Byline: By danny hakim section: Section B; Column 0; Metropolitan Desk; Pg. 1 Length

URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: FOOTWEAR (90%); LEATHER & ALLIED PRODUCT MFG (89%); PLANT CLOSINGS (89%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (72%); LABOR UNIONS (72%); WORKING CAPITAL (52%); STATE OWNED BUSINESSES (50%)
COMPANY: CNINSURE INC (71%)
TICKER: CISG (NASDAQ) (71%)
GEOGRAPHIC: BAGHDAD, IRAQ (94%) IRAQ (95%); UNITED STATES (93%); CHINA (92%); SYRIA (90%)
LOAD-DATE: April 16, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: Several dozen workers, managers and owners said persistence and entrepreneurial opportunism have allowed the Baghdad shoe business to maintain its presence.

Workers in the private factories are generally paid by the piece, which means their earning power has fallen since the American invasion in 2003. Fighting last month prevented some deliveries of shoes from a factory in Baghdad. At stores in the capital, handmade leather shoes by Iraqis sell for about $17, while synthetic leather shoes from China generally go for under $10.(PHOTOGRAPHS BY JOAO SILVA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES)(pg. A6)

A shoe factory on Baghdad's Rasheed Street. The 2003 closing of tanneries that provided raw materials hurt the shoe industry.

Monthly pay is from $150 to $400. The high end is enough to modestly support a family.(PHOTOGRAPHS BY JOAO SILVA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES)(pg. A10)

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The New York Times
April 14, 2008 Monday

Late Edition - Final

Despite Silicon Valley Optimism, a Disease Resists Cure
BYLINE: By DAN FOST
SECTION: Section C; Column 0; Business/Financial Desk; Pg. 6
LENGTH: 944 words
DATELINE: SAN FRANCISCO
In Silicon Valley, an unshakable optimism holds that the right combination of money, brains and computing power can solve any problem.

Mike Homer, a hard-charging executive at Netscape Communications in the 1990s, and his friends certainly subscribed to that belief. It is what led them two years ago to donate hundreds of thousands of dollars, along with powerful new computers, to the University of California, San Francisco, where some of the nation's top researchers are trying to solve intractable medical mysteries.

In a cruel twist of fate, however, the group is getting a sober lesson in the limits of technology and money. Last May, Mr. Homer, 50, learned he had Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a rare brain-wasting disorder sometimes likened to mad cow disease. A cure has not been found.

Similar lessons, under different circumstances, were learned last year when technological search-and-rescue operations, using the power of distributed computing, came up empty in the hunt for a computer scientist lost at sea and for an adventurer whose plane had disappeared in the desert.

Yet instead of discouraging the people involved, these failures have nourished an even stronger belief that if the person in front of them cannot be cured or helped, then the technology developed or refined in the effort will at least help a much broader section of society. Silicon Valley has a long history of optimism -- a belief that its technology can defy the laws of nature. The inventor Ray Kurzweil has said that people will be able to reverse the effects of disease and aging, leading to a promise of immortality.

Many aspects of the Web 2.0 movement acclaim the wisdom of crowds. Legions of Web surfers have written articles for Wikipedia, and bloggers and people posting videos to YouTube maintain that they help democratize the media.

''You cannot be an innovator or an entrepreneur unless you're an optimist,'' said Paul Saffo, a Silicon Valley technology forecaster. ''You have to be an optimist in the face of logic and experience. Most ideas fail, most companies fail and most entrepreneurs fail.''

But Andrew Keen, an author, entrepreneur and social critic, derides what he calls the valley's ''digital Utopians.''

''This shows the strengths and weaknesses of Silicon Valley,'' Mr. Keen said. ''The optimism, the can-do, the vitality are the classic American qualities that have helped Silicon Valley achieve so much. But there's also an absurd side. People there are indulgent, they lack perspective, and they have a belief that they can do anything. There are some things you can't do.''

Mr. Homer's wife, Kristina, who met her husband when both worked at Netscape, said that when she heard the bleak diagnosis -- and that no one with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease survives -- she got straight to work on attacking the problem.

''We live in Silicon Valley,'' she said. ''The impossible happens all the time, and in the grand scheme of things, usually doesn't take very long.''

