January 16, 1994

TARAH SCHAEFFER of Plainville has shiny dark bangs that sweep the top of her glasses. Her dancing eyes and infectious smile can light up a room and she chats openly with visitors about life as she sees it. But Tarah Schaeffer is more than a charming and effervescent 9-year-old. She is a courageous warrior whose battle against physical adversity has brought her to a cherished goal: a role on television's "Sesame Street." Tarah, who suffers from osteogenesis imperfecta (or brittle bone disease), is among four children who are regular cast members on the popular PBS program. She will be featured in a special segment to be broadcast on Wednesday.

INFLATION is down. And for some companies that made heavy investments in the late 1980's, that is horrible news. To pay the debts incurred then, they desperately need to charge high prices. And too often it turns out they can't. Investors who ought to be nervous about that phenomenon, but evidently aren't, are those who own stock in the world's most ambitious public works project, Eurotunnel. Its shares now stand at 613 British pence, up 43 percent in two months.

SAY this for hockey fans. They may throw hot pennies onto the ice, but no one ever talked about whacking Wayne Gretzky before the Stanley Cup playoffs. And the players punch each other out during the game. Usually they do not waylay each other in the parking lot. Figure skating, it seems, is a much tougher arena.

AS STATESMEN, THE ELDERS OF American composition have proved an uneven lot in recent decades, often showing little care for social grace and tact. Although William Schuman was a suave administrator and diplomat, and Aaron Copland projected a sweet public persona, Virgil Thomson, Leonard Bernstein and John Cage could be brash and unruly. And David Diamond remains as waspish as Elliott Carter and Milton Babbitt are amiable. Now Ned Rorem, the once and future enfant terrible of American music, has turned 70. He does not act it, and certainly does not look it, his ruddy, boyish face still uncreased. Nor, he insists, does he see himself as a grand old man. But he has mellowed with age. He gently boasts that after decades of flaunted philandering and conspicuous indulgence, he has lived monogamously with James Holmes, an organist and choir director in New York, for 27 years; that he has not touched cigarettes or alcohol for 23 years; that he never uses "naughty words" (well, hardly ever).

JAZZ history was recently made, or rather remade, at the Edison National Historic Site here. The jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis and his septet, using antique recording equipment built by Thomas A. Edison's phonograph company nearly 100 years ago, recorded four songs on wax cylinders in the legendary music room. It was in this room that Edison and his staff conducted many significant experiments with sounds and recording processes early in the century, and where it could be said the recording industry was born.