Comment by James Albrecht. Comment on Justice Thurgood Marshall's decision to step down from the Supreme Court, and President Bush's nomination of Judge Clarence Thomas to succeed him. With the nomination of Judge Thomas, Pres. Bush is poised to establish a solidly conservative majority on the bench. Bush has spoken of his commitment to...

The Talk of the Town The Traveler by Mark Singer. Talk story about the Traveler Restaurant, whose owner, Martin Doyle, gives free books to customers. The Traveler is near Interstate 84 in Union, Connecticut, on a service road a quarter of a mile off Exit 74. Mr. Doyle, 68, has been at the Traveler for 22 years, and owned it...

The Talk of the Town Three-Dimensional by Susan Orlean. Talk story about a press conference at the New York Hilton announcing the introduction of the Steve Urkel doll, based on a character in the television comedy "Family Matters." Steve Urkel is played by a 14-year-old actor named Jaleel White; his agent, Iris Burton, was among those present...

Fiction Late Early Man by Ralph Lombreglia. Walter and Anita are editing a videotape at their advertising agency, Paradise Productions, in Boston. It's summer, the air conditioning has broken down, and Anita is pregnant. The baby is overdue. Anita's husband, Dwight, arrives with an idea for the video--an infomercial about a new line of synthetic sandpaper...

Profiles I-THE EDUCATION OF AN ARCHBISHOP by Paul Wilkes. PROFILE of Rembert George Weakland, 64, Archbishop of Milwaukee. Writer spoke with him last Sept. just after he came back from a monthlong vacation. He visited Siberia, Poland & the Ukraine where he saw a Catholic Church emerging from the oppression of the recently defunct Dommunist regimes. He was eager...

The Current Cinema by Terrence Rafferty.

The Theatre No. 18 by Mimi Kramer.

Letter from Buenos Aires by Alma Guillermoprieto. There has been no lack of stories since President Carlos Menem took office, two years ago, but Daniel Capalbo, a reporter, dates the symbolic anniversary of the scandal era to a week last July, when the magazine he was then working for, "Noticias," ran a cover photograph of the head...

The Film File Dying Young by Michael Sragow. Julia Roberts’s vehicles are so closely linked that they resemble a series. Even the “movie tie-in” editions of the original novels “Sleeping with the Enemy” and “Dying Young” sport similar red-white-and-black cover art; it’s as if they were installments in a Julia Roberts line of contemporary gothic romances. In her...

Poetry Drowning in Grain by Caroline Fraser. Take silos. Full of the innocent fruit...

Poetry The Time at the Tone by Ron Hornung. Yesterday was an echo after you left, the air...