July 3, 2005

Within hours after Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's announced retirement from the Supreme Court, members of conservative groups around the country convened in five national conference calls in which, participants said, they shared one big concern: heading off any effort by President Bush to nominate his attorney general, Alberto R. Gonzales, to replace her. Late last week, a delegation of conservative lawyers led by C. Boyden Gray and former Attorney General Edwin Meese III met with the White House chief of staff, Andrew H. Card Jr., to warn that appointing Mr. Gonzales would splinter conservative support.

Two fine comeback tales converged on the most celebrated court in tennis Saturday, but only one could end happily. Venus Williams, not Lindsay Davenport, was the big-hitting veteran who earned that thrill after the longest women's final in the history of a tournament that has more history than any other.

TOM RATH, the protagonist in Sloan Wilson's 1955 novel, ''The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit,'' certainly had his share of troubles: the stressful conformity, the constant striving for success, the superficial suburban friendships, the war experiences he kept hidden from his wife. It all ate away at him. But Tom, like most Americans in the first three decades after World War II, took a rising standard of living for granted. When he needed more income to make ends meet, he simply landed a better-paying job. Indeed, at parties throughout suburbia, Mr. Wilson wrote, ''the public celebration of increases in salary was common.'' And Tom didn't fret about medical bills, job security or the quality of public schools for his three children.

After stumbling around center field last Saturday, Bernie Williams stood in the Yankees' clubhouse and calmly but firmly disagreed with Manager Joe Torre. No, Williams said, he did not think he needed rest. He was just finding his groove at the plate. But Torre rested Williams anyway, keeping him out of the lineup for the next three games. Williams never complained. Back in the lineup at Comerica Park this weekend, he made his statement on the field, with a performance that was straight out of a Yankees Classic broadcast, then slipped out of the clubhouse without speaking to reporters.

THE next time traffic snaps to a halt in a spectacle of brake lights, glance around. There's a good chance you'll see one of those cool hipster-mobiles -- the coupes with erector-set spoilers, the hatchbacks in emphatic colors, the boxy wagons that seem more square than a 1950's sitcom. These sorts of trendy cars, like the Toyota Matrix, the Honda Element and three varieties of Toyota's Scions, were designed and marketed expressly for 20-somethings. But the people at the wheel often look more like Ozzie and Harriet than like the serially pierced offspring of Ozzy Osbourne.