E.C.
Through his secretary, Mr. Levine declined to comment. Robert Higgins, Banyan's general counsel, declined to comment on any matters in litigation in the Key Biscayne dispute. He also said that Mr. Levine, in answering the elderly investor's question in June, "responded to the shareholder's question at that meeting appropriately."
The proceeds-transfer arrangement has already contributed to the dismissal of Mr. Levine from his executive posts at three Banyan partnerships. Yet he remains the senior executive of five other Banyan entities.
 
Beginnings In the 1980's
 The Soros group is not the first to raise accusations about improprieties at the entitities formed by VMS in the 1980's. VMS was a Chicago real estate concern that developed properties throughout the country. It raised cash from investors and lent the money to other VMS entities, which bought real estate and sometimes sold it to yet other VMS entities. VMS received fees for the transactions and other fees for managing the property.
To keep this arrangement going, VMS needed new money. The company turned to Prudential-Bache Securities. The VMS investments, assembled from 1984 through 1988, were sold by Prudential brokers to their customers as safe, conservative investments.
But, in reality VMS was falling apart. According to the recently unsealed court filing made on behalf of investors in a 1989 class action, executives with VMS knew as early as 1986 that numerous properties were in deep financial trouble. The lawsuit -- which was settled by VMS and other parties in 1991, with investors receiving about 4 cents on the dollar -- based that accusation on confidential company documents.
Mr. Levine, then a senior vice president at VMS, was among the executives who knew of the financial problems, according to the recently unsealed 1991 court filing.
Mr. Higgins, the Banyan lawyer, said the 1991 filing contained only accusations and that they should not be assumed to be true.
Shareholders were not informed of any problems until February 1990, when the company announced it was having significant cash flow problems. After the disclosure, the values of the publicly traded VMS entities, already suffering, collapsed.
About the time of the announcement, according to the recently unsealed filing, Mr. Levine resigned from VMS Realty Partners. He was hired shortly afterward by the eight entities as their president. The entities dropped their affiliation with VMS and were eventually renamed for Banyan, the company that Mr. Levine serves as president.
Over the next few years, the losses at the funds continued to rise under Banyan's management, S.E.C. filings show. From 1990 through 1993, the combined losses for the eight Banyan entities totaled more than $316 million. The annual losses did decline each year, with total losses of $7.2 million in 1993. Since 1991, only one entity has paid distributions to investors.
 
No Interruption In Compensation
 Despite that performance, Banyan was well paid. In 1990, according to the S.E.C. filings, the eight funds paid $612,000 in fees to Banyan. That climbed every year, reaching almost $3.5 million in 1993. The total paid to Banyan in three years is almost $10 million.
Mr. Levine also did well. In 1990 he received about $627,000 in salary and bonus. That rose to well over $1 million each year in 1991 and 1992, falling last year to about $673,000. Those payments were spread among the eight entities, meaning investors would know the total Mr. Levine received only by examining each entity's filings.
The seeds of the troubles that led to the battle with the Soros group were planted shortly after Banyan took over. In 1990, Banyan negotiated a number of settlements to compensate the investor-owned entities for the loans they made to other VMS units. In several deals, the Banyan entities took control of real estate in exchange for canceling debt.
In one of those agreements, 55 acres in Key Biscayne were divided between two entities, Banyan Mortgage Investors L.P. III and Banyan Strategic Land Fund II. Under the deal, the mortgage partnership owned 33 acres zoned for the construction of condominiums, and the land fund owned a contiguous 22 acres zoned for a hotel.
At the time, the land fund seemed to get the better deal because a hotel appeared to have more potential for profit than condominiums.
And indeed that made sense: the land fund had lent the most money to VMS for the property -- about $31 million, compared with about $7 million from the mortgage partnership.
The two entities negotiated an agreement in 1990 to work together in developing the Key Biscayne property. That agreement would become the focus of litigation.
 
A Hurricane Plays a Role
 By last year, the investment appeared to have become a disaster for the land fund and a boon for the mortgage partnership. The devastation caused by Hurricane Andrew in 1992 had crippled the values of coastal hotels because of the perceived risk. A March 1993 appraisal by Grubb & Ellis valued the hotel property at $6.3 million, far less than the land fund had invested.
But with demand for condominiums growing, the same appraisal found the market value of the mortgage partnership's property had more than quadrupled, to about $28.8 million.
That kind of jewel resting in the publicly traded mortgage partnership attracted the attention of high-profile investors. One interested group included Mr. Soros; Theodore V. Fowler, a former president of Prudential-Bache Capital Funding who had managed his own investment banking firm since 1990, and John Hinson, a Florida real estate investor and developer. According to S.E.C. filings by the Soros group, Mr. Fowler told Mr. Levine in December 1993 that the group was interested in the mortgage partnership.
Mr. Levine responded that such a deal could be done only if the group purchased the hotel parcel from the land fund, because he thought the two properties were inseparable, the filings state. Effectively, Mr. Levine rejected an offer for one company unless the bidders bought an asset from a separate company with conflicting interests.
Moreover, according to lawsuits in the case, the financial interests of Mr. Levine may also have been in conflict. Neither Mr. Levine nor any directors of the mortgage partnership held a stake in it. But Mr. Levine did own 25,428 shares in the land fund, and options to purchase 60,000 more shares, the lawsuit says.
 
Rearranging The Money Flow
 With the mortgage partnership days away from possibly receiving a tender offer, Mr. Levine amended the joint development agreement from four years earlier. The amendment, effective as of 1990, said that the two Banyan entities had to share all future net revenue, at a split of 75 percent to the land fund and 25 percent to the mortgage partnership. That revenue sharing would continue until all monies invested by the two entities had been returned, at a 15 percent interest rate.
Mr. Levine signed the document on behalf of both entities. The directors of the mortgage partnership were not consulted, according to S.E.C. filings by the partnership.
With the amendment, Mr. Levine effectively transferred three-quarters of the potential investment return of the condominium parcel from the mortgage partnership in which he had no interest to the land fund in which he held a large stake. In return the partnership received one-quarter of the potential return of the financially troubled hotel parcel.
In S.E.C. filings, the Banyan land fund has stated that the amendment reflected the deal's original intent. But no revenue-sharing terms had previously been disclosed by Banyan. The fund has filed suit in Illinois to have the amendment enforced.
 
Premium-Price Bid Is Kept Quiet
 For its part, the Soros group, apparently assuming that its own lawsuit would lead a court to declare the amendment invalid, submitted a $28.1 million bid for the partnership. The price was $2.50 a unit, a 105 percent premium over the market price at the time. Banyan did not tell its shareholders that it had received the bid.
The offer was revised twice, but investors were still not informed. On April 15, Mr. Fowler sent a letter to the partnership's directors that discussed Mr. Levine's amendment to the joint development agreement and criticized Banyan for not telling its investors of the takeover bid.
Also on April 15, Mr. Levine was dismissed from Banyan Mortgage Investors L.P. III. Within days, but still almost six weeks after the first bid for the partnership was submitted, Banyan disclosed the takeover offer to its investors. During the summer, the investor group acquired a majority of partnership units, and a full takeover was recently completed.
Despite his dismissal for cause from the mortgage partnership, Mr. Levine continued to run seven other Banyan entities, including two with the same directors as the mortgage partnership. Last month, he was dismissed from those two partnerships, but he retains management control of the other five.
The Banyan land and mortgage entities are now enmeshed in litigation with each other, as well as suits brought against executives and directors. Mr. Levine has also filed a claim against the mortgage partnership seeking more than $240,000. As for investors in the mortgage partnership, some lawyers say that even if there is a finding that the partnership acted improperly, investors might not be able to recover any money from Banyan.
After all, most of those investors had settled their claims against those executives in 1991 to conclude the class action against VMS.

LOAD-DATE: November 2, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: A Banyan Management partnership reached an agreement with another Banyan entity in 1990 about developing a hotel and condominiums in Key Biscayne, Fla. An investor group has acquired the partnership and its residential project, which currently consists of one abandoned structure. (Cindy Karp for The New York Times)

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November 2, 1994, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Heart Ills and High Cholesterol May Not Be Linked in Old Age

BYLINE: By GINA KOLATA 

SECTION: Section C;  Page 12;  Column 4;  National Desk;  Health Page

LENGTH: 1640 words

CHOLESTEROL levels, which so accurately predict risk of heart disease in middle-aged people, appear to have no such predictive value in the elderly, a new study has found.
The study, by investigators at Yale University, included 997 men and women 70 years old or older who were followed from 1988 until the end of 1992. It is one of the very few studies of cholesterol to focus on people over 65, and in fact the average age of the study participants was 79. The researchers report that although a third of the women and a sixth of the men had high cholesterol levels, these people did not have any more heart attacks during the study period than those whose cholesterol levels were normal or even low, nor were they more likely to die from heart disease or from any cause. 
 The study is being published today in The Journal of the American Medical Association.
"This is good news for old people," said Dr. Stephen B. Hulley, the chairman of the department of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California at San Francisco. He said the study showed that after about the age of 70, "they can take it easy and relax" and stop worrying about cholesterol. Dr. Hulley, who wrote an editorial accompanying the paper, said that the findings were "very important" because there has been virtually no information on cholesterol's effects in the very old. Although this study by itself is unlikely to be definitive, he said, its findings are bolstered by those of the Framingham Heart Study, now in its 46th year, which also found no effect of cholesterol in the elderly.
Dr. Michael Criqui, an expert on cholesterol and heart disease at the University of California at San Diego, said the Framingham data showed, in fact, that cholesterol levels taken at the age of 50 were a better predictor of heart disease risk at 70 or 80 than cholesterol levels at 70 or 80.
Dr. Harlan M. Krumholz, the study director, a cardiologist and epidemiologist at the Yale University School of Medicine, said many old people were alarmed by their cholesterol readings and were trying desperately to get them down, with diet or often with cholesterol-lowering drugs. But Dr. Krumholz, Dr. Hulley and others say that since there is no evidence that lowering cholesterol helps in people over 70, doctors should not even take cholesterol measurements in old but otherwise healthy patients.
Dr. Hulley explained: "At least for people in their late 70's and beyond, we don't know what's a good cholesterol level. We actually don't know whether you're better off with a high one or a low one, so there is no point in measuring it." He added that there was especially no point in treating old people with cholesterol-lowering drugs and said he was deeply concerned because many people in their late 70's and older were taking those medications.
At first glance, the questioning of cholesterol's effects may sound odd, heart disease researchers said. After all, if large amounts of cholesterol in the blood encourage the buildup of artery-clogging plaque in middle-aged people and even in people as old as 65, why would they not do the same in the very old?
One possible explanation, said Dr. David Kritchevsky, a cholesterol researcher at the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia, is that anyone who reaches 80 or so with a high cholesterol level and no evident heart disease may be immune to cholesterol's effects. "The bullet has missed you," he said.
But Dr. Kritchevsky said many people did not want to hear that they could ignore cholesterol after reaching a certain age. "What has happened is that the risk factor has become the disease," he said. High cholesterol levels themselves have come to be viewed as a pathology.
Dr. Kritchevsky said many old people and their doctors were so convinced that high cholesterol levels were dangerous at any age that the question of whether to measure them, or try to lower them if they were high, might never come up. "My own father, who is 82, announced to me that he was going to stop eating eggs," Dr. Kritchevsky said. "I told him, 'Eating eggs is what got you here.' "
Until very recently, nearly all studies that looked at whether high cholesterol levels were a risk factor for heart disease focused on people under 70 and most looked predominantly at men under 65. And the studies that showed that lowering cholesterol could prevent heart attacks focused on middle-aged men, in whom the relationship between high cholesterol levels and heart disease is strongest.
The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute is starting a study that may eventually involve as many as 40,000 people over 60, looking into whether reducing cholesterol levels and blood pressure prevents heart disease. But the study is in its earliest stages and the results will not be known until after the year 2000. In the meantime, researchers have been forced to extrapolate from studies of the middle aged in giving advice to the elderly.
Dr. Basil Rifkind, a senior scientific adviser to the heart institute's vascular research program said studies had consistently shown that as people grew older, the relationship between cholesterol levels and heart disease risk steadily weakened. Eventually, he said, "there is some point where the return is not worth the effort, where benefits are not likely to be seen." But the problem is deciding at what age that point occurs.
Dr. Rifkind said that when the heart institute's cholesterol education panel tried to decide what to recommend to old people with high cholesterol levels, "they did not come up with a blanket recommendation." Essentially, they said doctors should use their judgment in treating people over 65; for example, asking if the person was healthy and vigorous or chronically ill. Nonetheless, Dr. Rifkind said, there has been "a shift toward being more aggressive about treating cholesterol in the elderly."
Some think that is appropriate. Dr. William P. Castelli, director of the Framingham study, one of the largest observational studies ever done, said his data showed that cholesterol remained a risk factor at any age, for men and women.
In an analysis published in 1992, he reported that total cholesterol levels predicted heart disease risk in 992 men 50 to 64 years old and in 1,295 women 50 to 79 years old. But, he said, he could predict heart disease in older men if he looked at a particular fraction of the cholesterol-carrying proteins, the ratio of total cholesterol to the cholesterol carried by high density lipoproteins, or H.D.L., which are the proteins that carry cholesterol away from blood vessels.
Using this ratio is a way of correcting for the fact that people who have high levels of H.D.L. cholesterol, the so-called good cholesterol, are at lower risk than those whose H.D.L. levels are low.
Dr. Castelli focused not on death from heart disease but on heart attacks and chest pain, signs that arteries are becoming blocked. He said his findings showed why doctors should aggressively treat old people: not to prevent deaths from heart attacks, since few die the first time they have a heart attack, but to prevent the heart attack in the first place.
"I want to slow the progress down so you will not shut down an artery and have a heart attack from which you will not die but the quality of your life will go downhill," he said.
But others say the case is not so clear-cut. Dr. Hulley argued that Dr. Castelli had not, in fact, shown that cholesterol or the cholesterol ratio was important after 79, so that his results were actually consistent with those from the new study. And another investigator, using the Framingham data, looked at heart disease deaths and found no relationship to cholesterol levels among the very old.
Dr. Richard Kronmal, a statistician at the University of Washington in Seattle, found that the relationship between cholesterol levels and risk of death from heart disease diminished as people grew older, eventually becoming nonexistent.
The new study, by Dr. Krumholz, found no relationship between cholesterol and deaths from heart attacks or between cholesterol and symptoms of heart disease in the elderly whether he looked at total cholesterol or at the ratio between total cholesterol and H.D.L. levels.
Dr. Anthony Gotto, chairman of the department of internal medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston and a past president of the American Heart Association, said he still felt that high cholesterol levels in the elderly should be treated because some studies showed that artery-clogging plaque regressed in the elderly when they reduced their cholesterol levels.
"As a matter of fact," he said, "we have seen patients treated with angioplasty and bypass operations when they are in their 80's and when they have severe symptoms. If it's worthwhile treating with invasive therapy, then surely it's worth preventing."
But, Dr. Kronmal said, that sort of statement "requires several leaps of faith." He explained: "You have to believe that treating old people will work. And there are no data one way or the other. You have to believe it is safe to treat. And what is safe in young people may not be safe in old people. And you have to say that the benefit is substantial enough to make a difference. If you save people from a heart attack, they may suffer the ravages of another disease soon thereafter."
In the end, definitive answers will come only from studies that test treatments in the elderly. Dr. David Gordon, the heart institute's main adviser on its new study, said that for now he was "a little more comfortable recommending treatment to old people who actually have heart disease." But, he added, he cannot say how high cholesterol levels should be before treatment should begin. "There's not a lot of hard data to base that on," he said.

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LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


GRAPHIC: In a four-year study of 387 men and 610 women over 70 (with an average age of 79), the percentage of each group who suffered heart attacks and the death rates from coronary heart disease and from all causes were compared for those with high, medium and low levels of total cholesterol, measured in milligrams per deciliter of blood. Adjusting for other cardiobascular risk factors, ther would be no statistically significant difference. Graph shows results of study. (Source: Dr. Harlan M. Krumholz/JAMA)
Graph: "Survival and Cholesterol: What Happens in Old Age?"

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November 3, 1994, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

THE 1994 CAMPAIGN: THE PRESIDENT;
Clinton Stumps for Candidates But Watches Where He Goes

BYLINE: By DOUGLAS JEHL,    Special to The New York Times  

SECTION: Section A;   Page 29;   Column 5;   National Desk  

LENGTH: 732 words

DATELINE: PROVIDENCE, R.I., Nov. 2

To hear his advisers tell it, this is Bill Clinton's mission as he begins his final cross-country charge of the fall campaign: define the choices, rally the faithful, fill the coffers and help those Democrats who want to be helped.
But these are his instructions: never, never, never stray south of the Mason-Dixon line. 
 With six days to go before the election, Mr. Clinton is spending his evenings in halls like the Rhode Island Convention Center here on behalf of candidates like Myrth York, the Democrat who hopes to be the state's next governor. By week's end, he will have carried his exhortations to New York, Iowa, Minnesota, California, Michigan, Delaware and Washington.
But in Tennessee, Oklahoma, Florida and Texas, where the Democrats are facing some of their toughest Senate and statehouse races, Mr. Clinton will nowhere be seen. Even as the White House maintained today that his resurgent popularity had given the party new momentum, his itinerary reflected a view that there remained much of the country where Democrats were better off if the man from Arkansas stayed at arm's length.
"We go where we're invited," a senior White House official said today with a shrug. With voter antipathy toward Mr. Clinton still running fierce across the South, that has left his autumn march confined to fewer than a dozen states across the Northeast, Midwest and the West Coast where candidates believe that the President can make a positive difference.
Missing from the ranks of candidates that Mr. Clinton will try to help in the coming days are some of his party's leading figures, including Gov. Ann W. Richards of Texas, Gov. Lawton Chiles of Florida, Senator Jim Sasser of Tennessee, and Representatives Jim Cooper of Tennessee and Dave McCurdy of Oklahoma, both of whom are seeking to maintain the party's hold on open Senate seats. Instead, Mr. Clinton will spend the final days before the election in the frequent company of statehouse candidates like Ms. York and Bonnie Campbell of Iowa, and Senate hopefuls like Helen Wynia of Minnesota and Ron Sims of Washington, who all are running behind in the polls and are hardly household names.
For the White House, the calculation has been frustrating but simple. Rather than risk alienating voters elsewhere, Mr. Clinton is limiting his stops to states like this one, where he can mobilize Democratic loyalists.
As in every other state he is scheduled to visit, a majority of Rhode Island's voters cast their ballots for Mr. Clinton in the 1992 Presidential campaign. And at a stop this afternoon near here in Pawtucket, Mr. Clinton found the kind of unrestrained support he sought as several hundred senior citizens at a Portuguese Social Club took in his warnings that Republican campaign promises would leave that party no choice but to cut back on Social Security benefits.
"We're moving forward," the President declared to loud applause. "You be thinking on Tuesday: 'I'm in control. I have a remote control on America's movie. I'm going to go into a polling place and I'm going to push forward. Maybe I'll even push fast-forward. But I certainly won't push reverse.' "
As Mr. Clinton repeated that message here in radio and television interviews via satellite with stations in Iowa, Connecticut and Massachusetts, his advisers portrayed his choice of venue as almost incidental. "The President's role in the final week is to travel around the country and help define the choice between Republicans and Democrats," said Joan Baggett, the White House political director.
At the same time, the White House issued a three-page fact sheet in an effort to substantiate its assertions that Mr. Clinton's trips had begun to have an effect on the Democratic fight to maintain control of the House and the Senate. Titled "A Week in Politics Is an Eternity," the document pointed to recent gains by Gov. Mario M. Cuomo of New York and other candidates for whom Mr. Clinton has campaigned, and it said that recent good economic news and the President's trip to the Middle East would underscore what should matter most to voters: "The nation is at peace, and the economy is growing."
With some recent national polls showing a surge in Mr. Clinton's approval ratings, one senior White House official said today: "I think the danger that voter anger at the President could cause the defeat of a local candidate is gone."

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November 3, 1994, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

THE 1994 CAMPAIGN: CAMPAIGN DIGEST;
On the Trail

SECTION: Section B;   Page 9;   Column 6;   Metropolitan Desk  

LENGTH: 204 words

Developments yesterday in campaigns in New York and New Jersey.
 
NEW YORK
Governor -- A day after he endorsed Gov. Ann Richards of Texas, Ross Perot agreed to extend his blessing to the candidacy of B. Thomas Golisano, the third-party challenger for New York governor. The Texas billionaire has agreed to come to New York to campaign with the Rochester millionaire, a move that is expected to hurt State Senator George E. Pataki and help Gov. Mario M. Cuomo. Page A1. 
 Senator -- Bernadette Castro accused her opponent, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, of having a poor memory or intentionally misleading voters. In an interview in Newsday, he said that her charge during their debate on Sunday that he had voted for increased energy taxes was "a lie." "I didn't lie," Ms. Castro said.
 
NEW JERSEY
Senator -- The Democratic incumbent, Frank R. Lautenberg, and his Republican challenger, Chuck Haytaian, squabbled over who was the true friend of the elderly. Mr. Haytaian said older people would benefit under his simplified income tax proposal because it exempts Social Security income. Senator Lautenberg said that in his third term he will work for health care reform that includes long-term care.

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November 3, 1994, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

The Art of Growing Older Forcefully

BYLINE: By ENID NEMY  

SECTION: Section C;   Page 8;   Column 3;   Home Desk  

LENGTH: 1094 words

DATELINE: STAMFORD, Conn. Oct. 30

Turn the word "mom" upside down and what do you have? No guessing here, it's "wow," and one might well ask, so what?
So, as Dr. Ruth Harriet Jacobs pointed out at a workshop entitled "Be an Outrageous Older Woman" this weekend, WOW can, and does, stand for wonderful, wise or witty older woman. The women in the audience, most of whom admitted to being over 50, loved it. 
 The workshop was one of 30 offered at a three-day conference here on "Conscious Aging," organized by the Omega Institute and attended by some 1,000 men and women.
Dr. Jacobs, a sociologist and author obviously fond of initials, went on to further flights of descriptive fancy -- a WOW, she said, was also a RASP, an acronym that could be read as anything from Remarkable Aging Smart Person and Ravishing Aging Sensuous Person to Radical Aging Stressed Person or, for that matter -- and why not -- all three. The objective of the initials: to turn around society's current view of older women and, not incidentally, to mobilize their energy and potential.
"Dignity, decorum and the don'ts have limited the fun and growth of older women," she observed, adding that being feisty was preferable to being frightened of what people might think.
"There is so much age-ist, sexist prejudice against older women that we might as well enjoy life without worrying about others' opinion of us," said Dr. Jacobs, who has written a book, "Be an Outrageous Older Woman: A RASP," published in 1993 by Knowledge, Ideas & Trends in Manchester, Conn. "I think the underdog has a right to bark."
The underdog, in this case older people, also has "the same needs and rights to sex as anyone," she said, despite the fact that older women were often seen as figures who ought to be chaste and Madonnalike (no, not the singer).
This cultural stereotype about sex and age was reiterated by another speaker, Myrna I. Lewis, who observed that "love and sex in the mid and later years are frequently surrounded by jokes, ridicule and misinformation."
"Look out for your adult kids," she warned jokingly. "They may have a hard time believing Mom and Dad have a sex life." On the other hand, she said, men and women who are not interested in sex should relax -- "it gives them a lot of extra time to do other things."
Ms. Lewis, an assistant professor in the community medicine department at Mount Sinai Medical School and co-author with Robert N. Butler of "Love and Sex After 60" (Ballantine Books, 1993), spelled out a psychological difference between men and women as they became older.
With men, she said, the earlier emphasis on youthful physical speed and prowess meant that when normal slowing began, it brought with it worries about masculinity. For women, the lifelong emphasis on youthful physical beauty often led to stress when aging became noticeable.
"For both men and women, we still see too little social value placed on late life character, intelligence, experience, achievement and the social skills acquired over a lifetime," she said. "Love and sex after 60 has more to do with intimacy than it does simply with the act of sex."
Colette Dowling, whose book "Red Hot Mamas" is to be published by Bantam next year, also touched on the cultural emphasis on physical beauty for women. "Youth is not the apotheosis of sexiness in men," she said. "In women it is. Because of the way society views aging women, there is serious danger of our turning against ourselves.
"In adolescence, girls enter the age in which they become objects, viewed by society as sexually desirable, or not. After puberty, the basis of their social value begins to shift, and ineluctably, they enter the mating game."
As a result, she said, "we spend the rest of our lives trying to regain the boldness we had as girls." Midlife, she suggested, offered an opportunity for women to regain the courage they had when they were young.
Ms. Dowling admitted that the myth of "if you're not in a marriage, you're alone," was undergoing change. Nevertheless, for many women who had been married for years, finding happiness as a single person required action -- constructing social networks, looking for intellectual challenges and shifting internal gears.
The conference, which had a ratio of about 10 women to 1 man, was the second on aging organized by the Omega Institute, a holistic education center, founded in 1977, with headquarters in Rhinebeck, N.Y.
For a registration fee that ranged from $215 to $275, there were Betty Friedan, Dr. Sherwin B. Nuland and Dr. Dean Ornish among the keynote speakers, and workshops on everything from "Tibetan Teachings on Living and Dying" to "the Harlem Council of Elders."
The importance of a dialogue with aging parents was taken up in a workshop led by Barry Barkan, Debora Cushman Barkan and Taun Cosentino Relihan, executives of the Live Oak Institute Elder Living Center, a nursing and assisted-living center in El Sobrante, Calif.
Mr. Barkan emphasized the importance of explaining to elderly parents the need to know certain facts to insure appropriate support if the need arose. He suggested a tactful approach to the subject might be "what do I need to know -- I want to be your ambassador, representing your will."
Dr. Nuland drew some of the most enthusiastic response of the conference when, in his keynote address, he noted that in an age of super-specialists, he had become "a great advocate" of the family doctor.
"We do not know our patients," said Dr. Nuland, clinical professor of surgery at the Yale School of Medicine and author of "How We Die" (Knopf, 1994). The house calls that doctors used to make gave them a certain knowledge of their patients and their families, he said, but now very often "we are making decisions for people we barely know."
He lamented that comparatively few geriatricians were in practice (about 4,000 in 1992, he said). These were the specialists who could become family doctors to the aging. "When we become older, who can we turn to who understands the spectrum of things that go on in our bodies?" he asked.
Part of what went on was that from 20 to 50 percent of brain cells were lost by the age of 80, he said, adding quickly that "fortunately they are not the cells giving us intellectual prowess or judgment." For most people, the loss was related to spontaneity, speed and stamina, quantitative rather than qualitative, and, he said, "after the 80's and 90's even that slows."
His advice: "We should think more of cerebral functions and less and less about things that go on below the jawbone."

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November 5, 1994, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

Hamish Munro, 79; Studied Nutrition of Elderly

SECTION: Section 1;  Page 13;  Column 2;  National Desk 

LENGTH: 305 words

Hamish N. Munro, a nutrition scientist and doctor who was the first director of the Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University, died on Oct. 28 in a nursing home in Glasgow, Scotland. He was 79.
He had suffered from Parkinson's disease for eight years, the university said. 
 For six decades, Dr. Munro studied the biochemical effects of nutritional change, particularly protein metabolism. His studies led to a deeper understanding of the role of nutrition in aging.
Hamish Nisbet Munro was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on July 3, 1915, and began his studies of protein metabolism while a student at Glasgow University, where he completed his medical training in 1939. From then until 1966, he held academic positions in medicine at the university. He wrote a four-volume work, "Mammalian Protein Metabolism" (Academic Press, 1964-70).
In 1966, he became a professor in the department of nutrition and food science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1980, he was appointed professor of medicine at Tufts and director of the world's first research center devoted to the nutritional needs of the elderly. He was director of the center for three years and continued to teach at Tufts and conduct nutrition research until he retired in 1991.
From 1975 to 1980 he was chairman of the United States Recommended Dietary Allowances Committee of the National Academy of Sciences. He was also a member of international nutrition committees. He was a former president of the American Institute of Nutrition and a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and the recipient of several awards.
His wife, Dr. Edith Munro, died in 1985. He is survived by a daughter, Joan Munro of London; three sons, Colin and Michael, both of Glasgow, and Andrew, of Acton, Mass., and three grandchildren.

NAME: Hamish N. Munro

LOAD-DATE: November 5, 1994

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GRAPHIC: Photo: Hamish N. Munro (1982)

TYPE: Obituary (Obit); Biography

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November 6, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

THE 1994 CAMPAIGN: Pennsylvania
The Last Weekend: Senate Races Where the Battle Has Been Intense;
A War of Words On Social Security

BYLINE: By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE,   Special to The New York Times 

SECTION: Section 1;  Page 26;  Column 4;  National Desk 

LENGTH: 613 words

DATELINE: PHILADELPHIA, Nov. 5

The Senate candidates in Pennsylvania have become locked in a pitched battle over Social Security, a fight that defines their vast ideological differences.
Both candidates -- Senator Harris Wofford, a liberal Democrat, and Representative Rick Santorum, a conservative Republican -- began this unusually warm autumn day courting votes in Philadelphia. Mr. Santorum shook hands at the Italian Market in South Philadelphia, a must-stop on any political tour, before campaigning in Harrisburg with the Senate Republican leader, Bob Dole of Kansas, and going on to West Hazleton, where he received the endorsement of the City Council President, a Democrat. Mr. Wofford, meanwhile, joined a motorcade with Philadelphia labor leaders and met with residents of suburban Narberth to talk about his opposition to assault weapons. 
 But it is Social Security that has moved front and center in the campaign, and both candidates spent Friday scouring some of the many retirement homes and senior citizen centers in Pennsylvania, which has more older people than any other state except Florida. Invoking a familiar Democratic theme, Senator Wofford, who has run a relentlessly negative campaign, accused Mr. Santorum and his fellow Republicans of wanting to cut Social Security benefits.
In a burst of political recklessness, Mr. Santorum had provided some evidence that he thought that step would be necessary to keep the Social Security fund healthy for future generations of retirees. Mr. Santorum told a college-age audience on Oct. 18 that it was "ridiculous" that retirees receive full benefits at 65, an age set in 1936, when life expectancies were shorter. Eligibility now, he said, should not begin until 70 at the earliest.
The Democrats taped Mr. Santorum's remarks, and Mr. Wofford has been trying to buy time to broadcast the video, which runs nearly five minutes. But the network affiliates have already sold their political time slots, and the Wofford campaign is now scrambling to show the video on cable television.
Mr. Wofford told a nursing home audience on Friday that raising the age of eligibility would be "the least reasonable" solution. He advocated retraining workers in mid-life and enforcing age-discrimination laws, but he offered no details on how to keep the fund solvent.
Still, he may have scored some points.
"Any time you have a politician who is trying to prey on fears, especially of seniors, you can expect to have some sort of marginal impact," Mike Mihalke, a spokesman for Mr. Santorum, said today. "But in the final analysis, Pennsylvanians will realize that this is nothing but a defensive tactic from a desperate incumbent who is trying to divert attention from his ineffective record."
The other hot topic here is Mr. Santorum's recent suggestion that Teresa Heinz, the widow of Senator John Heinz, who was a popular Pennsylvania Republican, had made disparaging remarks about Mr. Santorum because she is dating a Democrat, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts.
Mr. Wofford is exploiting the Santorum-Heinz dust-up in an effort to link Mrs. Heinz, a liberal Republican, with his own candidacy and to convince moderate suburban Republicans, whose votes could well decide this race, that Mr. Santorum is not of their ilk. Mr. Santorum, an aggressive campaigner, fiercely promotes less government and lower taxes, opposes the ban on assault weapons and favors more spending on the military.
But he has received strong support from the state's moderate Republican Senator, Arlen Specter, who campaigned with him today. He was also endorsed on Friday by Gov. Christine Todd Whitman of New Jersey.   KATHARINE Q. SEELYE

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GRAPHIC: Photos of Wofford and Santorum.

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November 8, 1994, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

PRO FOOTBALL;
Saturday Movies and Sunday Moves

BYLINE: By FRANK LITSKY,   Special to The New York Times 

SECTION: Section B;  Page 15;  Column 4;  Sports Desk 

LENGTH: 755 words

DATELINE: HEMPSTEAD, L.I., Nov. 7

The Jets, like all other pro football teams, have a pre-game ritual -- "Saturday Night at the Movies." For most teams, these movies or videotapes feature the next day's opponent. They are more "Basic Blocking and Tackling" than "Basic Instinct."
Pete Carroll, the Jets' first-year coach, believes in keeping his players relaxed, so his Saturday night movies have been different. One night, a Three Stooges show was spliced into the middle of football sequences. Another night, there were cut-ins of Ronnie Lott riding a motorcycle in a B movie. 
 This past Saturday's surprise was "Knockout Night," hard hits from football and boxing. One of the victims was George Foreman being knocked out by Muhammad Ali in 1974. Three hours after the Jets saw that, Foreman, at age 45, regained the heavyweight title.
"I think for us older people," Boomer Esiason, 33, said with a semistraight face, "George Foreman's victory was inspiring."
Even more inspiring to the Jets and their fans was Sunday's 22-17 upset victory over the Buffalo Bills at Giants Stadium. Although the Bills are not quite the fearsome team that has played in the past four Super Bowls, they still have many weapons. The Jets contained them all with what safety Brian Washington called their most ferocious defensive game of the season.
"The intensity was special," said middle linebacker Kyle Clifton. "But I kind of think we've had that the last four weeks and we've been building on it. We had real good execution with the intensity. That's the difference between winning and losing."
Execution and intensity are the magic words of football. You must want badly to do it right, and then you must do it right. It sounds simple, but no one can explain why a team can be so good one week and so numb the next.
"Don't make too much of this win," said Pat Terrell, who played safety for much of the game after Lott pinched a nerve in his neck. "It's just another mile in a 16-mile race. And it doesn't take a genius to figure out that the team we play this week will concentrate on us even more."
That team is the Green Bay Packers, who have a rugged defense and the home-field advantage. The Packers, like the Jets, have a 5-4 record and are fighting to stay in the playoff picture.
"But if we play like we did yesterday," Esiason said, "we can beat anybody we play. We won yesterday, and we still didn't play our best game."
Nick Lowery, who kicked three field goals, was watching anxiously in the final seconds when Jim Kelly ran around madly on fourth down, looking for a receiver. His pass was wild.
"I don't know if he could have scrambled for a first down," Lowery said. "But he didn't seem to be scrambling with enthusiasm because he knew he would get racked if he ran. That's a tribute to our defense, and it sends a message to other teams."
If only the Jets could bottle the formula that produced their smash-mouth play against the Bills.
"We're working on it," Carroll said. "In all sports, you raise your level to the competition if you're capable. The better the players we're playing, the higher the level of our performance. We got the Bills up and they got us up. Bottling is hard to do, but we're trying to take it in stride, keep it in perspective and go to next week."
Bottle it? Esiason cringed at the thought.
"The first thing you do," he said, "is forget about yesterday. It was one game. We played a solid game. But you're going to be in another hard-fought battle in Green Bay."
 
 
 
EXTRA POINTS
 CLIFFORD HICKS, the punt returner, sprained his right ankle against the Bills and will be out for two weeks. RONNIE LOTT (neck) and AARON GLENN (toe) are questionable and JOHNNY JOHNSON (hamstring) and ANTHONY JOHNSON (shoulder) probable. Glenn was walking around with an ankle cast and a cane. . . . BOOMER ESIASON (ankle and kidney) was not on the injury report. . . . Esiason's 2 touchdown passes against the Bills gave him 200 for his career and moved him into 17th place, past PHIL SIMMS. "It means I'm old, I guess," Esiason said. "I'd like to say there will be 200 more, but I don't think I'll last that long." . . . The coaches awarded game balls to BOBBY HOUSTON and DONALD EVANS on defense, JAMES THORNTON on offense and NICK LOWERY on special teams. . . . Coach PETE CARROLL praised PAT TERRELL for filling in for Lott at safety, and said that if Lott could not start this week, Terrell would. If Glenn cannot play, MARCUS TURNER will start at cornerback and ANTHONY PRIOR will play in the nickel defense.

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November 8, 1994, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

New Ability to Find Earliest Cancers: A Mixed Blessing?

BYLINE: By GINA KOLATA 

SECTION: Section C;  Page 1;  Column 4;  Science Desk 

LENGTH: 1507 words

AS scientists develop ingenious techniques to detect smaller and smaller cancers, some investigators are voicing a note of caution. Finding a cancer early may not be better, they say, unless it is one that will progress if left untreated.
It sounds heretical but, these critics say, studies show that many, if not most, early cancers do not grow large and dangerous and would never be noticed unless doctors with an early detection method went looking for them. Yet tiny cancers are so common that autopsy studies of middle-aged and older people have found that almost everyone's body contains them. If the cancers are harmless, treatment could be useless or possibly even harmful because it might subject people to needless surgery or chemoterapy. The skeptics add that even with cancers that do become life-threatening, early detection and treatment do not always help. 
 "We're heading down a very slippery slope" said Dr. H. Gilbert Welsh, a specialist in internal medicine at the Veterans Affairs Hospital in White River Junction, Vt., who has made a study of the early diagnosis problem. He noted that the current breathtaking pace of research on the molecular biology of cancer is leading to "an explosion of new tests." As a result, more and more people will be told that they have a very early cancer and be treated for it, yet no one can tell which early cancers are dangerous and which are not. With very early cancers, "we just don't know that it's the same disease" as cancer that has already grown large and noticeable, Dr. Welsh said.
Scientists like Dr. Welsh say they are not trying to be Jeremiahs, but that the new era of molecular diagnostics must be entered with open eyes. Nearly every advance in molecular genetics makes possible some new test for finding microscopic tumors. For example, a test that is now under development at Johns Hopkins University relies on the fact that many cancer cells have characteristic mutations in the nonprotein-coding or "junk" regions of their DNA, the genetic material. This provides a test for detecting even very small groups of cancerous cells in sputum or urine.
Once such cells are detected, the tumor of origin can now be found even if it is microscopic, said Dr. David Sidransky, the developer of the test and director of head and neck cancer research at Johns Hopkins. Dr. Sidransky said one new method relied on fluorescent dyes to mark cancer cells. Another new technique, contact microendoscopy, allows a doctor to insert a microscope into a tissue and "see down to the level of individual cells," Dr. Sidransky said.
Using a molecular diagnosis to find cancer cells in body fluids, fluorescent dyes to mark cancer cells and microendoscopy to find each tiny tumor, investigators should soon be able to find tumors smaller than a millimeter, or about four-hundredths of an inch, a tenth the size that can be found today, Dr. Sidransky said. And he added, this is just an example of the sorts of methods that are on the horizon. When it comes to cancer diagnosis, "we'll be in a different world," in the near future, he said.
The problem with this, some cancer researchers say, is that no one understands enough about the natural history of cancer to know what it means to find a tumor so small. Do all such tumors eventually grow and spread, or only some? How can the doctor decide which path a particular tumor is headed down, whether a long passivity or a spiraling path that will lead to a deadly metastasis, in which the cancer spreads to other parts of the body?
"We have to meticulously avoid the tendency to assume that early diagnosis in and of itself will make a difference," said Dr. Barry Kramer, associate director of the early detection and community oncology program at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Md.
Dr. Arnold Levine of Princeton University, who studies the molecular biology of cancer, said: "There is no doubt that the best possible response to cancer is to find it early. If you find it early, you have a chance to treat it. But it does present a problem: How aggressive do you want to be if you find a precursor or a lesion?"
There is good reason to believe that many very early cancers never become clinically significant, said Dr. William Black, an investigator at the Center for Evaluative Clinical Sciences at Dartmouth University. "The harder you look for cancer, the more you find it," he said.
For example, Dr. Black said, autopsy studies have shown that 39 percent of women from 40 to 50 years old turn out to have tumors in their breasts. These are usually very small lesions that have not spread and remained so quiescent they were never noticed. Yet had they been detected while the woman was alive, they would have been labeled as breast cancer. An interesting reflection on current detection methods is that tumors are diagnosed clinically in just 1 percent of women in this age range.
Forty-six percent of men from 60 to 70 have prostate cancer, also in the form of small tumors, although once again the cancer is diagnosed clinically in just 1 percent of men in this age group. And autopsies of people from 50 to 70 have shown that virtually all had small tumors in their thyroids. Yet thyroid cancer is diagnosed in just one person in 1,000 of this age.
These findings call into question the definition of cancer, a word that historically has been used to describe a large tumor with the potential to spread and kill. Are these tiny lesions cancer?
"I'm very, very concerned by the labeling and misuse of language to describe the things we're finding," Dr. Black said. "The terms we use are so loaded that they almost prevent rational thought. If you tell someone that they have an early cancer or say its a cancer that won't progress, that doesn't make sense to them. Most people think of cancer as something that will kill you if you don't intervene."
Cancerous cells are ones that have somehow thrown off the usually tight genetic controls on unwanted division and growth. This escape from regulation occurs when a mutation develops in the genes that control cell division or monitor for abnormal growth patterns.
With most cancers, a sequence of several separate mutations must probably occur to convert a cell into a fully formed tumor capable of spreading to other sites in the body.  The microscopic tumors that now appear to be so common are presumably cells that have gathered a few but not all of the mutations necessary for a full cancer. In this sense, they are probably better thought of as "precancers," although there is currently no way to tell them from the real thing.
Dr. Kramer said the limits of scientists' knowledge were perhaps best illustrated by the pitfalls of a screening test for prostate cancer. The test, which looks for an antigen in the blood, can lead to early diagnosis. But there is no way of distinguishing between the vast majority of tumors that will not spread and are harmless and the few that can be deadly.
"We don't know enough yet to know which ones demand treatment and which ones can be left alone," Dr. Kramer said. So, essentially, all are treated, with surgery or radiation, both of which can have severe aftereffects, including impotence and incontinence.
Dr. Sidransky said the questions raised about the new era of very early cancer detection were "very valid." But, he said, he expects that researchers will proceed cautiously and use the new tests at first to screen people who are already at high risk of cancer -- cigarette smokers, for example. A small cancer in a high-risk person might be more likely to turn into a malignant tumor. And the screening would be done in a research setting, where it could also be asked whether early diagnosis and excision of microscopic tumors leads to a reduction in cancer deaths.
Very early diagnosis might also allow investigators to refine tests of anticancer drugs by tracking a cancer from its earliest stages, Dr. Sidransky said.
But others are less sanguine.
Dr. Kramer said the nation ought to be meticulous in every step it takes in investigating the benefits. "We ought to have serious discussions with trained ethicists about the implications for society," he said. "We have to be prepared to weigh risks and benefits and not simply assume that there is benefit and no risk."
Dr. Black said the tests would be promoted by companies that made them and unleashed on a public that had been taught that the earlier a diagnosis was made, the better. He said there was "no limit to the amount of sickness we can tell people they have."
Dr. Black said the tests could be enormously beneficial once the science caught up with the diagnostic technology. "The main thing is to be patient and to recognize that there are limits to our knowledge," he said. "When we first make new observations, we don't understand what they mean."
"I'm not totally negative," Dr. Black added. "I'm not saying there could not possibly be a benefit. But there is a lot of potential for abuse."

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CHRONICLE

BYLINE: By NADINE BROZAN 

SECTION: Section B;  Page 2;  Column 5;  Style Desk 

LENGTH: 221 words

How far will powerful women travel to meet other powerful women? Quite a distance, said GAEL GREENE, the restaurant critic, who has noticed increasing numbers of women from out of town and out of state making reservations for the eighth annual Citymeals-on-Wheels Power Lunch for Women. This year, 340 women (and a dozen men) are expected to converge for lunch at the Rainbow Room on Monday.
For example, Dr. Mae C. Jemison, the astronaut, is coming from Houston; Donna E. Shalala, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, is coming from Washington, and Margie Profet, the biologist who theorizes that menstruation evolved as a mechanism to protect against infection from male-borne diseases, is coming from Seattle. 
 "Every year the response is bigger and sooner," said Ms. Greene, a founder of Citymeals-on-Wheels, which distributes meals to homebound elderly people on weekends and holidays. "This year we had 200 reservations before the invitations even went to the printer."
The message? "For anyone who hasn't figured it out," she said, "women really like women, and our appreciation for each other and for loyalty and networking has become important. We put out a networking book that tells how to reach everyone who comes or sends a contribution. It's the most valuable party favor of the year."

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The Spoken Word

SECTION: Section C;  Page 27;  Column 1;  Weekend Desk 

LENGTH: 309 words


HUDSON VALLEY STORYTELLING FESTIVAL. A weekend of events sponsored by Bard and Vassar Colleges and the Mid-Hudson Teacher Center. Tonight at 8, "Storytellers on Stage!" with Donna Bailey, Jim May and Peninnah Schram at Vassar College, Chapel Building, Raymond Avenue, Poughkeepsie, N.Y.; tickets: $9. Tomorrow, 8 A.M. to 6 P.M., a conference with workshops at Bard College, F. W. Olin Humanities Building, Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y.; fee: $60. Tomorrow at 8 P.M., "Storytellers on Stage!" with Motoko, Tom Weakley and Marianne McShane at Bard; tickets: $8 in advance; $9 at the door. On Sunday, two storytelling programs, at 1 and 3 P.M., with the Ivy Vine Players, Jonathan Kruk, the Storycrafters and Motoko; tickets: $4 in advance; $5 at the door. Information: (914) 635-3887.
 
WARTIME STORYTELLING, Seamen's Church Institute, 241 Water Street, lower Manhattan. Four World War II veterans who spent time in the port of New York City speak. Today at 3 P.M. Free. Information: (212) 349-9090. 

FLAMENCO LECTURE AND DEMONSTRATION, Julie Saul Gallery, 560 Broadway, at Prince Street, SoHo. A lecture and slide show illustrating the evolution of castanets in flamenco dance, by Matteo, a dancer and choreographer, followed by a dance performance by Jerane Michel. Tomorrow at 5 P.M. Photographs of flamenco dancers taken by Isabel Munoz are on view through tomorrow. Free. Information: (212) 431-0747.
 
TALK AND FILM SCREENING, Brooklyn Museum, 200 Eastern Parkway, at Prospect Park. "Reel-to-Reel Harmony: Great Classical Voices on Film," a lecture by Christian Labrande, a program director at the Louvre in Paris, followed by a screening of the 1969 film "Medea," starring Maria Callas and directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini. Tomorrow at 2 P.M. Admission: $6; $4 for museum members, students and the elderly. Information: (718) 638-5000.

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THE 1994 ELECTION;
In Their Own Words: The Republican Promises

SECTION: Section A;  Page 26;  Column 3;  National Desk 

LENGTH: 488 words

During the election campaign, Republican candidates for Congress gathered in Washington to endorse a set of proposals for legislative action that they called their "Contract With America." They said that in the first 100 days of the 104th Congress, they would introduce bills they described as follows:
 
1. The Fiscal Responsibility Act: A balanced budget/tax limitation amendment and a legislative line-item veto to restore fiscal responsibility to an out-of-control Congress, requiring them to live under the same budget constraints as families and businesses.
 
2. The Taking Back Our Streets Act: An anti-crime package including stronger truth-in-sentencing, "good faith" exclusionary rule exemptions, effective death penalty provisions, and cuts in social spending from this summer's "crime" bill to fund prison construction and additional law enforcement to keep people secure in their neighborhoods and kids safe in their schools.
 
3. The Personal Responsibility Act: Discourage illegitimacy and teen pregnancy by prohibiting welfare to minor mothers and denying increased AFDC for additinal children while on welfare, cut spending for welfare programs, and enact a tough two-years-and-out provision with work requirements to promote individual responsibility.
 