For the last several months, Mr. Homer has been cared for at home, while at the University of California, a ''Fight for Mike'' campaign continues to raise money, even though its original mission has shifted.

''The miracle probably isn't going to happen for Mike,'' said Ron Conway, a technology investor who, with William V. Campbell, the chairman of Intuit and another close friend of Mr. Homer, has led the effort. ''The campaign now has turned to how can we save others.''

The Fight for Mike campaign has raised more than $7 million, which doctors at the San Francisco campus say could help cure other neurological diseases such as Alzheimer's disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's disease. Mr. Homer's friends have faith in the medical school, where a Nobel laureate, Stanley B. Prusiner, leads research into prion diseases, and where Mr. Homer's doctor, Michael Geschwind, is leading the first- treatment study for Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in the United States.

Keeping an eye on a brighter future, even as the bubbles burst or hope fades, was certainly true in two other instances when Silicon Valley rallied to use technology to search for the missing. James Gray, a researcher with Microsoft and renowned computer scientist, disappeared in January 2007 when he sailed from San Francisco to scatter his mother's ashes at sea. In September, the adventurer Steve Fossett was piloting a small plane over a Nevada desert when he vanished.

While both events led to full-scale search-and-rescue operations, they also provided showcases for Microsoft and Google, as well as for Amazon's ''Mechanical Turk'' technology. The idea behind the Mechanical Turk program is that human beings perform some tasks better than computers, like identifying objects in photographs.

Using the Amazon service, groups of people could take satellite photos, made available by Microsoft and Google, and divide them into manageable tasks. Hundreds of volunteers worldwide logged on to their computers and painstakingly searched these photos of ocean or desert. The men, or even the boat and the plane, have not been found.

People involved in those searches did not necessarily see a failure of technology. ''It's not that futile,'' said Joseph M. Hellerstein, a computer science professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who helped lead the search for Mr. Gray. ''In science and medicine, you try a second, third and fourth time, and progress is made. You need doggedness and insight.''

''It's not a bad thing to try this stuff,'' Professor Hellerstein added. ''This is how discovery is done. Hubris is part of the intellectual exercise.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: DISEASES & DISORDERS (90%); CREUTZFELDT JAKOB DISEASE (88%); INTERNET SOCIAL NETWORKING (86%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (85%); INTERNET & WWW (75%); DISTRIBUTED COMPUTING (73%); BOVINE SPONGIFORM ENCEPHALOPATHY (69%); WEB 2 (68%); BLOGS & MESSAGE BOARDS (68%)
ORGANIZATION: UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA (57%)
PERSON: MICHAEL MCMAHON (53%)
GEOGRAPHIC: SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA, CA, USA (94%); SAN FRANCISCO, CA, USA (93%) CALIFORNIA, USA (94%) UNITED STATES (94%)
LOAD-DATE: April 14, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

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The New York Times
April 14, 2008 Monday

The New York Times on the Web

Delta to Join Northwest to Form World's Largest Airline
BYLINE: By JEFF BAILEY and MICHELINE MAYNARD; Micheline Maynard contributed reporting.
SECTION: Section ; Column 0; Business/Financial Desk; Pg.
LENGTH: 1975 words
Delta Air Lines and Northwest Airlines agreed to merge late Monday, in a $3.1 billion deal that would create the world's biggest carrier and could trigger other airlines to pursue mergers of their own.

The agreement came despite failed efforts to get pilots at both airlines to agree on how to combine their ranks, an issue that could lead to labor unrest and disruptions to flight operations.

But the threat of rising fuel prices -- and a belief that a merger would bring huge cost savings -- overcame those concerns.

Northwest shareholders would receive 1.25 Delta shares for each of 236.4 million Northwest shares outstanding. That represents a premium of 17 percent based on Monday's closing prices. Delta closed 48 cents higher at $10.48; Northwest closed up 26 cents, to $11.22.

Seven directors from Delta and five from Northwest would join the board of the new airline, to be known as Delta. The Air Line Pilots Association, which represents pilots at both airlines, would receive a seat.

