South Florida Sun Sentinel from Fort Lauderdale, Florida • Page 53

Sun-Sentinel, Thursday, February 2, 1989 Section RAY RECCHI Lifestyle Columnist a I i ri if if i .1 '2 J- The nose knows how to change your mood If 1 or Christmas every year, my wife buys herself a bottle of a popular men's cologne, wraps it up and gives it to me. in turn, buy myself a bottle of a saucy women's cologne, and give it to her. -V, 4 'J 'if Jfe i -s CTv4 v- Ken Russell paddles through floating ice in Alaska's Glacier Bay National Park, where he and his wife work five months of the year. They're part-time Alaskans, but South Florida is their winter wonderland. By MARLA WILLIAMS Staff Writer t's the difference between grizzly bears and alligators.

That's the rough part. Remembering which is where. Or why you're where one is and not the other. When you live in Alaska and Florida it gets doors unlocked, my keys in the car and the engine running. Not because there isn't any crime there isn't much but your engine can freeze and there may not be anybody around or anyplace to go for help.

"Down here, you can't leave a car unlocked. It would be gone." And then there is the matter of time. In Alaska, the days pass at a glacial crawl. In Florida, they move as quickly as Interstate 95. "At Glacier Bay we're cut off from everything.

We order our groceries from Juneau by phone, we do our banking by mail, we move slower because there's nowhere to hurry off to," Russell explains. "But here," Devaney says, "we push grocery carts and stand in line at the bank and fight traffic. "Of course, to be fair, we also go to the movies. Boy, is that great." 4 But the differences don't matter to them, the similarities do the fragile impermanence, the threat oi! extinction. "Both places are going to look like New Jersey in five years if something isn't done," Russell says, which is unfair to New Jersey, but you know what he means.

"Down here, up there, we feel like we're on the front lines. We can't leave now." So they remain, gypsies. Itinerant confusing. "I swear, I go home to Alaska and for three months I see gators swimming in ponds," Laurel Devaney says. "And then I come back down here and catch myself listening for bears in the sawgrass.

"It's sort of like jet lag, only worse." Devaney and her husband, Ken Russell, are members of a small flock of rare snowbirds who each year migrate 5,600 miles from the subarctic to the subtrop-ics. But they are not looking to retire to beach condos, not independently wealthy and opposed to work. They are young, hardy and independent. They are looking for adventure. They are looking for original America.

They are national park rangers. Devaney and Russell work five months of the year in Glacier Bay National Park, Alaska, where the landscape is jagged ice, and five months in the Everglades, where the landscape is flat swamp. In between, they pack. And unpack. It's a tidy little arrangement that enhances the joy of giving as well as receiving.

She loves the smell of that particular men's cologne. I would look twice at a baboon wearing the stuff I give her. At the very least, the scent of her perfume will make unhappy thoughts veer in an entirely different and definitely more pleasant direction. So when I read about "aroma therapy," I was not as quick as usual to dismiss it as another gimmick conceived by charlatans eager to separate disturbed dilettantes from their money. According to the New York Times story, aroma therapy has been slow to waft its way across the sea from France and Great Britain, where it has been going on for years.

Still, there apparently are some 200 aroma therapists in the United States. Not surprisingly, most of them are based on or near the Left Coast. The idea is to relieve stress by getting a massage from an aroma therapist, who uses natural oils with distinctive, pleasant scents. When the aroma reaches the part of one's brain that controls emotion, one's mood is supposed to improve. Only the nose knows To reach this level of olfactory nirvana, however, costs about $35 a pop.

Ah, there's the rub. The reason for the relatively high cost of mood enhancement, according to aroma therapists, is the high cost of the special oils. Essence of rose, a Moroccan import, is said to cost $55 an ounce. Well, call me cheap if you will, but I can't imagine how spending $35 to be rubbed with Moroccan oils would do anything positive to my mood, particularly considering that a chronic lack of funds is responsible for most of my foul moods. Still, as I said, the idea makes "scents" (I couldn't resist).

After all, who among us hasn't been sent on a trip through time triggered by an familiar aroma? The smell of burning leaves, for example, brings me back to autumn evenings in my grandfather's -back yard. I smell Shalimar (a woman's cologne my father used to wear anyway) and I remember Dad in his tuxedo, giving me a goodnight hug and kiss before he left for work. What's more, nothing makes home so appealing and comfortable as a homey smell. On Sunday, for example, my friend Rick walked in my house, stopped abruptly just inside the door, threw his head back, sniffed the air and said: "Whoa! Something smells gooodl" Is that a banana in your oven? It was banana bread, was all. Having spied a few bananas languishing long past their prime in the kitchen, my resourceful mother had decided to bake.

Sure, we enjoyed eating the banana bread. But the smell of it baking made an even greater contribution to the day by setting a tone of warmth and familiarity for a visit with good friends. Of course, when it comes to smell, one man's flower bed is another man's sewer. And vice versa. Recall, if you will, Robert Duvall in the film Apocalypse Now, drawing a deep breath through his nose and saying, "I love the smell of napalm in the morning." I wouldn't be a bit surprised if the people at BEI Defense Systems, makers of "extraordinarily lethal" Flechette rockets, recalled that very scene when they came up with their latest advertising gimmick.

