Anne Akiko Meyers

i used to listen to her in college, and i think she is easily one of the top three or four violinists in the world today:
http://www.npr.org/programs/pt/4a/meyers.html
http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/music/reviews/story.jsp?story=464549

so if you can, go see her! i'm going Friday (and maybe thursday night too!).

With U.S. Busy, China Is Romping With Neighbors

With U.S. Busy, China Is Romping With Neighbors
By JANE PERLEZ
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/03/international/asia/03LETT.html

JAKARTA, Indonesia, Dec. 2 — When Citibank was casting around for a brand name speaker at its annual retreat here, the bank spurned the usual Western investors. Instead, Citibank chose the Chinese ambassador, Lu Shumin, one of a new generation of diplomats from Beijing who speak flawless English and play a mean game of golf.

The envoy's presentation was relentlessly upbeat: what Southeast Asia sells, China buys. Oil, natural gas and aluminum to build bigger bridges, taller buildings, faster railroads to serve the country's flourishing cities, like Shanghai, which is beginning to make New York City look like a small town. Palm oil for frying all that food for the swelling middle class, even eggs from faraway New Zealand on the region's southern periphery.

China's buying spree and voracious markets provide the underpinning, he said, for the peaceful coexistence that everyone wants.

Contrast this with the dour message from the United States. Congratulations, said President Bush to the Indonesians during his short stopover in October, for "hunting and finding dangerous killers." Cannily, China has wasted little time in capitalizing on the United States preoccupation with the campaign on terror to greatly expand its influence in Asia.

A new team of leaders in Beijing who came to power last spring — President Hu Jintao and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao — have led the charge, personally traveling in the region bearing sizable investments and diplomatic warmth. In fact, some forward leaning analysts think China may already have become Asia's leading power.

"After Afghanistan, after Iraq, after bringing democracy to the Middle East, when the United States refocuses on Asia, it will find a much different China in a much different region," James J. Przystup, a research fellow at the National Defense University, wrote recently.

Beyond the economics and the diplomacy, something else is going on. China has the allure of the new. A new affinity is developing between the once feared China and the rest of Asia.

Karim Raslan, a Malaysian lawyer and writer who traveled to Washington recently on a Fulbright scholarship, put it this way. The American "obsession" with terror seems tedious to Asians, he said. "We've all got to live, we've all got to make money," said Mr. Raslan. "The Chinese want to make money and so do we."

So as American tourists have vanished from an area made uninviting by State Department travel warnings, Chinese tourists have started to arrive. They are pouring into Malaysia (with a substantial minority Chinese population) and Singapore (majority Chinese) where they can talk to the locals and are not afraid to go out at night. They are beginning to buy big-ticket items — five-figure diamond watches, designer clothes — that used to be favored by modish Japanese and American tourists.

This affinity is a two-way street. Singapore's newspapers are filled with stories giving advice on how Singaporean professionals — who face a tough job climate at home — should behave when they work in China. (Don't lord it over the Chinese, is one of the tips.)

Most disturbing for the United States, China's surging economy has much to offer America's most important Asian allies. Japan's rebound is being driven by a surge in exports to China. Australia's healthy economy is being kept that way by Chinese investments in liquid natural gas projects. China is now South Korea's largest trading partner.

Among Southeast Asian countries with significant Muslim populations, places where the American concentration on terror is particularly unappealing, China is on a buying spree.

In Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines (and to a lesser extent Thailand), Washington's primary concern is the presence of Islamic militants. China's main interest is to scoop up what it can for its modernization. Indonesians have come to call this new relationship with Beijing as "feeding the dragon."

As Asia warms to the confident new China, Asians say they are not betraying the United States. "We don't have to choose," said a Singaporean businessman.

This is because relations between the United States and Beijing have rarely been warmer. In the Bush administration's book, China has emerged from the diplomatic doghouse.

In a speech at Texas A&M University devoted to China last month, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell listed all the positives. China has stated its support for the campaign on terror, and has voted with Washington at the United Nations. It is playing a major role in trying to solve the North Korea problem. Mr. Powell jocularly portrayed his relationship with the Chinese foreign minister, Li Zhaoxing, as being so chummy that one of their Saturday telephone conversations was interrupted by the secretary's barking terriers, a knock at the front door, and his wife, Alma, calling from upstairs.

For all China's burst of activity, the United States remains the biggest foreign investor in Asia, and Washington maintains by far the most significant military presence in the region. No one is suggesting that China's antiquated armed forces are about to catch up with the might of the world's superpower.

But the People's Liberation Army is doing its own diplomacy, and naval exercises last month by China and India — the first between the two old rivals — caught people's attention. Militarily they did not add up to much, but the symbolism of an Indian destroyer at the Shanghai docks was widely noted.

Not everyone is convinced that China's courtship of the region will last forever. "They're making progress because we're invisible and distracted; or bull-headed when we do show up," said Robert L. Suettinger, the author of the recent book "Beyond Tiananmen" and a member of the National Security Council during much of the Clinton administration. "There's no natural condominium for China in Southeast Asia. But I think it would behoove us to pay a bit more attention."

But the more provocative Mr. Przystup counters, "Today, China is East Asia's great power."

Justices Resist Religious Study Using Subsidies

Justices Resist Religious Study Using Subsidies
By LINDA GREENHOUSE
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/03/national/03SCOT.html

WASHINGTON, Dec. 2 — An argument by religious conservatives in a church-state case they embraced as a vehicle for expanding their recent Supreme Court victories met resistance from a deeply divided court on Tuesday. A majority of the justices expressed concern about the implications of requiring states to subsidize religious training if they choose to provide college scholarships for other kinds of study.

The court heard arguments on the validity of Washington State's Promise Scholarship Program, which makes awards on the basis of academic merit and financial need to students who attend accredited colleges in the state, including those with religious affiliations, but excludes students pursuing degrees in theology.

A federal appeals court, ruling in a lawsuit brought by a student who would have qualified for the scholarship had he not chosen a major in pastoral ministry, found the exclusion to be an unconstitutional burden on the free exercise of religion. Washington State's appeal of that ruling has produced a Supreme Court case of potentially landmark dimensions, raising the profound question of whether, and under what circumstances, the government can carve religion out of general programs of services and benefits.

The justices devoted much of the lively hourlong argument to probing for just what the consequences might be on issues like school voucher programs if they agreed with the appeals court. The two justices most often in the middle of the court's church-state debates, Sandra Day O'Connor and Anthony M. Kennedy, sought assurances that neither the student's lawyer, Jay A. Sekulow, nor Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson, arguing for the Bush administration as a "friend of the court" on the student's behalf, was willing to provide — that a decision to strike down the Washington program could stop there.

By the end, a clear majority of five or even six justices appeared unconvinced that a limiting principle would be available if they accepted the broad argument that the Constitution mandates equality in awarding government benefits to religious and nonreligious activities alike.

The limitation in Washington's scholarship program is required under the state Constitution's strict separation of church and state. Narda Pierce, the state's solicitor general, described the state Constitution as protecting "the freedom of conscience of all its citizens" by "not compelling its citizens to provide enforced public funds to support the promotion of religious beliefs with which they may or may not agree."

Washington is one of 37 states to forbid the public financing of religious instruction. Many such provisions mirror a failed federal constitutional amendment known as the Blaine Amendment, proposed in 1875 and widely regarded today as an expression of the anti-Catholic sentiment of the day.

But despite briefs urging them to regard the state provisions as the illegitimate expressions of religious bias, the justices expressed little interest in the past and great concern about the future.

"The implications of this case are breathtaking," Justice Stephen G. Breyer observed at one point to Solicitor General Olson, who called the Washington program "the plainest form of religious discrimination."

Although the issue was not mentioned directly, the administration's religion-based initiative would benefit immeasurably from a decision to uphold the ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Not only would it be permissible to channel federal money through religion-based service organizations, but some version of the administration's program might be seen as constitutionally mandatory.

"If your side wins," Justice Breyer told the solicitor general, "every program, not just educational programs, but nursing programs, hospital programs, social welfare programs, contracting programs throughout the governments" would all be subject to the argument "that they cannot be purely secular, that they must fund all religions who want to do the same thing."

Different religious groups "may get into fights with each other about billions and billions of dollars," Justice Breyer continued.

Describing the Washington program, Mr. Olson said that "the clear and unmistakable message is that religion and preparation for a career in the ministry is disfavored and discouraged." He added, "the person who wants to believe in God or wants to have a position of religious leadership is the one that's singled out for discriminatory treatment."

His argument met an unexpectedly skeptical response from Justice O'Connor, who said: "Well, but of course, there's been a couple of centuries of practice in this country of not funding religious instruction by tax money." She added, "I mean, that's as old as the country itself, isn't it?"

Mr. Olson replied: "Well, yes it is. But there is the other tradition that is as old as the country itself, the free exercise component of the religion clauses, which this court has said repeatedly mandates neutrality."

At times, Justice O'Connor appeared to doubt that the state's denial of a scholarship for religious study amounted to an unconstitutional burden in the first place. "How does this violate the student's right to free exercise of religion?" she asked Mr. Sekulow, the student's lawyer. "Maybe it's more expensive to go to school, but why does that violate his free exercise of religion?"

Throughout the argument, both Justice O'Connor and Justice Kennedy worried aloud that a decision striking down the Washington program would have the effect of compelling any state that offered tuition vouchers in a "school choice" program to include religious schools, regardless of whether the state wanted such an inclusive program.

"Can they refrain from making that program available for use in religious schools?" Justice O'Connor asked Mr. Sekulow.

"I would think not," replied Mr. Sekulow, chief counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice, a legal organization founded by the Rev. Pat Robertson.

"So what you are urging here would have a major impact then, would it not, on voucher programs," Justice O'Connor said.

A decision by the court in June 2002 upheld a tuition voucher program in Cleveland that provides for participation by parochial schools and that was challenged as an unconstitutional "establishment" of religion. That decision raised, but did not answer, the further question of whether religious schools had to be included in such programs, which have spread more slowly than their proponents had hoped, in part because of the existence of state prohibitions like Washington's.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg asked Mr. Sekulow a question that she described as "really what the case turns on." Is there "any space," she asked, "between what a state is permitted to fund under the Establishment Clause and what it must fund under the Free Exercise Clause and, if so, what fills that space?"

For example, she continued, could a state decide to subsidize the training of doctors, lawyers, architects, and members of all other professions except the clergy?

Not unless the state could show a compelling interest for making such a distinction, Mr. Sekulow replied.

For his part, Justice Kennedy seemed to be looking for a way to avoid the broader issue by finding the Washington program to be invalid on grounds that would not carry the same broad implications. Why could the program not be invalidated on the ground that it placed a burden on a student's "religious conscience," he asked, by forcing students to choose secular majors if they wanted the scholarship money.

But Justice David H. Souter suggested that a ruling on that basis would not avoid implications for the voucher question. If tuition vouchers were available only for nonreligious schools, he said, the argument could be made "that the religious student must somehow surrender a conscientious belief" and enroll in a secular school to use the voucher.

Joshua Davey, the student whose lawsuit led to this case, Locke v. Davey, No. 02-1315, continued his religious studies at Northwest College, which is affiliated with the Assemblies of God. He did not, however, become a minister. He is now a student at Harvard Law School, and attended the argument Tuesday.

More Fallout in the Mutual Fund Industry

More Fallout in the Mutual Fund Industry
By RIVA ATLAS and DAVID BARBOZA
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/03/business/03fund.html

Richard S. Strong gave up control yesterday of the mutual fund company he founded, and regulators filed suits accusing the Invesco Funds Group and its chief executive of securities fraud in the rapidly expanding investigation of improper trading.

Mr. Strong is under tremendous pressure from the New York attorney general, Eliot Spitzer, who has said that he intends to file suit against Mr. Strong for trading in and out of funds for his own profit. Mr. Strong, 61, resigned yesterday as chairman and chief executive of Strong Financial, the fund management company, having stepped down last month as chairman of the board at Strong Mutual Funds.

Someone briefed on Mr. Strong's plans said that he planned to try to sell the company, of which he owns over 80 percent. A spokeswoman for Mr. Spitzer said the actions "would have no impact on our ongoing investigation."

Invesco, with $18 billion in assets, joins a growing group of investment firms, brokers and intermediaries sued by regulators since allegations of improper trading erupted in September with a single hedge fund. Since then, numerous companies have dismissed employees, begun internal inquiries and responded to subpoenas. Mr. Spitzer, who brought the case against Invesco yesterday in tandem with the Securities and Exchange Commission, said he expected to file more cases before the end of the year.

Like Putnam and Pilgrim Baxter before it, Invesco has much at stake as it tries to resolve regulators' complaints. The company, which is based in Denver and is a division of Amvescap of London, said yesterday that it would vigorously contest the allegations, but a prolonged dispute could spur investor withdrawals.

Since regulators filed suit against Putnam in late October, its chief executive has been replaced, and its assets have shrunk by $32 billion, or nearly 12 percent, as investors withdrew their money. The founders of the PBHG funds, Gary Pilgrim and Harold Baxter, have also been forced out. Strong Financial, which is based in Menomonee Falls, Wis., manages more than $40 billion in mutual fund and institutional assets, including pension funds, and said more than $500 million flowed out of the company in October.

Mr. Strong is among the nation's richest people, with virtually all of his wealth tied up in the fund company. He is said to be worth $800 million, and according to regulators, he earned $600,000 from the improper trading.

Invesco executives are not accused of any improper trading themselves, but they are said to have permitted it by many others. The complaints say management went to great lengths to lure dozens of market timers, an industry term for those who trade rapidly for short-term gain. As much as $900 million of Invesco's $18 billion in assets were controlled by market timers as of the middle of last year, according to the attorney general.

Though the practice is not illegal, regulators have said that it dilutes the returns of long-term investors and often violates the policies of many funds and their management companies, constituting fraud.

The attorney general is seeking the return of more than $160 million in management fees earned by Invesco executives on funds traded by timers. The commission also wants Ray Cunningham, the chief executive, to disgorge his salary, bonus and other compensation during the period of illegal activity.

Extensive market timing was permitted at Invesco from 2001 until July 2003, when Mr. Spitzer sent a subpoena to the company, the attorney general said in his complaint. The trading occurred in at least 10 Invesco funds, the commission said.

Mr. Spitzer said in an interview that the Invesco suit was the first to focus on fund executives who permitted market timing. Some companies may have permitted timing, but the policy should have been uniform for all investors, big and small, he said. "If you are making exceptions it is an illegal activity," he said.

The prospectuses for Invesco funds state that the company will permit only four exchanges in and out of the funds over a 12-month period, although the company says it may "modify or terminate the exchange policy if it is in the best interest of the fund and its shareholders."

The S.E.C. and Mr. Spitzer said in their complaints yesterday that Invesco executives were repeatedly told that active trading by timers was hurting the performance of some funds, yet they continued to allow the activity without informing independent directors.

The company's chief compliance officer said in a January memorandum to Mr. Cunningham that funds heavily traded by market timers appear to have underperformed similar funds by as much as one percentage point. Amvescap said yesterday that the prospectus was written to give the company latitude over trading in its funds. Regulators' suits, Amvescap said, describe what was "always intended to be a flexible guideline, as if it were an inflexible policy."

The company also said that "no clear regulations or directions have been provided that bear specifically on which market timing activities should be permissible" and that it looked forward to new rules clarifying the point from the S.E.C. The company also said that the allegations "will be vigorously contested."

Randall Fons, regional director of the commission in Denver, said yesterday that "the standards we are holding them to are nothing new.''

"This is a standard case of violation of fiduciary duty and fraud," he added.

A spokesman for AIM Distributors, which distributes Invesco funds, said that Mr. Cunningham would have no comment on the suits.

The Strong funds were cited in the attorney general's initial mutual fund case involving the activities of a single hedge fund run by Edward J. Stern. As the inquiry continued, Mr. Strong promised to reimburse the Strong funds for any losses that resulted from his trades along with stepping out of the fund oversight role as a director. David S. Ruder, a former chairman of the S.E.C., was brought in to help overhaul the company's policies and corporate governance structure.

"After weeks of intense reflection, I have come to realize that the best way for Strong Financial to pursue its promising future is for me to step down," Mr. Strong said in a statement yesterday. He surrendered day-to-day control of the company to Kenneth J. Wessels, a former Dain Rauscher executive, who becomes chairman and chief executive.

Mr. Strong plans to turn over voting control of his management company, the statement said. If the company cannot be sold at an acceptable price, Mr. Strong could take other steps to divest his stake, possibly putting his interest in a trust, according to the person briefed on his plans.

