Comment by Garrison Keillor. A Comment about life in New York City, especially about helping a 20-year-old young man from Iowa get settled. One morning writer saw a taxicab engulfed in flames on Park Avenue and nobody trying to put out the fire and nobody watching it burn. Last winter he was...

The Talk of the Town Primitive by Guy Trebay. Talk Story about the people who construct puppets for the annual Village Halloween Parade. Jeanne Fleming, the parade's director for the past seven years, told the writer, "...the folks who work on the parade do it for no money... We always go into Halloween night with a deficit. We have...

Fiction Hooks by Zinovy Zinik. The narrator is a Soviet Jewish emigre living in London, where he meets a Soviet tourist. The tourist keeps his eyes averted from him. The narrator speculates that it might be the effect of the difference in their status: the tourist, after all, was an industrial expert on an official...

Our Local Correspondents GOODBYE, MICHAEL by Whitney Balliett. OUR LOCAL CORRESPONDENTS about bassist Michael Moore, who moved to India, and also about his former jazz duet partner, Gene Bertoncini. For the past 7 years, one of the best open secrets of New York night life was the nearly year-round Sunday concerts given by the duo of Michael...

The Theatre APPEARANCES by Mimi Kramer.

Annals of Politics THE JOHNSON YEARS: A CONGRESSMAN GOES TO WAR by Robert A. Caro. ANNALS OF POLITICS about Lyndon Johnson. At age 28 he was a congressman with national power. Tells about his early life which was so poverty-stricken that he resolved to make a lot of money. He never wanted to be regarded as an idealist, as his unsuccessful father was, but...

Musical Events by Andrew Porter.

Around City Hall AROUND CITY HALL INEXAKTE by Andy Logan. A Daily News/Eyewitness News poll published on October 18th and 19th showed Dinkins with a lead in the general election of 53% to 34% over former U.S. Attorney Rudolph Giuliani, the Republican nominee... Last February when most politically wise sorts did not give Dinkins much of a chance, he...

Fiction Ocean Avenue by Michael Chabon. Bobby Lazar, an architect, is in a cafe in Laguna Beach, California, when he suddenly sees his ex- lover Suzette walk in. Suzette, who danced aerobically or ran 5 miles everyday, was wearing a leotard-and-tights combination. The memory of their last days together returned to him. He thought...

Books by Kennedy Fraser.

The Talk of the Town Rose Inventory by Anthony Hiss. Talk Story about Stephen Scanniello, a gardener who is in charge of a 1000 varieties of rose bushes at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden's acre-and-a-half Cranford Rose Garden. Rose Inventory, devised by Scanniello, is half census & half out reach. The easy part of the job is counting...

The Talk of the Town Landmark by Alec Wilkinson. Talk story about going to Trenton to see a pieces of machinery in an empty factory which was designated a national landmark by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. The machine was the Roebling Eighty-Ton Wire Rope Machine and it had been designed in 1893 by Charles Roebling, whose...

Poetry The Summer Was Not Long Enough by Jean Valentine. Stanley, my ex, the painter...

Poetry Orchestrion by Edward Kleinschmidt. Or the Chinese chest of drawers taken...

Poetry Ambition by Ciaran Carson. Now I've climbed this far it's time to look back. But smoke...