Etc...

Just don't call me a flower girl

In her distinguished career, actress Della Reese is used to prestigious honors. Her star appears with those of other entertainment greats in the Hollywood Walk of Fame. And between them, the NAACP and Family Television Awards have cited her four times for her role in the TV series "Touched By an Angel." But now she's in line for a truly rare distinction: On Jan. 3, she'll join Britain's Queen Elizabeth II, country music singer Dolly Parton, the late President Kennedy, and Diana, Princess of Wales, in having a rose named for her. The "Della" is deep burgundy in color. "Like people," she said on learning the news, "each [rose] is uniquely individual and beautiful."

Renowned architect Frank Gehry, winner of the 1989 Pritzker Prize (architecture's Nobel), has a significant new client, the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. His assignment: to collaborate with the Norwegian firm Snohetta to design the performing arts center at the World Trade Center site. He didn't enter the competition for the memorial on the site or the towering skyscraper that will replace the Twin Towers. Although he isn't a New Yorker, his father was born in Hell's Kitchen, the famous midtown Manhattan neighborhood. Curvaceous structures of steel and titanium are Gehry's trademark. Among his notable projects, and the cities (and places) where they're located:

Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Spain
Walt Disney Concert Hall Los Angeles
Jay Pritzker Pavilion Chicago (Millennium Park)
Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y. (Bard College)
Experience Music Project (rock-'n'-roll museum) Seattle
Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum Minneapolis (University of Minnesota Twin Cities campus) - Associated Press