Comment by Lawrence Weschler. I was having a rather acid conversation with Mr. Ghorbanifar on the telephone," Maj. Gen. Richard Secord told one of the first sessions of the House-Senate committee investigating the Iran-Contra scandal(Manucher Ghorbanifar is an expatriate Iranian arms merchant & middleman of some sort), "and I told him...

Fiction Let It Pass by Mavis Gallant. Carlotta Peel, the daughter of the narrator's former wife, Lily, turned up one August on his doorstep, uninvited, in the South of France. Steve, the narrator, and Lily were from Montreal. He was now a Canadian diplomat and spent summers in his home in France. Carlotta, 15, planned to stay...

The Talk of the Town Crafts by Vickie Karp. Talk story about the American Craft at the Armory show. Carol Sedestrom, the president of American Craft Enterprises & a veteran organizer of exhibitions & fairs, told writers one evening when they stopped by for a look, "Brown rice, brown pots, brown bedspreads--that was the crafts movement in the...

Fiction The New First Lady by Randy Cohen. Before the New First Lady's motorcade can enter the Bel Mar Galleria, her support crew must clear a path through the foam cups and burger boxes that surge and eddy across the parking lot. She is the guest of the William C. Westmoreland Retirement Center's amateur orchestra, The Jolly Pals...

The Sporting Scene THE HAIG AND SOME RECENT MASTERS by Herbert Warren Wind. THE SPORTING SCENE about the 1987 Masters golf tournament & early pro golfer Walter Hagen... At the first Masters(then called the Augusta National Invitation tournament)Hagen(the Haig) was decidedly present. He thought highly of the course & his approval was important to the event... Ever since 1914, when...

The Talk of the Town The Gunks by Alec Wilkinson. Talk story about rock climbing on the Shawangunk cliffs which lie several deer crossings west of New Paltz, NY, on Route 44-55. From the center of town, they are visible in the distance as 3 plateaus of roughly equal size... Writer interviews Will Colgan, a ginseng farmer from Vermont, managed...

The Current Cinema NANNIES AND NONCOMS by Pauline Kael.

A Reporter at Large THE SECOND HAVANA by David Rieff. REPORTER AT LARGE about the Cubanization of Miami due to the influx of Cubans beginning in 1959. The first wave of immigrants, consisting mostly of political refugees who came shortly after the Cuban revolution, founded the businesses that employed the second wave, consisting of those who arrived between the mid...

The Theatre HOMEWORK by Edith Oliver.

Books by John Updike.

The Talk of the Town PAAF by Veronica Geng. Talk story inspired by Donna Rice. (She is the Miami actress who was romantically linked with Gary Hart, who was a Democratic Presidential hopeful until he stepped aside last Friday, May 8). Last week, one of our staff members placed a long-distance call to Miami Beach, Fla. to her...

Musical Events by Andrew Porter.

Poetry The Wave Advances Three Poems by Osip Mandelstam. The wave advances--one wave breaking another's backbone...

Poetry The Brooklyn Museum of Art by Billy Collins. I will now step over the soft velvet rope...