Comment by Stephen Cohen. Comment about Charles Hamilton Houston (1895-1950), a black lawyer who in many ways pioneered the idea of using the Constitution to promote racial justice. After graduating from Amherst College and Harvard Law School, Houston went to teach at Howard University Law School, later becoming its dean. He transformed an unaccredited...

The Talk of the Town The Sleep Room by Richard Cohen. Talk story about a room at the Ramada Hotel, across from Pennsylvania Station, that the New Jersey Transit keeps, in order to provide their train workers a place to get four hours "undisturbed rest," which is guaranteed by Federal Law. Writer dials a wrong number and is told he has...

The Talk of the Town Witnesses by Brendan Gill. Talk story about an exhibit at the New-York Historical Society that celebrates the design and construction of City Hall. Built in the early 19th century, City Hall was the highest structure in town. Sightseers paid to climb to the cupola for the view. In February 1802 the Common Council...

The Talk of the Town Dancers at the Bar by Joan Acocella. Talk story about Bob Crowl's painting of dancers from New York City Ballet and other companies, which hung over the bar at O'Neals' Baloon, across from Lincoln Center. The bar closed a year ago. Peter Martins was among the dancers who posed for the painting. Mike O'Neal, who co-owned...

Dance The Talk in Eliza's Kitchen by Lore Segal. Ilka has recently moved to Concordance, Connecticut, to work at the Concordance Institute. The director, Leslie Shakespere, and his wife, Eliza, take her under their wing. The story opens at a dinner party, where Ilka is smitten by Eliza and her entertaining stories and half-truths. The couple invite her...

Profiles REGISSEUR by Whitney Balliett. PROFILE of Julius Monk, 79, one of the most successful supper club impresarios who emerged after the end of Prohibition. Monk (no relation to Thelonius) came to Manhattan from North Carolina as a teenager. He took over the Ruban Bleu from Herbert Jacoby in 1942, ran it for 14 years...

Report from Turkestan by Robin Wright. An American official visiting Kazakhstan in September described President Nazarbayev as "way ahead of anybody else in Central Asia. A shepherd's son and former steel-worker, he had long been an advocate of power sharing between Moscow and the republics. He tried to help Gorbachev save face after the August...

Musical Events by Andrew Porter.

The Theatre GETTING CLOSER by Edith Oliver.

The Current Cinema BOY'S GAMES by Terrence Rafferty.

Around City Hall Seesaw by Andy Logan. Despite stories of New York's decline and imminent fall, New York is one of the few large cities outside the Sun Belt that gained residents in the early eighties. Yet in early 1989 it was pointed out, in an informal survey, that anyone who relied on the local tabloids might...

Books by Ethan Mordden.

Poetry Itemized Expenses (August Strindberg, 1849-1912) by Lars Gustafsson. Some twenty reams of Lessebo paper, the Beehive grade...

Poetry Day's Work by Eamon Grennan. Tiny through binoculars, three deer cross...