July 10, 1994

THE life of Joseph R. Hendrick 3d sounds like a hard-driving country song set to the rhythm of a souped-up car, with lyrics that celebrate life in the fast lane. He has owned a race car team with Paul Newman, hung out with Tom Cruise and helped found basketball's Charlotte Hornets. In the movie "Days of Thunder," the car dealer and race car owner portrayed by Randy Quaid was modeled on Mr. Hendrick.

Unless the laws of celestial mechanics are repealed (or have been misapplied), this Saturday, on the very date 49 years ago that the scientists of the Manhattan Project produced the largest manmade sound, Jupiter will be the stage for what some astronomers are billing as the loudest noise in the solar system, except for the constant, silent roaring of the Sun. For almost a week, about 20 pieces of the Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet, some perhaps two or three miles in diameter, are expected to hit the far, hidden side of the planet with an impact equivalent to many nuclear bombs. Jupiter is considered big and mushy enough to absorb the attack with aplomb. Closer to home, the concern is not whether the cataclysm might damage the Earth but whether it will be detectable at all.

MY husband weighed in the other day with a helpful suggestion for reducing the risks of city living: From here on out, when going anywhere with our 23-month-old daughter, we should stay off Broadway. We live on Broadway. We depend upon it for the following: milk, bread, vegetables, fruit, poultry, fish, diapers, toothpaste, soap, toilet paper, books, coffee, dry cleaning, film, ice cream, the subway, taxis, cash.

TO Le Corbusier, whose designs were precursors of the postwar Hamptons style, the house was "a machine for living." To a Japanese designer, Setsuo Ito, who built his dream house on one of the highest points in the Hamptons, the house is a frame for living. "We need a house for shelter and comfort," Mr. Ito said. "But I come to the Hamptons to enjoy the countryside. So I built a house that would push you back outside."

After a decade-long decline, home-ownership rates are on the rise and are expected to increase for the rest of the decade, according to a study conducted by the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University. H. James Brown, director of the center, said that demographic trends, particularly the aging of the baby-boom generation and the movement of immigrants into the economic mainstream, should spark home buying.