The Boston Globe from Boston, Massachusetts • 57

in the 50s VA fun look at a drab decade. Page 60. Also Inside Deaths 62-63 Classified 64 r. THE BOSTON GLOBE TUESDAY, MARCH 5, 1991 i.r Weld arts plan may hurt ldds it aims to help MAMG Ms By Pattj Hartigan, GLOBE STAFF worry, behappy By Chris Reidy GLOBE STAFF Gov. Weld's plan to cut the Massachusetts Cultural Council budget to $3.5 million and channel funds to reduced-admissions programs may backfire, arts educators contend.

Ostensibly designed to benefit the "needy and vulnerable children of the commonwealth," the scheme limits funding to a handful of mainstream organizations and denies assistance to groups that provide hands-on, multicultural programs for the very youngsters the adrnihistration aims to serve, arts advocates say. Take the case of Very Special Arts, a nonprofit agency that connects artists and children with Tired of reading about demoralizing layoffs? Had enough of watching your home depreciate? Are all your savings tied up in Rhode Island Ls? Well, perhaps it's time to look for the recession's silver lining. The dark cloud: You don't have any money. The silver lining: Everything's on sale. Elegant restaurants discount the table d'hote.

Yachts can be had for ready money. Condominiums sell for a fraction of their former value. Adversity does more than provide opportunity, however. It can also improve attitude and disposition. Home repair crews are a case in point A sometimes surly and feckless lot, they've been forced to acquire good manners, a house husband in Milton claims.

During the '80s, they could outgall a RECESSION, Page 61 Who's at risk: smaller arts groups -and their clients special needs. In a typical program, a musician worked with autistic children at the Richard J. Murphy School in Dorchester. One youngster had not spoken a single word GLOBE STAFF PHOTO JANET KNOTT A New Directions employee chats with two clients about their Job options. Outplacement gives laid-off executives an in By Carol Stacker GLOBE STAFF very day they take the same commuter train in from the affluent 1 descriptive.

Firms specializing in this service provide office space and encouragement for recently laid-off executives whose new job is looking for a new job. Many provide on-site programs for newly pink-slipped hoi polloi, too. Although workers at all economic levels are facing layoffs, there are class differences even in how people are terminated. Maybe especially in this. While outplacement for corporate foot soldiers is often little more than a polite show of concern on the way out the door, captains of industry get their hands held by services like New Directions until they find another position.

western suburbs and stride purposefully from North Station gripping leather briefcases. They look like for 18 months. After the workshop, he picked up a guitar, strummed a few notes and began to sing. "It was remarkable," said Maida S. Abrams, executive director of Very Special Arts.

"This child who had not been able to communicate through language suddenly began to communicate through music." Under Weld's plan, Very Special Arts would lose state funding. This is buf-one example of a myriad of programs that connect youths and artists and change their lives in the process. Two afternoons a week, for instance, three dozen inner-city adolescents converge at the Strand Theater in Dorchester to participate in a theater project Before he discovered the program, said Anthony Cruz, 16, he used to go home after school, stare at the ceiling, talk on the phone, sleep. "This program relieves a lot of stress said Cruz, who lives in Harbor Point "The people here believe that what you think is WELD, Page 60 they are. But where their former colleagues -i- -E.

bear right and head toward the financial district, they take an unlikely left, out toward Long Wharf and the expansive but chilly Siberian vistas of Boston Harbor in winter. Their destination is New Directions, based in the old Custom House, one of more than a dozen businesses in the Boston area that have sprung up over the last decade offering outplacement services. Outplacement Seldom is business jargon so frankly Part of the game, of course, is being savvy enough to demand executive outplacement which is what Paul Cowan, 48, did when Northeastern University told him last Thanksgiving that he was being laid off after 25 years. He knew of others who had gotten outplace-OUTPLACEMENT, Page 61 GLOBE STAFF PHOTO JANET KNOTT In the mink room, Kakas saletderk Kelly Blow carries a selection of hire on sale. Architecture The older you get, the younger you feel Tower Records building hits the top of the charts By Donald M.