Because they say their advertising is often overlooked in trade publications, they devised a real attention-getter. "The Smell of Victory" says the ad, which has a scratch-and-sniff portion that emits the odor of cordite, the smell that follows a rocket explosion. What kind of person, one wonders, would buy BEI's rockets based on such advertising? One shudders to think. Still, it's obvious that such people must not only exist but are probably on the federal payroll. Just thinking about it depresses me.

So, with your kind indulgence, I think I'll go smell a pepperoni pizza to cheer up. teachers, trying to preserve what's left of the wilderness by educating the public. Sometimes, that means providing the most basic information: What kind of bird is that? (Osprey, eagle, hawk or dove.) Are there moose in Florida? (Only in fraternal lodges.) Snakes in Alaska? (Well, they impeached a governor there once.) "You know, there are a lot of people who have never been in a national park, who've never even taken a long walk outdoors. We don't consider any question too simple because we might just have the answer that convinces that person to get off the tour bus or the cruise ship and really look around," Russell says. "And boy, when we do that, it's great." They love the work so they work SEE BEST4E They make this 40-degree shift in latitude and attitude twice a year.

Sometimes, that doesn't come easy. Just ask park naturalist Patty Del Vec-chio. "It's pretty weird, but it's warmer down here in January than it is up there in July." Del Vecchio spends her winters in Everglades National Park and her summers in the shadow of Mount McKinley in Denali National Park. "I'm always getting confused, I'm always saying summer when I mean winter and bringing the wrong clothes and I don't know, sometimes it's like going through life standing on your head." And learning to undo everything you've just been taught. This is no life for old dogs.

Says park naturalist Kim Riffle, who winters in the shade of Miami at Bis-cayne National Park and summers in Denali: "In Alaska, I'd leave my car Hi. I- I PholOJOANN VITELU Rangers Laurel Devaney and Russell in Everglades National Park. Tide turning for women driven to kill abusive men Infant Ch. 25 thrives on improvisation By SUSAN DIESENHOUSE New York Times News Service Xmi INSIDE FAMILIES Pregnant TV personalities no longer have to keep a low profile in front of the camera. Instead, they're showing their profiles proudly, and getting gifts and advice from viewers to boot.

3E ENTERTAINMENTTV By TOM JICHA Television Writer i alk about attention-grab- "'i wo convicted murderers walked out of prison in Springfield, 111., in December, their sentences com- muted to the time they had uuig siuiiia iui idling tcu- ods. For its first sweeps ever, WPBF-Ch. 25 news is 1 1 coming out of the closet. are one sign that attitudes are changing in favor of women trapped in relationships with abusive men. They also cite more shelters for abused women, new state laws requiring the police to treat domestic violence as a serious crime and new legal strategies to defend women who commit crimes to protect themselves or their children.

The governors' actions, said Elizabeth M. Schneider, a professor at Brooklyn Law School, "show a new understanding of the law and may mean a fresh look at the cases of many women sitting in jail." The advocates say a decade of research makes it clear that many women are victims of "battered wife syndrome," in which prolonged violence from a male companion and indifference from the authorities impair a woman's judgment and often make her too terrified to try to escape. "There are literally hundreds of women in jail whose records only say Bruce Springsteen's much-anticipated Video Anthology: 1978-1988 just doesn't include enough early footage or candid comments to satisfy diehard fans. 10E Jim Brosemer, Sheila O'Connor. This is one of several, and far from the most challenging, of the improvisations WPBF has had to make during its infancy.

Less than six months ago, the station didn't have a program director, let alone programs. Mary Meadows, whose letterhead title is director of broadcast operations, arrived on Sept. 1. The only other employee on hand to greet her was general manager Bob Ware. Lee Polowczuk reported for duty as news director on Nov.

14. Fifty days later, he had three daily newscasts on the air, he notes proudly. This is no small feat. Under CBS' management, WCIX- SEE IMPROVISATION 10E already served. There was no question about their guilt; Gladys E.

Gonzalez and Leslie Brown, both 35 years old, had admitted hiring men to kill their husbands, who had repeatedly beaten them and threatened their children. But in commuting their sentences, Gov. James R. Thompson said the two women had been punished enough. Two weeks earlier, Kathleen B.

Kaplan, 31, won a conditional pardon for similar reasons from John H. Sununu, then governor of New Hampshire and now President Bush's chief of staff. In a year, she may begin to work outside prison; 15 months later she will be released on parole. Advocates for battered women say the governors' actions, though unusual, Only for Channel 25, this is no gimmick. It's a necessity.

The station has been coming out of the closet since it signed on the air on Jan. 1. Literally. WPBF is a work in progress. Some day June is the target date the news studio will be anchored in what now could be mistaken for a vacated supermarket.

The cavernous area, vacant except for the beginnings of duct work, is at the northeast corner of the station's headquarters in an industrial complex off RCA Boulevard in Palm Beach Gardens. In the interim, Channel 25 news is originating from what was designed to be, and eventually will become, a prop closet. Advice 2E Best Bet 11E Dear Kld8day 3E Movie Times 13E Lawrence Kutner 3E Comics 14E Television 11E Horoscope 156 SEE WOMEN 6E.