Comment by Julia Just. In 1836, an Act of Congress was passed requiring that a model "not more than 12" square neatly made," and a drawing be submitted along with all patent applications. Some of the results were on view a while back in an exhibit of nineteenth-century patent models at the Cooper...

The Talk of the Town Family Reunion by Gerald Jonas. Talk story about the origin of alumni reunions, and about the Rockefeller University. George Vaill, of the Yale Class of 1935, explained that the first alumni reunion took place in New Haven in 1824, and it was a "fund-raising device." 35 out of 69 grads came to that first...

Dancing by Arlene Croce.

Concert Records / Popular Music by Winthrop Sargeant.

Fiction What the Twister Did by William Franzen. While Daryl Eckner, the barber, was trimming the writer's sideburns, the writer thought that he saw the ring pull from a window shade hanging down from his glasses. Then it was gone. Ever since the big Palm Sunday tornado, the writer had been seeing odd things. No one was hurt...

Musical Events by Andrew Porter.

Fiction Getting Serious by Theodore Weesner. Matt Wells, a young white boy, meets a black girl named Vanessa Robbins in school. She is the first girl who ever flirted with him. While shopping downtown with his friend Cormac, he sees Vanessa again. She's with another black girl named Barbara. Cormac teases Matt because Vanessa is black...

The Sporting Scene THE OPEN'S FOURTH VISIT TO WINGED FOOT by Herbert Warren Wind. THE SPORTING SCENE about this year's U.S. Open, played at the Winged Foot Golf Club in Westchester, and won by Frank Urban (Fuzzy) Zoeller, in a playoff with Greg Norman, of Australia. Tells about the three previous Opens, also played at Winged Foot. They took place in 1929, 1959, and...

Around City Hall AROUND CITY HALL FIRST, THE GOOD NEWS by Andy Logan. Last Janury, Mayor Koch, Police Commissioner Benjamin Ward, and others convened at the Pitt Street police station, on the Lower East Side, to announce an all-out war against the drug market in the neighborhood. Ward said that the purpose of the program, whose formal name is Operation Pressure Point...

Books by Naomi Bliven.

The Talk of the Town Nature and All That by William McKibben. Talk story about the EcoSphere, a five inch glass ball full of water containing some shrimp, algae, and bacteria. It is sold for two hundred and fifty dollars by the Washington-based Center for Environmental Education. A scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory developed the sphere. "Essentially, you are holding...

U. S. Chronicles MYSTERY MONEY by Calvin Trillin. U.S. CHRONICLES about a case in Texas determining the ownership of almost half a million dollars that had been discovered in 1977 in the possession of two teen-aged boys from Alice, Texas. They had been stopped by police in Waco for making an illegal turn in a new Thunderbird...

The Talk of the Town by Jane Boutwell. Talk story about the making of a record of the new Stephen Sondheim-James Lapine musical "Sunday in the Park with George." Writer spoke with Thomas Z. Shepard, who is the head of RCA's classical division, who was mixing the recording. "In recording 'Sunday,' we've made a number of technical...

Poetry Marigolds by Jill Hoffman. Each morning Great Birnam Wood/walks in a dense troop...

Poetry Three Poems From Japan by Brad Leithauser. Together waking to the smell/of new mats beneath us, we find our...