December 28, 1983

The 11-year-old Arab girl has freckles on her nose and wears a red ribbon at the top of a long braid that swings to and fro along her back. Her name is Amal Abu al-Jamiyya. Amal means hope. She has never seen a Jew without a gun. In the labyrinth of pathways that meander among the cold concrete houses of her slum, a refugee camp that has been under Israeli military occupation since six years before she was born, Amal sees only two kinds of Jews: uniformed soldiers and civilian settlers, usually when they are running through the camp after children who have thrown stones at Israeli cars and buses.

CHANCES are that one morning in the next month or two - maybe even this week - you will awaken with a sore throat. In most of the nation, winter is unquestionably the sore throat season, and sore throats seem to spread like so many good wishes during the highly social holiday season. Whatever the time of year, a sore throat is the single most common reason for a visit to the doctor. Yet that is no assurance that your sore throat will be properly treated. Recent studies indicate that the true cause of a sore throat is often overlooked or improperly identified, even if the doctor takes a throat culture. As a result, treatment may be misdirected, unnecessarily exposing patients to antibiotics that cannot possibly cure them. In other cases, a new study in Boston has shown, patients may be incorrectly told that their sore throats are caused by viruses and that antibiotics would not be useful. A sore throat is a symptom, not a disease. By itself, it is no more revealing than pain, itch, cough or fever. To choose the proper remedy, you and the doctor must first zero in on the probable cause.

They gather at Bill Fisher's place every Sunday. Several of them bake pies. Sometimes Mr. Fisher whips up a stew. He's 82 and still frisky. The rest of the clan has trouble keeping up with him. Most of the Fisher family members work in Des Moines for the phone company, an institution that has always had a strong umbilical cord to its work force. The Northwestern Bell Telephone Company employs four of Mr. Fisher's daughters - Sandy, Bev, Kay and Lynn - as well as a son, Bill. Kay's husband, Ken, works for the company. His brother, Vern, retired from it. Vern's wife, Freda, works for it. With the final days ticking off before the long-anticipated moment when the Bell System is officially torn apart - the 22 operating companies severed from the mother American Telephone and Telegraph Company - it is clear that the arduous two years of preparation for the dismemberment has exacted a heavy toll on the one million Bell System workers, a corporate family unlike any other in its bonds. And it is one of the prime topics at the Fisher family's Sunday gatherings.

HOLIDAY celebrations come and go, but the one that has always meant the most to me is New Year's Eve. It seems a naturally bouyant occasion, the welcoming in of a brand-new year, and for as long as I can remember, I've marked it by inviting good friends to join me for a special feast. Over the years these dinners have been so festive that I've taken to keeping a written record of the menus, illustrated with watercolors detailing the various dishes, executed by the artist and cookbook author Ed Giobbi. The book is great fun to thumb through, especially now when Recipes are on page C8. I am preparing for this year's dinner.

An article in Business Day yesterday about the Audit Bureau of Circulations misstated the organization's numberof field auditors. It is 80.