During World War I, as part of the war effort, Gregory's had barrels out

in front for the collection of peach pits. They were said to be

used in the manufacture of gas masks.

Odd Fellows Hall was a busy social center. Many of us attended its afternoon tea dances for young people reluctantly, urged on by eager parents.

The East Hampton Public School, today the home of London Jewelers, stood on Newtown Lane 85 years ago, when I was born in a house next door.

The school was a two-story frame building with a brick wing. During the early '20s the frame structure was moved to Main Street and remodeled into the Masonic Temple. Later it became the headquarters of the Veterans of Foreign Wars.

There were bowling alleys in the basement as well as Augie Dragotta's barber shop. During World War II a serviceman's club was established there. Local ladies served sandwiches and coffee to young men stationed in the area.

Our home shared with our business - P.C. Schenck Coal, Wood, Hay, and Grain - a property that extended back to the railroad tracks. A spur of the Long Island Rail Road made possible the delivery of coal, grain, and bluestone via freight cars. Piles of coal and neat stacks of wood, as well as a structure storing grain, filled the yard in the track area until 1938, when the hurricane flattened the grain building.

Perhaps this was fortunate: Room was made for a new development - fuel oil products.

Our house and the supply yards were separated by a large pasture, with a garden and a barn next to it. Animals abounded - horses, a young steer, pigs, chickens, ducks, and geese, all of which grazed contentedly in the pasture, although the ducklings tended sometimes to wander. It was not an uncommon sight on Newtown Lane to see ducklings being shooed along the sidewalk.

The animals provided a source of great pleasure to many city-bred summer children until the property was sold and the house moved to Pantigo on a beautiful Saturday in July 1981 - a minor engineering miracle accomplished despite East Hampton traffic.

I.Y. Halsey owned a garage directly across Newtown Lane when I was a boy. It was a big two-story cement building that housed many expensive "motor cars" belonging to wealthy summer residents. Uniformed chauffeurs gathered each morning, ready and waiting for orders of the day from their bosses. The Halseys lived upstairs in an apartment and for a while the American Legion met in another upstairs area.

East of Halsey's, where the entrance to the Reutershan parking lot is now, there were several smaller buildings: Ryan's Diner (hamburgers 5 cents; root beer a dime). Next, a Chinese laundry, always busy "doing up" shirts with stiff white collars - items then necessary for proper businessmen.

Beyond the laundry, Emil Palma's shop dispensed Victrola records and offered billiard games for East Hampton men and youth. To the east, Joe Loris Sr. had established himself as proprietor of the East Hampton Hotel. His was another large building. Traveling salesmen were the major part of his clientele. (East Hampton was not yet a tourist spot.)

A.O. Jones Hardware occupied what is now East End Hardware. There was a plumbing shop in the basement and I remember that Babe Ruth made a brief visit to it, although the reason is unknown to me. Village kids were ecstatic!

Continuing east were Raymond Parsons's Electric Shop and Schultz's Bakery, with the luscious smell of baking bread. The Cavagnaros had a fruit and vegetable market and nearby, Steve Marley, in competition with A.O. Jones, also had a hardware store.

Mr. Marley had a radio (rare in those days) and men and boys alike were fascinated to see, posted on the store window, the inning-by-inning scoring of the World Series.

In the near vicinity, during my boyhood, a new firehouse was constructed with a meeting room above. Close by was Barney Panzer's tailor shop as well as Dick Corwin's garage. Dick had added convenience for motorists, as his gasoline pumps were right on the sidewalk curbing.

Lastly, there was, on the corner of Main Street, the brick building in which, in those days, the Post Office was situated. Its outside wall contained a through mail-drop for pedestrian access. Upstairs was the domain of the New York Telephone Company. This big building had only recently replaced my grandfather's house, in which my father, Percy Schenck, was born.

The north side of Newtown was not developed for business as early as the south. East of the small coal and wood office now occupied by Who'd A Thought, there was an orchard and a large, two-story house belonging to E. Moreford. He was the first Chief of Police for East Hampton Village.