Paul Herbert, a mutual fund analyst at Morningstar, the funds tracking company, said that fund companies or asset management firms have been valued at about 2 percent of assets in recent deals. He said that Strong might be valued at 1.5 to 3 percent of assets, putting its value at $630 million to $1.3 billion. "There are a lot of things that could affect how much it would go for," he said.

Nation-Building in Iraq: Lessons From the Past

Nation-Building in Iraq: Lessons From the Past
By MICHAEL R. GORDON
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/21/international/middleeast/21CND-GORD.html

WASHINGTON, Nov. 18 — James Dobbins has long been one of those troubleshooters who never seem to miss a crisis.

As the special United States envoy for Afghanistan, Mr. Dobbins was responsible for finding and installing a successor to the Taliban after they were toppled in 2001. During the 1990's, Mr. Dobbins hop-scotched from one trouble spot to another as he served as special envoy to Kosovo, Bosnia, Haiti and Somalia.

So when he offers a critique of the Bush administration's nation-building effort in Iraq, it is worth paying attention. Now out of government, Mr. Dobbins, who has worked for Republican as well as Democratic administrations, does not have a partisan ax to grind.

I spoke with Mr. Dobbins after reading "America's Role in Nation-Building: From Germany to Iraq," which Mr. Dobbins co-wrote with other experts at the Rand Corporation, where he is now a senior official. L. Paul Bremer III, the American administrator of Iraq, describes the recent book as a valuable "how to" manual on nation-building. Nevertheless, Mr. Dobbins believes that much of the Bush administration's planning for the political and physical reconstruction of Iraq is an object lesson in how not to go about the nation-building task.

Mr. Dobbins's basic argument is this: The Bush administration would have been better prepared for its Iraq mission if it had heeded the lessons of the United States' ongoing peacekeeping missions in the Balkans and other recent nation-building efforts. Those are cases, he argues, in which the United States had to contend with a security vacuum and the potential for ethnic strife, and designed a force to maintain order.

But the Bush administration, he argues, has such disdain for anything associated with former President Bill Clinton that it largely ignored useful lessons from recent United States peacekeeping operations. To the extent it looked to history, the Mr. Bush's administration turned to the American occupation of Germany and Japan more than half a century ago.

It was, Mr. Dobbins says, a costly exercise in "political correctness."

"Iraq in 2003 looks more like Yugoslavia in 1996 than Germany and Japan in 1945," Mr. Dobbins says. "What they have not done is look to the models worked out in the 1990's for sharing the burden and allowing others to participate in the management of the enterprise."

Iraq poses its own unique challenges, but Mr. Dobbins argues that the nation-building problems there more closely resemble those faced in Bosnia and Kosovo than in Germany. Like the former Yugoslavia, Iraq is a multi-ethnic state that was held together by a dictator. Like Bosnia and Kosovo, it has a Muslim population. Unlike Germany, Iraq does not have an ethnically homogenous population or a first-world economy. Nor has it been devastated by total war.

The failure to reflect on the sort of security breakdowns and power vacuums that the United States confronted in the former Yugoslavia, or Afghanistan and Haiti for that matter, Mr. Dobbins said, left the Bush administration less prepared for post-Hussein Iraq than it should have been. There is little historical support for the Defense Department's initial claim that it would take fewer troops to occupy Iraq and stabilize the country than to topple the Saddam Hussein regime.

In nation-building, Mr. Dobbins and his Rand colleagues have concluded that larger peacekeeping forces are better than smaller ones. Not only do small peacekeeping forces encourage potential adversaries to think they can challenge the peacekeepers but they also force the peacekeepers to rely more on firepower to make up for their limited numbers, raising the risk of civilian casualties and increased disaffection among the population.

"The highest levels of casualties have occurred in the operations with the lowest levels of U.S. troops, suggesting an inverse ratio between force levels and the level or risk," the Rand book notes.

In his book, Mr. Dobbins cites a rough strategic rule of thumb from the Balkans. It takes about 20 peacekeepers for each 1,000 civilians to safeguard the peace. Applying that rule to Iraq would yield a peacekeeping force of more than 450,000 in Iraq, a far cry from the 155,000 or so American and allied troops now trying to bring the "former regime loyalists," foreign fighters, and anti-occupation Iraqis to heel. Those are the sorts of calculations that led the former Army chief of staff Eric K. Shinseki to tell Congress before the war that it could take several hundreds of thousands of troops to control Iraq.

Such a force level, of course, would be hard for the United States to sustain alone for a long period, which is why Mr. Dobbins favors a multilateral approach. The United States had 50 percent of the world's gross domestic product in 1945, Mr. Dobbins notes. Not only could it afford to finance the reconstruction of Europe and Japan, but there was no alternative. By the 1990's, however, the share of G.D.P. was 22 percent. Sharing the burden for peacekeeping operations, he argues, was reasonable, politically desirable and an appropriate model for Iraq.

The failure to anticipate the breakdown in order, to deploy sufficient forces at the outset and to take a more multinational approach has undermined the Bush administration's broader political strategy in Iraq and limited its options, Mr. Dobbins asserts. Mr. Bush's administration had favored an approach that called for a new Iraqi constitution to be drafted before holding elections for a new government, and Mr. Dobbins sees much merit in that plan. But to carry out such a methodical strategy, he says, the United States needed a higher degree of public support and patience on the part of ordinary Iraqis and more success in establishing security than it has been able to achieve.

"Occupied people look first for security," Mr. Dobbins said. "If you provide security, they will provide cooperation," he added. "If you are not providing security, they will remain passive, uncommitted and will allow extremists to circulate in their midst."

Stung by the continued turmoil in Iraq and continued resistance to the American role there, the Bush administration has recently changed course: it is now seeking to establish a provisional government in advance of a constitution.

"A provisional government does seem to me to be feasible and almost inevitable," Mr. Dobbins said. "The opportunity to be able to more methodically put in place the prerequisites for a genuine democratic system before you move to Iraqi self-government has been lost."

There are many problems in Iraq. But according to Mr. Dobbins's analysis, some of the American wounds have been self-inflicted.

At this point, Mr. Dobbins is urging a major course correction. The Bush administration, he says, should expedite three transitions. First, he says, the United States should speed the transition to a provisional government, something the Bush administration has recently decided to do.

Second, Mr. Dobbins says, the American-led occupation authority headed by Mr. Bremer should be replaced by an international administration, which would be headed by a new high commissioner for Iraq. Third, NATO should take on the peacekeeping mission in Iraq.

While Mr. Dobbins believes it is important to quickly grant the Iraqis more sovereignty by establishing a provisional government, he also argues that a group of unelected Iraqi officials cannot be relied on to continue the trend toward democracy. So oversight is needed. But it needs to be a truly international oversight, he argues, to share the burden for the occupation and give it more legitimacy inside and outside Iraq.

The Bush administration is unlikely to cede control to an international body. One of the administration's objections, Mr. Dobbins reports, is that such a move would enable an international organization, and not the United States, to decide when the nation-building mission was over and when the troops could leave. That could mean that the effort could drag on for years, as it has in the Balkans.

But given the difficulties in Iraq, a long-term commitment to the political and physical reconstruction of Iraq and the lengthy deployment of peacekeeping forces seem to be unavoidable. Citing the lessons of the past decade, Mr. Dobbins argues that it will even be desirable.

Long, rather than short, engagements, he said, are more likely to succeed.

China Tells Its Public of Enormity of AIDS Toll

China Tells Its Public of Enormity of AIDS Toll
By JIM YARDLEY
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/03/international/asia/03AIDS.html

BEIJING, Dec. 2 — With China taking its first real steps toward a full-scale public awareness campaign about AIDS this week, the degree of ignorance caused by past government denial is evident in the dazed expression of Zhao Pingyuan.

Pedaling his bicycle along a narrow alleyway in the graceful old Houhai neighborhood, Mr. Zhao, 33, stopped beside a new government AIDS poster. He had not noticed the poster, or AIDS, before.

"I've never heard of it," he said. "I'm from Henan Province. We don't have it in Henan." Told that Henan is an epicenter of AIDS, with huge numbers of cases and deaths, Mr. Zhao shook his head. "There is nothing like that," he said. "It would have been on television if people had died of AIDS."

This week, in a flurry of publicity coinciding with World AIDS Day, AIDS is finally all over television in China. New public service announcements promote awareness and even recommend condom use.

The most dramatic moment came on Monday night when Prime Minister Wen Jiabao was shown comforting AIDS patients and pledging support, the first such public appearance by a top government leader.

Mr. Wen also promised that the government would provide free AIDS drugs to all people who needed them.

Elated AIDS advocates praised Mr. Wen's appearance as a pivotal moment that could reduce the stigma surrounding the disease and send an important signal to lower officials. Yet those same advocates also warned that symbolism was not enough, and that the government must dedicate major resources to curtailing the spread of AIDS and educating people like Mr. Zhao.

"This was like breaking the ice," said Joel Rehnstrom, the coordinator in China for Unaids, a United Nations agency. "It's something that a lot of people working in the AIDS field inside China and outside have been hoping for and waiting for."

China is thought to have slightly more than one million people who are infected with H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS, or who have already died of AIDS. Experts say there could be 10 million cases by 2010.

The disease was initially confined to intravenous drug users, sex-trade workers and farmers infected by a tainted blood-selling operation in central China, but it is now spreading into the general population.

Part of the problem is a widespread lack of public awareness. A recent poll by Futures Group Europe and Horizon Market Research found that roughly 19.9 percent of those responding had never heard of AIDS, the state news media reported.

Only 13.4 percent knew the three methods of transmission — through sex, blood and mother-to-child breast-feeding. Only 21.4 percent of people knew they could be infected with AIDS by having sex, and only 2.6 percent realized that condoms could prevent transmission.

For years the government blocked Chinese media coverage of the country's AIDS problem. Even now, Chinese and foreign reporters are detained in Henan if they are caught interviewing AIDS patients. But AIDS advocates say the public relations push this week represents a significant shift in attitudes about basic awareness.

"They were talking to the Chinese people," said Odilon Couzin, whose Hong Kong-based nonprofit group, China AIDS Info, disseminates information about the disease. "It's both symbolism and hopefully the beginning of real action."

Building public awareness is one thing. The more difficult task, experts agree, is creating an adequate nationwide health system to confront the disease and fulfilling the promise to provide free antiretroviral drugs to poor AIDS patients.

On Monday night a top health official, Gao Qiang, used a television talk show to publicly repeat an earlier pledge that a free drug program would be quickly expanded next year to cover all people who had tested positive for the disease.

Of the estimated one million cases of H.I.V., Chinese officials say only about 80,000 people have tested positive for the virus. They have not provided any figures about how many have been tested.

About 5,000 people are already getting antiretroviral drugs under a pilot program in more than 100 counties, though 20 percent have dropped out of the program because of harsh side effects. Many experts do not think that the program can possibly be expanded by next year to cover all of the 80,000 H.I.V.-positive people.

Other tough issues also remain. The government is still weighing a needle exchange program to reduce risks of continued spread among drug users. Public condom dispensers are available on college campuses and outside some public bathrooms. But experts say condoms are not available in hotels because the police believe that they encourage prostitution. Prostitution, meanwhile, is growing quickly.

Casting a Fresh Eye on China With Computer, Not Ink Brush

Casting a Fresh Eye on China With Computer, Not Ink Brush
By JANE PERLEZ
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/03/arts/design/03SHAN.html

SHANGHAI, Nov. 27 — Yang Fudong, a 32-year-old Chinese video artist, is in high demand on the international art circuit. The Venice Biennale and the Georges Pompidou Center showed his work this year. He travels to Florida to exhibit at the Art Basel Miami Beach show, which opens on Dec. 4. In January he plans to visit Manhattan when the Museum of Modern Art shows his work at the Gramercy Theater. He will also be included in an exhibition organized by the International Center of Photography that opens in June.

Part of the fascination surrounding Mr. Yang is founded on his place at the center of a digital whirlwind in China, where a new generation of artists have spurned the canvases of Mao-like heads that the West considered so avant-garde in the 1990's. Instead, he and his friends are creating videos about personal feelings and anomie amid the warp-speed change in China.

Mr. Yang's videos dwell on the dignity of the individual amid the urban chaos of modernizing China. His latest major piece, the 30-minute "Seven Intellectuals in Bamboo Forest" (2003), starring svelte, handsomely dressed actors who escape the city by decamping to the pristine beauty of the mountains, has been received as a welcome departure from the monotonous fare that has dominated the medium.

For all the attention that he and other young Chinese artists have received abroad, few of them any longer want to leave their homeland, Mr. Yang said.

"My friends and I don't have a strong desire to live abroad," Mr. Yang said as he served tea in the living room of his sixth floor walk-up that has so far survived this city's hyperactive bulldozers. "I'm not interested in politics. Our thinking is very simple: It's good to go abroad for several weeks for an exhibition, then after a while you have to come back. You get homesick."

"What's great is to make a movie with your friends, chat, eat Chinese food," he said. "It's a great life, and that's life now."

Unlike those who left in the 90's after the Tiananmen Square crackdown, current Chinese painters and installation and video artists said they could work pretty much unfettered. Certainly, direct hits at the political system are forbidden, and homosexuality as a subject is off-limits. But after officialdom allowed a sharp-edged show, designed to counter the 2000 Shanghai Biennale, to proceed unscathed, the closing of art shows has been virtually unheard of, they said.

Another inducement to stay is the availability of the latest computer and video equipment, especially in prestigious Chinese art schools. China's strength in commercial electronic technology is an important aspect of the art world here. "The Chinese government is investing an enormous amount of money in the new technology for artists," said Christopher Phillips, a curator at the International Center of Photography in Manhattan. That gallery is organizing an exhibition of new photography from China that includes Mr. Yang's work.

On a recent visit to the China Academy of Fine Arts in Hangzhou, one of the top two art schools in the country, Mr. Phillips said he was "knocked out" by the "dozens and dozens" of Power Mac G4 computers, a powerful, versatile system favored by video artists.

"The Chinese artists are in the front lines of adapting and exploiting the new possibilities in technology," Mr. Phillips said.

Mr. Yang, a 1995 graduate of the academy in Hangzhou, made a two-hour train trip to his alma mater recently to judge a student video competition that was organized to celebrate the academy's 75th anniversary.

The academy recently moved onto a new campus, with its a cluster of gray brick-and-glass buildings beside the willow-draped West Lake, and the new media department takes up more than four floors in the best building. "You could say the school is quite respectful of the new media," Mr. Yang said.

While he insists he is not interested in politics, Mr. Yang seems to mean that in only the narrowest sense. A recurrent thread in his work is the individual versus the corruption that permeates urban life in China.

"Seven Intellectuals in Bamboo Forest" alludes to a group of third-century Chinese scholars and poets who retreated to a bamboo grove to gain freedom of expression from corrupt emperors.

In his telling of this story, Mr. Yang films actors and actresses (all his friends) as they ascend Huangshan Mountain, talk with one another and meditate on life. An original musical score accompanies their musings. Some of the dialogue seems a bit hokey: "I believe in nothing except fate and constellation," and, "If you leave next week, be my lover this week." But the overall effect of the well-dressed wanderers on a misty mountaintop is dreamlike, eerie and compelling. The video is to be shown at the Museum of Modern Art and the International Center of Photography.

"It's important to stick to what you believe is important in your life no matter what the circumstances," Mr. Yang said. Thus "Seven Intellectuals" shows a group of people who "live in their own world, not conforming to the material world."

Mr. Yang dressed his actors in striking but unfashionable early-20th-century clothes borrowed from a movie studio's costume department. The men wear waistcoats and fob watches and carry walking sticks; the women wear cloche hats and pencil skirts.

Mr. Yang chose the academy in Hangzhou because it was in the south and more liberal than its equally eminent counterpart in Beijing. He majored in oil painting. "I hated computers because I was an oil painter," he said of the period after graduation. He dabbled in some photography classes at the Beijing academy in 1996.

By 1997 he needed to make a living and came to Shanghai, where he learned how to use a computer. He kept a day job making video games, but his heart was in shooting digital video for art, and he has not painted in two years, he said.

He eventually was fired from his job. "My boss liked my work, but I took too much leave. He gave me three months' compensation pay and said, `Now you can work on your art full time.' "

Often, Mr. Yang said, Western art collectors failed to comprehend the deep confidence Chinese artists now have in their culture. "They think we are doing our work for them. We're not. We're doing it for China," he said. "The purpose of going abroad is very simple. You take a look at what the world is doing and then you come back and you do it yourself."

Attack of the Killer Bras

Attack of the Killer Bras
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/10/opinion/10KRIS.html

SHUN SHUI VILLAGE, China — The most important thing happening in the world today is the rise of China, and that's the reality hovering in the background of the delicate U.S.-China talks under way in Washington this week.

