July 6, 1992

Finding inner peace, strengthening his left knee and recapturing his stature as one of pro football's most dominating defensive players are not easy for Bruce Smith after the season he endured last year. But Smith has found a perfect way to start. Each morning and on most afternoons he hops onto his Waverunner, a motorcycle on water, and from the dock behind his sprawling home here he zooms down the bay and out of sight, leaving the pressures and doubts about his career and those of the Buffalo Bills behind for a few moments.

With summer vacations in full swing, travelers who have waited until now to buy airline tickets are in for a surprise: beginning tomorrow, air fares are expected to rise to their highest level in months. And if the carriers have their way, fares will continue to climb. The exact amount of tomorrow's climb remains a mystery, because at least three different formulas have been loaded into the reservations computers. But on average, fares are likely to rise at least 10 percent.

Seven years ago Nobuo Mii, I.B.M.'s general manager in Japan, had a chance encounter with a Toshiba executive, Tsuyoshi Kawanishi, at a Tokyo cocktail party. The two men immediately realized that by sharing I.B.M. technology and Toshiba manufacturing expertise they could get a significant jump in bringing sophisticated color computer screens to a market where a six-month advantage can make a company unbeatable.

The major league shortstop scoops up a ground ball, pivots to start a double play and suddenly finds himself smiling giddily. He's in love -- with his second baseman. This may sound like the plot of a paperback by an unknown gay author published by a small press and selling at a gay bookstore. But it is actually "The Dreyfus Affair: A Love Story," a novel by Peter Lefcourt, an acclaimed author and Emmy-winning television writer and producer who is heterosexual. What is more, it is published by Random House and selling in independent and chain bookstores across the country.

It is the season of reckoning for Teach for America, the program that two years ago dispatched nearly 500 top college graduates to teach in the most troubled schools in America. The first group's two-year commitment is up, and the program now faces expectations raised by its sudden fame: can a small corps of bright and idealistic people with little training help change American education?