Letter from Washington by Elizabeth Drew. Tells about Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan's proposal to stop using Social Security funds to cut the deficit & about a proposal by Rep. Dan Rostenkowski, the chairman of the House Ways & Means committee to eliminate the deficit in five years by way of more taxes & budget cuts. For...

Books by Charles McGrath.

The Talk of the Town Heroes by Adam Gopnik. A talk story about attending the first round of the Melchior Centennial Heroic Tenors Competition--held at the Metropolitan Opera in List Hall, and sponsored by the Lauritze Melchior Heldentenor Foundation. A heldentenor or heroic tenor has a very specific voice: It's a baritone that develops late in life into...

The Theatre TO THE LADIES by Edith Oliver.

The Talk of the Town Beatlefest by Bobbie Ann Mason. Talk story about the writer's trip to Beatle-fest '90. Millings participates in a panel discusson in which he tells of his firm's part in the creation of the Beatles clothing. The firm, Douglas Millings & Co. (now G.S. Millings & Co.) designed all of the Beatles clothing up to...

Comment by Suzannah Lessard. Remarkable leaders are becoming almost commonplace nowadays. As if to make sure that familiarity didn't completely dull our sense of specialness of such people, Vaclav Havel and Nelson Mandela have now stepped forward, almost simultaneously. Havel and Mandela are manifestly whole men, who do not need power to complete them...

Fiction The Lite That Failed: One Person's Story by Prudence Crowther. Mary Alice tells the tale of her involvement with health food. When her parents died she began clipping health articles from the "Times." She went through the normal grieving process of denial and anger, and then met a man named Raymond. Clipping the health articles made her feel more in...

Musical Events by Andrew Porter.

Fiction Hourglass by Danilo Kis. E.S. lives inYugoslavia. He has narrowly escaped death in the slaughter of thousands of Jews and Serbs by the occupying Hungarian Army in his home town of Novi Sad in 1942. He is returning home on a train and sees a beautiful widow, but he is kicked out of the...

A Reporter at Large III-LOOKING FOR A SHIP by John McPhee. REPORTER AT LARGE about the U.S. Merchant Marine. Writer accompanied second mate George Anderson Chase on the S.S. Stella Lykes on a voyage to the West Coast of South America. The ship's captain, Paul McHenry Washburn, is now a great-grandfather. Tells about his life & career. Writer visited the...

The Talk of the Town Grand by Adam Gopnik. Talk story about the coining $140 million restoration of Ellis Island by John Belle of the architectural firm, Beyer, Blinder, Belle. More than 17 million immigrants entered the country through the island. It was expanded over the years, filled with dirt from subway excavations and the construction of Grand Central...

The Current Cinema ONE THING AFTER ANOTHER by Terrence Rafferty.

Poetry Rain Travel by W. S. Merwin. I wake in the dark and remember...

Poetry By Daylight by Elizabeth Macklin. In the tropical glass of a cool, foreign...

Poetry Cows by Eamon Grennan. Laying great heads on the green bank...