Comment by Burton Bernstein. Comment about the Bahais of Iran, who are being subjected to the world's foremost contemporary example of the genocide of a noncombatant people. The Bahais' founder, a Persian nobleman of the 19th century, was tortured and exiled for his beliefs. Today, under Ayatollah Khomeini, his followers are in peril of...

Fiction The Mistake by Isaac Bashevis Singer. In Poland, on a hot, summery Sabbath afternoon, the writer's Aunt Yentl told a story about Reb Shachne and his wife Lifshe. Out of seven children, only Tevel and Gneshe survived. Tevel got married at sixteen. Gneshe was known as a beauty. By thirteen, proposals for matches began to pour...

Comment Comment(Part 2) by Cynthia Zarin. A young woman we know writes: Robert Fitzgerald, the poet and translator of the Odyssey, the Iliad, and the Aeneid, and the author of several other translations as well, died last week, at the age of 74. While I was at Radcliffe, Mr. Fitzgerald was Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and...

Letter from the Philippines by Robert Shaplen. In 1983 Sen. Benigno Aquino was assassinated. Pres. Marcos reluctantly appointed a committee to investigate it. Their findings were that the murder was planned & carried out by a group that included some of the country's highest-ranking military officers. The brutal assassination shook the country & placed...

The Talk of the Town Birds of Paradise by Emily Hahn. Talk story about a meeting of Wildlife Conservation International, a division of the New York Zoological Society, at the Hotel Parker Meridien, on the subject of New Guinea's birds of paradise. The group has installed a research site in Papua New Guinea at Ubaigubi where David and Gillian Gillison study...

The Talk of the Town Hat by James Stevenson. Illustrated Talk story about winter hats. With the temperature last week at minus-two degrees&frequent warnings on television&in the press that alarming amounts of body heat were likely to escape through the top of one's head unless it was covered, the writer finally decided to buy...

Books by John Updike.

The Theatre by Edith Oliver.

Profiles ILLUSIONIST by Charles Patrick Crow. PROFILE of Steve Charney, who broadcasts a weekly children's show on radio station WDST-FM in Woodstock, N.Y. He has done nearly 250 broadcasts, and has attracted a more or less loyal following of children and adults throughout the mid-Hudson Valley...

Fiction Fast Forward by Peter Cameron. Alison Arbinger called her friend Patrick & asked him to go to Maine with her over the weekend. Her mother was very ill. Alison worked as a projectionist in a movie theatre in Cambridge & wanted to leave after work at midnight Friday. Patrick said yes &...

Poetry Hippocrene by Amy Clampitt. I came to the puddle. I could not cross it. Identity failed...

Poetry Ink by Laurance Wieder. The more one knows, /The more one knows no certainty/Lurks behind the...