Delta's chief executive Richard H. Anderson would run the new airline and Delta's chairman Daniel A. Carp would retain that role, with Roy J. Bostock, a Northwest director who also sits on the board at Morgan Stanley, as vice chairman. Northwest's chief executive, Douglas M. Steenland, would have a seat on the board but would not have a role in day-to-day operations.

The two companies persevered because of the rising cost of fuel, which has destroyed the bright financial prospects of the carriers since they emerged from bankruptcy a year ago.

Delta and Northwest filed for Chapter 11 on Sept. 14, 2005. Both ran into cash shortages that were worsened when oil prices spiked in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Many people in the airline industry expected that the two airlines, which already had a marketing arrangement, would join forces once they emerged from bankruptcy protection.

Mr. Anderson became Delta's chief executive in September, succeeding Gerald Grinstein, who led the airline through its restructuring. He was a surprise choice: Delta had been expected to name one of two younger executives to the post, but directors pushed for Mr. Anderson. He ran Northwest before being succeeded by Mr. Steenland in 2004.

Delta and Northwest are betting that cost cuts and the benefits of a bigger route network will outweigh the potential operating chaos and labor unrest that can result from airline mergers.

The long-expected Northwest-Delta deal could be quickly followed by another merger, airline executives and industry analysts said.

The leading candidates are United and Continental Airlines, which have explored the idea. The airlines may now try to get the deal wrapped up within the next 30 days, a person with direct knowledge of the negotiations said Monday night. He spoke on condition of anonymity because the talks are private.

One reason for the urgency is that airlines want to get their deals approved by the Justice Department under the Bush administration, rather than risk seeing them stall until a new president takes office.

United's chief executive, Glenn F. Tilton, has been eager for a merger, but Continental had resisted, saying it wanted to wait to see if the combination between Delta and Northwest came about. The chief executive of Continental, Lawrence W. Kellner, called it ''good news'' last month when it appeared that the Delta-Northwest talks had cooled. But Mr. Kellner could end up running the combined Continental-United, should an agreement take place, this person said.

Such deals would put pressure on others to explore combinations or consider restructuring, analysts said. American Airlines, which avoided Chapter 11 bankruptcy earlier in the decade, may be forced to explore that possibility so that it can rid itself of aging aircraft leases, and reduce its labor costs. Or, American could seek a deal with a smaller airline such as JetBlue Airways, in order to gain access to JetBlue's younger fleet.

Meanwhile, Southwest Airlines, which has been the healthiest of the American carriers, may be forced to explore a deal with a low-fare carrier like AirTran, so that it can maintain its hold on the market for bargain minded travelers.

At the end of 2007, Delta and Northwest employed a combined 89,000 workers. American Airlines, currently the largest carrier, had 85,500. Delta said the combined airline would employ 75,000.

But the 6,300 Delta pilots and the 4,500 Northwest pilots were the two groups that executives worked so assiduously to win support from in recent months.

That effort was not successful. The two pilot groups could not agree on a merger of their seniority lists, which are important in determining pay, schedules and the type of plane they fly.

Delta's Mr. Anderson faced the choice of either abandoning the deal or pushing ahead and risking fallout from pilots that could cripple his efforts to quickly combine the two carriers' operations and make them run more smoothly.

The chairman of the Northwest chapter of the Air Line Pilots Association, Dave Stevens, said in a statement Sunday that any deal not in the best interest of his members would meet ''vigorous opposition.'' Beyond enlisting members of Congress and the Justice Department to oppose the deal, pilots have little opportunity to prevent a merger.

But they can go a long way toward keeping a completed merger from being successful. At US Airways, the product of a 2005 merger with America West Airlines, pilots are still litigating over a combined seniority list and executives have been forced to continue operating the two carriers with separate squads of pilots. That makes the airline less efficient.

Pilots can also engage in legal work slowdowns, sometimes known as flying to the contract, which can cause late and canceled flights to swell and costs to rise. United suffered that fate in the summer of 2000, when its operations melted down.

It is clear that the airline industry is headed into a steep downturn. Analysts now expect losses for the year. And the industry is highly vulnerable to further increases in the price of jet fuel -- incurring $200 million in annual costs for every penny a gallon that fuel rises.

