December 25, 1992

THE night sky for which New York City is known is a galaxy of flickering neon, lights waxing in apartment towers and waning in offices, and the festive spectrum atop the Empire State Building. The heavens haven't a chance. Under the best conditions, only the moon and a rare point of starlight, usually a neighborly planet or two, manage to shine through the terrestrial competition. Which is one reason the city has a place where people can sit indoors and, through the artifice of technology, surround themselves in a fantasy of celestial vistas. This is the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan. Its holiday show this year, "The Star of Christmas," is a delightful excursion back 2,000 years in an attempt to discover what was that wondrous heavenly light that, in the story of Christmas, led the Wise Men to the manger in Bethlehem.

Helping the nation's airline industry recover from its $8 billion tailspin since 1990 is a top priority for both President-elect Bill Clinton and the new Congress, according to Government and industry officials, Proposals under study, they say, include tax incentives, regulatory relief, global partnerships and revisions of the bankruptcy laws to bolster the troubled industry.

PARCHEESI, it can now be revealed, causes stomach flu. I know this because in my childhood every single time I stayed home from school because I had turned green, the Parcheesi board was found next to my bed, plus crackers, warm ginger ale, at times tepid tea and sufficient Kleenex to blip the stock of the Kimberly Clark Corporation. (Never mind the battered pot always within emergency reach.)

Like generations of successful male lawyers, Zoe Baird, President-elect Bill Clinton's choice as Attorney General, has repeatedly attracted the attention of influential lawyers who sped her on to better things. It was at the Justice Department Ms. Baird has been chosen to lead that she was noticed by Lloyd M. Cutler, the first of several mentors who were impressed with her intellect and a talent for getting things done with little fuss. A Reluctant Admirer Mr. Cutler, who was White House counsel to President Jimmy Carter, recalled today how he had met Ms. Baird. The Administration was preparing to hand out political patronage jobs for the 1980 Census, but Ms. Baird, then a Justice Department official, had written a legal opinion saying that would be against the law.

President-elect Bill Clinton finished assembling his Cabinet today, appointing more women and blacks to his inner circle than any previous chief executive and straddling his party's ideological fault lines. In selecting Zoe Baird, a 40-year-old Connecticut corporate lawyer, to be the the first woman to serve as Attorney General, Mr. Clinton concluded a sometimes hectic selection process in which he named four blacks, three women and two Hispanic men to Cabinet jobs. Two other women were named to positions that Mr. Clinton has pledged to elevate to Cabinet level.