January 14, 1996

FOR the third time, Carol Link caresses a Noritake tea cup with an elaborate red and gold design. It's part of a set of china (service for six with extra serving plates) selling at the Harlem Restoration Thrift Shop for $150, a price that makes her think the unthinkable. "I already own two sets of china," she mumbles, "but I certainly don't own anything like this."

With Apache attack helicopters patrolling the slate-gray skies overhead, President Clinton stood today before rows of the American soldiers he had sent to Bosnia and thanked them for being "warriors for peace." On a chill airfield, the nearby roads mired in thick mud, President Clinton gazed at 500 soldiers in camouflage gear and told them they represented the American ideal.

The soldiers arrived in the village of Sororezo at 2 P.M. one bright day in early December, just as Herve Ntirabagire was finishing lunch with his family and getting ready to go back to his job in the Bujumbura market a few miles away. He heard the rumble of a jeep, then a machine gun's hideous cackle and the giant hammer of a mortar blast. Bullets raked through the tiny house. When the firing stopped, the soldiers ran in and started hacking away with knives and hammers, killing Mr. Ntirabagire's parents, three sisters and one brother before he escaped into the hills.

FOR Judy Wagner, the anxiety-ridden process of choosing a new health plan began five months ago. For 30 years she had received her insurance through the Unisys Corporation, where her husband worked until his death five years ago. Now, she said, with her eligibility in the company-sponsored program about to lapse, she faced the daunting process of finding new doctors she liked in a health plan that she, as a part-time Wal-Mart cashier, could afford.

They are the great steel strands that linked New York City to the nation's Northeast corridor and, in the process, helped wed the region to the car and suburbanization. Six of the metropolitan area's major bridges were designed by one man -- Othmar H. Ammann (1879-1965) -- and an exhibit running from Jan. 25 to April 19 at the PaineWebber Art Gallery in Manhattan will illustrate the contributions of the man who designed all six: George Washington, Triborough, Bronx-Whitestone, Throgs Neck, Bayonne and Verrazano-Narrows.