Michael Linenberg, an analyst at Merrill Lynch, noted Monday in a report that jet fuel in some markets had surged to as high as $3.50 a gallon, reflecting both higher oil prices and a steeper premium charged by refiners. Mr. Linenberg had expected fuel costs of $3.00 a gallon this year to produce an industry loss of $2 billion.

But if fuel prices moved industry-wide to $3.50 and stayed there, he said losses could soar to $12 billion this year. Before that happened, airlines would probably ground huge parts of their fleets, lay off workers and otherwise retrench.

Either way, without a remarkable increase in fares, the handful of smaller airline bankruptcies in recent weeks could grow to include some bigger carriers.

The deal comes nearly 30 years after the domestic airline industry was deregulated. But deregulation did not bring forth a flood of new and innovative airlines pushing aside the old guard, as some had envisioned. Instead, the industry since 1978 has been dominated by familiar names -- Delta and Northwest among them.

Through bankruptcies, strikes and a broad decline in service, the old-line carriers have hung onto most of the market. And the merger, the largest ever among domestic carriers, is but the latest effort by old-line airlines to protect their businesses from low-cost rivals like Southwest, JetBlue and AirTran.

''The staying power of the legacy carriers is a source of continual amazement,'' said Steve Morrison, chairman of the economics department at Northeastern University and author of a book on airline deregulation.

Indeed, since deregulation, the old-line airlines built what are known as fortress hubs -- such as Delta's in Cincinnati and Northwest's in Minneapolis and Detroit -- with such overwhelming market share that there is relatively little competition and fares in those markets are high.

Then they introduced frequent flier programs -- a boon, to be sure, with free travel -- that made it harder for regular travelers to stray from the dominant airline in their region.

Having pulled those two competitive rabbits out of their hat, will old-line carriers produce a third miracle with mergers?

''No,'' Mr. Morrison said, combinations will not affect the industry as dramatically. He and some other experts said the Delta-Northwest combination -- and a possible merger between Continental and United -- could bolster profits at old-line carriers in the near term through cost cutting. But that will not stop the steady advance of low-cost airlines, which now account for about a third of domestic air travel.

The growth of low-cost airlines and the ability of consumers to shop for cheaper fares on the Internet have kept old-line carriers on the defensive. Then, beginning last fall, oil prices shot past $100 a barrel. That effectively snuffed out an industry recovery that had barely begun, with Delta and Northwest having emerged from bankruptcy only months earlier.

Their survival again threatened, Delta, Northwest and others began merger discussions.

For consumers, one or more mergers could result in more crowded planes. Jets are already flying fuller than ever before because the domestic fleet shrank after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. And airlines merging are now expected to ground more planes and cancel more flights.

But even the companies' admirers expect over time that costs will be cut deeply. It is just not politic to say so. ''Note that while it's O.K. to downsize in other industries,'' Daniel McKenzie, an analyst at Credit Suisse, said in a report in Feb, in airlines ''a merger announcement accompanied by 1-2 hub closings and the layoff of thousands won't get far, in our view.''

Pardus Capital Management, an investment firm, estimated in November that a combination of Delta and Northwest could reduce costs by about $1.5 billion a year, in large part by combining hubs. Delta's hub in Cincinnati is close to Northwest's in Detroit. And Northwest's hub in Memphis is close to Delta's in Atlanta.

In announcing the merger, the two airlines said that they had no plans to close any hubs, and that the transaction would generate more than $1 billion in annual revenue and cost savings. The two airlines also expect to incur one-time cash costs to not exceed $1 billion to integrate.

The headquarters of the combined airline will be in Atlanta, with executive offices in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area.

''I would call this a defensive act,'' said Fred Reid, who was the first chief executive of Virgin America, the start-up low-cost airline backed by British entrepreneur Richard Branson. Mr. Reid watched old-line carriers file protests with the Transportation Department, seeking, ultimately unsuccessfully, to stop Virgin.

And though he is a former chief operating officer at Delta, Mr. Reid believes that within six-to-eight years low-cost carriers will have captured more than half the domestic market in the United States and will then go after the international business.

''The legacy airlines tend to have high levels of dissatisfaction'' among customers, he said.

Despite the agreement, it is not certain that the merger will ultimately be completed. Previous combinations -- notably United and US Airways in 2000 -- were abandoned in the face of antitrust scrutiny and opposition from unions.

