THE "Cherry Blossom" sailed off into the twilight Friday night with Mayor Marion Barry and his private guests, but the controversy surrounding the event was not stilled. Earlier this month, the mayor canceled a related event known as Riverfest, the city's largest summer celebration,...

RIVERBOAT RACE COUNTER CULTURE A Mississippi side-wheeler docks on lower Second Avenue NATCHEZ 31 Second Avenue 212.460.9171 Natchez sounds like a screwy name for a New Orleans-style Creole restaurant-especially since Natchez is in Mississippi. But one glance at...

[The Fabulous Riverboat] is the second volume of Philip José Farmer's "Riverworld" trilogy. Death is apparently only a temporary indisposition. Cadavers find themselves reincarnated as hale youngsters somewhere along the banks of The River, a giant stream twenty million miles long, and living cheek by jowl with a Neolithic caveman or John F. Kennedy, depending on the vagaries of chance or the plans of the Ethicals…. The hero of the story is Sam Clemens, alias Mark Twain, w...