The Talk of the Town Men's Room by Nicholson Baker. Story about some thoughts a man has in the corporate men's room. He talks about men's room etiquette and about whistling. He finds it interesting that people often whistle the same tunes, as if each one picks up the tune when he enters the men's room. He talks about the...

The Talk of the Town The Morgan Mansion by Verlyn Klinkenborg. Talk story about No. 231 Madison Avenue, the old Morgan Mansion. It is a sun-browned dowager of a building, perhaps the last freestanding Italianate brownstone in Manhattan & almost certainly the only empty one. With 45 rooms, it consumes the SE corner of 37th & Madison, next to the...

The Talk of the Town Wicketkeeper by Edith M. Agar. Talk story about cricket in Van Cortlandt Park... Writer went up to the park to watch cricket matches, which, it was learned, are held there every Saturday & Sunday from mid-May to mid-September & go on from one-thirty in the afternoon until well into the evening... It...

Concert Records / Popular Music by Mark Moses.

Comment Comment (1) by Mark Hertsgaard. Comment about Mubarak Awad, a Jerusalem born American citizen who was recently deported from the West Bank by Israel because Israeli officials feel that he does not actually oppose violence even though he says he does. There was a great deal of criticism of Israel for the deportation because Awad...

Letter from Washington by Elizabeth Drew. Jesse Jackson's domination of the news in the days leading up to the Convention, and in its first two days, should not have been a surprise. Causing attention to himself, and disruption, leading to concessions by the disrupted, are Jackson specialties. It was understood among Jackson's advisers that, since the...

Fiction Wish by Bobbie Ann Mason. Story about an almost 84-year-old man, Sam, and his sisters Damson and Hortense. Sam and Damson go to church every Sunday and then go to visit Hortense and her husband. The conversation is always much the same, but everyone is comfortable. There is some discussion of why Sam's...

Comment Comment (2) by Adam Gopnik. Comment about writer's vacation on Cape Cod, MA and his reaction to Thoreau's book "Cape Cod" which he bought to read on the beach. Thoreau's purpose in going to Cape Cod was to consider New England at its most austere; he felt that it produced the "least comfortable (and the...

A Reporter at Large THE TREASURE OF THE DEBRAAK by Paul Brodeur. A REPORTER AT LARGE about the salvaging of the HMS DeBraak, a British warship that had sunk at the mouth of the Delaware River in May of 1798... Credit for the discover of the DeBraak belongs to Harvey Harrington, who formed a company, Sub-Sal, to salvage the ship. On...

The Theatre GETTING OUT by Mimi Kramer.

Musical Events by Andrew Porter.

Poetry A.M. by Mark Strand. And here the dark infinitive to feel...

Poetry Coming Close by Philip Levine. Take this quiet woman, she has been...

Poetry Redbird by Sallie Anderson. Little blood let...