Comment Comment Pt. I by Lawrence Weschler. Comment about Poland's first semi-free elections in 50 year years being superceded last week by reports from Beijing. For once the story that displaced Poland's was not unrelated. On June 4th Warsaw & Beijing presented themselves as alternative versions of a single process--the perilous evolution from rigid totalitarian...

Dance Two Years by Mary Grimm. Kathy attends the Veterans Day dinner dance, an event that draws the most people at the V.F.W. hall. Everyone drinks a lot. Inside, Kathy sees her own friends & family sitting at tables, standing around by the bandstand, & getting drinks from the bar. Her Aunt Lou introduces her to...

Musical Events by Andrew Porter.

Profiles FIRST AND LAST by Whitney Balliett. PROFILE about the virtuoso drummer Louis Bellson, who at 65 is not only the last of the great swing drummers but the most commanding of all living drummers. He grew up in Moline, Illinois where his father owned a music store. He learned most of the basics of jazz drumming...

Fiction A Winding Stair by Alice Mattison. Marsha, a graduate student at Harvard, had known Alan before she met Tom, early in 1973. Sometimes when she came home from Tom's there'd be a postcard from Alan who was a graduate student in architecture at Yale. When she visited Alan they often toured the Hill where poor people...

Comment Comment Pt. II by Jane Kramer. Comment about a think tank called Center for Psychosocial Studies located in Chicago that is comprised of linguists, philosophers, anthropologists, & literary theorists who come to Chicago three times a year from as far away as Beijing & Bombay. The group has strong ties to China & its director is...

Letter from Beijing by Fred C. Shapiro. This letter dated June 9 is about the massacre of pro-democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square by the People's Liberation Army. The exact death toll will probably never be determined, but the latest estimates go as high as 5000. The People's Republic appears to have knocked itself back into the...

The Talk of the Town Waiting by Adam Gopnik. Talk Story about the line waiting outside the French Consulate Visa Section on Vanderbilt Avenue, where everyone is waiting for a visa; everyone is going to Paris. Two women have been trying to remember why the French government decided to force any New Yorker who wanted to visit Paris to...

The Art World (The Art Galleries) by Adam Gopnik.

Annals of Radiation THE HAZARDS OF ELECTROMAGNETIC FIELDS II-SOMETHING IS HAPPENING by Paul Brodeur. ANNALS OF RADIATION about the bio-effects of radar, power lines & electric fields from electrically heated beds, blankets & other heating systems. Tells about the installation of a PAVE PAWS radar on Upper Cape Cod & the subsequent rise in cancer rates of residents in the towns surrounding the...

Dance Riches by Mindy Aloff. Talk Story about attending "Bateaux des Reves," an outdoor spectacle of dance, music, & theatre by the lake in Central Park. The spectacle was produced by a small local arts organization called Cirque Gregoire. A New York choreographer named Suzanne Gregoire is the group's founder. According to Gregoire, the "Bateaux...

The Theatre The Chocolate Soldier by Edith Oliver.

Books by George Steiner.

Around City Hall AROUND CITY HALL GOING... by Andy Logan. Rudolph Giuliani, who was the US Attorney here until January, would, according to early-May polls, defeat Dinkins in the general election, or, if Koch should make it that far, would beat him by an even larger margin. The US attorney's office, under Giuliani, brought the indictment against Rep. Robert...

Poetry Far Abbotsbury by Cynthia Zarin. All in line in Cow Harbor, out past...

Poetry Collectibles by Katha Pollitt. Even jumbled here in the schoolyard rummage sale...