Comment by Mark Hertsgaard. Military censorship & other techniques of news management, combined with tacit acquiesence on the part of most news organizations have until now guaranteed that we Americans know about this war what our govt. wants us to know and little else... Pentagon officials seem also to be determined that this war...

Comment by David Green. We heard from a friend in Jerusalem. He said there was not much he could tell us about Iraq's missile attacks on Israel that we don't already know. TV viewers in the U.S. find out when Israel is being attacked before they do. He tells how early in the morning...

The Talk of the Town Ice by Nancy Marx Better. Talk story about the Sky Rink, which for 22 years has been Manhattan's only public indoor ice rink. It sits on top of a 16-story office building stretching along Tenth Ave. from 31st to 33rd Streets. During warm weather when other arenas close Sky Rink operates nearly 24 hours...

The Talk of the Town Party by Vajra Kilgour. Talk story about attending a party for"Harvey Wang's New York", a collection of 50 glossy black and white photographs, accompanied by thumb-nail descriptions of New Yorkers who have unusual, outmoded occupations. The music for the party was provided by one of the book's subjects, an enterprising bandleader named...

Fiction The Beige Book by George W. S. Trow. The story is headed by a quotation from The Times: "'BEIGE BOOK' CITES MUCH EVIDENCE OF SLOWING ECONOMY ...includes much anecdotal evidence of growing distress." The story is a parody of the Beige Book--a book brought out several times a year by the Federal Reserve Bank, recording the financial...

Fiction Devil's Thumb by Mary Tannen. Dixie lives with her lover, Shane, in a trailer in Priest Creek, Colorado. Shane is an unemployed cowboy. Dixie likes to read Western novels by an author named Treat Redheart; she takes comfort from their predictable plots. On Easter morning, Shane drives up Canyon Road to a mountain formation called...

Profiles A GOLD COIN by David Blum. PROFILE of violinist Josef Gingold. He was born Oct. 28, 1909 and teaches at the School of Music at Indiana University. Tells about his audition for Eugene Ysaye, a great Belgian violinist, in 1927. Gingold was renowned for his career as soloist, chamber-music player, concermaster of the Cleveland Orchestra...

A Reporter at Large THORNE MOORS by Catherine Caufield. REPORTER AT LARGE about Thorne Moors, an area of wetlands near York, England. It is an unusual type of wetland--a raised peat bog. 96% of Britain's raised peat bogs have been destroyed,according to gov't figures. Fisons, a multinational company, was engaged in scraping the area Dare , its peat...

Musical Events by Andrew Porter.

Letter from Washington by Elizabeth Drew. Tells about the war with Iraq. The major issue in the war over Kuwait has been smashing Saddam Hussein's military machine--and, if possible, his regime--it had priority. Some thought was given to post-crisis security arrangements, and some papers have been written--even if far more thought has...

Books by Ethan Mordden.

Poetry True History by Charles Simic. Which cannot be put into words...

Poetry On Thin Ice by Susan Prospere. Then we lifted the cans of snow...