For the Victorian-look, use lace tree skirts on your large and tabletop trees, and use lacey cloths on tables, bookcases, and upholstery.

Lace-accented pillows and light, romantic scents in potpourri and candles will add to the mood. Greenery will play off well against the white, and a garland using sheer white ribbon, white flowers and evergreens will add beauty and texture.

For a contemporary look, layer crisp linens on tables, and cover sofas and chairs with white chenille blankets. Add comfort with plain white pillows. In the dining room, create a simple centerpiece using an urn and pearlized white ball ornaments glued into an upside down cone-shape (tree-shape). A white runner accented with silver or gold threads will dress-up the dining table, and can also be used to dress the mantle.

“You really want to watch how much anxiety they’re showing at home,” says Linger. “If they’re clingy, they’re not sleeping, are complaining of nightmares, maybe are having a lot of sudden anger outbursts, that might also be a sign of distress.”

MacIntyre adds that how children interact with friends or at school may also be tip-offs of trouble. “If parents notice that kids are changing from their daily routine — maybe the child has always been really involved and outgoing and now they don’t want to go out and instead want to stay home close to parents — that might be a sign they are really affected by what’s going on.”

“Or if they suddenly aren’t hungry or are mysteriously not feeling good, the first stop then should be the family doctor. But if they can’t find something physically wrong, it may be a sign that a child is churning emotionally over these events and it’s coming out through physical symptoms. That’s not at all uncommon for younger kids,” he adds.

If you’re having trouble gauging how your child is handling recent events, and wonder whether he or she might not be resting easy as Halloween approaches, Linger has a simple suggestion: Talk to your child.

“You might want to just come out and ask them, what do they want to do this year? Do they want to stick with the same traditions or change the traditions?”

“And the spin doesn’t even need to be in the context of what’s going on in the world. You can just suggest that since the child is getting older, you wondered if they still want to do the same activities,” she says.

“Kids in general will let you know and if you’re sensitive and available, then you will hear that from them,” she adds.

But, despite major malls across the country cancelling their “trick or treating” tradition this year, mental health experts say that going on with life — including Halloween — is one of the best ways parents can restore a sense of security and comfort in their kids’ lives.

Just be sensitive, they add.

“Routines and customary activities are really important to kids, and those events may be more important than ever with all the turmoil and chaos going on in the world,” explains Doctor, a child psychiatrist and associate professor of psychiatry at Albany Medical College in New York.

MacIntyre says abrupt changes in those routines, instead of fending off fear, can sometimes have the opposite effect of sparking a sense of alarm.

“Kids take a lot of cues from their parents’ reactions to things, so I would say for starters, people shouldn’t think they should cancel the usual holiday routines or things they like to do on Halloween,” he adds.

MacIntyre cautions, however, that parents should be sensitive if kids don’t want to participate in normal Halloween activities.

“If kids are expressing fears or apprehensions about going out in the dark or going out trick-or-treating, then by all means, don’t force the issue of doing it for the sake of getting back to normal. It really may be a reaction to the truly scary things that are going on around the world,” he says.

On the other hand, even if kids are frothing at the bit to dress up and hit the candy trail, parents may still want to exercise some extra sensitivity, adds Doctor, medical director of Child and Adolescent Services at the Center for Emotional and Behavioral Health, Indian River Memorial Hospital in Vero Beach, Fla.

“This obviously isn’t the year for us as a nation to be thinking about the most frightening of costumes — the Freddy Kreuger and gory characters from ‘Scream,’ or other similar masks that have been so popular in the past,” she says.

Linger notes that some communities have even decided to shift their festivities to All Saints’ Day, the day after Halloween, when people dress up as someone they greatly admire.

In the ’80s, parents and society began to view children as an asset. If we put a lot into their childhood, they would pay us back with great success later in life. Parents now enroll their children in academically oriented preschools before they are born. Some children are involved in so many activities they need a social director to keep track of them all. Most troublesome to me, schools are pressured to advance children a grade or more in school or to red-shirt a 5-year-old from kindergarten for a year to ensure she is bigger and smarter than the other children are.