So I decided to "cover" the talks not in Washington, where it's easy to be overwhelmed by details of Chinese bra imports and U.S. policy toward Taiwan, but here in southern China's Taishan area, which accounted for a majority of Chinese emigrants to the U.S. until a few decades ago.

The descendants of Taishan include my wife, Sheryl WuDunn. (A WuDunn is what you get when you cross a Wu ancestor who doesn't speak English with a U.S. immigration officer who doesn't speak Chinese.) When Sheryl and I first traveled here in 1987, we met her distant cousins, poor peasants who spent their time wading in the rice paddies. The entire clan had about as many teeth as Sheryl does.

Back then, Shun Shui Village had no paved roads, no motor vehicles, no telephones and three black-and-white televisions. Now, along the paved road through the village, every house has a color television, and most have phones and motorcycles. Among Sheryl's distant kin, the youngest son of parents with only a second-grade education has just graduated from the university and bought a cellphone.

Multiply Shun Shui's transformation by the 700,000 villages of China, and you begin to appreciate the implications of China's industrial revolution. One study has found that China accounted for 25 percent of the world's economic growth from 1995 to 2002 (measured by purchasing power parity), more than the U.S.

Soaring Chinese demand has become the major force propping up world energy prices, and the International Energy Agency predicts that China will have net oil imports of four million barrels a day by 2010 — twice Iraq's current oil exports.

Where will that oil come from? What will China's carbon emissions mean for global warming and the New Jersey coastline? Will the U.S. and China go to war over Taiwan, or over the Diaoyu Islands now controlled by Japan? Will China sustain its boom or collapse into chaos?

Instead of engaging on these issues, the White House and both parties in Congress seem intent on launching a new trade war with China. Washington appears unable to focus on anything more weighty than the supposed Chinese dumping of bras and nightgowns in our markets (even though U.S. companies don't make bras).

That's myopia. There was a wonderful American movie in 1966 called "The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming," which poked fun at anti-Soviet hysteria. Maybe it's time for an update: "The Chinese Nighties Are Coming!"

President Bush has generally handled China quite sensibly, and it was also smart to warn Taiwan against steps toward independence. China's leaders have reciprocated, and have been especially helpful this year in restraining North Korea.

But with next year's elections approaching, the White House has turned demagogic and begun clubbing China over trade so as to win votes in manufacturing states, while endangering cooperation on a broader agenda. There are plenty of reasons to prod China to behave better — I know people who are in prison here, including a South Korean photographer (who often shoots pictures for The Times), whose only sin was documenting the plight of North Korean refugees in China. But our trade denunciations are petty and intellectually dishonest.

Unlike Japan a decade ago, China does not have a huge global trade surplus. Its imports are growing faster than its exports, up 40 percent this year. And exports to America grew after factories moved from Taiwan and Hong Kong to the mainland. Moreover, some 52 percent of China's exports come from foreign-owned factories.

One can quibble about China's keeping its currency cheap to promote exports. But China is stabilizing its currency by buying U.S. debt, financing Mr. Bush's budget deficit and keeping U.S. mortgage rates low.

Managing the rise of China will be one of the world's toughest challenges in coming years. Prime Minister Wen Jiabao is offering Mr. Bush both cooperation and patience, and it ill behooves us to slap him around for selling us cheap bras.

Bo Chen and Rui Su

Bo Chen and Rui Su
By JENNIFER TUNG
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/07/fashion/weddings/07VOWS.html

IT was a slow day at the Municipal Building in Manhattan, something that worked to the advantage of Bo Chen and his bride, Rui Su, who were clearly in a hurry. They waited only a few minutes to pay the $25 fee for a civil marriage ceremony and then were whisked into the wedding chapel without even sitting in the chairs lining the hall outside.

It seemed only fair. Since falling in love they had lived on opposite sides of the world — she in Harbin, China, and he in Flushing, Queens.

Mr. Chen first heard about Ms. Su from a friend at a dinner in Manhattan in October 2002. "She'd met Rui in Beijing and thought we'd get along, so she gave me her e-mail address," he said.

The friend had not planned on a lasting love match between Ms. Su, then a student at a language institute in Harbin, her hometown, and Mr. Chen, a home equity loan officer for J. P. Morgan Chase in Manhattan. "She didn't know I was ready to settle down," Mr. Chen said. "I didn't know I was ready to settle down."

Mr. Chen, 27, and Ms. Su, 25, embarked on a thoroughly modern courtship, beginning with an e-mail exchange, written in both Chinese and English. Ms. Su, who makes up for limited English with a bright impish smile and wide mischievous eyes, remembered, "I told him his first e-mail sounded like a business letter." Nevertheless, their dialogue quickly developed into daily phone calls.

Mr. Chen, who at 14 immigrated with his family to Flushing from Nanjing, China, stands six feet tall, is soft-spoken and steady and has a broad, gentle smile. Although they had not met in person, within weeks the topic of their daily conversations shifted to the future and, more specifically, a possible future together.

Then, in November last year, Ms. Su's father, who lives in Harbin, was seriously injured in a car accident. In the weeks following, Ms. Su took care of her father while keeping the upsetting news from her mother, who lives in New York. "The way she handled it made me care for her," Mr. Chen said. "I knew by my heart that she was the one for me."

By the end of the year, he had a plan. "I wanted to see her," he said. "I bought a plane ticket, took off six weeks from work and went to China."

They met for the first time in January at Harbin International Airport. Their first impressions were not exactly heart-stopping. "I was embarrassed," she said. Mr. Chen, who towers over the petite Ms. Su, remembered thinking, "She is short, O.K."

But no matter. Although no formal proposal had been uttered, by then they had committed themselves to marriage. After vacationing in Beijing, they gave a rousing engagement party at a restaurant in Harbin for 100 friends and relatives.

Four weeks later, Mr. Chen returned to New York and began the difficult wait for his fiancée to receive a visa. They quickly made up for lost time. The couple applied for a marriage license on Monday, only days after Ms. Su's arrival at Kennedy Airport. Then, on Wednesday, they were at the wedding chapel with Ms. Su's mother and Wei Liang, a longtime friend of Mr. Chen from work, as their witnesses.

The bride wore jeans with baby blue platform sneakers. The bridegroom, who came straight from the office, wore a paisley tie with his gray slacks and carried a worn leather briefcase. They did not bother to take off their winter coats for the ceremony, which made sense, considering that their vows took only three minutes.

Making their eagerness unmistakable, the bride jumped in and said "I do," when Blanca Ramos, the officiating clerk, asked Mr. Chen if he would take Ms. Su as his wife. (When she realized the clerk's mistake, the bride let out a yelp of laughter.)

And when Ms. Ramos asked Mr. Chen to place the ring on Ms. Su's finger, he grinned down at the bride, touched the silver band on her finger, and replied, "It's already placed."

Remembering 'Nutcracker' Ballets Past

Remembering 'Nutcracker' Ballets Past
By JENNIFER DUNNING
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/04/arts/dance/04NUTC.html

The Christmas tree in the first New York City Ballet production of "The Nutcracker" threatened to catch fire at any moment from the sparking, smoking bulbs that simulated candles. The production cost twice as much as its allocated budget of $40,000. The costumes were still being sewn three hours before opening night.

George Balanchine, who based his staging for City Ballet on the late-19th-century original that he had later danced as a child at the Maryinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, calmly took up a needle and thread and joined the seamstresses.

Performers were stuffed into every backstage cranny of City Center, where the ballet had its premiere on Feb. 2, 1954. The dressing rooms and studios were so packed that there was an overflow into the stairs and halls, and stagehands devised a complicated system of hand signals, sent via parents along the way, to get everyone onto the stage on cue. Eliot Feld, who played the young Nutcracker prince that year, remembers being coached by Balanchine on the prince's crucial second-act mime scene in a fifth-floor wardrobe room.

For all the glistening bravura choreography for adults in the second act, the ballet is a celebration of its children. And many of those children — the estimated total of child performers over the years is more than 2,000 — will gather at the State Theater on Saturday night for a reunion that includes an onstage bow after the company's performance.

Balanchine had performed a variety of children's roles in the ballet in Russia, among them a mouse and a hoop dancer. His young American dancers, all students at the City Ballet-affiliated School of American Ballet, were paid not only a small fee but also the compliment of choreography that demanded their best, on whatever level they were dancing.

The ballet opened to a somewhat mixed critical reception. One reviewer cautioned audiences to skip the first act, filled as it was with tiresome children performing the ballet's retelling of the E. T. A. Hoffmann story of a girl and a boy, a Christmas party and an eccentric uncle and his gift of a magical nutcracker.

Other critics wrote of how the ballet, though a departure from the company's resolutely nontraditional focus, reaffirmed the simple, lucid classicism inherent in Balanchine's work. And City Ballet had a box-office bonanza in "The Nutcracker" that ushered in a wave of other lucrative holiday productions of the ballet across the nation.

At the reunion, Maria Tallchief, Balanchine's first American Sugar Plum Fairy, will be the guest of honor.

The lead roles will be performed by Jennie Somogyi and Peter Boal, City Ballet principal dancers who played the lead children's roles of the prince and little Marie in their days at the school, in the late 1970's and 80's, respectively.

Just as Balanchine taught Mr. Feld, Mr. Boal was taught the mime by David Richardson, a child performer who danced as an adult with City Ballet and was chosen to coach the children, usually with great nervousness over whether his charges would win Balanchine's approval. And the lineage continues. Mr. Boal has helped coach the "Nutcracker" children recently with the former City Ballet dancer Garielle Whittle, who is the children's balletmistress.

One of Mr. Boal's favorite childhood memories is of sharing fruit-flavored Life Savers as he sat enthroned through the long second act with Katherine Healy, who danced Marie, from a special pouch her mother had sewn for her.

Ms. Somogyi recalled that she almost didn't make it to the children's audition. It was on a Saturday, and she and her mother, who stayed in the city during the week while she studied, usually went home to New Jersey for weekends. Her heart sank, she said, when she and another girl were singled out. To have stayed in town and then been one of the first to be eliminated, Ms. Somogyi remembers thinking.

Suddenly there were congratulatory squeals from the other children, one of whom rushed into the hallway to tell waiting parents that the alternating Maries had been chosen. "I wish we had had a video camera," Ms. Somogyi said, laughing. "My mother and I were like deer in headlights."

Like most of the children until recent, more sophisticated times, she and the others had little idea of what they were engaged in. "It became real when the reviews came out," she said. "I thought, `Wow, this is a really big deal.' " Wynne Abrahamson Shilling, whose children's roles from 1954 to 1957 included Marie's naughty brother, Fritz, recalled that she was simply told by telegram to show up for the first rehearsal, on Christmas Day. Today Ms. Shilling is chairwoman of the department of teacher education at York College of the City University of New York. Other alumni went on to perform in film and theater, among them Macaulay Culkin, and to careers as psychotherapists, film producers, lawyers, chefs and even the ownership of a beer import company.

Dr. Herbert Gretz, who danced several children's roles in the mid-1970's and is now a gynecological oncologist at Mount Sinai, recalls Jerome Robbins and Balanchine duking it out as the battling Mouse King and the little prince in one coaching session with the children. He sees a life lesson, he said, in his youthful ballet experiences.

"I think ballet takes a tremendous amount of dedication and commitment," Dr. Gretz said. "Medicine is the same. I teach surgery to student doctors and residents. I tell them that surgery is like a ballet, but there are no dress rehearsals. There is a whole team. It is orchestrated. It flows when going well. It has a rhythm and a style."

For Mr. Feld, today an internationally known choreographer, the memories are indelible. "My whole sense of dancing, of the magic, beauty, the otherworldliness of it, was formed in those times," he said.

Robert Maiorano, who danced a variety of children's roles before joining City Ballet in 1962, went on to write two vivid classics of ballet literature, "Worlds Apart: The Autobiography of a Dancer from Brooklyn" and "Balanchine's `Mozartiana': The Making of a Masterpiece," written with Valerie Brooks. "O.K., the first five go in there," the children's balletmistress tells an aggregate of little soldiers in "Worlds Apart" as she hustles them onto the stage for their battle with giant mice.

"We went into a huge toy cabinet," Mr. Maiorano writes. "It was actually onstage but hidden from the audience by a black velvet scrim. I couldn't see a thing. I stood with my rifle pressed against my side. At attention! I was beginning to sweat. My hat was tight. My jacket itched.

"Lights! The scrim was gone. `The audience can see me!' They were applauding. There were thousands of people out there. The Nutcracker Prince, our leader, came onstage. My music was getting closer, then closer. Now! `Go! Two, three, four, salute, six, seven, eight.' The mice are enormous. `Dive. Run. Charge. Fight. March.' Suddenly I was swung offstage by a mouse. It was over! I felt great!"

Gift Aims to Keep Met Opera on the Air

Gift Aims to Keep Met Opera on the Air
By ROBIN POGREBIN
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/04/arts/music/04MET.html

The Annenberg Foundation has given $3.5 million to the Metropolitan Opera to help keep its treasured Saturday afternoon live radio broadcasts on the air next season, the opera company said yesterday. The money, it said, is the largest gift ever made to the Met's annual-giving fund.

The contribution is a response to ChevronTexaco's decision in May to withdraw its support after the 2003-4 season, ending a 63-year relationship that has been the longest continuous commercial sponsorship in broadcast history.

The radio broadcast has introduced opera to millions of people, reaching an estimated 10 million listeners a year in 42 countries.

But the Annenberg gift takes the Met only halfway there, and for only one year; the broadcasts cost the Met $7 million a year, so another single corporate sponsor is still being sought to replace ChevronTexaco. Beverly Sills, the Met's chairwoman, said the Annenberg money was "a one-time shot and was meant to provide some relief from the pressure of getting these broadcasts on."

"The corporation that picks up the broadcast has to be a five-year commitment," she said, "because we can't do this on an annual basis without throwing ourselves out a window." She said that the Met hopes to find a corporate sponsor — she would not reveal any candidates — within the next two months.

Ms. Sills and Joseph Volpe, the Met's general manager, said they viewed the Annenberg donation as an important lead contribution. "We hope that this gift will serve as an incentive to other potential funders," Mr. Volpe said.

Ms. Sills said that a new corporate sponsor, if one is found before the next season, might decide not to use the Annenberg money. In that case, she said, "the money could be redirected."

The Annenberg Foundation, one of the nation's largest philanthropical organizations, gives hundreds of millions of dollars a year to institutions, many of them in the arts and education. The foundation, based outside Philadelphia, has contributed $15.6 million to the Met since 1980 for its endowment and its annual fund and to finance three new productions, said Lillian Silver, the Met's development director.

It was Leonore Annenberg, the president, chairwoman and sole director of the foundation, who Ms. Sills said approached the Met with the most recent offer.

"She was distressed when Texaco announced its departure," Ms. Sills said. "She just came forward and that was that."

Ms. Annenberg did not return calls seeking comment.

Ms. Sills said that the Met board was told of the gift at a Nov. 20 meeting attended by Ms. Annenberg. "Of course, morale shot right up," Ms. Sills said.

The Annenberg contribution was made to the Met's annual-giving fund, not to its endowment. Like all nonprofit arts groups, the Met can use the interest from the endowment only for operating expenses. The Annenberg money can be spent immediately.

The broadcasts are produced live 20 times a year, December through April, from the opera house stage at Lincoln Center and carried by 360 stations. Ms. Sills said that some of the highest listenership was in Britain and that opera fans nationwide hold brown-bag lunches to tune in.

The broadcasts, Saturday matinees, began as a way to help the Met out of financial difficulty. With the Met facing its first budget deficits during the Depression, NBC offered $120,000 to broadcast the season in 1931. The first program went out on Christmas with Humperdinck's "Hänsel und Gretel." Texaco became the sole sponsor of the program in 1940, presenting operas without commercials, except for references to the company in the commentary. (Chevron bought Texaco for $36 billion in 2000.)

During intermissions, the program occasionally offers a popular opera quiz, which in the early days was called "The Opera Question Forum." Listeners send in questions each year, hoping to stump a panel of experts.

The program was hosted by Milton Cross for more than 40 years, until his death in 1975, when Peter Allen took over.

This year's radio broadcast season is to start on Dec. 13 with the Met's new production of "La Juive," by Halévy, and is to conclude on April 24 with Wagner's "Götterdämmerung."

"They have to continue," Ms. Sills said. "In my old age, I am getting to treasure tradition. I'm just not willing to let this thing disappear."

