WHAT BETTER place for a stage version of Dickens' "Christmas Carol" than Scrooge's old city of London. The production drew these opening comments from Financial Times critic Alastair Macaulay:
"To see Charles Dickens' 'A Christmas Carol' onstage is to know again, with a frisson of joy, how theatrical its author's instincts were.
"What, I wonder, would he have made of the coup de theatre with which the Royal Shakespeare Company's new version opens?
"The panoramic view of London in dark silhouette, dominated by the dome of St. Paul's, lifts yards into the sky -- and from the blackness beneath, there emerge people, also in black, in Bible black indeed, for Marley's funeral. . ."
And later describing a different scene: "The scene is watched by a chorus of Victorians in black, who sing 'Hark the herald angels sing' with warning fierceness. The melodramatic excitement, the psychological intensity, the sense of Christmas as a jubilantly lyrical experience that is being threatened by Scrooge -- all these are there together."
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THE AFFABLE and winsome Stuart Berger, chief of Baltimore County schools, called the other day by car phone, inviting a Sun editor to lunch.
The editor had written (on this page, Dec. 3) that the school system, stampeded by anti-cultural zealots, had canceled the "holiday meal" in school cafeterias for fear of giving offense to anyone.
That was an unauthorized blunder by an over-zealous underling, the genial and avuncular Dr. Berger explained. He asked the writer to join in a special holiday meal at Catonsville High School.
Alas, the colleague had to plead a prior engagement, but he is happy to set the record straight: A festive, nutritious and popular holiday meal was served -- and not only in Catonsville. Throughout the system, seasonal spirit thrives in the Baltimore County school cafeterias.
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Just how many caucuses are there in Congress now that House Republicans want to get rid of them? One roster includes the following:
Arts, Automotive, Black, Border, Women's Issues, Children and Families, Hispanic, Human Rights, Hunger, Narcotics Abuse, Populist, Rural, Space, Steel, Sunbelt, Textile, Older Americans and Congressional Travel and Tourism.
All those listed are "legislative service organizations" supported by more than $4 million in tax money. Also in this category are caucuses for the New York and Pennsylvania delegations, Republican and Democratic Study Groups, an environmental and energy conference, a Federal Government Service Task Force, a Northeast-Midwest Coalition and even a group for almost defunct moderate Republicans.