The Talk of the Town Fast Draw by Brendan Dealy. Talk story about Bob Munden, a professional gunman, who is the fastest gun who ever lived. He got his start in 1969 with an outfit called National School Assemblies. Since then he has been travelling with his wife Becky ("the only full-time woman shooeter in the world") from town...

Dept. of Amplification by Berton Roueche. DEPT. OF AMPLIFICATION on ANNALS OF MEDICINE which ran Jan. 4, 1988 & told of a case of poisoning from certain pesticides. Among the many letters writer received was an interesting one from Dr. Jerrold F. Rosenbaum. It enclosed a report written by him and two colleagues describing emotional effects...

The Theatre OF TWO MINDS by Edith Oliver.

Fiction You Name It by Jeffrey Shaffer. This humorous piece parodies newscasters, in particular their presentation and naming of natural disasters. Reporters, from all around, patch their stories through to Norm, who's at the helm of the group. Kate reports on "Earthquake Bob" in the San Fernando Valley. Rita, in a chopper east of I-5, gives...

Around City Hall AROUND CITY HALL BOARD GAMES by Andy Logan. Rudolph Giuliani, the U.S. Attorney General has announced he will not be running for the U.S. Senate. After he cancelled out he was often asked about a more certain political opportunity: next year's mayoral race. A race against Koch is seen as far more interesting than it was before the...

The Talk of the Town Valentine by Katy Butler. Talk story about a woman in California, near Mill Valley, whose car broke down on Valentine's Day, and her husband, after five years of marriage, didn't give her flowers for Valentine's Day. She tells of the formal gifts he had given her in previous years. She walked into town for...

The Talk of the Town Expediter by Mark Singer. Talk story about Nat Silberman, 49, an expediter at the Dept. of Buildings on lower Hudson Street. It is a fact of life that if you need something done there you get an expediter to do it. The other morning the writer saw Nat waiting to talk to an inspector...

Comment by Roger Angell. Comment about a rowing machine. Writer begins by telling about his friend who built himself a one-room bungalow in a coconut grove in the Deominican Republic. He had a lot of help from his neighbors in Samana, who are mostly fishermen. They were looking through a catalogue of Yanqui...

Fiction Repetition by Peter Handke. An Austrian man, Filip Kobal, reminisces about the time 25 years ago, when he went to Yugoslavia on the trail of his older brother, Gregor, whom he never knew. Gregor had disappeared in World War II, after having been a bright student of agriculture. While Gregor was at school, in...

A Reporter at Large BATS by Diane Ackerman. A REPORTER AT LARGE about bats. Writer follows Merlin D. Tuttle, a world authority on bats and the founder and science director of Bat Conservation International, whose headquarters is in Austin. "Bats are among the gentlest of animals," he says. "They're really shy creatures, who have just had a bad...

The Control of Nature II-COOLING THE LAVA by John McPhee. Mentined in THE CONTROL OF NATURE about cooling a lava flow in 1973 in Iceland. Hawaii and Iceland are in a sense twins-geophysical hot spots. The youngest Hawaiian mountain is Kilauea, one of the two or three most active volcanoes in the world. On the rim stands a small...

Poetry Spring Thaw in South Hadley by Mary Jo Salter. Old snows locked under glass...

Poetry What The Night Is Like by Robert Mazzocco. The night is like...