Letter from Los Angeles by Joan Didion. This is fire season in Los Angeles, and it has been a particularly early and bad one. Most years it is September or October before the Santa Ana winds start blowing down through the passes, and the relative humidity drops to figures like 7 or 6 or 3%, and the...

The Talk of the Town Aboriginality by Vickie Karp. Talk story about Burnum Burnum, an Australian Aboriginal who has played professional rugby, read law in Tasmania, run for the Australian senate twice, acted in three movies and has recently had his first book published: "Burnum Burnum's Aboriginal Australia: A Traveller's Guide." At a recent storytelling event at the Brooklyn...

Annals of Medicine THE POKER GAME by Berton Roueche. ANNALS OF MEDICINE about Q fever, which has some of the same symptoms as pneumonia. Q fever is not transmitted from man to man. It is a zoonosis, a disease of animals, principally certain livestock in which man is only accidentally a victim. It is contracted by inhalation. Dr. Thomas...

Comment Comment, Pt. II by Sara Lippincott. Comment about a broken steam pipe at the southeast corner of Gramercy Park. Three people--two Con Edison workers, and a woman asleep in the bedroom of her third-story apartment, which faced the street--were killed, 24 people were injured, and thousands had the wits scared out of them...

The Theatre ESPRIT DE CORPS by Edith Oliver.

Profiles AT PLAY IN THE LANGUAGE by Michelle Stacey. PROFILE of Allen Walker Read, 83, an etymologist who is an authority on the American language. He was a professor of English at Columbia from 1945 to 1974 & has been professor emeritus since. He is best known for tracking down the origin of the word "o.K." This began as...

Anniversary Comment by Naomi Bliven. Comment about the spread of democracy, the anniversary of World War II & history in general. A few years after the end of the war, some historians were arguing that the Allies had lost the war, because it had led to the spread of Communism; others maintained that the war...

The Talk of the Town Heading North by John W. Paton. Talk story about a man whose parents came to the U.S. from Dundee, Scotland shortly before the first World War. When the war in Europe broke out in September of 1939, the young man was a senior at Yonkers High School. He decided to go north to Ontario to join...

The Current Cinema DEAD IN THE WATER by Terrence Rafferty.

The Talk of the Town Big Sky by Mindy Aloff. Talk story about a huge blue cyclorama that was hung in the Metropolitan Opera House on Aug. 6. Nick Bryson is the president of the American branch of Gerriets, the firm that created the cyclorama. Gerriets is a West German theatrical-draperies firm...

Fiction Wigtime by Alice Munro. Anita comes back to Walley, Canada to care for her dying mother. At the hospital she runs into Margot, who she has not seen since they were high school seniors in 1948-49. That was the year that Anita was seriously ill after an appendix operation & the year that Margot...

Poetry German Nudists, Kalamaki, Crete by Karl Kirchwey. These are the true worshippers of light...

Poetry Russian Still Life by Tom Pow. Though the signs are of sleep...

Poetry I Imagine Back by Elizabeth Macklin. to the year when my throat, lungs, chest...

Poetry Bedtime Story by Ciaran Carson. The sound effects were really very simple: a creaky leather...