Only a Move Will Prevent Bankruptcy, Barnes Says

Only a Move Will Prevent Bankruptcy, Barnes Says
By CAROL VOGEL
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/09/arts/design/09BARN.html

NORRISTOWN, Pa., Dec. 8 — The Barnes Foundation, with its multibillion-dollar art collection, will be forced to go bankrupt unless a judge permits it to move from the cozy suburb of Merion, Pa., to downtown Philadelphia, Barnes officials testified in court on Monday.

At the opening of a weeklong hearing that is being closely watched by the art world and experts in trust law, Bernard C. Watson, the foundation's president, explained that three Philadelphia-area institutions — the Annenberg Foundation, the Lenfest Foundation and the Pew Charitable Trusts — promised the Barnes $150 million, but only if it relocated to museum-rich Philadelphia.

That move, however, would violate the will of its founder, Albert C. Barnes, who clearly specified that his world-class collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art "remain in exactly the places they are," never to be sold or loaned.

Throughout the morning Dr. Watson told Judge Stanley Ott of Montgomery County Orphans' Court that Merion regulations limited public access. The foundation's board had explored alternatives, everything from selling art and closing its galleries to the public, to being managed by an outside entity, Dr. Watson said.

"Why didn't you just sell some stuff, a couple of van Goghs?" said Ralph G. Wellington, a lawyer for the foundation.

Dr. Watson replied, "Because selling one or two paintings wouldn't solve our long-term problems." .

Judge Ott, who presided over the sparsely attended hearing, is to decide whether the foundation can violate Dr. Barnes's will.

Opposing the move are some of the present and former art students who studied at the Barnes.

"The primary purpose of the Barnes was as an educational institution not a museum," Michael E. Lignowski, one of the lawyers hired by the students, said before the hearing began. "I cannot imagine Barnes could have envisioned a better place for the foundation than Merion. It's worked for years. It was Barnes's intent that the art be seen in this location in this manner. It was never meant to be seen by the masses."

The planned move would relocate the Barnes to what is being called a future "miracle museum mile" in downtown Philadelphia. City officials have offered to give the Barnes the site of the Youth Study Center, on 20th Street between the Free Library and the Rodin Museum. The center is being demolished. Meanwhile the foundation would keep its home in Merion along with the surrounding property and turn it into a study center.

Dr. Watson stressed that the offer from the three foundations has been by far the best. This option, he explained, would still allow the Barnes to be independent and most important enable the foundation to expand its educational programs. It would better expose, he said, Barnes's vision of art to what Dr. Watson called "plain people." Later Mr. Lignowski said that he and others in the courtroom wondered how the plain people would feel if the admission price were raised from $5, and the Barnes were run like a conventional museum.

"Over time the original Barnes mission will be expanded," Mr. Lignowski said. "At the same time it will be diluted."

Housed in galleries attached to his house, his collection of about 800 paintings and 200 sculptures including some 170 Renoirs, 55 Cézannes and 20 Picassos, are arranged as Dr. Barnes thought art should be seen: in a quirky yet thoroughly original way so that the paintings by Matisse, Seurat, van Gogh and Manet are paired with porcelains, furniture and other objects like antique hardware.

A year before his death, Barnes entrusted the historically black Lincoln University with no reputation for the study of art with the power to nominate four of the five foundation trustees. For more than a decade the Barnes has been sinking into ever-increasing financial troubles. In September the Lincoln board voted in favor of moving the foundation and of expanding the board, which would weaken their control. Under the proposed plan the Barnes would add 10 members to the board and Lincoln could nominate only a third of them.

The three foundations that have promised to fund the move have already given the Barnes $3 million to help it with operating expenses over the next two years and are underwriting the legal fees for this hearing.

The opportunity to have as prestigious collection of the Barnes in downtown Philadelphia has won the support of Gov. Edward G. Rendell of Pennsylvania and the state attorney general, Mike Fisher.

Even if Judge Ott agrees to the move, this will not be the foundation's final court appearance, however. A second hearing will be scheduled for the court to review the location and the architectural plans.

Photographs That Cry Out for Meaning

Photographs That Cry Out for Meaning
By MICHAEL KIMMELMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/06/arts/design/06PIX.html

In "Brandstätten" ("Places of Fire"), a new book by the historian Jörg Friedrich, we see a photograph of a seated woman.

I think. Is it a woman?

Assuming it is, she has a child on her lap. The child is perhaps 3 or 4 and wears an overcoat with big buttons. The woman's head is facing up (heavenward), her mouth wide open. She wears a cape with a hood, which surrounds her like a halo. Behind her are two figures.

Mother and child with two saints. Or so you might think, except that the figures are incinerated. Their corpses are lightly dusted with rubble. The backdrop is a collapsed wall. The caption says, "Hamburg, July, 1943."

Some years ago the art critic John Berger wrote about the violence that is in all photographs shot by strangers, what he called public photographs, as opposed to private snapshots, which we take for ourselves and are continuous with our own memory. Public photographs "carry no certain meaning in themselves," he wrote. They are "like images in the memory of a total stranger," lending themselves "to any use."

Presumably a photojournalist or a German official shot the picture in Hamburg. Without the caption in the book, we would not know that it was Hamburg or 1943. It could be a picture of any conflagration. It could be put to any use.

In this case it is being used to recover a supposedly neglected and contested part of modern military history. Mr. Friedrich is following in the footsteps of the writer W. G. Sebald, who died in 2001. In his last book, "On the Natural History of Destruction," based on lectures he gave in Zurich in 1997, Sebald addressed a "scandalous deficiency": what he perceived as a self-imposed silence by Germans after World War II about the effects of Allied bombings on German civilians and cities.

Against this "collective amnesia," Sebald, a Trümmerkind, a child who grew up in the ruins, tried to piece together what had transpired during the war. The bombs on Hamburg, Sebald recounted, caused a firestorm that rose miles into the air, sucking oxygen, lifting roofs off of buildings and rolling at a tremendous speed, "like a tidal wave through the streets."

Mr. Friedrich's "Places of Fire" is a collection of photographs of Germany during the war, visual traces of Sebald's missing history. Mr. Friedrich is mysterious about their origin. They seem to have been amassed by the country's efficient record keepers and collected in town archives. They show scenes of Nazis hauling corpses across the smoking ruins of bombed-out Dresden and Hitler Youth clearing dead children from streets in Cologne.

Mr. Friedrich, another Trümmerkind (like Sebald, born in 1944), published an earlier book, "Der Brand" ("The Fire"), which incited charges that he wished to portray Germans as victims and the British and Americans as war criminals. Now "Places of Fire" has caused even more criticism. The German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung recommended that readers throw it directly into the garbage.

At the encouragement of former Chancellor Helmut Kohl, Mr. Friedrich says, he included a few photographs showing the effects of Nazi bombing on British and Polish civilians, as a kind of balance. And he has responded that while the decision to publish the German photographs was difficult, Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda chief, "forbade these photos of our victims from the German papers."

"In a way we've obeyed his orders until this day," Mr. Friedrich said. "If you like looking at these photos, you're crazy and you need a doctor. But this is a matter of truth."

I leave Mr. Friedrich's motives, the question of German memory and the justification for the Allied attacks on German civilians for others to decide. Whether the history of these attacks has even been a taboo and repressed in Germany is a matter of debate among scholars. Goebbels's order was not universally obeyed. In any case at issue here are the creaky moral mechanics of photography, a visual art matter.

Photographs do illustrate a basic, unremarkable truth that war, like all forms of suffering, is terrible. But beyond that their relationship to reality is complicated.

It was the Nazis who first turned photography into a systematic form of propaganda. Photographs, it has often been said, both objectify and subjectify what they depict. They atomize time, disconnecting past from present. A picture may tell a thousand words, but words have ultimate power over photographs because each photograph is just a fragment: it needs words to assign it a context, and this context may change along with the message of the image.

A dark, uncaptioned, black-and-white photograph of the crumpled remains of unidentified people scattered across a street accompanies Sebald's account of the Hamburg bombing. It is not clear what place the picture shows, or even that these are corpses, since they are burned beyond recognition. In the small photograph, they look almost like heaps of litter after a parade.

On the facing page Sebald cites a passage from the diary of a man named Friedrich Reck, who shortly before the end of the war was sent to Dachau by the Nazis and died there of typhus. Reck describes the exodus of several dozen refugees in Upper Bavaria from the Allied bombings, which were like those in Hamburg.

Reck recalls the refugees forcing their way onto a train. A cardboard suitcase "falls on the platform, bursts open and spills its contents," he says. "Toys, a manicure case, singed underwear. And last of all the roasted corpse of a child, shrunk like a mummy, which its half-deranged mother has been carrying about with her, the relic of a past that was still intact a few days ago."

Not many years ago photographs turned up from Tuol Sleng, where the Khmer Rouge tortured and killed Cambodians during the 1970's. More than 14,000 people were imprisoned there. Seven survived.

Like the Nazis, the Khmer Rouge kept obsessive records, including mug shots of those they arrested, among them a mother cradling a baby; two men, shackled and blindfolded, holding hands; a boy, maybe 12 years old, hands bound behind his back, his expression perfectly calm despite the prison number safety-pinned directly into his bare chest.

He is a modern St. Sebastian. The Tuol Sleng photographs, like those in Mr. Friedrich's book, are unbearable. Does it alter their impact to learn that many of those killed at Tuol Sleng were themselves Khmer Rouge, as the dead in "Places of Fire" include Nazis?

Surely it does, but the photographs themselves remain morally neutral. A photograph in Mr. Friedrich's book, from Dresden, 1945, shows scores of limp, charred German corpses piled in a heap, precisely like the pictures of the murdered inmates at the extermination camps. The caption explains that after the Allied attack on Dresden, Russians built enormous pyres to incinerate the partly carbonized bodies.

Another picture, captioned "Battle of Berlin, 1943/44," shows two men wearing German uniforms hoisting a woman, seated in their arms, from a rubble wasteland. It can summon to mind, almost involuntarily, the much-reproduced photograph by Shannon Stapleton of Reuters, of five dust-covered rescue workers at the World Trade Center carrying out the Rev. Mychal F. Judge, a Fire Department chaplain, who had died in a rain of debris while ministering to victims when the towers collapsed, a modern-day Pietà.

Other pictures in Mr. Friedrich's book (presumably inadvertently) bear more associations with familiar art. A photograph of a young girl, kneeling, arms extended, weeping over the prone corpse of her sister, is a standard Entombment. A photograph of smoldering Berlin, in silhouette with trees against a leaden sky, looks uncannily like "Winter," by the German Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich.

It is one of the basic truths of photographs that they inevitably beautify horror (in the process, cleansing the events they capture of unattractive sounds and smells). The writer Walter Benjamin noticed this. The camera, he perceived, "is now incapable of photographing a tenement or a rubbish heap without transfiguring it." It has succeeded "in turning abject poverty itself, by handling it in a modish, technically perfect way, into an object of enjoyment."

Enjoyment and beauty provoke sympathy. Images of Germany during World War II, which, consciously or not, we associate with other images already familiar to us, raise the essential point that Susan Sontag made years ago: "Contrary to what is suggested by the humanist claims made for photography, the camera's ability to transform reality into something beautiful derives from its relative weakness as a means of conveying truth."

To this I might add a final disturbance deriving from the presumption that photographs of suffering are shot as if in our name. War photographers show moments of agony that are meant to shock us, as sympathetic viewers, into a condition of moral alarm. Mr. Berger, the critic, located this condition in the discrepancy between what we see in the picture and our own (more fortunate) lives.

Shock registers as a feeling of "personal moral inadequacy." The viewer's "own moral inadequacy may now shock him as much as the crimes being committed in the war," Mr. Berger writes. In this instant the viewer may decide to shrug off the feeling as too familiar or perform an act of penance. In either case, "the issue of the war which has caused that moment is effectively depoliticized," he adds. "The picture becomes evidence of a general human condition. It accuses nobody and everybody."

So we stare at the sensational photographs in Mr. Friedrich's book with our beliefs about the war struggling to anchor images that threaten to come politically untethered before our eyes. The pictures beseech us to feel outrage while they exploit the amoral status of photography, with its deeply misleading reputation for truthfulness.

The only way to look at such pictures — because not looking is an unreasonable choice — is therefore to keep their equivocal status in mind. The meaning of words, while fungible like the meaning of photographs, can be easier to control. Sebald ends with a reminder that "the real pioneering achievements in bomb warfare" were by Germans.

The German Sixth Army had reached the Volga in August 1942, he points out, when 1,200 Nazi bombers descended in a single raid on Stalingrad, then swollen by refugees. "During that raid alone, which caused elation among the German troops stationed on the opposite bank," he says, "40,000 people lost their lives."

Near-Perfect Poems, Imperfect Poet

Near-Perfect Poems, Imperfect Poet
By RICHARD EDER
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/04/books/04EDER.html

W. B. YEATS
A Life. Volume 2: The Arch-Poet, 1915-1939.
By R. F. Foster.
Illustrated. 798 pp. New York: Oxford University Press. $45.

William Butler Yeats made such charged and explicit use of his life, his passions, his philosophical searchings, his country and causes, and even his failings — no major poet of our time has done it so passionately and few have ever done it — that a biography could just about be constructed out of quotations.

So, almost, could the review of a biography. Starting, famously enough, with "How can we know the dancer from the dance?" Or less famously, with Yeats's remark that "poetry is born out of the quarrel with oneself."

That quarrel is great and petty by turns. And sometimes it seems conducted with an eye to what it will engender. ("You think it horrible that Lust and Rage/ Should dance attendance upon my old age. . . ./ What else have I to spur me into song?") The poetry, at all events, is far greater, particularly over the period covered by this second part of R. F. Foster's biography.

In its two parts, the biography is more than 1,400 pages, so its bulk may exceed many readers' purposes. But its critical, psychological and historical insights — along with an ardor steeled by judgment and prose that is all brains and style — will stretch those purposes remarkably.

Mr. Foster, Irish and a professor at Oxford, accomplishes two seemingly opposite things. He separates the dancer, corns and all, from the dance, most notably in passages in Yeats's life where arrogance, windy mysticism and destructive self-indulgence seemed to prevail yet extraordinary poems were written. And yet he draws us into that mystery: the straight line running between these contrary poles.

There's a further mystery. In the grave poems reflecting on the bitter Irish ordeal that Yeats witnessed — "Nineteen Nineteen" and "Meditations in Time of Civil War" — and the aching elegy of "The Tower," it is hard to know whether the poet has become the poem or the poem the poet.

Part 2 begins in 1915 when Yeats was 50. As indicated by the subtitle, "The Arch-Poet," it coincides with the start of a quarter century when Yeats's best work would be done: complex, yet direct, powerful and free. Unlike Pound, whose later writing was crazed, and Eliot, whose last "Quartets" ascended into a graceful empyrean, Yeats was to the end (some trifles and a little wind apart) engaged in transforming history, recollection and his own late-life torments — sexual, among others — into detonating imagery and whiplash rhythms.

On the basis of his earlier Irish lyricism, he was already a poetic icon, a cultural and social lion in England. At home, as always, he was plunged in controversy, and over the years, this would include, among much else, reproaches for distancing himself somewhat from his early nationalism. Still, his poem "Easter 1916" became a fierce, much-quoted rallying cry ("a terrible beauty is born") for the insurgent cause.

Mr. Foster recounts this and much else in the rich context in which he sets the entire last quarter century of Yeats's life, all this while making a remarkable assessment of the poems that came out of it. There are the poet's fiery relations with the uncompromising rebel Maude Gonne. He proposed to her several times; the last, when they were in their 50's. When she continued to refuse him, he turned gingerly to her daughter, Iseult, though without result other than high-flown sentiments and nervous strain on either side.

He tells of Yeats's oscillating relations with nationalism, and his initially cautious anti-British stand during the independence war, which he spent in London. After he supported the Free State government, formed by compromise with the British, rebel republicans stoned his house during the civil war that followed. (He was delighted to be named a Free State senator: "A 60-year-old smiling public man." He supervised a redesigned coinage featuring barn animals instead of the English king. (The government called in a livestock expert to adjust the bull.)

There was Catholic and nationalist anger at his fight to have Protestants like himself and other cultural leaders, many of them independence supporters, acknowledged as part of the new Irish identity. There were perpetual storms around his and Augusta Gregory's Abbey Theater.

The biography's detail may sometimes seem excessive, but it is only seriously so in the lengthy account of the seven-year lucubrations with which Yeats assembled the mystical contents — drawn from Eastern philosophies, Neoplatonism, spiritualism and much else — of "A Vision." Mr. Foster had to do it, no doubt because so many splendid poems flashed, fully fledged, from the miasma. But it makes hard reading.