4. The Family Reinforcement Act: Child support enforcement, tax incentive for adoption, strengthening rights of parents in their children's education, stronger child pornography laws, and an elderly dependent care tax credit to reinforce the central role of families in American society.
 
5. The American Dream Restoration Act: A $500 per child tax credit, begin repeal of the marriage tax penalty, and creation of American Dream Savings Accounts to provide middle class tax relief.
 
6. The National Security Restoration Act: No U.S. troops under U.N. command and restoration of the essential parts of our national security funding to strengthen our national defense and maintain our credibility around the world.
 
7. The Senior Citizens Fairness Act: Raise the Social Security earnings limit which currently forces seniors out of the work force, repeal the 1993 tax hikes on Social Security benefits and provide tax incentive for private long-term care insurance to let older Americans keep more of what they have earned over the years.
 
8. The Hob Creation and Wage Enhancement Act: Small business incentives, capital gains cut and indexation, neutral cost recovery, risk assessment/cost-benefit analysis, strengthening the Regulatory Flexibility Act and unfunded mandate reform to create jobs and raise worker wages.
 
9. The Common Sense Legal Reform Act: "Loser pays" laws, reasonable limits on punitive damages and reform of product liablility laws to stem the endless tide of litigation.
 
10. The Citizen Legislative Act: A first ever vote on term limits to replace career politicians with citizen legislators.

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Correction Appended

A Simpler Test for Alzheimer's Is Reported

BYLINE: By GINA KOLATA 

SECTION: Section A;  Page 20;  Column 4;  National Desk 

LENGTH: 1160 words

Researchers at Harvard Medical School believe they may have stumbled upon a simple test for Alzheimer's disease, one that can easily distinguish between those who have the devastating disorder, which relentlessly robs its victims of their minds, and those who do not.
The investigators, led by Dr. Leonard F. M. Scinto, of the Brigham and Women's Hospital and the Harvard Medical School, and by Dr. Huntington Potter, of Harvard Medical School, report that people with Alzheimer's appear to be exquisitely sensitive to eye drops similar to those that doctors use to dilate the pupils before performing an eye examination. 
 They found that the pupils of people with Alzheimer's dilate in response to an atropine solution that is just one-hundredth the strength needed for dilation.
Moreover, the researchers report, people with other brain diseases appear to respond normally to the eye drops. And, they say, they have preliminary evidence that people with Alzheimer's may test positive months before their symptoms become obvious.
The findings are being reported today in Science magazine.
The tests looks for small changes in the size of the pupil, using equipment that is readily available at most medical centers, although not in opthalmologists' offices.
So far the researchers have tested 19 people in whom Alzheimer's disease had been diagnosed and found 18 had positive tests. They have also tested 33 old people who were thought not to have the disease and found that 30 tested negative. One of the three who tested positive has now been diagnosed with Alzheimer's; another shows symptoms of mental deterioration.
Patients with other brain disorders, including multiple small strokes and Parkinson's-like diseases, have tested negative, the investigators report. One patient with alcoholic dementia tested negative; another tested positive. The investigators are following the patient with the positive test to see if he also has Alzheimer's.
The researchers are continuing to test people with Alzheimer's and with other brain disorders, and other old people. Other researchers are starting their own studies of the test.
Anticipating that the test will fulfill its promise, Harvard University has granted the Genica Pharmaceuticals Corporation of Worchester, Mass., exclusive rights to market the eye drops and a device for measuring pupil sizes, and to interpret test results for doctors; in exchange, Harvard will receive stock in the company and royalties. The company says the test may be available clinically by the end of 1996, and estimates that each test will cost $100 to $200.
Experts say there are two reasons to want a simple and accurate diagnostic test. One is to detect people with Alzheimer's early enough that experimental medications to slow the disease can be most effective. The other is to be able to respond accurately to people who fear they may have the disease but whose symptoms are not clear.
It is the problem of assuring the healthy that makes investigators so cautious, said Dr. Steven DeKosky, director of the Alzheimer's Disease Research Center at the University of Pittsburgh.
"Although it is easy and exciting for all of us to talk about public health and screening, this would still come down to the patient wanting to know," he said. "If we were to give that information, how confident could we be that we were absolutely correct?"
Alzheimer's disease afflicts an estimated four million Americans, mostly elderly people, and is the fourth leading cause of death, according to the Alzheimer's Association, in Chicago.
Its hallmark is the progressive loss of brain cells involved with memory and reasoning. Although initial symptoms vary, people with the disease always get worse. They lose their memory for recent events and for familiar names and faces; they lose the ability to reason and to find their way around, getting lost in parking lots or stores and even in their own homes.
Other causes of mental deterioration include depression, drugs, small strokes and brain tumors.
An Alzheimer's diagnosis can cost several thousand dollars and includes brain scans and psychological tests, blood tests and repeated visits to make sure that the person's symptoms are growing worse.
A person is said to have the disease when no other cause can be found for their worsening symptoms, but autopsies have shown that if the diagnosis is done carefully, it is correct at least 90 percent of the time.
Most people with Alzheimer's have symptoms for several years before the disease is diagnosed, said Dr. John Growdon, director of the Massachusetts Alzheimer's Disease Research Center at Massachusetts General Hospital.
Many people deny their symptoms or hide their memory problems at first, he said; others know something is wrong long before the tests reveal it. Dr. Growdon said he had seen a lawyer who insisted he was becoming demented even though the standard tests showed he was normal. A year later, Alzheimer's disease was diagnosed.
On the other hand, said Dr. John Breitner, a researcher at Duke University, most elderly people who have memory lapses do not have Alzheimer's. They are more likely to be depressed or to be drinking too much or to have had small strokes.
For years investigators have searched for a simple and accurate diagnostic test for Alzheimer's, and many that looked promising have fallen by the wayside. But other proposed tests were not as sensitive or specific as the new one appears to be, nor were they as simple. For that reason, the new test is being met with enthusiasm.
The test is "an exciting development," said Dr. Zaven Khachaturian, director of the Office of Alzheimer's Disease Research at the National Institute on Aging.
One of the most surprising aspects of the test is that anyone even thought to try it.
Dr. Potter, the researcher from Harvard, said he reasoned that since virtually everyone with Down syndrome eventually develops Alzheimer's, perhaps the syndrome and the disease share some clinical sign. So he looked thorough the voluminous literature on Down syndrome and found three papers, the first published in 1958, noting the curious observation that a very dilute solution of atropine makes the pupils of people with Down syndrome dilate.
"I went to my colleagues at the hospital and said, 'Why don't we try this in Alzheimer's disease,' " Dr. Potter said.
The investigators began testing people with Alzheimer's and other elderly people who did not have the disease.
"The fourth normal patient we examined walked in off the street as a volunteer," Dr. Potter said. "He was perfectly normal by standard tests and had no indication of Alzheimer's disease. But he turned out to be positive on the eye test. That might have been enough to stop the study right there, but we persevered.
"The excitement came when we brought him back in 10 months and tested him again."
The man had developed Alzheimer's disease.

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CORRECTION-DATE: November 12, 1994, Saturday

 CORRECTION:
Because of an editing error, an article yesterday about a new test for Alzheimer's disease misidentified the journal in which scientists reported their findings. It was Science, not The Journal of Science.

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CONNECTICUT GUIDE

BYLINE: By ELEANOR CHARLES

SECTION: Section 13CN; Page 21; Column 1; Connecticut Weekly Desk

LENGTH: 1354 words


HOLLAR'S ETCHINGS
 The first great etchings produced in England were made by a Bohemian from Prague named Wenceslaus Hollar (1607-1677), who had been brought to London by the Earl of Arundel in 1636. A comprehensive exhibition of his work, the first such display in America, opens at the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven on Wednesday, remaining through Jan. 22.
A free symposium is scheduled on Saturday with English and American scholars and experts appearing at the museum, 1080 Chapel Street, from 10:30 to 4:30. 
 Forty watercolors and 219 prints have been assembled from the British Museum and the Yale Center for British Art by Richard Godfrey, an authority on the subject at Sotheby's in London. They include views of Germany, Antwerp and London, and some large watercolors depicting the British colony at Tangier. Also featured are some works by Hollar's contemporaries: Rembrandt and Van Dyck.
Mr. Godfrey will lead off the program on Saturday with a talk on "An Artist in Search of a Market: Hollar's Early Years in England." Christopher White, a professor of art history at Oxford and director of its Ashmolean Museum, will address "The Iconography of the Earl of Arundel" and a talk on "The Culture of the Early Modern Metropolis" will be given by Lawrence Manley, a professor of English at Yale.
Following a lunch break, there will be "Hollar and the English Revolution" by David Underdown, professor of history at Yale; "Hollar's Graphic Art and the Culture of Curiosity" by Celeste Brusati, associate professor of the history of art at the University of Michigan, and "The Antiquarian Endeavor in the 17th Century" by Graham Parry, reader in English at the University of York.
Visiting hours for the exhibition are Tuesday through Saturday from 10 to 5 and Sunday from noon to 5.  Admission is free. The number for more information is 432-2850.
 
ARTISANS IN WESTPORT
 When the first Creative Arts Festival of the Westport Young Women's League was held in 1976, about 65 artisans set up their displays in the junior high school cafeteria and admission was 50 cents.
This year's two-day edition, on Saturday and Sunday from 10 to 5, will feature the work of 145 craftspeople from around the country, be held at Staples High School and cost $6 for adults, $3 for people 65 and older and nothing for children under 12. A breakfast preview on Saturday from 8:30 to 10 A.M. is also available at $12 for adults and $9 for older people.
In recent years the festival has drawn more than 10,000 people annually. Pottery, quilts, jewelry, toys, leather goods, dolls, food, clothing, textiles, furniture and holiday decorations are for sale.
Proceeds are distributed to the more than 50 organizations that the league helps support, in the arts, education, human services, and programs for children and the elderly. To reach the high school take Exit 18 off I-95 or Exit 42 off the Merritt Parkway and follow the signs. For more information, the number is 222-1388.
 
SLAVERY IN GREENWICH
 "Chains Unbound: Slave Emancipations in Greenwich, Conn." is the title of a book to be published early in December by Gateway Press of Baltimore. Its author, Jeffrey B. Mead, will be discussing the work on Monday at 7:30 P.M. in the Greenwich Arts Center, 299 Greenwich Avenue. Mr. Mead is a 12th-generation descendant of one of the founders of the Town of Greenwich. He is a local historian and a member of the Connecticut Society of Genealogists and the New England Historic Genealogic Society.
While slavery was not widespread in what is now Fairfield County, its existence in Greenwich was prevalent enough to arouse Mr. Mead's curiosity. To investigate the period of abolition, from 1776 through 1838, He relied on Town Hall probate records, deeds and texts of the time. Admission to the lecture will be $10, or $8 for students.
 
ON THE MIDDLE EAST
 Each year the Program in Judaic Studies and Middle Eastern Affairs at the University of Connecticut's Stamford branch holds a public conference and this year's program comes at an especially significant point in that region's stormy history.
The conference topic is "The New Middle East: Opportunities and Risks in an Era of Peace," scheduled today from 10 A.M. to 3 P.M. on the Scofieldtown Road campus. Admission is $45 and includes lunch.
The first speaker will be Dr. Mary-Jane Deeb, the Egyptian-born director of the Omani Program at American University. She is also an author and television commentator. Her subject is "The Arab World and the Peace Process: Dissent and Support."
Dr. Howard Rosen, a former economist for the Bank of Israel and the United States Department of Labor will talk about "The Economics of Peace: Interaction between the Israeli and Arab Economies;" and Dr. Bernard Reich, professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University, will address "Peace from the Israeli Perspective: Benefits and Risks."
The final hour, from 2 to 3 P.M., will be devoted to a discussion among the three speakers, moderated by Dr. Abraham Aschkenasy, a former senior lecturer at Tel-Aviv and Hebrew Universities in Jerusalem. Subjects will include international terrorism, economic reconstruction, Islamic fundamentalism and politics, the status of women and family planning. For more information, the numbers are 322-6336 or 322-3466.
 
TABLE SUGGESTIONS
 With the holidays coming, people who entertain at home will welcome the tips they can pick up at the Ridgefield Community Center's Women's Committee exhibition, "Creative Table Settings: A Table for All Seaons." The show contains more than 40 inspired table settings, seminars on all kinds of entertaining, and boutiques offering decorations and knick-knacks.
It will take place Thursday through Saturday from 10 to 4 at Lounsbury House, the 19th century Georgian Revival headquarters of the Community Center at 316 Main Street. Tickets, at $7, or $5 for older adults, will be good on all three days.
Among the exhibitors are Ruth Henderson, co-proprietor, with her husband, Skitch Henderson, of The Silo in New Milford; Ira Joe Fisher, the NBC weatherman and poetry buff; Tonya Walker, known as Alex Olanov on the TV soap, "One Life to Live;" Lisa Nichols, whose sweater designs are sold under the Marisa Christina label, and a number of shops and antique dealers including Yellow Monkey Village, Keeler Tavern, the Pottery Barn, and Paper Connection. The number for more information is 438-4657.
 
TALL (AND SMALL) TALES
 The time for telling tales tall, small and in between has arrived again, as storytellers around the country prepare to gather on Saturday for the annual "Tellebration: Night of Storytelling."
One location for the Connecticut Storytelling Center's observance will be the Unitarian Church at 10 Lyons Plain Road in Westport, starting at 8 P.M. Tom Callinan, Ann Shapiro and Connie Rockman will be among the local taletellers, joined by Diane Crehan, who specializes in Irish yarns; Josephine Fulcher-Anderson with African-American stories, and Lot Therrio with ballads of the American South. Admission will be $8 at the door, or call 227-5986 or 972-3731 for reservations or more information.
 
BRUCE BAZAAR
 The Bruce Museum in Greenwich, recently renovated, will reopen its seasonal International Bazaar, but for only four days, from Thursday through Sunday. Merchandise has been separated by point of origin -- England, Russia, South America, Morocco, India, Mexico, Guatemala and the Orient -- and displayed in a "Street of Shops."
Items available include glass ornaments, Russian nesting dolls, silver, porcelain, amber jewelry from the Baltic, silver cuffs from Israel, toys, cookbooks, handmade quilts and baby clothes, hooked rugs and needlepoint. Prices start at $5 and go up to the hundreds. Hours are 10 to 5 on Thursday through Saturday, 2 to 5 on Sunday, and museum admission is $3.50 for adults, $2.50 for older people and children 5 to 12. There is no charge for visitors to the bazaar in the museum's store. For more information call 869-0376.   ELEANOR CHARLES

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Senator Says Home Oxygen Is Overpriced

BYLINE: AP 

SECTION: Section 1;  Page 34;  Column 1;  National Desk 

LENGTH: 566 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Nov. 12

Medicare is paying about $300 million a year more than it should to lease home oxygen machines for people with lung diseases, a Senator contends.
 Medicare reimburses more than 200,000 elderly and disabled Americans who use oxygen-concentrating machines, the Senator, Tom Harkin, said at a subcommittee hearing on Wednesday. The devices, which are about the size of a room dehumidifier, remove nitrogen and other gases from the air and deliver concentrated oxygen. 
 Mr. Harkin, Democrat of Iowa, said Medicare recipients of oxygen therapy received "shockingly poor levels of services" despite "exorbitantly high prices." If adequate reforms were instituted, he said, "we're talking about Medicare savings of $300 million annually."
 Medicare pays about $280 a month, or $3,360 a year, to provide a home oxygen machine, said Jonathan Gaev, director of the health devices group for the Emergency Care Research Institute, a nonprofit organization.
 An institute study found that oxygen concentrators are sold for as much as $1,175 each to companies that rent them out. The institute estimated that it cost the rental companies about $600 year, including purchase and maintenance, for each machine over a seven-year span.
 Assuming an equipment rental company received $280 a month from Medicare, the company would make a profit of $7,689, or 650 percent, a machine over three years on each machine. Over seven years, the profit would exceed $17,941, or 1,500 percent, Mr. Gaev said.
 "Clearly, the $280 a month reimbursement level needs to be closely scrutinized," he said.
 Gary J. Krump, acting Assistant Secretary for acquisition of the Department of Veterans Affairs, said his agency paid from $40 to $175 a month for an oxygen concentrator. About 11,000 veterans administration patients are on concentrators in any given month, he said.
Mr. Harkin, the chairman of the Appropriations Committee's Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services and Education, asked the head of the Health Care Financing Administration, Bruce C. Vladeck, to explain why his agency paid so much more for concentrators than the Veteran Affairs Department.
 Mr. Vladeck said his agency was precluded by law from obtaining competitive bids, while the Veterans Affairs Department was not.
 Mr. Harkin pointed out that the veterans agency had been able to lower the price it paid for blood glucose monitors. But Mr. Vladeck said because oxygen concentrators are not sold at retail, "it would take an extraordinary investment of time and effort in 200 separate localities" to prove that Medicare is grossly overpaying for the devices. He said it would be easier if Congress changed the law to allow the agency to solicit competitive bids.
 "I can't promise you a legislative fix," Mr. Harkin said.
 Mr. Vladeck then promised to start the process of trying to prove that the agency was grossly overpaying for the concentrators.
 James Liken, past president of the National Association for Medical Equipment Services, said Medicare's reimbursement level should not be changed. He said most Medicare patients on oxygen concentrators received services, including home visits, equipment maintenance and monitoring that are included in the Medicare cost.
 Reducing the Medicare fee would send "the wrong message to an industry committed to increasing levels of quality beneficiary services," he said.

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2 Plans to House Elderly Opposed by Neighbors

BYLINE: By MERRI ROSENBERG   

SECTION: Section 13WC;    Page 23;    Column 1;    Westchester Weekly Desk   

LENGTH: 736 words

DATELINE: YONKERS

TWO unrelated projects that seek to provide housing for the elderly have triggered opposition in two disparate communities.
Along the Hudson River here, a 122-bed nursing home proposed by St. John's Riverside Hospital is being opposed primarily on environmental grounds. The hospital wants to build the home about 260 feet from the old Croton Aqueduct and 70 feet from Untermyer Park. 
 "Untermyer Park is a historic landmark," said Nortrud Spero, a co- chairman of the Hudson Communities Coalition, a nonprofit preservation organization. "These gardens, which were designed by the same architect who did Kykuit, once superseded Kykuit. The remains are still intact, with the marble basins and the water channels. The nursing home would totally destroy it. We need a nursing home in the community, but this is an ill-chosen site."
Opponents of the project have also expressed concern that construction would increase storm-water runoff and that blasting would damage the aqueduct. They say that the project would also disrupt some of the open space of the Hudson flyway for migrating birds.
In response, Jim Foy, chief executive officer of St. John's Riverside Hospital, said: "There is a terrible shortage of nursing homes for patients in our community. I took over 14 months ago, and put this project on hold until February in an attempt to acquire a different site. We are now in the process of drafting a final environmental-impact statement that will be submitted in two weeks. This project will bring 140 permanent jobs to Yonkers, and we will make every effort to go ahead with the project. We think it's a badly needed service in Yonkers."
In the other case -- in Bronxville -- a proposal to build Kensington Manor, a 90-unit condominium complex for affluent residents, is being opposed by a group called Villagers Against Kensington Manor. The group says the project will have a negative impact on quality of life and will fail to provide the financial benefits that the development's supporters claim.
Opponents question whether there is a market for older residents willing to spend $295,000 to $400,000 to buy the units and pay $2,000 a month in maintenance charges.
"The Board of Trustees is hurting this village by opening it to large development," said Dorothy Brennan, a member of Villagers Against Kensington Manor and a former Bronxville Village Trustee. "The sun won't shine anywhere, and it will look like Riverdale. The trustees have the audacity to fight Metro-North on the parkway issue, but this would allow the urbanization of the village."
The opponents to the project developed by Henry George Green are also concerned about the lease period -- 50 years with an option to renew for 100 years -- and the type of structure being proposed. They question the wisdom of the developer's having to pay only $2.5 million over the first five years and then only $1 a year.
"We are concerned that this project will fracture the quality of this community," said Anne Agee, a member of Villagers Against Kensington Manor.
David Fuller, a senior warden at Christ Episcopal Church in Bronxville, said: "We are concerned that this kind of high building will be oppressive. The scale is way off for the village. The loss of parking would be inconvenient to our parishioners, who wouldn't use an underground garage. And we are also worried about the the possibility of the blasting causing significant damage to the church, with cracking the stained-glass windows and the risk of dust affecting our pipe organ."
Terry Rice, a lawyer with the Suffern firm of Rice & Amon, who is representing Villagers Against Kensington Manor, said: "If you are leasing a municipal property, the village has to determine that it's an unneeded property."
Supporters of the development argue otherwise. "This project is the culmination of seven to eight years of investigation and research," said Nancy Hand, Mayor of the village of Bronxville. "This is the best possible use for the property. A villagewide committee studied it and tried to analyze the best solutions to this dilemma. The village has put $3.5 million into the property since 1985.
There will be substantial financial benefits to this project. It returns the property to the tax rolls. There will be $2.5 million in lease payments during the first five years, and after the third year, $450,000 in tax revenues will go to the village."

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CHILDREN'S BOOKS;
The New History: Showing Children the Dark Side

BYLINE: By Martha Saxton;   Martha Saxton teaches American history at Columbia University and is the author of a biography of Louisa May Alcott.

SECTION: Section 7;  Page 32;  Column 1;  Book Review Desk 

LENGTH: 1676 words

NOT so long ago, the Americans who made the history I read all appeared to be old men, dressed in dull clothing and devoted to principles so high I could perceive them only dimly. They seemed to have lived far away in that adult world where you were not to say anything at all if it was not to be something nice.
By the time I began teaching in the 1980's, American history had been invigorated by the belated inclusion of a wide variety of groups traditionally excluded from the enterprise. Their presence has altered the discipline forever. As long as women and blacks, American Indians, Asian-Americans and others were not part of history, then what white men did to them was not part of the great narrative of the nation. Now that all of our pasts figure in our history, however, tragedy is never too distant and celebration must share its place with reconciliation in the stories we teach. 
 Studying the American past today is a complicated and demanding exercise, but not one that has to bore and alienate students anymore. Out of the rich materials only recently designated "history," almost all children can find meaningful stories. And providing young people with tales that make them understand and admire their forebears is one of the most moving experiences a teacher can have.
At the same time, teaching American history demands active engagement with the moral questions it never stops asking us. Contemporary historians are finally learning not to flinch at showing to children both the good and the evil dimensions of the American tale. Bruno Bettelheim once wrote, "Prettified or bowdlerized fairy tales are rightly rejected by any child who has heard them in their original form." Students also instinctively turn away from bowdlerized history. Children from elementary school on up have a lively sense of fairness and are more than ready to engage with fully human stories of good and evil, struggle and resistance. The epic seizes their imaginations, not sanitized visions of the Founding Fathers.
Just in time to meet the interest level of the children who are the last offspring of the baby boomers and now in the middle grades, a number of books, including several series, have appeared that present American history in new and inviting ways.  A HISTORY OF US, by Joy Hakim (Oxford University, 8 volumes, $14.95 each; ages 8 and up), is particularly successful in working toward the goals of inclusiveness and frankness. Her exciting series -- eight volumes are now available, two more are promised -- is based on the most up-to-date academic research and provides historical contexts for all kinds of Americans. In her account, groups once written off in a sentence become inviting topics of study for a schoolchild.
When historians used to see pre-Columbian civilizations in America as a digression in the superstory of the European march to mastery of the New World, they described them as static and indistinguishable from one another, existing in a hazily described, primitive world and disappearing with the appearance of Europeans. In Volume 1, "The First Americans," Ms. Hakim provides a sense not only of the wide differences among these Native Americans, but also of their independent rhythms of success and failure as well as their extraordinarily developed systems of communication and trade. She pursues their civilizations on into the colonial era, not allowing us to forget what happened to these ancient cultures. And with simple but imaginative comparisons, like one in Volume 3, "From Colonies to Country," between the dangerous, muddy, rocky colonial roads and the far-reaching net of smooth, paved highways of the Incas, she makes us feel the different emphases and achievements of these two civilizations.
In her evenhanded treatment of an explorer like George Rogers Clark, she frees children from the grasp of hoary American myth nurtured by novelists and historians; without sermonizing, she allows them to glimpse the horrific underside of the once magical word "frontier."
AMERICA ALIVE: A History, by Jean Karl, illustrated by Ian Schoenherr (Philomel, $22.95; ages 10 to 14), seems written for younger children and clearly embraces the ideal of the new history. The attractive and amusing illustrations by Mr. Schoenherr include sketches of a wide range of individuals -- some famous, some just typical individuals -- set in the margins beside the text. A variety of specific incidents are illustrated as well. The necessary condensation of the book is so great, however, that it forces occasional oversimplifications. Even young children, in my experience, are able and eager to confront moral complexity.
Ms. Karl, the editorial director of Atheneum Books for Children for 24 years, mentions as a cause of the Revolution England's insistence that Americans not move west of the proclamation line of 1763, "to keep people close enough to the sea to trade with England and to let a valuable fur trade with Indians to the west go on unchanged." But she leaves out the English desire to protect beleaguered Native Americans from further white encroachment on their lands.
After the Revolution, Ms. Karl writes, "No reason now not to move west of the Appalachian Mountains." But there was a reason: the presence of substantial Indian populations. American policy in this period was to treat Indians as defeated enemies whose lands should be spoils of war. Fighting after the Revolution devastated the Cherokees, Shawnees, Miamis, Iroquois, Delawares, Ottawas and many others. As many as 6,000 Cherokees died of disease and warfare, and the Iroquois lost half their population. Although they thwarted American plans to be made over into Americans or be exterminated, Native Americans found the post-Revolutionary period a dark one.
The series BROWN PAPER SCHOOL USKIDS HISTORY, by Marlene Smith-Baranzini and Howard Egger-Bovet (Little, Brown; cloth, $19.95; paper, $10.95; ages 8 to 12), is most serviceable for a middle-grade audience somewhere between Ms. Hakim's and Ms. Karl's. With this new series, the "Brown Paper School" books, which have previously included works on sociology, science and fitness, enter the arena of history. Like the Hakim series, this one gives a widely differentiated view of Americans before Columbus, including aspects of their mythology and material culture. Because the first volume, "Book of the American Indians," is one of a series of single-theme books, it does not attempt to do the harder job of integrating the fate of these societies (and their evolving myths) with the arrival and settlement of the Europeans. But it provides valuable introductory portraits of indigenous people from the Northwest to the Southeast before contact with Europeans.
The authors of "Brown Paper School USKids History" have a wonderfully latitudinarian sense of what constitutes history. Their "Book of the American Revolution" provides delightful portraits, anecdotes and odd pieces of information, like how to mold a cannon and what it was like aboard a privateer. One of my favorite stories in this volume is about the Sons of Liberty surprising the austere Samuel Adams with two elegant new suits of clothes to wear to the First Continental Congress. It suggests Adams's character and priorities at the same time that it speaks of the powerful bonds among Boston patriots, while never losing sight of the simple humanity of all of them. We read a poem the slave Phillis Wheatley sent to George Washington; we are present at the Battle of Breed's Hill (known as Bunker Hill), and we get a sympathetic view of the lives of Redcoats stranded in the hostile New World, living in bleak poverty and constantly threatened by the ferocious military discipline of the 18th century.
Joy Hakim's series is illustrated on every page with drawings and reproductions of portraits, cartoons and broadsides. She has organized her books into relatively short historical periods, which helps tame what would otherwise be an unruly amount of material. For those who worry about the fate of narrative history with so many stories and so many people to accommodate, Ms. Hakim braids multiple narratives together to bring alive material long dead to children's imaginations. Her chapters are short, written in a jaunty, immediate style. She occasionally comments upon her own decisions to focus on particular incidents and characters, thus opening up to children the idea that historians make personal choices and are not simply recorders of immutable fact. Entertaining inserts and boxed asides comment on her text.
Dramatic black and white sketches illustrate the "Brown Paper School" texts. The books' evocative set pieces are, in turn, punctuated with many suggestions and directions for games and projects.
OTHER useful supplementary works compiled in the same expansive spirit are the excellent YOUNG READER'S COMPANION TO AMERICAN HISTORY, edited by John A. Garraty (Houghton Mifflin, $39.95; ages 8 to 12), and HAND IN HAND: An American History Through Poetry, edited by Lee Bennett Hopkins and illustrated by Peter M. Fiore (Simon & Schuster, $19.95; ages 8 to 12), a collection of poems about American history decorated with charming watercolor illustrations. "The Young Reader's Companion to American History" is a useful, clearly written compendium of knowledge about Americans and their country that schoolchildren will have an easy time using. It is extensively illustrated with photographs and well-reproduced cartoons and sketches from the period. And "Hand in Hand" is a judicious medley of old celebratory favorites and some newer, more somber contributions.
Altogether, these books represent an exciting step in the evolution of the stories with which we teach our children. To paraphrase a recent remark by the historian Vincent Harding, they constitute a belief in the healing role historians may play in presenting the American past. They also testify to the fascination and vitality that are byproducts of opening up the study of history to include us all.

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November 14, 1994, Monday, Late Edition - Final

Essay;
Transfer Of Power

BYLINE: By WILLIAM SAFIRE 

SECTION: Section A;  Page 17;  Column 6;  Editorial Desk 

LENGTH: 723 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON

Bill Clinton remains President of the United States for foreign affairs, but the center of power in domestic affairs -- both in voting strength and intellectual energy -- has shifted from the White House to the putative Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich.
Our first elected half-term President has only himself, his wife and their political advisers to blame for this unprecedented power division. When Representative Gingrich sought to nationalize local elections by submitting a platform of clear, conservative promises, Mr. Clinton foolishly agreed to escalate the mid-term elections into a stark choice between Reaganism and Clintonism. 
 He publicized Gingrich's "Contract With America," warred happily against it on the campaign trail, nuked it by misleading the elderly into fearing for their Social Security, and laid his leadership on the line. As a result, as the Chinese say, he lost the Mandate of Heaven.
Keeper of the voters' mandate is now Gingrich. Since the election, the future-shocking history teacher from Georgia has been forthright, at times eloquent, in articulating his policy goals to a much wider audience. Counterproductively, he added a few ungracious and dated shots at the "counterculture" and media elite, which gave losers not still shell-shocked their chance to demonize him.
But consider why some of us think of him as Newt the Beaut. Not so long ago, our 435 House members were served by a staff of 3,000; today, aides and hangers-on have ballooned to 20,000, and are an integral part of the government-intrusion problem (the Congress makes regulations for idle hands). He has pledged to cut staff by one-third, and as Speaker, he will have the power to deliver; that example should induce the Senate to do the same.
He'll also deliver in the House on term limits and a balanced-budget amendment, too, along with the line-item veto that will give the President greater power to break up costly legislative package deals; we'll see how many Democrats join Senator Robert Byrd, prince of pork, to thwart the will of the people.
That element of Newt's First 100 Days will be aimed at restraining and disciplining the way Washington does political business. What about the way the Federal Government then helps the average family cope with modern social and economic life?
The trick, according to Newtonom-ics, is to let people keep more of what they earn to spend the way they want. But that's selfish, say liberals; what about compassion for the poor?
That takes us past the easy stuff, like health-insurance reform and tax fixes to encourage marriage and parents' support of children, to the hard part: welfare reform and -- want a new long word? -- disentitlementarianism.
The Clinton notion of welfare reform -- a make-work requirement after a couple of years -- is a far cry from what Representative Gingrich and Senator Phil Gramm have in mind. They can show how welfare to the able-bodied has bred dependency, and believe the only way to discourage unemployed single mothers from having more children is to make it unprofitable.
Does this mean we're going to let little kids starve to provide a disincentive? That's where Newt starts muttering about orphanages, as if the nation is going to allow Oliver Twisting in the wind. No; draconian threats may be needed to break the old patterns, but cooperation can find a way -- none dare call it compromise -- to quickly transform welfare to workfare.
Libertarian conservatives like me recoil at the intrusiveness in Newt's call for a "voluntary" school prayer amendment. He's being inconsistent on his bedrock principle of individual responsibility: If parents want to imbue their children with spiritual values -- as more should -- the parents should take the kids by the hand to Sunday School and not fob off that family duty on educators employed by local government.
But we don't have to agree with Newt down the line to admire the boldness of his futurism, the energy with which he mobilizes his forces and the joy he takes in upsetting the apple cart of power in the nation's capital.
The transfer is only temporary, of course. One of these days, a President will offer a competing vision of public support for personal freedom.  Could even be Clinton; but for now, the Congress proposes and the Congress disposes.

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NEWS SUMMARY

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

LENGTH: 910 words

International A3-17
 
PACIFIC TRADE AGREEMENT
As the summit meeting of east Asian and Pacific nations began in Indonesia, they neared an agreement to try to remove all barriers to free trade by the year 2020.  A1
 

President Clinton sought support for the North Korea accord.  A14
 
CUBANS MAY GAIN ENTRY TO U.S.
The United States was reported leaning toward reversing its stance on the Cubans being held at Guantanamo bay, to allow all families there with children to enter the country on humane grounds.  A1
 
SERBS REGAINING TERRITORY
Bosnian Serbs were regaining much of the land they lost recently to Government troops in northwest Bosnia, but the Bosnian Army said that its withdrawal was actually a tactical maneuver.  A1
 
CLINTON DEFENDS BOSNIA MOVE
President Clinton offered a defense of his decision to stop enforcing the Bosnia arms embargo, saying that Congress gave him no choice and that the international embargo had not been violated.  A12
 
TOO COSTLY TO DIE IN RUSSIA
Burial, once subsidized by the state, has become so costly in Russia that few can afford it, a nightmarish situation for many elderly people who now believe they will have no dignity in death.  A3
 
President Yeltsin called for more military preparedness.  A17
 
GROWING TENSION IN GAZA
Palestinian authorities in the Gaza strip promised a sustained crackdown on radicals, as tensions grew between the Government of Yasir Arafat and Islamic militants.  A6
 
China said it would ban sex-screening of fetuses.  A5
 
The United Nations retained its economic sanctions on Iraq.  A6
 
Storms killed at least 75 people over the weekend in Haiti.  A9
 
The Pope proposed marking the millenium with atonement.  A16
 
Cairo Journal: New battle for an ailing author.  A4
 
National A20-26, B8-10
 
BIG PLANS FOR HOUSE
House Republican leaders announced plans to force Congress to work 20 hours a day, seven days a week, if necessary, at the same time that they said they would try to make lawmakers work schedules "more humane." A1
 
CRACKS IN G.O.P. FRONT
News Analysis: In opposition and in victory last week Republicans in the House and Senate seemed to be echoing each other, but as they began to decide their approach to the new era, leaders in each body were taking divergent stands.  A1
 
Republican victory gave Representative Bill Paxon a boost.B10
Tennesee voters, feeling ignored, gave up on Democrats.  B8
 
DRIFTER GOES ON RAMPAGE
Victor Boutwell, a 37-year-old who had spent the last six years living out of the back of his van, attempted a carjacking Sunday night that led to a 25-minute firefight with police officers in San Francisco.  A20
 
NAVY REBELS AT CUTBACKS
As the Pentagon worries about declining money and the armed forces' rivalry intensifies, the Navy's top admiral has repudiated an earlier plan to speed up the retirement of ships.  A20
 
JUDGE ADMITS SIMPSON EVIDENCE
Judge Lance A. Ito turned down a request by lawyers for O. J. Simpson to exclude items taken from his Ford Bronco as evidence in his double murder trial.  A22
 
WARNING FROM BISHOPS
As victorious Republicans talk about having charities take greater responsibility for the poor, the head of the nation's Roman Catholic bishops warned against "punitive welfare provisions" that could hurt families.  A24
 
LOUISIANA DESEGREGATION ACCORD
A Federal judge approved a plan to settle a 20-year-old lawsuit against Louisiana by having the state spend $100 million in the next 10 years to attract white students to its predominantly black universities and vice versa.  A24
 
Metro Digest B1
 
PLAYGROUNDS IN CRISIS
With maintenance a critical problem in parks and playgrounds, the city is considering plans that would change the way they have long been operated and financed.  A1
 
COURT RULING ON JEFFRIES CASE
The Supreme Court gave City College a second chance to show that its demotion of Prof. Leonard Jeffries, the outspoken chairman of its black studies department, did not violate the Constitution.  A1
 
Business Digest D1
 
Science Times C1-14
 
Saving the salmon by saving their environment.  C1
 
Toward making atoms out of antimatter.  C1
 
Responding to a challenge, a bird grows a bigger brain.  C1
 
The Doctor's World: Was it plague or not in India?  C3
 
Rwandan refugees endanger the oldest national park in Africa.  C4
 
Fashion Page B11
 
All the bustle over retro.
 
Obituaries D29
 
Dr. Jules H. Masserman, psychoanalyst.
 
Arts/Entertainment C15-20
 
Musical gender gap.  C15
 
Theater: Shepard's "Simpatico." C15
 
Music: Lyle Lovett concert.  C15
 
"American Transcendentalists," at the Brooklyn Academy.  C20
 
Books: "Vamps and Tramps," by Camille Paglia.  C19
 
Television: "Killer Quake!" C20
 
Sports B12-17
 
Knicks to Starks: Temper, Temper.  B13
 
Columns: Berkow on Beard.  B13
 
Football: Giants could lose Corey Miller.  B13
 
Editorials/Op-Ed A28-29
 
Editorials
 
Making China trade fairly.
 
G.P., call City Hall.
 
The mess at Youth Services.
 
Indonesia's embarrassment.
 
Letters
 
Russell Baker: The final analysis.
 
Christopher Winship: Lessons beyond "The Bell Curve."
 
Katie Leishman: We only wanted to scare you.
 
Chronicle A26
 
Chess C7
 
Crossword C20

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In Russia, Corruption Inflates the Cost of Dying

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

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

LENGTH: 942 words

DATELINE: MOSCOW, Nov. 14

The Russian way of death would make anyone want to live forever.
Burials, once one of the many subsidies doled out by the worker's state, have become so costly and so thoroughly dependent on graft, bribery and connections that few people can contemplate finding quiet plots of land or buying headstones. 
 The simplest municipal burial in Moscow costs about $160 without a headstone, not much by American standards perhaps, but more than the average monthly industrial wage in Russia. In many provincial cities the costs are even higher because the Moscow city government subsidizes Ritual, the main public burial company. Flowers for a municipal service cost an extra $25, and many Russians believe profoundly that funerals without flowers are an insult to the soul.
"This has become a nightmare for many pensioners," said Leonid A. Sidov, a sociologist at the Russian Center for Public Opinion Studies. "But in many ways the problem is a mirror of life in Russia today. The young accept the changes. They are flexible. But for the old people, many of whom served in World War II, to have no dignity in death, to have no hope of a headstone, to know that you will lie so far from Moscow that your family will have trouble visiting the grave -- it's all too painful.
"Russians overwhelmingly feel that a proper burial is an essential right. But if it is, it has gone unfulfilled."
Cremations have increased steadily in the past three years, largely because the costs are only half those of a burial, despite the Russian Orthodox Church's call for all faithful to be buried in the ground.
But the competition for burial space has become so intense that even the church has granted believers grudging permission for cremation if no alternative is available.
"These days if you get out of the morgue and into the ground, you are lucky," said Vladimir I. Panin, chairman of Kristall, one of the many private funeral companies that have sprung up. "But to be buried in Moscow is practically impossible. You have to be in the mafia or a major politician for that."
Even Ritual, the municipal company, offers special services with "American hearses" and "European embalming techniques" for the wealthy. The prices start at $1,500 -- tombstone not included -- and can run to many times that.
But for most people, the best they can hope for is that their survivors have enough money to bribe the undertakers, grave diggers and cemetery operators necessary to be buried only 30 or 40 miles from Moscow, where there is still space in several cemeteries.
People encountered recently at Mitingskaya Cemetery, about 20 miles from the center of Moscow, were particularly eager to express their bitterness at a system that demands bribes and dispenses humiliation at a time they feel exceptionally vulnerable.
"I don't know how they can live with themselves," said Lyudmila V. Povilovka, 56, recalling the bribes she had to pay to bury her father last year. "I had to give vodka to a grave digger. I had to pay the morgue extra to make sure everything went all right. And of course I couldn't afford a headstone."
The funeral director, Vladimir M. Smirnov, acknowledged that a normal burial service includes putting a rough wooden coffin into the ground. But it does not include covering that coffin with dirt. That costs extra.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the only happy people in the cemetery were the grave diggers.
"If people want to pay me something, I am certainly not going to refuse," said Roman V. Vikhayal, 23, a grave digger at Mitingskaya, the cemetery closest to Moscow that is still not full. "If people want to do it themselves, of course they have that right."
Mr. Vikhayal said he made an excellent living, though he declined to cite specifics.
It is not only the free market that has made people like him so successful and his clients so angry. The laws of supply and demand are also on his side. More than 150,000 people died in Moscow in the first half of 1994, 12 percent above the corresponding period in 1993. At least 400 people need to be buried every day in the capital, and as the director of Ritual, Anatoly Pokhorov, pointed out in an interview, "if we take a day off, we have 800 to bury the next day."
Russians traditionally make the journey to a funeral in a bus, usually supplied by the funeral parlor, which doubles as hearse and conveyance for mourners. Once, Ritual put only one coffin on each bus. But in Moscow, Ritual only has three or four working buses, and now it loads as many as three coffins on each, with mourners sharing their grief with people they have never met.
"It is a horrible time," said Galina P. Runina, 63, whose uncle had just been buried. "You don't think it can be made worse by what surrounds it. But it is worse, degrading, to think that even in death we are treated with so little respect. We can't have privacy for an hour."
Important cemeteries like Danilovskaya and Novodivechy, or the smaller one at Peredelkino where former Communist and cultural leaders are buried, are only open to the elite. But money talks here now, and someone with the right connections can even be buried in a "closed" central Moscow cemetery.
Russian law permits a new coffin to be laid on top of another after 15 years, so there is always the occasional opening at the choicest of the city's 59 cemeteries -- for the truly privileged.
"Anything is possible if you can pay for it," said Mr. Panin, of Kristall. "Even the closed cemeteries are open if you have enough money. I'm not talking about what is right or wrong; I'm not making a value judgment. I'm only saying what is possible."

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GRAPHIC: Photo: Burials in Russia have become so costly and so dependent on graft, bribery and connections that few people can contemplate finding quiet plots of land and some cannot afford headstones. At the Mytingskaya Cemetery outside Moscow, where many mourners expressed bitterness at the system, relatives of Anastasia I. Zalnikova waited for her grave to be dug last week. She will lie next to her husband, who died in 1986. (Otto Pohl for The New York Times)

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November 16, 1994, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Storm Off Florida Leaves 2 Dead and Dozens Hurt

BYLINE: AP 

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

LENGTH: 203 words

DATELINE: FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla., Nov. 15

A tropical storm pounded Southern Florida with high wind and heavy rain today, spinning off a tornado that skipped through a retirement community and left one person dead and 40 people injured.
The storm, Gordon, whipped up winds that grounded a 506-foot freighter just off the beach here and knocked out a traffic signal, causing an accident on Monday that killed a pregnant motorist. 
 Six people from the mobile home community of about 7,000 people, Barefoot Bay, on the east coast 40 miles south of Melbourne, were taken to hospitals, officials said.
Fifty to 100 homes were damaged. Mangled metal hung from trees, and debris was strewn everywhere.
The tornado followed a two-mile path, damaging or destroying at least 500 homes, most belonging to the elderly, said Sheriff Jake Miller.
Gordon, about 115 miles south of Sarasota late tonight, moved into the Gulf of Mexico off Key West with 50 mile-an-hour winds. More than eight and a half inches of rain fell in parts of South Florida. The storm knocked out power to 397,000 homes and businesses.
The storm killed at least 100 people in Haiti, although unofficial reports said the toll was much higher.  Two people each died in Jamaica and Cuba.

LOAD-DATE: November 16, 1994

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GRAPHIC: Photo: A tornado caused heavy damage in a retirement community, Barefoot Bay, on Florida's east coast, yesterday. (Associated Press)

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In Fearful Thrift, Elderly Forage in Garbage Bins

BYLINE: By ALAN FINDER 

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

LENGTH: 1535 words

A gray-haired man in a blue Yankees cap lifts the lid of a garbage bin next to a supermarket. Peering inside, he pulls out a tray of mushrooms still wrapped in plastic and slips it surreptitiously into a small gym bag.
A few minutes later, a man in his 80's walks to another of the three green bins outside the market. He forages through the garbage, using his cane to stir the bottom, and removes a red pepper, some potatoes, an apple and wilted broccoli. 
 The scene is repeated nearly two dozen times over the course of a week. While shoppers stroll in front of the bustling Key Food supermarket on Seventh Avenue in the commercial heart of Park Slope, Brooklyn, elderly people go almost unnoticed as they scavenge for food in the garbage bins just around the corner.
They are not homeless, and they are not entirely destitute. But they say they are driven to the unappealing, even humiliating task of foraging through the trash by a disturbing combination of immediate financial need and a more general fear of the future.
"I lost my pride a long time ago," said Casey Losik, an 87-year-old retired shipping clerk, as he scoured the sidewalk bins one morning. Mr. Losik lives four blocks away in Park Slope with his ailing wife, Florence, in the fourth-floor walkup apartment they have rented for 62 years.
Like Mr. Losik, the people who forage in the bins are elderly, most of them retired, and they struggle to get by on limited incomes. Sometimes what they receive each month in Social Security and small pensions simply does not meet their expenses. An unexpected medical bill may leave them short of cash, or they may be hoarding what's left in their checking account for fear that an unanticipated bill may come in the mail.
Some say they are reluctant to go to nearby soup kitchens or churches that provide free meals, leaving them in the paradoxical position of maintaining their independence by picking through smelly supermarket garbage, just a few feet from the bookstores, boutiques and restaurants that define the upscale neighborhood.
There is no way to know how widespread these scavenging practices are. Yet supermarket managers and shoppers in other middle-class New York City neighborhoods, including Brooklyn Heights and Bay Ridge in Brooklyn and Woodhaven and Richmond Hill in Queens, say they, too, have seen elderly people pick through the markets' refuse for food.
Mr. Losik, the retired shipping clerk, says the fruits, vegetables and frozen foods he plucks from the Dumpsters early each morning help offset large medical bills.
While he seems somewhat embarrassed by this routine, he is also clearly pleased by his resourcefulness. Mr. Losik held up two Golden Delicious apples and a large butternut squash he had found in the bins. "What's wrong with these apples?" he said. "What's wrong with this squash?
"The young people, they won't buy it if it has a nick or a scratch or a bump," he said. "They weren't brought up right. My father said people throw out food that's perfectly good."
As many as one in six elderly Americans -- many of them, like the Losiks, living above the poverty line -- are either hungry or have inadequate diets, according to a survey last year by the Urban Institute, a nonprofit research organization in Washington.
Madeline Menard, whose hands were filled with food from Key Food's garbage on a recent Saturday morning, says she is forced to forage because her Social Security check does not cover all her expenses.
Ms. Menard, who is 67, held two wrapped packages, each with three ears of corn, that she had just retrieved from the Dumpsters, along with seven eggplants, a clear plastic bag of mixed greens and a large green garbage bag stuffed with assorted produce.
"I do it out of necessity," Ms. Menard said. "If I didn't have to do it to eat, I wouldn't do it.
"I don't understand why they throw it out," Ms. Menard said, holding up one of her packages of corn. "This is good food. See, there's nothing wrong with it. It's fine to eat."
Some people, embarrassed to be seen poking through the supermarket's garbage, denied to a reporter who had watched them that they had done so. The 62-year-old man in the Yankees cap implied strongly just seconds after taking the mushrooms that he had not even looked into the Dumpster, much less taken something from it.
He did say, quite nervously, that he had worked for years in printing shops, but had not worked since being dismissed from his last printing job in 1989. "It's hard out there," he said, before rushing away.
Many others declined to talk at all. But the half-dozen people who agreed to be interviewed after they were seen scavenging in recent weeks outside the Key Food and a second supermarket in Park Slope said that they often found decent food in the Dumpsters. They said that they always washed and cooked the food, and that they had never been made sick by it.
Saul Rivera, 61, said that as a welfare recipient he got $100 a month in food stamps. But $25 a week does not buy a lot of food, he said, so he regularly goes to the Dumpsters at Key Food.
"It's good food," Mr. Rivera said. "You can always get fruit and vegetables, and sometimes you can find part of a ham or a salami. You take it home, you wash it off and it's good to eat. I never got sick from it or anything."
Another retired man, who refused to give his full name, said he preferred another set of Dumpsters outside a Met Food supermarket on Ninth Street near Fifth Avenue, about a half mile from Key Food. He said he usually picked through those bins once or twice a week, but recently had been forced to do so daily for a week. He said he had misplaced $200 right after withdrawing the money from a bank, and was short of cash.
"The thing is, you have to know the schedules," he said. "You have to get there right after they throw it out so you get the best stuff."
"I tell all my friends, if they complain about money, 'Stop whining; go down to the Dumpster at Met Food and make yourself a nice stew,' " he said. "But they don't listen to me. They think it's dirty. It's not dirty. I'm a very clean person. Do I look like the kind of person who would eat dirty food?"
He was well groomed, his gray hair neatly combed and parted on the side, and he wore a clean dress shirt and brown slacks. He was, in fact, considerably better dressed than most of the elderly people who pick in the supermarkets' trash. While they are not homeless, most are clearly not affluent. They are usually dressed in old, worn clothing.
Mr. Losik, for example, was wearing a shirt with a rip in a front pocket and several large, dark stains when he was interviewed at length in his apartment one afternoon. Mr. Losik said he had begun searching in supermarket Dumpsters for fruit and vegetables not long after he retired 22 years ago, after nearly five decades as a shipping clerk in a warehouse along the Brooklyn waterfront in Sunset Park.
He apparently always had a scavenger's streak: When he was working he often spent summer evenings searching for coins in the sand at the Riis Park beach in the Rockaways, he said.
But his recent forays into the garbage, he said, were driven primarily by financial insecurity. "When you get a pension of $270 a month from the firm you worked for, you haven't got much to live on, do you?" Mr. Losik said. "So what are you going to do when they are giving good stuff away?"
In addition to his pension, Mr. Losik and his wife each get monthly Social Security checks. Altogether, they receive $1,286 a month, he said, plus a few dollars he makes for doing small chores in his apartment building. Their apartment, which is rent stabilized, costs $373.91 a month, he said, and telephone and utilities are an additional $100.
That should leave enough for food and incidentals, except that medical bills keep cropping up. Mr. Losik said that he had surgery for a hernia in August, and that even with Medicare, he had to pay 20 percent of the bill, or about $1,000. That was a big setback, he said.
"Ten dollars a day, that's what I'm trying to get by on, so I can have some money around to pay medical bills and what not," Mr. Losik said. And while he shops inside Key Food for milk, cheese, crackers and other staples, he depends on his daily forays into the garbage bins to limit his expenses.
"Every day I go look there," he said. "If it's too rotten, I pass it by. But this is good stuff they put out there."
"My father said, 'That's God's gift to mankind -- don't throw it away,' " he added. "People are starving around the world, and in this country they are throwing food away."
Mr. Losik said employees at Key Food were aware that he and other elderly people were taking things from the Dumpsters, and that they did not harass anyone. "They tell you not to mess up, that's all," he said.
Mr. Losik said he had seen 20 to 30 different older people picking through the garbage bins there. An outgoing man, Mr. Losik said he tried to help the others, offering tips on the best times to come and which foods to avoid. "I don't blame the people for doing this," he said. "They just want to have enough to get by.
"It's not easy for old people," he said.

