A prep course for the month-long World Cup soccer tournament, a worldwide pheno

tion . She felt it was the gift that kept on giving , because it restored her gi

rlish figure without her having to do 200 sit-ups a night . Another friend I kno

w disappeared for a week and returned with a face that was taut where it had beg

un to sag . `` How do you like my face ? '' she asked me . `` I 've always liked

 your face , and I still do , '' I replied . There is something nice about age l

ines , even about wrinkles . It 's sad that for so many women these are hated si

gns of aging that translate in their minds into threats to their continued attra

ctiveness and , therefore , to their value . Those wrinkles on the forehead are 

really frown lines caused by deep thinking . Surely , there 's nothing wrong wit

h that . Those crinkles at the edges of their eyes are either the result of smil

ing or of squinting because they are too vain to wear their glasses . Both are t

he result of living . A lived-in face is a warm and comforting thing . This fixa

tion some women have with aging and their appearance gets in the way of their en

joying their progress through life . `` There 's no one more invisible than a mi

ddle-aged woman , '' one friend said to me . It was fun to be an ingenue , but b

eing 40-something has its value . Most days . I marvel at the things I 've learn

ed between my 20s and my 40s , the people I 've known , the children I 've had ,

 the jars of jam I 've canned , the stories I 've written , the places I 've bee

n . Looked at that way , those decades are achievement badges , the only kind li

fe hands out . I wouldn't want to go back . I know too much . Besides , there 's

 too much ahead to explore and experience . Still , I hedge my bets . I apply ey

e cream faithfully , hoping it will minimize the circles under my eyes . I wash 

away some of that gray . Why not ? I figure I 'm still holding the high ground b

ecause I refuse to lie about my age . Of course , my friend Holly , loyal pal th

at she is , took me out for my birthday and solemnly toasted my 39th once again 

. And I have to admit it had a nice ring to it .

 This fall , some American women seeking an abortion will be offered their first

 alternative to surgery : RU-486 , the abortion drug widely used in Europe and C

hina . The Population Council , a non-profit contraceptive research organization

 in New York , holds the American patent rights to the drug . It soon will selec

t sites for clinical trials required by the Food and Drug Administration before 

the drug can be made available to the public . The Population Council expects ap

proval in two years . RU-486 , manufactured by the French company Roussel Uclaf 

, is also used outside the United States as a contraceptive `` morning after '' 

pill which prevents a fertilized egg from implanting in the uterus after unprote

cted sex . This usage of the drug is being tested now at the University of Calif

ornia , San Francisco . As an abortion drug , however , RU-486 will be tested in

 conjunction with a prostaglandin pill ; the RU-486 , given first , makes the em

bryo detach from the uterus while the other stimulates the body to expel it . Th

e treatment , given during the early weeks of pregnancy , is painful and usually

 takes two to three days . A woman visits a doctor several times over the course

 of treatment . The benefits of using RU-486 include avoiding surgery and anesth

esia , permitting women to terminate pregnancy at an earlier stage and affording

 them greater privacy . It allows women to obtain an abortion from any physician

 who is trained in pregnancy and its complications rather than requiring them to

 travel to centers where surgical abortions are performed . Some women also beli

eve this non-invasive method gives them greater control over their bodies . A su

rgical abortion , on the other hand , takes less time , is slightly more effecti

ve 99 percent compared to 97 percent and requires fewer office visits . In addit

ion , women usually experience less cramping and notice a lighter blood flow tha

n they do with RU-486 . The French manufacturer recommends women who are over ag

e 35 , who are smokers and who have any other cardiovascular risks should not ta

ke RU-486 . The Population Council will conduct its clinical tests on 2,000 wome

n at as many as a dozen hospitals and clinics throughout the country . Women see

king an abortion at these sites will be offered a choice of RU-486 in lieu of su

rgery . Until this new treatment becomes more widely used , misconceptions may r

emain . Dr. George Huggins , chairman of the department of obstetrics and gyneco

logy at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center , one of the institutions applying 

to serve as a test site , recently considered some basic questions about the dru

g . Q : What is RU-486 ? A : It 's a compound that blocks the functioning of the

 progesterone hormone . Progesterone is necessary for the maintenance of pregnan

cy . Q : Why is more than one pill necessary to cause an abortion ? A : Prostagl

andins cause the uterus to contract and expel the pregnancy . Most of the protoc

ols today include giving prostaglandins one or two days after RU-486 . Q : Must 

women always take prostaglandins in addition to RU-486 ? A : If a woman just use

s RU-486 , the percentage completing the pregnancy termination by themselves is 

somewhere between 65 and 85 percent . Q : How long does it take to expel the emb

ryo after taking the prostaglandin pill ? A : Somewhere from six to 12 hours . Q

 : How far into a pregnancy can a woman use this method ? A : Up to 54 days from

 the first day of her last menstrual period . Q : What are the side effects ? A 

: There is a small incidence of prolonged bleeding of more than a day or so . Be

cause of the prostaglandins , a fair number of women get nauseated , have diarrh

ea and headaches while they are going through the abortion process . Q : What sh

ould a woman expect to feel physically ? A : This is a medical abortion , not a 

heavy period . A woman will have significant cramping and significant bleeding .

