May 5, 1994

PETER JORDAN is a writer. Like Ernest Hemingway, he grinds out short, plain, punchy sentences. Like Danielle Steele or Stephen King, he is widely read: his last work went through several big printings. But his success has not gone to his head. Unlike monster-salary, monster-ego authors, he is surprisingly self-effacing. "When people say, 'I loved this,' I almost say, 'I'm sorry you had to read it,' " he declared. Mr. Jordan, 34, writes instruction manuals for Sony television sets, stereo receivers, compact disk players, clock radios and videocassette recorders. His goal is to get consumers to do what many consider the impossible: set the VCR clock so that it does not flash "12:00" day in and day out. And maybe, just maybe, make the machine record the right channel, at the right time.

Carolyn and Robert Whiting have hiked the trails of the Rockefeller State Park Preserve here for years and always wondered what life was like inside the Rockefellers' private home, Kykuit. They found out today, when the house was opened to the public for the first time. "It's incredible," said Mr. Whiting, a sergeant with the Greenburgh Police Department. "I could get used to living here."

The United States teamed up with the central banks of 16 other nations today to buy dollars in a global campaign intended to show investors that the Clinton Administration is serious about maintaining the value of the ailing American currency. It was the first such coordinated intervention since August 1992, and involved the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve, joining with the central banks of Germany, France, Japan and 13 other countries. The move was planned in a series of secret phone calls overnight.

When David Rothermel and his two hired hands began planting corn outside Dwight, Ill., just over two weeks ago, the roar of their tractors contrasted starkly with the silence from neighboring fields, where spring was still a rumor. Planting corn and soybeans across 2,900 acres in five east-central Illinois counties severely tests the sophistication of Mr. Rothermel's equipment, his team management skills, his ability to shift plans and repair machinery on the fly and his endurance. But the first challenge for an operation this big is simply to get planting started as soon as possible.

LDDS Communications Inc., the nation's fourth-largest long-distance company and a major province in John W. Kluge's corporate empire, is offering $2 billion for the Wiltel Communications Systems, Inc., a telephone network. The LDDS offer, which was made public early today, signals that despite the collapse of the proposed giant merger between Bell Atlantic and Tele-Communications Inc., deal-making fever continues to rage in the telecommunications business.