During the real estate boom that preceded the 1929 stock market crash, Mrs. Norman Barns bought this property, moved the house back, and had built the block of small shops as well as the larger building presently occupied by the Barefoot Contessa. Due to the timing, the shops were not too successful and were mostly rented only in summer. The large one served as Town Hall. Later the Post Office relocated to it, and still later, a small theater, called the Old Post Office Cinema, was there.

Beyond Barns Lane, Tony Rose owned two stores, over which he lived. He had his shoe repair shop in the first and rented the second to Fisher's Variety. When Tony's daughter was married to Sam Nasca they took over the second store and established Sam's Restaurant, and so it remains.

Mrs. Barns also owned and developed the next nearby vacant property during the '20s. One store, leased in advance, became an A&P, another was Levesconte's Men's Shop, and the third, after prohibition was repealed, became Dakers' Liquor Store. A large part of the present Village Hardware occupies the same location.

Beyond, to the east, situated just as it is today, was the Odd Fellows Hall. This was a busy social center. Among other activities held there were afternoon tea dances for young people. Many of the young participants attended these affairs reluctantly, urged on by eager parents. Admission was 10 cents and included refreshments.

Years later, during renovation of the school, kindergarten classes were held here.

Adjacent to the Odd Fellows, John Jensen had a garage and automobile showroom. I believe it is a clothing store now. Close to Mr. Jensen was a small plumbing shop (long gone) owned and operated by Charles Mapes. Where Fleet Bank stands today there was vacant property.

The newly built Rowe's Pharmacy graced the corner. It remained a pharmacy until a very few years ago.

During my lifetime, Main Street, too, has had many changes. A few which stand out in my memory: Ernest Miller's house and McCann's meat market where Guild Hall is today. The East Hampton Free Library, as it was called then, was much smaller and sat between two large residences.

The present Star office was E.J. Edwards's Pharmacy (somewhat later a brokerage house). Otto Simmons's plumbing shop, with two gasoline pumps, was on the site of the historic town school house, Clinton Academy.

Dayton Lane had not been opened up. The Presbyterian Church had two steeples, and the session house (much lower) was beside the church, facing Main Street.

Gregory's Department Store, on the west side of Main Street, was a thriving establishment - the largest in the village. Inside, toward the rear, the cashier had an elevated station. Payments made to the sales clerks were inserted in a cup, which was then sent to her by an intricate system of overhead wiring. Much to the fascination of both young and old customers, change and receipts were whizzed back to the clerk in the same manner.

During World War I, as part of the war effort, Gregory's had barrels out in front for the collection of peach pits. They were said to be used in the manufacture of gas masks.

The grand old store burned and was almost completely gutted on a bitter cold winter night in the late '20s or early '30s.

Kennell Schenck was born on Newtown Lane and has lived on the street for all but about nine years of his life. When he left it was to attend college, join the Navy, and work in New York City.

Photo: Morgan McGivern

The energy in Guild Hall's Woodhouse Gallery was vibrant on a rainy afternoon last week, as kindergarteners from the Bridgehampton School squeezed in a visit to the Children's Museum of the East End exhibit before its final day on Sunday.

Children swarmed across the bridge over a fishing "pond," twirled about the room dragging the hems of overlarge, old-fashioned dress-up clothes, and waved their arms, covered with plush sea-creature puppets, as they crouched in front of a mural of East Hampton's shore.

Since its inception in October, 5,141 visitors, adults and children alike, have explored the interactive exhibit. And, while the museum's organizers look for land to build a permanent museum, C.M.E.E.'s first show, "Time and Place/Light and Space," which focuses on the East End environment past and present, will head to the Manhanset Chapel Museum of the Shelter Island Historical Society.

To Shelter Island

Though plans were tentative this week, the exhibit's Shelter Island run is likely to last from March or April to September, according to Louise Greene, the Historical Society's director. The details, including a rental fee, are still being negotiated.

"We're excited, because now all the schools on the North Fork can visit," said Lucy Kazickas, a member of the museum's founding committee. "We weren't happy about the prospect of putting the exhibit in storage."