All of these are symptoms of a society striving to create superkids. But have we forgotten to consider what is best for the children? Given a choice, would they choose to have so many structured activities? Did you?

I fear we have lost sight of how children develop intellectually, socially, physically and emotionally. No matter how advanced or mature we would like them to be, their development is on an inner time clock that neither parents nor society can change. It cannot be hurried.

This is one my last articles for the year, and so I decided to end it with my wish list for our children:

We again embrace our responsibility to protect children from harmful influences.

We allow children to have ample time to play and explore free from the structure imposed by adults.

We quit rewarding children for obligations like homework and household chores.

We give up our agendas for what we would like our children to be and return that right to the kids.

It is the responsibility of us all to see to it that the next decade will once again be one in which our children truly have a childhood.

And what a site it is. Noted one well-known Internet writer in an online discussion list, “Um, did they just throw it together last night? A more uninspired display of hypertext I haven’t seen since before Mosaic was invented.”

Indeed, a visit to the Dubya’s new site is like a trip back to the Net in the early days of 1994. Check it out at www.whitehouse.gov. (On the odd chance that they have managed an upgrade to the site since the early days of the presidency, you can check out a couple of the pages at www.jimcarroll.com/dubya/index.html.)

Then compare it to the Clinton site. In a remarkable display of digital preservation, the U.S. National Arch-ives is busy creating a time-based archive of the various Clinton Internet incarnations at clinton.nara.gov.

Take a look at the Clinton site of 1994, and then look at the Dubya site of 2001. It’s uncanny: the current White House has adopted Web design principles of 1994. In one fell swoop, Dubya has managed to proclaim to the world, loud and clear, that he and his team are but a bunch of technological dunces. A few bytes short of a program. A few memories short of a server. Sorry, but I can’t resist.

We’re supposed to believe that this guy is going to help drag the economy back from the brink of recession, yet he can’t throw together a Web site that even meets 1997 standards?

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. After all, his official campaign site stated that he would “accelerate e-government” and that “Governor Bush’s high-tech plan encourages both growth and opportunity.” Maybe he meant that he’d do his best to help get jobs for all those newly unemployed Webmasters of bankrupt dot coms. Gosh, even the many G.W. Bush parody sites look better than the new White House site. Maybe he should go and hire the designers who did the sites at www.gwbush.com, www.bushfordummies.com or www.bushlite.net.

OK, so I’m kind of raving about the new White House site. Granted, there were undeniably time pressures that led to this situation. And perhaps there might be a misunderstanding at work here too–maybe the Bush team, knowing that Al Gore invented the Internet, thought that Gore is so upset with them that he wouldn’t share the secret of Flash technology.

So what is the point to my ranting? Because it begs the question, if the leader of the free world isn’t really serious about the Web, are leaders in the corporate world? I’m still convinced that the answer is no.

Sure, browse Canadian Web sites, and you will find that, generally, most are relatively current in terms of design and actually are up to date with information content. So we’re way ahead of George W., right?

Wrong. Dig beneath the surface, and tremendous challenges still exist. I continue to find, and most surveys echo my sentiment, that many companies still ignore the e-mail support questions that I send them. Errors and problems within Web sites that would result in an outcry if they occurred in the “real world” seem rampant. While finalizing this article, for example, I found that I couldn’t access the accounts section of a Web site for a major bank for a period of over two days. And I just tried to sign into the Web site for a computer accessories supplier, only to find that all of my old account details had become–whoops!–inaccessible.

Sure, Web sites are looking great and often sport cool designs, but beneath the surface they are still ugly. The problem here is that while we might have the design elements nailed, we haven’t dealt with the infrastructure.

We’ve simply created a thin veneer on top of a shaky foundation, which doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. Organizations that refuse to pay proper attention to the infrastructure behind their sites might as well declare to their customers that they are technological nincompoops, and that they don’t care about the new Internet-empowered consumer. Heck, they might as well hang a sign on the home page that says, “Don’t do business with us. We don’t care about customer support or loyalty. We don’t give a hoot about the fact that you want to do business with us this way. Just leave us alone and go away.”