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LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Many elderly New Yorkers, like this man at a grocery in Park Slope, Brooklyn, jscrounge for edible garbage. (Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times)

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November 17, 1994, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

METRO DIGEST

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

LENGTH: 537 words


ELDERLY FORAGE IN GARBAGE BINS
While shoppers stroll in front of the bustling Key Food supermarket on Seventh Avenue in Park Slope, Brooklyn, elderly people go almost unnoticed as they scavenge for food in the garbage bins just around the corner. They are not homeless, and they are not entirely destitute. But they say they are driven to the unappealing, humiliating task by a combination of financial need and fear of the future. A1.
 
NEW YORK CITY
 
CO-OP SETTLEMENT HAILED AS GAY VICTORY
Five years after his companion died and a year after his own death from AIDS, Harry Kirkpatrick has won a long and bitter battle with a Sutton Place co-op board over the right to inherit an apartment the two men shared. As a result, co-ops throughout the city may find themselves extending to gay, lesbian and other unmarried couples the privilege customarily granted to married couples. B3. 

MEDICAID MYTHS LINGER AFTER ELECTION
Call them the Medicaid Myths. They were threaded through the New York governor's campaign. And they are built on misunderstandings, confusion and a few politically useful distortions. Metro Matters, B3.
 
GIULIANI BACK ON POLITICAL OFFENSIVE
Momentarily chastened after losing his gamble in the governor's race, Mayor Giuliani is back on the political offensive, seeking to use George E. Pataki's refusal to call him to showcase himself as the champion of the city. B3.
 
DRUG TESTS FOR WELFARE RECIPIENTS
A new work-for-welfare plan by the Giuliani administration will require single, childless people who say they cannot work for medical reasons to undergo a medical exam and drug test to get benefits, officials said. B7.
 
36 MOB 'WANNABES' ARRESTED IN SWEEP
They are known in the underworld as "wannabes," ambitious criminals who hope to become full-fledged Mafia members by committing violent crimes and sharing their spoils with mob leaders. The authorities arrested 36 men they identified as "wannabes" and accused them of engaging in dozens of hijackings, robberies and narcotics deals. B9.
 
The Top 10 Ways to Mispronounce the Name of Governor-Elect George Pataki. B3.
 
A man who intervened in a sidewalk fight was shot and critically wounded. B8.
 
Mike Wallace was reprimanded by CBS News for a hidden-camera interview. B9.
 
Mayor Giuliani announced a sweeping program to combat graffiti. B10.
 
REGION
 
CARJACK-KILLING SUSPECT SPEAKS
Edward L. Summers, the Bronx premedical student accused of stealing a Jeep at a suburban mall and killing its driver, took the witness stand in his own defense and told how he had been terrorized into taking part in the crime by a shadowy figure named Dino who had once saved him from a street fight. B6.
 
NEW EDITOR FOR INFLUENTIAL NEWSPAPER
Mort Pye, editor of The Star-Ledger of Newark, New Jersey's largest daily newspaper, will retire at the end of the year. He will be succeeded by James P. Willse, former editor and publisher of The Daily News. B6.
 
POLICE FORCE IS OFF DUTY FOR GOOD
The local police made their last patrols in the rustic village of Greenport on the East End of Long Island, after the people they had sworn to protect voted to throw them out of work. B6.

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GRAPHIC: Graph: "AIDS in Other Cities" tracks the annual rates of new cases per 100,000 population in five major metropolitan areas, as reported July 1993 through June 1994. (Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)

TYPE: Summary

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November 17, 1994, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

METRO MATTERS;
Medicaid Myths Linger In Wake of Campaign

BYLINE: By Joyce Purnick 

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

LENGTH: 818 words

CALL them the Medicaid Myths.
They were threaded through the New York governor's campaign. They emerge every year in Albany at budget time. They dominate the public debate about Medicaid. And they are built on misunderstandings, confusion and a few politically useful distortions.
Since Medicaid accounts for about a fifth of the state's spending, Governor-elect George E. Pataki will have to cut it considerably to help to close the looming $4 billion budget gap, especially if he really does begin to lower taxes. 
 A LOOK, then, at the Big Three Medicaid Myths:
Myth No. 1: New York spends three times what California does per Medicaid patient.
Mr. Pataki repeated that comparison so often during the campaign that it took on the air of fact. It isn't.
New York is among the top Medicaid-spending states in the country, and does indeed outspend California's Medi-Cal program by nearly 3 to 1. But the comparison is misleading because New York's Medicaid basket includes some services that California finances through other Federal programs and local taxes.
"While it appears that New York spends considerably more than California, many features of New York's programs are funded in California outside its Medi-Cal budget," concluded an analysis in 1991 by the Republican State Senate -- where Mr. Pataki sat for the last two years.
Experts contend that correcting for that accounting difference still leaves some disparity between the two states, contrary to Gov. Mario M. Cuomo's assertions during the campaign. New York's labor costs are higher than California's, some of New York's Medicaid services are more generous and its population is older and needier.
How much more New York really spends per patient is not clear. But the real question is what can New York learn from California and other states reputed to be doing a better job of containing Medicaid costs.
That won't be so easy, because New York, as is its wont, has pursued its own Medicaid style.
Myth No. 2: Medicaid is health insurance for the poor.
That is how Congress envisioned Medicaid in 1965. But ever-creative New York concentrated on taking maximum advantage of Medicaid dollars. As a result, many nonpoor New Yorkers also have a stake in Medicaid.
For instance, 41 percent of the recipients are receiving Aid to Families With Dependent Children, the largest welfare program, but they account for only 12 percent of the state's Medicaid spending. The elderly and disabled, some poor and some not, make up quarter of the recipients and account for two-thirds of the Medicaid costs.
Medicaid is also a large employer. "We've got a Medicaid industrial complex in this state," said James Fossett, professor of public administration and public health at the Rockefeller College of the State University at Albany. "New York has a whole wide range of state and nonprofit agencies that make lot of money by providing services to Medicaid clients."
And many of these are upstate, in areas that voted heavily for Mr. Pataki, which means that in taking on Medicaid, the Governor-elect would also be taking on his constituency.
Myth No. 3: Medicaid is bleeding the state budget dry.
That is a matter of opinion. Medicaid accounts for 6 percent of annual state spending of its own revenues and it is expensive to localities. But some argue that Medicaid benefits the state's finances.
"This legislation said we," meaning the Federal Government, "will pay half of anything a doctor says a patient needs," said Professor Fossett. "New York said, 'Hmm, boy, can we find a lot of things a doctor says a patient needs.' '
Starting under a Republican Governor, Nelson A. Rockefeller, New York "Medicaided" some services that had been financed only by the state. Now New York, with about 9 percent of the country's Medicaid recipients, gets 13.5 percent of all Federal Medicaid dollars.
"New York realized if we're already doing it, and paying 100 percent, it reduces our costs to do it through Medicaid," said John Holahan, director of the health policy research center at the Urban Institute, a nonprofit research group in Washington.
OF course, New York could eliminate some services or cut them dramatically. The state has, for instance, a generous personal care program: nonmedical help for the disabled, like shopping and bathing. Would New Yorkers stand for cutting that service?
So far, Mr. Pataki has only mentioned cutting administrative bloat and preventing Medicaid funding for hair transplants -- which no one has ever received. Elizabeth P. McCaughey, the Lieutenant Governor-elect, says the administration will look at expanding managed care, privatizing long-term care and other options. There are several, and each would have an impact not only on cost, but also on recipients, providers or both.


 	 	 
	--------------------	 
MONDAY: A look at ways of reducing Medicaid costs.

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November 17, 1994, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

Asthma Deaths Tied to Error In Use of Drug

BYLINE: AP 

SECTION: Section B;  Page 11;  Column 1;  National Desk 

LENGTH: 427 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Nov. 16

The maker of a new, long-acting asthma drug has issued a warning after doctors reported that the death of some asthma sufferers might be attributable to their improper use of it.
Twenty deaths among users of the drug, Serevent, have been reported to the Food and Drug Administration since the new medicine entered the market in April. It is not yet clear how many of those deaths resulted from misuse of the drug, but its maker, Glaxo Inc., told patients and doctors today to take special care to use it properly. 
 Experts agree that Serevent is effective at preventing asthma attacks and that its effects last longer than do those of other drugs. But it is not intended for use once an asthma attack starts, because it takes at least 30 minutes to begin working.
At least some of the 20 deaths reported since April are believed to have occurred when patients inhaled the drug during attacks and waited in vain for it to help.
In addition to the danger that Serevent may prove lethally ineffective to a sufferer who needs quick relief from a severe attack, there is the danger that such a sufferer might frantically overdose on it, causing abnormal heart rhythms and other perils, said Dr. Roger Bone, president of the Medical College of Ohio.
In The New England Journal of Medicine last week, Dr. Frank Finkelstein of Plymouth, Mass., described two elderly women found dead while holding their Serevent. "Both had been told they could use their previous inhaler (albuterol) for emergencies, but they did not do so," he wrote.
Asthma is an inflammatory lung disease characterized by attacks in which the airways become blocked, keeping patients from breathing. Some 10 million Americans have asthma, and about 5,000 die each year.
Quick-acting bronchodilators, medicine inhaled straight into the lungs to widen airways, usually alleviate attacks. The most popular is albuterol.
Yet the effects of these quick-acting drugs last only about four hours, so patients often awake during the night, wheezing as their drug wears off.
Serevent, or salmaterol xinafoate, is the nation's only long-lasting bronchodilator. It is for patients with moderate asthma, who have stabilized the disease with other drugs. They inhale two puffs in the morning and two at night, 12 hours apart.
The drug has proved safe in trials involving hundreds of people, so patients should not abandon it, said Susan Cruzan, an F.D.A. spokeswoman.
"It is one of the most useful drugs for asthma," Dr. Bone said. "But if it's used inappropriately, it can cause problems."

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November 17, 1994, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

Few on Welfare Said To Defeat Addiction

BYLINE: AP 

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

LENGTH: 159 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Nov. 16

Just 1 percent of the low-income drug addicts and alcoholics who receive Federal disability benefits recover from their addictions or get jobs, a Federal study shows. Most are dropped from the rolls only when they die or go to jail, the study says.
The study has also found that Government workers failed to make sure that addicts and alcoholics were being treated even though it was a requirement for receiving monthly disability checks of $446. 
 A report on the study, by the Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services, was made public on Monday.
More than 80,000 drug addicts and alcoholics receive benefits under Supplemental Security Income, a welfare program run by the Social Security Administration for the elderly and disabled. Fewer than 10 percent of addicts and alcoholics receiving benefits were in treatment, and the administration did not know the treatment status of most of the rest, the report said.

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November 18, 1994, Friday, Late Edition - Final

2,000 Evacuated While Bomb Is Disarmed

BYLINE: AP  

SECTION: Section A;   Page 33;   Column 1;   National Desk  

LENGTH: 281 words

DATELINE: REDDING, Calif., Nov. 17

About 2,000 people were evacuated from their homes and offices today after authorities found an object that looked like a bomb attached to two large propane tanks.
Members of the bomb squad removed the device at about 6:30 P.M., said Lieut. Herb Davidson of the Shasta County Sheriff's Department. They said it appeared to be a genuine explosive device, which they planned to dismantle. 
 If the device had exploded, it could have devastated everything for several blocks, said Sgt. Arlin Markin of the Sheriff's office.
All homes and businesses within a mile radius of the industrial area south of downtown were evacuated after authorities found the bomb this morning. The residents were allowed to return Thursday night.
Before the bomb squad disarmed the device, the officers made two failed attempts to knock the bomb off the 30,000-gallon propane storage tanks at the Campora Propane Company. There were a total of four such tanks and three 30,000-gallon railroad tank cars at the company.
The authorities were alerted by an anonymous caller shortly after 8 A.M.
Evacuation centers were set up at the Shasta District Fairgrounds and at a senior citizens center near an elementary school in the Northern California community, 175 miles north of San Francisco.
Only about 40 people went to the shelters, with the rest apparently staying elsewhere, officials said.
The Redding city police reported that while the evacuation was under way, a Sacramento Savings Bank branch about three miles away was robbed by a gunman who fled on foot with an undisclosed amount of cash.
"There is no reason to link it to the bank robbery other than coincidence," Markin said.

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November 18, 1994, Friday, Late Edition - Final

They Said She Was D.O.A., But Then the Body Bag Moved

BYLINE: By ROBERT D. McFADDEN  

SECTION: Section B;   Page 7;   Column 5;   Metropolitan Desk  

LENGTH: 696 words

The old woman was sprawled on her living room floor, cold and motionless, and the apartment manager who found her on Wednesday was sure she was gone. Paramedics and the Albany County Coroner, Philip Furie, found no heartbeat, no pulse, no breath or other signs of life, and the coroner declared her officially dead.
They zipped Mildred C. Clarke, 86, into a body bag, took her to the morgue at the Albany Medical Center Hospital and left her in a room where corpses are kept at 40 degrees, pending autopsies or funerals. About 90 minutes later, the chief morgue attendant went in to transfer her to a funeral home. 
 "He was wheeling her out of the cooler when he noticed movement in the body bag -- actually a rising of the bag," said Gregory McGarry, a spokesman for the medical center. "He also detected a faint breathing sound. At first he assumed it was just air escaping from the bag. But then he noticed a rhythm to it."
The attendant, Herman Thomas, opened the bag with widening eyes and found the woman alive, breathing shallowly and unconscious. A medical team, quickly summoned, used a ventilator bag to force air into her lungs, moved her to the emergency room and took other measures to resuscitate her, Mr. McGarry said.
Yesterday, with Mrs. Clark in critical condition, unconscious but resting comfortably, doctors were puzzling over the cause of the death-mimic case. The coroner -- an elected official who is an insurance agent, not a doctor -- was calling it a miracle, and health officials, mindful that a Poe-like premature burial had narrowly been averted, were debating whether Albany ought to have a full-fledged medical examiner.
"Albany is the only major city in New York State that does not have a medical examiner, an official who is trained in forensic pathology, and this would be a real advantage," Dr. Jeff Ross, chairman of the department of pathology at the Albany Medical Center, said in an interview.
In a relic still used in many American cities, Albany elects four coroners to declare deaths and investigate their causes, when necessary, leaving autopsies to forensic pathologists. The coroners are experienced in evaluating crime scenes and suspicious deaths, but have no medical training. Dr. Ross said he would retain coroners for investigations, but place primary responsibility in a medical examiner.
Mrs. Clarke, a widow and a retired bank worker who lives alone at the DeWitt Clinton Apartments, a complex for elderly, disabled and handicapped people, was found at midafternoon on Wednesday by Lori Goodman-DePietro, the manager, who had not seen her since Monday and became worried.
She called the Albany Fire Department and a squad of paramedics listened to the woman's chest with a stethoscope and found no heartbeat. Mr. Furie, the coroner, also was summoned. He felt her pulse, found none and declared her to be dead.
"She was cold as ice, right down by her face, and also she was stiff as a board," he told The Associated Press. "Actually, when you come right down to it, this might be called a miracle of God."
Dr. Ross said there were several generally effective tests to determine whether someone is dead. One is using a stethoscope to detect a heartbeat, though a very weak beat may not be heard. Another is to shine a flashlight into the eye to see if the pupils react. Another is a pain-reflex test, pinching an ear or the nose, which are sensitive. But none is absolutely foolproof, he noted.
Mr. Thomas, the chief attendant and autopsy technician, said the movement in the body bag was something he had not seen in 30 years in the morgue. "He opened the bag and was startled to discover she was in fact breathing. He couldn't believe it," Mr. McGarry said.
Mr. McGarry said hypothermia was the most usual cause of symptoms that mimic death; it lowers the body temperature, slows the heart and respiratory rates and makes the body stiff. A stroke victim or a person who has taken an overdose of drugs may also appear dead, and lying down for a long time can cause blood vessels to collapse, making the pulse hard to detect, he said.
The cause of Mrs. Clarke's condition remained a mystery yesterday.

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November 18, 1994, Friday, Late Edition - Final

Kohl Trims His Cabinet

BYLINE: Special to The New York Times  

SECTION: Section A;   Page 10;   Column 6;   Foreign Desk  

LENGTH: 129 words

DATELINE: BERLIN, Nov. 17

Two days after being formally re-elected by Parliament, Chancellor Helmut Kohl named a slimmed-down Cabinet today in which all key ministers retained their posts.
But Klaus Topfer, Minister of Environment, was named Minister of Construction and Housing. Chancellor Kohl said he needed Mr. Topfer to help oversee the move of the capital from Bonn to Berlin. He was replaced by Angela Merkel, a physicist and Kohl ally who has not shown special interest in environmental issues. 
 Reducing the Cabinet from 14 members by consolidating two posts, Mr. Kohl named Claudia Nolte, 28, to the portfolio for youth, women's affairs, family matters and senior citizens, and appointed Jurgen Ruttgers, a 43-year-old lawyer, as the Minister of Education, Science and Research.

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November 19, 1994, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

U.N. Says Rwandans Are Not Getting Food

BYLINE: Reuters 

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

LENGTH: 244 words

DATELINE: ROME, Nov. 18

The United Nations World Food Program said today that a growing number of Rwandan children in refugee camps in Zaire are going hungry because food distribution is controlled by corrupt former Rwandan leaders.
 The agency, which is based in Rome, said in a statement that the situation was especially bad in the Mugunga camp near Goma on Zaire's border with Rwanda, where 200,000 refugees are living. 
 "The number of children under the age of five who were suffering from severe malnutrition has more than doubled from August, to 8.3 percent," the statement said. "More than 30 percent of the population of the camp are not receiving full rations. Those especially affected are the elderly, children and families headed by women."
 The agency, which delivers an average of 20,000 tons of food every month, blamed rising malnutrition on those who distribute the rations.
 "The more vulnerable groups do not receive enough food because of corruption and food leakages at the distribution level," the statement said. "At camps, relief food is delivered to village heads, elders and officials of the old Rwandan hierarchy who keep the control of the food distribution."
 The food organization said food should be distributed "based on a family/household level."
 The Hutu-dominated Rwandan Government was ousted by the Tutsi-led Rwanda Patriotic Front after Hutu militia and troops massacred hundreds of thousands of Tutsi between April and July.

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November 20, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

THE WORLD;
Taxpayers Are Angry. They're Expensive, Too.

BYLINE: By MICHAEL WINES 

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

LENGTH: 445 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON

AMERICANS believe that their Government wastes vast wads of cash on pork-barrel highways, naval bases in the landlocked home states of important Senators and handouts to an ungrateful underclass -- and that wiping out all this would balance the budget.
After the election of 1994, few Republicans or even Democrats deny that the voters have a point. 
 But like most truths, this one is not absolute. Sure, Congress is a certain soft touch. But the biggest beneficiaries of the benefits mandated by law are not grifters or crack addicts or well-connected defense contractors: they are mostly average folk, like you. Or me.
Direct aid to the Government-certified poor -- food stamps, Medicaid, Supplemental Security Income, Aid to Families with Dependent Children -- totals about $140 billion a year. That is roughly what the Government spends on Medicare, providing services to the elderly at roughly one quarter of their actual cost.
And payments to the poor add up to less than the three largest tax breaks that benefit the middle class and wealthy: deductions for retirement plans, the deduction for home mortgage interest and the exemption of health-insurance premiums that companies pay for their employees.
 
Don't Touch
 Perhaps more important, most tax breaks and payments to the well-situated are practically exempt from the debate over controlling expenditures.
There are some arguments in favor of this. Cutting Social Security and tax-deferred retirement plans could push some of the elderly below the poverty level. Curbing the mortgage interest break would devalue homes and crimp sales.
And politically, the principle known in budgetese as "means-testing" seems a dead letter. Republicans and Democrats alike say they won't seek limits in the largest entitlement, Social Security, although a large share goes to people who live in relative comfort. When Mr. Clinton's budget director, Alice Rivlin, floated the idea of limiting some popular middle- and upper-class tax breaks, like the mortgage deduction, Republicans pounced on the Democratic "tax-and-spend" philosophy, and the White House disavowed her.
Some experts say that ignores the Willie Sutton law of accounting: to balance the budget, you go where the money is, and the money these days is put mostly in the hands of people who are not poor. "My view of life is, you rule out taxes and Social Security and most Medicare, and you're not serious" about balancing the budget, said Charles Schultze of the Brookings Institution, who was chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Carter. "I don't care what you say. You're not really playing the game."

LOAD-DATE: November 20, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Graphs: "Taxpayers Are Angry. They're Expensive, Too."
New that Republicans control Congress, there will be some pressure to fulfill one of the promises of the "Contract With America" -- a balanced budget. Back in the early Reagan years, balanced budget promises were accompanied by stories of welfare mothers buying vodka with food stamps. Now the watchword in welfare reform. Either way, the implication is that cracking down on the poor will bring about big savngs.
 But once budget committees start looking at Ferderal costs, both indirect payments and in monet the Government doesn't take in through tax breaks, they'll find that there are precious few poor people's programs to cut. The bulk of the money goes to the politacally potent middle class.
 Below are figures for some Federal spending programs in fiscal 1993 and tax breaks given for individuals in 1992 and filed in 1993, based om early reviews of the returns. (Sources: Congressional Budget Office; I.R.S.; Congressional Research Service; Office of Management and Budget; Employee Benefit Research Institute; Department of Agriculture; Census Bureau); "Entitlements vs. Tax Breaks" shows percentage of households that receive Federal entitlement benefits in 1990 and tax breaks in 1992. (Sources: Congressional Budget Office; I.R.S.; Office of Management and Budget)

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November 20, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

In One Town, Fed Move Brings Some Fear

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

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

LENGTH: 1222 words

DATELINE: FREDERICK, Md., Nov. 18

Sitting in the Chat 'n' Chew Restaurant, Chris Adams and Dennis Price were eating their $3.75 hot turkey dinners and saying today that they were as mystified as anyone in town about the economic direction of the country.
As partners in a year-old home improvement company that has enjoyed a reasonably good start, they now have the latest interest rate increase by the Federal Reserve to think about. The Fed action, raising the short-term interest rates it controls by three-quarters of a percentage point, was announced on Tuesday as an essential step to contain inflation. Big banks across the country immediately raised the prime lending rate, a response generally considered bad news for people seeking loans and good news for most investors. 
 For the partners, it was a little of both, and their ambiguity was reflected around town, as most people said they were not sure what to make of the Fed's latest move. Many said that they were unconvinced that the economy has been stabilized or that average people would be better off.
And almost all expressed a disquieting fear that whatever security they might have with their current jobs or financial situation could be jeopardized tomorrow or the next day.
"I was happy the way things were going," said Mr. Price, whose company specializes in vinyl siding and other exterior work. "But now, I don't know. I don't know what the answer is."
On the one hand, he explained, the company might benefit because 90 percent of its clients are elderly -- people who have lived in their houses for decades, who have invested wisely and, with the higher interest rates for their investments, expect to have more money to renovate their homes. Over the several years that interest rates fell, through 1993, Mr. Price and Mr. Adams said that many elderly home owners could not afford home improvements.
But on the other hand, Mr. Price said, "Higher rates will eliminate some of our Yuppies with a couple of kids, cars and a house to pay for. They're not going to be able to do as much. Maybe the elderly will offset that."
In addition, the partners' plans to construct a building for the business next year could be shelved. "We have to reassess that now," Mr. Adams said.
Frederick is an old but fast-growing town of 45,000 people that serves as a bedroom community for Baltimore to the east and Washington to the south. Francis Scott Key, the author of "The Star-Spangled Banner," came from here, but 180 years after he wrote his famous song, he would hardly recognize the place. All around its quaint central district of antique shops, small boutiques and eateries is an expanding nexus of insurance companies, mortgage brokers, high-tech industries and strip malls.
With crime, traffic and other urban ills spreading into the near suburbs of Baltimore and Washington, each about an hour away, Frederick has grown to the second-largest city in Maryland, but a place residents say still offers a high quality of life with minimal crime, safe streets, affordable housing and superior schools. The area has become so attractive that some town leaders say they would be just as happy if the population growth slowed and subsequent economic development served only to lower the county's already low 3.9 percent unemployment rate.
Yet the climbing interest rates have crept into the town like a thick smog: People are not sure how it might affect them or when it might clear out.
Joseph Dahms, a professor of economics at Hood College in Frederick, predicted that the rate increase would hurt the city and surrounding areas in a variety of ways. Fewer people, he said, will be able to buy or refinance houses or purchase cars and other high-cost items. Retailers could suffer the immediate effects of people spending less money for Christmas, he said, because they do not want to run up their credit card balances.
"This has scared people, and it's a surprise," he said of the timing and size of the rate increase. "A quarter of a point people could have lived with. The Fed has always been more paranoid about inflation than unemployment, but three-quarters of a point is pretty unusual."
For some area residents, like Mary Losovsky, the higher interest rates could not come at a worse time. A 29-year-old secretary who trained as a teacher but could not find a job, she and her fiance, Jason Hoffman, are getting married on Nov. 26. More than anything, she said, they wanted to buy a house. Now, that seems impossible.
Some time ago, she said, she shopped around and found that a decent town house in the area would cost more than $100,000. A bank would only qualify her for a loan of about $70,000. Even with Mr. Hoffman's salary as a worker with a lawn-care company, the single-family house she wants is out of reach. "It seems to be a ways off now," she said.
"I have a lot of friends with kids who want to buy a bigger house but they can't afford it," Ms. Losovsky said. "That frightens you."
Marvin Lohr, owner of the Village Restaurant and Soda Fountain, has watched his business slowly improve in recent years. But now he wonders how long that might continue. New restaurants are opening all the time, he said. Some of the bigger and better-financed operations are advertising on radio and in the local newspapers. "I can compete with their food," he said. "But not their advertising."
Before Tuesday, Mr. Lohr said he had been thinking about refinancing his debts to improve his cash position. Now, he is hesitant. "I know there's this fear about inflation," he said of the Federal Reserve's rationale, "but I still think they are ahead of the game. Or I don't see that far enough out. I'm not sure."
Almost every morning at the Village, a group of octogenarians push a few tables together to drink coffee and discuss current events. Most are long-time residents of Frederick, like Charles V. Main, the 84-year-old former police chief and de facto host of the table.
"It's just wrong," he said of the rising interest rates. "Middle-class people just can't afford it. It only enhances the value of the rich, the man with a lot of investments. It doesn't hurt me, but I must console people younger than me."
Don Falconer, an 80-year-old retired engineer, said: "It's an overreaction by the Fed. The Government seems to dabble a little too much into the economy, and by so doing, they're going to stifle it. They're being too tight about inflation."
Bud Radcliffe, a 78-year-old former banker, was the only member of the group who acknowledged a personal gain from the higher rates. With money invested in certificates of deposit, he said he would make money as a result. "But I don't think it's good for the economy," he said.
Sitting at a table nearby, Linda Foflygen, a 42-year-old mother of four, shook her head. The wife of an art teacher who supplements his income by working for an engineering firm, Mrs. Foflygen said recent interest rate increases had cost them money. They had been waiting final approval for refinancing their house in Frederick's historic district, she said, before finally getting a rate of 8.25 percent.
"I don't know why they are rushing to raise the rates again, now that people are becoming comfortable with the economy and spending," she said. "Why stifle it? If we were trying to refinance now, we couldn't afford it."

LOAD-DATE: November 20, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH 

GRAPHIC: Photos: Almost every morning at the Village Restaurant in Frederick, Md., a group of octogenarians push a few tables together to drink coffee and talk. One recent day, the topic was rising interest rates. (pg. 1); Dennis Price, center -- Runs home improvement company with Chris Adams, right -- "I was happy the way things were going. But now, I don't know. I don't know what the answer is;" Linda Foflygen, Mother of four -- "I don't know why they are rushing to raise the rates again, now that people are becoming comfortable with the economy and spending, Why stifle it?" (Photographs by Michael Geissinger for The New York Times) (pg. 26)

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November 20, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Social Security Finds '78 Underpayments

BYLINE: AP  

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

LENGTH: 175 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Nov. 19

Hundreds of thousands of retired people were underpaid an average of $1,000 in Social Security benefits because of a 1978 computer glitch, officials said today, adding that the Government now wanted to reimburse them or their survivors or estates.
The Social Security Administration, which recently discovered the mistake in its computer program, must now identify as many as 426,000 elderly people whose retirement checks were shorted by an average of $10 a month, some for a decade or more. The total of the underpayments was $478.5 million, the officials said. 
 A Social Security spokesman, Phil Gambino, said the error affected fewer than 1 percent of the 43 million Americans who receive Social Security benefits.
Officials said the underpayments affected mainly recipients who had returned to work after their retirement.
Patrick Burns, a spokesman for the National Council of Senior Citizens, a Washington advocacy group, urged elderly Americans not to inquire about the underpayments but to wait until the agency notified them.

LOAD-DATE: November 20, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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November 20, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

NEIGHBORHOOD REPORT: UPPER WEST SIDE;
At a Loss for Words With Those Who Aren't

BYLINE: By JENNIFER KINGSON BLOOM 

SECTION: Section 13;  Page 8;  Column 4;  The City Weekly Desk 

LENGTH: 497 words

Meeting one of his favorite authors, David Kratz was at a loss for words.
"I was worried about what I would talk to E. L. Doctorow about," said Mr. Kratz, a public relations executive who lives on Central Park West. "I mean, he is E. L. Doctorow." 
 Luckily, Mr. Kratz -- whose favorite novel of Mr. Doctorow's is "Ragtime" -- had been to a seminar that day where several famous authors, including Kurt Vonnegut and Tama Janowitz, discussed the future of the novel.
Sipping from a goblet of white wine while a pianist played Gershwin, Mr. Kratz described the event to Mr. Doctorow -- "Ed" to some guests. "We gossiped about the other writers," he said.
The soiree Thursday, with Mr. Doctorow and Walter Mosley, the mystery writer, as featured guests was one of 20 held in the last two weeks to benefit the Goddard Riverside Community Center, which offers housing and services to homeless and elderly people. For eight years, authors and publishing executives from the Upper West Side have held a book fair to benefit the center.  And increasingly, the book fair spins off a swirl of parties.
This year's book fair is in its final day today, from noon to 5 P.M, in the cafeteria at Goddard Riverside, at 593 Columbus Avenue. All 20,000 books are sold half-price, and the volunteers who sell them include entry-level publishing employees and the heads of publishing houses. With the book fair, the parties and an auction, organizers hope to raise more than $200,000 for Goddard Riverside this year.
"We have aimed to make this the publishing industry's cause, much like AIDS has become Seventh Avenue's cause," said Florence Janovic, a co-chair of the event.
In the name of that good cause, hundreds of book lovers paid at least $200 to attend meet-the-author dinners this month, in which 43 writers participated. The 20 guests at last Thursday's dinner at the home of Terry and Jerry Shargel were treated to a catered buffet that included mesclun salad, wild rice and chicken in Port sauce with figs. 
"They ask me how I work, what my habits as a writer are," Mr. Doctorow said as waiters passed canapes on silver trays. "They ask me what I think of the films that have come out based on my books. Then a great number of people who ask you these questions confess that they have literary aspirations."
Mr. Shargel, a criminal defense lawyer, asked both writers to sign copies of their latest books and make brief speeches. Mr. Mosley revealed that he worked as a computer programmer for 15 years, enjoys writing dialogue and has an odd passion for Brooklyn accents. The soft-spoken Mr. Doctorow said he avoids in-depth research for his books.
Donald Porter, a writer and former West Sider, founded the book fair. The literary dinner parties followed quickly, he said.
"I was at one at which Allan Gurganus read from "Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All," Mr. Porter said. "He just sat by the fire and read -- it was magic."   JENNIFER KINGSON BLOOM

LOAD-DATE: November 22, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: E. L. Doctorow, right, amid guests and wine goblets last week. (Philip Greenberg for The New York Times)

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November 20, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

NEIGHBORHOOD REPORT: UPPER EAST SIDE;
For the Elderly, a Deli Is a Lifeline

BYLINE: By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN 

SECTION: Section 13;  Page 6;  Column 1;  The City Weekly Desk 

LENGTH: 438 words

In Manhattan, getting from one place to another usually involves considering up- or downtown, not up- or downhill. But for elderly people living along a slice of the island's easternmost avenue, the threat of losing the only deli for a mile is bringing local topography into unusual focus.
"We are at the bottom of a hill," fretted Ursula Maksic, 72 years old, who lives around the corner from the Sutton House Deli, at 1155 York Avenue, between 62d and 63d Streets. First Avenue, she said, has a variety of stores, but they are inaccessible to her. "Sixty-Second, 63d and 64th are all uphill streets," she said. "For elderly people or the handicapped -- I happen to be both -- this is impossible." 
 Come February, though, the deli's 10-year lease is up, and, because of a misunderstanding, its survival now hinges on whether the city will renew a zoning variance.
The owner of the building -- a consortium of schools and hospitals that includes New York Hospital and the Rockefeller University -- allowed the variance to lapse, planning eventually to place medical clinics, which are permitted by the zoning, in the building.
That was before it realized that the deli had an option to renew the lease for five more years. "The deli does have the ability, we believe now, to renew their lease for five years if they want to continue to stay there," said David Lyons, the vice president and treasurer of Rockefeller University, chairman of the committee that manages the property.
But he calculated the cost of reapplying for the variance at more than $100,000, counting for architectural plans and legal fees.
Residents, fearing the loss of the deli, gathered hundreds of signatures on petitions to Community Board 8. At a meeting on Wednesday, the board resolved to urge the consortium to keep the deli at its present site. Mr. Lyons said the outcry had changed the consortium's attitude about future plans to replace the deli.
"We understand that people in the community find this very convenient," Mr. Lyons said. "We certainly hadn't realized that there were so many people who thought it was important to them."
Still, applying for the variance and receiving it are two different things. Assemblyman Pete Grannis said he planned to help the consortium obtain the new zoning variance. "This will be a test of the city's bureaucracy, of whether the city will be willing to work with the community," he said.
Karam Awad, a co-owner of the deli, said he had no plans to move. "We are not going anywhere because we can't and because the community badly needs us," he said.   DAVID M. HERSZENHORN

LOAD-DATE: November 22, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: The Sutton House Deli is the only one for a mile and its survival is in question. (Jakc Manning/The New York Times)

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November 20, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

A LA CARTE;
Alternatives to Turkey on Turkey Day

BYLINE: By RICHARD JAY SCHOLEM 

SECTION: Section 13LI;  Page 31;  Column 1;  Long Island Weekly Desk 

LENGTH: 1001 words

UNUSUAL Thanksgiving dinners with flair are widely available this year. Those seeking nontraditional turkeyless meals will have no problems. Grilled venison with green-peppercorn sauce, fillet of sole stuffed with salmon mousse and lobster sauce, roast breast of goose with holiday stuffing and lingonberry sauce, pan-roasted salmon with rock shrimp and caper-thyme butter and Chesapeake Bay jumbo lump crab cakes with red-pepper coulis compete with turkey for top billing.
Venison ($29) is one of six entrees at the Fusion Grille in East Setauket (751-2200), where cheese pumpkin soup with curried Granny Smith apples ($6.50) and pumpkin souffle with ginger clove Anglais and fresh berries ($6.50) are also on the menu. 
 The stuffed fillet of sole at Dar Tiffany in Greenvale (625-0444) is part of a three-course $25 prix fixe meal that includes pumpkin bisque and bread pudding with Wild Turkey bourbon sauce.
Pan-roasted salmon with Rock Island shrimp is one of three entrees on the $29.95 fixed-price menu at the Pine Island Grill in Bayville (628-3000). Pumpkin-bread pudding with calvados cream is one of three desserts available.
Tierra Mar in Westhampton (288-2700) is serving a six-course feast at prices for a complete dinner that range from $30 to $60. The stuffed roast goose with lingonberry sauce ($50) will be preceded by interesting accompaniments like curried pumpkin soup and venison tart.
The crab cakes are part of a four-course meal at the Inn on the Harbor in Cold Spring Harbor (367-3166). The complete dinners cost $22.95 to $29.95. For the crab cakes with red-pepper coulis -- the signature dish of Guy Peuch, the chef -- the price is $28.95.
The inn is also serving a complimentary Thanksgiving dinner to people from the Huntington Senior Citizens Center who will be alone for the holiday. Last Thursday the restaurant contributed pumpkin pies to the Thanksgiving dinner at the center.
Among the other interesting possibilities at Nassau and Suffolk restaurants are an Australian free-range rack of lamb with cranberry-port-Pommery mustard sauce at Bruzells, 451 Middle Neck Road, Great Neck (482-6600); cod and lobster with spinach risotto and sauce American at Starr Boggs, 10 Beach Road, Westhampton Beach (288-1877), and braised lamb shanks with mixed root vegetables over orzo served in a pan au jus at Caffe Angelica at 2370 Jericho Turnpike in Garden City Park (739-0525).
 
A Guide Revisited
 Long Island restaurants are receiving second looks from the Zagat Survey. The 1995 update of restaurants in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut rates 53 places not in the 1993 edition. The newly listed restaurants, unlike those in the original, are evaluated by Zagat editors rather than diners.
On a scale of 1 to 4, Zagat gives just East Hampton Point a 4, calling the new American food offered by the chef, Gerard Hayden, "innovative, exciting, yet still grounded in tradition."
Among the spots with a 3, or "very good bet," are Cafe Europa in Roslyn, Cilantro's of Blue Point, Ken's Place in Sea Cliff, Me and Mom in Greenlawn, 107 Forrest Avenue in Locust Valley, the Siena Cafe in Syosset, the Station Bistro in Water Mill, the Station House Cafe in Glen Head, Trattoria Grasso in Huntington and the Taj Mahal in Huntington and West Hempstead.
 
Wine Tasting
 The Bellport at 159 South Country Road (286-7550), is featuring five Chapoutier wines and a six-course, $48 dinner, at 7 P.M. on Thursday, Dec. 1. The French wines, some of which were awarded a perfect 100 rating by the wine expert Robert Parker, will be paired with a number of dishes created by Taylor Alonso who, along with his wife, Patricia Trainor, own The Bellport.
Orlando Restaurant, 15 New Street, Huntington (421-0606), is holding another of its Italian nights, on Sunday, Dec. 4, from 5 to 10 P.M. The five-course, $49.95 dinner features a choice of veal, chicken and fish entrees, wines, dancing, Italian music and the singing of Silvia.
Panama Hattie's every-night-but-Saturday $65 tasting meal features Chateau St. Jean California wines, four pastas and an entree of herb-crusted smoked-pork mignon. The restaurant, at 872 East Jericho Turnpike in Huntington Station (351-1727), is offering the five-course wine dinner until Dec. 5.
 
Closing
 Mainstream, 415 Main Street Port Washington, an American seafood restaurant.
 
Potpourri
 A few weeks ago the chef at Stresa in Manhasset (365-6956), Roberto Calabresse, started to offer off-the-menu country-type specials. The down-to-earth peasanty dishes have become so popular that diners request them. Among the hearty casual offerings are rabbit, deboned and stuffed much like a suckling pig, with vegetables and smoked ham or bacon ($16.75); roast leg of lamb with flageolets ($17.75), roast loin of pork with apple sauce ($15.25) and a stew of marinated salt-preserved cod ($16.50).
Palmer Vineyards 1992 barrel-fermented chardonnay won a double gold medal at the New York Wine and Food Classic. A double gold goes to a wine selected first in its class by every judge. Palmer's 1993 Riesling also won a gold medal at the Atlanta Wine Summit.
Ken's Place, one of the most innovative restaurants on the Island, at 64 Roslyn Avenue in Sea Cliff (674-3752), has introduced its fall-winter menu. Among the new dishes being cooked by the chef and owner, Ken Lammer, are a crisp organic-tomato-garlic polenta appetizer; a vegetarian pizza with organic eggplant, garlic puree, beans, mushrooms, roasted peppers and jalapeno oil; black fettucini with smoked scallops and a warm apple tart made with butter-free puff pastry, homemade granola and ice cream.
Gumbo Alley, a Cajun-creole restaurant at 18 South Park Avenue, Rockville Centre (766-9758), is presenting live jazz every Friday night.
 
Chef's Corner
 Alain V. DeCoster, who was executive chef at the Piping Rock Club in Locust Valley and the Garden City Hotel, has moved to Manhattan. He is the sous chef at the Four Seasons Hotel.

LOAD-DATE: November 20, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

TYPE: Review

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November 20, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Amid Affluence, Hunger Is at Home

BYLINE: By ELSA BRENNER 

SECTION: Section 13WC;  Page 1;  Column 3;  Westchester Weekly Desk 

LENGTH: 1268 words

DATELINE: WHITE PLAINS

LAST Monday morning, 74-year-old Stefan Szymik arrived at the soup kitchen at Grace Episcopal Church here for his first hot meal in three days. The former machinist, a homeless man who said he lived meal to meal on Social Security checks, had purchased a package of luncheon meats from the local A.&P. two days before but had eaten little since.
Like many of the 80 or so other people in the dining room -- the elderly, the newly unemployed, homeless and disabled among them -- Mr. Szymik had come to depend on the bounty of the soup kitchen. 
 Another man, Harold Chavis, 48, said he used to be a tractor-trailer driver and that he comes to the soup kitchen every day. A man of few words, Mr. Chavis described himself as "homeless and hungry."
A 43-year-old woman, who would identify herself only as Roxanne, was also waiting for a meal, as was her daughter, Fatima, 2, who sat quietly at a table counting coins in her pink plastic purse.
Victoria Stewart, 35, a former telephone operator, and her companion Bubby Seabrook, 46, who said he had worked as a pediatric nurse, had come for a free meal, too, because they were out of work now and living on public assistance.
It was the first hot meal for many since the weekend, when the soup kitchen was closed, and some said they had stolen food from supermarkets during the two days to get by. Others had visited food pantries, where they received dried goods and food staples to tide them over. Others described a network of church-run soup kitchens, where they could count on a hot Sunday meal.
A few, however, said that although they had eaten little for several days, they were not hungry.
"The less you eat, the less you want to eat," Mr. Szymik explained. "You learn to get by."
According to Second Harvest, a national nonprofit hunger relief organization in Chicago, 10.4 percent of the population -- close to 26 million Americans -- are fed by local food banks throughout the United States.
Like Fatima, 42.9 percent are children. And like her mother, Roxanne, 26.8 percent of the nation's hungry are single parents.
Another 8.1 percent are elderly, like Mr. Szymik, many of whom are living on fixed incomes.
Others are newly unemployed, like Ms. Stewart and Mr. Seabrook, and social workers say it is especially difficult for them in a county like Westchester, where housing and other cost-of-living expenses run high.
In Westchester, where the mean household income was more than $48,000 in 1990, according to the Census Bureau, the statistics on hunger follow the national patterns -- although those studying the problem locally say the county presents a special picture.
"Poverty and hunger tend to be invisible in Westchester, and most people like it that way," said Priscilla Denby, who is directing a study of hunger at Pace University.
But attitudes have recently begun to shift, and Dr. Denby said that in telephone interviews with Westchester residents during the study, respondents were asked if they would be willing to spend another $100 in taxes to feed the poor. The survey found that 61.5 percent would.
According to the university study -- titled "A Growing Hunger: A Study of Food Inadequacy in Westchester County, 1993" -- even though the county is one of the wealthiest in the nation, one-third of Westchester's residents have "had to choose at some time between being hungry or paying the rent."
Numbers from the county's Department of Social Services show that 9,078 residents received food stamps during the fiscal year 1993-94, up from 8,700 the year before.
The Pace University survey also says poverty and hunger are not confined to the big cities of the county, and interviews revealed "pockets of problems throughout Westchester."
"Wherever it occurs, in the southern tier cities of the county or in the suburbs, poverty and hunger are joined at the hip," Dr. Denby said.
Ghassam Karam, assistant professor of economics at Pace University and a coordinator for the hunger study -- he prefers to call it "The Other Westchester" -- said that according to the 1990 census, 58,164 Westchester County residents were listed as living below the poverty line, which is considered to be $14,700 a year for a family of four.
But the actual number for those who are "hungry and in need" was probably closer to 135,000, if one includes residents living at 200 percent of the Federal poverty level, he said.
Dr. Denby described "a new type of person" who was going hungry in Westchester, saying that "more and more, it's the newly unemployed that we are seeing."
At Second Harvest, which represents 189 food banks and 50,000 agencies nationally, Christine Vladimiroff, president and chief executive officer, said that the "face of hunger was changing."
"Increasingly," she said, "we are seeing the working poor, who receive minimum pay and no benefits.
At Food-Patch in Millwood, a local food bank allied with Second Harvest, Christina Rohatynskyj, the executive director, described it as "a broad spectrum of people who are suffering, who are having to ask themselves, 'Do we buy the kids shoes, or do we eat? Do we pay the rent or do we eat?' We're talking about people who never dreamed they would enter the emergency food network."
Food-Patch, which stands for People Allied to Combat Hunger, fed 200,000 people during the 1993-94 fiscal year, with about 43 percent of those being children, Ms. Rohatynskyj said. The organization distributes food to local food pantries, soup kitchens and emergency shelters.
Food banks and soup kitchens are now worried that sources of Federal funding for their relief efforts will be jeopardized by the change in administration and Ms. Rohatynskyj said, "We're all feeling threatened."
The food banks expect even less money from Congress to buy United States Department of Agriculture commodities -- like butter, cornmeal and canned meat, beans, fruits and vegetables -- to distribute to the food pantries. The Government's $25 million budget to purchase commodities for food pantries was down from $85 million last year.
Meanwhile, as the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays approach, food pantries and soup kitchens continue to feed the poor, relying increasingly on private donations.
At the Ossining Food Pantry in Trinity Episcopal Church, Aileen Hunt, a supervisor, said her organization was distributing bags of groceries that contained a three- or four-day supply of food to 115 people a week.
The typical mix of groceries for a mother and two children from the food pantry includes soups, vegetables, cereal, dried milk, beans, oil, peanut butter, jelly, tunafish and pasta -- worth about $28.
For Thanksgiving, turkey hams, which are pressed turkeys flavored like hams, will be distributed by the pantry, along with 150 turkeys.
At Grace Church, Lesma Howard-Zepeda, director of the nutrition center, said that although the soup kitchen was receiving less money from donors and had already seen a $14,000 shortfall this year in its $110,000 annual budget, it would keep its doors open, and full-course holiday meals would be served.
"At holiday time we talk of abundance," said Ms. Vladimiroff of Second Harvest, "and some are offended that we only pay attention to the hunger problem at this time of year. Our hope is that what happens at Christmas and Thanksgiving carries over."
"The numbers keep going up for domestic hunger," she said, "Maybe we don't see the bloated stomachs, the skeletal frames" and the orange hair from vitamin deficiency, "the graphic images of famine and death, but the problem in this country is not going away."

