December 8, 2002

Santa's Workshop, venerable Christmas theme park in Adirondack Mountains, survives brush with disaster that followed agreement by its owner, Bob Reiss, to sell park to Gregory P Cunningham Sr, who turns out to have been convicted felon with reputation as con man; Reiss decided to block sale and not open park for 2001 season, but people of Wilmington, NY, whose economy relies on park, worked to keep it open; Reiss has found a buyer more to his liking in Doug Waterbury; Cunningham is suing Reiss and insists his involvement with park was completely honest; photos (M)

Gretchen Morgenson Market Watch column on recent reshuffling of Pres Bush's economic team; notes Bush's worries about political costs of sickly economy; sees tax cuts he seeks unlikely to counterbalance other drags on economy; graph of household net worth (M)

Long, close ties between Ford Motor Co chairman William Clay Ford Jr and Goldman Sachs Group president and John L Thornton discussed in light of recent disclosure that Mr Ford was allocated 400,000 shares of Goldman stock when investment bank went public in 1999, by far largest individual award; friendship made it easier for Ford to request stock and has strengthened long ties between Ford Motor and Goldman; Thornton is Ford Motor director; photos (M)

Rice University has developed creative, even sly ways to keep up enrollment of black and Hispanic students in six years since federal appeals court ruled that colleges and universities cannot legally consider race or ethnicity in admitting students; encourages applicants to discuss 'cultural traditions' in their essays, asks if they spoke English and second language and takes note, albeit silently, of those identified as presidents of their black student associations; has faced no legal challenges in six years of using such subterfuge, and selective colleges and universities across the country may well resort to similar techniques if Supreme Court decides to impose strict restrictions on affirmative action; photo (M)

Baz Luhrmann's production of La Boheme is latest in long history of opera on Broadway; article traces tradition that started with Gershwin's Porgy and Bess in 1935; drawing (M)