October 6, 1991

What happens when a mortgagee forecloses on a co-op building that converted from a regulated rental? It occurs so rarely that many questions arise, and Justice David B. Saxe of State Supreme Court has ruled on some of them in a case involving three co-op walk-ups at 145-49 East 61st Street. The mortgagee, Angela De Santis, foreclosed on a sponsor who had converted the property to 24 co-ops and a store. Seventeen tenants had remained without buying. Their occupancy rights are protected, the judge found, as long as they pay their rent. But he granted a writ to oust one tenant who owed $10,300 in rent. Hearings were ordered in two cases where rents were in dispute. The new owner reached settlements with the others.

In the factories and on the construction sites of eastern Poland, there is a new model employee these days. Trustworthy, tireless, and willing to accept half the prevailing wages, these highly prized workers speak broken Polish and are likely to answer to names like Nikolai, Mikhail or Ivan. They are Russians, Lithuanians and Ukrainians. Like the Poles who have for years streamed west to work without permits in America and Western Europe, they are flocking to Poland, eager to earn sums equivalent to eight months Soviet pay in a month. Some enter legally, while many more come on tourist visas and then melt into the cities and countryside, wherever there is work.

Hoping to breathe some life into this colorful but withering Old West town in its storied gulch, South Dakota voters approved casino gambling in Deadwood two years ago. The promoters said they expected betting of $4 million a year. They were way off. In the first two years, gamblers have bet $400 million on Deadwood's slot machines and blackjack and poker tables.

THE JOURNALS OF JOHN CHEEVER By John Cheever. 399 pp. New York: Knopf. $25.

State lawmakers told a crowd of more than 40,000, who gathered outside the Capitol today to rage against the state's new income tax, that they had enough votes to repeal the tax in a special session they planned to call within weeks. The protest is believed to be the state's largest and angriest poltical rally in decades, if not ever. Speakers called on the crowd to transform their anger into pressure on lawmakers to win over the votes that would be needed to override Gov. Lowell P. Weicker Jr.'s certain veto of any bill overturning the new law.