May 26, 1996

ANY traveler knows that people are different from country to country -- from the way they build their roofs to the hour they eat dinner. Russians drink vodka, Germans drink beer and the French drink wine. Americans are gregarious and overfed. The British are prudish and indirect. Germans are orderly. The differences aren't just material for light anecdotes or caricature, either. Germans, the medical journalist Lynn Payer notes, are more likely to be treated for heart weakness, French people for a liver crisis, Americans for a virus and the British for constipation. British doctors perform pelvic examinations by having their patients lie comfortably on their sides, not in stirrups. French people are much more likely to be prescribed suppositories than anyone else. Even among industrialized, Western countries, one British doctor told Ms. Payer, people die of diseases they don't believe in across the border.

Every morning there are dozens of desperate people outside Arthur O. Obel's office in downtown Nairobi. They wait for hours in sad-eyed silence, hoping to get a bottle of the herbal potion that Mr. Obel claims will rid them of AIDS. "Sometimes there are about 100 people here," Mr. Obel said, ushering another teary-eyed patient from his office. "How can I see them all? I just can't cope."

THINGS AREN'T WHAT THEY USED TO BE in the art world. A sea change is under way. The outside is coming inside. The margins are moving to the center. Maybe 1996 will be remembered as the year the "other" came in from the cold. Further good news is that the quality of art hasn't suffered. Over the past season, the solo shows by women and, to a lesser extent, minority artists have been increasing in number and impact. Their presence is becoming routine, taken for granted, even in prestigious establishments that previously seemed closed to them.

LIKE a moth caught in amber, the happy family smiles out from the old photograph: four generations of the Bacardi family, gathered on a lush Cuban terrace in the late 1950's, looking forward to a wealthy future nourished by an ocean of rum. At the lower left-hand corner of the photo, sitting on the lap of her radiant mother, with her beaming grandmother just a few feet away, is a beautiful but solemn toddler named Lisette Arellano.

They shackled Shaquille O'Neal, stifled Anfernee Hardaway and completely discombobulated the only dimension of Dennis Scott's game. The Chicago Bulls have come to be known as a great offensive machine in the open court, but they get their hands dirty, too. As a result, Shaq, Anfernee and their bandaged teammates looked like mud today.