December 27, 1991

Sam Baraker, who arrived in Brooklyn 10 months ago from Ukraine, has been looking for someone who will speak English with him. He spends five mornings a week in an English class for immigrants, but that is not enough. "I have no friends in America," he said. "Now I have an empty life. I cannot connect. If I have language, and job, then I have full life. I need learn English. I need conversation with people."

President Bush's choice for Commerce Secretary, Barbara H. Franklin, will inherit an agency diminished by its loss of primacy over international trade and somewhat weakened by the management style of its current leader, Robert A. Mosbacher. Mr. Mosbacher, who will leave next month to head the President's re-election campaign, has played a limited role in interagency debates on business-related issues like tax and health policy and international trade. Unlike his combative predecessor, Malcolm Baldrige, he has spent much of his tenure jetting around the world on trade missions with the nation's corporate elite, seeking to open new markets for American exports.

Call it whistling in the dark, or smiling through the apocalypse: The advertising that bombarded consumers this year tried mightily to sell with style, despite some tight budgets, and to sell with a smile, despite much gloom. "People were continuing to do good, quality work," said Jay Schulberg, executive vice president and executive creative head of Bozell Inc. in New York. "That was no minor achievement."

Markets Stock prices rose to record levels, continuing a rally that has defied gloomy expectations about the nation's economy and apparently reflecting confidence that a recovery will finally appear in 1992. The Dow climbed 31.98, to 3,082.96. That represents a 5.8 percent rise in the four days since the Fed rate cut and puts it 17.1 percent above its level on Jan. 1. [ Page A1. ]

PRIVATE parties are one New Year's Eve option; sulking at home is another. Some hardy thousands rub shoulders with strangers in the midnight crowd at Times Square. But for those who want to mix the thrill of big-city anonymity with a sense of underlying camaraderie, music offers the perfect social catalyst. In New York City, huge numbers of people prefer not just to ring in the New Year, but to twang it in or stomp along with it, to ease the year in with the voice of a favorite crooner or to crash into January with a beat they can feel in their bones. On New Year's Eve, the places that present music in New York do their best to book performers who can turn a roomful of strangers into a community of revelers.