Though the Shelter Island Historical Society has hosted "quite a few children's exhibits," said Ms. Greene, this is the first aimed specifically at young children up to 10 years of age.

Looking For Land

The exhibit will continue "on tour" after Labor Day, if there is interest from other organizations. A minimum of 1,200 square feet, and a ceiling height of 12 feet, are required to set up the show.

Children's Museum of the East End committee members, who have been seeking a permanent home for the museum, will meet with a children's museum consultant on Wednesday to forge plans.

"If we could find the land, we would build," Ms. Kazickas said. A central location, in the Bridgehampton area, for instance, is preferred.

Beyond Expectations

Fund raising will not be a problem, organizers feel, as the children's museum concept has garnered enthusiastic support.

"We had no idea it was going to be this successful," said Janet Jennings, another museum committee member.

A new museum building, "in the best world," would be 5,000 square feet on two acres of land, Ms. Jennings said. It would encompass permanent displays as well as rotating exhibits, with an outdoor playground, perhaps with an East End theme.

Guild Hall "Thrilled"

On Monday the panels of "now and then" photographs were dismantled, the pretend farmstand packed up, and the bullfrog, fiddler crab, and old boot from the pond tucked away.

As the paintings and artifacts in Guild Hall's corresponding Moran Family exhibit came down, so did the Children's Museum's copy of "MidSummer's Day," a Thomas Moran painting of East Hampton, where, behind "discovery doors," children could learn about windmills, trees, and Long Island's glacial origins.

"We're thrilled with the outcome," said Henry Korn, the director of Guild Hall, as "Time and Place/Light and Space" was loaded up. "It was marvelous for the community and also wonderful for Guild Hall."

Guild Hall is "looking forward to future cooperation with the Children's Museum of the East End," Mr. Korn said. The children's museum's focus on education for young children dovetails nicely with Guild Hall's educational mission, he noted.

"We would be happy to have them back in our galleries, and delighted to host workshops," Mr. Korn said. Guild Hall also would be willing to collaborate on activities at a future Children's Museum site, and would make its collection and other resources available, he said.

Race Lane, East Hampton

324-3199

Open for dinner every night from 5:30

Reservations requested for six or more.

Photo: Doug Kuntz

There has been a lot of curiosity about whether the Laundry, an East Hampton hangout loved by one and all, has changed since the head chef and manager moved on last year.

The first thing to know is that it's still the Laundry, with its blast of welcoming heat that melts the ice as you duck in from the shrieking winds of winter and its raw wood buttresses, warm brick walls, and comfortable couches around the fireside. The wonderful design, done years ago by the late Norman Jaffe, hasn't dated in the least.

Knowing that the Laundry does not take reservations but not that it prefers to be called ahead for parties of six or more, we arrived at 7:30 on a Saturday and for a minute it looked as if we would have a long wait. But the staff went into bustling action, rearranged tables, and we were seated almost immediately.

The service was excellent - personal and thoughtful. The wine list is huge (though they had run out of the Corey Creek merlot we ordered by the time we wanted a second bottle) and those important dollar numbers tend to be larger rather than smaller. The wines by the glass, $5 to $7.50, are carefully chosen for variety.

Appetizers vary in price from $5 for soup to $11 for a choice of two tapas. Three out of four of the tapas scored very high: The calamari, served with a spicy marinara sauce, were perfectly tender and the grilled beef, which had been marinated in scallions, ginger, and soy sauce, was spicily delicate.

The crostini came with a topping of roasted peppers and white bean garlic puree which provided a perfect combination of taste and texture. The chicken quesadillas, on this occasion, however, were somewhat scorched and a little heavy.

We tried two salads, both fairly removed from the conventional green stuff. The vegetable salad was an invigorating combination of garbanzos, scallions, and diced tomatoes and cucumbers in an eye-opening cilantro and lemon vinaigrette.

