Casual Attitude by Garrison Keillor. Writer plays slow-pitch softball on a casual, beer-drinking team that makes plenty of errors. At the age of 37, he finds himself taking the game very seriously. It's not the team's bonehead plays that get him down: it's their attitude. Bottom of the ninth, down 18-3, two outs...

The Current Cinema PREMISES by Veronica Geng.

Around City Hall Guns of August by Andy Logan. On Aug. 2nd, Mayor Koch demoted two of his seven deputy mayors and fired three others. Those who were to leave his administration entirely were Philip Toia, deputy mayor for finance, Herman Badillo, Deputy Mayor for Policy, and Philip Trimble, Deputy Mayor for Intergovernmental Relations, Deputy Mayor for Administration Ronay...

The Talk of the Town The Tap by Mark Singer. Talk story about Water Ventures, Inc., a company formed for the marketing and distribution of bottled New York water - an offshoot of the Pet Rock craze. The idea was spawned by Henry Galiano, a curatorial assistant at the Museum of Natural History...

Musical Events by Andrew Porter.

The Talk of the Town Leasan Gaidhlig by Israel Shenker. Talk story about Scottish Gaelic lessons given at tthe headquarters of the Scottish National Party Assn at 230 Park Ave. Gaelic teacher Larry Siegel describes the difficulty of this language, and said that it is being revived and that it is basically an oral language. You cannot say 'yes' or...

A Reporter at Large PHASE: IN SEARCH OF A DEFINITION by Elizabeth Drew. REPORTER AT LARGE about the commotion caused by the Carter Administration in a 2 1/2 week period in July: the cancellation of the President's energy speech; the staging of a "domestic" summit" at Camp David, and, after the President's ultimate delivery of a speech, the sudden call for the mass...

Comment by James Stevenson. An old friend of ours died last week. He was in his nineties, and we had known him for nearly fifty years. When we were young, we used to play with his children. Of all the adults we knew, he was by far the most fun. He would entertain us...

The Talk of the Town This Concert by James Stevenson. Talk story about the 1979 Berkshire Mountains Bluegrass Festival. A friend's 23-year-old daughter, who works as a mason on Cape Cod, tells about going to the third day of the 1979 Berkshire Mountains Bluegrass Festival in Ancramdale, N.Y. Performers were seen on a stage set in a bowl...

Fiction Dale Loves Sophie To Death by Robb Forman Dew. Dinah is sick in bed in a house in the country in Ohio. She, her husband and their 3 children live in the Berkshires but each summer they rent a house in Ohio, in the town where Dinah grew up. Dinah thinks of their summers in Ohio as nostalgic pilgrimages...

U. S. Journal RECEPTOR by Calvin Trillin. U.S. JOURNAL: SOUTHERN CALIF, about smog in Riverside and San Bernardino Counties, 50 miles east of Los Angeles. These areas, called the Inland Empire, are called "receptor areas" by specialists in air pollution because they receive smog coming downwind from Los Angeles. Tells how efforts to improve the air in...

Fiction Holidays by Jamaica Kincaid. Impressions of a writer who sits on the porch facing the mountains. Lists every move she makes: she walks, she scratches. Lists everything that goes through her mind and anything her eye lights on. She sees tenants carrying a speck of food; this does not fascinate her. She sees her...

The Talk of the Town First Suburb by Wallace White. Talk story about walking tour of Brooklyn Heights. Ed Mickens was the guide for the tour, sponsored by the National Park Service. Tells about the history of the Heights, an area of some 40 square blocks on the eastern side of the Brooklyn Bridge. Tells about the changes the neighborhood...

Poetry Cafe de Banzo by Henry Jackson. When evening comes to the Cafe de Banzo...

Poetry Two Poems by W. S. Merwin. My father was born in a house by a river...

Poetry Back by Brian Swann. This light is more than the light...

Poetry Children by Ted Hughes. Children, new to the blood...