NOTEBOOK

By KATHLEEN ADAMS, MELISSA AUGUST, CHARLOTTE FALTERMAYER, JANICE HOROWITZ, NADYA LABI, LINA LOFARO, EMILY MITCHELL, MEGAN RUTHERFORD AND ALAIN SANDERS

WINNERS & LOSERS

THANKS FOR THE MEMOIRS

[WINNERS]

FRANK MCCOURT Prestigious literary prize rises from Angela's Ashes, the 66-year-old teacher's first book

JESSIE FOVEAUX At 98, she sells her hard-luck story for a million plus. And now she's writing Volume II

ROBERT REICH Short people got no reason to live? Ex-Labor Secretary has fun with Locked in the Cabinet

[& LOSERS]

O.J. SIMPSON I Want to Tell You remaindered in L.A. for 99[cents], while he owes $86,000 in back mortgage

SOL WACHTLER New York's stalking judge goes on the defensive over criticism that his book blames the victim

CARL BERNSTEIN So does the Pope sue him? No. Just a friend from youth furious about an exposed prank

LOCAL HEROES

OTIS GAITHER, 23; LANCASTER, SOUTH CAROLINA; construction worker

Returning from a night out, Gaither saw flames soaring from a mobile home. The young black man smashed through the door to pull out Larry Leroy Whitten, 44, then revived the white man with mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, heedless of the Confederate battle flag fluttering overhead. Gaither was hailed for his race-blind heroism, but says, "I don't deserve the attention. Someone would do the same for me."

HANNAH HAWKINS, 57; WASHINGTON; founder of Children of Mine

Hannah Hawkins understands the need for safe haven. After her husband was murdered in 1970, she started Children of Mine, an after-school program for neglected children. Every day the retired school administrative aide and mom of five acts on her philosophy that the 100 participating kids need tough mothering--along with lessons and meals. Says Hawkins: "If you get them at a young age, you can help mold them."

HOW MANY MILES CAN YOU GO ON POETIC LICENSE?

License plates have long been made by prisoners, but now they are also in the more questionable hands of artists. Standard-issue tags are competing with the burgeoning traffic of specialty plates. Drivers can flaunt their social conscience in all causes and colors. The fancy tags raise revenue, but what happens when you actually want to read the number on a plate? That has been a problem.

--California's cops say this design makes it nearly impossible to identify license information. Nevertheless, the mountainscape remains California's most popular specialty plate. More than 40,000 have been sold since 1993, raising more than $5.5 million. Half the revenue supports the Yosemite Fund.

--Purple irises smell especially sweet in Tennessee, where state parks have already made $510,000 from sales of 25,000 plates. Despite complaints from police officers about the plates' illegibility, the department of motor vehicles is riding out the controversy with no plans for a recall.

--Benetton would embrace the colors of this plate. But after Arizona issued it in 1992, it was redesigned for clarity. The peaks paled to lilac, and the lettering was darkened. Plate sales remain brisk, raising in all more than $2 million for environmental education.

--This 1887 oil painting has adorned 30,000 Pennsylvania plates since 1995, generating $450,000 for the state's historical and museum commission. Police, however, were at sea in its churning waters. The plate was discontinued in February.

HEALTH REPORT

THE GOOD NEWS

--Throw out the moisturizer? Besides relieving symptoms of menopause, estrogen-replacement therapy seems to prevent SKIN from becoming dry and wrinkly. Why? Estrogen increases production of collagen, the fibrous tissue that makes skin elastic.

--A powerful but still experimental drug called Aggrastat may cut by 45% the risk of HEART ATTACKS and death in patients hospitalized for severe chest pains caused by unstable angina. Unlike today's clot-busting drugs, which dissolve the clots that cause heart attacks, Aggrastat prevents clots from forming in the first place.

--DISABILITIES among the elderly are on the decline. Since 1982 the percentage of older Americans who live in a nursing home or need help with routine tasks has dropped 14.5%, to 7.1 million people--1.2 million fewer than researchers expected.

THE BAD NEWS

--Talk about underage SMOKERS. Newborns of mothers who puff away during pregnancy have nearly the same level of nicotine in their bodies as adult smokers. Hence the baby's first few days of life may be spent in nicotine withdrawal.

--A major study of patients with mild heart attacks found that the death rate is significantly higher among those who are aggressively treated with ANGIOPLASTY or bypass surgery than those who are cared for more conservatively.

--Raising concern about how all GENETIC TESTING is conducted, researchers found that only 20% of patients tested for a form of inherited colon cancer ever receive formal genetic counseling. Worse, doctors misinterpreted 30% of the results.

Sources--GOOD NEWS: Archives of Dermatology; American College of Cardiology meeting; National Institutes of Health. BAD NEWS: American College of Cardiology meeting (1 & 2); New England Journal of Medicine

20 YEARS AGO IN TIME

Cloaked and Daggered

Before Anthony Lake decided to bag his CIA nomination, White House aides complained privately that he was being bled to death by the "Ted Sorensen strategy." Sorensen was the ex-Kennedy Administration aide who became Carter's abortive nominee for CIA chief in 1977. Of the Lake debacle, Sorensen (now an international lawyer in New York City) told TIME last week: "Been there, done that": "Looking grim and even more somber than usual, [Sorensen] read a vigorous 10-page rebuttal of what he called 'scurrilous and personal attacks.' When he had finished, he picked up another piece of paper and began reading from it. 'It is now clear,' he said, 'that a substantial portion of the U.S. Senate and the intelligence community is not yet ready to accept as director of Central Intelligence an outsider who believes as I believe.' As the 15 members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence visibly stiffened, Sorensen went on to announce that he was withdrawing his nomination...He told TIME: '...[A] lot of dirty little streams flowed together to make this flood. There was the extreme right, the Kennedy haters, the Carter haters. The smoke-screen reasons--outright lies and falsehoods--masked the real opposition.'" --Jan. 31, 1977