Letter from Washington by Elizabeth Drew. Having had foreign-policy events break very nicely his way since he took office, President Bush finally came to the hard part in his relations with the Soviet Union when Mikhail Gorbachev attempted to strangle--or at least slow Lithuania's move to independence... Bush, in his own handling of the...

Fiction Willing by Lorrie Moore. Sidra is an aging movie actress whose career has wilted into semi-porn. She hates her Hollywood life and, after her boyfriend goes back to his wife, goes to Chicago, thinking vague thoughts of marriage, domesticity, etc. An old friend back in CA, Tommy, calls her and tells her to...

The Theatre PRANKS by Edith Oliver.

Comment Comment, Pt. I by Brendan Lemon. Comment on reactions to a speech by President Bush on March 29 in which he vowed to support legislation protecting people with AIDS against job and housing discrimination. Donald S. Goldman of the National Commission on AIDS praised the symbolic importance of the speech. But Jeffrey Braff of the Gay...

A Reporter at Large THE ANCIENT FOREST by Catherine Caufield. REPORTER AT LARGE about the Pacific forest. Today the effects of almot 50 years of intensive logging in the publicly owned forests of the Pacific Northwest are clear. The logging industry haa been unable to take large amounts of timber out of the forest without damaging water quality, wildlife, and...

The Art World (The Art Galleries) by Adam Gopnik.

The Talk of the Town Desolate by Thomas Vinciguerra. Talk story about visiting North Brother Island. The island is a 20 1/2 acre chunk of rock in the East River about 1500' off the Bronx near Hunts Point. At one time or another, it has been turned into or envisioned as the site of a hospital, a waste-disposal...

Books by Naomi Bliven.

Comment Comment, Pt. II by Sherwin B. Nuland. A comment about visiting with Dr. Jozsef Antall, the director of the Semmelweis Museum of Medical History, in Budapest. Writer is a medical historian himself and began exchanging notes with Antall, who revealed himself to be a man of considerable wisdom and kindness... Writer visits Hungary and finds that the...

Jazz by Whitney Balliett.

The Talk of the Town Permanence by George W. S. Trow. Talk story about George Tsypin, designer of theatrical sets He designed Peter Sellars' "Don Giovanni", set in Spanish Harlem. He was born in the Soviet Union in 1954 & attended the Institute of Architecture in Moscow (it's near the KGB), came to America in 1979, and eneded up studying theatre...

Poetry Faith by David Baker. It was midday before we noticed it was morning...

Poetry Playground by Katha Pollitt. In the hygienic sand...

Poetry Saying Yes to a Drink by Deborah Garrison. What would a grown woman do...