The Boston Globe from Boston, Massachusetts • 25

Tin-: hoston glow: tuksday, novicmhkk ib, iobk 25 nwnn TELEVISION I JACK THOMAS From politics to the anchor desk Toby Moffett on the air, and on the campaign trail. hi. rp A vj 0 iw Lt ARCHITECTURE By ROBERT CAMPBELL THE MAN WHO BROUGHT YOU THE MARKETPLACE An exhibition now on view in the main lobby of Boston City Hall gives Bostonlans a chance to take the measure of an architect who has, unquestionably, done more to change the face of America than any other Boston designer of our time. "The Revitalization of Cities and Waterfronts" commemorates the 20th anniversary of the firm of Benjamin Thompson and Associates, as well as the 10th anniversary of its most famous building, the Faneuil Hall Marketplace. Benjamin Thompson is an anomaly to other architects, who often don't know what to make of him or how to evaluate his work.

This wasn't always so. In the 1950s and '60s and into the '70s, as a partner at the Architects Collaborative and then as head of his own firm, Thompson was a major architect with a conventional practice who won national awards for the design of such buildings as the Gutman Library of the Harvard I School of Education on Brattle Street. He was I also chairman, for four years, of the department of architecture at Harvard. More prophetic of the future, perhaps, was his founding of the Design Research store, now defunct, which sold a dream of understated sophistication, modern yet rustic, a Cambridge lifestyle embodied In brightly colored plastic tableware, natural oak furniture, peasant blouses and Marimekko fabrics. In 1976 Thompson's career took a sharp turn when his Faneuil Hall Marketplace opened.

Pooh-poohed by the wise as a risky venture in a dubious neighborhood, the Marketplace took off with a roar and became a model for the resurgence of cities all over the United States. Thompson, together with de-iveloper James Rouse, had invented some-i thing called the "festival marketplace." Oth-iers had had the same idea at Ghirardelli Square in San Francisco, at Trolley Square in Salt Lake City but Thompson's version was both less hokey and more profitable. His Marketplace became a sort of halfway house for a generation of tlrnld suburbanites trying to find their way back to the richness and diversity of real city life. Soon Thompson was cloning his success everywhere: at Harbor-place in Baltimore, at South Street Seaport in New York, at the Old Post Office in Washington, and now in Jacksonville, Miami, Burlington, and many other cities. But the more successful Thompson became, the less he was admired by other architects, who Increasingly saw him as a master ARCHITECTURE, Page 26 5 Iff: 1 TOBY m-l OFFET i A for Governor -rniiriiTi IUM ARTFORD After nearly 20 years in politics, including four terms as congressman, Toby Moffett, 42, has given up politics to anchor the 6 and 1 1 o'clock news here at a third-place UHF station, WVIT-TV.

Channel 30. It's too soon to measure ratings this is his seventh night but his new role has aroused debate as to whether news can be reported objectively by any former politician in this case, a passionate liberal. Traditionally, Journalists are expected to keep politics from infecting news. Walter Cronklte was proud recently when overtures that he run for US Senate came from both Republicans and Democrats, neither party being certain of his affiliation. Although Journalists sometimes move to politics and return to Journalism, they are usually restricted to an interviewer, "C'mon into the ladies room while I put on makeup." She explained her reservations about Moffett in contorted vowels, because she was leaning over the sink, squinting into the mirror and daubing her lips with rouge.

"I have to admit it. I was skeptical. I raised the questions everybody else raised after it became public, and that is, 'Gee, how can we do this? How can we assure the public of objectivity? But I spent a day with Toby, thrashing it out, and he gave me good answers. I see this as a good partnership. I mean, I like him so much, and I think he likes me, and I think we're going to get along just fine.

But there is an unanswereable question, and that is, how will the audience receive him? I can't tell you." "Misgivings? Well, I'd call them concerns. Before I could think about what I wanted the job to be, I had to make a decision that I was going to retreat from advocacy, from activism, from partisanship. That was the thing I had to come to grips wtth, and it was not easy. "1 don't want to be Just another Jace, a gimmick to attract a wider audience you know, 'Oh, yeah, we're putting this guy on and everybody knows who he is so they'll all tune "There are a lot of things I do not know. I do not know the television business.

