April 12, 1993

On a small mountain ridge known as the Hollow, in the foothills of the Adirondacks, indoor plumbing was first installed six years ago and many people still do not have telephones. There may be a few signs of modernization in the area, which social workers call the Appalachia of the North: Subsistence farmers no longer keep animals inside their homes. Sales people sometimes venture in now. And more parents are sending their children to school, although they say heavy snow on the mountain roads often keeps them from reaching classes during the long winters.

When President Clinton moved into the White House in January, specialists in academia, health care and law enforcement around the country were expecting big changes in the way the Federal Government dealt with the national drug problem. But Mr. Clinton surprised and disappointed many specialists last week by presenting a $13.04 billion anti-drug budget that offered little change from the widely criticized approach followed for 12 years by Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush. That approach relied heavily on law enforcement instead of emphasizing rehabilitation and prevention.

Despite the lamentations of loyalists last summer that Tina Brown would tart up The New Yorker and destroy its very soul, six months into her tenure as editor in chief, subscription renewals are strong, newsstand sales have doubled, and advertising pages are up a hefty 16 percent just since Jan. 1. However, what no one knows except S. I. Newhouse, the magazine's owner, and a few top executives at the parent company, Advance Publications Inc., is whether The New Yorker has begun to stanch its losses. Ms. Brown, asked her timetable for turning around The New Yorker economically, replied, "We would like to see it in profit in five years."

When Congress passed the Clean Air Act amendments of 1990, it had in mind people like Bert Adams, who climbs behind the wheel of a white, 15-passenger Dodge van each weekday morning at 6:45 and sets off on a 32.5-mile drive to his job here as a manager at Champion International. Along the way he picks up more than a dozen passengers. Mr. Adams's van pool seems at first glance to be a working model for the clean air remedy specified in the new law: cutting down on the number of people commuting alone in cars. But his experience is actually a sobering illustration of the obstacles that will face thousands of companies across New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, as well as other areas with severe air pollution, as they try to change a basic habit: the way people get to work.

In the biggest gamble yet that Americans want an "information superhighway" to their homes, the nation's largest cable television company is embarking on a $2 billion program to lay fiber-optic cable throughout more than 400 communities across the country by 1996. The plan, to be outlined Monday by Tele-Communications Inc. of Denver, marks a sharp acceleration in the race between cable and telephone companies to provide homes with everything from hundreds of television channels to home-shopping and high-speed information services.