Musical Events A Fine Resource by Andrew Porter.

The Talk of the Town Dirt by Bobbie Ann Mason. Talk story about attending a seminar on site preparation and soils for gardening. It was the 1981 Fall Garden School: Growing Vegetables in the Big Apple. The Cornell University Cooperative Extension and the New York State Dept. of Agriculture and Markets are behind the idea. John Ameroso, horticulturist of the...

Fiction The New Washington: An Inside Story by Garrison Keillor. Preceded by quotation from N.Y. Times of Charles Z. Wick, a member of President Reagan's Kitchen Cabinet. Mr. Wick expresses the opinion that economically pinched Americans of today enjoy viewing the luxurious Washington way of life of the Reagan Administration members. He compares this to the vicarious delight moviegoers during...

Personal History I-VEDI by Ved Mehta. PERSONAL HISTORY about a nine-month period in 1939, when the writer was five years old. He was sent from his home in Lahore, in the Punjab (India), to the Dadar School for the Blind in Bombay. He had lost his sight when he was four due to meningitis. His...

Comment by Howard Moss. A friend from East Hampton writes that on the east end of Long Island the notion of the smart and fashionable Hamptons dies every Labor Day, only to be resurrected on Memorial Day. He described how peaceful it was last weekend walking down Main St. He spent most of the...

Fiction Gypsies by Michael Wilding. One-page story in which narrator recalls his experiences with gypsies. The gypsies came to his grandmother's house and sold pigeons' eggs, and also sold big clothes pegs. They came and went with the picking season. They left signals on fence posts to indicate to each other housewives good for...

The Talk of the Town Starting Out by Kennedy Fraser. Talk story about a meeting with our friend the expatriate Englishwoman, who had just been to visit her friend Katie, also from England. Katie recently moved to New York, began her first job, and found an apartment. She furnishes the apartment with used items, including furniture, which she is constantly...

Comment by Daniel Ford. Comment on the lack of strict federal safety regulation at nuclear power plants. It is the busy season once again for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the federal agency that oversees the commercial nuclear-power industry. Tells about some of the safety problems, in seemingly epidemic patterns, that have broken...

Fiction Gila Flambe by Frederick Barthelme. Harold Ohls, a stranger in a Southwestern town stops into a restaurant on a rainy night. It is crowded, and there aren't any tables for one, so he has to sit with Mr. Pelham, who is odd and surly. Mr. Pelham asks Harold to drive him to a trailer where...

Around City Hall AROUND CITY HALL GETTING OUT THE VOTE by Andy Logan. New York black leaders attending a meeting of their counterparts from around the country in Washington, were jubilant in comparison to their colleagues. This was due to a large turnout of blacks in the September 22 New York Democratic primary. Mayor Koch had run for both the Democratic and Republican...

The Theatre Improving the Master by Edith Oliver.

The Talk of the Town Lagniappe by Mark Singer. Talk story about a visit with Melvyn Kaufman who, with his brother Robert, runs the William Kaufman Organization, a midtown real estate firm with offices 39 stories above Madison Avenue. His company is now putting the finishing touches on a 40-story office building at 767 Third Avenue, on the...

Books Katherine Mansfield by V. S. Pritchett.

Letter from London by Mollie Panter-Downes. LETTER FROM LONDON about three political-party conferences, and also about the trouble the London Times is having. Both the Labour conference, in Brighton, and the Conservative, in Blackpool, were critical of their leaders -- and critical for them -- and had been awaited with excitement by their supporters. Margaret Thatcher was...

Dancing Connections by Arlene Croce.

The Current Cinema THREE PAIRS by Pauline Kael.

Poetry The Window Two Poems (After Balthus) by Stephen Dobyns. The woman who is waiting for the evening draws...