James L. Oberstar, chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, opposed that 2000 merger and ''is generally opposed to any further consolidation,'' said a spokesman, James Berard. The House cannot technically block a merger, but it can hold hearings and encourage the Justice Department to scrutinize deals.

URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: AIRLINES (92%); MERGERS & ACQUISITIONS (91%); PRICE INCREASES (89%); OIL & GAS PRICES (89%); AVIATION SECTOR PERFORMANCE (78%); BUSINESS INSOLVENCY & BANKRUPTCY (78%); TALKS & MEETINGS (77%); SHAREHOLDERS (73%); BOARD CHANGES (73%); HURRICANES (71%); INDUSTRY ANALYSTS (71%); BUSINESS FORECASTS (67%); HURRICANE KATRINA (50%); MERGERS (90%); DELTA NORTHWEST MERGER (90%); US CHAPTER 11 BANKRUPTCY (64%)
COMPANY: DELTA AIR LINES INC (96%); CONTINENTAL AIRLINES INC (58%); NORTHWEST AIRLINES CORP (58%); MORGAN STANLEY (55%); NORTHWEST AIRLINES INC (91%)
ORGANIZATION: ASSOCIATION OF FLIGHT ATTENDANTS (56%)
TICKER: DAL (NYSE) (96%); CAL (NYSE) (58%); NWA (NYSE) (91%); MS (NYSE) (55%)
INDUSTRY: SIC4512 AIR TRANSPORTATION, SCHEDULED (96%); NAICS481112 SCHEDULED FREIGHT AIR TRANSPORTATION (91%); NAICS481111 SCHEDULED PASSENGER AIR TRANSPORTATION (91%); NAICS492110 COURIERS (58%); SIC4513 AIR COURIER SERVICES (91%); NAICS523120 SECURITIES BROKERAGE (55%); SIC6211 SECURITY BROKERS, DEALERS, & FLOTATION COMPANIES (55%); NAICS492110 COURIERS & EXPRESS DELIVERY SERVICES (91%)
PERSON: RICHARD H ANDERSON (69%); DOUGLAS M STEENLAND (67%)
LOAD-DATE: April 17, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

866 of 1231 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times
April 13, 2008 Sunday

Late Edition - Final

A Place to Get Better, and Thrive
BYLINE: By CELIA BARBOUR
SECTION: Section RE; Column 0; Real Estate Desk; HABITATS BRONXVILLE, N.Y.; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1168 words
FRANCESCO CLARK is squirmy. ''I had stem-cell surgery two and a half years ago, so I'm starting to feel my butt now,'' he said with a grin, ''and I'm always kind of wiggling around.''

The same cheerful restlessness seems to pervade all areas of his life. In the last six years, since becoming quadriplegic, he has started a skin care line, Clark's Botanicals; written a memoir (''it's 95 percent finished,'' he said); learned Spanish, to communicate better with some of his caretakers; and researched and managed his recovery. Recently, he became a national ambassador for the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation, and makes regular appearances on its behalf.

Most successful 30-year-old entrepreneurs do not live with their parents, let alone share a roof with extended family (Mr. Clark's Italian grandmother, Enza Spaggiari, spends eight months a year living with, and cooking for, the household).

But Mr. Clark is not most people. Indeed, he was never ordinary, although his distinctiveness was somewhat less pronounced before a balmy Friday evening in June 2002. Mr. Clark, then 24, had just arrived for his first weekend at a summer share on Long Island. He didn't know the other guests very well. ''They were all friends of friends of friends,'' he said. ''But you get to this great place, and it's warm out and you see this pool and you want to go in it.''

The pool was not well lighted. ''The second I dove in, my chin hit the bottom and my head snapped back,'' Mr. Clark said. ''It felt like an iron rod slamming against another piece of metal; this loud pang reverberated through my entire body. I knew exactly what had happened -- I was fully conscious the whole time -- but at that second I didn't think: I might die because I'm underwater. I actually scolded myself, something like, Oh, no,do you realize how much therapy you're going to have to do now? One of the people saw me and flipped me over, and I said, 'Call 911.' ''

Two months later, Mr. Clark left the hospital and went home to his family's antique-filled house in Bronxville, N.Y. He had been a fifth-grader when they moved to the United States from Italy, and back then, the tight-knit Bronxville community had been slow to welcome a boy who had grown up picking mushrooms in the foothills of the Dolomites in northern Italy. ''I felt like the new kid until 11th grade,'' he said.

