Yorker

I got to teach Episcopal Sunday school last week, a rare privilege, and it was in a New York church so the kids had plenty to say. Teenagers, and if you expect them to sit in rapt silence as you tick off points of theology, you're in the wrong place. They made plenty of noise, and not much of it about religion. Some of them seemed to be on a faith journey that was heading away from the Nicene Creed toward something cooler and jokier, some form of animism perhaps, the worship of cougars and badgers.

NEW YORK -- The two cars, the taxi and the beat-up Chevy, are waiting for the light to change on 15th Street at Fifth Avenue when it becomes apparent to the driver of the second car, the Chevy, that the light is never going to change. So he starts honking his horn.Big deal. The cabbie in front of him points a finger at the red light and then holds up one hand, indicating, hold your horses. But the man in the Chevy holds up a symbolic digit of his own and, feeling this inadequately expresses his feelings, gets out of his car, marches up to the cabbie, and asks him to roll down his window.

NEW YORK -- For the first time in more than four decades, residents of metropolitan New York have contracted malaria from local mosquitoes, federal health officials said yesterday.Three of the cases occurred last July in the New York borough of Queens, startling city health officials who this year, for the first time in recent memory, are regularly trapping the insects and testing them for the disease. Two other cases, to be reported today in the New England Journal of Medicine, were seen in New Jersey in 1991.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, enjoying the freedom that only a final term in office can bring, has proposed banning the sale of soda and other sugary drinks larger than 16 ounces at restaurants, sports venues, delis and food carts, effective next March. If you want your drink super-sized, you will have to buy two - or go back for a refill. And New Yorkers, who never harbor an unexpressed thought for very long, are outraged. Some see this as the nanny state gone wild, and another liberty, like the right to consume trans fats in restaurants, trampled by the health-nut mayor (who has built an edifice to his passion here in Baltimore)

As a member of the arts community, I find it to be very exciting that Harford County will get a new arts center funded by a major contribution from Emily Bayless Graham ("Designs are unveiled for Harford arts center," Oct. 24). What bothers me however is the hiring of a New York firm to design it. Maryland, and particularly Baltimore and it's surrounding counties, have several extremely talented architectural firms, some of which have excellent reputations for this type of project.

How was the changing of the guard at The New Yorker? Not "entirely smooth," writes Jim Windolf in the New York Observer. A list of notes and grievances:One of the first things to go when the new regime swept in was a note pinned to the bulletin board outside new editor Tina Brown's office, a memo to the staff written by former editor William Shawn when he departed."

Maybe New Yorker editor Tina Brown and her well-connected writers, often celebrities themselves, wanted to prove that they're not just a bunch of au courant social swells and intellectuals, that they could compete with the British Sun, the News of the World, the Daily Mail and the other tabloids after all. That they could gossip, predict the future, name-drop and ooze saccharin sentiment with the best of them.How else to understand the Sept. 15 issue of the New Yorker, which pays strange tribute to the late Princess of Wales?

With nominations in five categories, the monthly GQ and weekly New Yorker lead the 75 finalists in the judging of 1994's entries in the annual National Magazine Awards. The awards, the industry's equivalent of the Oscars, will be held April 14 in New York.As for the competition between GQ and the New Yorker:GQ writer Tom Junod has two entries in the feature-writing category.One, "The Abortionist," published in the February issue, is about Dr. John Bayard Britton, the 68-year-old doctor who replaced Dr. David Gunn after he was murdered two years ago in Pensacola, Fla., "the Selma of the abortion-rights movement," as Mr. Junod calls it.Mr.

A New Yorker who police said used cash, drugs and violence to establish a $4-million-a-year heroin and cocaine ring in East Baltimore has been indicted along with 33 other alleged members of his organization, the Baltimore state's attorney's office said yesterday.Complaints from residents of the area where the group operated prompted the investigation that led to the indictments, police said.The alleged ringleader, Billy Guy, a 25-year-old native of the Bronx, N.Y., was said to have marked his $10 bags of heroin with "G Force" to identify them with his organization.

Mount Airy officials have named a manager for the town's new Main Street revitalization program. Jill Lemke, a member of the American Institute of Certified Planners, has accepted the position, Mayor James S. Holt said yesterday. Now living in Buffalo, N.Y., she plans to begin work next month. "We're very excited to have her coming here because of her qualifications, and she's quite enthusiastic," Holt said. Lemke has a master's degree from Cornell University in regional planning, with a concentration in community and economic development, according to the announcement.