December 11, 1994

A fuel shortage resulting from blockades by nationalist Serbs has virtually paralyzed United Nations military and aid operations in the most vulnerable areas of this war-torn country, United Nations officials said today. Although the Bosnian Serbs have sporadically permitted food to enter some encircled Muslim enclaves in recent days, they are barring trucks carrying aviation or diesel fuel, said a spokesman for the United Nations peacekeeping force here, Lieut. Col. Jan-Dirk von Merveldt.

A SIGN in front of the goat pen at the Stamford Museum and Nature Center warns visitors not to touch the animals and double fencing reinforces the order. The goats are no longer available for petting, and the same goes for the pigs. A year after an emergency decree by the Connecticut Department of Agriculture ordering certain farm animals -- including goats, pigs and wild rabbits -- be kept out of the public's reach because of a rabies risk, the majority of breeders, nature centers, pet stores and farms in the state are complying, but not happily.

EVERY Sunday evening at 6 o'clock, as cars hurtle back to the city, men and women from assorted walks of life gather in a glass-and-timber house in Northwest Woods for the serenity that they receive from sharing a Tibetan Buddhist meditation. Amid the glow of firelight, the scent of incense and soothing strains of a New Age cassette, the dozen or so meditators, including a financier, a shop assistant and an Ivy League professor, sit on ecru cushions and embark on their inward journeys.

IN "DISCLOSURE," THE NEW film about a woman who sexually harasses her male employee, one line floats through like a mantra: "Sexual harassment isn't about sex. It's about power." The first person who says this is the no-nonsense, ordinary-looking female lawyer defending Tom Sanders (Michael Douglas) against his movie-star-glamorous harasser, Meredith Johnson (Demi Moore). The lawyer is the movie's official voice, making the irrefutable case that harassment is a gender-neutral offense. But when her little lesson is echoed by Tom himself, it becomes a cri de coeur, exposing the dirty secrets that make the film so effective as a button pusher. Angry that his wife thinks he allowed the harassment to happen -- why was he having an intimate glass of wine with his sexy boss, anyway? -- Tom explodes. "Why don't I just be that guy, that evil white guy you're always complaining about?" he shouts. "Sexual harassment is about power. When did I have the power? When?"

THE sky is coal-black, dawn still a time zone to the east, when Mona Clausen boards the 5:35 bus to Manhattan in front of the Old Tyme Pharmacy in this quaint village in the hilly northeastern reaches of the Poconos not far from the point where the borders of New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania fit like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Mrs. Clausen's trip to her office at a midtown Manhattan bank takes two hours door-to-door; she won't see daybreak this time of year until the bus nears Newark. She commutes this way four or five times a week.