September 30, 1992

Sears, Roebuck & Company said yesterday that it planned to dispose of its securities business, Discover credit card and real estate operations and to sell up to 20 percent of its Allstate insurance subsidiary in a public stock offering. The broad thrust of the announcement represented the final burial of the decade-old Sears vision of providing middle-class consumers with almost every conceivable type of banking, investment and real estate service in addition to the clothes, appliances and other goods that had made the company a retailing legend in more than a century of business.

Strategists in the Bush and Clinton campaigns agree that a revived candidacy by Ross Perot would not be the powerful third force that it seemed last spring. But the Bush forces are hoping that it will help shake up a race that has seemed ominously stable for a President lagging in the polls. Strategists in both camps say Mr. Perot, if he enters the race on Thursday, will probably make his influence felt around the margins. Citing the lateness of the hour, his current standings in the polls and the high negative ratings that Mr. Perot has acquired since he bolted from the race last July, these strategists say they expect him to attract about the same percentage of votes as third-party candidacies in the past, in the teens or even single digits.

WOLFGANG PUCK, the celebrity chef whose duck- and shrimp-topped pizzas have become the snack of Hollywood stars, couldn't wait to join the Pure Food Campaign. After years of fighting with the Federal Government over how he must label the frozen version of his pizzas, he is evangelical about the need to test and label genetically engineered foods, for which the Pure Food Campaign is vigorously lobbying. Mr. Puck has become politicized. And so have thousands of other chefs across the nation, from Julia Child to Alice Waters. They have begun to lobby in Washington and hold benefits to raise money for their favorite environmental issues, ranging from the stricter regulation of genetically engineered foods to mandatory inspection of seafood to cleaning up the Hudson River.

TO the library staff, he's Dr. Healy; to his secretary, he's Tim. In his Washington years, he was Father Healy, and now and then, Father Tim. At Il Brunello, an Italian restaurant on West 56th Street he discovered and enjoys, he's simply "Buon giorno, signore." Timothy S. Healy is the president of the New York Public Library. He's also a priest and has been a Jesuit for half a century. Before he took the library job in 1989, he was, for 13 years, the president of Georgetown University.

The hype is the billions of dollars annually that Jose Ignacio Lopez de Arriotua promises he will save the General Motors Corporation in lower outlays for parts and materials. The cold reality is embodied in a nondescript factory here that makes millions of seat belts every year for Cadillacs, Buicks, Pontiacs and Oldsmobiles. As G.M.'s new vice president of worldwide purchasing, Mr. Lopez and his lieutenants rearranged machines and workers on the assembly lines at the General Safety Corporation. The changes, said Alfred J. Fisher 3d, General Safety's president, yielded double-digit improvements in productivity.