Comment by Richard Cohen. A young man we know writes that some of the levees that prevent the Mississippi River from flooding Louisiana were built early in this century by prisoners, most of them black, & scores of workers who died after being overcome by heat & exhaustion were buried in them. He learned...

The Talk of the Town The Understanding by Robert Sullivan. Talk story about practicing graphologist Marie Bernard. Her book "Sexual Deviations As Seen in Handwriting" was published earlier this year. Her seminal work "The Art of Graphology" is still considered a classic, as it was when it first appeared in 1985. Quotes from a review of the latter by Rudi...

The Talk of the Town Money by Adam Gopnik. Talk story about going around the corner, to the Citibank branch on 42 St. to sit in on an introductory banking seminar being held by some people from Citibank for a group of potential depositors-in this case most of Nely Valentin's 7th-grade class from the Hudson River Middle...

The Talk of the Town Gladiators by Susan Orlean. Talk story about going to Madison Square Garden to see the American Gladiators. They were on a 70-city tour with a stop in N.Y.C. They were bringing the "American Gladiators" television show off the living-room screen into places like Madison Square Garden. The audience was introduced to the...

Fiction The Pugilist at Rest by Thom Jones. The narrator recalls his experience as a Marine during the Vietnam War. In boot camp during August, 1966, at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego, he befriends a fellow recruit named Jorgeson. Jorgeson would like to move to New York and become a beatnik. The narrator defends Jorgeson...

Profiles OPENING WINDOWS by David Owen. PROFILE of Kenny Schaffer. Writer describes him as an exhippie, radio-hobbyist, engineer, inventor, publicist, entrepreneur, rock-star, manager, salesman, and Sovietologist. Officially, he is vice-president of Belka International, a small consulting company that he founded with 2 friends in 1986. Belka exports liquidated consumer items to the Soviet...

Letter from Rio De Janeiro LETTER FROM RIO by Alma Guillermoprieto. Umbanda is a blend of traditional Afro-Brazilian religions with the French theoryof Spiritism. It has no central authority & no official statistics but one can guess that its followers number in the millions. It is virtually the official religion of Rio's poor, who are predominantly black but include large...

Musical Events by Andrew Porter.

The Current Cinema by Terrence Rafferty.

Books Little Girl Blue by Naomi Bliven.

Poetry Lost Glove by Charles Simic. Here's a woman's black glove...

Poetry Brief History of an Atlas by Jeffrey Harrison. Printed in Spain in 1697...

Poetry The Schoolroom On the Second Floor of the Knitting Mill by Judy Page Heitzman. While most of us copied letters out of books...