Pictures

Let us now defend Meredith Vieira. The talented correspondent on CBS News' "West 57th" is being pilloried, vilified and excoriated because she posed for sexy pictures in Esquire magazine. The pictures are accompanied by a semi-facetious gush note which acclaims Vieira for her journalistic skills and professional prowess as well as for her appearance. It ends, jokingly, "Baby, baby, gimme some news!" Who wrote that? Little ol' me. I thought people would sense its strain of parody.

Immediately after Pearl Harbor, Japanese Americans and long-time residents of Japanese ancestry on the West Coast were assumed to be potentially disloyal. They were rounded up by the government and shipped first to temporary "assembly centers" and then to "relocation centers" in isolated western areas. Euphemism can't conceal the fact that these "relocation centers" were concentration camps and that the approximately 110,000 deportees were prisoners - in most cases of their own government.

It was one of many pictures Gertrude Hopkins took while on vacation in San Francisco. A couple of cable cars inching their way up a street to picture-perfect houses, leaving the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz in the distance. But for the 83-year-old painter, it was more than a picture. It was another scene to decorate Phoenixville Hospital. "It's for the patients," Hopkins said about her paintings. "But the staff gets a kick out of it, too, because they'll come by and say, 'That's nice.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, think of how many words there must be in English teacher Madeleine Weidel's classroom at Lenape High School. Although Weidel has her students hone their writing skills each day on the 15 computers in the classroom, she also encourages them to use those computers in another way - to take and develop pictures. "Computers let us bring words and pictures together," Weidel said. "It's all part of our efforts to integrate technology in all fields, from business to English.

Anyone who's ever been sightseeing knows that these days it's no longer good enough to just see the sight. You have to capture the image, take it home with you, get it developed, then try to figure out what your little finger is doing on top of the Eiffel Tower. For the last decade or so, tourists and their cameras have been as inseparable as yuppies and their humidors, whether they spring for a $10,000 set-up with a lens the size of Arizona or a $15 disposable number with an attached rubber band so they can wear the thing fashionably on their wrist.

Sometimes a great idea can hit you right in the face. That is what happened to Lori A. Frost, co-inventor of the Picture-Exchange Communication System. Frost was working as a speech pathologist with severely handicapped children when she realized traditional communication methods did not always work. "I was told by a school staff member to have an autistic child stuff envelopes. I handed her the envelopes, and she punched me in the nose," Frost said. "I realized that she had never learned to communicate, 'No, thank you.' Without that skill, she had no control of the situation.

When Bob Dole visited this Republican stronghold for an April 15 tax-cutting rally, a plainclothes Haverford Township police detective took photographs of local politicians and business owners as they met him. Two detectives spent two work days enlarging and printing about 150 of the black-and-white pictures in the police station's darkroom, according to police sources who requested anonymity. Local Republican leaders then distributed the pictures as mementos to those who had posed with the GOP presidential nominee-to-be.

Imagine that you are visiting your mother's house and you're poking around up in the attic when you come across a dusty shoe box tucked under the eaves, a box you don't remember from earlier forays into your past. Curious, you open the box to find that is filled with sheets of yellowing stationery, each sheet covered with your grandmother's distinctive handwriting. As you take out the top leaf you can almost hear her distant, quavering voice, but when you begin to read you recognize immediately that these words are written in the voice of a younger woman.

A strangely troubling photo record of the Vietnam War is about to be opened to the public at the Library of Congress. Burning fighter planes scream toward earth. American POWs bow in forced submission. Vietnamese gun crews strike heroic poses. But something is missing. There are no bodies in this new collection of hundreds of pictures taken by communist photographers. The Pentagon, which obtained the pictures during its search for information about those who disappeared during the war, is withholding access to photographs of dead Americans from all but their relatives.

"OK, lean on the back of the chair, arch your back, throw that right hand on your hip," photographer Fred Norwood cooed at the gorgeous young woman in tight jeans and a black sweater. "Now, look at me, chin down a little. Hold that. Nice," he said, getting a shot of her - golden curls tossed over a shoulder, sea-blue eyes boring into the camera - that's sure to make the boys swoon. Over the next hour, Amber Tressler would go from prom queen to pinup as she posed for scores of pictures in three outfits in Norwood's studio and on the gritty streets of Coatesville.