August 16, 1995

Principals, teachers and parents in New York City schools said yesterday that they were dismayed and demoralized by Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani's declaration that the public school system was teetering on collapse and that it could be saved if it was more like the Catholic school system. While many of them agreed with the Mayor that the central bureaucracy was too large and cumbersome, they said Mr. Giuliani has shown nothing but disdain for a school system that has had many successes even as it works to make some needed changes.

AT&T announced plans yesterday to offer access to the Internet, saying that it wanted to make on-line services as common and as easy to use as the telephone. The company, which has 80 million telephone customers worldwide, said it intended to offer Internet services ranging from secure business transactions to electronic mail, voice and video conferencing, and wireless access.

A hand-picked mayoral advisory panel recommended yesterday that New York City abolish its municipal hospital system, a proposal that Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani praised. In a blunt analytical report, the seven-member panel accused the city's Health and Hospitals Corporation of delivering inefficient, low-quality health services and asserted that its 11 hospitals and its assortment of clinics, nursing homes and home-health agencies were poorly prepared to compete in a marketplace dominated by managed care.

IF a movie maker were casting the part of a film director, Forest Whitaker wouldn't seem the obvious choice. He is not loud. He is not manic. During the filming of Terry McMillan's novel "Waiting to Exhale," which he is in fact directing, the cast and crew were enamored of him almost to the point of obnoxiousness; you couldn't help thinking that if one more person called Mr. Whitaker a gentle giant . . . And perhaps it was because of Mr. Whitaker's linebacker size that he made such an effort to keep a calm atmosphere on the set. Unlike some directors who change their minds on whims and experiment while the crew's time ticks away, Mr. Whitaker, 35, carefully plotted every aspect well in advance. "Months ago, my director of photography and I figured out how we wanted to shoot each scene," Mr. Whitaker said. "Then in rehearsals we went over it all again. By the time we get on set, I feel pretty confident that the performances will work and I know what the shots will look like."

It is a pitfall of being a divorce lawyer, in contrast to, say, a corporate litigator, that once a case is over, the client has no further need for your high moral dudgeon or your billable hours. But Eleanor B. Alter, one of New York's premier divorce lawyers, whose firm charges the bitter and the brokenhearted $400 an hour for her counsel, has a number of dedicated repeat customers.