Corporate sites might not be as bad as the White House in terms of the design and the message that sends out, but by ignoring infrastructure, they are just as guilty.

First you need to remember that children don’t see a mess the same way adults see it. When we see clutter, we can organize it in our minds. Young children lack this ability. When they see toys spread out over a floor they see three times as many as there actually are. So the task of cleaning up all of those toys can be overwhelming to them.

Try teaching your children how to organize a mess by breaking down the task into small steps. Get them started by helping them pile all the like objects together — all the books, all the cars, all the blocks, all the dolls, etc. Then they can work on putting away one pile at a time.

Tips:
Children are more likely to keep their rooms tidy if you organize the space first.
Keep in mind that children need accessible storage space. If they don’t have low, open shelves, build some out of cement blocks and boards.
Use plastic baskets or boxes to separate items on the shelves. Label each box so they know what goes where.
Many children are young collectors. Help them organize their collections with scrapbooks, clear plastic boxes, shelves and bulletin boards.
Get kids into the habit of separating their laundry by providing labeled laundry bags for dirty clothes. The bags, which can be drawstring plastic bags or shopping bags with handles, should be labeled “light” and “dark.”
Give children smiles, hugs and verbal praise when they try to do a better job of keeping rooms neat. Specifically describe the ways they are doing better so that your praise is meaningful.
A chart (or calendar) and gold stars or stickers can be very motivating.
Set a goal. Plan a reward that kids will receive after a certain number of terrific weekly room inspections.

Childhood home Ivana: Gottwaldov, Czechoslovakia; Martha: Nutley, New Jersey.

Youthful passions Ivana: Skiing — her father enrolled her in a Communist training camp for child athletes at age 12; Martha: Cooking, gardening, homemaking.

College Ivana: Charles University, Prague; Martha: Barnard College, New York City.

Children Ivana: Donald Jr., Ivanca, Eric; Martha: Alexis.

First book Ivana: “For Love Alone”; Martha: “Entertaining.”

Best known for Ivana: Painfully public divorce from Donald Trump; Martha: Her flaky pie crust.

In her own words Ivana: “If people see your weaknesses they will take advantage of them”; Martha: “It’s a good thing.”

In someone else’s words Donald Trump, Ivana’s ex-hubby: “Ivana built a cottage industry on my back”; Jerry Oppenheimer, Martha’s unauthorized biographer: “Martha’s not the doyenne of domesticity, but more like Betty Crocker from Hell.”

Early career Ivana: Model; Martha: Model.

Last seen Ivana: Paying homage at the spring ’99 fashion shows; Martha: Cleaning out the gutters.

There will be some changes. Remember Mr. Judge? He has told Mr. Garry not to have people demonstrate handgun safety on this show anymore. Instead we are going to do fun stuff like go to The Art Museum.

This is it. You can tell by all of the sculptures and paintings. Well, you can also tell because that is what the sign says on the building.

Actually, from the looks of some of this stuff, if the sign did not tell you, you might not know. This sculpture right here looks like an alien somebody shot a cannonball through. The sculptor called it ‘Dancing Nude.’ So maybe it is an alien nude dancer that somebody shot a cannonball through. Mr. Garry would probably shoot something at an alien nude dancer if he saw one, only Mr. Judge would not let him.

Years ago, Mr. Garry saw statues like ‘The Thinker.’ It looked like a man who was thinking. He did not look like he was thinking: ‘who shot a cannonball through my gut?’ That was a statue by some Greek guy, or maybe he was Italian. The only thing was, lots of the Greek statues were nudes and they looked it. So maybe ‘The Thinker’ was thinking: ‘where did I leave my clothes?’

There was another statue called ‘Venus de Milo’. Do not confuse her with the woman who played Lily Munster. She was Yvonne DeCarlo. You can tell them apart because ‘Venus DeMilo’ did not have a head or arms. Lily Munster did. Lily Munster moved around. Venus DeMilo did not.

