September 7, 1995

The shortage of water in New Jersey resulting from dry weather is severe but still falls short of a drought emergency requiring mandatory water-rationing, officials of the state's Department of Environmental Protection said yesterday. "It's not dire; it's not a disaster," said Steven Nieswand, administrator for the department's water supply program, at a public forum to discuss the drought. The reservoirs in the northeastern part of the state, which provide water for three million people, are only 62 percent full -- 17 percent below the average for this time of year, Mr. Nieswand said.

Ever wonder how the boss got his job? In the old days, chief executives picked their successors, usually from inside the company. Now the board of directors is increasingly making the selection, and often going outside the company. But some choices are proving to be disappointing, or at least questionable, to judge by the stock market's reaction. Many people are wondering if boards are up to the task.

Representative Steve Gunderson, the only openly gay Republican in Congress, denounced Senator Bob Dole today for returning a Presidential campaign contribution from a gay Republican group. The attack on Mr. Dole, the Senate Republican leader, came in a letter to him from an eight-term Congressman from Wisconsin who was an early and enthusiastic backer of his Presidential bid and has only recently become outspoken about issues concerning homosexuals.

Of all the props at all the Capitol hearings that now seem to occur here as an endless series of tabloid tableaux -- the rifle waved at the Waco hearing, the scribblings of the suicidal Presidential aide at the Whitewater inquiry -- none appeared as purely theatrical as the simple wood-and-glass cabin door displayed today as the Senate opened its inquiry into the shootout at Ruby Ridge, Idaho. The door stood unhinged and leading to nowhere in a display bracket. Its calico-fringed denim curtains added an American Gothic touch as the senators arrived to hear a tale about guns and backwoods individualism and Ninja-suited Government sharpshooters in which three people died in a bloody showdown in August 1992. The door stood upright to the senators' left, looking as flimsy as a leftover prop from summer stock.

There was just the slightest tinge of elegy discernible in Marilyn Shipman's voice as she sat in a booth at Ship's of Culver City, perhaps for the last time. "Times change, times change," she said with a shrug and a rueful smile, seeking to explain why her family had decided after nearly four decades to close the last two Ship's coffee shops, both Southern California landmarks. (The other is on La Cienega Boulevard, at Olympic Boulevard.) "There's so much competition out there these days we just couldn't make it anymore."