LOAD-DATE: November 20, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photos: Harold Chavis dines at Grace Episcopal Church's soup kitchen. Studies show hunger is not confined to county's big cities. (Pg. 1); Lesma Howard-Zepeda of Grace Episcopal Church in White Plains. (Pg. 21) (Susan Harris for The New York Times)

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November 21, 1994, Monday, Late Edition - Final

METRO MATTERS;
Cutting Medicaid Will Not Be Easy

BYLINE: By Joyce Purnick 

SECTION: Section B;  Page 7;  Column 4;  Metropolitan Desk 

LENGTH: 807 words

THERE is no debate about it. New York's Medicaid system, the kudzu of health-care programs, needs pruning. It is one of the most expensive and expansive Medicaid programs in the country, and Governor-elect George E. Pataki has pledged to cut it.
But how? New York has done such a masterly job of wringing dollars out of the Federal Government, which pays half of all Medicaid bills, that the program has spawned a vigorous lobby of clients and providers. 
 Gov. Mario M. Cuomo's efforts to contain Medicaid costs have met resistance in the courts and from the Democratic Assembly, protecting patients, and the Republican Senate, protecting providers. Lawmakers propose cuts every year but they are always trivial, because in New York, which set out when Medicaid began in 1965 to take advantage of Federal dollars, Medicaid has become a strong, $20 billion piece of the state's economy.
MR. PATAKI could try to remake the program in the image of those in more cost-conscious states. He could shake up the complicated system of hospital reimbursement, which links Medicaid to other hospital costs. He could reduce Medicaid's contribution to graduate medical education, drop categories of recipients, reverse the state's aggressive effort to get Medicaid coverage for mental health programs.
More likely, Mr. Pataki could consider these more realistic options:
Cutting benefits
The service most often proposed for reductions is personal care, at $1.7 billion a year the most expensive piece of Medicaid in New York, after hospitals and nursing homes. It provides help for the elderly and disabled -- with shopping and bathing, for instance.
In 1992, the Cuomo administration tried to cap monthly personal care, which averages 200 hours, at 156 hours. The Senate said 120 hours and the Assembly said no. Then Mr. Cuomo tried more stringent screening standards, but they were tied up in court.
Cutting recipients
Proposals to reduce the Medicaid rolls center on two categories: New Yorkers on Home Relief, and elderly middle-class people who give away their assets so Medicaid will pay nursing-home costs.
Some argue that people on Home Relief, a state welfare program mostly for single adults, should be earning their own way. Providing Medicaid for them is expensive because they are not covered by the Federal Medicaid program. New York uses its own money, supplemented by Federal dollars from non-Medicaid programs. Those funds do not quite reach the 50 percent Federal Medicaid pays for other programs.
Canceling Medicaid coverage that now goes to about 380,000 New Yorkers on Home Relief would save New York about $650 million. Or would it? "These people will still show up at the hospital doors," said John Holahan, director of the Health Policy Center at the Urban Institute. "Then what are you going to do?" The Cuomo administration did try to limit this group's benefits, but litigation stopped that, too.
Throughout the country, the elderly spend down their assets so they can qualify for Medicaid payments to nursing homes. Most would likely exhaust their money on nursing-home care and then qualify for Medicaid coverage anyway. But the ruse is costly and infuriates those who remember that Medicaid was meant for the poor.
The state could try to prevent the practice, but Mr. Pataki rejects that. Another alternative is private insurance for long-term care. The Cuomo administration recently began a program that gives people Medicaid coverage if they buy private insurance; once the insurance is exhausted, they contribute their retirement income, but keep their assets.
Reducing rates paid to hospitals and nursing homes
Hospital and nursing-home fees account for half of New York's Medicaid costs. The state could pay less for Medicaid patients than is paid by private insurers. That risks tempting institutions to provide inferior care to the poor, which offends New York's sensibilities.
Delivering care more efficiently
New York and most other states are moving to managed-care systems, aimed at getting patients out of emergency rooms and into health centers where they can get preventive and primary care.
So far, 420,000 of the state's 2.5 million Medicaid patients are in managed care, but the goal is to enroll half by the year 2000. Will managed care save money? It is actually expensive in the short run; eventually, it could save up to 15 percent on some patients, but not on the elderly and disabled, Medicaid's most costly clients.
Elizabeth P. McCaughey, the Lieutenant Governor-elect, says that she and her new Medicaid task force will consider all options, especially managed care and private insurance programs for the elderly. No approach will be an easy sell in New York, though. "If it had been easy," says Michael J. Dowling, Social Services Commissioner, "we'd have done it."

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November 23, 1994, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Region News Briefs;
Suffolk Cracking Down On Crime Against Elderly

BYLINE: AP 

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

LENGTH: 196 words

DATELINE: HAUPPAUGE, L.I., Nov. 22

The Suffolk County District Attorney's office announced a crackdown today on crimes against the elderly, which rose 25 percent in the county last year.
The District Attorney, James M. Catterson Jr., said he had created a task force to respond to the rising number of such crimes. 
 Nina Pozgar, chief of Mr. Catterson's White Collar Crime Bureau, was appointed to head the task force.
The most common crimes, she said, involve financial abuse, which often escalates into physical abuse. She said in most of the cases the victims have been abused by a family member or a home-care worker.
Two people were arrested today and charged with stealing more than $40,000 from elderly victims in two separate incidents.
In one case, a home health-care worker was charged with stealing more than $10,000 from a 96-year-old woman. The worker, Christine Mapes, 48, of Riverhead, was charged with grand larceny and forgery. The authorities said she forged checks in the victim's name.
In the second case, a worker for the Homebound Meal Program for the Town of Islip, Paul D'Arcy, was charged with stealing more than $30,000 from elderly people to whom he delivered meals.

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November 23, 1994, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Nutrition Guides May Be Deceptive for the Aged

BYLINE: By JANE E. BRODY 

SECTION: Section C;  Page 7;  Column 1;  National Desk;  Health Page

LENGTH: 668 words

IT should surprise no one to learn that people's bodies change in significant ways as they age. But researchers are just beginning to discover important nutritional differences between the old and young that, if ignored, could adversely affect the health and well-being of older Americans.
In today's issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association, for example, Dr. Susan B. Roberts and colleagues at the Federal Agriculture Department's Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging in Boston report that older men seem to have trouble balancing the amount of calories they consume with the amount they expend. When forced to gain weight, they hang on to the extra pounds, and when their weight drops below normal, they do not readily gain it back. Either way -- overweight or underweight -- this failure to adjust could increase the risk of serious illness in older people, Dr. Roberts said. 
 In a second, unrelated, study conducted at the same center, Dr. Wayne Campbell found that the protein needs of older people were significantly higher than the daily protein intake recommended by Federal agencies. Although the average older American is already eating 25 to 50 percent more protein than is recommended, Dr. Campbell, who is now at Pennsylvania State University in University Park, noted that the many older people who consumed exactly what was recommended or less were probably being shortchanged.
The consequences could be a reduced ability to respond to stress or weakened muscles, the researcher said. He called for more research on the nutritional needs of older people, who until recently have been relatively neglected by nutrition researchers.
In setting Federal dietary guidelines, experts have largely relied on studies in people 50 or younger. The nutrition research center on aging, which is at Tufts University, was established to conduct studies to fill in the many gaps in knowledge about nutritional and metabolic changes with age and to stimulate researchers elsewhere to do similar research.
In the study directed by Dr. Roberts, 17 men in their 20's and 17 others who were about 70 spent three weeks in the center's metabolic research unit where they were provided with either more or less food than they normally consumed. In the weeks following the period of forced overfeeding or underfeeding, the young men automatically made adjustments in their caloric intake that enabled them to lose weight gained or gain back their losses. But the older men made no such adjustments.
Dr. Roberts concluded that aging, even in those in good health, impairs a person's ability to match food intake with energy needs. Thus, when an older person splurges on calories day after day, say, on a vacation cruise, he or she is not likely to readily shed the extra pounds upon returning home. The result could be an increased risk of high blood pressure, diabetes and heart disease. Similarly, should a prolonged illness causes an older person to become significantly underweight, failure to gain back the lost pounds could impair the person's resistance to infectious diseases.
The findings of the protein study were published in a recent issue of The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. The study involved a dozen healthy adults from 56 to 80 whose diets were very closely controlled for 11 consecutive days. Half were given the daily recommended amount of protein and the other half got twice that amount.
Dr. Campbell measured the amount of protein each person consumed and the amount of nitrogen they excreted. Nitrogen is the critical indicator nutrient in protein; when more protein is eaten than the body needs, the excess is lost through the stool. To be sure that a person is in nitrogen balance, small amounts of this nutrient should be found in the stool. But Dr. Campbell found that the participants who consumed just the recommended amount of protein were not in nitrogen balance; to meet their bodies' needs, they needed more protein than they took in.

LOAD-DATE: November 23, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Chart: "Protein Needs and the Elderly"
 The current recommendation is for 0.8 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight each day, which would mean about 63 grams (about 2.2 ounces) of protein for a 170-pound man and 50 grams (about 1.75 ounces) for a 143-pound woman.
 However, because caloric needs drop with age, protein has to provide an increasing share of daily calories as people get older. Based on his findings, Dr. Wayne Campbell suggested raising the protein recommendation to 1 gram or even 1.25 grams for people over 55. This would amount to 93 grams (about 3.3 ounces) of protein daily for the 170-pound man and 78 grams (about 2.75 ounces) for the 143-pound woman.
 
How to Fill Them:
 Three ounces of cooked beef, flounder, canned tuna or turkey each provide about 24 grams of protein, or about a third of a 143-pound woman's needs, by Dr. Campbell's estimates.
 Eight ounces of skim milk provides nearly 9 grams of protein
 One-half cup of cottage cheese provides 15 grams of protein.

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November 24, 1994, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

BOOKS OF THE TIMES;
Of Older People and Their Need for Love, Sex and Marriage

BYLINE: By CHRISTOPHER LEHMANN-HAUPT 

SECTION: Section C;  Page 20;  Column 1;  Cultural Desk 

LENGTH: 927 words


LATE LOVE
A Celebration of Marriage After 50
By Eileen Simpson
208 pages. A Peter Davison Book/Houghton Mifflin. $21.95. 
 Here is a book that explores a variation on the old joke about the man and woman in their 80's who finally decide to divorce, and when the judge asks why they are bothering so late in life, they reply, "We wanted to wait until the children were dead." The difference in Eileen Simpson's new book, "Late Love: A Celebration of Marriage After 50," is that the old couple in the story are marrying instead of divorcing.
True, Ms. Simpson doesn't tell either version of this joke in her book. Her sense of humor simply isn't that dark. But she does explore why such a couple would want to marry.
Old people are doing it more and more these days. As Ms. Simpson points out, the sexual revolution of the 1960's had its effect on older people as well as younger ones: "Many in the over-60 population began to ask, If the young are free to become sexually active earlier in life than was permissible in our day, why shouldn't we, who envy them their freedom and feel cheated that we were denied it, remain active later in life?"
Changed expectations have served to rejuvenate dormant sexual desires, the author finds. When older people complained of problems, doctors no longer were permitted to say, "At your age what do you expect?"
And older people's children have often enough proved an impediment to geriatric sexual satisfaction. In several cases Ms. Simpson writes about, the hardest adjustment for people remarrying later in life has been getting along with the partners' children, particularly those who fly back into the nest for some reason.
Moreover, as Ms. Simpson found out, people who never remarry, even when there's an opportunity to do so, often choose not to because the children object. The children fear losing their inheritance, which they very likely equate with love. If the trends described in "Late Love" continue, we are going to need a whole new set of fairy tales, ones that explore the behavior of the wicked stepchildren.
To gather material for "Late Love," Ms. Simpson interviewed 50 men and women who married after the age of 55. At the time she saw them they ranged in age up to 90. She also talked to 25 people in the same age group who had remained unmarried. Because these people were more affluent than the subjects of some other recent studies, material possessions often played a big role in how the partners adapted to each other. Clashing furniture styles took the place of conflicting egos. Instead of disagreeing over what movie to see, couples debated whose country house to live in.
Yet sex reared its silvery tresses.  Ms. Simpson found that while couples continued to feel desire at increasingly advanced ages, men tended to run down and to worry about it. But loss of sexual prowess is made up for by more open talk. Women feel freer to express their needs. The author writes, "With this shift in roles women release men from the demand to perform, which in turn allows men the freedom to express tenderness they formerly repressed."
What you miss in Ms. Simpson's interviews is the playing out of certain potentially dramatic situations like the conflict between Saul and Phil, for instance. Saul grew up scarred by the Great Depression and when his new wife's beatnik son, Phil, moves back into her house to recover from an illness, his free-spending ways drive Saul to distraction.
Or the case of Ed Parker, who not only brings no furniture with him when he moves into May's house, but also doesn't seem to mind the oil portrait of her late husband, which dominates the living room, or the many photographs of him on the walls. Or even the case of the man who irritates his new wife by never screwing the caps back on the bottles in the refrigerator! Unfortunately, these are situations, not stories.
The failure of these potential dramas to fulfill themselves in Ms. Simpson's pages perhaps explains why she is forced to tap history and literature for her best illustrations of late love. The geriatric passions that stand out most distinctly in her book are those of Dickens, George Eliot, Goethe, Yeats and Bertrand Russell, each of whom illustrates some aspect of Ms. Simpson's exploration. And just as colorful in her narrative are the late-life affairs of Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza in Gabriel Garcia Marquez's novel "Love in the Time of Cholera" and of Alexander and Alexandra in Gunter Grass's novel "The Time of the Toad."
Ms. Simpson, whose best-known previous books are "Reversals: A Personal Account of Victory Over Dyslexia," "Poets in Their Youth: A Memoir," and "Orphans: Real and Imaginary," even turns to fiction to interpret the most dramatic incident that emerged from her research, namely what happened to 72-year-old Todd Bufford after the death of his wife of 45 years.
As background to Todd's story, Ms. Simpson tells the plot of Isaac Bashevis Singer's short story "Old Love," about Ethel, a Miami widow who first courts Harry and then suddenly throws herself out of her apartment window, leaving a note that reads: "Dear Harry, forgive me. I must go where my husband is.  If it's not too much trouble say Kaddish for me. I'll intercede for you where I'm going."
Ms. Simpson then speculates that a similar guilt over disloyalty to a dead spouse might well explain why Todd, while courting an attractive divorced woman, suddenly committed suicide.
As so much of "Late Love" goes to show, fiction is simply truer than life.

LOAD-DATE: November 24, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Eileen Simpson (Dominique Nabokov/Houghton Mifflin)

TYPE: Review

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November 25, 1994, Friday, Late Edition - Final

Milton J. Shapp Is Dead at 82; Ex-Governor of Pennsylvania

BYLINE: By GARRY PIERRE-PIERRE 

SECTION: Section B;  Page 19;  Column 1;  Metropolitan Desk 

LENGTH: 631 words

Milton Jerrold Shapp, former Governor of Pennsylvania and a Philadelphia industrialist who was the first Jew to mount a campaign for the Presidential nomination of a major party, died on Thursday at Lankenau Hospital in the Philadelphia suburb of Wynnewood. He was 82.
 The cause was Alzheimer's disease, family friends said. 
 Mr. Shapp, a Democrat, served as Governor from 1971 to 1979 and brought an income tax and lottery to the state. He ran unsuccessfully for President in 1976.
 Before he became Governor, Mr. Shapp was politically active with President John F. Kennedy and is credited with promoting the idea that eventually led to the creation of the Peace Corps.
 Fresh out of the Army Signal Corps after World War II, during which he was a captain and served in North Africa, Italy and Austria, Mr. Shapp, an electrical engineer, founded the Jerrold Electronics Corporation in 1948. The company went public in 1956 and did $25 million-a-year in business. A decade later, when Mr. Shapp sold his interests, the corporation's business was up to $50 million a year.
 Born in Cleveland, Mr. Shapp attended the Cleveland public schools and earned a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Case Institute of Technology (now Case Western Reserve University) in 1933.
 He entered public life in 1960, when he became an early supporter of Mr. Kennedy. In the 1960 election, he served as chairman of the Business and Professional Committee for John Kennedy in the Mid-Atlantic States. During that campaign, Mr. Shapp suggested to Mr. Kennedy the idea of forming a Peace Corps. In a speech at Penn State University on March 9, 1961, entitled "Peace and the Peace Corps," Mr. Shapp outlined for the first time the basic policies that were to serve as a guide for the operation of that organization.
 He returned briefly to business in mid-1963, but plunged very quickly again into politics. He made an unsuccessful run for the Senate in 1964. After that effort failed, he worked in the campaign of Lyndon B. Johnson and organized businessmen in the East for him as he had done for President Kennedy.
 Mr. Shapp won national attention for his consumer-advocate policies and his innovative programs for elderly and handicapped people, including using lottery money for elderly people. He was largely credited with bringing Pennsylvania back from the brink of deficit.
 Mr. Shapp also instituted full financial disclosure for top officials, the most comprehensive of the so-called Sunshine Laws for open government in the nation and a strict code of ethics for all state employees.
 In an interview during his Presidential bid in 1976, he was asked why he was running.
 "I compare myself to the people who were talking about becoming candidates," he told the interviewer. "In knowledge of the economy, in ability to develop programs and get them implemented, and I couldn't see anybody comparable. I saw the caliber of these people and I said, 'What the hell.' "
 In a 1981 letter to The New York Times, Mr. Shapp, sharply criticized President Ronald Reagan's sale of Awacs electronic-warfare planes to Saudi Arabia.
"It would be far more beneficial to America's future economy and to its security if the President would implement a major civilian Awacs program by beginning a war against city slums in our nation," he wrote. "Unless we soon start to cope realistically with our major internal problems, no amount of sophisticated weapons in our possession or in the hands of so-called allies will be able to stave off internal disruption."
 Mr. Shapp battled Alzheimer's for several years, said Richard Gross, a family friend.
 He is survived by his wife, Muriel; two daughters, Dolores Graham and Joanne Shapp; a son, Richard, and three grandchildren.

NAME: Milton Jerrold Shapp

LOAD-DATE: November 25, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Milton J. Shapp (Associated Press, 1975)

TYPE: Obituary (Obit); Biography

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November 25, 1994, Friday, Late Edition - Final

U.S. Study Shows Half of Food-Stamp Recipients Are Children

BYLINE: AP 

SECTION: Section A;  Page 25;  Column 1;  National Desk 

LENGTH: 481 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Nov. 24

As House Republicans push a plan for changing the welfare system that includes dismantling Federal nutrition programs, the Clinton Administration has issued a new study showing that half of the food stamp recipients are children in poverty.
The Agriculture Department's Food and Consumer Service, which runs the Government's largest nutrition programs, released the study this week as the debate intensified over the Republican proposal. 
 Republicans preparing to take control of the House want to consolidate several nutrition programs for the poor -- including food stamps, school lunches and the supplemental feeding program for women, infants and children -- and give the money to the states in a lump sum.
Under their plan, spending on nutrition assistance would be limited, and low-income families would no longer be automatically entitled to receive benefits.
Republican lawmakers say that their proposal would end duplication among programs and give the states greater flexibility to distribute aid for food to poor families. The block grant would save $11 billion over five years, they say.
Advocates for the poor say the plan, if it becomes law, could lead to increased hunger and homelessness among American families because spending could not grow automatically in times of recession and rising poverty.
They also say families could be taken off the welfare rolls or put in waiting lines for benefits. They seized on the new study to make their case that the Republican plan would hit children, the elderly and the working poor especially hard.
"This underscores how heavily targeted the Republican welfare reform plan will fall on children, including very poor and often very hungry children," said Robert J. Fersh, president of the Food Research and Action Center, an advocacy group in Washington.
The Agriculture Department report, dated Oct. 27 and released this week without any comment from the Administration, profiled the population that receives food stamps in the summer of 1993.
The program then served an average of 27.3 million people in almost 11 million households. More than half of the people in the program, 51.4 percent, were children. Seven percent were elderly, and the rest were adults ages 18 to 59.
The study found that food stamps were about a fourth of a family's total income. The average benefit per household was $170 a month.
The study also found that a fifth of the families receiving food stamps were working, but not earning enough to escape poverty.
Darold Johnson, deputy director for programs and policy at the Children's Defense Fund, said the block grant was a bad idea because it replaced coupons, which must be used to purchase food, with cash, which could be used for other purposes like rent and utilities.
"The decision between heating and eating is one that low-income families make constantly," he said.

LOAD-DATE: November 25, 1994

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November 26, 1994, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

Older Men Are Warned About Predatory 'Nurse'

BYLINE: Special to The New York Times 

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

LENGTH: 255 words

DATELINE: LEVITTOWN, L.I., Nov. 25

The police have issued a warning to elderly men to beware if an attractive young woman dressed as a nurse approaches them at a stop light, says her car has broken down and asks for a ride.
 Since April 1991, the police said, the woman has robbed at least 15 men by fondling them and then stealing their money. 
She usually works at shopping areas on Long Island, seeking out older men in late-model cars, the police said, although twice she approached men as they sat parked in their driveways.
 Anthony Letterel, a Nassau County detective, has posted written warnings about the woman. "She'll tell them she has car trouble, something to do with her battery," he said. "She says she is a home health-care nurse and she needs a ride to a house nearby, where she is caring for an elderly patient."
 He said she then engaged the men in sexual conversations and fondled them "long enough to lift their cash from their pockets."
 Detective Letterel said most of the men are upset by her advances and demand that the woman get out of the vehicle, not realizing that she has already taken their money.
 All the incidents occurred between 4 and 8 P.M. The police said they had received complaints from virtually every precinct in Nassau County. They said they thought that some victims are too embarrassed to come forward.
 The woman is described in the police warning as a "female black, approximately 30 years old, attractive looking, oval face, dressed in a nurse's uniform, approximately 5 feet 5 inches, stocky build."

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November 27, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

83 Is His Age. His Golf Scores Are Lower.

BYLINE: By JACK CAVANAUGH 

SECTION: Section 13CN;  Page 23;  Column 1;  Connecticut Weekly Desk 

LENGTH: 1509 words

IN a chance meeting outside the clubhouse at the Race Brook Country Club in Orange, Ed Silver feigned shock when, peering into George Dunham's golf bag, he found an outsized Big Bertha driver and a collection of other up-to-date graphite clubs.
"What are you doing using all of this state-of-the-art stuff?," Dr. Silver, a retired dentist, asked with a smile. 
 Smiling back, Mr. Dunham replied, "At my age, Ed, you take every edge you can get."
In fact, at the age of 83 Mr. Dunham does not take many edges or advantages. For instance on this crisp late October day he had just finished playing 18 holes in five hours while walking the 6,080-yard course and carrying his own bag. He is not happy over his round, although, as always, he enjoyed playing.
"I think today I may have shot my age or over it," said Mr. Dunham, who did not keep score. If he shot over his age -- which did not seem likely to his two companions -- it was one of the few times in about 150 rounds this year. More often than not, he shoots in the 70's or around 80, always while carrying his golf bag. "Shooting my age or better is no big deal. The older I get, the easier it is to do," said Mr. Dunham, now retired after an eclectic career that ran from sportswriter to realtor.
 One day a week earlier Mr. Dunham shot a 77. Coincidentally, so, too, did the other three players in his foursome. But all three, considerably younger than Mr. Dunham, rode in golf carts.
The game took place at the Farmington Woods Country Club, Mr. Dunham's home golfing base. It was there, in August, that he became perhaps the oldest player ever to win a club tournament, capturing the trophy for those 55 and older. (Officials at the United States Golf Association in Short Hills, N.J., said if anyone older had won a senior tournament, they were unaware of it.) In the 18-hole final, he beat Bob McDaniel, who is just 63 and who rode the course.
"Bob is actually a better player than I am," Mr. Dunham said, "but he putted poorly that day and I was aided and abetted by his failings."
It was an event he had never entered before. "I entered because I knew I'm not going to have that many good golfing days left," Mr. Dunham said. "I also got in this year because they didn't allow handicaps, which they had in the past."
Mr. Dunham's golfing friends feel that there are still plenty of good golfing days ahead for the octogenarian, who lives in Salisbury. "He's my idol," said Dick McAuliffe of Farmington, a former major league infielder who plays often with Mr. Dunham. "He loves the game of golf and he has a great outlook. And he's always working on something, trying to improve his game. He'll say, 'I've got to get my right elbow tucked in closer to my body on my swing.' He's an absolute delight to play with."
And to talk with. "Golf is the greatest game of all," said Mr. Dunham, who began playing in 1926 at the age of 15. "You can play when you're 12 and when you're 90, and you can have fun. Exercise is blended with sport, and, for me, it's a tonic."
How often does he play? "Any day that ends in y," he says, smiling. "Actually, I play Monday through Friday, weather permitting, but not on weekends when courses tend to get crowded."
Despite his small stature -- "I'm 5 feet 7 and shrinking and weigh 138 pounds," he says -- Mr. Dunham is a big hitter. Most of his drives carry around 225 yards, and some of his fairway wood shots travel as far. One challenging quirk: on long fairway wood shots he uses his Big Bertha War Bird driver, instead of a 3 wood or a 3 or 4 iron.
About his insistence on walking, Mr. Dunham explains that "For one thing, that way I can smell the flowers, as Walter Hagen used to say. And for another, it's easier to concentrate on your golf game. When you ride, the chatter between players in a cart destroys concentration.
"Also, I find it's very difficult to suddenly go from a sitting position in a golf cart to a standing position where you're trying to execute a golf shot. Carts are fine if you have a physical problem, but otherwise it's much better to walk, both for the exercise and for your golf game."
There are few golf courses in the state that Mr. Dunham has not played or visited as a scorekeeper for the Connecticut State Golf Association. His favorite? The Country Club of Fairfield. "It's a partial links course, with some holes overlooking Long Island Sound," he said. "And every hole is a delight to look at."
The toughest courses in the state? "Wee Burn in Darien, Black Hall in Old Lyme and the Waterbury Country Club," said Mr. Dunham, who thinks nothing of driving two hours or more from Salisbury to Greenwich to play a round of golf, and sometimes as many as 27 holes.
That keeps him away from home most days, from early spring through late fall and sometimes beyond. Does Victoria, his wife of 56 years, object? "No, not at all," he says. "It keeps me out of the way."
Mrs. Dunham, who has never played the game, described herself as "the original golf widow."
"But I love having George play," she said. "He's happy doing it. And his doctors are amazed that he keeps walking instead of riding after his operation."
After surgery on his left leg five years ago, Mr. Dunham was told by his doctor that he should ride while playing. "But there's no way I was going to do that, because I can't play that way, he said. "So I've kept walking, and my leg is just fine."
Mr. Dunham's first job was at The Fort Myers News Press in Florida, where he wrote a column entitled "Hooks and Slices" and where he met golfing legends like Mr. Hagen and Gene Sarazen. In the early 1930's, he also got to know and play golf with Connie Mack, the longtime manager of the old Philadelphia Athletics, and such A's stars as Jimmy Foxx and Lefty Grove.
"Mack would play golf wearing his black suit, straw hat and winged-tip collar and tie," Mr. Dunham recalled. "And Foxx would hit tee shots more than 300 yards, but with an enormous slice."
After being marryied and graduating from the University of Michigan, Mr. Dunham served four years in the Navy during World War II as, first, a gunner in the North Atlantic and, later, as a pilot in the Pacific.
"I was a 90-day wonder," he said, alluding to his shift from enlisted man to officer, from seaman to lieutenant commander. Then he operated his own flying service on Long Island and later flew small planes to South America on consignment. Then for 20 years, while living in Redding, he was an executive at a freight company in Manhattan.
In the 1970's, in between dabbling in real estate, Mr. Dunham, then living in Norfolk, spent five years as a golf pro at the Norfolk Country Club. "The club was a playground for the idle rich from New York and New Jersey who would come up on private trains," Mr. Dunham recalled. "The Vanderbilts had nothing on them."
It was around that time that Mr. Dunham shot his lowest score ever, a 67, at the Torrington Country Club in Goshen. "My best since then was a 72 at Farmington Woods about 10 years ago," he said, "and I doubt if I'm going to top that."
Mr. McAuliffe, who spent 14 seasons with the Detroit Tigers and two with the Boston Red Sox, marvels at Mr. Dunham's power and endurance.
"George can put it out there 225 to 230 yards," said Mr. McAuliffe, who has a 6 handicap. "And he never seems to get tired even though he always walks the course."
If anything, he tends to do better as a round progresses. "Sure, I get tired sometimes, but as a rule I do better on the back nine," said Mr. Dunham, whose diet usually includes fruit and cereal for breakfast, an apple or some raisins for lunch and a light dinner. ("At 80, one doesn't need much to eat -- only the right things.")
Unlike many older golfers, Mr. Dunham does not head to warmer climates during the winter. Instead, he and his wife remain in Salisbury in the coldest and snowiest part of the state.
"I stay home to hibernate and become a curmudgeon," he said before getting into his pickup truck for the 75-mile drive back to Salisbury from the Race Brook Country Club in Orange. "I stay in shape by splitting wood, shoveling snow, of which we have plenty, and walking the mountain." That's really the foothills of the Berkshires, which he visits with his border collie.
"I also swing my clubs in the house while looking in a full-length mirror. Most of the rest of the time, I spend listening to Mozart, writing poetry, reading -- especially Winston Churchill -- and writing my book." The book is a humorous novel -- "I think it's satire," he said -- about life, and especially golf, at a mythical country club.
Will Mr. Dunham be back to defend his senior title at Farmington Woods next summer?
 "No way," he replied. "I don't like to play in tournaments because at my age I get buck fever hovering over a four-foot putt. The tournament last summer was my last hurrah. I know when the party's over. Or almost over. And besides Dick McAuliffe's going to be 55 and eligible for the senior tournament next summer. And he's much better than me."

LOAD-DATE: November 29, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: George Dunham's home base is the Farmington Woods Country Club. (Photographs by Steve Miller for The New York Times)

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November 27, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Should Historical Buildings Yield to Square Glass Boxes?

BYLINE: By BILL RYAN  

SECTION: Section 13CN;   Page 1;   Column 3;   Connecticut Weekly Desk  

LENGTH: 1244 words

A GIANT metal claw started to rip away at the 100-year-old Laurel Street School in Branford one day late in October, only hours after a Federal judge in Hartford concluded that town officials had not acted unreasonably in deciding to demolish the school to make way for a new police station.
The destruction of the school was the culmination of a 10-month sometimes bitter battle between town officials and their supporters, who wanted to raze the school, and a citizens' organization known as SOS (Save Our School). Eventually the battle also involved the Connecticut Historical Commission and the State Attorney General's office, both of which favored retaining the school building as a historically important structure. 
 For the historical commission's director, John W. Shannahan, the demise of the old school meant one more folder he will add to a stack in a cabinet in his office. Each folder represents a lost cause, a sort of necrology of buildings Mr. Shannahan felt were important reminders of Connecticut's past.
The necrology includes structures like the huge 19th-century Whittemore summer home overlooking Lake Quassapaug in Middlebury, dismantled to be sold piece by piece by a salvage company; the old New Britain Opera House, still structurally sound but ignominiously reduced to showing pornographic movies, battered to earth by a wrecker's ball; the Hartford Aetna building, constructed in the early part of this century as the capital city's first skyscraper, imploded and tumbled to dust in the center of Hartford to make way for a new Society for Savings headquarters that to date has not materialized.
Of course, Mr. Shannahan said, not all worthy buildings receive such unworthy endings. Efforts of his commission and of non-governmental preservation organizations, sometimes working in concert, have been successful in saving some of them.
One of his favorites is the three-story yellow brick building near City Hall in Milford. It had been the city's high school at the turn of the century, but by the start of the 80's had degenerated into a prime example of municipal neglect, boarded up and falling apart. It was slated to be razed to make way for a new government complex, a plan supported by the local newspaper, The Milford Citizen. "It obviously is time that it goes," the newspaper commented editorially.
The building, however, did not go. It now contains 39 apartments for elderly people and is considered a prime example of a successful second life for an elderly building. After it was dedicated to its new use in 1993, The Milford Citizen admitted it had been too enthusiastic in seeking its demise. "Historic minds prevailed and the sow's ear became a silk purse," the newspaper then commented editorially.
But such successes are not often enough, Mr. Shannahan feels. Connecticut has destroyed, and keeps destroying, too many buildings with little regard for their historical significance or what they contribute to the overall architecture of a community. "People go to Disney World to see Main Street U.S.A.," he said. "We have them right here, but they're being destroyed.
"It's not that we went to keep all old buildings in the state," he said about his commission. "Many buildings are beyond hope. They should be torn down. We don't worship old buildings here. But there has to be a balance. Some buildings you can recycle. You can find new uses.
"People say, 'What's one building?' But you get one developer after another tearing down one building after another, and finally you have a city of square glass boxes."
Both major cities and smaller towns in the state have been guilty of excessive demolition, he said, but Hartford demonstrated the greatest zeal for destruction, particularly in the 80's. He described it as a frenzy, with developers rushing in to put up bigger and higher and more glitzy new buildings. "It just sort of got out of control. They were taking down buildings you can't replicate, you can't duplicate," Mr. Shannahan said.
Then, when the boom times ended, what Hartford had to show for the frenzy was a devastated central business section, lots of vacant lots where distinctive buildings had once been and a reputation as one of the poorest cities in the country. "Last Christmas, I went up to Main Street," Mr. Shannahan said, "and it struck me, all those vacant buildings and empty lots. The city has lost its identity."
Haven't cities elsewhere also lost their identities? Not to the same degree as Hartford, Mr. Shannahan said. "I'm a native of Boston," he said, "and when I go back there, I still get a feeling of history when I walk around. It's a nice feeling."
The sad fact, Mr. Shannahan said, is that there are very few safeguards when it comes to retaining the historical character of Hartford or other Connecticut cities.
The state does have a law on establishing historic districts, which makes it difficult to change or destroy old buildings within their boundaries. At present, there are 104 such districts in various parts of the state (although none in Hartford). But Connecticut is the only state that requires historic districts to be placed on the ballot, he said, and currently that means two-thirds of all property owners in a proposed district must vote to approve it.
Elsewhere, he said, it is easier to protect historical places and areas. "In New York City, Boston, Chicago, if the city designates a building as a landmark, that's it," Mr. Shannahan said. When the Penn Central Railroad wanted to put a high rise above Grand Central Terminal and the city refused to allow it, the case went to court. " And the court said the station represented the best use of the property, not the highest use," he said. It was a ruling that gladdened the heart of preservationists.
Connecticut also has a 1982 amendment to the state Environmental Protection Act that provides that before an old building of historic significance is torn down, it must be demonstrated that "feasible and prudent alternatives" for keeping the building have been explored. The problem is that the wording is subject to interpretation. What does "feasible" really mean? How much money does "prudent" mean?
Mr. Shannahan's best advice to municipal leaders is to examine what architectural history is left in the cities and then build on that base rather than continually tearing it down. The commission that Mr. Shannahan heads was established in 1955 at a time when cities were on the verge of massive changes. It has remained a tiny branch of government that today numbers only 19 full-time and 6 part-time employees. Its headquarters is in the Bull House near downtown Hartford, one of only a half-dozen 18th-century structures that remain in one of the country's oldest cities.
Perhaps the greatest irony about the commission is that it has had more than a bit of trouble preserving its own identity. In 1971, 1977 and 1992, attempts were made to merge the it into bigger state agencies. The latest attempt was by Gov. Lowell P. Weicker Jr. when, in his 1992-1993 budget, he proposed the transfer of the historical commission to the Department of Economic Development.
Members of the commission, backed by preservationists around the state, convinced the General Assembly that such a move was ill advised on the basis that the historical group oversees all state and Federal projects, to insure that they do not encroach on places of historic significance.

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GRAPHIC: Photos: The Laurel Street School in Branford recently fell to a wrecking claw. Lamenting its demise is John W. Shannahan, right, director of the state's Historical Commission. (Pg. 1) (Thomas McDonald for The New York Times; right, George Ruhe for The New York Times); A mural of the Aetna building, a Hartford landmark that was demolished to make rooom for a bank office building. The new building never materialized. (Pg. 16)

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November 27, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

A Thelma and Louis Take Love on the Lam

BYLINE: AP  

SECTION: Section 1;   Page 48;   Column 1;   National Desk  

LENGTH: 488 words

DATELINE: NEW ORLEANS, Nov. 26

With her boyfriend facing a 20-year sentence for armed robbery, a young woman who had "never gone anywhere" embarked on the trip of a lifetime, seeing Graceland and getting married before being arrested on a Georgia island, law-enforcement officials said.
The woman, Consuella Monique Gaines-Thomas, began her 1,100-mile journey on Nov. 10 in Opelousas, La., about 130 miles northwest of New Orleans. 
 As her boyfriend, Gordon Ray Thomas, and two other prisoners were being led in shackles through the crowded town square at about noon, Ms. Gaines-Thomas, who was two months pregnant, suddenly appeared, the authorities said. Shotgun in hand, she ordered the deputies to unchain Mr. Thomas, and they complied, wanting to avoid a gunfight in the noontime traffic.
"She had never gone anywhere, and she wanted to go sightseeing," Chief Criminal Deputy Laura Bal thazar said last week in describing the events that had led to the capture of the couple on Nov. 18.
But in order to get anywhere, the couple, both 23, needed transportation. Their solution, Deputy Balthazar said, was a powder-blue Cadillac, which they stole from two elderly women.
They headed north to Little Rock, Ark., via northeast Texas. "They followed a prison bus all the way," the deputy said. "They thought that was the safest thing to do."
With a few thousand dollars in savings, Mr. Thomas and Ms. Gaines-Thomas had planned to fly to Jamaica from Miami. But they decided to do some sightseeing instead and drove to Memphis, stopping several police officers to ask for directions, Deputy Balthazar said.
The couple toured Graceland, the home of Elvis Presley, and looked for a place to stay. Discovering that the Memphis hotels were all booked with a convention of Baptist ministers, they picked a minister and were married, on Nov. 15.
They then drove to Nashville and Chattanooga, Tenn., on their way to Tybee Island, east of Savannah.
"The only reason they ended up in Tybee Island was she wanted to see the beach," the deputy said.
The couple got no farther. As Mr. Thomas was putting the shotgun into the car at a trailer park, the gun accidentally went off. Residents called the police, and one roadblock later, the honeymoon was over.
Before the couple were caught, they threw their remaining money, about $2,500, into the Atlantic Ocean, the deputy said.
Mr. Thomas is serving his original sentence. Officials also plan to charge him with aggravated escape, armed robbery and avoiding prosecution. Ms. Gaines-Thomas is being held on $500,000 bond, facing charges of carjacking, armed robbery, aggravated escape and aggravated assault.
Deputy Balthazar, who escorted them to Opelousas in her squad car on Tuesday, said the newlyweds laughed and chatted the whole way.
"I don't think it's dawned on them, what they're facing," she said. "They're looking up to 99 years for that armed robbery. Especially on two elderly ladies."

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November 27, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

In America;
Starve the Weak

BYLINE: By BOB HERBERT 

SECTION: Section 4;  Page 11;  Column 1;  Editorial Desk 

LENGTH: 711 words

The elderly woman was moving slowly up Lexington Avenue in East Harlem, her face ashen and her eyes tearing against the sudden wind and the cold that had rolled in on the day before Thanksgiving. By the end of the day there would be snow showers, but the snow hadn't started yet. The sun was still shining on a cold autumn morning that felt like winter. The woman had a long brown scarf draped over her head like a hood. Her steps were painfully slow. She was heading north on Lexington, in search of a meal.
 An old man had directed the woman toward Emmaus House, at Lexington and 124th Street, which provides a bit of food for the destitute and the working poor in a setting reminiscent of the Great Depression. 
 The man had said: "Try them, sister. They might have a little something for you."
 New York is gearing up for another spectacular holiday season. The enormous tree is in place in Rockefeller Center. The ultimate American value (the value of the almighty dollar) is about to be reaffirmed. A bountiful season has been forecast. But all the festivities in the world cannot hide the fact that something evil is eating at the national soul, and New York has not escaped it. In the midst of plenty, in the most advanced society on earth, the prevailing political mood calls for humbling the weak and the helpless. National and local policies already in the works would empty the storage bins of community programs like Emmaus House and would take food out of the mouths of individuals like the old woman on Lexington Avenue.
 The prosperous are on the march against the poor. In the new political climate, driven by talk radio and the emerging Republican majority in Congress, no quarter is to be given, no mercy shown. Toddlers who can't ante up the price of their breakfast had better get used to the sound of their stomachs growling.
 "We serve 500 meals a day, but it's not enough and our resources are dwindling," said the Rev. David Kirk, a Melkite Catholic priest who is the president of Emmaus House. "We have elderly people here who are trying to stretch their Social Security checks. We have poor families. We have a lot of grandparents who come looking for baby food for their grandkids. It's a terrible situation."
 The demand for soup kitchens and food pantries has become intense as more and more Americans find themselves sliding into the ugly pit of poverty. But government support for anti-hunger efforts is rapidly diminishing.
 "We had to shut our pantry down for three weeks," said Father Kirk. "The money dried up."
 Much worse is ahead. Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, struggling with a perennial budget deficit, wants to cut city funding for anti-hunger projects. And the coming Republican majority in Congress can hardly wait to begin battering anti-poverty programs on all fronts.
 "We're already in bad shape," said Kathy Goldman, who directs the Community Food Resource Center, a citywide nonprofit program. For those who imagine that hunger is a small problem, Ms. Goldman noted that there are 750 soup kitchens and food pantries in the city that distribute the equivalent of 2.5 million to 3 million meals per month. Even so, 30,000 to 35,000 people are turned away each month. In the midst of plenty there is plenty of suffering.
 A week and a half ago, The Times's Alan Finder wrote about elderly New Yorkers who routinely forage for food in supermarket garbage bins. "I lost my pride a long time ago," said 87-year-old Casey Losik, a retired shipping clerk.
 When next year's Republican-led Congress begins showing off its muscle with an unabashed assault on the needy, food programs across the country will be caught in an awful squeeze. With their funds diminishing, the programs will find the lines of hungry people at their doors lengthening.
 Among other things, House Republicans plan to hack away at funding for food stamps, the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, and the school lunch and breakfast programs.
 Those are the kinds of cuts that send people in droves to soup kitchens and food pantries, the providers of last resort. No one has figured out what happens when they arrive at the kitchens and the pantries only to find the pots and the shelves are bare.

