Comment by Daniel Menaker. A friend - a man in his forties who lives & works in Manhattan - writes that last winter an aunt of his who is 85, deeded to him her property in northwestern Connecticut. The place consists of about 75 acres, a small summer cottage, and a few outbuildings, all ramshackle. His...

Fiction What Did We Do Wrong? by Garrison Keillor. Annie Szemanski was the first woman to play major league baseball. She was the fourth second baseman on the Sparrows roster&she wanted to be treated like any other rookie. The team didn't treat her very nicely, but by March she had a .346 average. Asked how she felt...

The Talk of the Town When at the Waldorf by William McKibben. Talk story about Roger Axtell, an internationalist Emily Post, who wrote"Do's& Taboos Around the World." Writer spoke to him at the Waldorf. Mr. Axtell lives in Janesville, Wisconson&has travelled the globe for 22 years for the Parker Pen Company. The Parker Pen Company, which also has...

Television Soviet TV by Thomas Whiteside. Talk story about daily Soviet television broadcasts of news & other programs, which since last August, have been viewed by professors& students at Columbia University's Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union. The routine reception of these broadcasts here in the city had been too difficult...

The Talk of the Town Three Sisters by William McKibben. Talk story about 3 sisters: Alice, Nell&Claire Scovell, who graduated from Harvard in 1980, 1982&last spring, respectively. They stand 4 feet 11 inches, 5 feet& 5 feet 2 inches& they have just finished work on the first of what they hope will be many...

Books by John Lukacs.

Dancing Dancing With Poets by Ellen Bryant Voigt. The accident" is what he calls the time he threw himself from a window four floors up, breaking his back and both ankles so that walking became the direst labor for this man who takes my hand, invites me to the empty strip of floor ...Unsuited for this world-his...

A Reporter at Large I-HOLY DAYS by Lis Harris. REPORTER AT LARGE about the Lubavitcher Hasidim, a particularly pious Jewish sect. Hasidism is a revivalist-pietistic movement that began in Poland in the first half of the 18th century. Its innovativeness lay in the way it redefined traditional Jewish values by placing prayer, mysticism, dancing singing, storytelling, and the...

Fiction The Fence Party by Elizabeth Tallent. This story is about a father, his son and his second wife. Hart has recently married Caro, daughter of a Nicaraguan refugee (who also may be a bit younger than her husband.) Kevin, his son, is fifteen years old. The story takes place at a fencemending party where Hart is...

The Art World (The Art Galleries) by Sanford Schwartz.

Poetry The New World by Deborah Digges. There is news from my friend...

Poetry Catch by Phyllis Janowitz. Scuba diving in the green murk...