December 12, 1993

The dawn after two honor students at Ward Melville High School in Setauket committed suicide by lying down between railroad tracks, the press charged in. The principal, Robert C. McKean, showed signs of the strain from hours with reporters. An aide opened his office door and said: "Excuse me for interrupting, but reporters are going to the 7-Eleven and trying to interview the kids."

Survival has always demanded ingenuity in the Great Plains, where 19th-century settlers, making do without timber and nails, used mud and grass to build their homes. Today vast stretches of this region are about as lonesome as they were a century ago. But some small economic miracles, born of creative ideas and the willingness to take a chance, are thriving in the scrub and dust of America's least populated quarter.

The dawn after two honor students at Ward Melville High School in Setauket committed suicide by lying down between railroad tracks, the press charged in. The principal, Robert C. McKean, showed signs of the strain from hours with reporters. An aide opened his office door and said: "Excuse me for interrupting, but reporters are going to the 7-Eleven and trying to interview the kids."

The successful repair of the Hubble Space Telescope, the first big confidence-building accomplishment in years for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, may have infused new life into the agency's next major project, the $40 billion space station. In a telephone call to congratulate the astronauts of the shuttle Endeavour on Friday, President Clinton said that the current mission was "an immense boost to the space program in general," and in general language he gave the space station project his most forceful endorsement yet. Public support for the station has been waning, and only by the barest margin did the proposal survive a tough Congressional budget fight last month, leaving its future very much in doubt.

WHENEVER Johnny Johnson trotted to the sideline, Bruce Coslet would ask, "You all right?" With his damaged ribs protected by a plastic guard taped tightly to his black sweatshirt under his green jersey, Johnson would nod. And when the Jets had the ball again, he would run with it. Again and again. Eventually, after a 25-yard sweep around left end to the Jets' sideline in the third quarter, he got up holding his right pinky.