Murray GLOBE CORRESPONDENT "You look younger, now that you're retired," she said. I am. I was never as old as I was at 16, and I've enjoyed a Over 60 steady decrease in maturity ever since. Then I had enormous responsibil ities, all self-appointed. My folks were, UUL nnnnuuu I HE BIZARRE BUT WONDERFUL building at 360 Newbury generally known as the Tower Records building after one of its tenants, has been chosen one of the ml 19 best works of architecture in the Umtect States for 1991.

The building is a renovation of a former seven-sto- ry brick warehouse. The architects, the internationally known Frank Gehry of California and the Boston firm of SchwartzSilver, refaced the whole structure and, added a bold new top floor and street-level awning. "Spunky and provocative, this project nonetheless harmonizes with its traditional New England context" comments the jury of the American Institute of Architects, which made the award. The institute's prizes are the top national honors in architecture, the Emmys or Tonys of the trade. Gehry's challenge at 360 Newbury was how to dress up a plain building that suddenly found itself on a bold new site.

The Massachusetts Turnpike had -sliced away 360's former neighbors, leaving it alone and exposed, with a prominence in the city it was never designed for. Gehry responded with wit and verve. The new top floor is a kind of madman's interpretation of a big protruding Renaissance cornice by someone like Michelangelo. The cornice is supported by angled struts that don't quite match up, like a chorus line on the first day of rehearsals. It's Gehry's way of being monumental without being pompous.

None of the other 18 prize winners looks anything like 360 Newbury. The interesting thing is that they don't look much like one another, either. American culture keeps getting more pluralistic, and the architects themselves mostly WASP and male, though that's changing are apparently responding by handing out prizes to the widest possible range of architectural styles and sizes. Leafing through photographs of these 19 winners is like grabbing a remote and channel-surfing your TV. You get a quick flash of everything from punk to Palladio.

For instance, there's a post office in Illinois that's designed to look like an abstraction of the Stars and Stripes waving in the breeze. (I'm not kidding.) There's a huge symphony hall in Dallas by I. M. Pei, the designer of Boston's Kennedy Library, in a style ARCHITECTURE, Page 61 raDDDDDQC to put it kindly, poor money managers. I believed that my paper route, my job at Miller's market or all the other special jobs I took on would produce the cash perhaps five bucks a week that would solve their problems.

They didn't I feared that Father would join the Morris Plan, an outfit that was eager to help you get out of debt with others so you could get into debt with them. He did. I was slow to realize that their fiscal habits were beyond my control, slower to realize that I couldn't redesign them for happiness. They were jolly on the street and at church but miserable at home. There they revealed their personality problems, their marital problems, their emotional problems, their lack of the philosophical perspective on the world that I had developed starting at 14.

I believed I had an obligation to redesign my parents. I tried. I had long talks with them as they tried to read or listen to the Red Sox game on the Philco. They listened to my wisdom without anger but worse, with astonishment then a smile, finally' laughter. The redesign was obviously going to take longer than I expected and I had geometry homework as well.

(I am still waiting to make use of what I know about a rhomboid.) My parent's cultural life was as barren as that of their friends. Mother read women's magazines and Father read the sports pages and Republican columnists who confirmed his prejudices. My parents needed culture: my music, my books, my answers to the greatest philosophical questions of our time. I turned on good music; they turned it off. I got the right books from the library; they didn't open them.

I created an agenda for our mealtime conversations; they exchanged looks. Of course I wasn't able to focus my attention entirely on the family: at 16 1 had responsibility for the world. 60, Page 60 ael 1.. -t, -iff ft? 'If mmiffr- 11 i' (I i i PHOTO DAVID HEWITT Among theUA't favorite buildings this yr is 360 Newbury St, which houses Tower Records..