Saga

What started in 1957 as a mannequin-repair shop eventually grew into D'Agostino Studios, which for the past two decades has created lifelike sculptures, casts, molds and costumes for museums such as the Smithsonian and has worked on hundreds of mannequins of characters from the Star Wars saga for displays across the globe. Studio owner Lania D'Agostino began working for what was then called Mannequin Service Company in 1985. Today, she and her staff of artisans create, fashion and adorn an array of faces and postures, with an eye on realism.

Could this be the year that the long-anticipated championship golf course and conference center is built at Rocky Gap State Park near Cumberland? We'll know by the end of the month.Even supporters of the project are uneasy, though. There have ** been so many unexpected setbacks that the Rocky Gap saga looks like an old-fashioned cliffhanger along the lines of "The Perils of Pauline."The most recent sticking point came when Western Maryland construction companies failed to show much interest in the $34.4 million project east of Cumberland.

Pull Me Up: A Memoir, by Dan Barry. W.W. Norton, 320 pages, $24.95. Dan Barry is The New York Times' "About New York" columnist. He got there the hard way, by years of reporting, from small New England regional papers upward to the Times, and a great deal of watching the world go by. This affectionate, tough-edged, expressive tale of that life will move readers already fans of his writing and offers an inviting introduction to a remarkable writer's work...

Carolyn Colvin, Maryland's Human Resources secretary, once expressed the hope that the state's attempt at welfare reform would blaze a trail for the Clinton administration.In hindsight, that now seems overwhelmingly ambitious for a plan that was largely a pastiche of proposals already tried, or about to be tried, in other states.The family cap? New Jersey gets to take credit for that innovation, which freezes benefits when welfare recipients have more children. (Early results are promising, but incomplete.

Years from now, when people look back at the day U.S. marshals forced Elian Gonzalez from the arms of Cuban exiles, it might be remembered as a watershed in U.S.-Cuban relations, several longtime Cuba watchers said. The picture of U.S. officers using force against Cuban exiles symbolizes the turnabout in U.S.-Cuban relations from the days of the Cold War, analysts say. "We have gone from an image of two nations in conflict to the two countries working together," said Wayne Smith, a former chief of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana.

Clinton matter is farce that cannot compare with WatergateHow can anyone compare President Clinton's idiotic indiscretions or his lies about them to the criminal conspiracies of Richard Nixon, which threatened the subversion of the Republic?And why does the media (The Sun included) persist in calling the Clinton/Lewinsky spectacle a saga or drama? It is neither saga nor drama, but farce; a tawdry tale that once would have been confined to the prurient pages of Penthouse or the National Enquirer.

It strikes me as a stretch to claim that the Naval Academy denied Frank Shannon a commission and diploma "because he failed a running test by 20 seconds" ("For ex-mid, academy saga `doesn't add up'," Nov. 23), especially when the article notes that Mr. Shannon accumulated a record of 12 failures in 18 attempts to pass his physical fitness test. I couldn't agree more with the Shannons that the football steroid saga has a nasty smell to it, as does any suspicion of a college putting its athletes' achievements before society's standards.

If any adage characterizes the Maryland saga of the 1990s, it would be: "No pain, no gain." As did the rest of the country, Maryland suffered during the 1990-1991 recession, and suffered wretchedly the jobless recovery that followed. But evidence continues to show that this saga has had a happy ending: Maryland emerged from these tribulations with one of the strongest state economies in the country. A study set for release today bears this out. Maryland enjoys higher wages, lower unemployment and lower poverty rates than most of its Southern peer states, not to mention the nation.

THE CREATIVE force behind David Wisniewski's innovative picture books was a familiar one -- at least the way he tells it.''It wasn't a matter of inspiration; it was a matter of paying the mortgage,'' said Wisniewski (pronounced Wiz-NESS-key). ''My wife, Donna, and I were touring with our shadow puppet theater until 1985, when our second child was born. We couldn't keep traveling; we had to find another way to make a living.''Donna, a graphic designer, began to do free-lance work from their Bowie home.