Pittsburgh Post-Gazette from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania • Page 39

SECTION I 1 DAVE 3tr BARRY Good for whatever ails vou 1 4 v1'' 4 2 Lake FongPost-Gazelte helps find "the profound silence within." Slow-motion photo captures a Buddhist group in C-' fT fl ypprtf SIS appeal as a religion lifestyle attracts followers Friendship during walking meditation, which monial aspects of Buddhism," said the 34-year-old bookstore manager from Shadyside. "They want an opportunity to get re-centered and refocused, which is what Buddhism provides." Named from a poem in T.S. Eliot's "Four Quartets," Stillpoint practices a Japanese-influenced Zen Buddhism, which uses seated and walking meditation to return to "the profound silence within," Walshak said. "When you get to that place, you come to see your situation exactly as it is, without feeling the need to control or change things. By accepting reality, you are free to live completely in the moment and to live without fear." Stillpoint's founding member, Neal Griebling, a 55-year-old health system planner and Mount Washington resident, believes people are drawn to Buddhism because "they want to relieve suffering and they want to derive meaning from their lives." While Buddhism can have therapeutic value, he said, "it is clearly a spiritual practice." "Buddhism has very few rules, so it ap Buddhism's and a peals to the American sense of individuality and personal freedom," said Deborah Drape, 49, of Valencia, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Pittsburgh.

She is also a member of Three Rivers Dharma Center, which practices the Tibetan Buddhism actor Richard Gere has helped make famous. The Three Rivers Dharma Center will help sponsor the Dalai Lama's visit to Pittsburgh this November. Through meditation, Buddhists seek to develop charity, wisdom, compassion and awareness for the good of the self and others. Suffering is eased, they say, when we give up selfish desires. Groups generally form around spiritual leaders who spread the teachings of Buddha, an Indian religious philosopher who lived around 500 B.C.

As Buddhism migrated from India to Tibet and China and, later, to Japan and Korea, it assumed different cultural characteristics, from which various practices formed. Most Pittsburgh Buddhist groups meet in SEE MEDITATION, PAGE 2 By Deborah Weisberg Post-Gazette Staff Writer Pj ankWalshak says his sextuple II can uypass surgery lasi year was more like high theater than high anxiety. That's because he adopted a spiritual practice that's new to him but older than Christianity. Like a growing number of Americans, Walshak has embraced Buddhism. "Buddhism teaches you awareness and acceptance," said the Bethel Park public relations executive.

"Instead of fighting it or denying it, I was able to watch my hospital experience as a kind of unfolding drama." Walshak, 59, belongs to Stillpoint, one of 10 member groups of the Buddhist Society of Pittsburgh. At the heart of Stillpoint's practice and almost every Buddhist practice is meditation. It is what draws most people to Buddhism, according to Stillpoint member Tim Boyle. "Americans are not interested in the cere ecently I was lying on the sofa and watching my favorite TV show, which is called, "Whatever Is on TV When I'm Lying on the Sofa." I was in a good mood until the commercial came on. It showed an old man (and when I say "old man," I mean "a man who is maybe eight years older than I helping his grandson learn to ride a bicycle.

I was watching this, wondering what product was being advertised (Bicycles? Dietary fiber? and the announcer said: "Aren't there enough reasons in your life to talk to your doctor about Zocor?" The announcer did not say what "Zocor" is. It sounds like the evil ruler of the Planet Wombax. I figure it's a medical drug, although I have no idea what it does. And so, instead of enjoying my favorite TV show, I was lying there wondering if I should be talking to my doctor about Zocor. Television has become infested with commercials for drugs that we're supposed to ask our doctors about.

Usually the announcer says something scary like, "If you're one of the 337 million people who suffer from parabolical distabulation of the frenulum, ask your doctor about Varvacron. Do it now. Don't wait until you develop boils the size of fondue pots." At that point, you're thinking, "Gosh, I better get some Varvacron!" Then the announcer tells you the side effects. "In some patients," he says, "Varvacron causes stomach discomfort and the growth of an extra hand coming out of the forehead. Also, one patient turned into a lemur.

Do not use Varvacron if you are now taking, or have recently shaken hands with anybody who is taking, Fladamol, Lavadil, Fromagil, Havadam, Lexavon, Clamadam, Gungadin or breath mints. Discontinue use if your eyeballs suddenly get way smaller. Pregnant women should not even be watching this commercial." So basically, the message of these drug commercials is: 1. You need this drug. 2.

This drug might kill you. I realize that the drug companies, by running these commercials, are trying to make me an informed medical consumer. But I don't WANT to be an informed medical consumer. I liked it better when my only medical responsibility was to stick out my tongue. That was the health-care system I grew up under, which was called "The Dr.

Mortimer Cohn Health Care System," named for my family doctor when I was growing up in Armonk, N.Y. Under this system, if you got sick, your mom took you to see Dr. Cohn, and he looked at your throat, then he wrote out a prescription in a Secret Medical Code that neither you nor the CIA could understand. The only person who could understand it was Mr. DiGiacinto, who ran the Armonk Pharmacy, where you went to get some mystery pills and a half-gallon of Sealtest chocolate ice cream, which was a critical element of this health-care system.