 It 's painful enough so that , in one study , 37 percent of the women needed to

 take some kind of pain medication during the process . Q : How much will this m

ethod cost ? A : I have no idea on cost yet . Q : What are the benefits of RU-48

6 over surgical abortion ? A : In some countries , surgical abortions are very e

xpensive . In France and in England , the health system requires that abortions 

be performed in hospitals and that patients stay overnight . That makes this met

hod much more convenient and less expensive . The major advantage to this method

 is in the developing world where many surgical abortions are not clean or are n

ot done with good equipment or the skill of the provider might not be of very hi

gh caliber . This will be significantly safer for those women . But that 's not 

true in the United States . Fortunately in the United States today , surgical te

rmination of early pregnancy is a very safe procedure and has a very low complic

ation rate . Some 90 percent of surgical abortions are done in outpatient facili

ties and patients go home in a couple of hours . This new procedure is going to 

be more time-consuming for the patients than a surgical termination . From a sta

ndpoint of cost and convenience , RU-486 is not going to have quite the same adv

antages as it does elsewhere. .. . I think it 's going to be more complicated th

an surgical termination . Q : Who do you anticipate will seek this treatment if 

it becomes available ? A : Most of the women seeking abortions in our ( Hopkins 

Bayview ) population are single . In the country , most of the women seeking abo

rtions are married . We have no idea who this is going to appeal to or even whet

her it will appeal to any specific segment of the population .

 Of Shostakovich 's harrowing symphonies , No. 8 may be the greatest . It used t

o be classified as the composer 's response to the horrors of World War II . But

 the piece was written as the Germans fled the Red Army after their collapse at 

Stalingrad and it has been argued more recently by Ashkenazy , among others that

 the Eighth is more generally about the tragedy of life in a totalitarian system

 and is filled with fears about the future . Certainly , it is Ashkenazy 's favo

rite among Shostakovich 's 15 symphonies , and this latest release ranks as one 

of the finest performances of the Eighth in modern sound . In fact , Ashkenazy '

s only genuine rival may be the great recording by his friend , Bernard Haitink 

, with the Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam . The Russian-born conductor und

erstands the context of this piece the brutally repressive realities of his home

land under Stalin and his successors . And like Haitink , Ashkenazy is not intim

idated by the structural complexities of the symphony , which begin with a gigan

tic and wrenching 25-minute adagio , continue with two savage but very different

 scherzos and yet another painfully searching slow movement and conclude with a 

strange fifth movement allegretto , which nearly tears itself apart with raging 

crescendos only to end with exhausted and otherworldly resignation . Ashkenazy '

s approach eschews flash for architectural strength : He holds the huge opening 

movement together , sustaining its tension and building inexorably to its shatte

ring climaxes . His interpretation of the pitiless third movement toccata , with

 its remorselessly repeated rhythmic figure , seems initially unexciting , but g

rows exhilaratingly to screeching satirical heights . And his pacing of the fina

l movement is masterly , suggesting the `` all passion spent '' of Milton 's tra

gic `` Samson Agonistes '' at the symphony 's equivocal close . Choosing between

 this recording ( which includes two short , moving tributes to Russia 's war de

ad as fillers ) and Haitink 's is difficult . The Dutch conductor 's great Amste

rdam players make Ashkenazy 's Londoners sound almost like a bunch of ragamuffin

s . But Shostakovich can take the rough and ready better than other composers . 

That is demonstrated by Bychkov 's recording of the Eighth with what may be the 

world 's greatest orchestra . The beautiful , polished-to-perfection playing of 

the Berliners is insufficient recompense for a first movement that is insufficie

ntly sustained , a third movement marred by rhythmic mannerisms and a final one 

that fails to solve the riddle of the coda . The best available recording of thi

s piece , however , remains the 1982 live performance ( Philips ) of what was th

en the Leningrad ( and is now the St. Petersburg ) Philharmonic under Evgeny Mra

vinsky , to whom the work was dedicated and who conducted its premiere . The sou

nd , while not great , is good , and the performance has a ferocity and convicti

on unmatched by any other save the same conductor 's long out-of-print , 1950s r

ecording , once available as an LP on the MK label . That earlier performance wi

ll probably resurface as a CD . And Shostakovich fanciers should be advised that

 another distinguished , older performance of the piece by Kurt Sanderling anoth

er close associate of the composer is scheduled for re-release on the Berlin Cla

ssics label .