The spinach salad, on the other hand, was dauntingly rich, too much so for an appetizer. Served with grilled shiitake mushrooms, spiced pecan nuts, and some very sweet pieces of crunchy smoked bacon, the salad was full of interesting flavors but had far too much oil.

Although not tried on this occasion, enthusiastic reports have filtered Starwards of the cornmeal fried oysters. Also, the Malpeque oysters on the half shell looked wonderful. I can't tell you how they tasted, though. I tried to pull rank as the restaurant critic, but their recipient refused to share them.

Exotic Plumes

Main dishes, and the portions are hefty, run from $12.50 for a hamburger (any style) to $27 for a sirloin steak. The presentation is more artistic these days than we remember. The kitchen seems to have adopted the vertical approach, where many dishes arrive like little stacked-up castles, topped with pennants of exotic greenery.

The braised shortribs illustrate the kind of food the Laundry has always been known for - heartwarming comfort food at not too high a price. The huge plate of ribs, great value at $19.50, came with mashed potatoes and tiny baby sprouts and was delicious.

The calf's liver, served with mashed sweet potatoes, bacon, and caramelized onions, is also a great plateful at $18.50. For a little less you can get an enormous helping of pan-roasted chicken with garlic and rosemary-flavored mashed potatoes.

Exotic Flavors

This is a highly regarded staple on the Laundry's list, but this particular poulet did not have its recipient leaping over the table with enthusiasm. Rather, she poked at it with her knife and looked disappointed. We were puzzled.

The Japanese-style crab cakes came accompanied by a carrot and jicama slaw that some people will find too hot. The cakes themselves, beautifully cooked, moist inside and crisp outside, are flavored with wasabi mustard. This gives them an unusual flavor that took a little getting used to.

When it came to the Muscovy duck, however, there was no doubt that the exotic flavoring had gone over the top. The taste of the Chinese five-spice powder was overpowering. It came with a red sauce that turned out to be a rather superfluous reduction of beetroot juice.

Butter Is Better, But

We've been deluged in the past few weeks by Science Times pieces telling us that butter is better, oil is terrific, and obesity doesn't kill you after all. But the experts may change their minds again at any minute and it has to be said that a number of the Laundry's dishes were, at least on this occasion, too rich. This included the risotto.

Studded with chan ter elles and black trumpet mushrooms, this gleaming bowlful, as dark and oily as the River Styx itself, had the taste buds crying "Yes!" while the stomach cried "Mercy!"

Perhaps with some more aggressive guidance from the waitstaff, we would have known better than to pair the spinach salad with it.

Gossamer Desserts

When it came to dessert time - so often the moment at East End restaurants when you should just grab your hat and get out - the Laundry put out the bunting and let off the fireworks.

There was a gossamer pear Napoleon filled with a caramel pastry cream and decorated with warm caramel that was a joy to eat as well as behold. A little mound of featherlight chocolate cake with a warm liquid center was simple and perfect. (The secret, we were told, is in the pure Carib chocolate.)

Those who had eaten too much were delighted with the champagne granita made with blood orange juice and served with ruby grapefruit slices and pomegranate seeds - pretty and refreshing.

Winning Game

And, lastly, the Laundry's cookie plate was a work of art - nothing too fancy, just simple, butter-based cookies that your grandmother would have sold her whalebone corset to know how to make.

The changes at the Laundry are not that noticeable, though the prices seem to have risen a little. You can still get a hamburger and I'm sure you can still order just an appetizer or split an order of pasta. But it's a bit grander now and the food is more elaborate, not always wisely so.

Since everyone loves the Laundry just the way it has always been, we don't think it needs to jump on the Pacific Rim bandwagon or compete with the newest places in town. The restaurant has played a winning game for years, and, as poker players know, it's tempting fate to change it.

Photo: Morgan McGivern

The year Joan Washburn graduated from Middlebury College, she went to work as a secretary at the Kraushaar Galleries in New York City. One day, when she was alone in the gallery, a "rather attractive man" came in and showed interest in an exhibit of paintings of farmhouses and horses by a relatively obscure artist, Vaughan Flannery.

