The Palm Beach Post from West Palm Beach, Florida • Page 45

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 13, 1992 The Palm Beach Post lo SECTION MAGIC OF MERMAN Kravis one-woman show: a tribute to Ethel Merman THEATER REVIEW, 3D I WTf i F-r i' fKi i1tv i iit Accent i i A musical AIDS quilt Composer's three-part symphony memorializes friends TV explores Thomas-HilPs effect on blacks like to be valuable to the classical music world and do something where I feel By CHARLES PASSY Palm Beach Post Staff Writer Not so long ago, American composers used to shy away from the public, writing in a complex, cerebral language that seemed to be more about mathematics than matters of the heart. Or as the headline to a now infamous article by the Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Milton Babbitt neatly summarized: "Who Cares If You Listen?" But John Corigliano cares, and that care has finally started to pay off. The 54-year-old composer has enjoyed enormous success in the last few years, as evidenced by the popular response to both his Symphony No. 1, an anguished reflection on the AIDS crisis that became a best-selling recording on the Erato label (2292-45601-2), and his opera The Ghosts of Versailles, a comic fantasy that had a sold out-run last season at the Metropolitan Opera and that recently aired on public television. Now it's South Florida's turn to see what all the fuss is about: Corigliano's Symphony No.

1 will be presented by the Florida Philharmonic several times in the next few days, as part of the orchestra's subscription concerts at Fort Lauderdale's Broward Center (tonight and Wednesday), Miami's Gusman Center (Thursday), Boca Raton's Florida Atlantic University Auditorium (Friday) and West Palm Beach's Kravis Center (Monday). "I like to be valuable to the classical music world and do something where I feel useful," said Corigliano in a telephone interview from his New York apartment. Please see CORIGLIANO5D Frontline: Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill: Public Hearing, Private Pain: 10-11 p.m. today, WPBT-Channel 2. By SUSAN KING "the Los Angeles Times A year ago, Americans sat transfixed to their television sets watching the Clarence Thomas Supreme Court confirmation hearings, which culminated in Anita Hill's sexual harassment charges against her former boss.

Newspapers and television played the Hill-Thomas hearings as another chapter in the never-ending battle of the sexes. Thomas eventually was sworn in as a Supreme Court justice, and Hill became a heroine to many women because she brought the previously taboo subject into the spotlight. The sexual harassment issue galvanized women around the country into running for political office this year. But to the African-American community, the issue of the hearings was race. The John Corigliano's work will be performed at FAU on Friday and the Kravis Center Monday.

run a khard1 for LfU 7 sl JL new Frontline documentary, Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill: Public Hearing, Private Pain, tonight The waiting has ended. For John Drotar, transplant surgery was the beginning of a new life. (10-11 p.m. WPBT- I I Channel 2) explores how the hearings affected African-Americans. Emmy-winning producer Of ra Bikel spent i) My friend John J.

Drotar, 58, has a new heart. I was at Tampa General Hospital when they wheeled him into surgery at 3 a.m. last Tuesday for the transplant operation. He squeezed his wife Mar-jorie's wrist, said "I love you," and then turning to the nurse said: "Gee, I hope it's a boy." John was what you might call reverse pregnant Hill nine months interviewing dozens of male and 'A In female African-Americans, including ministers, politicians, civil-rights leaders, journalists, college students and writers, to comprehend the painful impact of the hearings. Bikel, who is white, said that when she watched the Hill-Thomas hearings, "I got mad like everybody else." In fact, she set lor zi monins, so mat was not only pure Johnny, it came wrapped in its own logic.

He had been "expecting" his new heart since February 1991, in H'l 1 ft' vC-' i when he went on the computer as a heart transplant candi- ChJ. date. I was in his West Palm Reach hosDital room almost out to make a documentary on the battle of the sexes angle of the controversy. But 10 days two years ago when his doctor told him that his fourth heart attack had left him with 15 percent of his heart muscle. With proper medication and luck, he was told, he could ex- I into production she scrapped her original plans after interviewing a middle-aged black woman.

Ron Wiggins I "I said to her, 'Isn't it wonderful? Race A I I riiHn't nlav anv nart in Thomas the hearings. It didn't She said, 'It didn't matter to you. But it mattered to She was angry and contemptuous. Then by chance, I interviewed a couple of more blacks and I was so stunned by the difference. Everything they said was a surprise to me." When President Bush nominated Thomas in June 1991 to replace the only black Supreme Court justice, Thurgood Marshall, Bush insisted race was not an issue.

Thomas said that it was not an issue. But it was Please see 'FRONTLINE'5D A Photo by DENNY DROTAR The day after his heart transplant, John Drotar was able to have brief visits with his family, including wife Marjorie. John will have to follow a very strict medical program. tmmmmm pect to get a donor heart in six to eight months. John made it almost two years.