On the other hand, there is a brilliant account of the automatic writing that Yeats practiced with his wife, George Hyde-Lees. She seems to have used it as transactional analysis on her wild and woolly minded husband. "Communicators" prescribed sex, diet, exercise. This had the effect of getting the arch-romantic to submit to domestic and marital duties by linking them to the higher spirits. When he doubted an answer, she would step back and blame it on "frustrators."

Her portrait is terrific; Mr. Foster makes this shrewd, commonsensical and witty woman his spirited heroine and, until sheer fatigue set in, an astringent to Yeatsian sublimity.

Their marital closeness ended in Yeats's last years, biographically humiliating if poetically fertile. After a vasectomy that he imagined had restored his sexual potency, he pursued sexual affairs with a succession of women, mostly literary would-be's. At best the results were what the French call a succès d'estime.

A succession of imbroglios ensued, some comic, along with serious physical breakdowns. George, wearily tolerant, would come to the rescue. She felt, she wrote Yeats's sister, like "a child of 5 in charge of a Tiger in a wire cage," and she was "tired of being sent for when the Tiger escapes from the cage."

But the poems went on, almost until his death in 1939. And if Yeats's erotic wanderings were pathetic, even an old man's pathos finds itself transmuted in the last lines of "The Circus Animals' Desertion":

Now that my ladder's gone
I must lie down where all the ladders start
In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.

Brooklyn Man Acquitted in Case Hurt by Witness Fear

Brooklyn Man Acquitted in Case Hurt by Witness Fear
By WILLIAM GLABERSON
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/05/nyregion/05CND-ACQU.html

A Brooklyn man was acquitted of murder charges today in a case that highlighted the dangers of witness intimidation and New Yorkers' often unspoken fears about cooperating with law enforcement officials.

The man who was acquitted, Dupree Harris, has become a frustrating figure to Brooklyn prosecutors. In two separate murder cases in which he played a central role, prosecutors have spoken of brazen efforts to silence witnesses. The killing of a witness in one of the cases, Bobby Gibson, 21, drew national attention to flaws in witness-protection efforts across the country.

In the latest trial, involving a 1999 Bedford-Stuyvesant killing, the prosecution's case was damaged by what law enforcement officials said appeared to be an orchestrated effort to threaten witnesses. As they were leaving the Downtown Brooklyn courthouse today, two of the jurors said the jurors all agreed that Mr. Harris had committed the murder.

"A lot of people felt bad because we all thought he was guilty," said one juror, who would give only his first name, Phillip. Because of a ruling by the judge, Carolyn E. Demarest of Brooklyn Supreme Court, the jurors were not told about any threats during the trial.

With a second juror nodding in agreement as they scurried through blowing snow, Phillip said the panel had concluded that there was not enough evidence to justify a conviction. He said the jurors were irritated after deliberations late into the night Thursday and after unexpectedly being sequestered in a hotel by the judge.

"Everybody was getting upset," Phillip said. "They just wanted to finish the case and go home. People had shopping to do, some have kids and they said, `Let's finish it.' "

So after nine hours of deliberations on Thursday, the somber jurors delivered their verdict after less than an hour today.

For the Brooklyn district attorney's office, the verdict was a high-profile setback because accusations surrounding Mr. Harris, 29, have exposed the difficulties of insulating witnesses from efforts to intimidate them.

Mr. Harris is also awaiting trial on charges of bribing and intimidating witnesses in the 2002 trial of his half-brother Wesley Sykes. Mr. Sykes was eventually convicted of the schoolyard shooting that Mr. Gibson was preparing to testify about when he was killed on the eve of the trial.

Mr. Harris has been in jail awaiting the trials, and Justice Demarest returned him to jail today to await the next trial. A bail hearing is set for Dec. 16.

The police have described Mr. Harris, who is known as Turf, as a neighborhood leader of the violent Bloods street gang with a long record of gun, drug and robbery arrests and half a dozen aliases. His lawyer, Stacey Richman, says he is a gentle and innocent man whose nickname dates from youthful days playing football.

After a long hug in the courtroom with Mr. Harris, Ms. Richman turned toward reporters and said the verdict had been just. "There has been no effort to tamper with any witnesses whatsoever," she added.

Through a spokesman, the district attorney, Charles J. Hynes, said his prosecutors did not comment on jury verdicts, though he did assert: "We will never let intimidation deter us from prosecution. We will vigorously pursue anyone who threatens a witness and will bring them to trial."

Hundreds of city witnesses in court cases report being threatened every year, and at least 19 have been killed since 1980. Officials at the Brooklyn district attorney's office said on Thursday that they had offered protection to several people in the current case but did not elaborate. After the witness in the earlier case was killed, the office provided protection for 27 people, moving many of them out of Bedford-Stuyvesant to hotels or new apartments in the city.

The case that ended today involved accusations that Mr. Harris shot to death a 23-year-old man, Clifford Robinson, on April 30, 1999, because Mr. Robinson was pursuing a woman involved with a friend of Mr. Harris's. The prosecutors called only one witness, a former crack addict, who claimed to have seen the shooting directly.

Another potential witness, a woman who once told the police that she saw Mr. Harris commit the murder, refused to go to court at all. A third witness ran from the courthouse this week, only to be forced to testify on Wednesday.

One witness at first picked out a man in the courtroom audience as resembling a man she said she saw threaten Mr. Robinson just before the shooting. Then, after telling the judge she had been threatened, she identified Mr. Harris.

Justice Demarest ruled that the witness could explain her change of heart about identifying Mr. Harris by telling the jurors that she had been fearful. But in a ruling that obviously frustrated the prosecutors, she said the jurors could not be told of the threats because there was no evidence connecting them to Mr. Harris.

One witness told the judge this week, "They had called and they said `You're gonna die.' "

Two jurors declined to speak to a reporter today. When the two who did talk were told by a reporter about the accusations that the prosecution case had been weakened by intimidation efforts, the one named Phillip said that that information underscored his bad feelings about the case. "I don't feel good about that," he said.

Addressing the jurors at Mr. Harris's trial on Thursday, just before they began deliberations, a prosecutor, Lawrence Fredella, told them to take account of the way things work on the streets. He reminded them about the witness who first lost her nerve.

"She looked around the courtroom and saw the hard stare," he said, referring to Mr. Harris. "For her to walk into an open courtroom and do what she had to do — you telling me she shouldn't have been scared at all? Come on. Use your common sense."

Brooklyn Waterfront Landmark to Be Remade

Brooklyn Waterfront Landmark to Be Remade
By GLENN COLLINS
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/03/nyregion/03EMPI.html

It is called the Empire Stores, and for more than 50 years the cavernous, forbidding warehouse has been abandoned, a magnificent ruin between the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges along the East River.

A signature of the Brooklyn skyline for at least 130 years that has transfixed residents and, to an extent, defined the waterfront, it has nonetheless resisted all efforts of developers, public officials and community stewards to reclaim it.

Now, Empire State Development Corporation, owner of the warehouse, has, through a subsidiary, signed an agreement with Boymelgreen Developers to transform it into a $100 million gateway to Brooklyn from the East River.

According to this plan, the echoing spaces, cobwebs and rusting iron shutters of the 400,000-square-foot structure, a city and state landmark in the neighborhood known as Dumbo, are to yield to a Chelsea Market-ish conglomeration of restaurants, retail shops, art galleries and performance spaces. Its opening is scheduled for 2007.

The proposal has been met by skepticism from another builder, and watchfulness from the community, but the development corporation has expressed only jubilation. "We are taking back the waterfront, and this building, with two bridges as bookends, is a Brooklyn showcase," said Charles A. Gargano, chairman of the development corporation and of its state-and-city-run subsidiary, the Brooklyn Bridge Park Development Corporation, which will lease the property to Boymelgreen for 39 years.

Mr. Gargano said that 63 firms expressed interest in the renovation, but in the end three submitted bids. "Boymelgreen had the most to offer, in terms of the proposal and the maintenance that will be involved," which, he said, amounted to "several million a year."

The Brooklyn-based Boymelgreen is hardly an unknown, with 20 projects under development in the five boroughs, which represent an investment of more than $1.5 billion, including 23 Wall Street and 15 Broad Street in Manhattan.

Both Gov. George E. Pataki and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg have issued huzzahs. "Not only will these wonderful buildings be restored, they will be the prototype for supporting a park with community-friendly economic development," Governor Pataki said.

And Mayor Bloomberg gushed: "The mix of office, retail, restaurant and gallery space in this historic structure will really make the waterfront park a destination, and enhance the growing Dumbo neighborhood."

But the deal has been questioned by David C. Walentas, the developer who, years ago, launched the real-estate transformation of Dumbo — the acronym means Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass — and whose control of millions of square feet of mixed-use space there has won him the sobriquet Mr. Dumbo.

"I would be delighted if someone would do this, and quickly, because it would make my neighborhood more valuable," Mr. Walentas said of the development. "But it will sit there. And nothing will happen."

Mr. Walentas, who was one of three developers vying for the Empire Stores revivification, contended that Boymelgreen had overbid for the right to develop the project. "My offer was substantially less," Mr. Walentas said, explaining that high rents at Empire Stores were unrealistic.

However, James F. Moogan, president of the Brooklyn Bridge Park Development Corporation, defended the deal. "This is a realistic bid, and we have realistic expectations," he said, adding that Boymelgreen made a nonrefundable $1 million payment on signing the agreement. "That shows us they believe it's viable. This proposal underwent substantial financial analysis by city and state agencies."

T. William Kim, the Empire Stores project developer for Boymelgreen, said that "this is one of our priorities, and there is no question that it will be completed." He said Boymelgreen, in partnership with an Israeli businessman, Lev Leviev, will put $40 million into the project and finance the rest of the $100 million with its customary investment partners.

Empire Stores sits on landfill deposited in the late 18th century and early 19th century, which extended the reach of the Village of Brooklyn, the future borough's first civic settlement.

A report written by the architectural firm Beyer Blinder Belle, said that the first warehouse buildings at the site, called the Empire Stores (as in storehouses) even then, date back to the 1850's. By 1869 or so, larger private warehouses built by a merchant, James Nesmith, and his son Henry already hugged the shoreline. The finishing touches came in 1886, three years after the Brooklyn Bridge was completed.

Once a storehouse for spices and green coffee beans, the monolithic warehouse is actually composed of seven structures, and has load-bearing, two-foot-thick walls of brick masonry and interior walls of fieldstone. It was framed with massive first-growth lumber from America's primordial pine forest.

In the 1880's, Herman Melville, toiling on Wall Street in the New York Customs House, would have seen the warehouse complex right across the harbor. But he never could have predicted that it would become Brooklyn's 21st-century counterpart of Moby Dick. The Empire Stores remained the great white whale of New York architectural preservation, since, as an industrial building, it flew below the radar of history.

The warehouse declined with the pre-eminence of trucking and railway transportation, and was mostly abandoned in the 1950's. After brief ownership by Con Edison, Empire Stores was taken over by the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation in 1978.

During the Lindsay administration there were proposals to transform it into a wholesale meat market. During the Koch administration, there were plans for a festival marketplace akin to the South Street Seaport, not to mention a lawsuit by Mr. Walentas against the city. Another development proposal was made in 1991, but went unheeded. In 1999 Mr. Walentas announced a plan to make the Empire Stores a centerpiece of a $300 million cultural and retail complex, but this galvanized community groups into opposing what they said was overdevelopment.

These days, the Empire Stores, on Water Street between Dock and Main Streets, endures in Stygian darkness behind its iron shutters. The buildings still yield the perfume of spices and coffee-bean remnants still crunch underfoot; a flashlight reveals disintegrating floors and onetime workers' graffiti on the walls.

The warehouse was declared a landmark inside and out by both the state and the city in the 1970's. "We want to keep as much of the historic interior as possible," said Jay Valgora, the design principal for Boymelgreen's restoration architect, WalkerGroup, part of the WPP advertising holding company.

It is the largest preservation redevelopment attempted by WalkerGroup, which has developed projects in New York, Tokyo, and Bilbao and Salamanca, Spain. Mr. Valgora's design calls for a ground-floor grand arcade on the side overlooking the Manhattan skyline and the Brooklyn Bridge; a terrace and esplanade would allow access to cafes and retail stores, a mix somewhat like that at Chelsea Market, the successful arcade in Manhattan created from a former Nabisco cookie factory.

He would also construct several glass-and-steel atriums coexisting with the old walls, creating courtyards spanned with glass bridges. Unlike the South Street Seaport, Mr. Valgora said, the space would "not be an evocation of Ye Olde New York." Instead, he said, "we're hoping for destination retail stores, such as unique Brooklyn design and furniture companies."

Above the warehouse, atop a new public park on the roof, would be a curving sculptural structure that would be lit at night. "We hope," Mr. Valgora said, "it can become another symbol for Brooklyn."

All of Mr. Valgora's architectural additions must be approved by the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation. And beyond that, the project must undergo an environmental impact study.

The mixed-use proposal for the warehouse is part of a community-generated master plan from 2000, guiding the economic development of Brooklyn Bridge Park, a 67-acre stretch of waterfront between Atlantic Avenue and Jay Street that would be turned into a riverside promenade with recreational and cultural amenities and limited commercial development.

The plan will thus be closely scrutinized by the community. Residents have opposed traffic-clogged streets and other threats they saw in more grandiose proposals. Mr. Moogan, president of the development corporation, said that Community Board 2 had been briefed on the Boymelgreen plan. He said, "We are committed to sustained public involvement," through the development corporation's 25-member citizen's advisory council.

Marianna Koval, executive director of the Brooklyn Bridge Park Coalition, an alliance of some 60 community groups, said that the Empire Stores was "the jewel in the crown of this park." Having seen elements of the Boymelgreen plan, she said the coalition would monitor the development, but "is cautiously optimistic."

Others in the neighborhood are more openly enthusiastic. "I would welcome other restaurants," said Buzzy O'Keeffe, who became a pioneer in the transformation of the Brooklyn waterfront after fighting for 12 years to be able to open the River Cafe in 1977. "My basic feeling is that any improvement down here is good for the area."

From Grit to Chic to Très Chic

COMMERCIAL PROPERTY; From Grit to Chic to Très Chic
By JOHN HOLUSHA
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/23/realestate/23COV.html

ON a typical weekday there is a bustle of activity at Chelsea Market, which occupies the ground floor of the old manufacturing building that covers the block between Ninth and 10th Avenues and 15th and 16th Streets. Shoppers browse the food stores to the sweet smell of baked goods, while others enjoy a snack at the tables spotted at strategic corners of the irregularly shaped main-floor corridor.

On the roof, meanwhile, invisible to the shoppers and office workers below, contractors are building a 100,000-square-foot addition to be used as studios and offices by the Food Network, which is to commence operations there about the middle of next year.

Diagonally across Ninth Avenue a new hotel, the Maritime, opened earlier this year in a building that once housed sailors. A couple of blocks to the south, at Ninth Avenue and 13th Street, another hotel, the Gansevoort, is under construction and scheduled to open early next year.

Just to the west, in what was once called the meatpacking district, now the Gansevoort Market Historic District, fashion designers, restaurants and clubs are rapidly replacing meat wholesalers.

The West Chelsea and meatpacking district areas are rapidly being transformed from tired industrial and distribution centers to one of the most hip, lively areas of the city. The influx of media tenants, designers and retailers is raising rent levels and speeding the process of change. ''There is something very New York about all this -- the way a neglected industrial neighborhood becomes not just a little gentrified, but suddenly a destination,'' said Richard Born, one of four partners who own and operate the Maritime Hotel.

Most who know the area say Chelsea Market, with its arcade of two dozen stores selling everything from meat and fish to brownies and wine, has been a key to the redevelopment. At a recent ceremony at the building -- a onetime Nabisco cookie factory -- Deputy Mayor Daniel L. Doctoroff described the market as ''an example of an investment that sparked the transformation'' of one of the city's 400 neighborhoods.

One attraction of the market is the freshness of its products. That is because the retail stores there are in many cases offshoots of wholesale companies, whose operations supply the city's restaurants and hotels and are conducted in the back rooms of the 1.9-million-square-foot complex of buildings.

Irwin Cohen, the principal owner and manager of the market since 1995, said another characteristic of the stores is that they are not subsidiaries of some far-distant corporation. ''All the tenants are family-owned businesses, some in their second and third generation,'' he said.

Two Upscale Hotels
Converted Union Hall And a New Tower

The success of Chelsea Market and restaurants, boutiques and clubs in the meatpacking district persuaded the developers of the Hotel Gansevoort to proceed on what had been a parking lot, said Michael Achenbaum, president of the family company.

