March 20, 1994

Just as Arkansas basked in the reflected glory of Bill Clinton's election as President 16 months ago, it is stewing and reeling to the same degree today because of the unfolding story of Whitewater and the travails of some of Mr. Clinton's home-grown appointees. On the human level of lives shattered or turned upside down, and on the larger level of the state's image and reputation, events in Washington are turning this capital city into an aggrieved, edgy reflection of the giddy place that savored the spotlight during Mr. Clinton's campaign and after his election.

Blunt but true, the players come and go, but Mike Jarvis and Jim Calhoun have had time to work on their relationship. They have known each other for over a quarter of a century, two tough guys from very different corners of Boston who last summer became friends over a series of what they said were cappuccinos. Now Calhoun is going to the regionals this Friday in Miami after Connecticut's talent outlasted the grittiness of Jarvis's George Washington team yesterday, 75-63. But this time, they insisted, they wouldn't let a game or a recruiting battle or a disagreement or a verbal joust get in the way of their newly salvaged friendship.

Sometimes restoration touches are found in the least likely places, like at Euclid Hall, a once-florid, recently squalid S.R.O. at the southwest corner of 86th Street and Broadway on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, where the ornate fire escapes are being redone. The fire escapes were added sometime before 1920 on the north and south sides of the Beaux Arts-style building, which was originally built in 1903 with large apartments. The original fire escapes were carefully designed to match the balcony railing, which mixed diagonal lattice work with panels of curved iron in the French style.

SOMETIMES Naomi Ebert would simply avoid her roommate, Joe Weiss, too angry and frustrated to be in the same room with him. Sometimes, she would try to throw him off guard by offering a greeting or striking up some idle converstion as they crossed paths in the three-bedroom apartment they shared in Elmhurst, Queens. ("I would be nice to him just to confuse him," she explains.)

Facing up to the near-certainty of major losses at every level in this year's midterm elections, Democrats are increasingly looking to passage of a health care bill this fall as their best hope for limiting the damage. But even as they set to work to overhaul health care, President Clinton's top policy priority, Democratic candidates for the House, the Senate and governorships are more and more concerned about a spillover from the President's political troubles, particularly the Whitewater investigation.