September 17, 1993

President Clinton formally opened his campaign to revise the nation's health care system today by inviting ordinary Americans to the Rose Garden to voice their complaints and by asserting his willingness to compromise on key elements of his plan. Mr. Clinton told a group of small-business owners who met him later at a hardware store in an industrial area of northeast Washington that he was willing to reconsider elements of his proposal that they say would hurt business owners with 50 to 100 employees. Clinton Considers Plea Owners of businesses of this size have been among the most vocally opposed to the President's plan because larger employers are better able to afford insurance for employees, and employers with fewer than 50 workers would be given Government assistance to ease the hardship.

Abandoning efforts to frame a fundamentally different agreement with the United Automobile Workers, the Ford Motor Company reached a tentative three-year contract with the union late on Wednesday that increases wages and preserves benefits, including health care fully paid by the auto maker. The few changes appeared more likely to benefit Ford than the industry's ailing giant, the General Motors Corporation, with which the U.A.W. will seek a similar agreement in coming weeks.

THE city sleeps; the city wakes. Obedient to the daily imperative, I, too, get out of bed. The breakfast ritual: tea and bread made of seven grains never heard of before last year. (Yeats's old mummy wheat baked slowly in an oven?) I swallow the vitamin supplement because it's said to hold cataracts at bay, read the paper and glare at my watch. It is half-past 8. The city wakes earlier than I. This weekend, at this same early hour, the annual fair justly named New York Is Book Country will be in full swing. Three full days have been set aside to celebrate the printed page under the theme "Make Time for Reading," with seminars on business, comics and detective stories, authors addressing adults and children, a curtain lifted to reveal the spicy magic of Harlem's literary past. Every borough will pitch in; even rebellious Staten Island will have readings and performances by high school student authors and more. My mood brightens. I see that my wife, too, is reading. Her glasses have settled at the tip of the nose I love above all others. As if she didn't know it, I tell her I am glad to be a New Yorker.

For 27 years, Bobby Taylor has run a shoeshine stand in the lobby of the Bergen County Courthouse, a little business where he offered a nice shine, ($1 for judges, $2 for everyone else), a ready smile and plenty of quips and banter each morning. For 27 years, he occupied his space in the courthouse based on a handshake and gentleman's agreement.

7 Shot in Bronx Apartment Seven people were shot in a Bronx apartment, four fatally, in what the police said may have been a well-planned execution. Page B1. Taking Sides on Comptroller Alan G. Hevesi picked up endorsements in his race with Comptroller Elizabeth Holtzman, but Mayor Dinkins has yet to intervene. Page B1. Hint of Chinese Atom Test The United States has data suggesting that China is planning to set off an underground nuclear test, an Administration official said. Page A3.