The Cicadas Come Back
Closed mid-May 1993 · On stands late May 1993
The Front
Index of the Spring
Numbers of May — graduation-season catering bookings, the season's pollen count, the average price of a used minivan
Field Notes: The Lawn Service
A count of how many co-op boards switched lawn-care contractors this spring, and why
The Essay
The Seventeen-Year Insect
A furniture essay on the cicada brood's return to the mid-Atlantic suburbs, and what a town does with a noise it can't opt out of
The Foreign File
Bratislava, Divided Quietly
A stringer's dispatch on the new Slovak capital five months after the velvet divorce, a government still moving into its own building
The Feature Well
The Minivan's Decade
A profile of a Detroit product planner tracking the minivan's rise against the station wagon it replaced
The City
Subject: A service piece on the city's stoop-sale calendar, block by block, as the weather turns
The Back
Books: A review essay on the season's graduation-gift nonfiction · Art: A gallery note on a spring student-thesis show at a co-op gallery · Film: Short notices on June's early-summer openings