Concert Records / Popular Music Revelation by Douglas Watt.

A Reporter at Large II-AMERICAN JOURNEY by Richard Reeves. REPORTER AT LARGE about following in the footsteps of Alex de Tocqueville who visited the US in 1831 and then wrote "Democracy in America." Writer quotes from his observations and follows with his own views, which come from his 1979 travels. Writer discusses religion's changed state and its decline and...

Fiction Victrola by Wright Morris. Bundy was an old man with an old dog. Once a month Bundy took the dog with him to the drugstore to pick up his prescription. The pharmacist paid close attention to the amount of medication Bundy took. He recommended a vitamin supplement for Bundy's dog. Bundy inherited the dog...

U. S. Journal FUNNY, FUNNY by Calvin Trillin. U.S. JOURNAL: PEMBROKE PARK, FLORIDA, about the town that has been called Bozoville, U.S.A. One of the sources of the town's reputation must have been the short tenure of Tom Courtney as police chief and administrative assistant to the mayor in 1977. During that time, the town of 4,900 people...

The Theatre Time Exposures by Edith Oliver.

The Talk of the Town Maple Sugar by Patti Hagan. Talk story about going to the Bronx to visit Wave Hill, a city-operated environmental center of 28 acres at 252 St. and the Hudson. A class of first-graders surrounded a sugar maple tree with a couple of hooded metal pails hanging from its trunk. It was Joan Valentine's...

Fiction The Fishermen by Douglas Dunn. Kenneth Fraser grew up on the banks of Dargal Water in Scotland. Fishing was the obsession of all the men and boys in his small town. When Kenneth grew up and became a dentist he left town to live in a city with his wife. Fishing became something he did...

The Talk of the Town Launch by Thomas Zito. Talk story about the third launching of the Space Shuttle Columbia, from Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center. A phalanx of 500 photographers aimed their cameras at Columbia, which was suspended in a state of motionless silence. Describes the spectators at different stages of the countdown. Then tells...

Books Who Was Christy Mathewson? by Jeremy Bernstein.

The Talk of the Town Sonny Greer by Whitney Balliett. Talk story about jazz drummer Sonny Greer, who died a week or so ago at the age of seventy-eight. Greer was a co-founder of the Duke Ellington band, in the early twenties, and remained Ellington's drummer for almost thirty years. He left in 1951 and never went back...

Comment by Suzannah Lessard. The cat on the roof below is hunting, her tawny coat puffed out against the cold so that her tail is nearly as thick as a raccoon's. This is obscure Cambridge, local Cambridge, which was built in the 19th century between Old Cambridge and Boston, and is still known as...

Poetry After a Storm by W. S. Merwin. When I come back I find...

Poetry A Woman by Robert Pinsky. Thirty years ago: gulls keen in the blue...