Fiction Yours by Mary A. Robison. Allison is 35 and her new husband, Clark, is 78. Although it is mentioned in the beginning of the story that Allison is wearing a wig and has trouble carrying a pumpkin up to the porch from the car, one assumes that, since her husband is so much older, it...

A Reporter at Large II-THE CULT OF THE ATOM by Daniel Ford. After the accident at Three Mile Island, in Mar., 1979, Pres. Carter appointed a Nuclear Safety Oversight Committee to supervise the NRC's overhauling and upgrading of its safety programs, but Pres. Reagan disbanded it last year...

The Talk of the Town Resolved by William McKibben. Talk story about going to the Bronx High School of Science for one of the nation's most important forensic-debate and public-speaking tournaments. It drew almost 500 contestants from nearly 100 high schools in 22 states. This year's national high-school debate topic was: "Resolved: That the United States...

Comment by Jonathan Schell. Comment about Poland. Some words spoken there have great weight because they were uttered in the teeth of the most crushing repression. Writer had in mind two speeches given late this summer. One was by Bishop Ignacy Tokarxzuk, to an audience of half a million farmers in Czestochowa. Quotes from...

The Talk of the Town Hand by Kennedy Fraser. Talk story about visiting the New York Knitting Yarn Fair with Patricial Feiwel, a young woman who runs a cottage-industry hand-weaving business from her apartment on the upper West Side. The fair was in the Pier 88 exhibition hall on W. 48th Street. The international spinning-and-knitting...

Comment by Lillian Ross. In this world, and in this day, good moments go a long way for us, and the marvellous moment last Sunday when 1982's New York City Marathon winner Alberto Salazar, of Eugene, Oregon, before reaching for his warmup jacket, turned to the man just four seconds behind him, second...

Musical Events How to Live in Grace by Andrew Porter.

Fiction Linked to Faster Sunday-Mag Perusal by Lynn Caraganis. Parody on how a reader might read the New York Times Magazine, which comes out on Sundays. The idea is that the reader is perusing, or rushing, through the articles and what we read is what he or she actually did read. A variety of articles are given: the On...

Dancing Artists and Models by Arlene Croce.

The Sporting Scene MUNDIAL NOTEBOOK by Alastair Reid. THE SPORTING SCENE about the soccer World Cup played in Spain in the summer of 1982. The Federacion Internationale de Football Assoc. (FIFA) increased the number of finalists from 15 to 24, making Spain's Mundial the largest ever. The games would be played in the space of a month in...

The Theatre Off Broadway by Edith Oliver.

The Current Cinema RICE KRISPIES by Pauline Kael.

The Talk of the Town Down Under by William McKibben. Talk story about an old railway tunnel in Brooklyn, which was uncovered in the summer of 1981 by Robert Diamond. Writer visited it before its first public appearance in more than a century-a highly successful event that took place the next day and saw more than 500 people pay...

Fiction The Professor's Houses by Ursula K. Le Guin. The professor has two houses: one where he lives with his; wife and daughter, Victoria, and the other, inside that house, is the Victorian-style doll house the professor made for his daughter. From early on, however, it is acknowledged by everyone that the doll house, or inner house, is...

Poetry The Heaven of the Vampires by Peter Cooley. If our name is put up by a member...

Poetry Hearing by W. S. Merwin. Back when it took all day to come up...