Maybe ‘The Thinker’ was in the same place with ‘Venus De Milo’ and he was thinking: ‘wonder what happened to her head and arms?’ One thing Mr. Garry does remember is that ‘The Thinker’ was never on ‘The Munsters’.

Mr. Garry seems to remember that the guy who made ‘The Thinker’ was named Rodan. There was a Japanese movie by a similar name but it was not about an artist. It was about a monster and everyone knows monsters don’t make statues; they crush them. Rodan the monster was never on ‘The Munsters’ either.

That is an idea, Boys and Girls. Maybe we should go to the Japanese Monster Movie Mania festival because Mr. Garry sure doesn’t see much art here. This section here is called “The Avant Garde’ section and what it is is stuff most people would call crap. People who look at it are supposed to get a message from it or something like that. The message Mr. Ornery gets is: ‘this guy can’t even make a sculpture that looks like an alien somebody shot a cannonball through.’

Mr. Garry heard about one of these exhibits in London. It had ashtrays full of cigarette butts. There were beer cans and pop cans,or bottles, and coffee cups. A janitor saw it and threw it all away. He sounds like a smart man because if that stuff is art, Mr. Garry could hold museum tours after one of his poker nights with the guys. If Mr. Garry had tried to tell Mrs. Ornery it was art, the mess we made, she would have said, ‘it’s a load of garbage.’

Maybe that was what happened to ‘The Thinker’s’ clothes. Maybe he lost them in a poker game. Maybe he was thinking: ‘I shouldn’t have tried to fill that inside straight.’

“Oh, good,” I yawned, anticipating a false alarm and a groggy morning commute. “Call me back when things look more definite.” I expected to hear from her on Saturday. But I wasn’t asleep for long. Two hours later, Hugh called me from his car phone. Cassandra was in the midst of a contraction, unable to speak. And they were on their way to the Birth Center.
Still not quite believing, I pulled on my clothes and grabbed my camera. It was a warm April night, and there was no traffic. A pleasant, relatively speedy drive. At about 4:45, Hugh unlocked the Birth Center door and let me in. “She’s in the jacuzzi,” he whispered.

I stashed my things and headed for the bathroom. I found her on her hands and knees, rocking gently in the rolling waves. On arrival, she had been 6 cm dilated. Her midwife smiled gently, as she unobtrusively reached beneath the bubbles and intermittently monitored the baby’s heartbeat with a waterproof doppler. “She’s doing great,” she said.
I sat down on the floor. “Do you want some back pressure?” I asked her. She nodded, so during the next contraction, I applied the heel of my hand to the small of her back as she rocked and moaned softly. It helped, she said.
But it wasn’t long before everything started to annoy her. The contractions had turned themselves up a notch, and they were just short of overwhelming. She needed her hair tied back. She needed the sweat wiped from her forehead. She needed the jacuzzi turned off. She wanted the back pressure stopped. And without warning she felt something she hadn’t felt with Patrick. She felt an overpowering urge to push.

She seemed surprised. This magnificent urge was new to her. When she labored with Patrick, her midwife determined that she was 10 cm dilated and gave her a choice to either begin pushing or wait until she felt the urge. She chose to push. She never really experienced that awe-inspiring moment of relinquishment, that undeniable surge of control taken by some higher force. She never experienced the inevitability of birth. This time was different. She had no choice but to surrender.
And surrender she did. Gracefully. Beautifully. Did you expect anything less? She relaxed into her body and let it do its work. Between contractions, Hugh and I helped her out of the tub and into the adjoining bedroom. She positioned herself as comfortably as possible in a semi-reclined position. We helped her arrange her pillows. She pushed with a determination born of abandon, a strength born of letting go. And between pushes, she rested. She rested so deeply that she actually dozed off at the fall of each contraction, awakening gently with the rise of the next.

Walter was born at 5:32 on a Thursday morning. He weighed 7 lb. 13 oz. Riding the crest of an inspired surrender, he oozed out slowly and deliberately, amniotic membrane still intact. The midwife nicked the membrane lightly with an amnihook, whereupon it peeled back around his emerging head to reveal an alert, ancient-eyed creature with straight black hair and a kitten’s gentle cry. He nursed strongly about 15 minutes after birth. He is amazing. So is his mother.