"I didn't know anything about the subject," Ms. Washburn said. "But I launched into a long monologue about horses and polo. Later, I was told the man was Alfred G. Vanderbilt."

The moral of the story is that "in this business, you sometimes have to play it by ear. You never know who you're talking to."

Many Artists And Styles

Joan Washburn has run the 57th Street gallery that bears her name for just over 25 years. In that time, she has shown works by a wide range of artists working in a broad range of styles, from Willem de Kooning and Pablo Picasso to Martin Johnson Heade and Albert Pinkham Ryder, and has established a reputation as one of New York's pre-eminent dealers.

Ms. Washburn has organized solo exhibits by her regular artists, such as Jack Youngerman and Bill Jensen, and group shows on art historical themes, such as "Miro and New York: 1930-1950," which examined the influence of the painter Joan Miro on younger artists working in New York during those decades.

To East Hampton

Recently, a visitor was led into the small, comfortable house on a quiet street in East Hampton Village where Ms. Washburn and her husband, Alan Washburn, stay on weekends and vacations.

A friendly-looking cat wandered up, seemingly in greeting. "Don't try to pet her!" Ms. Washburn cried. "She's very bad-tempered."

Ms. Washburn and her husband bought their first house in East Hampton in 1964, on Red Dirt Road. They'd been weekend guests of friends for many years before that, before their two children were born.

"When we had our first child, we still had invitations. But when we had our second child, all invitations ceased!" she said, laughing.

Pollock's Other Influences

The Washburn Gallery's newest exhibit, which opens on Wednesday, is called "Pollock, Orozco, and Siqueiros: The 1930s and '40s." It is typical of Ms. Washburn to go to the roots of a well-known artist's style, tracing connections that other dealers and curators may have overlooked.

Pollock, for example, is now the subject of an exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art that links him with his early teacher and mentor, the academic painter Thomas Hart Benton. But Ms. Washburn asserts that the Mexican artists Jose Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros had a more profound and less easily understood influence on Pollock.

Pollock was inspired by the size and format of Mexican mural painting, and Mr. Siqueiros often dripped and splashed paint onto panels before adding representational images.

Ms. Washburn has been working in the art world since 1951, first at Kraushaar, and subsequently at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Conn., the Graham Gallery, Cordier & Ekstrom, and Sotheby-Parke-Bernet. She started her own gallery in 1971.

The responsibility of an art dealer, Ms. Washburn said, is simply to "sell an artist's work and help him support himself. And you do that by arranging exhibitions on the highest possible level in terms of selection and quality. Based on the gallery's reputation, collectors and curators and the public come to see what the artist is doing."

With contemporary artists, Ms. Washburn tries to schedule an exhibit every two years, depending on how prolific the artist is. Her gallery has migrated over the years from Madison Avenue to a larger space at 42 East 57th Street.

A Healthier Market

The art world is much larger now than it was when she began her career.

"The art world doesn't have the cohesiveness today that it did in the '50s and '60s in that you can't walk up and down 57th Street and see everything. I regret that, in a way. It was wonderful for the viewers and for the artists."

"But in those days New York was the center of the art world, and all of the viewers were New Yorkers." When interest in art began to spread across the country, and to the rest of the world, things became "much healthier," she said.

Expanding Knowledge

"When the financial markets went bad in 1973 and 1974, it was terrible. Because everything was still concentrated in New York. But now people from every state in the country, and from abroad, come to the gallery. And museums have grown up all over the country."

"Years ago, we did a lot more 19th-century shows, because it was possible then to get groups of important paintings, to put a body of work together, which is what I enjoy doing most," she said.

"I like to hone in on a certain portion of an artist's work and expand the knowledge of their work that way. I never had the money to do buying. But gradually, over the years, people have liked the exhibitions and the way we handle them. And they've brought ideas to me, or artists' estates have come to me. I will often handle just a certain period of an artist's work."

