Fiction Alpha by Larry Woiwode. James, the narrator, recalls when he was in 3rd grade, in 1950, and his brother Jerome was in 4th. There were five children in his family, and Alpha, his mother, was pregnant again. They were Catholic, and James and Jerome went to parochial school. They lived in North Dakota, where...

Comment Comment Part I by John Bennet. By coincidence, in the same week that the Los Angeles Board of Education voted to put its schools on a year-round schedule a friend in Missouri has sent us a copy of an old letter, apparently from the mid-nineteenth century, which he says he says he found in...

Musical Events by Andrew Porter.

The Talk of the Town Therapy by Erik Larson. Talk story about a group-therapy session for pet owners held at the Animal Medical Center, on East Sixty-Second Street. Under the guidance of Susan Phillips Cohen, the center's social worker, pet owners meet every second Saturday to talk about pets who have died or who are fading fast...

Books by Terrence Rafferty.

Comment Comment Pt. II by Elizabeth Macklin. An occasional reader of Spanish writes that she likes the wistfully flamboyant color that "El Diario-La Prensa" uses on its front page: various reds & blues normally good for flags. She likes the paper's editorial cartoons, though she often doesn't get them, since the joke often hangs on a...

The Theatre THE COURTSHIP OF JOHN MALKOVICH by Edith Oliver.

The Talk of the Town Mini Golf by Susan Orlean. Talk story about attending a miniature-golf-course-slide-show party at the invitation of Ken Brown and Lisa Crafts. Lisa is an animator and Ken is a cartoonist. He occasionally appears in his own cartoons. He also makes videos & slide shows about his three favorite subjects. He's currently...

A Reporter at Large DARK TIME by Richard Preston. Mentioned a number of times in REPORTER AT LARGE about planetary scientist Eugene M. Shoemaker, and his wife, Carolyn, who works with him. One evening, in Oct., 1985, when writer was visiting them at their home near Flagstaff, Arizona, Gene said they were going after something new that month at...

Around City Hall AROUND CITY HALL KNOWING THE RIGHT PEOPLE by Andy Logan. Bess Myerson, was arraigned on Oct. 15 at the federal court-house in Manhattan's Foley Square. Arraigned with her was her lover, the city contractor Carl Capasso, with whom, according to the indictment announced eight days earlier by U.S. Attorney Rudolph Giuliani, he had unlawfully conspired with a State Supreme...

Our Far-Flung Correspondents LAUGHTER IN THE BALKANS by Burton Bernstein. OUR FAR-FLUNG CORRESPONDENTS about a visit to Bulgaria & to the 8th International Biennial of Humor & Satire... When writer received his invitation to the Biennial, he first thought it was a joke & not a very funny one... In the ensuing moths he read a lot about Bulgaria...

Fiction Post-Season Knucklers by James Stevenson. Story begins with a quote by James Gleick in the Times about baseball's most demonic challenge to science, the knuckleball... Recent simulations show...that a knuckleball can veer more than once in flight... Illustrated story about some unexpected results which resemble the knuckleball's unpredictable course. Writer gives various examples. Some...

Dance Out of Mongolia by Sarantuya Batchuluun. Talk story about a visiting group of singers & dancers from the Mongolian People's Republic. They went to the Hope of Israel Senior Citizens Center in the Bronx to learn an American folk dance. Later Batchuluun Sarantuya sang a song about the Kherlen River...

Poetry On the River by Philip Levine. My brother has an old rowboat...

Poetry Goodbye, Goteborg by John Updike. The countries we depart will manage without us...