By Richard Stengel

Dear Folks,

Hello from the Big Apple (they really do call it that). In case you worried about who in Sin City would buy tickets to hear me sing at Radio City Music Hall, lo and behold, the place was Sold Out. Most of the media (they're everywhere up here) hadn't really heard of Amy Grant, and they all stepped pretty gingerly around the fact that I'm a "Christian" singer. They seemed surprised when I told them that I've won two Grammys and that I'm pretty well known in a lot of the country. They wanted to make me out as some kind of sermon-singing Goody Two-Shoes from Nashville. Well anyway, it's been great. I saw Cats (purr), had Chinese food at Mr. Chow (yum), and rented a room at the Plaza to watch the Columbus Day Parade. Gotta go. On to Philadelphia and Toronto. As I told one reporter, I've honestly felt embraced up here.

Love, Amy

It's all been rather a bore so far. No parties. No press conferences. No polo, even. The first four weeks of Henry (call me Harry) Charles Albert David's life have been spent quietly with Mum and Nanny at Highgrove, Prince Charles' stately home in Gloucestershire, about 90 sedate miles west of London. They're all mad about the boy, of course, but thus far they have kept his short reign quiet. He hasn't even messed about much with Brother Willie. The only public peek at the newborn Windsor came when his uncle manque, Lord Snowdon, came to call and snapped his first portrait. The baby Beau Brummell was turned out in the very latest in Savile Row swaddling clothes.

The scene had the ageless delicacy and serenity of a 19th century Japanese watercolor. The white royal retreat overlooking a placid lake. The azure sky contrasting with the pale, pebbled front yard. Nothing had changed, at least not on the surface, as Emperor Hirohito, 83, and Empress Nagako, 81, returned to Inawashiro, the resort town 150 miles north of Tokyo where they had spent their honeymoon 60 summers before. The only changes evident during this "full-moon" trip, as second honeymoons are called in Japan, was writ on the wrinkled faces of the six bowing septuagenarians who had served as caddies for the couple during a golfing outing in 1924. The royal pair did not try another round. The Emperor was content to visit a local orchard where he picked three nashi, Japanese pears, while the Empress, looking ever so slightly moonstruck, observed from close by.

Debearded, deponytailed and, some might say, delovelied, Willie seemed like a half-Nelson. Last week when a clean-shaven but still grizzled ole boy collected Willie Nelson's prize at the Country Music Association awards in Nashville, the "redheaded stranger" was not immediately recognized. "I did it for comfort mainly," he explained. What he also did it for mainly was his role in the film Songwriter. Now that he is shorn again, will he stay clean-cut? "People tell me I look younger and healthier," said Nelson, 51. "I like it."

-By Richard Stengel