American Notes POSTAL SERVICE

Letter carriers usually fret about dogs; now they're worried about copycats. Postal workers are afraid that mail bombings in the South, which left a federal judge and a civil rights lawyer dead, were models for two unrelated episodes last week. In Brooklyn, a booby-trapped .22-cal. sawed-off rifle, which failed to go off, was mailed in a briefcase to a federal prosecutor. In Houston a Pentecostal minister's daughter suffered burns when she opened an exploding parcel addressed to her father.

Tom McClure of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service faults publicity for the spate of bombings. The service now has an Atlanta hot line to take calls about suspect packages. "We are trying to get members not to panic," says Moe Biller, president of the American Postal Workers Union.