 Not long ago , fax modems were exotic , expensive , cutting-edge technology . T

oday they 're standard equipment on many home and small business PC packages . I

n fact , it 's hard to find a modem today that doesn't have fax capabilities bui

lt in . Unfortunately , many users who have fax modems ignore their fax capabili

ties , passing up a handy , dual-purpose tool . Others buy fax modems thinking t

hat at $ 100 to $ 200 , they 're cheap substitutes for an honest-to-goodness fax

 machine , which is not the case . Most fax modems today have two functions . Th

ey can operate as standard modems for normal communications . They can run as fa

st as 14,400 bits per second ( bps ) . That 's the equivalent of 1,440 text char

acters a second , or enough to fill a computer screen in a second and a half . Y

ou can still find cheap modems that offer standard communications at only 2,400 

bps , but the cost of high-speed communication has come down so quickly that the

 increased performance is well worth the extra money . In addition to standard m

odem innards , fax modems have chips that emulate the transmission and receive c

ircuitry in standard fax machines . There 's a big difference between the two ty

pes of communication , even if they 're packaged in the same modem case . Let 's

 say you 're collaborating on a report or book with someone in another city . If

 you 're using the same word processing software , you can use a standard modem 

to send the actual file you 're working on . Your correspondent can call up that

 document , make changes , and send it back . When you fax a document , all you 

're sending is a picture , a collection of dots that means something to you beca

use your brain is smart enough to turn them into words and numbers . But those d

ots mean nothing to your word processor . Some high-end fax programs include opt

ical character recognition software that can turn those dots back into usable te

xt for your application programs , but the process is tedious and inaccurate at 

best . In facsimile mode , fax modems also differ from desktop fax machines in t

he source of the images they send and the destination of the images they receive

 . A desktop fax machine actually has three parts . There 's a scanner , which c

onverts documents into digital images ; a telephone and facsimile modem that tra

nsmits and receives those images , and a printer that reproduces the image on pa

per . No matter how much you pay for a fax machine , the basic technology inside

 is the same . That 's why different brands of fax machines can talk to one anot

her without so much as a hiccup . Instead of scanning existing documents , fax m

odems get their images from your computer . For IBM compatibles running older DO

S programs , this presents some difficulty . Memory-resident DOS fax programs ch

ew up memory , and because they lack font recognition technology , the output on

 the other end often looks as though it came from a cheap dot-matrix printer . F

or PCs running Windows and for Apple Macintoshes , fax modems are far more usefu

l . That 's because the fax software is installed as a printer driver - a progra

m that tells the computer 's underlying software how to communicate with a print

er . When you select the fax modem as your printer and print a document , your s

oftware will typically pop up a screen asking you for the phone number of the re

ceiving fax , or allow you to choose the number from a dialing directory . The p

rogram will dial the number and send the document with no further intervention .

 But there 's a big difference at the other end ; in fact a document faxed direc

tly will look like no other fax you 've ever seen . Your software essentially tr

eats the receiving fax as a 200 dot-per-inch printer . While it 's not quite up 

to laser standards , your document will come out with its fonts , graphics and l

ogos sharp and intact . By eliminating the middleman - the cheap scanners built 

into most fax machines - your fax modem delivers remarkable quality . This has m

ade fax modems a favorite with travelers using laptop computers . If you need a 

printed copy of a report stored on your PC , all you have to do is fax yourself 

a copy at your hotel or business destination . Fax receiving software typically 

runs in the background , alerting you when faxes come in . The faxes can be stor

ed on your disk , viewed on screen or printed . Some users like this because it 

saves trees . They can throw away junk faxes before they 're committed to paper 

. Fax modems generally come with basic software to make them work their magic , 

although more sophisticated fax programs provide more flexibility . Elementary f

ax programs may let you do little more than set up a phone directory of fax numb

ers , and that may be all you need . More sophisticated programs will automatica

lly send the cover page of your choice , transmit a scanned signature at the end

 of your document and allow you to set up groups of phone numbers for mass fax b

roadcasts . Now the downside . Not every document you 'll want to fax will be cr

eated on your computer . You may want to send a copy of a report from another de

partment , a magazine article , a drawing or diagram , or a copy of Aunt Rhoda '

s chocolate cake recipe . The only way to do this with your computer is to buy a

 full-page scanner at $ 700 to $ 1,500 and then master the scanning software . L

ikewise , a fax modem is no substitute for a shared fax machine in an office env

ironment where many people need to send and receive documents . And for those wh

o receive faxes at odd hours , I question the wisdom of leaving a $ 2,000 comput

er running around- the-clock to save the expense of a $ 300 fax machine . Even w

ith these limitations , fax modems are good buys , particularly for owners of Ma

cintoshes or PCs running Microsoft Windows . While they 're not complete substit

utes for regular fax machines , they 're convenient for sending documents create

d on your computer .