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November 27, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Population Trends Hold Surprises

BYLINE: By ELSA BRENNER 

SECTION: Section 13WC;  Page 1;  Column 3;  Westchester Weekly Desk 

LENGTH: 1373 words

A REPORT issued earlier this month on the county's population has broad implications for educators, health-care workers and taxpayers, demographers and planning officials said last week.
The report, "Westchester County and Municipalities: Population Estimates for Jan. 1, 1993," found that last year's count of 885,731 follows moderate increases since 1990 and reverses a downward trend of the 1970's and 1980's. 
 The latest figures reflect an increase in both the birth rate and migration to Westchester from other countries and other parts of the New York City area, according to the County Planning Department.
The report predicts that if the birth rate continues at its high level, if the economic recovery continues at a moderate pace and if migration continues at its current level, Westchester's population will exceed 890,000 by 1995, approaching 1970's historic ceiling of 894,000.
The County Clerk's office reported last week that there was a surge last year in naturalizations, which paralleled an increase in immigrants counted by the Planning Department.
Demographers had predicted that the county's population would stabilize in the 90's, and Planning Department officials said they were surprised to find the population up by 1 percent in 1990 and 1.24 percent last year.
Last year's increase was mainly the result of growth by two groups -- school-age children and the elderly. That is expected to have a profound impact on both the type and amount of public services needed in the future, officials said.
For one, the number of children entering the public schools has jumped in recent years -- the result of the highest birth rates since the mid-60's. In 1992, there were 15 births per 1,000 people in Westchester, compared with 11.4 births per 1,000 in 1982.
While birth rates are not expected to hit the record high of 19.6 per 1,000 in 1961, the recent surge -- or boomlet, as it is being called -- was not expected. School planners nevertheless face serious implications.
Mary R. Carlson, a researcher for the Department of Planning, attributed the boomlet in part to post World War II baby boomers who are bearing children relatively late in life.
Children entering school next fall in Westchester are expected to be among the largest class in the county since 1970, and they will be followed by even larger classes of children born since 1990.
Last year, there were 10,141 students enrolled in Westchester's public kindergarten classes, compared with 7,193 in 1983.
Ruth Robinson, a statistician for the State Department of Education, said that the increase in incoming kindergarten classes occurred as the overall public school enrollment dropped to 115,996, from 117,598 in 1983.
Evelyn M. Stock, president of the Westchester-Putnam School Boards Association, a nonprofit organization serving 55 school boards, said that the growing enrollments are translating into pocketbook issues.
"We're talking about a greater tax burden, new buildings in some cases and caring for new populations with special needs -- the immigrants," she said.
Janet S. Walker, executive director of the Westchester-Putnam School Boards Association, said that both the smaller, suburban school districts and the big city systems were feeling the impact of newly arrived immigrants in the classroom and that by law public schools were required to educate all children "regardless of their legal status." In California earlier this month, voters approved a proposition that would limit public services like education to illegal immigrants, but a Federal judge later blocked implementation of the law pending determination of Constitutional questions of due process and invasion of privacy.
The largest immigrant groups in the county include those from Japan, India, Central and South America, the Caribbean islands, Korea, China and the Middle East.
Dee R. Barbato, a program administrator in the County Clerk's office, reported that her office was performing more than 300 naturalizations a month -- more than double the usual number. She said the increase that began last year followed a general amnesty granted five years ago by the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service to illegal immigrants. In most cases, it takes about five years to complete the paperwork and classes needed to become naturalized.
Dr. Vincent T. Beni, Superintendent of Schools in Hastings-on-Hudson and president of the Southern Westchester Chief School Administrators, noted that the demands on school districts for more classrooms and teachers comes at a time when state aid has hit historic lows.
Dr. Beni, whose organization represents 35 school districts, said schools were facing devastating pressures and many districts had to float bonds to pay for renovations and expansion.
At the same time that the school-age population has been increasing, the Department of Planning's population report for last year said that the number of elderly living in Westchester -- those older than 60 -- had also risen, while the number of young adults and middle-aged people remained relatively stable.
According to 1990 census figures, there were 170,971 elderly people in Westchester during 1990, up from 126,023 a decade earlier. Moreover, the number of "old-old" residents, those over 85, had increased by 35.9 percent in a decade to 14,200 by 1990.
The Planning Department's report showed that the nursing-home population had increased to 8,759 by 1992 from 7,256 in 1990.
"What was unbelievable and unique -- like living to be 100 -- is becoming more commonplace," said Laura Bolotsky, an administrator for the County Office for the Aging, who said that as population figures for the elderly rose, her office was increasingly being called upon for its services.
The Office for the Aging finances municipal and agency services for the elderly: nutrition, transportation, housing assistance, crime prevention and legal aid. It also provides information and referrals for nutritionists and has a case-management staff, which attempts to prevent premature institutionalization.
Its $8 million yearly budget "is certainly seeing a strain," said Mae Carpenter, director of the office. "We're stretching ourselves to the limit. It's a triage situation. First, we have to serve those most at risk. Then we look at preventive care. Sometimes, quality-of-life services get pushed to the side."
Ms. Stock of the school boards association said that the elderly, who were often on fixed incomes, were also being called upon as taxpayers to pay for new school expenses.
"They are being squeezed financially," she said. "But they are also grandparents, and when it comes to funding schools, we hope they are able to look at the broader picture."
The Planning Department's population estimate report -- the first in a new series prepared by the research division of the department -- also reported an increase in the number of single-person households. Between 1980 and 1990, those numbers were up by 25 percent to 322,999, and about half of those represented elderly people living alone. The 1993 report did not contain revised figures.
The report also says that the county is showing signs of recovering from the economic recession of the late 80's and early 90's, demonstrated by the absorption of unsold and unoccupied housing in many parts of Westchester, along with an increasing demand for new residential units.
The population estimates were arrived at, in part, by using housing-vacancy rates from the 1990 census in the absence of more recent data, the report says.
Population increases were registered by all cities in the county, with the largest gains in Peekskill (up 2.61 percent to 20,045), White Plains (up 1.87 percent to 49,627) and Yonkers (up 1.22 percent to 190,377).
Population in the northern part of the county grew at twice the rate of the county, with an increase of about 5,600 or 2.3 percent.
The central part, led by Greenburgh and White Plains, grew by 1.04 percent or 2,200 people.
Growth in the southern tier of Westchester, while modest, was bolstered by an increase of nearly 2,300 in Yonkers and represented the first population gain in that part of the county in more than 20 years.

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November 28, 1994, Monday, Late Edition - Final

OPERA REVIEW;
In All-Male Revue, Art Meets Noise

BYLINE: By ALEX ROSS 

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

LENGTH: 571 words

It is a bland fact of nature that falsetto goes up, not down: men's voices can climb into mezzo-soprano or even soprano registers, while most women's voices cannot likewise descend. The male transgression most often results in excruciating noise, but it can sometimes attain high art; there are several countertenors presently before the public who produce genuinely beautiful mezzo tone. In the case of La Gran Scena's all-male opera revue, seen on Saturday night at the Kaye Playhouse (Hunter College, 68th Street between Lexington and Park Avenues), moments of high art and excruciating noise produced comedy of a sophisticated kind.
This is the company's 13th year -- what it likes to call its bar mitzvah season -- and it presented a gala array of maimed excerpts from various operatic genres: the "Ride of the Valkyries," the closing trio from "Der Rosenkavalier," the duet of the title character and Arsace from "Semiramide," the St. Sulpice scene from "Manon" and the entirety, more or less, of Act II of "Tosca." The evening's host was Sylvia Bills (Joe Simmons), "America's most beloved retired diva," expertly sending up the gala chitchat of Beverly Sills. 
 The members of La Gran Scena have created a colorful array of fictional divas to essay this ambitious repertory. Ira Siff, the company's founder and artistic director, stars as Madame Vera Galupe-Borszkh, the great traumatic soprano known as "La Dementia" to her legions of fans. Mr. Siff resourcefully exploits the inevitable obstacles his voice encounters in the soprano range, suggesting the vocal difficulties of a Slavic singer past her prime and out of her league. To say that Mme. Galupe-Borszkh has a problematic register break is to understate the case severely.
The "Rosenkavalier" trio was supposed to be an excerpt from an iconoclastic production-in-progress directed by Mme. Galupe-Borszkh. It takes place at a shopping mall outside Fort Lee, N.J.; the Marschallin has been renamed Marsha Lynn, and Octavian is a footloose teen-ager wearing a baseball cap turned backward, a Walkman and a T-shirt that reads, "I Love Older Women." Supertitles provide an up-to-date translation of Hofmannstahl's libretto: "Sophie's cool, but, like, Marsha's awesome."
The evening's tour de force, however, was the manhandling of Act II of "Tosca." Mme. Galupe-Borszkh exploded every cliche associated with the lead role. The noted Hungarian baritone Fodor Sedan matched her move for move, tangoing around the stage to Puccini's striding rhythms. This parody was notable for its detail: each of the comprimario singers had his own routine, and no bit of stage business went unscathed. (Tosca discovers the instrument of Scarpia's demise while carving slices of turkey for herself.)
These antics would be tiresome if real voices were not at work behind the satire. Keith Jurosko's impersonation of a very elderly Italian soprano, called to the stage to sing her favorite encore, "The Last Rose of Summer," was very funny, but also rather uncanny; he was a 78-rpm record brought to life. Mr. Siff, too, stepped outside of comedy for his bizarrely beautiful rendition of "Vissi d'arte." By the time all the evening's characters came onstage for an encore, slaughtering Broadway tunes in high operatic style, one had begun to believe in their crazed world, and La Gran Scena had become opera itself.
The revue will be repeated on Friday and Saturday.

LOAD-DATE: November 30, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Ira Siff as Madame Vera Galupe-Borszkh (a k a "La Dementia") in La Gran Scena's all-male opera revue. (Beatriz Schiller for The New York Times)

TYPE: Review

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November 29, 1994, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final

Pfizer Forms Japan Alliance

BYLINE: AP 

SECTION: Section D;  Page 2;  Column 3;  Financial Desk 

LENGTH: 179 words

DATELINE: TOKYO, Nov. 28

Pfizer Inc. has formed an alliance with the Eisai Company of Japan to develop a new drug for Alzheimer's disease, the companies said today.
The alliance will focus on an Eisai compound, E2020, which is undergoing clinical tests in Japan, the United States and Europe. 
 The companies plan to market the drug jointly in the United States, Britain, Germany, France and Japan pending regulatory approval. Pfizer will hold the marketing rights for E2020 in all other countries.
Alzheimer's is a form of dementia that generally afflicts elderly people. Its symptoms include memory loss, behavioral changes and, eventually, loss of language and motor skills. The disease is the fourth leading cause of death in the United States.
The companies will also work together on the possible development of other dementia agents, including Pfizer's CP-118,594.
Eisai, which had $2.3 billion in 1993 sales, said the agreement would help it establish a presence in Europe and the United States. Pfizer is a New York-based health care company with annual sales of $7.5 billion.

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November 30, 1994, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

In America;
Business Beats Brooklyn

BYLINE: By BOB HERBERT  

SECTION: Section A;   Page 23;   Column 6;   Editorial Desk  

LENGTH: 688 words

Final approval of the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade will tear a large hole in the Federal budget. But this breach of the budget is not considered a major problem by Government leaders in Washington because the new GATT agreement will be a bonanza for big business, and that is something favored by Democrats and Republicans alike.
When benefits for working people or the poor are involved, the budget deficit is seen as an insurmountable problem. There is no money for investments in ordinary Americans. But the specter of $42 billion in lost tariff revenues over the next decade is met with a shrug by the movers and shakers in Congress and the White House. As long as it's for business -- well, then, that's all right. 
 Brownsville, a desolate and mostly forgotten neighborhood in Brooklyn, is light years from Washington. Its residents will never be mistaken for the champagne-drinking, limousine-riding lobbyists who are swarming all over Capitol Hill in a gaudy display of corporate muscle on behalf of GATT. A glimpse of this crippled neighborhood was provided in Senate testimony last spring by Anne Kohler, who runs a soup kitchen in a tiny storefront that once housed a bakery:
"Our clients consist of the working poor, single mothers with children, long-term unemployed single men (part of the blue-collar work force, where many jobs have disappeared), married families with children, senior citizens, the mentally ill, the disabled and the handicapped. Some are illiterate, some are college-educated, some are chemically dependent, some worked all of their lives only to find that in old age the safety net has begun to crumble beneath their feet."
What these soup kitchen clients have in common is an economic predicament so dire they cannot be sure from one day to the next that they will eat. This is not easily understood by Congressmen, senators and Presidents who have trouble buttoning their jackets over their ample midsections. Hunger is alien to them.
Ms. Kohler's soup kitchen is called Neighbors Together and is the second-largest in Brooklyn. It serves a simple lunch (canned meat, a starch, canned vegetables) to 500 people a day, five days a week.
"I think most people are unaware of the tremendous poverty that exists in this country," said Ms. Kohler during an interview on Monday. "I see the suffering in the eyes of these people. Some of them are frail and old. There are women who are retarded. They can't work. I get sick to my stomach when I hear the stereotypes about how lazy the poor are, how they're living such great lives at the taxpayers' expense."
One evening Ms. Kohler took a boy from a desperately poor family home to spend the night with her and her husband in a different part of Brooklyn. "I told him he could sleep on the sofabed, or on a makeshift bed on the floor, beside our bed."
A stricken look crossed the boy's face. "Do you have mice?" he asked.
Ms. Kohler said the boy was afraid because his experience was that children who slept on the floor would have mice running over them.
GATT is about power and money and influence. Brownsville is about survival. Some of the very same Government officials who are going to the mat for GATT are also trying to cut the food stamp allotments of the poor. If there is equity in that kind of governing -- not to mention a sense of humanity -- Ms. Kohler has been unable to find it.
"Food stamps!" she cried, her eyes angry. "Can you believe they want to cut food stamps? A monthly allotment of food stamps provides about 88 cents per meal. I'll take you shopping and you see if you can buy a meal for 88 cents. Now they're going to give them less?"
The fine restaurants of the nation's capital are heavily booked for tomorrow night as corporate representatives prepare to celebrate the Uruguay Round's final passage. If the Senate gives the thumbs up, there will be toasts and laughter and triumphant applause, the kind of exuberance that accompanies a sudden acceleration of wealth and worth.
It's the kind of celebration that's as alien to Brownsville as hunger is to Capitol Hill.

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December 1, 1994, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

Stone Age Man Had Modern Pains, Study Says

BYLINE: AP 

SECTION: Section A;  Page 18;  Column 1;  National Desk 

LENGTH: 376 words

DATELINE: CHICAGO, Nov. 30

The 5,300-year-old "ice man," whose well-preserved body was discovered in a glacier three years ago in the Alps, had arthritis, hardening of the arteries and broken ribs that healed slowly, researchers said today.
Dr. William A. Murphy Jr., head of diagnostic imaging at the University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, reported on the ice man's medical condition at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America. 
 "It's really not much different from modern man," Dr. Murphy said. "There are just very impressive similarities."
Researchers believe that the gap-toothed Stone Age man was 25 to 40 years of age when he died, but he had already developed fairly severe osteoarthritis, a slowly progressive, degenerative bone disease found chiefly in elderly people, in his neck, lower back and one hip, Dr. Murphy said.
Osteoarthritis in one little toe also suggests that he may have suffered from frostbite, Dr. Murphy added.
Calcium deposits were found in the blood vessels of the ice man's chest, pelvis and neck, indicating heart disease.
"He had hardening of the arteries, arteriosclerosis," Dr. Murphy said.
But researchers have no way of knowing whether this was unusual for men of that age in that era, he said, adding, "He's the only reference point we have for 5,300 years ago."
Eight fractures were found in the ice man's ribs, but no one can say whether they occurred all at once or at different times, Dr. Murphy said.
"It's the kind of thing that might have hospitalized modern man," he said. "He did very well with these; he certainly lived well beyond the injuries."
Dr. Murphy was part of an international team assembled at the University of Innsbruck in Austria to examine the mummified body with X-ray techniques.
The researchers have taken more than 2,000 images of the man since he was found, Dr. Murphy said.
The body was found in the ice by hikers. The corpse is the best-preserved European known from 4,000 to 6,000 years ago, when humans were just starting to use copper for tools and weapons.
The body is being stored in a freezer at the University of Innsbruck, and researchers are allowed to work with it only 20 or 30 minutes at a time to prevent it from deteriorating.

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December 4, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

WEDDINGS;
Dana Selig, Steven L. Kahn

SECTION: Section 1; Page 65; Column 6; Society Desk

LENGTH: 162 words

Dana Selig, a hearing officer for the New York City Board of Education in Brooklyn, is to be married today to Steven Lewis Kahn, an associate at Loft & Zarkin, a law firm in New York. Rabbi Shlomo Balter is to perform the ceremony at Tappan Hill in Tarrytown, N.Y.
The bride, 27, graduated cum laude from Clark University. She and the bridegroom received law degrees from Brooklyn Law School. She is the daughter of Karen and Benjamin Selig of Wesley Hills, N.Y. 
 The bride's father is a senior partner in Hurley, Fox, Selig & Kelleher, a Stony Point, N.Y., law firm. Her mother is an administrative assistant at the firm.
The bridegroom, 28, graduated from Cornell University. He is the son of Myra and Joel Kahn of New City, N.Y.
The bridegroom's mother is the director of the senior citizens program at the Rockland County Association of Retarded Citizens in Congers, N.Y. His father retired as a court reporter at the State Supreme Court in Manhattan.

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December 4, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

WEDDINGS;
Heather Vrooman, Neal Zuckerman

SECTION: Section 1; Page 65; Column 5; Society Desk

LENGTH: 210 words

Heather Anne Vrooman, a daughter of Lynda and Edward A. Vrooman of Garrison, N.Y., is to be married today to First Lieut. Neal Jeffrey Zuckerman, the son of Phyllis S. Zuckerman of Scarsdale, N.Y., and Richard J. Zuckerman of Mohegan Lake, N.Y. Donald J. McGrath, the town clerk of Philipstown, N.Y., is to officiate at the Putnam County Historical Society in Cold Spring, N.Y.
The bride, 25, graduated from St. Lawrence University. She was until recently the personnel coordinator at D'Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles, a New York advertising agency. Her father, a lawyer in Garrison, is also a director of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and chairman of the Metro-North Railroad Committee. Her mother is director of development at the Dutchess County Association for Senior Citizens in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. 
 The bridegroom, 24, graduated with honors from the United States Military Academy at West Point, N.Y. He recently returned from South Korea, where he served as the company executive officer, and has been reassigned to Fort Carson, Colo. His mother is an administrative assistant at Leon Reimer & Company, an accounting firm in Tarrytown, N.Y. His father is a senior partner in Lesser, Leff & Company, an accounting firm in New York.

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December 4, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Plan to Give Venison To the Poor Hits a Snag

SECTION: Section 1;   Page 54;   Column 1;   Metropolitan Desk  

LENGTH: 749 words

The idea was simple enough: deer hunters in New Jersey would donate their venison to the poor, making good use of meat that might otherwise go to waste.
While the hungry would get the food, the hunters of New Jersey would get the good publicity. Several other states, including Maryland and New York, have similar government-sanctioned programs. 
 Yet in New Jersey, the plan, which drew opposition from anti-hunting groups, has fallen victim to an unexpected bureaucratic misunderstanding in the state legislature, which supports the idea.
The deer hunters' trek through the brambles of bureaucracy began in the mid-1980's, when Bergen County Bowmen, a sportsman's group affiliated with the United Bowhunters of New Jersey, proposed donating venison to soup kitchens.
In autumn 1989 the bowhunters obtained permission to begin a three-year demonstration program under the auspices of the New Jersey State Department of Health and the Division of Fish, Game and Wildlife. Some 1,800 pounds of venison were distributed to two charities in Hackensack and elsewhere over the three-year period, said Mike Volpe, president of the United Bowhunters of New Jersey.
The hunters tried to create a permanent statewide program, but ran into delays. "We got caught in the legislative process," Mr. Volpe said. "We ended up shutting down for two years."
Finally, Gov. Jim Florio signed a bill in 1993 introduced by Assemblyman John Gaffney, Republican from the 2d District, that would allow venison donations gathered from hunts to be given to the needy, and for the meat to be inspected by the state.
Six butchers and seven charities in Hackensack, Union City, Atlantic City, Pomona, Salem and New Brunswick were ready to handle the meat. Mr. Volpe said that strict record-keeping would have allowed the state to trace the hunter and the kill if there were any problems with the meat.
But in the confusion of keeping track of several similar proposals, supporters did not realize that it was an earlier version of Mr. Gaffney's bill that had gone through committee. That version gave jurisdiction for the program to the Department of Agriculture -- which doesn't have the capability to inspect the meat.
"The Department of Agriculture doesn't have an inspection bureau for this particular activity," said Joe Marczyk, an assistant to Mr. Gaffney.
Meanwhile, New Jersey Assembly's Senior Citizens and Social Services Committee has voted to replace the mistakenly passed measure with one that would give jurisdiction to the Health Department. But by the time the legislature acts, this year's opportunities may be lost: The final day for all deer hunting is Jan. 31.
The committee has asked Governor's Council to determine if Gov. Christine Todd Whitman could invoke executive power to jump-start the program until the legislative process catches up. Calls to the office of the Governor's Council were not returned as of last week.
"We already have a three-year proven track record with the health department," Mr. Volpe said. "I can't see any reason for not granting our request."
The venison-donation program in neighboring states has proven more successful. The Maryland Deerhunter's Association runs the Hunter's Harvestshare program in cooperation with the Maryland Food Bank and the State's Department of Natural Resources. In New York State, agriculture and public health laws were amended in 1993 to allow nonprofit food kitchens to accept deer meat. Richard Svenson of the New York Health Department's Bureau of Community Sanitation and Food Protection said there had been no reported problems with venison donated by hunters.
Last year, a Pennsylvania program called Hunters Sharing the Harvest provided 70,000 pounds of deer meat to the poor, said Ken Brandt, executive vice president of Pennsylvanians for the Responsible Use of Animals.
"The anti-hunters can't say anything bad about this program," Mr. Brandt said.
But Stu Chaifetz, chairman of the Anti-Hunting Committee of the New Jersey Animal Rights Alliance, does.
"These are people killing for fun and then trying to make an excuse for it," said Mr. Chaifetz, whose organization makes alternative donations of vegetarian food to charities in Atlantic, Bergen, Morris and Cumberland counties.
Mr. Marczyk, Assemblyman Gaffney's assistant, called the problem unfortunate.
"It's kind of embarrassing how something like this can happen," he said. "The bill goes through, gets signed, and it doesn't help anyone."

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December 4, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

The Neediest Cases;
An Array of Troubles Afflicts the Elderly Poor

BYLINE: By ABBY GOODNOUGH 

SECTION: Section 1;  Page 56;  Column 1;  Metropolitan Desk 

LENGTH: 1147 words

If her chiming wooden clock did not prove otherwise, Elizabeth Malon would insist that time slows down in old age. Ninety-seven years old and partly blind, she spends her days wandering through a dark apartment in Queens, fending off illness, boredom and depression.
For weeks on end, Mrs. Malon's only contact with the outdoors is the sunlight that filters through her thick curtains. A woman from her church delivers a hot lunch four days a week, sometimes lingering for small talk. Other visitors are rare. Of Mrs. Malon's 4 children, 15 grandchildren and 26 great-grandchildren, only a few call regularly. 
 Last year she slipped in the bathtub, injuring her leg. She screamed for help for several hours before the building superintendent came to her aid. In April she fell again, fracturing her pelvis and ending up in bed for several months.
"I'm an independent person and I don't like to ask for help," she said last week, easing into her favorite armchair and clutching a pillow that she crocheted when her eyes were healthy. "The time gathers and lags on, and I do feel lonely."
For thousands of frail elderly New Yorkers, survival is a daily ritual of hardship and frustration. Mrs. Malon is among the more fortunate: her mind is still sharp, and with regular meal deliveries, she hangs on. But a growing number of New Yorkers are suffering from hunger and the many mental and physical ailments of old age. With government resources limited, poverty is taking a disproportionate toll on the city's elderly.  And private charities, including those served by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund, say the need is overwhelming.
According to the city Department for the Aging, New York has 953,317 residents over 65, or 13 percent of the total population. More than 150,000 of them, or 15.8 percent, have annual incomes below the poverty level: $7,360 for a single person, or about $20 a day. The national poverty rate for the elderly is 12 percent.
Those most likely to be poor are New Yorkers over 85, whose ranks grew by 32.6 percent between 1980 and 1990. Twenty percent of this group live in poverty, and the majority are women living alone.
The practical effects of these statistics are many. Waiting lists for home-delivered meals and subsidized public housing are long. Some elderly New Yorkers supplement meager diets by foraging in garbage bins. Others, in a few extreme cases, starve.
"A substantial number of elderly people are living on extremely meager incomes in an extremely high-cost city," said Marjorie Cantor, a gerontologist at the Fordham University Graduate School of Social Service.
"One of the main problems is that many of these people are not taking advantage of entitlements," said Ms. Cantor, who recently completed a study on aging New Yorkers. She found that only 57 percent of poor elderly New Yorkers received Medicaid in 1990, and 32 percent received food stamps.
Since only a fraction of elderly people can afford nursing homes, the need for community-based services is urgent. But charity officials say services for the elderly are not keeping up with the population explosion.
"Every hospital tells me stories of frail elderly who come to their emergency rooms malnourished, confused and sometimes even homeless," said Bob Wolf, director of medical and geriatric services for UJA-Federation of New York.
In a city where many elderly live alone, charity officials say malnutrition is rampant. According to the Department for the Aging, about 13,500 elderly New Yorkers receive government-subsidized, home-delivered meals. But the number of poor elderly is roughly 11 times that amount.
At the Woodside Senior Center in Queens, which is supported by Catholic Charities,four social workers assess piles of applications for hot meals. Choosing who receives help, they say, can be excruciating.
"Sometimes we have to decide between someone who's had a leg amputated and someone who's blind," said Donald Young, supervisor of the center's Meals on Wheels program, which delivers 50 lunches a day.
The Department for the Aging requires that delivered meals provide a third of daily nutritional needs. But many who receive meals, especially the physically or mentally disabled, eat little else. Jose Lopez, 67, who lives alone in Sunnyside, Queens, said that besides his daily lunch, he eats only cereal and peanut-butter sandwiches.
In Long Island City, an 86-year-old named Lucille G. forgoes lunch and eats her free meal in the evening, sitting on an ancient couch that is also her bed.
"It's not the best in the world, but I count my blessings," she said, heading to her tiny kitchen with a tray of chili and bread.
Too often, worries about food are compounded by the struggle to pay rent. According to the Census, elderly people living alone pay an average monthly rent of $311 -- half the average Social Security check.
In Flushing, Queens, Joan Cooke, 66, pays $433 in rent for a two-room apartment, which leaves about $100 until her next Social Security check. She survives on crackers, soup and egg sandwiches from a nearby coffee shop. For the past three years, the Community Service Society of New York has helped pay her electricity bill, which averages $28 a month.
Mrs. Cooke is still able to seek help on her own, but charity officials say a growing number of elderly New Yorkers -- especially those who are Hispanic or over 85 -- are not. Because of this, the Woodside Senior Center sends a nurse and a social worker to visit elderly residents who are physically or emotionally frail. The situations they encounter can be bleak.
Laura Zimmermann, the social worker, and Maggie Silver, the nurse, describe dozens of people unfit to live alone: an emotionally disturbed woman living in a tent in her living room. A man with Alzheimer's disease left alone when his wife was hospitalized. A woman who had not eaten in four days. Twice, they found people dead in squalid apartments.
"The typical case is an elder who is paranoid and suspicious of everything, living alone in a dirty house with no food," said Mrs. Zimmermann. "You don't want to take over these peoples' lives, but you want to help them live with dignity."
Last week, after receiving a call from a local church, Mrs. Zimmermann made her first visit to Elizabeth Malon. She found a woman who was entirely lucid, but frail, anxious and confused about her options. In the course of an hour, she advised Mrs. Malon on Medicare benefits, suggested a summer camp for the blind and told her how to cure her chapped hands. She listened as Mrs. Malon vented her frustrations about being housebound and nearly blind.
"I worked so hard for years to have a good retirement, and now I can't do anything," the old woman said, staring straight ahead with red-rimmed eyes. "Between the world I grew up in and this life, there's a vast difference."

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GRAPHIC: Photos: Fragile Independence: Elizabeth Malon, 97, at home in Middle Village, Queens, as Laura Zimmermann, as social worker, visits; A Need Fulfilled: For many, the hunger for food and companionship is acute. Michael Machado, left, a driver for a Meals on Wheels program run by Catholic Charities in Queens, readies hot lunches for delivery in Long Island City, Sunnyside and Woodside. (Photographs by MARILYNN K. YEE/The New York Times); Vernetta Crawford of the Woodside Senior Center, above right, and Rose Pennasilico share a meal on a field trip to a restaurant. (Andrea Mohin/The New York Times); Lucille G., below, of Long Island City, opens her door to a meal delivery; Finding Solace: A man climbs the steps to St. Mary's Senior Center, a place for recreation and meals in Long Island City. (Photographs by MARILYNN K. YEE/The New York Times)

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December 4, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

The Neediest Cases;
Lean Times for Catholic Charities

SECTION: Section 1;  Page 56;  Column 1;  Metropolitan Desk 

LENGTH: 270 words

After a sharp drop in private donations this year, Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of New York is conducting a mail campaign for the first time in its history. Msgr. James Murray, executive director, said the agency is $250,000 short of its budget, mostly because individual contributions have fallen off.
Catholic Charities, which has provided social services for the poor through a network of agencies since 1917, is one of seven charities supported by the annual appeal of The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund. The New York Times Company Foundation pays all the costs of running the appeal, so all contributions go directly to the charities. 
 Besides its own programs, Catholic Charities supports a network of hospitals, nursing homes, child care agencies and community centers in the New York region. Services range from prenatal care for indigent mothers to day care for the elderly. In New York City, eight family service centers provide emergency housing or food, legal advice and psychiatric care.
Monsignor Murray said the aftereffects of a long recession still weighed heavily on poor New Yorkers, many of whom depend on Catholic Charities for services. "All the layoffs and early retirements caused by the recession are making life difficult for hundreds of people," he said.
Like other charity officials, Monsignor Murray said he didn't know how city budget cuts would affect his agency. But he is especially concerned about programs supported by the Human Resources Administration, the Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation Services and the Department of Youth Services.

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December 4, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

SERVICES;
For Elderly, Places That Help

SECTION: Section 13;  Page 17;  Column 1;  The City Weekly Desk 

LENGTH: 420 words


Various services for the elderly are available through the Department for the Aging, other city agencies and volunteer groups. The Department for the Aging's telephone number for information and referrals: (212) 442-1000. Here is a sampling.

HOME SHARING
 
NEW YORK FOUNDATION FOR SENIOR CITIZENS (212) 962-7559. Arranges house partners, provides screening and financial advice.
 
MEAL DELIVERY
 
AGING IN AMERICA 1500 Pelham Parkway South, the Bronx, N.Y. 10461; (718) 824-4004.
 
BHRAGS TOMPKINS PARK SENIOR CENTER 550 Greene Avenue, Brooklyn, N.Y. 11216; (718) 638-3000.
 
CENTRAL HARLEM MEALS-ON-WHEELS 163 West 125th Street, Room 1320, New York, N.Y. 10027; (212) 222-2552. Housekeeping and personal care available.
 
 
PROSPECT HILL SENIOR SERVICES 283 Prospect Avenue, Brooklyn, N.Y. 11215; (718) 499-9574. Some housekeeping services available.
 
SOUTHWEST QUEENS SENIOR SERVICES 103-12 101st Avenue, Ozone Park, N.Y. 11416; (718) 847-9200.
 
STANLEY ISAACS SENIOR CENTER 415 East 93d Street, New York, N.Y. 10218; (212) 360-7620.
 
OUTINGS
 
PETER DELLAMONICA SENIOR CITIZEN CENTER 23-56 Broadway, Astoria, N.Y. 11106; (718) 626-1500. Offers assistance to crime victims, health screening, shopping and chore services, and meal delivery.
 
PROJECT FIND -- HAMILTON SENIOR CENTER 141 West 73d Street, New York, N.Y. 10023; (212) 787-7710. Organizes trips and offers exercise and art classes, concerts, movies and a daily lunch program.
 
REPAIRS
 
ALLEN A. M. E. NEIGHBORHOOD PRESERVATION/SENIOR TRANSPORTATION 114-02 Guy Brewer Boulevard, Jamaica, N.Y. 11433; (718) 658-6660.
 
DEPARTMENT OF HOUSING PRESERVATION AND DEVELOPMENT Emergency Repair Program, (212) 960-4800. Emergency heat and water repairs, 24 hours a day.
 
NEW YORK FOUNDATION FOR SENIOR CITIZENS 150 Nassau Street, New York, N.Y. 10038; (212) 962-7653. Home safety inspections and minor repairs, throughout the city.
 
TRANSPORTATION
 
AGING IN AMERICA (718) 824-4004. Transportation throughout the Bronx for medical purposes.
 
HAMILTON GRANGE SENIOR CITIZENS CENTER 420 West 145th Street, New York, N.Y. 10031; (212) 862-4181. Transportation throughout Manhattan for elderly Harlem residents who live between 110th to 155th Streets, west of Fifth Avenue.
 
VISITING
SENIOR ACTION IN A GAY ENVIRONMENT 208 West 13th Street, New York, N.Y. 10011; (212) 741-2247.
 
VISITING NEIGHBORS 401 Lafayette Street, New York, N.Y. 10003; (212) 260-6200.

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December 5, 1994, Monday, Late Edition - Final

JUDGES PROPOSING TO NARROW ACCESS TO FEDERAL COURT

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

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

LENGTH: 1263 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Dec. 4

A panel of Federal judges is proposing new limits on access to Federal courts for Social Security beneficiaries, victims of job discrimination and consumers as part of a long-range plan to cope with huge increases in the caseload.
The panel of nine judges, who have a combined total of more than 160 years on the bench, was created in 1990 by the Judicial Conference of the United States, the policy-making arm of the Federal judiciary. 
 If recent trends continue, the judges said, the Federal courts will be inundated with civil and criminal cases. The crime bill passed this fall, for example, has extended Federal jurisdiction to a new range of crimes.
The report says there are already signs of "impending crisis" and predicts that the problems will grow steadily over the next 25 years. The growing burden of criminal cases has produced significant delays in the handling of civil cases, and a report done for the committee says "the civil trial is a chimera" in some places, like Southern California, where criminal cases account for more than 85 percent of the Federal trials.
By the year 2020, the judges estimate, more than one million new cases will be filed in a year in Federal district courts, up from the 281,740 in the year that ended June 30.
The report described that projection as "nightmarish."
"Numbers alone do not adequately capture this frightening picture," it said. To handle the anticipated caseload, even assuming some increase in judicial productivity, would require more than 4,000 judges, up from the current total of 846, the report says. Without hiring new judges, delays would grow intolerably.
With so many judges, the report says, it will be difficult to maintain the coherence and consistency of Federal court decisions. "Federal law would be Babel, with thousands of decisions issuing weekly and no one judge capable of comprehending the entire corpus of Federal law, or even the law of his or her own circuit," it says.
To prevent such confusion, the judges recommend limiting the courts' jurisdiction over certain types of cases.
After hearings, a final version of the report will be submitted in March 1995 to the full Judicial Conference, which is expected to accept most of the recommendations.
Some proposed changes can be made by the judges, but most would require action by Congress. While Congress has contributed to many problems described in the report, it may also be receptive to some of the judges' suggestions. In the current climate, Congress is unlikely to provide the money needed for judicial hiring and budgets to keep pace with rising caseloads.
Advocates for the elderly and others viewed the report with concern. Burton D. Fretz, executive director of the National Senior Citizens Law Center, which represents elderly people in cases involving Social Security, Medicaid and welfare programs, said, "The proposals would significantly shrink the availability of Federal courts to low-income clients."
A theme of the report is that people should rely more on state courts and on administrative appeals at Federal and state agencies. Mr. Fretz said the proposals would raise new obstacles to people suing state officials for denial of welfare, Medicaid and other benefits guaranteed by Federal laws.
But Judge Otto R. Skopil Jr. of Portland, Ore., the chairman of the Judicial Conference's Committee on Long-Range Planning, which wrote the report, said the new proposals could help people applying for Government benefits in some ways, he said.
"A Social Security disability case goes through more reviews than a capital punishment case," said Judge Skopil, who sits on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. "It seems strange to me that people asserting a disability must wait five to seven years to find out whether they are disabled. In fairness to the disabled person, we should expedite that process."
The Federal courts are, in a sense, a victim of their own success. Lawyers and lawmakers trust them so much that they continually try to give them new duties. Conservatives want to define new crimes, liberals want to define new rights and together they make a Federal case out of every violation.
Wilfred Feinberg, a former chief judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in New York, said this trend clogged the courts and made it difficult for them to perform their most basic functions.
Judge Skopil said the report's projections of new Federal court cases, based on historical trends, were conservative because they did not take account of a sweeping anti-crime law signed by President Clinton in September. The law creates new Federal crimes, and Judge Skopil said: "It could have a very, very large effect on criminal caseload. The possibilities are staggering."
Civil cases are increasing even faster. The number of new civil cases has quadrupled since 1960, and five times as many civil cases as criminal cases are filed each year. The House Republicans' Contract With America could produce many more. It would authorize citizens to sue the Government for unfair or inconsistent application of "any law, rule, regulation, policy or internal standard."
In developing its recommendations, the committee solicited advice for four years from thousands of lawyers, legal scholars, Federal and state judges and other experts. It will hold three public hearings on the plan: in Phoenix on Dec. 7, Washington on Dec. 9 and Chicago on Dec. 16. The committee may revise the plan in the light of comment from judges and the public.
The long-range plan made these recommendations:
*Disputes over Social Security disability benefits should ordinarily be resolved in the Department of Health and Human Services, perhaps by establishing a new "benefits review board."
*Congress should curtail the Federal courts' jurisdiction to decide routine claims under employee pension, health and welfare benefit plans. State courts should be the primary forum for review of such claims. "The availability of a Federal forum in these cases suggests erroneously that state courts and agencies are inadequate to the task."
*Job discrimination claims, involving bias on the basis of race, sex, age, national origin or disability, should initially be resolved by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. While Federal judges would still handle some of these disputes, the commission should be required to investigate cases more thoroughly before allowing workers to sue.
*Federal courts should no longer be required to take cases merely because they involve citizens of different states. Such cases should be heard by a Federal judge only if plaintiffs can show that state courts would be prejudiced against them. This type of case, in which Federal judges apply state law, accounts for one of every four civil cases filed in Federal district court and "constitutes a massive diversion of Federal judge power."
In an interview, Judge Skopil said that the problems described in the report were not hypothetical. In the last few years, he said, Federal courts have run out of money for juries in civil cases and for court-appointed lawyers in criminal cases, and Congress took emergency action to provide extra money.
The report says judges ought to have greater control over courthouse security and should be offered training in the use of firearms so they can better protect themselves outside the courthouse. A spokesman for the United States Marshals Service, which is now responsible for court security, said judges were threatened almost every day.

LOAD-DATE: December 5, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Graph: "BY THE NUMBERS: A Heavy Workload" shows new Federal filings of civil and criminal cases and number of district and appelate judgeships from 1940 to 1994. (Source: Judicial Conference of the U.S.)(pg. B9)

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December 7, 1994, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

William Hiscock, Civil Servant, 71; Was Health Expert

BYLINE: By WOLFGANG SAXON 

SECTION: Section D;  Page 21;  Column 3;  National Desk 

LENGTH: 293 words

William McConway Hiscock, a retired public-health specialist who helped to draft the legislation that created Medicaid and other Federal health programs in the 1960's, died on Nov. 29 at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. A resident of Towson, Md., he was 71.
The cause was pancreatic cancer, his family said. 
 Mr. Hiscock worked in the Health, Education and Welfare Department's Office of the Surgeon General in the early 1960's when he became involved in writing legislation that ultimately led to Medicaid and health programs for children and the elderly. In 1967 he received a superior-service award for "major contributions to the improvement of health legislation and to the development of the comprehensive health planning programs."
More recently he was cited for having started a program for mothers and children, and for his work on the child health program at the Medicaid bureau.
He retired earlier this year as a program analysis officer for the Medicaid bureau in Baltimore.
Born in New Haven, Mr. Hiscock was a graduate of Phillips Andover Academy and received a bachelor's degree in political science from Yale University in 1943. He earned a master's degree in public administration at Wesleyan University in 1952.
Before working for the Federal Government, he directed studies in public-health training at the Yale University School of Medicine and at the Central Maryland Health Systems Agency.
Mr. Hiscock is survived by his wife, Barbara Strangmann Hiscock; his son, Robin M. of Silver Spring, Md.; his daughter, Susan C. of Los Angeles; a sister, Margaret H. Weatherly of Mount Laurel, N.J., and a granddaughter. Also surviving are two stepsons, William M. and David M. Donovan of Baltimore, and a step-granddaughter.

NAME: William McConway Hiscock

LOAD-DATE: December 7, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

TYPE: Obituary (Obit); Biography

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December 7, 1994, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

HEALTH WATCH;
Walking a Mile a Day Helps Delay Bone Loss

BYLINE: REUTERS 

SECTION: Section C;  Page 13;  Column 4;  National Desk;  Health Page

LENGTH: 662 words

WOMEN who walk a mile a day, whether on the track or in the course of a busy day, reduce their chance of losing bone density as they age.
Agriculture Department scientists found that women who walked more than 7.5 miles a week can delay complications from loss of bone density better than non-walkers. 
 Previous studies have shown that there is a link between bone density and lifelong physical habits, including walking, and that women who begin a walking program during and after menopause can turn around the rapid bone loss that usually occurs during that period.
But a study by Dr. Elizabeth Krall of the Agricultural Research Service, focusing on walking as a specific type of exercise, found that walkers have up to seven years' worth more bone in reserve than non-walkers.
"A major finding of the study was that the type of walking that women were already doing in their day-to-day routines is probably benefiting their bones and doesn't require any major change in their exercise habits," said Dr. Krall, study leader of the Jean Meyer Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University. "It takes walkers four to seven years longer to reach the point of very low bone density."
Dr. Krall measured bone density in 238 healthy, post-menopausal white women whose average age was 62, separating personal walking histories from other physical activity data. Most in the study group were well past menopause.
"With menopause comes the most accelerated rate of bone loss," Dr. Krall said. Typically, women lose from 3 percent to 6 percent of bone density each year in the five years surrounding menopause, with the rate eventually dropping to about 1 percent a year later on, she said.
In the yearlong study, Dr. Krall found that those who walked about one mile a day had 7 percent more density in the leg bones and 4 percent more bone density over all than those who had walked less than a mile a week. The walkers also had a slower bone loss rate in the leg.
Based on the walkers' measurements, women who consistently walk more than a mile each day are likely to gain several years free of bone density loss. Severe bone density loss, or osteoporosis, can lead to fractures that occur from very little trauma.
Dr. Krall said she studied walking because the activity was done "more than any other type of exercise."
"In this age group of women, walking was the exercise that they did year round," she said. "It is a nice, moderate-intensity thing that just about anybody can do. Also, walking appeals to many more women in this age group than something more vigorous." (AP)
 
 
Predicting Bad Driving
 Yale University researchers say they believe three simple tests can help predict whether an elderly person can safely operate an auto.
 In a study published in the current issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine, five Yale School of Medicine researchers said elderly people who walk less than a block a day, who have foot abnormalities, like toe deformities, and who perform poorly when copying designs during mental tests are much more likely to to be involved in accidents.
 Dr. Richard Marotolli, leader of the research team, wrote that while the total number of automobile crashes involving drivers older than 72 is low, the rate of collisions per mile driven is very high.
 "We believe that clinicians, family members and state regulators need guidance in identifying older drivers who are at particular risk for adverse driving events," the study said.
 The researchers studied 283 people 72 and older from 1990 to 1991 and found that 46 percent of those who walked little, had foot problems and had trouble copying diagrams were later involved in serious traffic problems. Of those who had none of the three risk factors, only 6 percent had driving problems like crashes or violations, while 12 percent of those with one factor had trouble driving and 26 percent of those with two factors had trouble. (REUTERS)

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December 8, 1994, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

BOOKS OF THE TIMES;
A Mute Girl's Theatrical Journey

BYLINE: By CHRISTOPHER LEHMANN-HAUPT  

SECTION: Section C;   Page 18;   Column 4;   Cultural Desk  

LENGTH: 927 words


THE MYTH MAN
By Elizabeth Swados
326 pages. Viking. $21.95.
"A theater artist is an alchemist of human behavior. We take what is horrible and make it into something deep and beautiful. Sometimes, however, we must take golden moments and change them into something savage." 
 With these high-flown words, Sasha Novotny, the director of a famous lower West Side of Manhattan theater ensemble much admired by the likes of Susan Sontag and Ionesco, invites a 9-year-old mute girl to go on the soul-saving pilgrimage recounted in Elizabeth Swados's ambitious new novel, "The Myth Man."
The child whom Sasha addresses is actually the daughter of a Florida prostitute who named her Rikki Nelson, "after the rock-and-roll singer from the happy postcard family." When a doctor threatened to turn Rikki over to the Social Service Department because of the sexual abuse inflicted on her by her mother's older customers, Rikki's alcoholic father kidnaped her, drove her north to New York City, coached her to become a child star of television commercials and then sold her to Sasha's drama company.
Rikki's reaction to her traumas was to cease speaking. "Talking was treacherous," she explains. "I chose silence. Like nuns or monks." Still she willingly submits to rigorous training in mime, music and dance by the multicultural members of Sasha's troupe. Looking back at the age of 20, she describes in the first person how she became the central figure of a show called "The Myth Man."
As Bruce, the company's dramaturge, explains to her: "The way it goes is that there's a small child -- guess who? -- and the kid won't go to sleep. So her ancient, wise grandfather conjures up some Greek gods to teach her about life, death and the here, there and everywhere after.  The gods become so real, the grandfather has no power to help the little girl. She must save herself and her grandfather with what she learns on her journey."
Ms. Swados is, of course, the playwright, composer, songwriter, director and choreographer whose best-known theater works are "Runaways" and "Nightclub Cantata." But she has also published a previous novel, "Leah and Lazar" (1982), and a memoir, "The Four of Us" (1992), both of which concerned her embrace of art as a way of overcoming the experience of growing up with an emotionally disturbed elder brother.
In "The Myth Man," she has distanced herself from this material somewhat, sublimating it into a plot removed from herself and writing about it in a cooler, more objective style than she did in her earlier books. Where the poetry of "Leah and Lazar" was in its language, here it is more in the events of the story, leaving the language to be sharper, wittier and more playful.
The most lyrical passages are spent on descriptions of the mythic scenes in Sasha's drama. "Sasha began to spin," Rikki recalls. "He was a heron. The sky was turning red. It blazed behind his circles. . . . After a while I didn't hear the drum anymore. Sasha had taken off. I was behind him. He was circling Manhattan higher and higher. I was on his wing. We were going to burn up and God was waiting in the flames."
Yet such verbal flights are continually undercut by humor. The overserious Sasha has a brother, Charles, a famous drag queen who takes over as Rikki's nanny and nurtures her with a healing love. After a spellbindingly sensuous performance of Narcissus falling in love with his reflection, Charles gets stuck in the trapdoor representing the pool of water.
When Rikki gets sick from training too hard, Charles visits her in St. Vincent's Hospital dressed in a nun's magnificent white habit. As the fame of the troupe spreads, and Europe vies with America to toast its celebrity, Ms. Swados misses no opening to satirize what happens to artists in the corporate state.
Predictably enough, the myths that Rikki must learn from grow more and more contemporary, as Ms. Swados develops her thesis "that no matter how much human beings may have advanced technologically, we are still ruled by the same forces which tormented our primitive ancestors."
Unfortunately, the reader is not as deeply engaged by the experience as Rikki becomes. One problem is that the story's appeal depends on our caring about an experimental theater company that resembles the Living Theater of the 1960's and 70's or Artaud's Theater of Cruelty or Jerzy Grotowski's Polish Laboratory Theater or Brecht's Berliner Ensemble, none of which ever resembled a utopian community, even in an age when the profession of acting is no longer disdained. And, after all, even Shakespeare retired from the King's Men at a relatively early age when he could afford to.
Moreover, Ms. Swados fails to create a goal worthy of a reader's deep concern when she has Sasha take his troupe into the Amazonian jungle in a nonsatirical search for some annealing vision. The author does write strongly about the sufferings of the ensemble on its trek deep into the heart of darkness. But as Rikki and her companions grow feverish from heat and disease, you half expect the appearance of Ambrose, the butler who shows up in the jungle hallucination at the end of Evelyn Waugh's novel, "A Handful of Dust," and announces to the delirious protagonist, "The City is served."
Finally, although Ms. Swados has created spirited characters, along with vivid, often funny, scenes for them to act in, you don't care enough about their conflicts to stay deeply engaged. "The Myth Man," for all its flights and aspirations, never quite bursts into the flame of truth.

