Musical Events by Andrew Porter.

The Talk of the Town Squares by Donovan Webster. Talk STory about visiting the International Checker Hall of Fame, in Petal, Mississippi during the International Goodwill Checkers Invitational Tournament. The tournament featured world-class players from 24 nations, & amateurs from 11 others. Charles Walker, the founder & proprietor of the Hall of Fame took the writer on a...

Fiction The Music Room by Dennis McFarland. Marty, in his early twenties, returns from his sophomore year at Harvard to spend part of the summer with his wealthy parents and his younger brother, Perry at their summer home in Newport, Rhode Island. Both his parents are alcoholics. His father was once a musician, but quit giving performances...

Reflections Comment by Suzannah Lessard. Comment on Edmund Burke's "Reflections on the Revolution in France" & the recent spate of decisions from the Supreme Court. In general these decisions traced a dramatic turn to the right. The decisions themselves reflected our detail orientated system in their careful distinctions, & they also reflected a capacity for...

Letter from Washington by Elizabeth Drew. The Bush White House has played to the President's strengths. His strength is in foreign policy, and having just completed his trips foreign trip he has by this time taken more such trips than any other Pres. during the same period. Tells how the President's recent trip to Eastern Europe...

Dancing by Arlene Croce.

The Talk of the Town Anahid by Richard Brookhiser. Talk story about Anahid Sofian and the Anahid Sofian Studio on W. 15th St. She is a teacher and performer of Middle Eastern dances. She recently held a party at which she performed Middle Eastern belly dancing. She grew up in Washington Heights in a very strict Armenian family. She...

Books by Naomi Bliven.

The Talk of the Town Cowboy Joe by Deirdre McNamer. Talk Story about Paul Aaron, the former host of "Cowboy Joe's Radio Ranch," a music-and-talk show that aired on WKCR-FM for 12 years. Aaron & the radio station parted company last year. He plans to move from the Upper West Side to Wyoming. Aaron, dressed in cowboy...

The Sporting Scene NO, BUT I SAW THE GAME by Roger Angell. THE SPORTING SCENE about baseball movies. They make baseball fans smug in the knowledge that their sport and its practitioners are beyond imitation. Movie baseball is inexorably entertaining while real baseball is too serious, most of the time, to be fun at all. There have been many new baseball movies...

A Reporter at Large TO THE LEFT OF ZERO by William Murray. REPORTER AT LARGE about the investigation into the murder of Hector Felix Miranda, a Mexican journalist. He wrote a column for the weekly independent newspaper called"Zeta"in Tijuana, Mexico. After Felix's murder on April 20, 1988, it was pointed out that in the past decade at least 30 journalists...

Poetry Moving by Eamon Grennan. She is moving...

Poetry Haze by James Schuyler. hangs heavy...

Poetry These Friends by Rhea L. Cohen. Crickets' insistence and the low, late sun...