 You didn't work hard all your life just for the IRS to claim a big chunk of you

r savings after you die . Instead , you want to make sure your estate will be di

stributed to your heirs according to your wishes . That 's where trusts can help

 . But creating the right trust requires considerable planning and some tough de

cision-making . Put bluntly , trust planning requires you to mentally kill off e

very generation of your family , says Charles Groppe , a partner at the law firm

 of Putney , Twombly , Hall & Hirson in New York . The idea is to imagine who wo

uld be the beneficiary of your estate in different scenarios , depending on who 

dies first . This macabre mental exercise can become especially complicated if y

ou have been married more than once and have children from one or more of the ma

rriages . Imagine that a husband wants to provide for his new wife after he dies

 , but he also wants to be sure his children from a first marriage receive some 

inheritance after she dies . If he bequeaths his estate to his second wife , he 

has no assurance she will include his children in her will . The solution , says

 Lisa Berger , author of a book about retirement planning called `` Feathering Y

our Nest , '' is a Qualified Terminable Interest Property Trust , or QTIP . The 

husband sets up a trust so that after he dies , his wife will receive the income

 from the trust . He may even structure the trust so she has access to some of t

he assets at the discretion of the trustee who runs it . But she has no direct c

ontrol over the trust assets . After she dies , the remaining estate goes to the

 trust 's beneficiaries in this case , the man 's children by a first marriage .

 A word of warning : Depending on where you reside , you may not be able use a t

rust to prevent your surviving spouse from taking part of your estate outright .

 Trusts also can be useful if a father is worried that his children will squande

r their inheritance , or if he wants to specify how the inheritance can be used 

, such as for a college education . In that case , the father can set up a trust

 that will provide income for his children , but will be managed by a trustee ac

cording to his wishes . Parents of a disabled child may want to create a trust t

o be sure the child is adequately cared for after they die . If a trust is drawn

 up correctly , it can help shelter assets so that the child can continue to rec

eive government aid . Karen Greenberg , a financial planner in Baldwin , N.Y. , 

who specializes in financial advice for parents of disabled children , says that

 a special needs trust , or Escher trust , is a means of ensuring the disabled p

erson will qualify for government benefits , while still receiving income and pr

incipal from the trust for other `` quality of life '' items . Trusts are also c

ommonly used to reduce estate taxes . This is not usually an important considera

tion unless you have an estate worth more than $ 600,000 the threshold for feder

al estate taxes . That may sound like a lot of money . But by the time you add t

ogether the current value of your home , your pension plan , 401 ( k ) plan , li

fe insurance policy and other savings , you may have a much larger estate than y

ou think . You are allowed to deduct certain expenses from this total before you

 arrive at the amount used for calculating federal estate tax . They include suc

h things as funeral expenses , income taxes owed , and other bills that must be 

paid from the estate . Don't forget that in addition to federal estate taxes you

 may have to pay state estate taxes or inheritance taxes , or both . Five states

 have no inheritance tax on the recipient but instead levy taxes on the entire e

state , Berger says . The state 's threshold may be lower than for federal tax .

 The good news is that the IRS and most states allow an unlimited marital deduct

ion . That means no matter how large your estate , if you bequeath it to your sp

ouse , there will be no estate tax . However , the tax bite comes after your spo

use dies . Say for example , your estate is worth $ 1.2 million . You leave it a

ll to your wife so there is no estate tax . When she dies , however , half of it

 will be tax exempt and the other half will be subject to estate tax . And that 

can add up to quite a bite . Groppe says that in New York , for instance , the c

ombined federal and state estate tax on $ 600,000 is $ 240,000 . ( Begin optiona

l trim ) In this scenario , there is a way to avoid getting hit with any taxes .

 It 's often referred to as a bypass trust or a credit shelter trust . And it ba

sically works this way : When the husband dies , he leaves his wife $ 600,000 ou

tright . And he puts $ 600,000 into a family trust that will provide income for 

his wife as long as she lives . When she dies , she bequeaths $ 600,000 tax-free