April 16, 1995

JOE CARELLA of Brooklyn, a public relations executive and member of the Long Island Alfa Romeo Owners Club, loves his 1989 Spider convertible, keeping it in a garage on Long Island and using it mainly as summer transportation to his rental home in the Hamptons. And like most dedicated Alfa Romeo owners, Mr. Carella was devastated by Alfa's announcement in January that it would pull out of the North American market. "It was an emotional thing," Mr. Carella said. "My family is Italian, and I like to see a company from the mother country doing well."

It was a breezy springtime morning, the sort of day on which Ernie Banks used to saunter out of the dugout, and say, "Let's play two." On its opening day, the Harlem Little League was doing the Chicago Cubs great one better: it was playing 23 games, all preceded by a whale of a parade. Eight African drummers led the way up Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard, 2,000 balloons hovered overhead, boys and girls wore lovingly pressed uniforms and stiff new gloves, adults led chants, mothers pushed baby carriages. As the procession filed past the husks of one abandoned building after the next, passers-by stopped to look, then to smile, wave and clap.

The Brooklyn poet laureate's study is unused now. There are an old memo pad, books and photographs in the tiny, lamplighted Brooklyn Heights den. A walking stick, polished but untouched, stands in a corner. And there is a poem taped to the bulletin board. It opens:

John Wetteland is drinking coffee from a large mug with the words "Jesus Lives" emblazoned across it in big, black letters. He grins and nods when someone comments on the mug. His Bible is resting on a shelf in his locker and he has a personal computer at his disposal so he can retrieve morning devotionals from an on-line program and pray before the Yankees begin another day of baseball. "I honestly try and walk with Jesus Christ every day," he said, describing his most important relationship, more important than his relationship with his wife.

President Clinton today laid out a short list of his priorities in his next round of wrangling with the Republican Congress, saying that he was intent on winning passage of tax cuts linked to education, a welfare overhaul that promotes work and anti-crime measures that preserve the ban on assault-style weapons. The three-point list, which Mr. Clinton presented in his weekly radio address, offered the sharpest vision yet of his agenda for the months ahead and represented his most forceful attempt to win back control of the capital's agenda.