Comment by Kennedy Fraser. Comment about the St. Agnes branch of the New York Public Library at Amsterdam Avenue and 81st Street, and about Mesopotamia. Writer talks with Molly Wamp, a librarian at the St. Agnes branch of the New York Public Library, at Amsterdam Avenue and 81st St. The St. Agnes branch gives...

The Talk of the Town Stamping Ground by Robert Sullivan. Talk story about the moment the United States Postal Service officially switched from the twenty-five- to the twenty-nine-cent stamp, at midnight on the night of Saturday, Feb. 2. The writer observed the big moment by going to the James A. Farley Post Office, on Eighth Ave. between...

The Talk of the Town De-Acquisitioning by Jane Stern. Talk story about the probable closing of the Central Park Children's Zoo. Director Herbert Clement retires on Feb.16. Unless Parks & Recreation Commissioner Betsy Gotbaum can raise funds for repair the Zoo will soon close. The fifty-odd animals now on exhibit will be resettled. It's difficult to find...

Fiction Wilderness Tips by Margaret Atwood. George and Prue became lovers when he came to Toronto in the late fifties, as a refugee from Hungary. Soon after, he married Prue's younger sister, Portia, but he has continued to sleep with Prue, on and off, over the years. Portia is aware of this, but pretends not to...

Jazz WONDER WOMAN by Whitney Balliett. PROFILE of Dorothy Donegan--a virtuoso jazz pianist, an electric performer, and a transcendent clown. She is almost the last of the vaudeville-tinged pianists who came up in the late thirties and early forties. She's been performing for fifty years, but is only now winning recognition. She spoke with...

Annals of the Cold War II-THE YELLOW-RAIN COMPLEX by Thomas Whiteside. ANNALS OF THE COLD WAR about chemical & biological warfare. Shortly after the Afghanistan invasion, during the Carter Adm., there were reports of a serious accident at a secret biological-weapons-research facility on the southern outskirts of Sverdlovsk, a city in the Ural Mountains which is off limits to...

Musical Events by Andrew Porter.

The Diplomatic Round MISREADINGS by John Newhouse. THE DIPLOMATIC ROUND about the Persian Gulf war. Most diplomats wondered why Bush chose to send so much additional force to Saudi Arabia... Between Nov. 8th and Nov. 29th, Bush and Secretary of StateJames Baker worked feverishly to enlist support for UN Resolution 678 which authorized the use of force...

Books by Louis Menand.

Poetry February 14th by Philip Levine. Awakening at dawn thirty...

Poetry Inside the Midget by Mary Jo Salter. In town again some ten years later...

Poetry In a Mississauga Garden by Michael Longley. The ghosts of the aunt and uncles I never knew...