Comment by William McKibben. City authorities recently announced that a 100,000 dollar program will paste decals over the windows of burned-out buildings in the South Bronx in order to improve the appearance of the buildings. Decals will show flower pots, curtains and blinds, designed to give the impression that the buildings are not...

Books Grand Design for Futility by William Pfaff.

The Talk of the Town Bloomsbury Unbuttoned by Natacha Stewart. Two-part Talk story about a group of distinguished French intellectuals who performed Virginia Woolf's play "Freshwater," in French at the N.Y.U. Theatre. Director Simone Benmussa & her company, L'Espace Theatrical, was responsible for bringing the play to N.Y. It was performed once at the Center Pompidou on, Dec...

Comment by Jonathan Schell. It's a strange feature of journalistic life today that the greatest"story"of our time-the possible self-extermination of mankind in a nuclear holocaust-is one that, by its very nature, can never be written. The time to file our reports, to write our headlines, to raise our monuments...

Fiction Grounded by Peter Cameron. David's mother calls him, saying "it's time for the big move," referring to David's grandmother. She's moving out of the house in Connecticut that she has lived in since 1953 & moving to his parents' in California. Because she refuses to fly, David is driving her cross-country, with...

Anniversary Lines on a Tenth Anniversary by Arthur Smith. What she's wearing is the brightest thing in the kitchen...

Fiction The Circling Hand by Jamaica Kincaid. Writer remembers her childhood in Antigua, an island in the West Indies. Annie & her mother used to bathe, shop & cook together. Walking with her mother, Annie remembers hearing angry voices shouting at them. Annie figured out that it was one of the women her father had...

A Reporter at Large I-KATE QUINTON'S DAYS by Susan Sheehan. REPORTER AT LARGE about the ailing 80-year-old Kate Quinton (pseud.) & her treatment for the first half of 1982. She was a patient at Lutheran Medical Center in Bklyn. from January 5 to March 3. She was really a candidate for a nursing home after her hospital...

Off Broadway East and West by Edith Oliver.

A Political Journal by Elizabeth Drew. One of the 8 Democratic Presidential candidates is Walter Mondale, who was the Vice-President under Jimmy Carter. The Mondale campaign has had much to do with the shape of the race for the Democratic nomination so far. The candidates have had to run national campaigns early. The new rules...

The Talk of the Town Fun by William McKibben. Talk story about New York's Electronic Fun Week, which was highlighted by the Electronic Fun Expo. It opened with a small Electronic Fun Parade & continued for 4 days, giving the 52,000 people who paid $7.50 each a chance to have fun & buy products. The Expo unfolded...

Poetry November, Remembering Voltaire by Jane Hirshfield. In the evenings...