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NEWS SUMMARY

SECTION: Section 1; Page 2; Column 5; Metropolitan Desk

LENGTH: 856 words


International 3-7
 
CUBAN REFUGEES IN LIMBO
Although the Guantanamo refugee camp at the American naval base in Cuba has not experienced riots like the one in Panama, it is filled with refugees who are desperate to resume normal lives. 1 

Calm returned after riots in refugee camps in Panama. 6
 
FACING REALITY IN BOSNIA
News analysis: The threats to withdraw peacekeepers from Bosnia should have the effect of forcing both sides to realize what it would be like to fight an all-out war without the peacekeeping buffer.  1
 
EUROPE PLEDGE ON BOSNIA
Although France and Britain have threatened to withdraw troops from Bosnia, European Union leaders agreed that it would be necessary to keep peacekeepers there to help supply civilians. 7
 
UNITY TOUCHY AT LATIN SUMMIT
President Clinton opened the meeting of Latin American leaders in Miami saying it heralded a new era of cooperation, but officials conceded it was hard to achieve agreement on some tough issues.  6
 
ULSTER TALKS BEGIN
The political wing of the Irish Republican Army and Britain met for the first time in exploratory talks that are designed to lead to a political settlement of the violence in Northern Ireland. 3
 
PRIZE IN OSLO, PRESSURE AT HOME
The Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Israel and the Palestinian leader went to Oslo to receive the Nobel Peace Prize on Saturday, but both sides left touchy political situations at home. 4
 
Syria indicated willingness to resume the Mideast peace talks. 4
 
China ordered nationwide inspections after a major fire. 3
 
Giza Journal: Urban sprawl causes more suffering for the Sphinx. 4
 
National 8-12, 30
 
SURGEON GENERAL RESIGNS
The White House forced the resignation of Joycelyn Elders, whose views about drugs and sex made her a target of conservatives.  1
 
ESPY INVESTIGATION EXPANDS
The inquiry into the departing Agriculture Secretary has expanded to examine the operations of Tyson Foods, the Arkansas poultry empire with ties to the Clintons.  1
 
COMMUTER PLANES RESTRICTED
The F.A.A. banned two models of propeller airplanes from flying in conditions where ice is likely to build up on their wings.  1
 
A transcript revealed the final seconds of USAir Flight 427.  10
 
E.P.A. RETHINKS EMISSION RULES
The Environmental Protection Agency is considering changes to make auto emissions inspections less burdensome on car owners.  8
 
COURT TO HEAR DISTRICTING CASE
The Supreme Court accepted a Louisiana voting rights case that raises crucial questions about the role of race in legislative districting.  8
 
MORE MONEY FOR U.S. TROOPS
The Pentagon announced it would cut $7.7 billion in new weapons over six years to pay for increased salaries and improved living conditions for American troops.  11
 
RETHINKING HOUSE COMMITTEES
House Republicans scaled back plans to reduce committee sizes but left Democrats with a problem: who to kick off the committees.  30
 
COUNTERATTACK ON BENEFITS
Labor unions and spokesmen for the elderly attacked proposals advising President Clinton on how to slow the growth of Social Security and other Government benefit programs.  30
 
Religion Journal: A priest returned to the church before dying.  12
 
Metro Digest 25
 
CARGO SHIP SINKS IN ATLANTIC
Battered by ferocious winds, with crew members clinging to debris and life rafts, a Ukrainian ship sank 1,200 miles off New Jersey in the Atlantic Ocean. 1
 
TAKING A BYTE OUT OF THE BUDGET
As the City Council and Mayor wrangle over control of the budget, the Comptroller has reprogrammed six city computers to implement all the cuts both sides want. 1
 
Business Digest 39
 
Your Money 37-38
 
Arts/Entertainment 13-19
 
Theater: "Suddenly Last Summer." 13
 
Music: Oslo Philharmonic.  13
 
Music: Victoria Williams.  13
 
Dance: Buglisi/Foreman troupe.  16
 
Sports 32-36
 
Baseball: Mantle's name surfaces in memorabilia investigation.  33
 
Basketball: Knicks fall to the Hawks, 89-85, in Atlanta.  33
 
Nets, a team in turmoil, try to iron things out.  34
 
Lopez getting the attention for unbeaten St. John's.  35
 
High School Report.  32
 
Columns: Rhoden on Charlie Ward's Heisman Trophy year.  33
 
Football: A playoff atmosphere for today's Jets-Lions game.  33
 
Soccer: Virginia edges Rutgers to reach N.C.A.A. final.  35
 
Obituaries 52
 
Enrique Lister, an anti-Fascist general in the Spanish Civil War.
 
Adda Bozeman Barkhuus, an expert in international relations.
 
Editorials/Op-Ed 22-23
 
Editorials
 
Rescue mission in Bosnia.
 
Dr. Elders's untimely candor.
 
Personal prayer is not illegal.
 
A break on legislative secrecy.
 
Letters
 
Anna Quindlen: The good mother.
 
Russell Baker: Newt's pal Warbucks.
 
Bruce Ackerman: Gingrich vs. the Constitution.
 
Keith Spicer: Propaganda for peace.
 
Emily Kelton: Brown, Bowdoin, Brandeis and Prozac.
 
Neediest Cases 26
 
Chronicle 24
 
Bridge 19
 
Crossword 18

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Denny's Hit By Protests At Only Site With Union

BYLINE: By JON NORDHEIMER,   Special to The New York Times 

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

LENGTH: 1088 words

DATELINE: ABSECON, N.J.

The crowd gathered outside Denny's restaurant here on Dec. 2 was not lined up for a Super Slam breakfast (three eggs, three pancakes, three bacon strips and three sausage links for $2.99).
 The 40 or so men and women were there for an event rare in the American labor movement: a job action directed against one of the few fast-food, family restaurant outlets in the nation organized by a labor union. 
 "Denny's has good food at a good price, but they're terrible to their workers," said Pauli Mortillite, a 30-year-old waiter who joined an informational picket line outside the chain restaurant on the White Horse Pike near Atlantic City. He was one of the employees and their supporters who rallied to draw attention to what they claim is the franchise operator's refusal to negotiate a contract with the upstart union.
 The Denny's in Absecon is the only one of the chain's more than 1,500 restaurants where service and kitchen workers have formed a union.
 Four days later, as the protest continued, Superior Court Judge Anthony Gibson of Atlantic County ruled that seven people can picket outside Denny's at any one time, but cannot stand in the parking lot or be closer to one another than 10 feet.
 Though Denny's is a full-service restaurant chain, with waiters and tips, and occupies a niche in the food industry just above companies like McDonald's, Burger King and Kentucky Fried Chicken, it is part of the fast-food explosion of the last quarter-century that has pushed aside roadside diners and mom-and-pop breakfast bars to offer standardized fare at low prices.
 It is rare, though, for workers paid minimum wages or dependent on tips to risk jobs by demanding better working conditions and benefits. Only 3 to 5 percent of waiters and waitresses in the country are union members, industry statistics show.
 "In an industry where you have teen-agers, senior citizens and illegal aliens lined up to take these jobs, most of the workers don't want to rock the boat," said Jack Lavin, a spokesman for the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union, whose 400,000 members work chiefly in quality hotels and "white tablecloth" restaurants in major cities.
 Mr. Lavin said skill levels drop with menu prices at the lower end of the industry and managers can easily replace strikers with new workers who have little or no experience.
 It is no accident that a Denny's near Atlantic City, where the casino industry is heavily unionized, was the first in the chain to organize.
 "A guy who was a waiter laid off at one of the casino hotels was hired last Christmas and he told us we were crazy to do all the side work our management made us do," said Frankie Vigue, 18, a waitress.
 She said part of the daily routine was to perform "deep cleaning" work between waiting on tables, like scrubbing garbage cans, storage spaces and table bases.
 "I don't know how the customers would like it if they knew I am handling chemicals and trash, and the next minute serving them coffee," she added.
 Servers dependent on tips for most of their income earn a starting wage of $2.13 an hour at the restaurant, said Vicki McMahon, 36, a waitress who has worked there two years.
 "On some days, I am stuck there two hours after the end of my shift to do cleaning," she said. "Since I'm not waiting on tables during that time, I don't make more than $2.22 an hour, which is my nontip wage. When I'm told to run the cash register for a few hours, it can cost me $20 a day."
 Denny's in Absecon is owned by a franchise operator, American Family Restaurants of Englishtown, N.J. "It is company policy not to make statements on labor relations," said a woman at its headquarters who identified herself only as Marie.
 The chain is operated by Flagstar Company Inc. of Spartanburg, S.C., which owns about 1,530 outlets. Flagstar also coordinates marketing and food policies with 493 independent franchise operators like American Family Restaurants.
 Denny's recently underwent a public relations crisis in dealing with allegations that its outlets discriminated against black patrons, and Flagstar has agreed to pay $54 million to settle claims growing from these complaints.
 "Flagstar has absolutely no involvement with the union negotiations at the Absecon outlet," said Debbie Atkins, a Flagstar spokeswoman. "The franchise is a totally independent business."
 Her statement was in response to a union suggestion that Flagstar was heavily involved behind the scenes in the negotiations.
 "I simply cannot understand why the local owners are refusing to offer a decent raise unless they are being directed to do so by the Denny's corporate office," said Terry McCabe, business agent and chief negotiator for Local 54 of the restaurant workers union.
 She charged that Flagstar was afraid that a successful union contract at Absecon would encourage workers at other Denny's restaurants to organize. There are 16 other outlets in New Jersey, 32 in New York State and 10 in Connecticut. The National Labor Relations Board is looking into the treatment of Denny's workers at outlets in Mount Laurel and Marlton who were laid off after signing union organizing cards, Ms. McCabe said.
 The union was certified to represent the Absecon workers last April and negotiations since then with the franchise operator have failed to produce a contract. The latest offer, which included elimination of most of the "deep cleaning" requirements, proposed a 1 percent annual salary increase, tantamount to a raise of two cents an hour, for most of the hourly workers, Ms. McCabe said. Before the workers organized, they were given average yearly increases of 3 to 4 percent, she said.
 While a strike had been threatened, the workers voted on Nov. 30 to continue working while holding job actions like the Dec. 2 rally to call attention to the outlet.
 "Because they are in the service industry, chains are vulnerable to public relations pressure, one of the few tools workers in high-turnover, low-wage jobs can use," said Dorothy Sue Cobble, an associate professor at Rutgers University School of Management and Labor Relations. Dr. Cobble is author of "Dishing It Out: Waitresses and Their Unions" (University of Illinois Press, 1991).
 But she said it was very difficult for service workers to organize restaurant by restaurant. "The target needs to be the entire chain," she said, of the industry in general, "and there doesn't seem to be much success in getting any large movement started."

LOAD-DATE: December 10, 1994

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GRAPHIC: Photo: Denny's, which recently settled a lawsuit charging widespread racism toward customers, has another problem: a picket line in Absecon, N.J., at the only Denny's with a union of kitchen and service workers. (Dith Pran/The New York Times)

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December 10, 1994, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

THEATER IN REVIEW

BYLINE: By D.J.R. BRUCKNER 

SECTION: Section 1;  Page 16;  Column 3;  Cultural Desk 

LENGTH: 319 words


One Play Is New;
2 Have New Versions
'Shelter,' 'Live Witness' and
 'Older People'
Greenwich Street Theater 
 The Chain Lightning Theater company's short play festival is presenting one new work and new versions of two others.
In "Shelter," the new play, by Sandford Stokes, a prostitute (Leslie Colucci) and a gay hustler with AIDS (Max Faugno) try to bring a little holiday spirit to a New York alcoholic (Kricker James) who lives in a refrigerator carton, tortured by an unbearable memory of family tragedy. There are touching and funny moments in this overlong short play, but the dialogue and ideas are exhaustingly cliched.
Jim Neu's snappy 1992 work, "Live Witness," stages an on-the-air battle of innuendo and suspicion between the co-hosts of a television interview show (Cheryl Horne and Jerry Mettner). As the pair undermine their very identities in mind-twisting repartee, we are teased into recognizing and laughing at our own gullibility as television watchers.  The high point is a witty song in which Ms. Horne declares passionately: "Whoever you are, I'm glad it is you./There's nothing you and I can't co-do."
"Older People," a play with 15 comic scenes by John Ford Noonan, has not been seen here since its first production in 1972. Three of its funniest segments make up the last part of this festival. In a seaside episode Sandi Skodnik is a delightfully crazed old hysteric longing for life to begin over again and Sanford Morris a perfect straight man for her. Two episodes feature Mark Barkan and Frank O'Brien as lifelong friends in a retirement home and as doddering cowboy songwriters trying to remember the second stanza of an absurd, bawdy song that once made them famous. These actors know how to make an audience feel the bite in Mr. Noonan's jokes. The festival continues at the theater, 547 Greenwich Street, in SoHo, through Dec. 18.   D. J. R. BRUCKNER

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December 10, 1994, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

Attacks Begin on Plan to Cut Social Programs

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

SECTION: Section 1;  Page 30;  Column 4;  National Desk 

LENGTH: 950 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Dec. 9

In a taste of battles likely to dominate American politics for the next decade, labor unions and spokesmen for the elderly today attacked proposals from a panel advising President Clinton on how to slow the growth of Social Security, Medicare and other Government benefit programs.
 After three hours of debate, the chairman of the panel, Senator Bob Kerrey, Democrat of Nebraska, admitted that he had only four or five votes of the 20 needed to win an official endorsement of his recommendations. The 32-member panel, the Bipartisan Commission on Entitlement and Tax Reform, is scheduled to hold its final meeting on Wednesday, with no consensus in sight. 
 As part of a comprehensive plan to control the cost of Federal benefit programs, Mr. Kerrey and the vice chairman of the commission, Senator John C. Danforth, Republican of Missouri, proposed raising the eligibility age for Medicare and the normal retirement age, at which full Social Security benefits become available, to 70, from the current 65. They would also reduce Social Security, Medicare, unemployment insurance and certain veterans' benefits for people with high incomes.
 Critics immediately denounced the proposals, just as Mr. Kerrey had predicted. Thomas R. Donahue, secretary-treasurer of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., said, "These measures would destroy the retirement income and health system that Americans have enjoyed for 60 years." He asserted that "there is no crisis in the Social Security retirement program."
 Robert M. Ball, a former Commissioner of Social Security, said that Mr. Kerrey's proposals, taken together, would mean a 44 percent reduction in benefits for workers who have earned average wages over the course of their lives. "Raising the normal retirement age to 70 would reduce benefits not only for early retirees, but also for those who wait until age 70 to retire," Mr. Ball said.
 It is unclear whether Senator Kerrey, who expressed impatience with his critics, will engage in the lengthy discussions and negotiations that will be needed to forge agreement within his panel. It is also unclear whether his proposals will improve or worsen the political climate for members of Congress who want to curb the growth of Social Security and Medicare.
 Horace B. Deets, executive director of the American Association of Retired Persons, said he was stunned by Mr. Kerrey's proposals because they would require older people to "bear, not share, the burden of deficit reduction." The proposals, he said, are not balanced; two-thirds of the proposed savings would come from Social Security and Medicare.
 Martin A. Corry, director of Federal affairs at the association, said: "Only a small proportion of workers retire at 65. The average retirement age is now 61 1/2, though some retirees return to the labor force for part-time or seasonal work."
 Workers can now collect Social Security retirement benefits at ages as low as 62, but the benefits for early retirees are reduced, and the reduction is larger for people who retire earlier.
 Thomas R. Margenau, a spokesman for the Social Security Administration, said: "Fifty-one percent of the people who apply for Social Security retirement benefits do so at the age of 62. Only 25 percent wait till age 65."
 Richard L. Trumka, a commission member who is also president of the United Mine Workers of America, said Mr. Kerrey seemed to be operating on the premise that "we must destroy these programs in order to save them."
 "The means-testing of Medicare would, in effect, redefine it as welfare," Mr. Trumka said. "And we all know the level of public support for welfare programs."
 Mr. Kerrey said such hostile reactions suggested that Americans could not deal with serious problems until they turned into a crisis.
 Several commission members expressed support for Mr. Kerrey's approach. Among them were Robert E. Denham, the chairman of Salomon Inc.; Peter G. Peterson, chairman of the Blackstone Group, an investment bank, and two Republican Representatives, C. Christopher Cox of California and J. Alex McMillan of North Carolina.
 Some members of the commission said they needed more time to analyze and discuss Mr. Kerrey's proposals, so they would understand how the changes affected people at different income levels.
 One commission member, Senator Alan K. Simpson, Republican of Wyoming, said the critics of Mr. Kerrey's plan were trying to whip up "raw political fear" by using inflammatory words like "cut, slash, chop, destroy and dismantle." In fact, he said, people over the age of 50 will not be much affected.
 Wade J. Henderson, director of the Washington office of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said the proposals would have disproportionate effects on blacks and "could exacerbate racial divisions." For black males born in 1992, he said, the life expectancy is 65 years, so many of them will not live long enough to receive Social Security benefits if the retirement age is increased to 70.
 One of Mr. Kerrey's proposals would reduce the Social Security payroll tax for employees. Workers would have to invest the extra money they received in private savings plans or individual retirement accounts.
 Asked whether this was a first step toward "privatizing Social Security," Mr. Kerrey said: "Yes. But private retirement benefits are not destructive of Social Security."
 Under Mr. Kerrey's proposal, elderly people could stay in Medicare, but they could also get Government vouchers to enroll in private health plans. In addition, he would limit the tax deductions that employers may take for the cost of employee health benefits. Under current law, there is no such limit.

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GRAPHIC: Photo: No sooner had the head of a panel advising the President on how to slow the growth of Government benefit programs made his suggestions than opponents attacked them. The chairman, Senator Bob Kerrey, talked about his proposals yesterday before a hearing of the panel. (Stephen Crowley/The New York Times)

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December 11, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

In Praise of the Counterculture

SECTION: Section 4;  Page 14;  Column 1;  Editorial Desk 

LENGTH: 731 words

Generational bonding experiences have always been important in American life. Civil War veterans kept meeting until time scythed down the last of them. The Depression shaped the economic dreams, and fears, of millions of young couples and their children. People who fought in World War II have moved through history with a fortifying set of common memories. So have the children born to them during and shortly after that war.
 This last group profoundly altered the way Americans think about their inner lives, their fellow citizens, the earth upon which we live and the process by which older citizens in Washington decide when and where young Americans die in combat. 
 Now, in an excess of Republican triumphalism, the party's new leaders have decided to make "counterculture" into a pejorative. What flapdoodle. Only a few periods in American history have seen such a rich fulfillment of the informing ideals of personal freedom and creativity that lie at the heart of the American intellectual tradition. Like many of his elders, Representative Newt Gingrich may prefer a stricter regimen of social conformity and religious observance.
 But the millions of Americans who incorporated the cultural ideals of the Sixties and the decade's healthy spirit of political activism are foolish to abandon the high ground because of his post-election slanging. Certainly the excesses of the decade are easy to parody, and its summery, hedonistic ethos then and now reduced modern puritans to fits of twisting discomfort. America is still close enough to the frontier experience of relentless work and danger to view any kind of fun with suspicion.
 No true historian, however, can believe that it is possible to repudiate so large a cultural event in a nation's history, or to dismiss its seminal political events as a "McGovern-nik" aberration.
 The 60's spawned a new morality-based politics that emphasized the individual's responsibility to speak out against injustice and corruption. It was this renewed sense of responsibility that led enough people to raise their voices to end America's most disastrous foreign military adventure, the Vietnam War. On this level, the Sixties saw an exercise in mass sanity in which a nation's previously voiceless citizens -- its young -- overturned a war policy that was, in fact, deranged.
 The spirit of the age, like the tactics of the antiwar movement, was shaped by the civil rights movement. Its lessons of citizen empowerment, to use the 90's term, led to the progress of the environmental, women's and gay rights movements. The counterculture, in sum, produced a renewal of the Thoreauvian ideal of the clear, defiant voice of the dissenting citizen.
 There was another empowering aspect of the counterculture's confrontation with the Washington monolith. Those days produced the sad wisdom, now indispensable in American politics, that the Government will lie to protect its interests and that constant vigilance is necessary to keep it honest.
 The influence of 60's individualism was not limited to politics. It fostered a psychological movement that, while it burdened our shelves with tomes of psychobabble, also enabled people in emotional torment to ask for help without being stigmatized. It gave people in dead or abusive relationships permission to break out.
 Would many Americans truly like to imagine a society returned to the dictatorship of the majority culture? Would they like to go back to the days of blatant, sanctioned discrimination against African-Americans and women, to a world deprived of all the 60's ingredients that still simmer in the cultural stew, including an American music that has become a global language?
 We think not. For one thing, there are too many Republicans who are also Grateful Dead fans or, for that matter, divorced, ex-potheads and opponents of state-regulated prayer and abortion.
 At its essence, the counterculture was about one of conservatives' favorite words: values. It was a repudiation of the blind obedience and reflexive cynicism of politics as usual. It was about exposing hypocrisy, whether personal or political, and standing up to irrational authority. As in any large movement, it accommodated its share of charlatans and sociopaths. But it is part of us, a legacy around which Americans can now unite, rather than allow themselves to be divided.

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December 11, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Crime

BYLINE: By Marilyn Stasio 

SECTION: Section 7;  Page 38;  Column 3;  Book Review Desk 

LENGTH: 1143 words

Forget about English country houses -- there is no more insular setting for a mystery than an Israeli kibbutz. Inspector Michael Ohayon, the reflective detective who puzzles out Batya Gur's intellectually challenging mysteries, feels the waves of suspicion and hostility in MURDER ON A KIBBUTZ (HarperCollins, $20) when he invades one of these closed societies to investigate the death of its administrative secretary. "You're wasting your time," one elder says dismissively. "It's impossible to understand from the outside."
As far as the murder mystery goes, that's not true. There are some obvious suspects in the poisoning death of Osnat Harel, whose progressive views about letting children sleep in their parents' homes and setting up separate quarters for the elderly sowed a great deal of dissension in this very old, very traditional commune. But the deeper mysteries of how life is lived on a kibbutz do, indeed, seem almost impenetrable to an outsider. Which is why Ms. Gur, speaking through Dalya Bilu's lucid translation from the Hebrew, can grab her readers with dry discussions of "egalitarian elitism" and fussy deliberations over who picks the peaches and who cuts the dress patterns -- seemingly simple housekeeping matters that actually reflect earthshaking political and ideological changes transforming kibbutz society. 
 It's always nice to know what the boys in the back room are up to, and the F.B.I. agents Cuthbert Gibbons and Mike Tozzi are the guys with their eyes glued to the peepholes. The odd-couple partners in Anthony Bruno's crime books have a sting operation going in BAD APPLE (Delacorte, $21.50) to get the goods on Armand (Buddha) Stanzione, a New Jersey loan shark, and his associate Tony (Bells) Bellavita. But something goes wrong with Operation Shark Bite. An undercover agent is shot, and that hot dog Tozzi compromises his own cover, as a porn merchant hitting up the wise guys for a business loan, by making time with the Mafia princess whom Tony Bells has designs on.
Although there is less of a plot here than in other novels in this manic series, Mr. Bruno keeps us entertained with a razzle-dazzle style that tap-dances from horror to farce without tripping. If the stakes weren't so high, a furious car chase with good guys and bad guys being chewed out by the spirited women in their lives would be truly hilarious. Tony Bells has just the right moves for this style. Smooth and sadistic in a shakedown scene, he goes berserk in a frighteningly funny shoot-out at Macy's and upstages Santa in the Thanksgiving Day Parade. "His focus and execution were extraordinary," Tozzi enviously notes of Tony Bells, who slips into the author's big mug book of memorable villains with the silken grace of an adder.
American politicians think they're so tough. They'd get their ears torn off in the dogfights that erupt in Stephen Cook's ONE DEAD TORY (Foul Play/Countryman, $20) when the governing Conservative Party in a prosperous London suburb proposes a business tax break that would mean another 10 percent cut in social spending. There are riots in the streets, a snarling standoff between Tory and Labor, and vitriolic infighting among factions of the Conservative Party leadership. "It's like something out of 'Animal Farm,' " observes one combatant who was bloodied by his own party cohorts at a fractious borough council meeting.
But the participants in this political brawl agree that someone has gone too far when John Bullock, the abrasive council president who stirred up all the mischief, is found at the bottom of a quarry with his head bashed in. "Very un-British" seems to be the consensus.
Mr. Cook, a journalist at The Guardian, makes British municipal politics look a little dirtier than pig wrestling and a lot more fun than the sack of Rome. His detective, an earnest young police sergeant named Judy Best, wastes too much energy fighting outdated job prejudices about "female intuition" and garbage like that. But she has a good head for what turns out to be a complicated case, and she brings a vigor to her work that should keep this new series solidly on its feet.
Shirley McClintock's unsentimental view of life -- which asserts itself in a tart tongue and an overall prickly temperament -- brands her a welcome maverick in the sisterhood of gushy heroines who work the cozy mystery. Recent knee surgery and a move from her working ranch in Colorado to her spread of guesthouses in New Mexico make B. J. Oliphant's amateur sleuth, who is looking age 60 in the eyeball, even more testy than usual in DEATH SERVED UP COLD (Fawcett, paper, $4.99). A custody suit over her 14-year-old adopted daughter doesn't do much for Shirley's mood, either. She really doesn't need the aggravation when a tourist staying in one of her cabins dies suddenly from some mysterious bug -- and when that death proves to be murder.
"Obsession plus superstition yields inquisition, and inquisitions kill a lot of people," Shirley concludes after discovering that her murdered guest had a secret agenda tantamount to witch hunting. This sensible attitude is typical of Shirley's thinking, which cuts through a lot of the spiritual rant that filters up from nearby Santa Fe. Her plain-talk opinions on everything from teen-age pregnancy to the suicidal impulses of sheep get the proper deference from the guests at Rancho del Valle, who are not your usual assortment of tourist oddities but vital characters who play an active part in Ms. Oliphant's well-laid plot.
Can you take a cliche? A jerky wisecrack? How about a lot of cornball cliches and puerile private-eye humor? Dennis Lehane sure makes it hard on himself in A DRINK BEFORE THE WAR (Harcourt Brace, $22.95). But once he drops the affectations that he seems to think are de rigueur in hard-boiled detective fiction, he has some honest things to say about racial and class warfare in working-class neighborhoods like Dorchester, Mass., where this debut novel is set.
Patrick Kenzie, a tyro investigator who operates out of a church belfry (I warned you!), takes a fishy assignment from a state senator: to recover vaguely described "documentation" swiped by the woman who cleans his Statehouse office. The cleaning woman is a sad case. Her husband and her son are the leaders of rival street gangs, and the only respect she gets is at her funeral.
Mr. Lehane's detective goes where few gumshoes have gone before -- into the mean ghettos and rough bars of depressed mill towns and down memory lane for recollections of his own brutal father -- to follow the author's theme of the angry alienation of blue-collar dads and their disaffected sons. This is good, serious stuff, but it's not easy to reconcile it with the flippant style of Kenzie and his improbable partner, a tough cookie named Angie who belongs in some other comic book.

LOAD-DATE: December 11, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Drawing

TYPE: Review

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December 12, 1994, Monday, Late Edition - Final

U.S. Census Study Reveals A Nation of Rolling Stones

BYLINE: By SAM ROBERTS 

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

LENGTH: 781 words

Nearly three times as many Americans are transients with shallow roots only months old as homebodies who have lived in the same house for more than three decades, a new study shows.
Over all, according to a Census Bureau analysis being released today, more than 2 in 10 of the nation's households moved in the 15 months before the 1990 census, evidence of a mobility that among developed countries, is unique to the United States. 
 The analysis also found that fewer than 1 in 10 households had been in the same house since Dwight D. Eisenhower was President and the newly transplanted Los Angeles Dodgers, heralding the West's ascendancy, won the World Series.
Pittsburgh and two New York City suburbs -- Long Island and northern New Jersey -- were the only major metropolitan areas in the nation where people who moved in the 15 months before the census were outnumbered by people who had lived in the same house since 1959.
According to the analysis, the proportion of renters who were recent movers rose slightly in the last three decades. Among owners, though, the share who had moved recently declined to 9.4 percent from 12.2 percent, which census officials described as perhaps a historic low.
"As far as we know, it's the lowest," said Robert Bonnette, the Census Bureau demographer who conducted the analysis.
Striking differences separated the restless Americans who had moved in the 15 months before April 1, 1990, from the rooted stayers who had stayed put since before 1960.
The more foot-loose householders were likely to be unmarried men who were striking out after living with their parents or with roommates in rented houses or apartments, were younger and earned more than stayers, and tended to live in college towns or near military bases in the South and West.
People with the shallowest roots lived in Dallas, Orlando, Fla., and San Diego and in Bryan-College Station, Tex., home of Texas A & M University, where more than 4 in 10 householders were recent newcomers. The stayers were often homeowners and empty-nesters and other older married couples and elderly women living alone in the Northeast and Midwest.
In western Pennsylvania, Johnstown and the Beaver Valley area led the nation's 335 metropolitan areas in stayers, with 24 percent and 22 percent, respectively.
"I believe it," said Linda Weaver, the mayor of Johnstown. "Families grow up in a home and when the parents pass away it's turned over to the children, a cousin, an uncle. It becomes the family homestead. My family lived in the same house for 40-some years, until about five years ago when my mother and father moved into the house that I bought."
Not surprisingly, the nation's renters are more mobile than homeowners, with the typical renter living in his home for only two years and the typical owner at home for 10 years. Four in 10 of the rented households had recently moved. In five metropolitan areas, including College Station and Lawrence, Kan., home of the University of Kansas, more than 6 in 10 renters had pulled up their shallow roots in the last 15 months.
Renters in metropolitan New York defied the pattern. More than 1 in 20 lived in the same apartment or house for three decades or more, which demographers largely attributed to regulations in New York City and Westchester County that limit rent increases. In the New York suburbs, restrictive zoning crimped new construction after housing booms in the 1950's and 1960's.
Nassau and Suffolk Counties on Long Island, and Bergen and Passaic counties in northern New Jersey, which ranked just behind Pittsburgh in the proportion of stayers to movers, shared several characteristics with the quiescent metropolises of western Pennsylvania.
"It's very satisfied people who raised their kids and who then filled their houses with goods," said William B. Shore, senior fellow of the Regional Plan Association of New York, who also attributed some of the recent immobility to depressed housing prices, which may have discouraged owners from selling.
Demographers noted that the South and the West had more than their share of movers. As evidence, all four metropolitan areas where about 1 in 6 or more of the owners had just bought homes were in the South and the West: in Las Vegas, Nev.; Riverside-San Bernardino, Calif.; Yuma, Ariz., and Naples, Fla. In contrast, Pennsylvania was home to all but 3 of the 15 metropolitan areas where about 1 in 6 households stayed put.
Among people between the ages of 15 and 24, more than 7 in 10 had recently moved, the census found. Among those 75 and older, the mobility rate was about 1 in 20. The median age of recent movers was 33; of stayers, 71.

LOAD-DATE: December 12, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Graphs: "On the Move" shows percentage of renters and owners for 1960 and 1990. (Source: Bureau of the Census); "Demographics: Movers and Stayers" shows the top five U.S. cities with the highest percentages of recent movers and stayers. (Source: Bureau of the Census)

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December 12, 1994, Monday, Late Edition - Final

THEATER REVIEW;
On Both Sides of Urban Violence: Dehumanized and Interchangeable

BYLINE: By BEN BRANTLEY 

SECTION: Section C;  Page 13;  Column 1;  Cultural Desk 

LENGTH: 992 words

The murderous teen-ager who is the title character of Charles Fuller's "Zooman and the Sign" is, on his own harrowingly skewed terms, a thorough egalitarian. In the stunning monologue that begins the 1980 play, which has been revived at the Second Stage Theater, this inner-city Philadelphia youth seems to cast an eye of combustible contempt over anyone who crosses his line of vision.
He knifed an "ole jive West Indian" at a subway stop, he tells us, because the man was swinging his arms as if he owned the platform. He is glad, he says, that his aged aunt's Social Security check was stolen by junkies. Old people in general, "all bent over and twisted up, skin hanging off their faces," make him sick. 
 As for the girl he accidentally killed that day in a shooting that is the mainspring of the play's plot, it was entirely her fault. The "little bitch," as he puts it, had no business sitting on her front steps in the middle of what everyone knows is "a war zone."
As portrayed by Larry Gilliard Jr., in a smart, bravura performance that makes no apologies for his character, Zooman is a marvel of disaffection. He punctuates his frightening pronouncements with a mechanical, joyless whinny of a laugh, and his eyes rove the audience with a dead, ever-defensive gaze. He's a morally anesthetized punk, a spiritual cousin of the futurist hoodlums of "A Clockwork Orange" who nonetheless belongs, all too familiarly, to the America of today.
Mr. Fuller's take on the phenomenon this character represents still seems remarkable in its nonjudgmental clearsightedness and intelligence. "Zooman" remains a play with problems, and Seret Scott's straightforward production, while admirable in its nonsensationalist restraint, doesn't succeed in disguising them. The drama lacks the taut narrative drive and full-bodied characterizations of "A Soldier's Story," the 1981 work for which the author won a Pulitzer Prize.
But its searing presentation of the logic of a world in which people on both sides of the law become dehumanizingly interchangeable continues to demand attention. "Zooman" animates a moral argument in rich and uncompromisingly complex ways that avoid reductionist explanations and consoling solutions.
The play shifts between Zooman's self-justifying monologues and scenes that show the family of Jinny Tate, the 12-year-old girl the youth killed, dealing with the effects of the crime. There is grief, of course, but also righteous indignation when they realize that while many of their neighbors must have witnessed the killing, none will admit it.
The Tates deal with this realization in resonantly different ways. Jinny's mother, Rachel (Oni Faida Lampley), numbed by pain and disgust, wants only to leave the neighborhood. Her 14-year-old son, Victor (Alex Bess in an affectingly understated performance), gets a gun from a friend. Jinny's father, Reuben (Tony Todd), a bus driver and former prize fighter, puts up a sign that says, "The killers of our daughter Jinny are free on the streets because our neighbors will not identify them." This in turn sets off a chain of events, including nasty harassment of the family, that becomes a study in social pathology.
The play's most remarkable achievement is that Zooman makes a certain warped sense. His undiscriminating hostility reflects an environment that perceives him as faceless, a ready-made scapegoat. "Every time somebody black did something and the cops didn't have a name, they busted me!" he says. The arbitrarily brutal life he knows is for him part of a given system with its own set of rules. Even more disturbing is the fact that most of the Tates' neighbors seem to accept those rules as well.
As Rachel observes: "No one buried in the graveyard can read their own inscription. And this neighborhood is dead." And throughout the drama, there is a sense of people acting blindly with misbegotten results. Zooman, aiming at a gangland enemy, shoots a girl he has never met. The Tates accuse the wrong neighbor of withholding evidence. And Zooman's final undoing involves his being mistaken for someone else.
Mr. Fuller charts this futile pattern compellingly and persuasively. The domestic drama of the Tates is less convincing. A subplot about tension in the marriage and its effect on the children seems perfunctory and patly sentimental. And Ms. Scott, while keeping themes in sturdy focus, is less sure in building the play emotionally, and its climax is curiously flat.
The actors, who include Stephen M. Henderson and Saundra McClain in deftly shaped turns as visiting relatives, are all solid. Mr. Todd, a towering man who wears his size with appealing awkwardness, is considerably more. His Reuben is a giant of confused sorrow, loaded with the potential for violence, and his suppressed explosiveness is the perfect foil for Mr. Gilliard's casually worn destructiveness.
The current theater season, with its revivals of such recent works as Wendy Wasserstein's "Uncommon Women and Others" (also at the Second Stage) and Michael Cristofer's "Shadow Box," has demonstrated that topical plays can date quickly. "Zooman," however, remains a bracing and unfortunately relevant piece of theater.
 
ZOOMAN AND THE SIG
By Charles Fuller; directed by Seret Scott; sets by Marjorie Bradley Kellogg; costumes by Karen Perry; lighting by Michael Gilliam; sound by Janet Kalas; production stage manager, Elise-Ann Konstantin; stage manager, Elaine Bayless; associate producer, Carol Fishman. Presented by the Second Stage Theater, Carole Rothman, artistic director; Suzanne Schwartz Davidson, producing director. At 2162 Broadway, at 76th Street, Manhattan.

WITH: Larry Gilliard Jr. (Zooman), Oni Faida Lampley (Rachel Tate), Tony Todd (Reuben Tate), Stephen M. Henderson (Emmett Tate), Alex Bess (Victor Tate), Willie Stiggers Jr. (Russell Adams), Ed Wheeler (Donald Jackson), Saundra McClain (Ash Boswell) and Kim Bey (Grace Georges).

LOAD-DATE: December 12, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Oni Faida Lampley, left, Tony Todd and Saundra McClain play members of a bereaved family. (Susan Cook/"Zooman and the Sign")

TYPE: Review

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December 15, 1994, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

Kohl Names Abortion Foe To Family Post in Cabinet

BYLINE: By CRAIG R. WHITNEY,   Special to The New York Times 

SECTION: Section A;  Page 14;  Column 1;  Foreign Desk 

LENGTH: 645 words

DATELINE: BONN, Dec. 12

With German political parties still struggling four years after unification to reach consensus on a new abortion law to replace one that the courts rejected as unconstitutional, Chancellor Helmut Kohl has given the debate a new twist by naming an opponent of abortion as his Cabinet minister in charge of family policy.
East Germany permitted free access to abortion in the early stages of pregnancy. After unification, the Government loosened some of the restrictions West Germany had placed on abortion, until the country's highest court stepped in. Since then abortion has been technically illegal, though not punished. 
 The Cabinet member is Claudia Nolte, an eastern German Roman Catholic who heads the Ministry for the Family, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth. As minister, Mrs. Nolte will play an important role in influencing the debate in Parliament over a new abortion law.
When appointed last month, Mrs. Nolte told Parliament that she would do her best to seek a consensus. But she also said a new abortion law should encourage prospective mothers to say "yes to the child."
At 28, Mrs. Nolte is the youngest Cabinet minister in 50 years, and she is one of only three women in the Cabinet. She is also one of only two people from eastern Germany in Mr. Kohl's slimmed-down 16-member Cabinet; the other is Environment Minister Angela Merkel.
The Chancellor, who is also Roman Catholic, has avoided staking out a position on abortion. He said he had chosen Mrs. Nolte because he was impressed by her determination to stand up for principle.
But the appointment has provoked criticism. Barbara Ritter, a member of a nationwide abortion-rights movement here, said: "Her position on abortion is extreme -- she wants to make it punishable, period. At least now the Government has put its cards on the table."
Mrs. Nolte led the Christian Democratic Party list in Thuringia State in the first all-German elections in December 1990, and in the Parliament in Bonn she soon acquired a reputation for being independent minded, particularly on the issue of abortion. Mrs. Nolte voted against one liberalization bill supported by a majority of her own party.
From 1972 East German women had had the right to abortion until the 12th week of pregnancy, and more than 70,000 a year underwent the procedure in the late 1980's. This was about as many as in the western part of the country, which had four times the population.
West Germany also tried to lift the legal prohibition on abortion in the mid-1970's, but the courts overturned the first attempts and made it possible in most cases only if the attending physician approved.
After reunification in 1990, Parliament approved a law that gave women the right to abortion after mandatory counseling about the dangers and drawbacks. That law was overturned by the country's highest court in May 1993 on the ground that it violated the constitutional requirement to protect human life. But it also ruled that women who underwent abortions in the first three months of pregnancy, and their doctors, should not be prosecuted.
In practice, since the state-mandated health insurance program was barred from paying for abortions and state-run hospitals rarely performed them, the ruling meant that it was easier for women who could afford it to go to some other country for the operation or pay for it themselves in private clinics here.
The political parties have been struggling to reach agreement on a new law that would pay for the operation for indigent women who needed it, but have been divided on the income limit needed to qualify and other details.
Parliament gave up trying to enact a new law over the summer, but the Parliament elected on Oct. 16 is under pressure to resolve the problem soon, since the interim arrangements permitted by the court decision expire at the end of this year.

LOAD-DATE: December 15, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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December 16, 1994, Friday, Late Edition - Final

THE CLINTON TAX PLAN: THE OVERVIEW;
Clinton Outlines a Plan for Tax Breaks

BYLINE: By TODD S. PURDUM,   Special to The New York Times 

SECTION: Section A;  Page 1;  Column 6;  National Desk 

LENGTH: 1459 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Dec. 15

Bracing for battle with a Republican Congress and striving to win back a disgruntled electorate, President Clinton tonight sketched a blueprint of middle-class tax breaks, smaller government and new incentives for education and training for the second half of his term.
In a 10-minute televised address to the nation from the Oval Office, the President returned to the winning themes of his 1992 campaign, presenting himself as the champion of hard-working ordinary Americans. He sounded what amounted to the opening notes of his 1996 re-election effort in remarks aimed as much at reshaping himself as the Government he wants to continue to lead. 
 Mr. Clinton summoned Congress and the country to support a package of tax breaks intended to help middle-class families care for young children, send them to college or technical school, and plan for retirement and life's biggest and most important expenses, like buying a first home. [Transcript, page A36.]
In a move to cast himself as the fiscally responsible defender of the elderly -- which could severely limit his options -- Mr. Clinton challenged Congress to pass his program "without adding to the deficit and without any new cuts" in Social Security or Medicare. He said he would finance his tax package, which aides said amounted to about $60 billion over five years, by shrinking and reorganizing Government departments in ways that he left mostly unspecified.
"Fifty years ago, an American President proposed a G.I. bill of rights to help returning veterans from World War II go on to college, buy a home and raise their children," said Mr. Clinton, who, in a speech by turns bookish and personally upbeat, recalled his own youth as the son of a widowed mother who fought to make a better life. "That built this country. Tonight, I propose a middle-class bill of rights."
As he strove to assure a hearing for proposals that the Republican Congress could well ignore, Mr. Clinton embraced such traditionally Republican notions as smaller, less intrusive government and lower taxes. But he put the debate in his own terms by suggesting his actions were a fulfillment of his 1992 campaign pledge to cut the tax burden of the middle class and invest in education and training to prepare the nation for the 21st century -- ideas also long supported by the moderate Democrats who have recently accused him of forsaking them.
The President's plan would offer an annual income tax credit of up to $500 for each child under age 13 to families with adjusted gross incomes of up to $75,000, and up to $10,000 in annual deductions for any kind of post-high school education for families earning no more than $120,000.
Mr. Clinton also proposed expanding eligibility for tax-deductible contributions to Individual Retirement Accounts to families earning up to $100,000, from $50,000 now. He would permit tax-free withdrawals before retirement age to pay for education, catastrophic illness, care of an elderly parent or the purchase of a first home.
The President also proposed to consolidate 60 Federal job training programs into a single system that would give vouchers of between $2,000 and $3,000 to those who qualify for training in private employment programs.
Speaking from his desk with a flag and bright red poinsettias behind him, the President went out of his way to seem above partisan bickering, insisting: "This is not about politics as usual. As I have said for years, it is not about moving left or right, but moving forward. It is not about Government being bad or good, but about what kind of Government will best enable us to fulfill our God-given potential.
"And it's not about the next election, either. That's in your hands. Meanwhile, I'm going to do what I think is right. My rule for the next two years will be country first, and politics as usual dead last. I hope the new Congress will follow the same rule. And I hope you will, too."
But Republicans were swift and sharp in their response. Representative Jim Leach of Iowa, the new chairman of the Banking Committee and Mr. Clinton's chief Congressional critic on the Whitewater affair, accused the President of blatant accommodation to the new Republican realities.
"In a pretense of leadership, the President has strapped on the seat belt in the caboose of the freight train engineered by the new Speaker of the House," Mr. Leach said, "and made a leaner-government theme the centerpiece of both political parties."
In the Republicans' official televised reply to the President's speech, the newly elected Senator Fred D. Thompson of Tennessee vowed that his party would renew efforts to slash the size of Government, reshape Congress and set the country on a new path.
"We campaigned on these principles, and now we are going to do something that has become all too unusual in American politics," Mr. Thompson said. "We are going to do exactly what we said we were going to do during the campaign."
Officials said the President intended to pay for his plan with a sweeping mix of consolidation and cost cutting in five Federal agencies -- the Departments of Energy, Transportation, and Housing and Urban Development, as well as the General Services Administration (the Government's real estate management arm) and the Office of Personnel Management -- and by continuing existing caps on spending for discretionary programs into 2000.
Discretionary programs are the part of the Federal budget that must be approved each year and have a specific, limited budget. They do not include Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid or other "entitlements" on which the Government spends as much as necessary to cover all those who are eligible.
The Administration's approach postpones, at least until after the 1996 elections, hard decisions about just which programs would have to be cut to pay for the tax cuts. The White House deliberately deferred any detailed discussion of the rest of the budget until Mr. Clinton's State of the Union and budget messages next month, though the President tonight pledged a top-to-bottom review of spending in the coming weeks.
The new Republican majority in Congress has already proposed a broader, deeper range of tax and spending cuts, so even Presidential proposals that otherwise might be broadly popular with voters now face at best uphill fights and uncertain coalitions on Capitol Hill -- and quite likely will simply be declared dead on arrival in Congress.
Since the election, Mr. Clinton has struggled, first simply to absorb the Democrats' sweeping defeat, and then to respond to it, and he has been buffeted not only by bold pledges from the triumphant Republicans but also by harsh criticism and lukewarm support from many fellow Democrats. Indeed, the strongest statement that the new Senate Democratic leader, Tom Daschle of South Dakota, made for Mr. Clinton tonight was that his "proposal appears to be a good one."
For the last 10 days, Mr. Clinton and his top advisers have reviewed scores of options, and aides said Mr. Clinton was still tinkering with the final version of his address until early this evening, striving to communicate both his vision for the future, and his resolve to pursue it.
"He lived the American dream," one senior aide said in a White House briefing before the speech. "He's going to say that to the American people, and he wants others to believe it again as well."
Mr. Clinton himself stressed that theme in one passage of his speech, explaining his desire to make the tax code work to support worthy social goals. "Just as we made mortgage interest tax deductible because we want people to own homes, we should make college tuition tax deductible because we want people to go to college," the remarks read.
The President repeated a line from his inaugural speech, saying "I still believe deeply that there is nothing wrong with America that can't be fixed by what's right with America." He also echoed the second inaugural address of Abraham Lincoln, saying that the country needed "less malice and more charity."
The proposed tax cuts would take effect on Jan. 1, 1996, but senior officials acknowledged that their full effect was likely to be phased in over time, which would diminish the initial benefit.
Officials said about $24 billion in savings necessary to finance the tax breaks would come from restructuring Government agencies and farming out some functions to the private sector, though no cabinet department would be eliminated. It appears that the bulk of such savings would come from the Department of Energy. Another $52 billion in savings would come from continuing in force the caps on discretionary spending initially adopted as part of the 1990 budget accord through the turn of the century.

LOAD-DATE: December 16, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photos: President Clinton addressed the nation last night from the Oval Office, proposing a series of tax breaks intended to help the middle class. (CNN) (pg. A1); President Clinton yesterday proposed a combination of tax reductions and Government cutbacks geared to help middle-class families buy houses, educate their children and save for retirement. Earlier in the day, he worked on his speech in the Treaty Room, in the residential quarters of the White House. (White House Photo via Reuters) (pg. A36)

Charts: "CASE STUDIES: How the Tax Cut Would Work"
 How the White House says the President's tax cut for the middle class would work for three hypothetical families. In each case, the four-person family (two adults, two children) has $50,000 in wage and salary income, $7,500 in itemized deductions, and $10,000 in personal exemptions ($2,500 a person).
 
A $1,000 REDUCTION, OR 21 PERCENT CUT
 Both children are 12 or under
 Current Tax Bill -- $4,875
 Clinton Plan -- $3,875
 
A $1,500 REDUCTION, OR 31 PERCENT CUT
 Both children are over 12; family has $10,000 in education expenses
 Current Tax Bill -- $4,875
 Clinton Plan -- $3,374
 
A $600 REDUCTION, OR 12 PERCENT CUT
 Both children are over 12; no education expenses; $4,000 contribution to individual retirement account
 Current Tax Bill -- $4,875
 Clinton Plan -- $4,275 (pg. A36)
 
"HIGHLIGHTS: The President's Proposal"
 Highlights of the President's proposed package of tax and spending cuts as outlined by White House aides.
 