The retail destinations include Jeffrey, a pioneer on West 14th Street, and, more recently, flagship stores for the designers Stella McCartney and Alexander McQueen. Many of the stores, built in what had been refrigerated meat warehouses, are spare in their presentation, with only a few mannequins standing in bare, shelfless space.

But with shoppers patronizing retailers that Mr. Achenbaum's father, William, described as ''minimalist stores with maximum prices,'' the developers decided to build the Gansevoort as an upscale hotel with nightly room rates starting at $350.

The 13-story building will have 187 guest rooms, including 20 suites starting at $575 a night and a duplex penthouse commanding $3,500 a night. The zinc-colored metal-clad building, designed by the architect Stephen B. Jacobs and the interior designer Andi Pepper, stands in sharp contrast to the low-rise, mostly brick-walled, buildings nearby.

The decision to build a tower on the irregularly shaped lot gives guests views of the city over low buildings nearby and allows for extensive outdoor restaurant and bar operations in good weather, said Michael Achenbaum.

One signature element of the hotel will be the roof, which will include a 45-foot heated outdoor swimming pool, a garden and a loft for social events. These amenities, along with restaurants and a spa, should attract a seven-day-a-week business necessary for the economic success of the project, William Achenbaum said. ''We want to be on the cutting edge to attract the sorts of people who made SoHo and TriBeCa,'' he said.

The association with Mr. Jacobs put the Achenbaums in touch with Henry Kallan, for whom Mr. Jacobs designed the Library Hotel and Hotel Giraffe in New York. That led to an agreement for Mr. Kallen to operate the Gansevoort, with the Achenbaums retaining ownership. ''Hotels are a combination of business and real estate, not just an investment,'' Mr. Kallen said, with all the demands of 24-hour-a-day operation. ''Developers need someone to create value in the business.''

A couple of blocks up Ninth Avenue, the most prominent feature of the Maritime Hotel, between 16th and 17th Streets, is the circular windows that dot the facade. In fact, they are portholes, part of the building since it was built in 1966 as a training center and hiring hall for the National Maritime Union.

Each of the 120 standard guest rooms is decorated to look like a cabin on a cruise liner, complete with a five-foot-diameter porthole that can open and close. The old hiring hall in the basement is occupied by two restaurants.

The property has had an up-and-down history. After the sailors departed, occupants included Covenant House, a shelter for teenage runaways, and what was described as a student services center run by the Chinese government. Today, it has been extensively renovated and is being marketed as a highly styled boutique hotel with room rates at $250 a night.

The 12-story building was purchased for $19 million in 2001 by Sean MacPherson and Eric Goode, best known as developers of restaurants and clubs. They were joined by Mr. Born and his partner, Ira Drukier, who have been hotel developers and investors.

''I had been trying to buy the property since the late 1980's,'' said Mr. Born, who said his earlier plans were more modest than the current project, whose total cost is about $33 million.

He said the recent improvements in the neighborhood allowed the development of a hotel aimed, in Mr. Born's words, at the ''young, hip and cool.'' He said the change in the area became clear while the interior of the hotel was still under construction. An outdoor plaza serving drinks and snacks was opened and attracted good crowds. ''We had people walking their dogs -- it's outdoors so you can bring in dogs -- come in and have a drink.''

He said the approximately 4,000 people who work in the mammoth building next door at 111 Eighth Avenue, many of them for media and graphics companies, represent almost a built-in clientele for the hotels, cafes and restaurants.

Working with an existing building represented less risk, particularly in the uncertain outlook for hotels after the Sept. 11 attack, than new construction. ''I had six sites ready to go, but after 9/11, I decided to take a more conservative approach,'' Mr. Born said.

One of those sites was the land on which the Hotel Gansevoort is being finished. ''The Achenbaums had a more swashbuckling attitude, so now they have it on a 99-year lease,'' Mr. Born said.

In spite of the uncertainties, Mr. Born said, the Maritime has been nearly full since its opening. ''I am selling every room, every night,'' he said.

That has had the effect of pushing room rates from about $200 a night to about $250. ''In the hotel business, when you are full you raise rates,'' he said. ''But my partners and I didn't want to push them to $300 and lose our natural market, so we are limiting the increases.''

Another newcomer to the neighborhood is Soho House, an arts-oriented private club in a converted warehouse at 29-35 Ninth Avenue in the meatpacking district. To meet city requirements, the property is classified as a hotel. Although the 24 guest rooms are usually occupied by members of the club, which is modeled after one in London, they are at least theoretically available to the public.

Although office space in the area is hardly comparable to the towers of Midtown and Lower Manhattan, demand is increasing for space on the upper floors of industrial buildings, brokers report. Rents range from the mid to high $20's per square foot annually in spaces over the old meat warehouses to the mid $30's in more developed buildings like Chelsea Market and 111 Eighth Avenue, they add.

''Clothing designers are moving into the area, and we had a law firm that specializes in working with creative people,'' said Jodi Roberts, an associate with CB Richard Ellis, the brokerage and services company. One noteworthy relocation is the auction house Phillips, de Pury & Luxembourg, which moved from 57th Street to 450 West 15th Street, occupying what Matthew Bergey of CB Richard Ellis said is 30,000 square feet of space.

Food Network Studio
Installing Modern Box On Aging Structures

One of the biggest single deals in the area is the Food Network project at Chelsea Market, whose formal address is 75 Ninth Avenue. In a sense it represents a return to a building whose major theme is food.

The cable channel had originally signed a lease for 8,000 square feet in what had been a loading dock facing 10th Avenue for a studio and kitchen and 18,000 square feet in the basement for production and technical operations. But it never moved in, and the space is available for sublet.

''After much searching, Food Network came beck to Chelsea Market,'' said Samuel Clark III, an executive director of Cushman & Wakefield, the brokerage and services company.

He said the location was a ''natural fit'' for a media company since New York 1, the cable channel, and Oxygen Media, the cable television and Internet network, are already in the building.

''We wanted to consolidate in one location,'' said Peter Crowley, vice president for property development for Scripps Networks, which owns the Food Network along with the Home and Garden Television and Fine Living cable networks. Food Network now has a studio on 52nd Street and 10th Avenue and offices at 1180 Avenue of the Americas.

''There is a natural affinity between the market and the station, and Irwin was able to put together a program that met our needs,'' Mr. Crowley said. Earlier, Food Network officials had said they planned to take a camera along the central aisle of the market to photograph food preparation operations. Now, Mr. Crowley said, Mr. Cohen has promised to install cabling in the building so that cameras on the ground floor can be connected to studios on the roof.

Building the studio on the top of the old cookie factory -- the first Oreo was produced there in 1912 -- was far from simple, said Jeff J. Vandeberg, the architect for the project. Although it looks like one structure, the market is actually made up of 17 buildings built in the 1890's to the 1930's. Many are supported by wooden columns, rather than steel.

Mr. Vandeberg said the 100-foot-by-85-foot box that will contain the studio and transmission facilities was placed over an atrium between buildings. To avoid adding burdens to the wood-supported floors below, the addition is built on a truss that spreads the loads to the two-foot-thick brick walls of the buildings. ''It was not easy to put a modern box on this old structure,'' Mr. Vandeberg said. ''It was an intricate job of weaving the old plus the new.''

111 Eighth Avenue
An Influx of Offices In a Hulking Structure

Food Network is not the only media company moving into the neighborhood. DoubleClick, the Internet advertising and monitoring company, has leased 76,000 square feet on the 10th floor at 111 Eighth Avenue, a onetime Port Authority building. The company, which downsized after the dot-com debacle, is leaving space at 450 West 33rd Street.

And Deutsch Advertising is increasing the amount of space it occupies in the building to 130,000 square feet from 110,000.

Paul E. Pariser, a partner in Taconic Investment Partners, which owns the 2.9-million-square-foot building, said it had made an almost complete transition from industrial uses to offices since Taconic became only the third owner in January 1998. ''We have had an 80 percent turnover of tenants since taking over,'' he said.

Although telecommunications tenants, which use most of their space for electronic equipment, occupy 35 percent of the space in the hulking structure, the amenities of the area are attracting more human tenants. ''Chelsea Market is a tremendous amenity for us,'' Mr. Pariser said. Banana Republic now occupies two floors in the building rather then the single floor it had when it opened, ''and there is a Starbucks at 15th Street and Ninth Avenue.''

The ''gentrification of 14th Street,'' he said, has resulted in a connection between West Chelsea and the long established community in western Greenwich Village.

The success of the clothing store Jeffrey, which opened in the summer of 1999 in an old moving and storage building at the western end of 14th Street, began attracting retailers to an area dominated by refrigerated warehouses and roll-up metal gates, said Andrew S. Goldberg, an executive vice president of CB Richard Ellis.

''Retail was the last to get here, after the restaurants and clubs started drawing people both day and night,'' he said. The rents in the area were lower than SoHo, he said, where space on side streets are typically $60 to $200 a square foot annually, while they can hit $300 a square foot on streets like Spring and Prince.

Michael Achenbaum said ground floor rents in the meatpacking district were typically $10 to $15 a square foot before the influx from the outside. Now they are $60 to $100 a square foot, he said.

Mr. Goldberg agreed that rents for retail space have been rising in the area, even though they are still generally lower than SoHo. ''Post-Jeffrey rents were in the $20 to $30 range, and they quickly doubled to $40 to $60 a square foot,'' he said. ''Now they are at about $80 a square foot on West 14th Street and the most recent deals have been approaching $100 a square foot.''

Unlike SoHo, the meatpacking district is unlikely to change completely, Mr. Goldberg said. For one thing, he said, some meat wholesalers own their buildings and so they will not be driven out by rising rents if they choose to stay.

And the location tends to favor some continued industrial use. ''It is so close to the West Side Highway,'' Mr. Goldberg said, ''that there will probably be something of a wholesale component in the area.''

Published: 11 - 23 - 2003 , Late Edition - Final , Section 11 , Column 2 , Page 1

Hipsters, Meatpackers and Families, Too

Hipsters, Meatpackers and Families, Too
By CLAIRE WILSON
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/07/realestate/07LIVI.html

THE contrast is so New York: on one block on a recent sunny Saturday, restrained crowds of grown-ups in dark glasses waited for outdoor tables at Pastis, a hot see-and-be-seen restaurant in the ultra-hip Gansevoort Market meatpacking district. On another, at the Bleecker Playground, howling children in colorful clothing cavorted excitedly under a shimmering canopy of bright yellow ginkgo and maple leaves.

The two scenes are vastly different slices of the pie known as the Far West Village, where stylish hipster types in the neighborhood's only remaining warehouse district share turf with more and more young families and energetic preservationists. Bordered by West 14th Street to the north, West Houston Street to the south, Hudson Street to the east and the Hudson River to the west, the area is among Manhattan's most architecturally diverse as well as one of its quietest and most villagelike. Housing ranges from lofts to luxurious town houses, on tree-lined streets sprinkled with one-of-a-kind boutiques, restaurants and strong public and private schools.

Kathy Reber and her husband, Chris, who are both involved in the theater, will move this month into a loft on the fringes of the Gansevoort Market for which they paid in the high $3 million range. Temporarily subletting in Chelsea after a move from San Diego, Ms. Reber was pleasantly surprised by how child-friendly the neighborhood is. "The Bleecker Playground is loaded with kids and Hudson River Park is just beautiful," said the mother of two boys, Nicholas, 5, and Jacob, 3. "There are a lot of families here."

The West Village stretch of the planned five-mile-long, $400 million Hudson River Park is a highly visible symbol of kaleidoscopic changes in the last 20 to 30 years. Since 1969, the designation of the Greenwich Village Historic District has helped to protect the blocks of charming 19th-century town houses, tenements and shop fronts while guiding the conversion of warehouses, former factories, stables and parking garages into residential housing. Some building names tell the tale of former lives, like Le Gendarme and the former Ninth Precinct police station on Charles Street and the Archive on Greenwich Street, which was once the Federal Archives.

Luxurious new condominiums along West Street, outside the historic district, are thorns in the sides of many preservationists but are further proof of the area's striking metamorphosis from seedy to increasingly posh. "This was frontier country, the far west, when we moved here 30 years ago," recalled Will Gamble, a photographer of jazz musicians who was among the first residents of Westbeth, the 383-unit rent-regulated former Bell Labs research center converted for artists' use by a Pritzker-Prize winning architect, Richard Meier. "Our neighbors were wharf rats and federal prisoners."

No one has done a rat count lately, but the federal prisoners have decamped, and increases in housing prices have forced the departure of many artists, transvestite hookers and much of the gay and lesbian population that gave the area its character.

Alex Nicholas, a vice president at the Corcoran Group, says a 1,200-square-foot two-bedroom, two-bath co-op costs $800,000 to $1.5 million for something new or extremely charming. "The area is red hot and has been for as long as I can remember," he said. New condos are roughly 25 to 30 percent more costly than co-ops. Steve Kliegerman, executive director of sales for Halstead Properties, said the average price per square foot of condo space was $700 to $900 — well below the going rate at two glossy 15-story riverfront buildings designed by Mr. Meier at 173 and 176 Perry Street, where buyers purchase raw space. "The units have to be finished but are going for $1,300 per square foot," Mr. Kliegerman said.

Units in a third Meier building, on West Street, for which he will also design the apartments, will go on the market next spring. On the site of the former Pathfinder Press, the building will include amenities like a swimming pool, private wine cellars for each apartment and a screening room.

One Morton Square, with town houses, lofts, rental apartments and 147 condominium units, is due for occupancy next spring. Two-bedroom, 2.5-bath condo units, some with river views, are priced at $1.3 million.

That project's unusual three-bedroom, four-and-a-half-bath town houses with home offices, private elevators and back gardens start at $3.75 million and are among the few available town houses in the area. Sara Gelbard, senior vice president of the Corcoran Group, recently sold a small two-bedroom house in a yard accessible by a horse walk for $2.225 million. Another house nearby is on the market at $2.15 million, she said.

"There is not one single house in the West Village now that is under $2 million and anything between $2 and $4 million is really scarce," she noted.

THE good news is that rentals are getting cheaper, according to an independent broker, Debra Kameros. She recently rented a one-bedroom floor-through in a brownstone for $2,300, down from $2,800 before Sept. 11.

"Things are definitely coming down," said Ms. Kameros, a Village broker for 15 years. "Low interest rates mean that a lot more people can afford to buy."

An 800-square-foot, two-bedroom, two-bath apartment at 100 Jane Street rents for $3,600 per month, as does a one-bedroom plus sleeping loft with two baths at the Archive. Both are owned by the Rockrose Development Corporation.

Much-in-demand rent-regulated units at the 420-apartment West Village Houses rent from $745 for a studio to $1,460 for a four-bedroom, but the apartment buildings, opened in 1974, will soon begin to evolve out of the Mitchell-Lama subsidy program. Units at Westbeth, officially designated a Naturally Occurring Retirement Community because of the number of residents who are 65 or older, range from $540 for a studio to $922 for three bedrooms. Applicants must meet strict guidelines to qualify; the waiting list is about 12 years long.

Artists and writers like those at Westbeth have long been part of the scene in the Far West Village, which was settled in the 1700's by Dutch farmers. Residents moving there to flee cholera and yellow fever epidemics downtown in the 19th century swelled the population, but port activity along the Hudson gave the area the rough-and-tumble grit that so appealed to the literati and social marginals it was synonymous with for most of the 20th century. Generations of writers gathered at the White Horse Tavern, founded in 1880 at Hudson and West 11th Streets, including Dylan Thomas, Norman Mailer, Michael Harrington, William Styron, Vance Bourjaily, Pete Hamill and Frank McCourt.

Gays and lesbians remain very much a part of the neighborhood, where Congregation Beth Simchat Torah, based in Westbeth, has 800 dues-paying members. On Christopher Street, Bailey-Holt House was the first permanent residence for formerly homeless people with AIDS. It now has 44 residents and is completing a $1.5 million renovation. The rectory of St. Veronica's Roman Catholic Church on Washington Street is home to the House of Love, a 17-resident hospice for men with AIDS. It is staffed by the Missionaries of Charity, founded by Mother Teresa.

Parents rave about programs at area schools. Public School 3 on Hudson Street houses 535 students in prekindergarten through the fifth grade in a building that dates to 1905. Fourth-grade students there have some of the highest test scores in the city: 74 percent of students read at or above grade level, while 82.4 percent perform at or above grade level in math. The school puts special emphasis on the arts.

Students at P.S. 41 on West 11th Street, which also has prekindergarten through the fifth grade, have even higher test scores. Some 79.8 percent of fourth-grade students read at or above grade level, while 90 percent perform at such levels in math.

