MILESTONES

RECOVERING. THOMAS KEAN, 60, former G.O.P. Governor of New Jersey; from a balloon angioplasty to reopen a blocked artery; in Morristown, New Jersey. After Kean complained of chest pains, doctors sped the popular two termer into the operating room after determining he was dangerously close to a heart attack.

AILING. MARION BARRY, 59, mayor of Washington; from prostate cancer; in Washington. The controversy-dependent overseer of the nation's capital and his doctors insist the ailment was caught soon enough to ensure complete recovery.

AILING. JANET RENO, 57, U.S. Attorney General; from Parkinson's disease; in Washington. The no-frills lawwoman revealed that the progressive muscle affliction was diagnosed last month, but stressed that the condition is being controlled by medication--and underscored the point by extending a rock-steady hand.

DIED. RALPH BLANE, 81, Tin Pan Alley songwriter whose 500 titles include Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas and Meet Me in St. Louis; in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma.

DIED. JACK FINNEY, 84, writer; in Greenbrae, California. Finney's visions ran from a chilling depiction of conformity-as-horror in The Body Snatchers (1955), which spawned three movies, to the nostalgic Time and Again (1970), whose adman/time traveler found love, purpose and a sequel in the gaslit streets of Gilded Age New York.

DIED. SIMON RIFKIND, 94, lawyer and judge; in New York City. Rifkind fought for the cream of society and the wretched of the earth. As General Eisenhower's adviser on Jewish affairs, he pushed for aid to Holocaust victims and immigration to Palestine. As a star attorney, he represented Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis in actions against probing author William Manchester and prying photographer Ronald Galella.