TAX CUTS: $60 BILLION OVER FIVE YEARS
 Children -- Create tax credit of $500 for each child under 13. Applies fully for families with incomes of less than $60,000; phased out at $75,000.
 Education -- Allow deduction of up to $10,000 for post-secondary education. Applies fully to families with incomes of up to $100,000; phased out at $120,000.
 Individual Retirement Accounts -- Raise cutoff for full IRA deduction for people not covered by retirement plan (up to $2,000 per wage earner) to family incomes of $80,000, up from current limit of $40,000. Phased out at $100,000, up from current $50,000.
 Allow penalty-free early withdrawal of IRA funds for to pay for education, illness or illness of a parent or purchase of first home.
 
SPENDING CUTS: $76 BILLION OVER FIVE YEARS
 Cuts and management changes at Departments of Transportation, Energy and Housing and Urban Development and other agencies -- $ 24 billion.
 Extension of freeze on discretionary spending -- $ 52 billion.
 Spending cuts would be used both to cover cost of tax changes and to reduce the deficit by $16 billion over five years. (pg. A36)

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December 16, 1994, Friday, Late Edition - Final

METRO DIGEST

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

LENGTH: 486 words


MAYOR PLANS INCENTIVES FOR WALL STREET
 Mayor Giuliani proposed tax breaks and zoning changes to bolster the sagging real estate market of Wall Street and lower Manhattan. A1.
 
GIULIANI SEEKS CUTS IN AID FOR POOR
 The Giuliani administration began planning sharp reductions in health and welfare benefit programs for the poor as part of its strategy for handling a $2 billion budget gap. A1. 
 A judge urged the City Council and the Mayor to resolve their budget standoff. B8.
 
NEW YORK CITY
 
SHOWDOWN OVER THE SCHOOLS CHANCELLOR
 As Mayor Giuliani continues to press for the ouster of Schools Chancellor Ramon C. Cortines, the Mayor stands all but alone, abandoned even by those who have supported his efforts to streamline government and eliminate waste. News analysis, B3.
 
CONVICTION OF RABBI'S WIFE OVERTURNED
 A Brooklyn judge threw out the conviction of a rabbi's wife on charges that she conspired with her husband and others to help a Jewish teen-ager hide from his family for two years. B3.
 
A PHONE LINK TO LOVED ONES FAR AWAY
 Hundreds of elderly people took advantage of free phone lines set up for the holidays by the Teleport Communications Group to call friends and loved ones overseas. B3.
 
INCENDIARY DEVICE GOES OFF ON SUBWAY
 Two teen-agers on a subway train in Harlem were burned, one seriously, when an incendiary device that one of them was carrying set a book bag on fire, the transit police said. B3.
 
BROOKLYN JAIL WILL BE CLOSED
 The City Correction Department said that it would close its jail near the old Brooklyn Navy Yard next week and transfer 400 inmates to its sprawling complex on Rikers Island. B3.
 
GIRL DIES FROM FALL AT SCHOOL
 An 11-year-old Brooklyn girl has died from a neck injury she received when she fell down a flight of stairs at her junior high school last week, the police said. B2.
The Coast Guard suspended its search for survivors from a merchant vessel that sank. A11.
 
REGION
 
ROWLAND FINDS TABLES TURNED
 For two weeks, John G. Rowland, the first Republican elected governor in Connecticut in 20 years, has been barnstorming around the state, meeting people to build momentum for his plans to shrink government. But almost everywhere that he stopped someone demanded more money and more help from the state. B6.
 
SUSPECT QUESTIONS MAN WHO STOPPED HIM
 Colin Ferguson came face to face with Kevin Blum, the man who tackled him a year ago on a Long Island Rail Road train and halted a shooting rampage. B6.
 
PATAKI FILLS 3 KEY POSITIONS
 Governor-elect Pataki filled three jobs to complete his inner circle, announcing the appointment of an old friend, a chief aide to his mentor in the Legislature and a former press secretary to Senator Alfonse M. D'Amato. B7.
One of the victims of a stampede at an Elizabeth, N.J., club was carrying $1,715. B10.
Neediest Cases B2
Chronicle B4

LOAD-DATE: December 16, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Graph: "PULSE: Housing Starts" shows seasonally adjusted annual rate, in thousands, for New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and New England. (Source: Commerce Department)

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December 16, 1994, Friday, Late Edition - Final

For Elderly, a Phone Link to Loved Ones Far Away

BYLINE: By JOE SEXTON 

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

LENGTH: 587 words

Ann Kaufman is 91, and so she says she has trouble with words. She can never seem to find the right one, and she has lost some altogether.
"I'm old," she said. "I have the privilege to forget words." 
 Yesterday, though, as she punched numbers on a telephone trying to reach Israel, Ann Kaufman was confident she could master the vocabulary of the moment.
"I just want to say hello," she said.
She reached Israel, said hello and then some, as did hundreds of other elderly residents of Brooklyn. Taking advantage of free phone lines set up for the holidays by the Teleport Communications Group, people from Brighton Beach and Flatbush, Canarsie and Bushwick, walked into Borough Hall in Brooklyn yesterday and called Russia, Argentina, Mexico, Panama and South Africa. Similar setups were organized in the other four boroughs.
"I had wanted to call a young man who is in the Army in Germany, and who is like my own child," said Hazel Collman, a 64-year-old former bookkeeper who moved to Brooklyn from Jamaica 27 years ago. "He was a friend of my daughter. They didn't marry, but I didn't hold it against him. We stuck together. I live on a fixed income, and so I haven't spoken to him since May.
"I didn't reach him this morning. But I can pray. I think that line is open."
Alongside Mrs. Collman in the vaulted community room of Borough Hall, the men and women hunched over tables of phones, fingers stuck in their ears to hear above the din, above the assorted languages and dialects and accents colliding over their heads.
They pored over frayed personal phone books and crumpled paper, deciphering numbers.
"A lot come with only partial numbers," said Claire Hart, an employee of the communications company who was assisting the callers. "But as soon as you get them through, they tell you to go, go away and let them talk."
No one checked ages at the door. The half-hour call limit was only loosely enforced. There were a lot of tears and some spectacular arguments.
"I don't do much writing anymore," said 86-year-old Hilda Domingo, as she dialed Panama City. "A stroke slowed me down. But I can't get through."
She waited, her eventual reward a mixed one. A cousin she had considered a brother had died. In July.
"He was only 45," Hilda said. "But I'm glad to know."
Through her call, Olga Reichman learned yesterday that she had become a great aunt, her niece in Tel Aviv having given birth three weeks ago to a daughter, Noa. Mary Chernomordyn, who doesn't speak much English, slid a scarf around her face, but couldn't muffle a laugh. "Son," she said. "Leningrad." Clyde Sealy, 69, surprised a cousin in Barbados.
"We're old people now," he said. "We can talk about nothing. Easily."
The hardest thing Lillian Quiteman had to do after placing her calls was calm down. She phoned one old friend, who told her the conversation was "better than penicillin." Then she called France and spoke with the child she had helped raise. The girl, Linda Fulford, is a now a woman, married and living in the south of France.
"I never had a daughter myself, only sons," Lillian said. "She sounded beautiful. But I'm so charged up now. I'll have to put something in my coffee. I'm still in France."
Freida Robaschek was about to call Warsaw, although her list was short, as all of her relatives died during the war.
"I live in Brighton Beach now -- a poor man's paradise," she said. "I love America. You can say what you want."
Which is exactly what Freida Robaschek, phone in hand, then did .

LOAD-DATE: December 16, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Hundreds of elderly residents of Brooklyn took advantage of free phone lines set up in Borough Hall to call relatives in Russia, Argentina, Mexico, Panama and South Africa. (Ruby Washington/The New York Times)

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December 16, 1994, Friday, Late Edition - Final

GYMNASTICS: A Gymnast's Toughest Balancing Act;
Shannon Miller Juggles School, Social Life and Sports With a New, Mature Assurance

BYLINE: By JERE LONGMAN,   Special to The New York Times 

SECTION: Section B;  Page 13;  Column 5;  Sports Desk 

LENGTH: 1310 words

DATELINE: OKLAHOMA CITY

Since she won five medals in gymnastics as a 15-year-old at the 1992 Summer Olympics, Shannon Miller has grown. She has grown into a two-time world champion and she has also grown 4 inches and gained 20 pounds in a sport that remains a race against the clock, the body clock.
The maturing of her body since the Barcelona Games has shifted Miller's center of gravity and brought a transformation in her performance from a pipsqueak with a rubber-band body to a young woman of confidence, power and sophistication. And that's just the problem. 
 Ever since 1976, when Nadia Comaneci of Romania scored the first perfect routine and became the youngest Olympic gymnastics champion, judges, officials and coaches increasingly began to neglect maturity, grace and elegance, preferring instead the acrobatic stunts of athletic munchkins.
Recently, however, women's gymnastics has turned an institutional back flip, attempting to deflect criticism that it robs children of their youth and fosters the potential for eating disorders like anorexia, which led to the death last summer of Christy Henrich, a star in the 1980's.
After the 1996 Summer Games in Atlanta, female gymnasts must be at least 16 to compete in the Olympics and the world championships. Advances in training techniques, nutrition and physical therapy have allowed careers to mature along with women's bodies. No longer is a driver's license the gymnastic equivalent of a senior citizen's discount card.
"In the past, we didn't know how to deal with puberty," said Steve Nunno, who coaches Miller. "Now we do."
With the 1996 Summer Games to be held in the United States, careers that might have been mothballed are being extended. Miller, now a high school senior in the Oklahoma City suburb of Edmond, is 17. Dominique Dawes, the national all-around champion, is 18.
"It's important for people to know you don't have to be a young kid to perform difficult routines," Miller said at a recent workout.
A year ago, according to her mother, Claudia Miller, Shannon nearly abandoned gymnastics to get on with a normal teen-ager's life. With the medals from the 1992 Olympics and the all-around title at the 1993 world championships, her challenges seemed conquered and her body felt battered.
Eventually, her determination returned with rest and the continued dangling of this carrot: American women have never won a gold medal in Olympic team competition. She could vault herself and her teammates into history.
"I don't want to just be part of the team," Miller said. "I want to help the team. If you step back and look at the big picture, I guess you could say the clock is ticking, but I don't think about it."
Still, women's gymnastics is hardly given over completely to women. Every Olympic all-around champion since 1968 has been under 20 years of age. Three of the six have been younger than 17. Currently, the fourth-ranked American, Jenny Thompson of Houston, is 13.
To maintain her standing atop the world, Miller will have to continue her three-ring juggling of gymnastics, school and a nascent social life as her body and her outside interests continue to develop.
Inevitably, new routines have been devised to accommodate her new height and weight. A gymnast who is 4-11 and weighs 90 pounds cannot perform all the tricks that she performed when she was 4-7 and weighed 70 pounds.
In designing new routines, Nunno counters her loss of speed on twists and spins by accentuating her increased power in vaulting and tumbling. A new jazzy, lyrical floor routine, still in dress rehearsal, displays her metamorphosis from elfin exuberance to womanly self-assuredness.
"She's always been known as so shy, but now she comes in the gym and takes over," said Peggy Liddick, who coaches Miller on the balance beam and choreographs her floor routine. "Her inhibitions have subsided."
At 15, Miller could go nonstop, as if she were running on batteries. At 17, she needs more rest. Last month, she attended the world team championships in Germany but departed after competing in the compulsory events to prevent what Nunno called overuse. Her next international competition is likely to be the Pan-American Games in March in Argentina.
Nunno has built a physical therapy center at his gym to treat the inevitable nagging injuries. And he has purchased a 60-foot trampoline runway to ease the pounding on Miller's knees and ankles and back during tumbling maneuvers.
"Without that, she wouldn't have won the world championship this year," Nunno said. "She might not have competed."
Nunno admonishes Miller during practice, "Take nothing for granted." She has suffered a pair of rare defeats this year, finishing second at the Goodwill Games and the United States championships over the summer. Atlanta is 18 months away, a generation for women's gymnastics.
"If there is a clock ticking, it is a mental clock," Nunno said. "It's all mental, not physical. If an athlete thinks she's washed up, then she's washed up. It's my job to keep dangling that carrot, to keep her motivated."
In a sport where young athletes can balance wondrously on a four-inch-wide beam but often seem to struggle with personal equilibrium, Miller has brought some much-needed normalcy. She lives at home with her parents, Ron, a physics professor, and Claudia, a bank executive, and maintains a straight-A average in public school. Last week, she won the Dial Award as the nation's top female high school student-athlete.
There is no way around the abstinent life style required to be a world-class gymnast. Miller's social life -- movies, shopping -- is restricted to weekends when she is not competing or making a personal appearance. Classmates describe Miller as friendly but shy and uncomfortable with the public attention paid to her. So much so that she has never really discussed her trip to the 1992 Olympics.
"After she got home, we drove her to school the first day," said Erin Jones, a classmate of Miller's. "My mom said she looked more nervous than she did at the Olympics. It was a huge deal. One guy tried to kiss her in the hall. She freaked out. This year, she seems much more relaxed and comfortable."
Andy Branich, a friend from a rival high school in Edmond, said he first asked Miller out to dinner and a movie several months ago. "I'm a gymnast," he said, "and I've missed out on a lot of things that I wished someone had invited me to. Being a teen-ager, you want to be able to get out."
Given 35 hours of training each week, however, most of Miller's free time is devoted to studying. She has insisted on remaining in public school, and administrators at Edmond North High School have accommodated her with a flexible schedule. A tutor, Terri Thomas, picks up her class assignments when Miller is away at competitions and monitors her work in a home-study calculus class.
If the clock is ticking on her daughter's career, Claudia Miller is determined to make sure that the alarm doesn't go off despite some nervous moments from overzealous fans and concerns about a healthy social life and eating habits.
"She hasn't shown any signs of anorexia or bulimia," Claudia Miller said.
Her daughter's interest now lies in the challenge of new routines: a vault never before attempted, an original maneuver on the uneven bars, an innovative dismount. If it is unusual for Miller to stay with the sport beyond high school, Nunno said, it is because she is an unusual athlete.
"People are saying this is kind of crazy, she's over the hill, she'll never make it," Nunno said. "If we listened to everybody else, we'd have been through a long time ago. But Shannon's actually gotten better since the Olympics. She's the Martina Navratilova of gymnastics, is what she is. She has kept loving the sport, so why get out? At some point, you do it for yourself because you want to."

NAME: Shannon Miller

LOAD-DATE: December 16, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photos: Shannon Miller, right, during practice with a coach, Peggy Liddick, who choreographs her floor routines. (Pat J. Carter for The New York Times) (pg. B13); In 1992, at the age of 15, Shannon Miller won five medals at the Summer Olympics. She has since grown 4 inches and gained 20 pounds. (Associated Press) (pg. B14)

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December 18, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Q. & A.

SECTION: Section 9; Page 8; Column 6; Real Estate Desk

LENGTH: 732 words


Roaches Out of Control
 
Q. We are senior citizens living as tenants in a co-op complex. We have a roach problem that has gone out of control. It is causing me physical and emotional problems. 
 The apartment next door is occupied by a 90-year-old woman who cannot take care of herself or her apartment, which is absolutely filthy and full of roaches. Social Services wanted to clean the apartment at their expense but the neighbor refused to let anyone in. She does not allow the exterminator in. (I do.)
Because of this, I cannot control the roaches. Several months ago I called the Board of Health. Nothing was done. I telephoned Social Services and was told that the co-op board should institute legal action. The board claims it can't do anything because the law would not allow the eviction of a 90-year-old woman. What recourse do we have? . . . Mr. and Mrs. Vincent Mesisca, Bronxville, N.Y.
 
A. The writer may seek recourse against the co-op, the neighbor and the owners of the neighbor's and the writer's apartment, said Ronald A. Sher, a White Plains lawyer.
"A pest-infestation condition may constitute a breach of the warranty of habitability and violate the Westchester County or New York State Sanitary Codes," Mr. Sher said. "The co-op corporation has a duty to maintain the premises and provide proper care of the building, including pest-control extermination services. The corporation also has the right of entry and may conduct inspections, with notice or at any time without notice in an emergency."
It also has the right to make repairs and cure any unsanitary condition, he said. "The corporation has apparently tried to provide the necessary services, but has failed to alleviate the vermin situation by requiring treatment of the infested apartment," he said. "It has the right to bring the resident to court for a limited purpose, to cure the unsanitary condition, rather than seeking eviction of a senior citizen."
The tenant should ask the board and the managing agent to inspect the infested apartment, Mr. Sher said, and to find out of other residents are affected. The board should also notify the neighbor's family, the Westchester County Office for the Aging or the Department of Social Services' adult protection unit, he said, "since the resident is clearly unable to care for herself and is in need of assistance."
In addition, he said, the tenant should file another complaint with the Board of Health and contact the State Division of Housing and Community Renewal seeking an abatement of rent based on a lack of necessary services.
Finally, he said, if none of the above works, "the commencement of litigation may be considered against the board, the neighbor and owners of both the neighbor's and the tenant's apartment."
 
Approval of Co-op Applicants
 
Q. The proprietary lease of my co-op has a provision that requires the managing agent, rather than the co-op board of directors, to approve applicants for purchase of apartments under foreclosure. The reasoning for this, our attorney says, is to protect the bank from being stuck with an apartment because of a very selective co-op board.
Is this kind of provision common? If the co-op should get rid of this rule, would banks be reluctant to give mortgages in our building? If we want to get rid of this rule, how can we do so? . . . Laura Kirsner, Manhattan.
 
A. The provision is by no means unusual, said Marc Luxemburg, a Manhattan lawyer and president of the Council of New York Cooperatives. "There are probably many buildings that have proprietary leases that provide for some lesser degree of scrutiny of applicants brought in by banks in a foreclosure proceeding," Mr. Luxemburg said.
The co-op, however, may change the provision, he said. "Most proprietary leases contain a provision that allows the lease to be amended," he said. "The procedure typically requires agreement by two-thirds or three-quarters of the shareholders."
The provision, though, may only be changed prospectively, he said. "You can't take away the rights the banks have under the existing proprietary lease with regard to apartments that have bank loans on them now," he said.
As far as such a change making the banks wary, "many proprietary leases require full board consent, and that hasn't stopped banks from making loans to any buildings I'm aware of," Mr. Luxemburg said.

LOAD-DATE: December 18, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

TYPE: Question

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December 18, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

BACKTALK;
Baseball Fan: Heal Thyself

BYLINE: By ROBERT LIPSYTE 

SECTION: Section 8;  Page 9;  Column 1;  Sports Desk 

LENGTH: 847 words

We came back after the Fix of 1919 and we came back after the Abandonment of 1957 and we'll come back after the Strikeout of 1994, sadder Budweiser, wearing our rally caps, salary caps, dunce caps, backward, of course. We need to be tested every four decades or so to prove that fan is short for fantasist.
"We're the problem," said Roger Sims, an acknowledged fan. "We have this unrealistic view of who they are, and what our relationship is. The owners are truly from another planet, these gray old men who smell of cologne, but what did we ever do about the reserve clause or the antitrust exemption? And the players haven't been one of us in years, but we still demand some connection between our lives and theirs, just because we need them so much. 
 "Which is the point. We are junkies. We will forgive and forget as soon as the next season starts. And so what? Baseball don't mean nothing. That's what's so good about it."
Sims, who played baseball briefly at Howard University 35 years ago and who was loving last season because the Yankees were winning, lost interest when the conversation got to Bud Selig and Darryl Strawberry, who will probably be the handiest effigies for those looking to hang Poor Sportsmen of the Year from columns and wrap-ups. Why can owners collude and players be in a position to take money under the table and all we can do is wax nostalgic?
"Two stories," said Sims, who was watching a night rain bat on his condo windows in Everett, Wash. "In 1948, my grandfather took me to my first baseball game, in Wrigley Field. Loved that place. I held his hand as we walked in, and he said, 'If anyone asks you your favorite Cub, say Phil Cavarretta.'
"I waited the whole game but no one came up to us. I mean, who interrogates an old black man and a fat 10-year-old at a ball game? But holding my granddad's hand and baseball and Phil Cavarretta are mixed up in my mind forever. That's why I'm a fan. How could it have anything to do with right now. I mean, Gregg Jefferies. How many millions?
"And some years after that, when I was living in New York, I was waiting outside Yankee Stadium, too cool to rush for autographs, just watching other kids run after the players, and here comes Hector Lopez, and he's friendly and he signs for everybody and he talks while he's doing it and then he goes off to the subway. I remember the little half moons of sweat under his armpits. To the subway. So his fielding wasn't always perfect. You better not call him Whatta Pair of Hands Lopez in front of me unless you're smiling."
Having established his credentials, Sims turned a little mean. "We keep talking about the greedy owners and the greedy players, but what about the third corner of that triangle, the greedy fan? Emotionally greedy for a romance that never existed. We helped create all this. They know we'll be here when it's over. So how will anything ever change?"
Nevertheless, there are theories of change: a young generation of fan will be lost to multimedia, for example, less of a blow to club-owning corporations already in that field than to players; the bursting economic bubble will send players' salaries sliding back toward their fans', and fans will return but emotionally distance themselves from the game to prevent further disappointments.
Maybe fans will take a closer look. The reflexive bashing of owners is based on the Figaro complex, the common man reaffirming his fate as servant by railing at the master for not being perfect. Did we really expect owners to be smarter, more virtuous than players because they're richer? On the other hand, owners ARE the future of the game because they amass the capital, create the arena and meet the payroll, which is at least as important as throwing and catching. In the history of the game, Bud Selig is more important than Paul Molitor, and has done far more to keep it going.
That players are not necessarily smarter and more virtuous than fans may even be excusable, certainly understandable. Fans masquerading as parents, teachers, lovers and friends have been letting these adolescents off the hook all their lives so long as they performed. And as soon as they get into trouble, we wonder how they could be so ungrateful. Some compassion, please.
How much of Strawberry's current problems for allegedly taking card show fees without declaring it grew out of the addict's need for unaccountable cash?
"C'mon," Sims said. "That's just another hero-with-feet-of-clay story. You guys love that. Build 'em up and knock 'em down. Look, the world didn't end without baseball, which is good. It means we can keep on being fans. As much as we love and need it, baseball don't mean nothing. It's based on unrealistic expectations. Enough for now. I'm just gonna wait for the new season." It was getting late, even on the West Coast, and his voice sounded dreamy.
"When I get to the hereafter," he said, and it was hard to tell if he meant heaven or spring training, "I've got two questions to ask granddad: Is he proud of the way I turned out? Why Phil Cavarretta?"

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December 18, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Dec. 11-17: A Nation of Movers;
Study Shows America A Land of Transients

BYLINE: By SAM ROBERTS  

SECTION: Section 4;   Page 2;   Column 2;   Week in Review Desk  

LENGTH: 142 words

In Pennsylvania, there are neither movers nor Shakers. A new Census Bureau analysis found that the western portion of the state is home to a disproportionate share of households that had lived in the same home for three decades or more. Everywhere else, though, Americans were on the move. 
 Overall, nearly three times as many Americans were transients who had moved in the 15 months before the 1990 census as the number who had lived in the same house since 1959. The stayers were older, often elderly women who owned their own homes in the Northeast and Midwest. Transients typically were unmarried young men in the South and West. While the proportion of renters who were recent movers has been rising slightly, the share of owners who had switched homes within the previous 15 months dipped to what may be a record low.   SAM ROBERTS

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December 18, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Dec. 11-17: Gore Another's Ox;
Looking to Trim Benefits, Federal Panel Fails

BYLINE: By ROBERT PEAR  

SECTION: Section 4;   Page 2;   Column 3;   Week in Review Desk  

LENGTH: 253 words

As Democrats and Republicans rushed to voice their support for tax cuts last week, they all but ignored a plea for fiscal responsibility from a bipartisan Federal advisory panel headed by Senator Bob Kerrey.
 Many economists and Government officials agree with the panel's conclusion: that the cost of commitments made through programs like Social Security and Medicare exceeds the money available to pay for them over the next 35 years. But the problem grows gradually, and Americans are unwilling to deal with such problems until a crisis is at hand, Mr. Kerrey said. So the panel concluded its work without recommending a package of specific changes to slow the growth of these programs. 
 The panel, the Bipartisan Commission on Entitlement and Tax Reform, established by Mr. Clinton in November 1993, said that benefits like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and Federal employee pensions now accounted for 47 percent of all Federal spending and, with no change in current law, would account for 58 percent in the year 2003. Mr. Kerrey, a Nebraska Democrat, proposed savings that would have primarily come from Social Security and Medicare, but Mr. Clinton said no.
 Mr. Kerrey infuriated labor unions and spokesmen for the elderly, who said his proposals would gut social insurance programs. And he had the audacity to suggest that the middle class might need to make some sacrifices, just as the White House was proposing "a middle-class bill of rights," full of new tax breaks.   ROBERT PEAR

LOAD-DATE: December 18, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH 

GRAPHIC: Photo: Senators Kerry and Danforth (David Scull/The New York Times)

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December 18, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Interest Groups Rally to Prevent Medicare Cuts

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

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

LENGTH: 966 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Dec. 17

At the moment, the budgetary news out of both parties is blissfully painless: an array of tax cuts for the middle class, a stern stance on fiscal responsibility and the trimming back of inefficient, generally discretionary domestic spending programs.
But the interest groups in Washington are not so easily fooled. Ahead lie some wrenching political battles, and nowhere is that more clear than in the sprawling, complicated, exceedingly sensitive and exceedingly costly Medicare program for the elderly. The fear among groups representing doctors, hospitals and the elderly, and the expectation among many members on Capitol Hill, is that Medicare will become a tempting piggy bank to help pay for tax cuts, deficit reduction or just the general tightening and reordering of the Federal budget. 
 The program's protectors won a first round this week, when President Clinton challenged Congress to achieve his "middle-class bill of rights" without "new cuts" in Medicare. But the struggle has just begun, and newly influential Republicans in Congress, notably Representative John R. Kasich of Ohio, the incoming chairman of the House Budget Committee, are taking a hard look at the benefits and the financing of the Medicare program.
In the time-honored tradition of mobilizing one's constituents on the eve of a budget battle, the groups with a stake in Medicare are beginning to sound the alarm. "In our opinion, in 1995 we're looking at the biggest assault on the Medicare program in its entire history," said Richard J. Davidson, president of the American Hospital Association, which sent a letter to Mr. Clinton last week imploring him to hold the line on cuts in Medicare. "It's going to be assaulted from every part of town for a simple reason: it's where the money is."
John Rother, legislative director of the American Association of Retired Persons, said: "We're in a defensive position. Where the objective in the last few years was to solve some of the problems in the program, now our objective is to keep the situation from worsening."
The political calculus has, in fact, changed starkly on just about every issue since last month's elections, but nowhere more so than on health.  Just six months ago, Congress was still debating comprehensive health care plans to achieve universal coverage and a vast expansion of health benefits. Many proposals, including the Clinton plan, sought to extract substantial savings from the Medicare program by such means as raising the premiums paid by affluent retirees. But those proposals would have also added new benefits for the elderly, like a prescription drug program and new home-based services for the disabled.
After the collapse of those efforts, and last month's conservative sweep at the polls, only incremental changes in the health care system are expected in the new Congress, if that. But the temptation to squeeze savings out of Medicare remains.
"The reason people are looking at it is that potential savings were identified in health care reform," said Robert Reischauer, director of the Congressional Budget Office.
Administration officials said the President could achieve his middle-class bill of rights with cuts in other, discretionary programs. But Republicans are committed to a far more sweeping program, including a constitutional amendment to balance the budget and an array of tax cuts; given that agenda, many on Capitol Hill say it is hard to imagine keeping both Social Security and Medicare off the table.
There are several ways Congress can trim the Medicare program. In the 1993 budget agreement, it put limits on the growth of payments made to hospitals and doctors. It can impose a broad spending cap on Medicare and other non-Social Security entitlement programs, those programs offering benefits to all who meet the criteria in the law. This idea has been embraced in the past by Senator Pete V. Domenici of New Mexico, the incoming chairman of the Senate Budget Committee. Congress can also raise co-payments, adjust premiums for income or do both, approaches advanced by Mr. Kasich in the past.
A spokesman for Mr. Kasich said this week that while House Republicans had not yet produced their budget, "nothing has changed his mind" on three Medicare ideas he put forward in the past. These would raise certain premiums and deductibles for affluent retirees, and require a new co-payment for home services.
These approaches draw varying degrees, and kinds, of opposition.  Doctors and hospitals bitterly complain that they are already undercompensated by Medicare and that further limits would have serious consequences for the health care system.
Advocates for the elderly also warn that continuing limits on Medicare reimbursement raise the possibility that more and more doctors will stop seeing Medicare patients.
Raising the premiums on upper-income beneficiaries has considerable political support, but some Democrats wonder whether it can be achieved if it is not linked to new benefits for the elderly.
In general, officials at the hospital association, the American Medical Association and other groups argue that decisions on Medicare should be made in the context of health policy, not the need to free up money to use elsewhere. Mr. Davidson argues for the creation of an independent commission to review the Medicare program and decide how to allocate the existing resources.
In reality, though, the positioning around Medicare is already deeply political, and likely to become more so. The great health care struggle of 1994 may have a reprise.
"In a way, this is easy," said Mr. Rother of the American Association of Retired Persons. "The easiest thing in the world is to ask people to call or write their members of Congress to ask them to protect Medicare."

LOAD-DATE: December 18, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Graph: "INTO THE FUTURE: Spending on Medicare" tracks actual and projected spending on Medicare, according to a 1993 secenario, for fiscal years from 1967 through 2004. (Source: Congressional Budget Office)

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The New York Times

December 18, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Gunman Is Sought In Four Robberies

BYLINE: AP  

SECTION: Section 1;   Page 59;   Column 1;   Metropolitan Desk  

LENGTH: 231 words

DATELINE: LITTLE FERRY, N.J., Dec. 17

A statewide alert is in effect for a gunman believed responsible for three attacks, two involving elderly people, over the last few days.
"He's armed and dangerous and he's going to hit again," said Capt. Dennis Hoffman of the Little Ferry Police Department. "It's just a matter of time." 
 The latest attack occurred this morning at a River Edge gas station when the gunman got away with $45, police said. On Dec. 16, the gunman pistol-whipped the owner of a photo store in Little Ferry in a failed robbery attempt, the police said, and about an hour later robbed an 81-year-old woman of her wallet at gunpoint in a Fairfield parking lot.
A witness who saw the gunman flee empty-handed from the Express Photo shop in Little Ferry took down the suspect's license plate numbers, The Record of Hackensack reported today.
The police say the numbers matched those of the plates of a rented Ford Escort that was stolen Dec. 14 from Sanford Blackman, 67, of Colorado, and his 93-year-old mother, in the parking lot of the Totowa Holiday Inn.
The police said that they believe the same man was responsible in all the attacks. The authorities added that the assailant wore a blue bandanna to hide his face.
The owner of the photo shop, Mark Iarkowski, 30, was treated at the Hackensack Medical Center for abrasions and released, officials said. The other victims were unharmed.

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December 18, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

THE NEEDIEST CASES;
A Chance to Help Your Neighbors

SECTION: Section 1;   Page 73;   Column 4;   Metropolitan Desk  

LENGTH: 447 words

Expecting a decrease in financing over the next few years, Catholic Charities, Diocese of Brooklyn and Queens, is recruiting volunteers to deliver social services to the poor.
Thomas A. DeStefano, executive director of the agency, said it is relying more heavily on a network of 1,600 volunteers, saving money that would otherwise be spent on salaries or contracted services. He pointed to the example of a retired couple who cook meals in a center for the elderly in their Brooklyn neighborhood. 
 "There are some things the local communities just cannot provide, so we step in with our volunteers," Mr. DeStefano said. "They are working in their own communities, where they are already invested and really want to make a difference."
Catholic Charities may fall about $100,000 short of its $5 million budget because longtime donors are not able to give as much this year. "Up until this year we have been holding our own," Mr. DeStefano said. "But times are harder and people are really feeling threatened by the economy."
A loss of $150,000 from the city Department of Youth Services means 15 staff positions will be eliminated, affecting services for children. Project Bridge, in Bushwick, Brooklyn, will lose four after-school programs for 240 children aged 6 to 12. A skills-building program in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, called Pass II Play will be eliminated.
Catholic Charities was founded in 1899 when several smaller agencies in Brooklyn and Queens pooled their resources. It now offers dozens of services, including job training for teen-agers, prison ministry and day-care centers. Six mental health clinics provide individual and group counseling for people of all ages. A program delivers hot meals to more than 5,000 homebound elderly people. A refugee resettlement program provides emergency help, counseling and job training to new immigrants. And a Human Mobile Outreach Team provides help to mentally ill homeless people in Brooklyn and Queens.
Mr. DeStefano said the organization's four Family Action Centers, which receive no government funding, desperately need private donations. The centers, which provide crisis intervention, emergency assistance and long-term counseling, serve more than 35,000 families a year. Their services include parenting workshops, support groups for grandmothers and child safety workshops. But only 10 to 15 people staff each center, with a total budget of $2 million.
"People come to these centers with every kind of issue you can imagine, and our staff monitors each case," Mr. DeStefano said. "But with limited resources, there's no way they can cover the whole barrage of issues that arrive on their doorsteps."


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December 18, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

THE NEEDIEST CASES;
Helping Immigrants Adjust to U.S.

SECTION: Section 1;   Page 73;   Column 1;   Metropolitan Desk  

LENGTH: 429 words

A record 19,000 immigrants from the former Soviet Union arrived in New York City last year, and UJA-Federation of New York helped many of them find homes and jobs.
Working with the New York Association for New Americans and more than 60 other member agencies, UJA helped immigrants learn English, find work, get counseling and receive proper health care. 
 In addition, the agency helped more than 2,500 Jews from Syria adjust to life in Brooklyn.
UJA works with a network of 130 member agencies in the metropolitan area to provide a far-reaching range of social services. But Stephen D. Solender, executive vice president of UJA, said private donations to the agency have remained flat over the past five years.
"Wall Street is a primary source of support, but it is very unstable," Mr. Solender said. "The major firms are all cutting back, and we will continue to feel the after effects."
In addition to resettlement programs, UJA agencies provide services like child care, job training, rehabilitation for the disabled, medical and geriatric care and religious programs. Twenty-seven Jewish community centers provide various social services, including programs for physically and mentally disabled people. The philanthropy also subsidizes numerous Jewish educational programs, including summer camps, youth groups and trips to Israel for teen-agers.
Last year, UJA allotted $2.5 million to the Jewish Board of Education for assistance to synagogues, schools and other educational organizations. An additional $3 million went to the Fund for Jewish Education to help 429 yeshivas and day schools serving Jewish communities.
For frail elderly people, UJA extended its program of on-site social services to two more retirement communities in New York: Cooperative Village, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, and the Warbasse Houses in Coney Island, Brooklyn. Member agencies will provide residents of these buildings with recreational activities, transportation to local hospitals and stores and help in applying for public assistance.
Mr. Solender said he did not know how UJA, which receives considerable public financing, would manage under anticipated government budget cuts.
"As the government cuts back on expenses and doesn't raise taxes, I worry that people will start taking a Darwinian approach to our society," he said. "The assumption is that private charities can pick up the slack, but we just don't have the resources."
 
Previously recorded . . . $1,833,119.76
Recorded Friday . . .  56,631.23
 
Total . . . 1,889,750.99

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The New York Times

December 19, 1994, Monday, Late Edition - Final

Caring at Home, and Burning Out;
Tending for Infirm Relatives, Guardians Suffer Themselves

BYLINE: By ESTHER B. FEIN 

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

LENGTH: 1949 words

The women sat in a circle and talked about the pains that age and disease had forced on their lives. There was the sleeplessness, the sore backs and the strained shoulders. All felt dogged by anxiety. They would pass days, they said, sometimes weeks, depressed.
But it was not their own aging bodies that had caused them such aching and fatigue. Each woman said she had become exhausted -- mentally, physically and emotionally -- caring for a husband weakened by age and illness. 
 These women, who meet regularly in a support group at a Manhattan synagogue, are among the millions caring for the country's growing elderly population, burdened with the relentless, often excruciating, chore of caring for someone aging and frail.
They are often daughters tending to parents and in-laws, distracted at work and feeling guilty that their own children are being neglected. They are husbands and wives who have become lonely and frustrated caring for bedridden spouses and couples whose marriages are strained by taking in an elderly aunt.
This caregiver burnout, as experts call it, is growing rapidly as people in the United States live longer. Many survive crises that years ago would have killed them, and choose to live at home, rather than in nursing homes or other institutions, despite debilitating conditions that require round-the-clock feeding, bathing, diapering, dressing and turning.
In fact, one of the biggest health care crises looming over the nation, say doctors, psychologists and social workers, is the exhaustion and depression faced by those who minister to aging relatives and friends -- sometimes for decades.
"Moving my husband from the bed, to the commode, to the chair, I just completely threw my back out and needed a chiropractor," said Faye Joyce, who is 72 and has been caring for a husband with Parkinson's disease since 1980. "That really got me down, because I am very healthy, and suddenly it was hard for me to move."
The other women in her support group, one of thousands around the country offering comfort and camaraderie to family caregivers, nodded knowingly, the story understood even before it was finished.
"Even when you think you've got it together you lose it," said a woman who has been caring for 11 years for a husband partly paralyzed by a stroke, and who did not want her name used. "It just never lets up. It's detail after detail. And no matter where you are, a tiny part of you always wonders: 'Did he fall? Is he dead?' Sometimes, you just feel like you're going to snap."
 
The Extent
Number of Elderly Is Increasing
 Such weariness is expected to increase sharply, experts say, as the proportion of elderly people in the country rises. The Census Bureau predicts that by 2030, the population over 65 will nearly triple, to more than 70 million people, and older people will make up 20 percent of the population, up from 12.6 percent now. At some point, many of them will need full-time care.
"Caregivers have become the casualties of our ability to live longer," said Jack A. Nottingham, executive director of the Rosalynn Carter Institute for Human Development at Georgia Southwestern College, who has led several studies on caring for invalid relatives.
While some handle the job with great equanimity, experts say that others suffer symptoms from general sadness to states of overwhelming anger, severe anxiety and clinical depression that have broken up marriages and destroyed careers. A survey by the National Family Caregivers Association, a nonprofit information and advocacy group based in Kensington, Md., found that 49 percent of the people tending to sick elderly family members have experienced prolonged depression.
"I feel like a prisoner, and I'm terribly resentful of the situation," said a 73-year-old writer who said she would speak candidly about caring for her 77-year-old husband, sick with Parkinson's disease and rheumatoid arthritis, only if her name was not used.
He is too well for a nursing home and too sick to care for himself, she said, so her life is swallowed up by his needs. "Is it right," she asked, "for me to give up my life for his?"
When the stress or the level of care needed is too great, however, some families do turn to nursing homes. In fact, studies have found that more elderly people are placed in such institutions because of relatives' burnout than because of a decline in their own condition.
But a growing preference for aging at home causes many people to resist such a move, often, experts say, past the point when it would be more beneficial to both patient and relative. Some people feel that placing a relative in a nursing home stigmatizes the family as callous; others worry that nursing home care is poor, and many choose to keep their relatives at home out of devotion, feeling that it is their duty, however arduous.
Family members provide about 80 percent of home care for the elderly, according to various studies, but are seldom trained for the job and are often working full time and raising families, at the same time.
Family members, unlike professional aides, must also face the psychological trauma of dealing with the incapacitation and mortality of someone they love, or equally complicated, someone with whom they have unresolved conflicts.
"Going back into your parents' house very often brings up buried issues at a time when they basically cannot be dealt with," said Vivian Fenster Ehrlich, executive director of Dorot, a social service agency for the elderly on the Upper West Side. Some conflicts involve siblings or other relatives, who may disagree over care plans or leave most of the responsibility to one person.
"Even when the initial impulse to care for someone is based in love, and even when you find some aspects of being a caregiver rewarding, the pressure can still be unmanageable," Ms. Ehrlich said. "And the idea that this is going to go on for a long, long time is terrifying to people."
 
A Daughter's Story
At 41, a Life Held Hostage
 When she takes a break and thinks about her life, which she does not have time to do very often these days, Dona Lyttle finds it hard not to cry.
She is 41 years old and single, yet she lacks the will, the energy and the time to socialize.
Ms. Lyttle's world revolves around her 74-year-old mother, Lillian, whose Alzheimer's disease was diagnosed seven years ago and who has quickly slipped away into its mind-robbing cavern. In the years since, Ms. Lyttle also nursed her father through a brain tumor, then buried him last summer when prostate cancer took his life. Now, her days and nights are crammed with the logistics of caring for her mother and working full time as an administrator at a Harlem Hospital clinic.
Ms. Lyttle's situation is not likely to change soon. Her mother cannot feed, bathe, dress or lie down to sleep herself. She does not talk and is barely responsive. But apart from the Alzheimer's and some arthritis, her health is good. Her doctor says she is likely to live this way for at least 10 more years, her mind deteriorating far ahead of her body.
"Sometimes, I can be driving to work and suddenly, I start crying," said Ms. Lyttle, who moved back into her childhood home in St. Albans, Queens, four years ago to manage her mother's care. "I was depressed. I wasn't sleeping at all. I'd fall asleep, and within an hour I'd wake up. I was tired all the time and I had this huge knot in my stomach. I'm pulling myself at all ends and I feel like I have no life. I need a life."
When she is at work, Ms. Lyttle pays for a health aide to stay with her mother, using money from her mother's pension and her father's estate. She is usually gone from 8 A.M. to 8:30 P.M., and pays the aide's wages of $7 an hour herself because her mother is ineligible for Medicaid. Twice a week, for about six hours each day, she sends her mother to the Alzheimer's Respite Program at the Parker Jewish Geriatric Institute in New Hyde Park, Queens, again paying the $13-an-hour fee herself.
At work, Ms. Lyttle said, a part of her is always worrying about her mother. At night, a part of her is always awake.
"Sometimes I say to to myself, 'Dona, you have to stop,' " she said. "But I can't. I love my mother. I don't want this burden, but here it is. It's mine."
Friends have convinced her, she said, that she needs to hire someone to help watch her mother on weekends so that she can try to build a personal life for herself. If she can feel less isolated, she said, she will be able to keep her mother at home, where she is more confident about the care and they can spend more time together, even if her mother doesn't realize it.
"Really, my mother has become my child," she said. "Sometimes I go and sit on her bed and talk to her, I guess the way she used to with me when I was a child. It's a total reversal and it breaks my heart, and I know that no matter how much help I get, I'm going to have to see this and feel this day after day for many, many more years."
 
The Isolation
A Feeling Of Invisibility
 When they describe themselves, caregivers often say they feel invisible -- to the doctors who treat their aged relatives, and to other family members and friends who, when they call at all, ask only how the patient is doing. They even feel invisible to themselves.
"I ignore my own needs," said Richard Davis, 73, a retired office manager from Newark, who cares for his 94-year-old mother, incapacitated by senility and heart disease. "It's just easier to put all my focus on her."
Mr. Davis said he had considered a nursing home but had found the expense too great. He also figured he would spend so much time traveling to visit his mother and would worry so much that she was being mistreated that the stress would barely be eased.
While there has been some increase in the numbers of respite programs, adult day care programs and support groups that offer temporary relief for families providing care, experts and families say they fall far short of the growing need.
Doctors who deal with the elderly say that in generations past, the family physician might have noticed the stress on relatives and intervened with sympathy and suggestions. But they say the pressures for productivity in the trend toward managed care have diminished the attention that many doctors can give to those providing their patients' daily care.
Faye Joyce has worked very hard to build a life for herself outside of the apartment she shares in midtown Manhattan with her husband, Clive. He is bedridden and demented by Parkinson's disease, which was diagnosed 14 years ago and is now in an advanced and hopeless stage. Because her husband is on Medicaid, she has a home health aide for part of every day, so she is able to be active in the Horticultural Society and the Women's City Club, to go to her support group and museums.
But every week she prepares 21 meals for her husband that she stocks in the freezer. It takes an hour to feed him each one. Once a week she divides the pills that he takes several times a day among little jars.
Her bed is next to his hospital bed so that she can hold his hand as they sleep, and so that she is nearby if his diaper needs changing in the middle of the night.
"The only reason it sounds like any kind of life is my attitude," said Ms. Joyce, who has refused to put her husband in a nursing home because she fears the care would be inadequate and because she likes being with him, despite his condition. "Either you can work out a good life around your problem, or you can let it defeat you. But I know the down side. I know the dark side. And that's why I spend so much energy avoiding it."

LOAD-DATE: December 19, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photos: "Sometimes, I can be driving to work and suddenly, I start crying," said Dona Lyttle, 41, who moved back into her childhood home in Queens to manage the care of her mother, Lillian, 74. "I'm pulling myself at all ends and I feel like I have no life. I need a life." (Nancy Siesel/The New York Times)(pg. B8); Faye Joyce's husband, Clive, is bedridden from Parkinson's disease. She has taken care of him at home since 1980. (Nancy Siesel/The New York Times)(pg. B1)

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December 21, 1994, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

A 40-Mile Chain Against Russian Troops

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

SECTION: Section A;  Page 18;  Column 1;  Foreign Desk 

LENGTH: 989 words

DATELINE: GROZNY, Russia, Dec. 20

As Russian planes and mortar shells battered the Chechen capital today, more than 100,000 people formed a remarkable, 40-mile human chain to protest the assault on Grozny.
The demonstrators, called to their task by a radio broadcast, began the line on the western edge of the capital and stretched along the only open highway to the border of Dagestan, where regiments of Russian troops have been waiting for a week. 
 At times, it seemed as if the only people not taking part in the protest were Chechen soldiers, who were again involved in heavy fighting to the northwest of the capital. Grandmothers in shawls cradled infants in their arms, old men kneeled on prayer rugs facing Mecca, and factory workers stood in the driving snow. For miles, people linked arms in solidarity against a rapidly worsening war, and against the Russian government of President Boris N. Yeltsin.
"My children think that planes are for bombs," said Elina Saidoya, who stood for hours with her family and fellow villagers on the ice-covered Moscow-Baku highway. "I want them to stop. But I want them to know that we have always been here, and we are not going away."
That message is increasingly evident, even as the assault by Russian troops has intensified and as residential neighborhoods of Grozny have come under fire. The ninth-floor office of the Chechen leader, Dzhokhar Dudayev, was empty this morning; most government officials have evacuated the Presidential Palace to a bomb shelter beneath the Parliament building across the street.
"The whole government is leaving now," said Abdullah Dadayev, an assistant to the Chechen president, as he peered down onto Freedom Square through shards that were once his office window.
Russian fighter jets dropped what appeared to be one-ton bombs today on several parts of the capital, destroying more than 25 houses in a quiet neighborhood not far from the city's main tram station. Only one person was known to have died, and several were wounded. The casualty figures are low almost certainly because many women and children have already fled. Today thousands more could be seen piling carpets, food and whatever else could carried into carts, cars and buses.
Residents of Russian nationality -- with fewer relatives in the mountains and villages nearby -- are far more likely to remain stranded in Grozny.
Sergei Stepashin, director of the Russian counter-intelligence service, said on television tonight that mercenaries -- including Mujahedeen fighters from Afghanistan and snipers from Latvia -- were fighting against Russian troops in Chechnya.
And in a sign that Moscow fears the Chechen conflict could spread to other volatile areas in the Caucasus, the Russian Government suspended all air, sea and road traffic from Georgia and Azerbaijan into Russia, especially its North Caucasian republics.
Russian television reported that Chechen rebel fighters, using machine guns and rocket launchers, downed a Russian helicopter near a village 12 miles northeast of Grozny.  The helicopter was being used as an air ambulance, and two doctors and one crew member were reported killed.
Russian troops entered the secessionist republic 10 days ago after three years of increasing conflict in this predominantly Muslim, oil-producing region. Moscow never recognized Chechnya's call for independence. The assault on Grozny has quickly become the nation's largest military operation since the end of the Soviet war in Afghanistan, where 13,000 Russian troops died.
Chechen people say this adventure will end that way too. They seem ready to die, bitter about Mr. Yeltsin -- whom most supported in the 1991 presidential elections -- and unwilling to accept any terms that keep them a part of an empire with which they have had intermittently hostile relations for 300 years.
Russian troops are poised to take the city and they are clearly under orders only to secure the villages that surround it. At the moment, however, the Russian military has carried out irregularly timed bombing raids at irregular intervals.
The most recent bombings were the closest yet to the Presidential Palace, which Russian forces consider a crucial target. Flames lit the sky this morning as gas mains burned out of control from bombs that fell during the night. Stunned residents shifted through the twisted wreckage that had become their homes for anything worth keeping.
"I have died and yet I live again," said Abdul Evilbayev, 44, a manual laborer who stood with dried blood on his face in front of the smoking pile of rubble that was once his ranch-style house. Pointing to it, he added caustically, "The humanitarian aid of Yeltsin, Chernomyrdin and Grachev."
He was referring to the Russian President, Prime Minister, and Defense Minister, who have all offered economic incentives to the secessionist republic to try to cool the hostilities. "They want to fight us and they know where we are," he said. "I am not afraid."
Most of the population seem to share his sentiments. There were few tears on the line that stretched from Grozny to the Dagestan border. Huge banners denounced Mr. Yeltsin in every way and protested what people here see as the American indifference to the conflict. "Chechnya will always be free," said one.
"The fight for Chechnya is the subject for Allah," said another.
Some said they had not believed that a Russian president would ever assault a city he considers to be Russian. But now that he has, many say they are prepared for anything that might follow.
"I came here to make a protest to the Russian leadership, against their armed intervention into our internal affairs," said Andi Natsulkhanov, 52, a watchmaker from the hamlet of Kerla-Engenoy. "I don't want these issues to be solved by bombs or death," he said, flashing gold teeth. "No Chechen does. But this will be a drawn out war. Every stone, every bush will fight against the aggressors."