I would never have dreamed of talking to Dr. Cohn about Zocor or any other topic, because the longer you stayed in his office, the greater the danger that he might suddenly decide to give you a "booster shot." We did have TV commercials for medical products back then, but these were non-scary, straightforward commercials that the layperson could understand. For example, there was one for a headache remedy I think it was Anacin that showed the interior of an actual cartoon of a human head, so you could see the three medical causes of headaches: a hammer, a spring and a lightning bolt. There was a commercial for a product called "Serutan." I was never sure what it did, but it was definitely effective, because the announcer came right out and stated and the Food and Drug Administration has never disputed this claim that "Serutan" is "natures" spelled backward. You, the medical consumer, were not required to ask your doctor about any of these products.

You just looked at the commercial and said, "A hammer! No wonder my head aches!" And none of these products had side effects, except Gleem, which attracted the opposite sex. I miss those days, when we weren't constantly being nagged to talk to our doctors, and we also didn't have a clue how many grams of fat were in our Sealtest chocolate ice cream. Life was simpler then, as opposed to now, when watching TV sometimes makes me so nervous that I have to consume a certain medical product. I know it's effective, because it's "reeb" spelled backward. Dave Barry is a humor columnist for the Miami Herald.

Still a deli, with chutzpah on the side deli's next chapter, the community's emotional alarms were going off as if he had rented a billboard. After just one week in business, the 39-year-old Squirrel Hill native is renovating and training staff under an onslaught of tough expectations. "Where's the pickled herring?" a woman asks Bennett while he is giving an interview. He assures her the deli will restock the pickled herring: "We're just out right now." The change from Rhoda's to Kazansky's came about a year after SEE RHODA'S, PAGE E-2 By Diana Nelson Jones Post-Gazette Staff Writer or 70 years, a delicatessen has occupied the southeast corner of Murray Avenue and Douglas Street in Squirrel Hill. For almost 28 of those years, until earlier this month, it was Rhoda's, named for Rhoda Shugerman, who owned it with her husband, Robert.

On June 2, Brian Bennett was the new guy, welcoming everyone to Kazansky's. For all the hopes he had of quietly penning the first drafts of this old fZh Ml -t -J .1 .1 Annie O'NeiliPost-Gazette Steve Hoffman, an eight-year employee of Rhoda's in Squirrel Hill, shows a customer sliced turkey. After 28 years the deli has changed hands and name it's now Kazansky's. THE REEL STORIES post-Gazcttc Wednesday, June 24, 1998 INSIDE Geraldo Rivera Geraldo Rivera has been tapped by NBC's "Today" show to travel to China and cover President Clinton trip. The decision is not without controversy.

TELEVISION, PAGE E-8. Many area youngsters, including this month five Teen Forum panelists, already have decided whether they will leave or live and work in Pittsburgh. TEEN FORUM, PAGE E-3. Even though the Shakespeare Fest is dead, summer will still bring a bit of the Bard to Pittsburgh. CHRISTOPHER RAWSON, PAGE E-4.

Former Nickelodeon show host Marc Summers joins a panel at the Lawrence Convention Center tomorrow to discuss obsessive compulsive disorder. Medication and therapy have helped Summers control the disorder symptoms. PEOPLE PAGE E-5. ALSO INSIDE Life Support E-5 DearAbby Kids' Corner Horoscope E-7 I OOP t's all about access or the lack thereof. Woody Allen, above, gave noted documentary filmmaker Barbara topple carte blanche to record every moment of the 23 days she spent with him as he traveled through Europe on a concert tour with his jazz band.

What emerges in "Wild Man Blues," which opens in Pittsburgh this week, is an intensely personal portrait of Allen. But no less powerful is Nick Broomfield's "Kurt Woody Allen a fragile human By Barry Koltnow The Orange County Register I here is a telling moment in the new Barbara Kopple documentary, "Wild Man Blues," in which the real Woody Allen is revealed. In this scene, which takes place on the canals of Venice, Italy, we see the unedited and uncensored Woody Allen. This is not the Woody Allen of the movies. This is not the fearful, nebbish Woody Allen who has fumbled and stammered his way through countless comedy classics.

This is not oh, who are we kidding? it is exactly the Woody Allen we discover in the documentary. The real Woody Allen is the movie Woody Allen. The look of terror on his face as a tiny wave causes his boat to rock ever so slightly is the same look of terror we saw in most of his early comedies. And therein lies the brilliance of Kop-ple's film. The two-time Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker has laid bare the real Woody Allen.

And what she found was Alvy Singer of "Annie Hall." To be fair, Kopple said she uncovered that side of Allen only when he did not feel he was in control of his environment, which is only in those rare moments when he is actually living his life. Otherwise, he's in total control. "Woody is much more fragile and much SEE ALLEN, PAGE E-2 Mystery surrounds Cobain film and Courtney," which also opens here this week. And not only did Courtney Love refuse to cooperate with the British filmmaker's exploration of the death of her husband, grunge rocker Kurt Cobain, she did everything possible to suppress the film. In the accompanying stories, these two talented filmmakers talk about their subjects, their films and themselves.

allegedly used to kill himself and why Love according to the couple's nanny was obsessed with Cobain's will. "Strange things," Broomfield says. "I don't know what they add up to. You can't say she killed him. No one's been able to come up with the clincher for that accusation.

But there are a lot of questions that Courtney herself should answer. When she doesn't, it almost makes you think she does have something to hide." SEE COBAIN, PAGE E-2 By Glenn Whipp Los Angeles Daily News LOS ANGELES ick Broomfield doesn't believe Courtney Love murdered Kurt Cobain. But the British filmmaker does have doubts about events surrounding the grunge rocker's death in 1994, like why Cobain's body lay undiscovered in his own home for four days, why Love hired a Los Angeles detective from the Yellow Pages to find her husband, why there were no fingerprints on the gun he I.