June 7, 1991

WHAT is culture? The more the world shrinks, the more pertinent that question becomes. As the mass media permeate the globe, spreading a lowest-common-denominator vision based on television, movies and pop music, the world's ancient, honored traditions begin to blur and face extinction. The international arts festival, a proliferating species, was really invented to deal with the problem. A vehicle for accelerating cultural cross-fertilization, it is also a laboratory for preservation. While celebrating the resilience of the old, it also reveals the fragility.

The nation's two largest airlines, American and United, posted big increases in traffic for May. It was the first significant advance since the beginning of the year, when the Persian Gulf war discouraged many people from air travel. American Airlines said yesterday that its traffic had risen 6.6 percent in May over May 1990. On Tuesday United showed a surge of 14.9 percent.

Lindsay Baird felt compelled to become an adult at age 16, moving out of his parents' home into a one-room apartment and leaving school to take a job with a Brooklyn construction company. A year later, he has decided not to let the 11th grade be his last. Straight from work, he takes the subway to Manhattan, where he is a student in the nation's first full-time night high school. Manhattan Comprehensive Night High School is for students who have learned some of life's lessons. Like Lindsay, most of its 438 students live on their own. About half have children. Many have dropped out of at least two other schools. They juggle their jobs and families with efforts to recoup an education.

President Bush met today with his top national security advisers about the strategic arms talks with the Soviet Union, in an unusual last-minute rush to resolve American policy on issues that have blocked the Moscow summit conference and revealed a high-level split within the Administration. Mr. Bush met with members of his National Security Council at the White House on the eve of an important meeting scheduled for Friday in Geneva between Secretary of State James A. Baker 3d and Foreign Minister Aleksandr A. Bessmertnykh of the Soviet Union.

In an effort to ease the concerns of Eastern European countries still worried about a possible return of Soviet occupation forces, NATO moved today to strengthen its political and military ties to its former Warsaw Pact adversaries. While not specifying how it would actually respond to any Soviet or other threat, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization declared today that any "coercion or intimidation" aimed at the countries of Central and Eastern Europe would be treated as a matter of "direct and material concern" to the 16 members of the Western alliance.

Many of the nation's biggest retailers reported yesterday that sales in May had improved sharply from the same month a year earlier. While sales were helped by good weather, some analysts see the gains as another indication that the recession may be ending. Thirteen of 20 top retail companies said that in the four weeks ended June 1, same-store sales -- results at stores that have been in business for at least a year -- rose. The more favorable weather helped sell summer clothes, air-conditioners and garden equipment.

COMPANIES Time Warner said it would offer shareholders 34.5 million new shares for $63 to $105 a share. Time Warner's stock plunged for the second straight day, closing at $99.50, down $11.25, or 10 percent, on the news. On Thursday, it fell $6.25 in anticipation of the offering, which would dilute existing shares. [ D1. ] The two biggest airlines posted traffic gains for May. American and United's rises were the first significant advance since the Persian Gulf war. But analysts and travel agents attributed some of the recovery to promotional ticket sales and said the big question was whether there would be a future downturn. [ D1. ]

IT'S no ordinary hat. As it stands on display at the I.B.M. Gallery of Science and Art, the simple hat of Irish tweed becomes so much more. It is memory, and experience, and music, and laughter, and song. It is Broadway.

Time Warner Inc. announced an offering to stockholders yesterday that would enable them to buy about 34.5 million new shares for a price between $63 and $105 a share, depending on how many accept the offer. Wall Street was clearly not impressed, as Time Warner's stock plummeted for a second day, closing at $99.50, down $11.25, or 10 percent. With more than 1.5 million shares traded, Time Warner was the eighth-most active issue on the New York Stock Exchange. On Wednesday, the stock fell $6.25.

In the first state-by-state comparison of how public schoolchildren do in national academic tests, the Federal Government released data today showing that the highest scores in eighth-grade mathematics came from students in the upper midwestern and northwestern states, which in general have few large cities and less poverty than other regions. The Federal survey also indicated that only one out of seven eighth graders nationally reaches the proficiency in mathematics expected at that grade level.

For more than a century almost no one in this ancient seaside town ever paid much attention to the Anyoji Temple, a quiet Buddhist sanctuary built in memory of the 15,000 people who died here in 1792, when a volcanic eruption swept Shimabara into the sea. "It was something they mentioned in school, but nothing that could ever happen again," said Manabu Ogawa, 40 years old, a city official who remembers when his elementary school teacher led hikes up to the crater of Mt. Unzen for class picnics. "We never even thought about it."

Britain, as host of an economic summit meeting in July, urged that the Soviet leader be invited for talks immediately afterward. Page A8.