1 don't pretend to know It. But I do know something about news, having been a newsmaker, and I want an already good newscast to get even better so that people won't say, 'Oh, yeah, they hired him, and he just sold out and gave up all his advocacy to get this nice salary. "But this happened, btng-bing. I didn't have time to set up expectations. Before I knew what hit me, I was rehearsing, watching tapes of myself anchoring, and It was weird.

"Flaws? How much time do you There were 500,000 things I was doing wrong. I had this pained, worried look on my face, right there. And I never paid much attention to my appearance. I'm sure some politicians do, TELEVISION, Page 26 to writing columns, as in the case of William Saflre, or to commentary, as in the case of Bill Moyers, or to specialized reporting, as in the case of Pierre Salinger. It is rare, perhaps unprecedented, that a job as television anchor would be offered to someone like Moffett, who has held elective office, and who ran unsuccessful campaigns against Lowell P.

Weicker Jr. for the US Senate in 1982, and against incumbent William A. O'Neill for the governorship this year. The two months of training he underwent, and its effect on his attitudes, his speech and even his wardrobe, say a great deal about television. "It's a mixed bag," said Moffett.

"I bring certain strengths. I bring resources, a knowledge of issues, contacts. I also bring this question mark about where my head is, and how that's going to affect viewers, not because 1 have opinions. We would hope that the best journalists have opinions. But I was taken to task by the press, I got exasperated, and asked, 'What could I possibly do to the Joanne Nesti, who had been anchoring alone, and now shares the job with Moffett, was late for a rehearsal, and said a at- liv 1 1 I Globe file photo Benjamin Thompson's best-known work: Faneuil Hall Marketplace.

1 A fascination with friendship "Friendship is a lot like sex. Everybody wants to know how everybody else does It." Letty Cottln Pogrebin By Kay Longcope Globe Staff Who are our friends? How do we make them, and how long do they last? Are they a diverse group of people, or do they tend to reflect our own backgrounds and economic status? Are they old friends or new? Are our best friends women or men? To what extent does gender dictate the kinds of friendship we have? These were some of the questions Letty Cottin Pogrebin of New York asked herself in researching and writing a new book, "Among Friends: Who We Like. Why We Like Them, and What We Do With Them." Despite the depersonalization of society or perhaps because of it the topic of friendship sparks universal interest, says Pogrebin. "The remarkable thing is that the depersonalization of society and all the reasons we have not to pay attention to relationships turn us toward each other. Everybody's an expert on friendship because it's something we've been doing all our lives." There's a flip sjde, she says.

"In our secret heart of hearts, most of us feel inadequate as friends." Pogrebin, 47, is a founding editor of Ms. and the author of "Growing Up Free" and "Family Politics." She also wrote, with Mario Thomas, the best-selling "Free to Be You and Me." She was Interviewed recently in Boston, the fourth of a 14-city cross-country swing to promote "Among Friends." Pogrebin says she became fascinated with friendship at a dinner party in which women and men forthrightly discussed the topic for hours, swapping stories about people with whom they have the closest ties. They discussed the importance of similarity of values and backgrounds and they talked about traits they most admired in friends: loyalty, honesty, and dependability. Without exception, however, people at the table voiced fears about not being "good enough" friends, each wondering how the others managed to maintain old friendships and make new ones. Many bemoaned time constraints caused by work and family or "significant other" relationships and the guilt they felt about not regularly being In touch with people they care about.

Several shared poignant memories of friends for whom they still grieved after ties were severed. Pogrebin says that when friendships end, as some inevitably do, we may be hurt or relieved. "Much depends on who did the terminating." She says we should "enjoy our friendships while they last without expecting them to last forever. Why feel guilty if we did nothing wrong?" She adds, however, that "if we can walk away from someone we once liked so much, does this mean people are disposable, replaceable like paper plates?" Life without a friend is death without a witness. George Herbert Pogrebin says she wrote "Among Friends" because she was going through an emotionally wrenching period of POGREBIN, Page 27 it Globe staff photoJoeuncl Letty Cottin Pogrebin: "We all think we should be capable of the 'perfect.