The wait almost killed him. I visited him two weeks ago at his and Marjorie's 31-foot motor home outside of Tampa and got the Drotars to bring me up to date. I already knew that John had begun his wait at 25th on the transplant list kept by Cardiac Institute of Florida. Steadily, he moved up in line as others before him got transplants or died. Last December he had survived 11 months without hospitalization and theoretically was first in line at Tampa General for the next O-positive donor heart to show up on Florida's transplant computer network.

What happened? Lots of things, much of it nerve-wracking, one episode downright terrifying. John, looking amazingly tan and fit for a guy down to 11 percent of a working heart, sipped an diet root beer, cradled his moppy-looking little dog in his arm and told his story. "The first three hearts that came up on the computer were never offered to me. During my monthly checkups in Tampa, they told me that the first donor's sexual history made him a high risk for. HIV although he tested negative.

There were problems with the other hearts. "Then on Dec. 28 my beeper failed. When I didn't return their calls, the heart went to somebody else," John said. And the hearts kept going to others.

You can be No. 1 on the waiting list, John explained, but when other people in the program fall gravely ill and must be hospitalized, they automatically get dibs on the next available organ. The good news is that Johnny felt better than he had felt since he had his first heart attack at age 39. "I tire easily, but I can wax my car, fish, shop, walk my dog and have a pretty good time. My medication has my angina so well under control that there are times when I'll say, 'Doc, do I really need this And he always says, 'Trust me.

If you don't get a new heart, you'll Before his transplant operation, John and Marjorie spent almost two years in a motor home A Creepy Contest For Kids In honor of Halloween, we have a scary suggestion. If you're 18 or younger, send us your most ghoulish, monstrous drawing. Entries will be divided into three age categories 8 and younger, 9 to 14 years old and 15 to 18. Please include your name, age, address and phone number along with Stir JU outside Tampa, waiting for a suitable donor. your drawing.

One entry per person. Sorry, but drawings cannot be re i turned. Entries must be postmarked by Friday, Oct. 23. Mail entries to: Halloween Drawing rep 1 1.

1 Contest, The Palm Beach Post, P.O. Box 24696, West Palm Beach, Fla. 33416. Please see WIGGINS5D t. Photo by RON WIGGINS Clip and tell: Celebrities' grooming visits no secret four weeks at U.S.

Male-Female Hair Styling Disposable diapers are no more a threat to the environment than cloth diapers, according to an article in Garbage magazine. Editor Patricia Poore calls the campaign against disposables 'vigilante Photo Illustration by SCOn WISEMAN Staff Photographer Center in Little Rock. "We mainly concentrate on hair," said Jim Miles, who's cut the Democratic nominee's salt-and-pepper hair for 16 years. Chief of staff James Baker comes in to see Aziz for facials every few weeks. v-- 1 An 1 v.

o. Diaper Flash Don't dump disposables, environmental magazine says News flash for the infant and toddler set: Disposable diapers no longer are dirty words. So says Massachusetts-based Garbage magazine, "the practical journal for the environment." In the OctoberNovember issue, Editor Patricia Poore calls the campaign against disposables "vigilante environmentalism." According to a Garbage article by William Rathje and Cullen Murphy, authors of The Archeology of Garbage, disposables are no more a threat to the environment than cloth diapers. Why? Disposables are made with mostly renewable resources; require little energy to manufacture are a small part of landfill garbage; and add little, if any, toxic substances to landfills. But there is room for debate.

Leah Schad, a board member of the South Florida Water Management District and the National Audubon Society, was among the first to use disposables when she tested them in 1963. But she now worries the diapers' plastic and toxic substances they may release can contaminate landfills. "If I had the option today, I'd go back to cloth," she says. CAROLYN SUSMAN There's no reason for Bush and Baker to- be embarrassed, she says. "People used to think it was sissy," she said.

"But men are paying more attention to By NITA LELYVELD The Associated Press WASHINGTON Hairdresser Zahira Aziz loves to tell about the time she gave President Bush a facial and he fell fast asleep in his chair. "Once, he raved about how great it was," said the henna-haired Afghani woman, gesturing with her long pink-painted fingernails. "I said, 'I didn't do anything Mr. President, I was just standing by watching you Facials? The president, macho sportsman? And Jim Baker, too? The White House treats the issue as a state secret, and isn't eager to confirm pampering more commonly associated with the opposite sex. Spokesman Sean Walsh said brusquely, "I don't think so." From the Democratic camp came this: Bill Clinton definitely doesn't do mud packs.

But he does get his hair cut every three or their grooming now. Besides, she says, "they don't get facials I to Deautiiy tnemseives. ney get them to relax." Clients at Pietro's include Bush cam- paign chairman Robert Mosbacher. Abigail Van Buren came in recently, too. Aziz says she knows which powerful peo- pie aye ineir nair ana which ones don really have any.

(She won't tell.).