Pollen

One morning last week, a new product was being touted on the chalkboard on the sidewalk in front of Le Petit Mitron, the anomalous patisserie francaise across from the R-5 SEPTA station in the borough of Narberth. Henceforth, in addition to its celebrated croissants, its quiches and fresh-baked French pastries, it would be carrying the local honey of one Scott T. Bartow - "exclusivly. " The word had been slightly truncated, perhaps to fit as the chalk-writer ran out of room.

I'VE NEVER been one to make New Year's resolutions. I prefer my failures in small increments, so I make my resolutions weekly, and they usually come at the urging of my wife. How does it work, you ask? Well, sometimes she corners me at dinner, mere moments after the children have welcomed me home like a conquering hero. "Solomon, when are you gonna vacuum the inside of that car?" she'll ask, knowing that I must commit to doing it, or risk shattering the little ones' view of their father.

  Question: For many years we have painted our front steps. They are in very bad shape, and the paint is starting to peel and chip. We have power-washed them to remove the loose paint. I'd like to know the best and easiest way to remove the rest of the paint. Answer: You didn't say whether these steps were concrete or wood. Concrete is definitely more difficult because it is porous and paint tends to seep into the material itself, very much as it does to brick fireplaces and exteriors.

The trees are swollen with delicate leaves, the grasses are a deep green, the afternoons are soft and warm. And for people like Karen Gallagher, it doesn't get much worse. Gallagher and legions of others with pollen allergies have suffered through the most brutal week of the season, and next week doesn't look much better. "This is one of the worst weeks we've had in a long time," Donald J. Dvorin of the Asthma Center said yesterday from his office in Forked River, N.J. "Everybody is complaining.

The official snack food for the 1987 Pan American Games in Indianapolis is really something to sneeze at, particularly if you have allergies. Officials of the Indianapolis office of the Food and Drug Administration say the Buzzin bar could create special problems for people allergic to ragweed because the 1.3-ounce bar contains 300 milligrams of pure bee pollen. "Bee pollen does have ragweed in it, and if you are allergic to ragweed, you could have a severe reaction," said Lilyan M. Goossens, consumer affairs officer for the FDA at Indianapolis.

On a roof seven stories above Broad Street, Donald Dvorin plucks a tiny tube out of a whirring contraption and tries to figure out whether it's going to be a sneezy, eye-watering day. The views of City Hall and One Liberty Place are spectacular on this warm, sunny morning, but Dvorin's attention is focused on hundreds of tiny specks inside the plastic tube. He carries the tube down to the third floor of his Hahnemann University laboratory and spends the next 45 minutes examining its contents with a high- powered microscope.

Everywhere you look, people are sneezing. Rubbing their eyes. Rubbing their noses So many people have allergies - an estimated 35 million Americans with pollen allergies - that it makes you wonder. Maybe we're falling apart. As a group, that is. "No, I don't think we're evolving into a weak species," said Dr. Marc Goldstein, Hahnemann University allergist and clinical immunologist. "Our environment is becoming more hostile. We're living in air-polluted environments, outdoors and indoors.

Tony Reese of Cherry Hill would walk a mall to stay in shape. Tanned and trim and 73, Reese kept a brisk pace on a recent spring morning, marveling as the sun poured like juice through a skylight and spilled onto the freshly waxed marble floor. "Pleasant conditions, the most pleasant conditions," Reese remarked as he ambled along on his daily five-mile jaunt at the Cherry Hill Mall. "The temperature never changes in here. It's marvelous. The time goes by very quickly. " Ask him if he would rather walk outside, and Reese talks of cold gusts and car exhaust.

You're suffering. My, how you're suffering. Eyes swelling. Nose running. Why didn't anyone tell you today was going to be miserable? Ah, but now there's relief - or at least warning - coming right out of Plymouth Meeting and into your computer. It's Pollen.com, and it promises the allergy-plagued among us a better day. "What we've found is that people with pollen allergies are an extremely passionate audience," said Peter Jensen, vice president for Internet business development for Surveillance Data Inc., Pollen.

Thanks to the damp spring and the dry summer, it's been a bad year for allergy and asthma sufferers. "It's been terrible," said Myra Sarubin, a computer engineer from Mount Laurel, Burlington County. "I've always had allergies," she said. "I've had asthma on top of that since the late '60s. " And with that background, she said, this year has "definitely been the worst that I've experienced. " Sister William Catherine Brannen, a second grade teacher in Bryn Mawr, has been allergic to ragweed for three decades.