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GRAPHIC: Map shows the location of the Moscow-Baku Highway.

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December 21, 1994, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Comrades Up in Arms;
Ranks of American Communists Split Over Future of Their Party

BYLINE: By JANNY SCOTT 

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

LENGTH: 1769 words

The Communist Party, U.S.A. had a coming-out party recently. It laid out doughnuts and invited more than 100 reporters. When a handful showed up, they were ushered into the inner sanctum of party headquarters in Manhattan.
An elderly man with watery blue eyes entered slowly, using a cane. He was introduced as Gus Hall, the longtime party chairman. He began speaking about his party's accomplishments and its bright future. 
 "There is no question we are now the fastest-growing political organization in America," he declared. The party was changing. It was becoming a "mass party." It was going public.
How big is the party, Mr. Hall was asked. He said he didn't know. Then how did he know it was the fastest growing? He said he just knew. What did it mean to be more public?
"It means doing things publicly," he snapped. "That's what it means."
The Communist Party, U.S.A. is celebrating its 75th anniversary at a time when its public profile seems to have hit a new low, with the Soviet variety of Communism that the party has long venerated now repudiated at home and abroad.
But now the party has been decimated by a new spate of defections. It is at war with former comrades over money and property it says they stole, and over the direction of what remains of the American far left.
Many of the party's best-known members have quit to form a new organization, the Committees of Correspondence, which says it is looking for a new path to socialism.
The party is suing some of those defectors, charging they have absconded with its property -- holdings in San Francisco that the party values at more than $1 million and money it says had been willed to it.
Leaders have called on Communist parties worldwide to boycott the new group -- "a thoroughly petty-bourgeois phenomenon," as Mr. Hall put it, made up of victims of "ideological collapse, political dishonesty and simple greed."
At 84, Mr. Hall remains at the helm, one of the world's most durable Communist leaders, in office since 1959. Lieutenants say he is hale and hearty; detractors claim he slips out of meetings to snooze.
Acolytes encircle him. At least in public, there is no talk of succession.
"Whoever succeeds Gus will fracture what's left of the party," predicted Jay Schaffner, 42, who quit the party in 1992 after 23 years. "Because Gus is an icon. Gus is what you worshiped."
At party headquarters, a dreary eight-story building on West 23d Street across from the Chelsea Hotel, an elderly elevator operator controls access and the front door is often barred with a wooden paddle.
Receptionists still answer the telephone cryptically, reciting the phone number's last four digits. In the spirit of openness, they have been encouraged to answer "Communist Party," but old habits die hard.
Upstairs, the National Board meets weekly in a dimly lit room, its orange carpet buckling. A display case nearby holds gifts from Syria's ruling Baath Party and the Democratic Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
Downstairs, the Communist Party Bookstore, open to the public, sells theoretical tomes, a new 75th-anniversary calendar, the voluminous works of Mr. Hall and other material. Elderly volunteers come and go, known fondly as "old Bolsheviks."
 
A Resurgence, Or Not?
 Despite the appearance of quiescence, party leaders claim membership is "exploding." In New York alone, they say, hundreds of people have signed up since spring, many at Communist Party booths at street fairs around the city.
Part of the appeal, leaders say, is the current campaign to get Congress to pass a giant public-works bill -- something along the lines of the legislation that created the Works Progress Administration in the 1930's.
Yet they are still cagey about membership, estimated at 80,000 during the party's heyday. Defectors guess the number at 1,500. Officials hedge, then offer the figures they've trotted out for a decade: 15,000 to 20,000.
"Since 1991, the party has been trying to regroup itself," said John Bachtell, 38, chairman of the New York district. "This explosion in membership is the first sign that the party is healthy and growing and really on the move."
Observers have doubts.
"Somewhere along the line, people simply stopped being Communists," said Daniel J. Leab, general secretary of the Historians of American Communism. "The real problem is it became out of touch with reality. You can't even use the name as an epithet anymore. If I called you a Communist, who the hell cares?"
The troubles began well before Communism crumbled, as perestroika abroad inspired reformist impulses in America. Some members began saying they wanted a more democratic party and a rethinking of goals and methods. They accused the party of ignoring movements like environmentalism and feminism and of neglecting the ways in which immigration, technology and other social forces were changing the working class.
By late 1991, hundreds of members had signed an initiative demanding what they described as party reform. The signers included many of the party's best-known members, like Angela Davis; Herbert Aptheker, the historian, and Charlene Mitchell, the party's Presidential candidate in 1968.
Another who signed was Pat Fry, who had grown up in Detroit, become a campus radical in the late 1960's, traveled to Cuba in 1972 and become convinced that socialism promised a humane way of organizing society. But by the late 1980's, she began to suspect the party was not growing. People seemed to join, quickly lose interest and leave.
"It was cultish," said Ms. Fry, now 47, living in New York and working for the Committees of Correspondence. "You couldn't question the faith. And once there were questions raised, there was this circle-the-wagons phenomenon."
The crisis culminated in Cleveland in December 1991 at the 25th national party convention. Anyone who had signed the initiative suddenly found themselves excluded from nomination for party leadership. The dissidents insist the convention was rigged. Loyalists say "the factionalists" simply failed. But within months, hundreds of members had quit and begun making plans for the Committees of Correspondence.
 
Differences Spill Into Court
 In the aftermath, the legal troubles began. In one case, the party sued former members of its Northern California district who had tried to hang onto the party's building in San Francisco's Mission District and two corporations that were used to do party business. Last year, the Superior Court sided with the party. The former members are appealing the ruling.
It is unclear how many other suits have been filed by the party, which was reported to have lost a Soviet subsidy of $2 million a year in 1989.  Mr. Hall has referred to "numerous lawsuits, involving millions of dollars" against former members, at least some of the suits involving money the party says was willed to it.
"We call it grave robbery," said Jarvis Tyner, 53, a top party leader. "These are old comrades, dedicated to the party, who left their resources for the purpose of continuing the work of the party. No other organization would allow this to happen."
One defendant in two of the lawsuits is Danny Rubin, who for many years was the third highest-ranking official in the party. In 1991, he signed the initiative, lost his leadership post and left the party by mutual consent.
Mr. Rubin received $18,400 from the estate of a Brooklyn woman who, he says, wanted him to use the money to support progressive causes.  Mr. Rubin says he gave the money to the Committees of Correspondence.
But party officials say the money was intended for the party. They have filed suit in State Supreme Court in Manhattan against Mr. Rubin and two other former members who had received similar amounts from the estate.
The case has not come to trial. Mr. Rubin, 63, his eyesight failing, is retired and living in Park Slope "on very low Social Security because I worked for the Communist Party at poverty wages for 31 years."
"I do not consider the Communist Party my enemy," he said. "They can go their own way. But one of their very bad habits is to treat anybody who has left their ranks as enemies to be slandered. It makes me angry and a little bit sad."
Slander, party officials suggest, goes both ways. One former member, Michael Myerson, accused Mr. Hall in print of living "the good bourgeois life" in a "multilevel" house in Yonkers, with an "underground garage," first-class flights and "an estate in fashionable Hampton Bays."
Mr. Tyner said, "He lives in a humble, working-class home." The estate is "a shack" owned by his son. As for the flights, Mr. Tyner said that he did not know whether Mr. Hall traveled first-class, but that "if he traveled by bus cross-country, everyone would say: 'Your party's insignificant! You can't even put your chairman in a car.' "
 
Even Nature of Split Is Debatable
 Why the party's crisis turned so bitter is a matter of debate. Barry Cohen, former editor of the party newspaper, The People's Weekly World, who says he lost his job in a dispute over an article thought to be tainted by factionalism, suggested that the party's long history as an organization under seige in the United States contributed to its inability to "be open in its own thinking and self-critical."
Loyalists, on the other hand, say the collapse of Communism abroad shattered the dissidents' faith in the working class. They say the dissidents then tried to jettison the party's Marxist-Leninist orientation in favor of what Mr. Tyner calls "an amalgam of every ideological trend on the left."
"They rejected the path to socialism as we perceived it," said Mr. Tyner, who joined the party at age 21 as a printing-plant worker and civil-rights advocate in Philadelphia. As the party sees it, he said, that path is through a mostly working-class, not middle-class, movement.
Whatever the reasons, the battle left the party severely diminished. Depending on who's counting, 300 to 1,300 people quit. The newspaper's staff is half what it was before the split, said Tim Wheeler, 54, who was brought in to replace Mr. Cohen.
The Committees of Correspondence, meanwhile, held its founding convention last summer. It says it has 1,600 dues-paying members.
"The Communist Party is kind of a sad remnant of what at one time in our history had been very vital," said David McReynolds, co-chairman of the Socialist Party U.S.A., now working with the Committees of Correspondence. "It is just living on its history and its funds and its bank account and its buildings. But that's it."

LOAD-DATE: December 21, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photos: 1940's -- The secretary of the Communist Party in the United States, Eugene Dennis, above, addressing a rally in 1947, when the group was unified in its purpose. (The New York Times); 1990's -- Gus Hall, right, the longtime chairman of the Communist Party, U.S.A., denies that membership in the organization has dwindled. (Marilynn K. Yee/The New York Times)
 
Chart: "TIMELINE: 75 Years of American Communism"
 
1919: The first American Communist parties, the Communist Labor Party and the larger Communist Party of America, are founded by dissident factions of the Socialist Party. They unite a year later.
 
1924: The Daily Worker, the first Communist English-language newspaper in the United States, is published.
 
1929: The party faction of Wiliam Z. Foster and Earl Browder becomes dominant. They criticize established labor leaders and court blacks. The Depression boosts membership.
 
1935: The party courts the trade union mainstream and begins organizing unio for the Congress of Industrial Organizations.
 
1937: The Abraham Lincoln Brigade - 2,800 volunteers, mostly American Communists - fight Spanish Facism.
 
1939: With the Hitler-Stalin nonaggression pact, the American party opposes American involvement in World War II, an unpopular position that ends party alliances with other progressive groups. Many leave the party.
 
1941: Hilter invades the Soviet Union. The party supports Washington.
 
1945: The Cold War begins: anti-Communist laws are passed and Communist-dominated unions expelled from the labor movement.
 
1947: President Truman bars Communist and sympathizers from Federal employment. The "Hollywood 10" - blacklisted screenwriters, directors and producers - are imprisoned for contempt at hearings before the House UnAmerican Activities Committee.
 
1953: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are excuted for spying for the Soviet Union.
 
1954: The Communist Control Act is passed. The party is stripped of its rights as a legal organization.
 
1956: The party loses thousands of members after Khrushchev crushes the Hungarian uprising and denounces Stalin as a tyrant, confirming what many had long resisted.
 
1966: Open activities resume after court rulings, but support is only fringe.
 
1989: Gus Hall, party leader since 1959, criticizes Gorbachev's reforms on the fall of the Berlin wall. Moscow reportedly cuts off secret subsidies to the American party, said to amount to $2 million a year.
 
1991: Hundreds of members quit after being ostracized for signing an initiative calling for reform.
 
1994: The party become embroiled in lawsuits over money and property it says former members have stolen.
; Photos: The first issue of the Daily Worker; Julius and Ethel Rosenberg; Russian tank in Hungary during Hungarian democratic uprising of 1956.

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December 22, 1994, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

SKIING;
Areas That Have the 50-Plus Enthusiasts in Mind

BYLINE: By BARBARA LLOYD 

SECTION: Section B;  Page 19;  Column 1;  Sports Desk 

LENGTH: 718 words

There is an accent on youth in the ski industry, as there is in everything else. But increasingly, resorts are finding that sports-minded seniors are staying north to ski rather than following the exodus south to play golf.
"Being 70 and skiing isn't an oddity anymore," said Gwen Allard, the founder in 1987 of a senior skier development program at Windham, N.Y. "People are running up and down our slopes at 80 and 90. There's no reason for them to give up their participation in the sport as they age. But what we're trying to do is develop quality programs that won't break seniors or ski-area budgets." 
 The seniors program, coordinated through the Educational Foundation of the Professional Ski Instructors of America, has grown to include 48 ski areas in the East. More areas in the West are beginning to see its merits.
Under the program, ski areas offer clinics and ski instruction to people 50 and older for nominal fees. "People entering the golden years are much more active participants than their parents were," said Allard, who is 57. "When I started the seniors program seven years ago, I felt that the ski industry was not looking at this growing population."
Statistics from the National Sporting Goods Association, a trade group, show that the number of people 65 and older who skied in 1988 was .3 percent of the country's estimated 12.4 million skiers. In 1993, the number grew to .7 percent of 10.5 million skiers.
"There is no reason for aging skiers to give up their participation in the sport," Allard said. "They can stay warm if they dress right, and they can still ski 80-90 percent of the slopes they did at 20. I'm not saying they're going to ski it the same way, but they can still enjoy it."
Ski areas are designing their senior clinics to meet this increasing demand. At Jiminy Peak, in Hancock, Mass., the program is open to people 50 or older, beginner to advanced, each Thursday morning.
"We find there are a whole bunch of skiers who are pretty happy with their skiing," said John Root, director. "But they want to know how to handle certain tactical situations, like bumps, ice, the steeps, or powder. They want to know how to use the skiing they already own."
At Attitash/Bear Peak, N.H., the "Thank Goodness I'm Fifty" program costs $25 for seasonal membership. Included in the price of the Thursday morning classes is a social get-together from 8:30 to 10 A.M., and lessons from 10:30 A.M. to noon.
"In this area, the older folks have been coming here for quite awhile," said Jean Leone, administrator for sales at Attitash. "Most of them are good skiers, and they're very aggressive."
Low as the prices are for lessons, they are not free. But it is common in the industry for ski areas to give free lift passes to people who are 70 and older. Allard believes that aging skiers, many of whom are on the leading edge of the baby-boomers population bulge, will ultimately drain ski resort budgets if the practice persists.
Her opinion doesn't mesh with that of Lloyd Lambert, a 93-year-old skier from Ballston Lake, N.Y., who founded the 70-Plus Ski Club in 1977. With 11,000 members, the club has agreements with ski areas worldwide for free lift tickets for its 70-something skiers.
"I ski the lower runs now, maybe four or five times, and then I take a rest," Lambert said. "I used to go to the top and ski everything. But I stopped that. I thought, well, what's the use of taking chances. There's moguls out there, and I don't like moguls."
Lambert said that he gets letters from new members on fixed incomes who spoke of waiting to become 70 so they could take advantage of a free lift pass.
Alta, a ski area in Utah noted for its large annual snowfalls, has acknowledged the aging skier for years. But the cutoff for a free pass has always been 80 years old, and still is, said Rosie Gale, sales supervisor. Founded in 1936 as the second oldest ski resort in the West to Sun Valley, Idaho, Alta has numerous seniors who frequent its slopes.
Gale defends the area's policy, noting that an adult lift ticket at Alta, a large area with 2,500 acres of ski terrain, is $25. The price is comparable to a child's pass at many other ski areas.
"Everybody here get's a kid's price," she said. "If they make it to 80, they get a free ticket."

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December 25, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

CHRISTMAS ON THE ROAD -- TENNESSEE: PETER APPLEBOME;
After Fire and Flood, Home at Last

BYLINE: By PETER APPLEBOME;   PETER APPLEBOME is a Times correspondent who reports on education nationally from Atlanta.

SECTION: Section 5;  Page 8;  Column 3;  Travel Desk 

LENGTH: 477 words

If Christmas is a time for surprises, New York Times correspondents have had their share: along with the Japanese Santa and tree-trimming Muscovites there were the Serbian snipers, the bullets in Beirut, the tragic fire in Tennessee.
In writing of their most memorable Christmases away from home, 10 correspondents range around the world; some recall elegant feasts, in a Swabian castle or a Hong Kong hotel; others cannot forget the fruitcake they could not possibly eat in Somalia, the joy radiating from a Saigon cathedral, or the tearful Mass in Sarajevo. All remember how they counted their blessings. 
 Sometimes disasters afar can be disasters at home as well. Objectively, there isn't the slightest question which is worse. Subjectively, it can get a little murky.
I'm Jewish, but we always mark Christmas as a secular day of peace and quiet, a day when the world stops, and we do too. In fact, we -- meaning my wife, Mary Bounds, 3-year-old son, Ben, and I -- were all feeling kind of snug, toasty and happily familial on a frigid Christmas Eve in Atlanta in 1989, when the phone rang. My wife picked it up. "It's the desk," she said, in a tone a doctor might use in announcing, "It's malignant."
There had been a nursing home fire in Johnson City, Tenn. More than a dozen people had died, and I was the nearest available reporter to cover it.
I got up at dawn, flew to Knoxville and drove up an icy Interstate 81 past a handful of jackknifed 18-wheelers that had failed to navigate the icy patches toward Johnson City. There I found the charred remains of the John Sevier Center and perhaps 100 elderly people who had escaped a fire that had killed 16. Most of them had been trapped on upper floors as black smoke billowed round them. "It was sad, pitiful," a survivor named James Grizzle recalled. "There were people with walkers, with canes, with crutches. Their eyes were like saucers. They thought they weren't going to make it."
I did my interviews, wrote my story, sent it in and dashed for Johnson City's Tri-Cities Airport, which had a plane back to Atlanta at around 8:30 P.M. I checked in at home, to say that at least I'd get home for the end of the day. My wife icily said fine, and by the way, in the middle of the afternoon she heard a sudden loud crack downstairs, and ran down to find that a pipe had burst sending water cascading through our furnished basement. Luckily, the next door neighbor dashed over to shut off the water, but the downstairs was like a shallow pond.
I got home expecting the worst, but some days are so bad they can't do anything but get better. There was turkey and dressing on the table. Our son was soundly asleep. The water gently lapped around downstairs. I kept thinking of the old people in the stairwell, their eyes as big as saucers, counted my blessings, and felt happy to be home.

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December 25, 1994, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

Experts Say Improved Treatment Of Bed Sores Could Save Money

BYLINE: AP   

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

LENGTH: 433 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Dec. 24

Hospitals and nursing homes could alleviate suffering and save millions of dollars by improving treatment of bed sores, an ailment that afflicts hundreds of thousands of bedridden patients and people in wheelchairs, experts say.
Bed sores, also called pressure ulcers, can form in less than two hours and infect muscle and bone unless checked. The experts, backed by an agency of the Public Health Service, said prompt, simple treatments like frequently changing a patient's position could undo the damage in most cases. 
 Treatment guidelines were released on Wednesday by the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research, which Congress created in 1989 to encourage the spread of the most effective medical treatments.
One in 11 hospital patients and almost 1 in 4 nursing home patients are afflicted by bed sores. In addition, quadriplegics in wheelchairs and most elderly patients who fracture their hips suffer from them.
The sores cost an estimated $1.3 billion a year to treat, and cause untold suffering. The experts said hospitals and nursing homes could save at least $40 million if they followed the new guidelines.
"These recommendations can save pain, lives and money," said Clifton R. Gaus, the administrator of the health policy agency.
Dr. Nancy Bergstrom, a professor of nursing at the University of Nebraska Medical Center who was chairwoman of a 16-member advisory panel, said, "The fundamentals of good care are making sure the patient has good nutrition." In addition, she said, "relieving pressure on the skin frequently, and properly cleansing and dressing the wound" can prevent bed sores.
The sores tend to form on bony prominences like the hips or heels, which bear weight when someone is seated or lying for a long time. Healing usually takes two to four weeks, but infected sores can take longer.
The sores form when pressure squeezes and closes tiny blood vessels that normally supply tissue with oxygen and nutrients. Among the experts' recommendations were these:
*Keep pressure off the sore.
*Change positions at least every two hours.
*Clean sores with saline solutions; antiseptic agents and skin cleansers like peroxide and betadine should not be used.
*Maintain good nutrition to promote healing.
*Keep both heels off the bed by placing a thin foam pad or pillow under the legs from mid-calf to ankle.
*Avoid doughnut-type devices; they are more likely to cause pressure sores than prevent them.
The guidelines were the 15th clinical practice ones published by the health care agency. Free copies may be obtained by calling (800) 358-9295.

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December 26, 1994, Monday, Late Edition - Final

THE MEDIA BUSINESS;
Magazines

BYLINE: By Deirdre Carmody 

SECTION: Section 1;  Page 57;  Column 1;  Financial Desk 

LENGTH: 859 words

EVER conscious that sex sells and trendiness titillates, magazines do not usually go out of their way to put aging men on their covers.
But this month, it was a race for the face of the man New York magazine called "The Sexiest (70-Year-Old) Man Alive." 
 He is none other than Paul Newman, whose new movie came out yesterday, on Christmas Day. (Actually, Mr. Newman will turn 70 next month.) He appeared on the covers of the Dec. 12 issue of New York, the Dec. 19 issue of Newsweek and the December issue of GQ.
Entertainment Weekly reluctantly dropped plans to run a Jan. 6 Newman cover because everyone else seemed to have run him already.
"The reason we put him on the cover was because our culture people came back from seeing "Nobody's Fool" and said this is an absolutely terrific movie, he is going to be nominated for an Oscar and he is a great American icon," Maynard Parker, editor of Newsweek, said.
Did Mr. Parker mind that Mr. Newman had been on the cover of New York the week before?
"I thought long and hard about it. And I thought that the only people who would see both magazines were the hothouse New York media community," he said. "And that is so small a number that I didn't think it was a good enough reason to deprive the rest of our readers."
Arthur Cooper, editor in chief of GQ, had planned Jack Nicholson for GQ's December cover. Then, at the last minute, Nicholson's new movie, "The Crossing Guard," was postponed until spring, leaving Mr. Cooper coverless. He jumped at the opportunity to get Mr. Newman, not caring that the two other magazines already had him.
But does Paul Newman sell?
Kurt Andersen, editor of New York, said that the final results were not in yet but that it appeared that 50 percent of the Dec. 12 newsstand copies were sold -- an unusually high percentage for any magazine. Average weekly sales for New York are in the "low 40 percent," he said.
 
Postscript
 Despite his enormous appeal, Paul Newman actually ended up in second place this month, as far as cover-selling oldsters go.
Pope John Paul II, 74, walked away with the honors. Having appeared on the Dec. 11 cover of The New York Times Magazine (with a circulation of 1.7 million) and on the Dec. 26 cover of the Man of the Year issue of Time magazine (4.2 million circulation), the Pope reached far more readers than Mr. Newman did.
All in all, it was a great month for septuagenarians and near-septuagenarians.
 
News Weeklies Double Up
 Time and Newsweek each broke a longstanding practice this year and came out with their first double year-end issues. A third news weekly, U.S. News & World Report, has been running year-end double issues since 1976.
The cover date on Time is Dec. 26, 1994/Jan. 2, 1995. Newsweek wisely has no date on its cover since virtually everybody knows cover dates don't mean much. Both Time and Newsweek actually appear on newsstands the week before their dates.
Many weekly magazines, including Entertainment Weekly and The New Yorker, run year-end double issues, enabling them to save production costs and give the staff a week off.
Generally speaking, advertisers love any kind of special issue and magazines can sell more ad pages in a double issue than in two issues combined. Since the double issues of Time and Newsweek came out before Christmas, they were particularly attractive to advertisers seeking to snag last-minute shoppers.
Time was also able to capitalize on its double issue because it carried its Man of the Year profile.
 
Buzz Widens Its Net
 What would make a local magazine with a circulation of not quite 75,000 think it might be able to lure enough readers across the country to justify national distribution?
Four-year-old Buzz calls itself The Talk of Los Angeles. (Maybe a slight exaggeration, given the size of its circulation, but never mind.) Being a true chauvinist, Buzz believes that the City of Angels -- and articles about its culture, life style and mindset -- have enough of an aura to warrant being a national magazine.
Response to direct-mail tests supports this belief, Susan Gates, the publisher, said. As a result, Buzz plans to increase its circulation to 125,000 and step up its subscription efforts and newsstand presence in New York and other big cities.
Ms. Gates added that the small circulation posed no problem in attracting advertisers. "From the very start," she said, "our strategy has been to offer an extremely targeted, top-demographic readership to upscale national advertisers. Advertisers like these certainly find much of the nonprint media too broad for their message -- and interestingly, some of them even feel that the traditionally 'upscale' magazines offer a broader reach than they need."
Buzz, whose subscribers have a median household income of $74,700 -- higher than that for New York or Vanity Fair -- runs ads by Bulgari, Louis Vuitton, BMW and Giorgio Armani.
Buzz is also starting Buzz Books, a publishing venture with St. Martin's Press. It plans to publish six to eight fiction and nonfiction titles a year, focusing on the culture of Southern California, beginning next year.

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December 26, 1994, Monday, Late Edition - Final

Volunteering Is Therapy For the Volunteers, Too

BYLINE: By ABBY GOODNOUGH 

SECTION: Section 1;  Page 42;  Column 5;  Metropolitan Desk 

LENGTH: 601 words

Paul Adams spent years struggling with mental illness and learning how to function on his own. Not long ago, he realized that reaching out to other vulnerable people would have an invaluable effect on his own well-being.
Mr. Adams participates in Rehabilitation and Education in the Art of Living, a program in the Bronx that helps mentally ill people work toward independence. As part of his treatment, Mr. Adams volunteers as a companion for elderly people in the Pelham Parkway section of the Bronx. His responsibilities include escorting people to doctors' offices, buying groceries, picking up prescriptions and even chatting on the telephone. In more than one case, the volunteers have helped elderly people to continue living independently rather than enter nursing homes. 
 "Before I started doing this, I would lie in bed and be depressed all day," said Mr. Adams, who is going back to school now that the program has helped stabilize his life. "Volunteering gets my mind off my own burdens and makes me responsible."
Mr. Adams is an accomplished pianist, and as part of his volunteer work, he learns songs from the 1930's and performs them at centers for the elderly. The music, he said, is a form of therapy for both him and the people he works with.
"It has helped me deal with the pressure of performing in front of a lot of people," he said. "And it puts them in a good mood."
The Senior Citizens Project is just one aspect of the rehabilitation program, which was started by the Jewish Board of Family and Children's Services in 1985. The board is an agency of UJA-Federation of New York, one of seven organizations supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund, in its 83d year. Participants, who are referred by psychiatric hospitals, learn prevocational skills, cook for one another and receive group therapy. But Mr. Adams and several others say the Senior Citizens Project has been the key to building their confidence.
"It makes you feel like you're accomplishing so much," said Shirley Rios, who calls an elderly woman every morning to check on her. "Some of these people have nobody to talk to but us, and they really depend on us."
Dror Nir, director of the rehabilitation program, said that people often attach stigmas to both mental illness and old age, so the volunteers and their elderly companions share a sense of vulnerability. "Both groups are labeled negatively by society, but both have a lot of strength," he said. "They have a reciprocal relationship, helping each other get over obstacles."
A man named Lloyd, who would not give his last name, said he used to work with an elderly man who had lost a daughter to leukemia. Since Lloyd's parents had died young, the two helped each other work through their grief. "I was like a social worker to him," Lloyd said. "You can share their hurt and sorrow, but you can also share their joy."
In some cases, working with elderly people has helped the volunteers overcome their fears. One woman was afraid to use public transportation until she started escorting people to doctors' appointments, and now she rides the subway alone. But more than anything, the volunteers say, focusing on other people's needs has helped them stop obsessing about their own problems.
"I'm not as uptight as I used to be, and I'm a lot more empathetic," said George Fisher, a former artist who could not keep a job before he came to the program. "When you see how happy you make these people, it gives you such an uplifting feeling."
 
Previously recorded $2,164,560.34
Recorded Friday 104,237.20
 
Total $2,268,797.54

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December 28, 1994, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

Personal Health

BYLINE: By Jane E. Brody  

SECTION: Section C;   Page 10;   Column 5;   National Desk;   Health Page

LENGTH: 1153 words

BY the age of 3, virtually every American child has had at least one respiratory infection caused by a virus that few people have heard of and fewer still take seriously. It is respiratory syncytial virus, or R.S.V., which was first discovered in chimpanzees in 1956 but was soon recognized as a nearly universal cause of a cold-like illness in people.
Regardless of its relative obscurity and usually benign nature, R.S.V. is not an organism to be taken lightly. An R.S.V. infection can result in serious, even fatal, respiratory illness when it infects very young infants or any children with medical conditions like congenital heart or lung disease or respiratory damage after premature birth. 
 R.S.V., a highly contagious virus, is the leading cause in young children of severe lower respiratory illness -- bronchiolitis and pneumonia -- which often requires hospital treatment. Each year, 90,000 children are hospitalized with R.S.V., and the virus is responsible for an estimated 4,500 childhood deaths. It can be a very expensive illness, costing more than $5,000 a day to treat infants who need respiratory assistance and a total of $77,600 for a two-week hospital stay. In addition, after recovering from R.S.V., some children develop an asthmatic condition that can persist throughout childhood and occasionally into adulthood.
Adults too sometimes become very ill with an R.S.V. infection. In most adults, the virus causes a mild respiratory infection that is clinically indistinguishable from any other common cold. But British researchers reported last year that in elderly people R.S.V. might be as important as influenza viruses in causing serious and even fatal respiratory illness. The virus's symptoms in the elderly often mimic those of influenza, Dr. D. M. Fleming and Dr. K. W. Cross of the Birmingham Research Unit in England reported in The Lancet, a medical journal published in Britain. In fact, the researchers suggested that R.S.V. infections might be one reason flu vaccine appears to be less effective in older people; such people may think they have the flu but actually have R.S.V.
The "season" for R.S.V. infections in the temperate zone starts in December, peaks in January and February and peters out in April. There is no better time than now to learn how best to protect very young and high-risk children and how to recognize and deal with a serious R.S.V. infection should it occur.
 
Is It R.S.V.?
 Dr. Susan Brugman, a pediatric pulmonologist at the National Jewish Center for Immunology and Respiratory Medicine in Denver, said R.S.V. typically started like any cold: in the upper respiratory tract, causing a runny nose, slight fever and fussiness. But the infection can then move into the lower respiratory tract -- the bronchioles and lungs. She explained that although "the majority of babies are not at risk of developing severe R.S.V., infants under 6 months of age have much smaller airways that are more likely to become plugged up, making breathing difficult."
Dr. William C. Gruber, a specialist in pediatric infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, said the virus spread to the lower respiratory tract in about 20 percent of infected children. Signs of such spread include wheezing, a sinking of the chest between the ribs when the child inhales, rapid breathing and halted breathing for periods of time.
Dr. Brugman cautions parents to be on the alert for a serious infection. "The infection has become severe if the baby begins to breathe faster, has difficulty breathing, wheezes and coughs and stops drinking fluids," she said. "That's the time to see a physician right away. And especially if the baby was born prematurely, has congenital heart disease or cystic fibrosis, the sooner the baby gets to the doctor the better."
Babies with such respiratory symptoms should always have their blood checked to see if they are getting enough oxygen. Even if the baby does not look blue, more oxygen may be needed, Dr. Brugman said. Although a 20-minute antibody test for the viral infection can be performed in a doctor's office, the test is complex and the diagnosis of R.S.V. is more often made in a hospital laboratory, Dr. Gruber said.
Reinfection is common, but the severity of the illness nearly always diminishes with age. Other less serious complications of R.S.V. infection in young children include tracheobronchitis, middle ear infection and reactive airway disease, a tendency to wheeze when exposed to any respiratory irritant. Most children outgrow wheezing by the time they are 3 to 5 years old, but some develop persistent asthma. Dr. Brugman said those at high risk of developing asthma included babies with a family history of asthma, those who already had allergies and babies exposed to cigarette smoke or other environmental irritants at home.
 
How It Spreads
 There may be no virus more efficient at finding hosts than R.S.V. The organism can live on surfaces and clothing for hours, sometimes days, Dr. Brugman said. "Good, frequent hand washing is the single most important thing to do to curb the spread of this disease," she noted. "You can easily infect yourself after touching a contaminated surface and then touching your nose or eyes."
Likewise, an adult whose hands become contaminated by a child's virus-laden secretions can readily spread the infection to other children. Dr. Brugman noted, for example, that "almost 100 percent of children in a day care center will get R.S.V. if one child does." The infection often becomes epidemic in hospital settings, presumably spread by health professionals from child to child. Dr. Brugman said the risk of R.S.V. was the primary reason for avoiding elective pediatric surgery at this time of year.
About the only effective treatment for infection by the virus is the antiviral agent ribavirin (Virazole). When administered as an aerosol to hospitalized children, it can reduce the severity of lower respiratory infections.
Although antibodies to the virus form after an R.S.V. infection, they are not very protective, and no lasting immunity develops. A previous attempt to develop a vaccine against R.S.V. ended in disaster, with vaccinated children developing very serious and even fatal disease.
Researchers have also experimented with passively immunizing babies at high risk of severe R.S.V. infection by giving them intravenous injections of antibodies extracted from the blood of people, like pediatric nurses, who have high antibody levels.
Dr. Gruber and Dr. Kathy Neuzil, an infectious disease specialist, are exploring the value of extra doses of vitamin A in reducing the severity of infections from the virus. He explained that levels of vitamin A in the blood dropped after an R.S.V. infection, and that this might interfere with the repair of respiratory lining cells damaged by the infection, leading to more severe disease.

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December 29, 1994, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

When Hope Falters, Balm for the Soul

BYLINE: By ANNE RAVER 

SECTION: Section C;  Page 1;  Column 3;  Home Desk 

LENGTH: 1927 words

WHEN the ancients were sick, they walked among trees and plants and breathed the fresh air to soothe their pain.
Then came the discovery of penicillin, chemotherapy, laser beams. High-tech medicine buried the garden under high-rise hospitals with sealed windows. 
 But now there's a movement afoot to return nature to the lives of patients. It is spurred by an army of landscape architects, horticulture therapists, nurses, environmental psychologists, gardeners and most of all, the patients, families and friends who have found themselves inside dreary hospitals, facing a disease -- like cancer, AIDS or Alzheimer's -- for which there are no magic bullets.
Throughout history, the idea of providing gardens for patients "has waxed and waned," said Dr. Sam Bass Warner, an urban historian at Brandeis University. "Wherever medicine has no magic -- for AIDS or cancer or mental illness -- gardens reappear. When we think science can do it all, they disappear."
Gardens are popping up in hospitals, hospices and residences for the elderly all over the country. They may be as small as a rooftop terrace in East Harlem or as large as a 60-acre hospital complex in Texarkana, Tex. And though there is no cure for the diseases, the power of plants to heal the spirit is evident.
* In Vancouver, at a residence with a specially designed garden for Alzheimer's patients, violent incidents declined 19 percent over a two-year period. At three comparable residences with no outdoor space, the rate of violent incidents increased 681 percent over the same period.
* In an AIDS unit at the Terence Cardinal Cook Health Center in East Harlem, a patient looks out his window onto a garden he has followed from the moment of its construction. "I saw a bee seducing a flower out there," he says. "On a windy day, I can hear the chimes. That's what I call unorchestrated music."
* At the new St. Michael Rehabilitation Center on the outskirts of Texarkana, Leta Shelby, who had recently had a hip operation, did her leg exercises on a mat in a sunny room that faced a wooded glen full of birds.  "It's so nice to look out and see the trees and have the sun shining in the window." Mrs. Shelby had been wheelchair-bound for 20 years with rheumatoid arthritis. "It makes a tremendous difference. And I'm walking now, with a walker."
Sister Damian Murphy, the director of pastoral care at St. Michael, also notices a change. "I've seen a drastic improvement in patients here," she said. "The average rehab patient is home now in two to three weeks -- compared to about six weeks or more in the old facility."
Incorporating plants in healing is as ancient as the Egyptian physicians who prescribed walks in gardens for the mentally disturbed.
At Friends Hospital, which was founded in 1817 on a 57-acre farm outside Philadelphia, mentally disturbed patients were encouraged to work in the fields and gardens. Today, at a group home for schizophrenics on the grounds, a man once locked in a ward under heavy medication now tends the garden.
"Down here, he's off the medication," said Barbara Hines, the group home director. "He grows flowers; that's his medication."
In the Middle Ages, the monasteries and convents that housed the sick often had open courtyards that were divided into four squares that echoed the Garden of Eden.
By the 19th century, Florence Nightingale was designing hospital wards laid out in pavilions open to the light and air, with gardens on either side.
But after World War II, with antibiotics and medical technology, fresh air and greenery were nearly forgotten as cures came from petri dishes and radiation machines.
"Today's hospitals look more like office buildings or factories than places of healing," Dr. Warner said.
That's what James Burnett, a landscape architect, discovered two years ago, when his mother was dying of lung cancer at a hospital outside Dallas. She was in a tiny room with a tiny window, overlooking a gravel roof. She died there after months of invasive procedures.
"I would have liked to have gotten her out of there," he said. "She lived on a lake and she just wanted to go home."
After his mother's death, Mr. Burnett, who had concentrated much of his work on office parks for corporations, turned instead to designing gardens and landscapes for hospitals.
Two weeks ago, he stood in the middle of his latest project: the landscape for the $138 million St. Michael Health Care Center, which rises out of 60 acres of woods.
The gleaming glass towers of its new 400-bed acute-care hospital reflect the great pines that were carefully preserved during construction.  Offices face a fountain in a courtyard surrounded by pear trees, and patients undergoing radiation and chemotherapy can look out on climbing roses and a pond with goldfish.
The new complex, which is owned and run by the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate World, a Catholic order, has many human touches: little kitchens where family members can cook a loved one's favorite food, chairs that open up into single beds for family members who want to stay overnight, meditation rooms and plenty of gardens.
No one is saying that gardens can cure cancer or AIDS, but over the last 10 years, social scientists have begun to try to measure the effects of nature on an anxious mind.
A 10-year study of patients recovering from gall bladder surgery, conducted by Dr. Roger Ulrich, an environmental psychologist at Texas A & M's College of Architecture, compared 23 patients whose windows looked out on trees and sky with 23 patients whose windows faced brick walls. Those with views of nature had shorter stays, took fewer painkillers and complained less to nurses.
Subsequent studies by Dr. Ulrich and others show similar reductions in patient anxiety from just gazing at pictures of natural scenes.
Even a postage-stamp garden can give an anxious person respite in the noisy, enclosed spaces of a modern hospital where there is little chance for contemplation.
When Topher Delaney, a garden designer, was told she had malignant breast cancer six years ago, she found herself in a state of shock at a hospital in California. She was to have surgery in two days.
"I went into the waiting room, which was filled with young people," she said. She couldn't bear to stay there. Her only refuge was the cafeteria in the basement, where people were watching television and eating.
"At that moment, I said, 'Topher, you're going to spend the rest of whatever life you have making healing gardens,' " she said.
After recovering from her mastectomy, she built a garden in an 800-square-foot space at the Marin General Hospital Cancer Center north of San Francisco. It features a stone fountain surrounded by plants known for their medicinal qualities, like echinacea, periwinkle and yew, and is intended as a quiet place for patients awaiting radiation and chemotherapy.
She is now building a two-acre meditation garden at the Norris Cancer Center in Los Angeles, with a donation from a family whose daughter died at the hospital. Ms. Delaney designed the garden with two different groups of people in mind.
"You have people coming in who are panicked that they aren't going to survive," she said. "And ones who aren't, who are accepting it."
The gardens that Ms. Delaney and others are designing around the country are often built with volunteer labor and donations. Perhaps nowhere is this sense of community more alive than among those artists and designers who are building gardens for AIDS patients.
"I've lost about six friends to AIDS and two more are just starting the process," said David Kamp, who used to design landscapes for estates in Connecticut.
Two years ago, Mr. Kamp joined forces with Bruce Detrick, a founding member of the Tamarand Foundation -- a nonprofit group in New York devoted to making life better for AIDS patients. With private donations, they built a garden on a terrace off the AIDS unit at Terence Cardinal Cook Hospital on Fifth Avenue at 105th Street. The terrace, once a barren space that baked in the sun, now offers shady sitting areas for patients whose medication makes their eyes sensitive to light, and low planters that are accessible to people in wheelchairs. Patients have grown tomatoes, peppers, fragrant herbs and colorful flowers. Mr. Kamp's design emphasizes the sound of trickling water and wind chimes as well as the fragrance of herbs because hearing and smell are the two senses least affected by AIDS.
Mr. Kamp has also learned much from the horticulture therapy program at the Howard A. Rusk Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine in Manhattan, which has been in the forefront of using gardens in physical therapy.
"It feels really good to be touching the soil and plants again," said Jane Porcino, who is regaining the use of her hands after a stroke.
"You lose so much when you have a stroke," she said as she potted a plant in the institute's greenhouse. "The ability to walk, to use the computer. It feels very good to do this. It's one less loss."
The neurologist Dr. Oliver Sacks, who recounts the soothing effects of plants on his patients in "Awakenings" and "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat," is a familiar face at Rusk.
"I had people who were so anxious in the hospital that I would do my consultations in the greenhouse," he said. "They would often feel less pressured there and have less ticks and involuntary movements."
Dr. Sacks has watched deeply demented patients "who couldn't tell a knife from a fork" planting gardens. "They do not put a plant upside down," he said. "They have a deep natural sense of how plants grow."
Gardens have also been found to soothe Alzheimer's patients, especially if the spaces are designed to fit their special needs.
"Alzheimer's patients are very mobile and they have a huge amount of energy," said Patrick Mooney, who teaches landscape architecture at the University of British Columbia. "If they get agitated, they can go over a six-foot fence."
Mr. Mooney has compared the rate of violent incidents at five different residences for Alzheimer's patients in British Columbia. One, Cedarview Lodge, had a garden designed especially for these patients. Another had an outdoor area with no special design, and three had no outdoor space at all.
In both residences with gardens, the rate of violent incidents declined by 19 percent between 1989 and 1990.  In the non-garden institutions, the rate of violent incidents increased by 681 percent.
Gardens for Alzheimer's patients need fences with hedges or vines to screen out distractions on the other side, a path that will always bring them back to where they started, continuous lighted handrails to help navigate, and colored concrete surfaces to cut out glare.
The Cedarview garden includes fragrant herbs to awaken the senses and stir childhood memories, and even a clothesline where some patients enjoy hanging up the linens.
"Residents are not inclined to be violent, provided they are secure and can have access to spaces and get off on their own," said Lenore Nicell, director of Cedarview. "They need to experience solitude, yet feel safe."
Such widely varying accounts of the soothing powers of nature may well lead to a new vision for health care. "Until it becomes common knowledge," said Mr. Mooney "that the experience in naturalistic environments is fundamental to psychological wellness -- whether in the normal population or or special population -- then we cannot make the case for really improving the human condition."

LOAD-DATE: December 29, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photos: Topher Delaney in Healing Garden that she designed for patients at the Marin Cancer Institute near San Francisco when she learned she had breast cancer. The tiny atrium, below, has a fountain and medicinal plants. (Setb Affoumado; Marc Geller for The New York Times) (pg. C1); Gene Kelley relaxes in the Enid A. Haupt glass garden at the Howard A. Rusk Institute in Manhattan. People recovering from spinal cord injuries and strokes go there for regular horticultural therapy. (Andrea Mohin/The New York Times); James Burnett (above), landscape architect of St. Michael health center (right) in Texas. Old engraving (above left) of Friends Hospital in Pennsylvania. (Alan S. Weiner for The New York Times; master plan from Watkins Carter Hamilton, Architects, and James Burnett, Landscape Architecture.); The garden of Cardinal Cooke health center in East Harlem. (Alan S. Weiner for The New York Times) (pg. C6)
 
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457 of 457 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times

December 30, 1994, Friday, Late Edition - Final

THE NEEDIEST CASES;
With Help, Overcoming An Illness Of Solitude

BYLINE: By ABBY GOODNOUGH 

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

LENGTH: 435 words

The old man turned his eyes toward the floor and spoke softly of his wife's death. He had stood by her hospital bed for months, witnessing the waning of her life. As she grew sicker, Mike F. succumbed to an unfamiliar helplessness.
"All I could do was sit there and watch her go," he said. "And then I was alone." 
 After Mr. F.'s wife died of cancer in 1991, the silence in his Brooklyn apartment was unbearable. At his daughter's urging, Mr. F. started visiting a center for the elderly in his Brooklyn neighborhood, but his depression made it difficult to form friendships. He criticized activities at the center, and others found him pushy. Soon, he stopped going out.
"I didn't know how to cope in a social situation," said Mr. F., who is 78. "I was starting from scratch, and it was hard to mix with new people on my own."
Last year, after more prodding from his daughter, Mr. F. set out to deal with his depression. He started going to the Kings Bay YM-YWHA for counseling offered through the Jewish Board of Family and Children's Services. The board is affiliated with UJA-Federation of New York, one of the charities helped by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund. Money raised by the fund, in its 83d year, helps poor and sick people throughout the city.
Rita Landberg, a social worker with the board, has helped Mr. F. work through his grief and soften his gruff exterior.
"In the beginning, Mike was alienating people because he came across as bossy," said Ms. Landberg, who works with 25 elderly people at the Kings Bay Y and an office on Avenue J. "He had a profound depression and loneliness to deal with."
After a few months of therapy, Mr. F. ventured back to the center for the elderly in his neighborhood. Instead of criticism, he offered ideas for improving activities. He suggested printing menus and signs with large letters so everyone could read them, and helped raise money for a new pool table. Mr. F. also persuaded the center to hold dances twice a week instead of once. All his ideas were met with enthusiasm.
"It wasn't until I was visiting Rita on a regular basis that I realized you have to listen as much as you talk," Mr. F. said the other day. "I've learned to keep my mouth closed and not come across as a heavy."
His gentler approach has paid off: this fall, Mr. F. married a 68-year-old friend he met at a center for the elderly. "I asked her to dance and it led to a marriage," he said. "Hardly a day goes by that people don't tell me how wonderful she is."
 
Previously recorded $2,375,744.45
Recorded yesterday 31,237.00
 
Total $2,406,981.45

LOAD-DATE: December 30, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1994 The New York Times Company