Now the community embraced him. ''After my injury,'' he said, ''I feel like the whole town has been looking after me.''

More important was the attitude of his family. ''My mother and my father, they don't treat me like a kid,'' Mr. Clark said. ''They're almost like my accomplices. We try new restaurants, go to museums. We do whatever we want.''

No one would ever wish to be confined to a wheelchair, but under the circumstances, the Clark household was a fine environment in which to recuperate: the family is close without being smothering, concerned without being worrywarts, and well-to-do enough to afford top-notch treatment.

It also helped that Mr. Clark's father, Harold, comes from a long line of doctors. In his practice, Dr. Clark combines traditional medicine with alternative medicine, homeopathy and vitamin therapy. Mr. Clark's mother, Mariella, is a nutritionist and phlebotomist. From them, he inherited a creative outlook toward healing. ''You have to approach recovery in a multidisciplinary way,'' Mr. Clark said.

All the same, the first years after the accident were quite bleak. His days were filled with dull drives back and forth to physical therapy, and visits to doctors whose underlying message to Mr. Clark seemed to be that he should accept his fate, curb his expectations, and get used to living on the margins.

He refused to conform to their script. To the uninjured, such indefatigable hope can seem provocative, even unsettling. But having nearly lost his life, Mr. Clark doesn't waste time worrying about whether other people are comfortable with his attitude.

Before long, he grew frustrated by physical therapy sessions whose duration was dictated by insurance coverage. He had always been active, both physically -- running seven miles a day, lifting weights -- and intellectually. Now, he said, ''it felt like my life was on hold. It was very one-dimensional.''

He read enough to realize that regaining movement and sensation in his body was possible. He also believed that recovery was not an end in itself, but a means to pursue other dreams. He signed up for clinical trials, researched innovative treatments -- such as the stem-cell (or glial) surgery, for which he traveled to Beijing -- and surrounded himself with people whose outlook matched his own. ''The best therapy for me was to be treated as though I have a right to want to get better and to have fun and to live,'' he said.

Two years ago, Mr. Clark installed a gym in his family garage. He spent $35,000 converting the space and buying state-of-the-art equipment, then hired trainers from local gyms.

The investment has paid off. Before, he was paying about $350 a day for therapy,plus the cost of the commute. Now, according to Mr. Clark, ''it costs about $90 a day and I do five hours of therapy per day instead of two, and don't waste hours in traffic. But most importantly, I am seeing better results and am leaving the medical community dumbfounded on my progress.''

Running a business was never on his to-do list. Clark's Botanicals evolved naturally from Mr. Clark's efforts to relieve his skin of a host of problems: dryness, acne, rashes. ''My skin couldn't sense hot and cold and know when to sweat,'' he said. ''I wasn't releasing toxicity.''

He and his father experimented with 78 botanical extracts, and discovered jasmine absolute, a jasmine derivative that, according to Mr. Clark, is naturally rebalancing. ''I began making lotionsfor myself,'' he said. ''Some of my dad's patients started using them and liked them.'' Former colleagues from Harper's Bazaar, where Mr. Clark had worked as an editorial assistant before his injury, liked the products, too, and published them in the magazine.

Sales have doubled every year for the last three years; Clark's Botanicals products are available at Henri Bendel, C. O. Bigelow, and Fred Segal Beauty in the United States, and are sold in Europe and Asia.

The company is based in the house's former sun porch, which also serves as Mr. Clark's bedroom. ''It's all windows, so I'm looking out,'' he said.''It's like that with my injury. It's not just looking inward at my body, but looking outside.''

Part of what he sees is a family that, like most contemporary families, is scattered and preoccupied by various commitments for much of the week.

But every Thursday and Sunday, they all come together for dinner. Four generations sit down at the table, including Mr. Clark's nephew, 2, and niece, 5 months, children of his brother, who lives nearby.

''It's fun,'' Mr. Clark said. ''We laugh. It's a huge, wonderful feast. It feels like Thanksgiving.''