Comment by William Finnegan. There are a bewildering number of fronts and perimeters in the Bush Administration's "war on drugs."... When President Bush agreed, in April, to send American military trainers to Peru to help fight the guerrillas in the coca-growing highlands, it inevitably brought to mind the first steps of our involvement...

The Talk of the Town Homers by Jane Stern. Talk story about Chris & Willie Hongach of La Grange, N.Y.. just east of Poughkeepsie, who breed homing pigeons. Almost every summer weekend the Hongaches send 20 of their best birds to match speeds with hundreds of others from the lofts of members of the Mid-Valley Racing Pigeon Club...

Dancing by Arlene Croce.

The Talk of the Town Homers by Michael Stern. Talk story about Chris & Willie Hongach of La Grange, N.Y., just east of Poughkeepsie, who breed homing pigeons. Almost every summer weekend the Hongaches send 20 of their best birds to match speeds with hundreds of others from the lofts of members of the Mid-Valley Racing Pigeon Club...

The Talk of the Town Artist by Adam Gopnik. Talk story about Hani Shihada, a Jordanian-American artist who draws copies of Michelangelo and Raphael in pastels on the pavement. He does this for a living, he tells writer. He was born in Jerusalem, and grew up in Jordan, began his career as a sidewalk artist in Perugia. "In...

The Theatre SPAGHETTI WESTERN by Mimi Kramer.

The Talk of the Town Stan and Babe by Thomas Vinciguerra. Talk story about the Sons of the Desert, a group devoted to the movies of Laurel and Hardy (the team are known to fans as Stan and Babe). Last month would have been Stan Laurel's hundredth birthday; it was celebrated by groups of Sons, known as tents, around the country...

The World of Business UNDOING THE EIGHTIES by Connie Bruck. THE WORLD OF BUSINESS about the Wall Street securities firm of Shearson Lehman Hutton & its parent company American Express. Shearson, which American Express acquired in 1981, was a hard-bitten retail-brokerage business. In 1983 Peter Cohen became its CEO at age 36.. He was brash, impolitic & swaggering...

Fiction The Woman Lit By Fireflies by Jim Harrison. The story of one night spent alone in a cornfield. One week away from turning fifty, Clare decides at a rest stop along Interstate 80 in Iowa to leave her husband, Donald, and she promptly runs off between two rows to stop her life and rest within a womb-like...

Letter from Bucharest by Kathleen Hunt. Tells about violent clashes between demonstrators and government forces in Bucharest, since last December's revolution. Ion Iliescu won a victory in May's presidential election; his National Salvation Front party won a two-thirds majority in parliament. But students and intellectuals see him as simply a continuation of the Ceausescu dictatorship...

Poetry Kilauea by Galway Kinnell. Here is a stone with holes in it...

Poetry Work Song by Mark Levine. My name is Henri. Listen. It's morning...