Monsters

It takes a statesman of Churchill's caliber to recognize that there are, unfortunately, despots, lunatics and occasions when diplomacy, discussion and debate are perceived as weakness, vacillation and appeasement and, in the end, cost more lives than had force been used judiciously earlier. Had the U.N. taken the initiative months ago and dispatched NATO tanks to the area to defend a new Maginot line, the Serbs would not have dared to breach it. Instead, these stationary sentinels are merely unemployed mechanical monsters, facing a nonexistent adversary and accumulating rust in Germany, while the military searches for a mission.

Dr. Robert A. Wilson's 30-year-old announcement--menopause can be cured! ("Feminists Face Off in War Over Menopause," Aug. 9)--reminded me that I faced menopause just about 30 years ago. Like Betty Friedan, I hardly noticed. I passed comfortably through the symptoms, maybe not all 26 of them, with minimal medication for a brief period. Rather than wage war over whether menopause frees or enslaves us, we ought to be waging war against ignorance about and fear of it. It is the fault of us oldsters that many young women still believe incorrectly that menopause signals the end of their sexual activity, that it converts their mirrors into monsters, that they will be relegated to the inactivity of a rocking chair.

When Elmo, by far the cuddliest of "Sesame Street's" monsters, first appears on the big screen, something alarming happens. He becomes, well . . . monstrous! On television, you don't mind it when he leaps in your face like a puppy who's glad you finally came home. But when he does the same in this feature-length setting, your first impulse is to duck and cover before you get a face full of red hairball. Mind you, this is subjective.

These acrylic lamps, while grounded, appear to float on air. Their ghostlike quality is a signature of the late Japanese designer Shiro Kuramata's work. Kuramata, whose lamps are being introduced to the American market by Yamagiwa Corp., designed furniture and residential and commercial interiors before his death in 1991. Even though he worked with materials such as transparent steel mesh, tinted acrylic and frosted glass, his deft handling of light and shadow in minimal form evokes an airiness.