On the Street Spin by William McKibben. Talk story about a new invention that passed the writer on the street last week. It is called the Scootboard, and was make by David Gittens, a 44-year-old man, who got the idea in 1980. He had just arrived back in N.Y. and had no place to stay...

The Talk of the Town Raided by William Franzen. Talk story about the Nut Musem in Old Lyme, Connecticut. writer visited in the winter, when the museum is closed, but still full of activity -- by the local chipmunks and squirrels. Writer talked to Elizabeth Tashjian, the owner and curator of the museum, which takes up the ground floor of...

Letter from London by Mollie Panter-Downes. Tells about the exhibition at the Royal Academy in London, called "The Genius of Venice, 1500 to 1600." The local attention seemed rather oddly slow in coming, considering the affection the English have always had for Venice. The exhibition is the result of two years' planning by the Royal Academy's...

The Art World (The Art Galleries) by Calvin Tomkins.

Musical Events by Andrew Porter.

The Talk of the Town Tuchman by Philip Hamburger. Talk story about Barbara Tuchman, the historian, whose new book "The March of Folly--From Troy to Vietnam" has just been published. Mrs. Tuchman and her husband, Dr. Lester Tuchman, live the year round in Cos Cob, Conn., but maintain a pied-a-terre on 5th Avenue in the 80s...

Fiction In the Woods by Mary A. Robison. Writer is separated from her husband Marcus and goes to stay with her sister Barbara and her brother-in-law Kenneth, at their Indiana farm. She rides a horse named Sunny every day. In the weeks before her stay at the farm, she'd been awake too much and when she...

Fiction Too Much Electricity by Bill Barich. Gordy got into the moving business by accident, when he was hitchhiking to L.A. from Oregon. Earl Phillips picked him up, noticed he was muscular and offered him $70 to help move furniture. Gordy told Phillips that before he'd dropped out of college, he was a musician, a purple-haired...

Letter from Europe by Jane Kramer. Francois Mitterrand is nearly 3 years into his 7-year term. He seems to identify utterly with France in the way De Gualle did. It gives him great clarity of purpose abroad and confusion of purpose at home. Mitterand has money problems. Truck drivers, teachers, government clerks and utility worked...

Comment by George W. S. Trow. No one has been able to decide what President Reagan has been doing to or with American life. It is acknowledged that he is doing something from within American life, effortlessly. Both parties feel, but refuse to acknowledge, a gratitude and relief that he should imagine that it is possible...

Dancing by Arlene Croce.

Books by William Maxwell.

A Reporter at Large HARVARD LAW by Calvin Trillin. REPORTER AT LARGE about Harvard Law School. There is a deep, and at times bitter, division in the faculty-a division that began with a challenge from the political left, and has taken on some aspects of a generational dispute and an intellectual debate. There are people who think that...

Poetry Spring Training by Lynn Rigney Schott. The last of the birds has returned...

Poetry Einstein's Bathrobe by Howard Moss. I wove myself of many delicious strands...