Many students from these schools go on to the Greenwich Village Middle School, in the P.S. 3 building on Hudson Street. There are 180 students, in sixth through eighth grades, who can take yoga and play in a jazz band in addition to studying academic subjects. Of eighth graders there, 65.1 percent scored at or above grade level in reading, while 64.2 percent performed at or above grade level in math.

Private school choices include St. Luke's School, established in 1945 on Hudson Street on the grounds of the Episcopal Church of St. Luke in the Fields, one of the city's oldest churches, founded in 1822. Tuition at the school is $20,000 per student. About 20 percent of the 193 children, in prekindergarten through eighth grade, get scholarships.

For children ages 2, 3 and 4, the 41-year-old West Village Nursery school on Horatio Street, a parent co-op, charges $2,330 to $7,550 per child. There are 48 students, who look forward to tapping the backyard maple tree for syrup in March and making jelly from home-grown grapes in the fall. The West Village Community School, on West 10th Street, was started in 1973 and has 313 students in kindergarten through the eighth grade. Tuition is in the $20,000 range.

Christopher Street has long had a hopping bar scene, and Hudson Street, the main commercial drag, is rich in shops and restaurants like Sazerac House, popular for brunch, or the Cowgirl, famous for fried Texas fare. But it is the Gansevoort Market, also known as the meatpacking district, that the chattering classes have designated the borough's most chic entertainment district. Meat market blood still tints the cobblestones in the wee hours, but the 24-hour-a-day scene now includes a roster of hip restaurant and bars like Florent, which opened in the mid-80's; Le Zoo, which serves French fare; Pastis, a French brasserie; and others like Meet, Rhône and Macelleria, all on Gansevoort Street.

Despite expected landmark status for the meatpacking district, the arrival of the Hotel Gansevoort and high-end retailers like Diane Von Furstenburg, Stella McCartney and Jeffrey, and the influx of buyers of Perry Street condos like Martha Stewart, Nicole Kidman and Calvin Klein have some longtime residents muttering, "There goes the neighborhood!"

One Westbeth resident, Mae Gamble, worries about inevitable increases in the price of services as the area goes increasingly upscale, but she has seen plenty of change in 30 years and shrugs it off. "We still have diversity," she said, "it is still charming, we still get a lot of light and my husband still does all his errands on a bicycle."

2 Columbus Circle

CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK; A Building's Bold Spirit, Clad in Marble and Controversy
By HERBERT MUSCHAMP
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/24/arts/design/24MUSC.html

Let us now celebrate the aristocratic satisfaction of not pleasing. Huntington Hartford gave himself that pleasure when he commissioned Edward Durell Stone to design the Gallery of Modern Art (1964), the legendarily exotic building at 2 Columbus Circle.

A campaign is under way to have the building declared a city landmark before it undergoes a major renovation. I would regret the loss of the building. Whether the campaign succeeds, I hope that New Yorkers will take the opportunity to renew the independent spirit the building embodies.

The Preservation League of New York State has put 2 Columbus Circle on its Seven to Save list, an annual selection of the state's most endangered landmarks. Along with Landmark West! and other civic groups, the Preservation League is seeking a hearing before the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission. The groups want to prevent the building from being remodeled by its present owner, the Museum of Arts and Design, formerly the American Craft Museum. (More information is available on the Preservation League's Web site, www.preservenys.org.)

Designed by Brad Cloepfil of Allied Works Architecture in Portland, Ore., the remodeling plans propose to reclad the building with terra cotta and glass, creating a scrimlike effect. The building's marble skin, porthole windows and Venetian-Gothic-inspired details would be eliminated. The proposed facades appear intentionally underwhelming. The small, invited competition organized by the museum included more impressive efforts. Perhaps the museum hoped to forestall opposition by choosing the least aggressive design.

If so, the strategy backfired. The problem is not Mr. Cloepfil's plan. It is his client's choice of a design that stood little chance of rallying supporters. You can forgive the museum for making what it probably took to be a highly civic gesture. But what's so civic about fearfulness? Or so historically minded? The distinction of 2 Columbus Circle is that Stone was out of step. You do not necessarily improve on such a building by replacing it with something recessive. If anything, you punch up the idea of difference, as Zaha Hadid did in her proposal for the project. You go with a design that stands a chance of kicking up a storm.

I support the league's position. But I regret that its interpretation of the building is so badly skewed; 2 Columbus Circle is hardly the ''icon of the Modern movement'' described by the group's literature. Modern architects and critics reviled Stone for what they called aesthetic apostasy. Those who esteem the building as a precursor of Postmodernism are on historically firmer ground, but is this anything to be proud of?

That depends on which Postmodernism you have in mind. If by that we mean explicit references to historical styles, 2 Columbus Circle can be blamed for pointing the way toward the decline of New York architecture. If we mean drawing inspiration from the past, then there was no need to have a Postmodernism at all. Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, Frank Lloyd Wright and Louis Kahn are just a few of the modern architects who acknowledged their indebtedness to historical precedent.

The truth is that Stone's use of a style like Venetian Gothic is barely incidental to the importance of 2 Columbus Circle. The style was merely the means by which Stone broke ranks. Breaking ranks is what mattered, and I suspect that the attachment many of us feel for the building is due in large part to nostalgia for the period when New York was more hospitable than it is now to the kind of controversy breaking ranks can create.

The ideal of ''not pleasing'' is fundamental to modern art and modern criticism. The primary job of the critic who takes after Baudelaire is to cast off fear, the fear of saying the wrong thing, forming the wrong judgment, thinking the wrong thought. Criticism, like research science, is based on the absolute right to be wrong.

Like the museum it was designed for, Stone's building was intended as critique. Up to a point it was autocritique. A designer, with Philip Goodwin, of the Museum of Modern Art in 1939, Stone was initially a disciple of the International Style. In the 1950's he had some kind of conversion experience, which I believe involved being seated on a plane next to Aline Saarinen, an art critic for The New York Times. Thereafter he began designing ornamental screens.

The late 50's and early 60's, then, became the great era of ornamental screens. They were to that period what fritted and translucent glass facades like that designed by Allied Works are to ours: veils. The reference was not to the past but to the East, and to a sanitized version of the erotic energies associated with it. Rita Hayworth as Salome. The Forbidden. In this sense Stone was part of America's great libidinous awakening in the postwar decades, architecture's Peppermint Lounge.

Hartford was part of it, too. His crusade against the formalist orthodoxies of the Museum of Modern Art was largely a liberation of the repressed, with Salvador Dalí standing in for Freud. At the top of Stone's building, behind the screen of the loggia, was the two-story Gauguin Room (the museum's restaurant), and also its crowning impulse: the escape from civilization and its constraints on the senses.

Ms. Hadid's design picked up on the confidence of Stone's design and the era that produced it. Taking the porthole windows as her point of departure, she enlarged their size by several orders of magnitude, producing facades that evoked classic Pucci fabric designs. Now these were some scary veils. And I think the city was ready for it. At least the audience for contemporary architecture would have had something worth fighting for.

The fight itself is worth fighting for. Only a decade after Hartford's museum opened, New York architecture began to be overtaken by a tyranny of politeness, a fear of breaking ranks that has yet to loosen its grip. The battle cry for architectural consensus that followed the attacks on Sept. 11 shows how deeply entrenched is the city's resistance to facing the unknown.

Historically, preservationists have been part of this resistance, not just, or even mainly, because some of them may oppose change, but because their criteria for conferring value are obsolete. This is becoming increasingly clear as more postwar buildings come eligible for landmark status. ''Typical of its period,'' ''an important example of its style'': criteria like these betray a 19th-century historicist approach to the past. They do not account for the dynamic, dialectic role that buildings play over time.

Peter Eisenman is right to suggest that buildings create problems: this is what 2 Columbus Circle has in common with Lever House, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Met Life (originally Pan Am) Building, the T.W.A. Flight Center at Kennedy Airport and other works of the period. All of them were great problems. All of them deserve to be valued as such, if their history is not to be falsified, and if we are to regain a healthy appetite for more of the same.

Correction: November 29, 2003, Saturday A Critic's Notebook article on Monday about the building at 2 Columbus Circle in Manhattan, designed by Edward Durell Stone, misidentified the current owner. It is the City of New York; the sale to the Museum of Arts and Design has been authorized but not completed.

Just Saying No to the Dating Industry

Just Saying No to the Dating Industry
By KATE ZERNIKE
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/02/fashion/30SING.html

BY her own admission, Sara Cambridge was "totally cruising."

She spent hours trolling online dating sites, sending e-mail messages to potential mates and creating "a real connection," which would invariably sour into deep disappointment within the first five minutes of an actual date. At which point she would return to the sites, send more e-mail, make another connection and suffer another snap disappointment.

Finally, there was the left-leaning writer, who took her to a Japanese tea garden and, like so many of the others, seemed so perfect from his résumé.

"In the e-mails, he would say, `Tell me a story,' which I thought was kind of charming," said Ms. Cambridge, 38, a graphic designer in San Francisco. "When we got together it was, `Tell me stories, tell me stories, tell me stories.' I felt like I was auditioning for a play."

That was it.

"I realized I could be starting my own business in the time I was spending looking at these ads and crafting these responses," she said. So instead of going back online, she began taking a Small Business Administration class and designing funky planters.

Ms. Cambridge's tale is one small act of resistance against what might be called the Dating-Industrial Complex, a mighty fortress increasingly hard to ignore. To Match.com and Nerve.com, add DreamMates, The Right Stuff, eHarmony and eCrush (neither to be confused with Etrade, though the general concept is the same). TurboDate, HurryDate, 8minuteDating — or It's Just Lunch.

Reality television shows — "The Bachelorette," "Average Joe" — have fed the impression that finding the right mate is as simple as being presented with a room of 10 people and picking one. Bookstores bulge: "Surrendered Single," "Find a Husband After 35 Using What I Learned at Harvard Business School," "Make Every Girl Want You." That is just a sampling from the last year; the next two months will bring one manual promising to lure the love of your life in seven weeks, another in a sleeker six.

"There's a fetishization of coupling," said Bella DePaulo, a visiting professor of psychology at the University of California at Santa Barbara, who studies perceptions of singles. "It's made the pressure that's always been there more intense."

Yet like Ms. Cambridge, longtime combatants in the dating wars, psychologists and those who study the lives of singles talk about increasing dating fatigue. They say more and more people are taking dating sabbaticals or declaring they will let romance happen by chance, not commerce. Once-obsessive online daters are logging off, clients of speed dating services — which offer dozens of encounters in a roomful of strangers — are slowing down. A book due out in January, "Quirkyalone," offers "a manifesto for uncompromising romantics" — those not opposed to romance but against the compulsory dating encouraged by the barrage of books, Web sites and matchmaking services.

Pottery Barn and Williams-Sonoma report that singles are signing up for housewarming and birthday registries, deciding they do not have to wait for a wedding to request the pastamaker and flatware. Smaller stores report single women registering for china patterns and crystal, without ring, proposal or mate.

On the extreme end of political activism, the American Association for Single People, a kind of AARP for the unmarried, convinced governors in five states to declare Unmarried and Single Americans Week in September. And a small voice in the Web wilderness reassures: Itsokaytobe single.com.

"I have no doubt that there is a great, committed relationship out there for me," Ms. Cambridge said. "I don't identify at all with people who think, `I'll never find another person.' I just think the best thing to do is pursue my goals, and whatever unfolds will be a new story."

Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, co-director of the National Marriage Project, who relied on a national survey as well as in-depth interviews and dating histories of 60 women for her 2002 book, "Why There Are No Good Men Left: The Romantic Plight of the New Single Woman," said this hard-won wisdom is increasingly common. "People are making some kind of private agreement with themselves that they're not going to do this in a panicky, driven way that implicitly buys into the notion that if it doesn't happen to you, you'll be miserable," she said.

As Sari Siegal, who surrendered her love life to fate after a dating binge last spring, said, "This Internet stuff makes it seem like there's no excuse for not having someone."

"It trivializes it," said Ms. Siegal, a 30-year-old graduate student in New York. "It's like a math equation."

The discontent, Ms. Whitehead said, is not limited to women. Marc Johnson, 33, describes his late 20's and early 30's as a cycle between looking for dates, planning dates, going on dates or deconstructing dates with friends. He submitted to innumerable setups, and endured the gentle but persistent nagging of suburban-with-children friends. Every year, the fall scramble — the rush to find someone to cuddle with against the winter chill — gave way to the spring fling, and then a rinse-repeat.

It all began to seem a bit small last year when he returned to New York from a trip to Vietnam, and was greeted by friends hassling him about when he was going to date various women.

"When you're seeing the world and civilizations that are thousands of years old — it seemed so petty to focus on `meeting the right match,' " he said, his voice mocking the phrase. "You get a bit older, you go through this a couple of times, you start to think that life is short."

Like others, Mr. Johnson now feels you can't hurry love. "It's not a backlash or resenting the whole dating thing," he said. "It's just, you've gotten over it, it's no longer of the utmost importance to go on a set number of dates or be on dates or to meet some specific person. By taking off that pressure you allow yourself to just go through life, enabled to meet people."

Kara Herold, 34, who lives in San Francisco, grew increasingly alarmed as friends succumbed to the pressure to find a mate, buying — and buying into — the endless supply of love-help books.

"In college when I was 20 it was dieting, now it's men and relationships," she said. "I was in a panic, but part of me thought, `This is crazy, why are we concerned about this?' "

Ms. Herold is turning her disgust into a documentary, "Bachelor, 34," which captures her mother's urging her toward a relationship ("He's Catholic and Republican, but it's nothing you can't change") and her online experiences.

Sasha Cagen, the author of "Quirkyalone," wrote her book after being, as she said, "thoroughly messed up by `The Rules,' " the best seller that advised women to play the old-fashioned game of hard-to-get.

"The whole idea that you shouldn't ask someone out, that you're putting yourself out there to be rejected, that's just stupid," she said. "It just reinforces this warped, passive vision of what it means to be a woman."

Her manifesto exhorts singles to "resist the tyranny of coupledom." To Bridget Jones's Smug Marrieds, she adds the "Perkytogethers." After she wrote about the concept in her self-published magazine and the story was picked up by the Utne Reader, people in four cities held "International Quirkyalone Day" parties as alternatives to Valentine's Day celebrations earlier this year.

Ms. Cagen, 29, is not against setups or dating, online or otherwise. She is emphatically not against sex (the book includes a lengthy discourse on the Quirkyslut: "usually emerges during travel"). Rather, she writes, she is "anti dull relationship."

She reminds her followers of the power of not yearning for a relationship. "If you are in a relationship to feel normal," she writes, "get out."

"I think the era of the pitied single is on the way out," Ms. Cagen said in an interview. "It's about trusting yourself and respecting yourself despite the onslaught of subtle and not-so-subtle messages that there's something wrong with you if you're not dating, that you must have some sort of fear-of-commitment pathology, or you're overly picky or you've become so accustomed to being by yourself that you'll never be able to accommodate another person."

Still, the dating industry steamrolls forward, particularly online services, which claim a huge jump in membership in the last two years.

While the services love to talk about the success stories, they also admit, more quietly, to the dropouts. Matchmaker.com said its internal surveys show that the No. 1 reason people leave is that they do not find the right person. Just below that is that they have met someone, and men are twice as likely as women to say they met that companion offline, not on. (Women who drop out after meeting someone are twice as likely to cite an online connection.)

Tim Sullivan, the president of Match.com, one of the biggest dating sites, said people can't rely on fate alone. "I don't think their chances are as good if they don't take a proactive approach and try to blend the natural fates that exist out there with a proactivity," he said.

Experts say the rise of the Dating-Industrial Complex, and the burnout, is an inevitable result of the increasingly delayed age of marriage and the lengthening of the dating years. Nationwide, the number of single households continues to rise. The technology and advice industry that has developed in response advertises efficiency. In fact, Ms. Whitehead said, it offers anything but.

"It requires a whole bunch of energy and time and entrepreneurial drive," she said. "If you do that for a number of years, it begins to be fatiguing and you think, `There are better things to do with my time,' things with a known payoff like travel or learning a language."

"It's like trying out a new diet," she added. "You hear about a new system or a new approach or a new site, and it seems to offer a lot of what you're after. You go through a period of being very high in the initial experience, then it doesn't quite pan out, there's a low, it leads to discouragement, you think, `Why am I doing this, I can be happy without it.' "

Ethan Watters, the author of "Urban Tribes," which began with his own exploration of why he had remained single into his 30's, said as people delay marriage, they begin to rely more on friends, and see relationships less as the missing piece that will complete their lives. "They realize that a good love affair has as the basis a really good friendship," he said. "They're not becoming cynical, but they're getting more savvy about the ebb and flow of relationships. I think people get a bit more relaxed about this thing as they realize that being single is normal."

