February 11, 1996

As a strong contender for the Hart Trophy as most valuable player in the National Hockey League, Rangers Captain Mark Messier earns and deserves all the publicity and accolades that come to him. He scores important goals, initiates significant collisions and says the right things to the right people at the right time. That's why he's a leader; that's why he's a winner; that's why his team has the best record in the N.H.L.'s Eastern Conference.

THERE is no escaping these teams that are threatening to escape. Not even here, at David Stern's annual weekend All-Star retreat, before his winter-weary league makes the turn for the long and winding playoff run. Even as Stern was reveling in Michael and Magic being back, television ratings being up and Generation X hysteria going down, the good folk of this delightful "small market" wanted to know if they were soon going to be team-less, if they were going to lose their beloved Spurs to Nashville or New Orleans.

After mailing out more than 900,000 tax-assessment notices to New York City property owners last month, the Department of Finance is now trying to make it as convenient as possible to prove that the agency's valuations are wrong. Each January "tentative notices of assessment" are sent to owners of all taxable property in the city. The owners then have a right to appeal the assessments.

For decades, the New Hampshire primary and the Iowa caucuses have enjoyed an outsized influence as the first events on the election calendar. And for decades, local politicians have defended this influence on the grounds that their states act as the nation's living room, where candidates and voters get together over coffee to talk about issues.

When Kenneth and Mary Ellen Brzonkala delivered their 18-year-old daughter Christy to college in the fall of 1994, a giant aerial photograph of the campus stayed behind in her childhood room here, displayed with her high school basketball trophies and a collage of smiling classmates at the prom. The photograph of Virginia Polytechnic & State University, known as Virginia Tech, shows a serene pattern of lecture halls, sports fields and dormitories nestled securely in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Yet within weeks of starting there, the Brzonkalas' effervescent daughter grew so withdrawn that she seemed afraid to leave her dorm room.