Comment by Mark Hertsgaard. In Feb. Adm. James Watkins, the Secretary of Energy, declared in a letter to the American people that the Bush Adm. had devised a strategy that "charts a course for greater energy efficiency, improved environmental quality and a more secure energy future". The strategy is outlined in a 264-page...

The Talk of the Town Ploughing His Own Furrow by Robert Boyle. Talk story about Howard W. Moore, a conscientious objector who was court-martialled during the First World War and sentenced to five years at hard labor for refusing to serve in the Army. He and his wife, Louise, recently held an open house to celebrate his 102nd birthday. Howard and...

The Talk of the Town Light the Lights by Anthony Hiss. Talk story about floodlighting Grand Central Terminal. On next Thursday evening Mayor Dinkins will throw the switch for the floodlights from a platform on 42nd St. between Vanderbilt and Park Avenues, lighting the building for the first time in its 78-year history. The Grand Central Partnership, which was formed...

The Talk of the Town Chocolate by David Owen. Talk story about a press reception to mark the beginning of the second annual American Chocolate Week. The event was thrown by the Chocolate Manufacturers Association of the U.S.A. and took place in the penthouse of the Parker Meridien Hotel. The purpose of the week-long memorial is to inspire...

Fiction Poets' Corner by J. B. Handelsman. Spread showing imaginary scenes from the lives of the poets: 1. "With the aid of an abacus, Elizabeth Barrett Browning counts the ways." 2. "T.S. Eliot lacks the courage to eat a peach." 3. "Keats's heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains his sense." 4. "Walt Whitman sounds his barbaric...

Fiction Onionskin by Allegra Goodman. Story in the form of a letter written by Sharon, a middleaged Jewish college student, to Dr. Friedell, her religion professor at the University of Hawaii. Now living in Israel, she writes to explain why she stood up in his class and said Fuck Augustine. She feels that the academic...

Memory Memory of the Future? Prophecy of the Past? by May Swenson. A structure that haunts memory. Its bulk...

Annals of Government SERVING THE PRESIDENT II-THE TRUMAN YEARS by Richard Holbrooke. ANNALS OF GOVERNMENT about serving as adviser to Pres. Truman. The President's loyalty program got under way in 1946-47. As the Adm. proclaimed the dangers of Communism abroad, conservative politicians, encouraged by J. Edgar Hoover, claimed to have found evidence of a subversive Communist threat on the domestic front. The...

The Theatre PATERFAMILIAS by Edith Oliver.

Musical Events by Andrew Porter.

Report from Jerusalem by Amos Elon. The Gulf War was far away and, at the same time, very near. Almost every other night, the sky was lit by sudden glares as Scud missles came in and Patriot missles rose to disarm or deflect them, and the combined debris crashed into populous residential areas. The missle attacks...

Letter from Washington by Elizabeth Drew. Tells about the aftermath of the Persian Gulf War. The Administration is now in a dicey, and not unpredictable, situation with regard to what is going on internally in Iraq. The US & its allies want two contradictory things: they want stability in Iraq, and also a change of government...

Poetry House by Laura Mullen. Where it should have been there were only memories...

Poetry Late Night Ode (Horace IV. i) by J. D. McClatchy. It's over, love. Look at me pushing fifty now...