Being relaxed, the resisters say, is putting faith in the age old wisdom: you find the thing you're looking for just as you stop looking.

"Not that I'm going to meet someone across a crowded room," Ms. Siegal said. "But I want it to happen in an organic way, where it starts as just friendship or I meet someone at a party. I think people think I'm living a fairy tale, that it's unrealistic, but I don't feel that way. The right person has not walked into my world."

Heads-Up Displays Move From Cockpits to Cyclists' Helmets

Heads-Up Displays Move From Cockpits to Cyclists' Helmets
By JOHN MARKOFF
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/08/technology/08display.html

SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 7 - Fighter pilots have long been able to view flight data projected onto jet windshields within their line of sight. Soon recreational motorcyclists and bicyclists will be able to take advantage of that technology.

Motion Research, a Seattle company founded in 1993 by a former racecar driver, Dominic Dobson, said that next spring it would begin selling an inexpensive information display system to be attached to a motorcycle helmet.

The Sportvue head-mounted display will allow riders to see speed, r.p.m. and gear position without taking their eyes off the road. The system gathers speed information from a global positioning satellite receiver attached to the rear of the helmet.

The design, based on a patent co-developed by Tom Furness, one of the pioneers of head-mounted display technology, uses a lens and mirror and backlit liquid crystal display to give the viewer the illusion that the information displayed in the periphery of one eye is projected in the distance.

Mr. Dobson founded Motion Research when he was racing Indianapolis and Formula One cars, and his initial idea was to use the display technology for racecar drivers. But the cost of producing such displays was prohibitively high a decade ago. He retired in 1998 and recently picked the idea up again because the costs of the technology have fallen significantly.

"We realized we could build it far more cheaply today," he said. "Not much changed in the technology itself. What happened was the cost of manufacturing changed."

Today, he said, the technology is beginning to appear in the consumer market, both in wearable systems and in some cars, like certain models of the Cadillac with systems that project driving information onto the windshield.

But Motion Research will be the first company to attempt a truly low-cost consumer application. The price of the motorcycle Sportvue will be from $249 to $349.

The bicycle version of Sportvue, which will be introduced sometime after the motorcycle system, will project speed, distance traveled and heart rate information, like current cyclometers, and be from $150 to $199, Mr. Dobson said. He said the company was also in discussions with helmet manufacturers to integrate the display systems into helmets.

Most Popular Travel Vehicle: a Whim

Most Popular Travel Vehicle: a Whim
By BARRY ESTABROOK
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/30/travel/30lastminute.html

FOR travelers who have put off making holiday reservations, there's some early cheer: as late as the week before Thanksgiving, rooms were still available at popular winter resorts -- on the ski slopes and on the beaches. At a time when most hotels are usually booked solid, late planners could even find bargains on the Web. ''There are still plenty of opportunities for any number of cruises and resorts,'' said Karen Crager, public relations manager for 11thHourVacations.com, a site serving late bookers. ''But if you are looking at a specific travel date, I would advise you to book soon to get the maximum amount of choice.''

In the Caribbean, popular resorts like Little Dix Bay on Virgin Gorda and Curtain Bluff in Antigua were, as usual, booked solid between Christmas and New Year's. But there was still space available at the Ritz-Carlton Rose Hall in Jamaica and at all 17 Sandals and Beaches properties. Skiers hoping to get into The Lodge at Vail after Dec. 26 were out of luck, but there were rooms at the nearby Inn at Beaver Creek. Thanks to some cancellations, Thunderbird Lodge in Taos had space throughout the holidays.

''A few years ago, you would never think of getting Christmas space in November because it was all sold out,'' said Kevin Matier, director of Caribbean product for Travel Impressions, a tour operator that sells through travel agents only and develops packages for American Express Vacations. ''Although the Christmas holidays have filled up quite a bit, some hotels still have space.''

Travelers who have found themselves procrastinating lately when it comes to firming up vacation plans are in good company. A telephone survey of 1,300 American adults conducted in November 2002 by the Travel Industry Association of America indicated that nearly two-thirds of leisure travelers -- about 83 million people -- had started planning at least one trip taken in the previous year within two weeks of the departure date. A quarter of those truly left on a whim, deciding one or two days ahead.

''The trend toward last-minute travel had been building for quite some time,'' said Cathy Keefe, a spokeswoman for the Washington-based association, which represents all components of the travel business. ''But it really took off after Sept. 11 and continues to be strong.''

Acknowledging that the genteel days of clients' locking in vacation plans several months in advance are fading, the travel industry has begun to cater to the urge to make arrangements at the 11th hour. Through Web sites and electronic newsletters, virtually all airlines offer deeply discounted fares, frequently making them public only a few days before departure.

Site59.com, 11thHourVacations.com, Hotwire.com and LastMinuteTravel.com are among the Internet sites that appeal to vacationers who decide to get away on the spur of the moment. Even the carriage-trade tour company Abercrombie & Kent (www.abercrombiekent.com) has recently started a Signature series of vacations designed for spontaneous journeys to places like the Galapagos, China and Botswana.

And although waiting until the last minute involves the risk of not finding an airplane seat or a hotel room, it can also bring rewards: considerable savings.

''The best way to get what you want is to be flexible,'' said Gayle MacIntyre, director of marketing communications for the Web site LastMinuteTravel.com, which offers a wide range of travel services in all price ranges including flights, hotel rooms, package tours and cruises. ''Travelers should adopt a broad view: 'I want a beach and sunny, warm weather.' If you come to our site with that attitude, you could find yourself going to Mexico, the Caribbean or Hawaii, but you will end up with something.''

That was the experience of Ann Maine, editor in chief of Traditional Home magazine, who lives in Des Moines and describes herself as the Queen of Spontaneity. Because of a busy schedule, she put off booking her family's spring-break vacation in 2002 until a week before school recessed. ''I called up my travel agent and said, 'All I want is blue water, sun and a beach,''' she said. Although most tropical hotels were booked solid, Ms. Maine was able to find rooms at a Beaches resort in Jamaica.

The content of LastMinuteTravel's site tends to be dynamic, Ms. MacIntyre said, and changes throughout the day. ''When members of the industry realize they have availability, they can get offers up on the site in minutes for travelers who are seeking opportunities,'' she said. ''A resort may be sold out now, and then people cancel.''

Donatella Bennett might be considered something of an accidental last-minute tourist. During summer 2002, her daughter decided to go to camp three weeks before the session was to begin. Ms. Bennett, a personal trainer from Frederick, Md., decided to seize the opportunity to take a quick vacation with her fiancé. ''We wanted to get out of the country, and the total cost of the trip had to be under $2,000,'' Ms. Bennett said. She went to 11thHourVacations.com and found a package that fit the bill: a week for two in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic, for $1,500, with air fare. It was a much better rate than that paid by many of the more-disciplined guests at the hotel who had booked months in advance.

Although they cater to those who postpone planning, LastMinuteTravel.com and 11thHourVacations.com do not discriminate against the better-organized traveler by limiting how far ahead clients can book.

For those seeking a truly spur-of-the-moment getaway, Site59.com offers air and hotel packages (including taxes and fees) that can only be reserved 3 to 14 days before departure. The company specializes in trips of three to five days spanning weekends. Its Web site allows customers to depart from 76 cities across the United States to both internal and international destinations.

This month, for instance, the site offered 94 international air-hotel packages from New York that included five nights in Toronto beginning at $333 a person, in double occupancy, three nights in London beginning at $469 and three nights in San Juan for $310.

While many last-minute travel purveyors gear themselves toward bargain hunters, Abercrombie & Kent's Signature itineraries, recently expanded to 18 destinations on all continents except Antarctica, are designed for last-minute travelers with a taste for luxury, and budgets to indulge that taste.

The company says it has reserved first-class or deluxe space in hotels at the most desirable times of year in each destination. English-speaking drivers are on call, and they also serve as guides for the company's clients, taking them to the area's must-see sights. With one phone call, a client can find out if there is availability and, if so, book the services already set aside.

''The driving force behind the Signature series was that, even among our clients, we recognized that there was this trend of booking at the last moment,'' said Pamela Lassers, a spokeswoman for Abercrombie & Kent. ''This way, all the groundwork has already been done before they call.''

Among the Signature offerings is a 14-day trip to India, with a cruise on Lake Pichola, an elephant ride to the Amber Fort in Jaipur, a visit to a tiger reserve and a sunset tour of the Taj Mahal. Departures are between Jan. 9 and 21, and the cost -- not including air fare -- begins at $4,955 a person, double. A similarly deluxe 11-day Signature trip to Italy beginning Jan. 5 is $8,215 a person.

In August, Tony Hepburn, a lawyer in Nassau, the Bahamas, cancelled plans for a trip to northern Africa at the last minute, fearing terrorism. It would have been the third year in a row that Mr. Hepburn and his wife saw their vacation plans to Africa thwarted, so with about a month to spare, they booked a Signature trip to southern Africa through Abercrombie & Kent that included stopovers in Cape Town, Robben Island (where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned), the Singita game reserve and Victoria Falls. He booked Atlanta-to-Cape Town flights at Travelzoo.com, a site that offers last-minute deals. ''If we'd done it ourselves, it would have been hit or miss,'' Mr. Hepburn said. ''They had everything arranged for us. I don't normally book late, but it worked out fine.''

But even as late booking becomes the norm, there are some signs that the golden era for last-minute travel may be passing, particularly in popular destinations such as the Caribbean, where two years ago the hardest choice a procrastinator had to make was which enticement to go for: cash rebates, deep discounts at all-inclusive resorts, free extra nights at hotels or free flights. Now it may be tough to get a room during holidays and school breaks and even tougher to get a reasonably priced flight.

''There was a lot of extra capacity in airlines,'' said Mr. Matier, of Travel Impressions. ''When you have a situation where there is excess capacity, it pays consumers to wait. That trend is starting to reverse.''

Alec Sanguinetti, director general of the Caribbean Hotel Association, said that the improvement in the economy and not having the prospects of war have helped bookings throughout the Caribbean for the coming holiday and winter season. ''The booking window narrowed considerably after Sept. 11,'' he said. ''But for the first time since the terrorist attacks, we are noticing that people are reserving further out this winter.''

Two years ago, the Web site of Mr. Sanguinetti's organization, at www.caribbeanhotels.org, had a page where 50 member hotels offered discounts and incentives. That page is now down. ''The rates are firming up,'' he said. ''We are not seeing the discounting that was going on.''

It's also getting harder to find a low-cost, last-minute airline ticket, according to Tom Parsons, president of BestFares.com.

''Since Sept. 11 we have had it very easy,'' he said. ''There were super-cheap fares, and we could usually find them without booking very far in advance. There are still bargains -- especially to Europe -- but the number of opportunities is diminishing greatly. To get them, you have to scope out not where you are going next weekend, but where you are going four months from now.''

But to some die-hard last-minute travelers, accepting an element of uncertainty is part of the allure. Carl Schmehl, a Manhattan-based theater and special events producer, took six last-minute vacations this year. ''You are always a little afraid that you won't get a room or an airline reservation, especially as the time when you want to leave gets closer,'' Mr. Schmehl said. ''But if you can really hold out, you can get the best deals.'' Mr. Schmehl says he is toying with the idea of getting away to Las Vegas over Christmas. But he isn't sure. Something else may come up. There's still time.

Correction: December 7, 2003, Sunday An article last Sunday about last-minute travel misstated the deadline for reserving trips via the Web at Site59.com. It is up to three hours before departure, not three days.

Now Entering The California State of Mind

Now Entering The California State of Mind
By RICK LYMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/30/travel/30bpfires.html

OF all the places we've lived over the years -- Kansas City, Philadelphia, New York, Johannesburg, Houston -- Los Angeles was the one where we found that friends who said, ''Oh yes, we'll come visit,'' actually did.
My family and I lived for four years in a ranch house at the top of the Hollywood Hills, our backyard plummeting down toward a cityscape grid of lights and freeways, the horizon a corrugated jumble of mountains against cloudless sky.

We loved it. In all those years, we took not one vacation outside the state. But it was a trickier proposition when visitors came, because driving five hours into the High Sierra to stare at a giant sequoia was not what they had in mind.

What did they want? Celebrities. Big houses. Conspicuous consumption. A sense of dipping their toes into a hedonistic way of life they'd seen fetishized on T.V.

But the places that ostensibly promised to deliver those things were uniformly underwhelming. Hollywood Boulevard? It's a pit. A movie studio tour? Like visiting any other factory. Celebrity spotting? Easier in New York. Movie star homes? Hidden behind hedges. Malibu? Also hidden, but by a wall of garages and strip malls.

What they really wanted was a sense of the famous Southern California lifestyle, what it might be like to live it and how close it came to the stereotypes they'd accumulated. Thus, a walk along the Santa Monica palisades, staring down at the Pacific and watching the pretty young things on Roller-blades, was more gratifying than conniving for a table at a supposed celebrity hangout only to pay through the nose to watch a bunch of other anonymous people wonder who you are.

But there was something else people wanted from their California trip -- validation. Nothing was as satisfying to visitors as conversation on two topics: California's inherent goofiness and its penchant for delivering regular doses of calamity, whether in the form of earthquakes, storms or fires.

Sure, they didn't have perfect weather and backyard paradises back home, but at least their neighborhood flake quotient was kept to a manageable level and they didn't have any doomsday serpent slithering through the underbrush.

And then, almost from the moment our luggage-laden car slipped into Nevada four months ago during our move back to New York, California seemed determined to live up to every stereotype we'd been strenuously denying all those years.

First, the state had a kind of political conniption with the baffling fever dream that was the gubernatorial recall election. Then, Southern California had one of its apocalyptic outbursts -- a series of epic wildfires that scorched 750,000 acres, left 22 dead and destroyed more than 3,600 homes.

Take a look at that first number again: 750,000 acres is just about 1,172 square miles. The entire State of Rhode Island is only 1,045 square miles. It's as if New York City -- all five boroughs -- were burned four times over.

''Is your old neighborhood in any danger?,'' new neighbors asked us. Oh, no, no, we'd say. Laurel Canyon, where we lived, was a good hour's drive from the Simi Valley, where the nearest of the fires raged. It would be like someone in Poughkeepsie worrying about a fire in Princeton.

But at the same time, we'd call friends back in California and they'd say, Yeah, the sky is coated with an ashy haze and there's a bad barbecue stink on the wind. They'd say it in a tone of voice we had come to recognize in our four years there, a kind of here-we-go-again resignation. Or maybe we were just more attuned to it now, joining the others who view California from afar.

''That which does not appear to exist is to be regarded as if it did not exist,'' says the Maxims of Jurisprudence of the California Civil Code. But as we learned when we lived there, it's easier said than done.

In Los Angeles, you send your kids to school with earthquake kits, including bottled water, snacks and a reassuring note from Mom, just in case. And even in our canyon, which had never experienced a major fire, no company would sell fire insurance, forcing residents to buy into a state-run system that essentially taxed everyone else in the state a little bit more so we canyon rats could rebuild in the event of disaster.

The good news was that our particular stretch of the Hollywood Hills was built on solid granite, putting it in the safest zone possible in the event of earthquake -- the safest zone in Southern California, that is, which is kind of like saying it's the highest point in Atlantis.

''You must be glad you're not there now,'' people said to us when the wildfires filled the morning papers and the nightly news.

Actually, we'd gotten kind of used to narrowly averting California apocalypses.

On Oct. 16, 1999, a magnitude 7.1 earthquake hit a desolate area called Hector Mine, about 45 miles east of Barstow in the middle of the Mojave Desert. But the tremors were strong enough to rattle windows and topple furniture in parts of the Los Angeles basin. It was the only really significant quake during our four years in California. Friends told us that they were certain, just for a moment, that this was it, the Big One, time to pay the piper for that perfect tan.

But we were hundreds of miles away, up in the Napa Valley, sleeping off a pleasant dinner that included too much wine, and we missed the whole thing.

And while we lived through a series of wildfire scares, some not so far away from Laurel Canyon, when the Big Ones came this year, we were safely across the country, under a leafy canopy of East Coast suburbia, pungent with autumn vapors.

And we noticed something else, too.

Just as in California, we were living here, in the Westchester suburbs, among neighbors who had had their own close brush with apocalypse on Sept. 11 -- another disaster that we'd missed by happenstance, but that seemed to simmer in the back of all of our neighbors' brains.

''Do you miss California?,'' people ask us all the time. The real answer is yes. And no. And in a way, it's as if we never left. Is there anyplace left in America where you can live without having to suppress the fear of apocalypse?

''Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year,'' wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson. ''No man has learned anything rightly, until he knows that every day is Doomsday.''