Have you ever been somewhere and realized it had a hold on you? Until a trip to Oregon, our favorite beaches were in Washington State. The small coastal town of Cannon Beach, the Carmel, California, of Oregon changed that. Little did I realize that we’d be so drawn to this town.

Cannon Beach is located on the Oregon Coast south of Seaside, a young-at-heart mecca for tourists who like the boardwalk beaches of yesteryear and the touristy atmosphere. Cannon Beach is more of a small-town atmosphere with some unique downtown shops and galleries winding through an up-and-down town.

It’s home to Haystack Rock, the third largest monolith in the world. Listed as a Marine Garden, a protected area, it towers at 235 feet above sea level. Haystack Rock Awareness Program was formed to educate people about the fragility of the area. Guided tours are planned if you’re interested in seeing the marine life there; obtain copies of tour times and information at the Chamber of Commerce or businesses in the area. You’ll be treated to an eye-feast of anemones, starfish, nudibranches and chitons, for example.

The monolith attracts birds. Tufted Puffins nest on the rock in the summer, as do Pelagic Cormorants. Western Gulls and Pigeon Guillemots reside in the area, so it’s a great birding opportunity for birdwatchers of photographers.

Our greatest experience here was the European-style Stephanie Inn where we stayed. Tucked below a hill south of town, the only four-star Inn in the area caters to every need. This smoke-free, pet-free Inn does not allow children under 12, it’s also a quiet place to relax and enjoy the area.

The cookie jar is always full and coffee is on 24-hours-a-day, so you may partake of the goodies while you wait to be checked in (they are usually busy around 4:00 p.m. check-in time). There are 46 rooms at the Inn and four one-bedroom Suites at the Carriage House nearby. Most rooms include a Jacuzzi tub (ours was heart-shaped), fireplace, air conditioning, a VCR with free movie rentals, a wet bar stocked with complementary soft drinks and bottled water, silk-terry robes and turndown service.

Dinner is a gourmet four-course affair if you choose to eat at the Inn. We didn’t make reservations and by the time we realized we made a mistake, there were no tables available.

A complementary late afternoon Oregon wine and Tillamook cheese tasting is part of the experience in the library and chart room. Get comfortable in leather and wicker furniture overlooking the ocean. Since this was a vacation I didn’t write down the wines we tasted, but they were supreme. We enjoyed talking with other folks from all over the world. Most come back yearly (at least).

The Inn has a lot of different packages, like a honeymoon package with champagne, flower petals in your bed, a keepsake heart box of chocolates, a candle, confetti bubble bath, balloons and a bow on your door. An anniversary package is similar with two Stephanie Inn keepsake wine glasses in a Stephanie Inn wine box, etc.

The Inn has birthday packages, a romance package and a coastal comfort package which includes a one-hour body massage (there is a massage therapist on site – make reservations ahead so you won’t be disappointed) and other delights. You may obtain a complimentary pass to Cannon Beach Athletic Club if you desire. There is bell service, a masseuse and downtown shuttle service if needed. Though hilly, we found it a pleasant walk to town. Our town dinner included a tasty calamari steak and fish and chips, then a pleasant sunrise walk back to the Inn.

In the morning enjoy a satisfying, complementary gourmet breakfast. It’s served in the private dining room where supper is also served. We ate heartily on an egg dish, potatoes or pancakes, fresh fruit of every sort, hot full-grain oatmeal, pastries (usually there may even be some dessert left from the dinner the night before – I got to taste their wonderful cheesecake I missed when we couldn’t get dinner reservations). It’s served buffet style.

We hated to check out, but when the time came we were given more cookies for the trip home and some snacks, along with two bottles of water. We came for the beach but ended up staying for the accommodations; they’ll bring us back next year. If you’re interested, don’t wait to make reservations for a room and dinner; they’re often booked months ahead.

Oh, and do enjoy the lovely beach while there.