Changes In Approach

David Smith, an American artist whose name is often linked with the Abstract Expressionists and who is best known for his large metal sculptures, is a case in point. "We handled his paintings of the '30s and '40s, which had never been shown in a cohesive way. The same with the Louise Nevelson show - work from the '30s and '40s that you don't generally get to see."

Ms. Washburn has seen changes in the approach subsequent generations take to art. Reminded of something the painter Jane Freilicher said - that it seemed to her that young artists today don't so much look at paintings as read art magazines - Ms. Washburn said that although that may be true, there is a variety of reasons for it.

Black And White Slides

"When I studied art history, everything was learned through black and white slides. When I went to Europe for the first time, and saw those Titians and Tintorettos, I was absolutely floored!" she said, exploding in laughter.

"Not only by the size, but by the glorious colors. If you go back through old issues of ARTnews, there are very few color reproductions. But today, consider the number of art books available," she said, noting that art students now are able to see art reproduced in ways unthinkable to earlier generations.

And the idea of what art is has changed since she began her career. "The emphasis today is not on painting. It's on installation art, and video, and context. And the geography of things has changed," she said.

First Date

Ms. Washburn recalled talking recently to a painter friend who knew Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner. "She said that Lee and Jackson's first date was at the Frick Museum!" Ms. Washburn said, laughingly imagining Pollock and Krasner surrounded by frothy pictures by Watteau.

"You know, Bill de Kooning and Gorky used to go and stand in front of the Ingres pictures at the Met and just study the folds in the clothing, as abstract compositions. Those things mattered very much to those artists," she said.

Ms. Washburn noted that museums and galleries have had to grow larger and larger in the last few decades, in order to accommodate larger works.

Bigger And Bigger

What helped to make this necessary was the color-field painting of the 1960s. Color-field painters, working with quick-drying acrylic paint, rather than the slow-drying oil paint earlier artists had used, "could turn out two or three large canvases a day. Acrylic changed everything."

And both sculpture and painting have grown in size over the years. The big Pollock paintings of the 1940s and 1950s, she reminded her visitor, "were large to us because we were accustomed to pictures that were 30 by 36 inches, that could go over the couch."

She remembered a phone call that her first employer received "from a man who said that he was looking for a Cezanne that could go over his couch. In those days, galleries had things like that. You used to see ma jor Bonnard shows at the Wildenstein Gallery every couple of years. No more."

Freedom

Ms. Washburn looks for the unconventional or little-known while keeping art-historical context in mind.

"When I went into this business, I couldn't afford to get into Abstract Expressionism in a big way. But I was interested in the '30s and '40s. At the time, that period looked old hat to many people. It was too recent. But Abstract Expressionism did not arise from a void. And of course, now, it's a distant enough period for people to see it with a fresh eye."

"The thing that tends to grab me," she said, "is how I can make something meaningful of an exhibit. For the Pollock show, for example, I wondered how I could do something that hadn't been done before. Being in a gallery, you can do these things within a few months. You have a freedom that is not possible in a museum."

History has been repeating itself, over and over, at the East Hampton Housing Authority's affordable housing complex on Accabonac Highway. The project, plagued since its inception, continues to slip into the briny deep, weighed down by legal, construction, and budgetary problems, while Democratic officials, who espoused the laudable concept in the first place, continue to give it blind support.

Perhaps no one other than the town budget officer, Michael Haran, and former Republican Councilman Thomas Knobel have had the nerve to consider the fiscal and political consequences should the authority take to the lifeboats. The authority's new members, appointed by the 1996-97 Republican Town Board majority, vowed to take a firm grasp of the rudder. But the accounting firm they hired to audit its books gave up after a year, reporting that it was unable to sort things out.

The Star has done innumerable articles about the agency's troubles and editorialized three times that it should not be allowed to spend another penny until it can tell the public where every penny has gone so far. This is still the prudent course.

The authority has borrowed $4.1 million for the Accabonac housing in loans that are ultimately the taxpayers' responsibility. The single investor in the partnership it established to see the project through, the Bank of New York, has refused to turn over any of the funds needed to pay the loans back, telling the authority it needs another $1 million to be fiscally sound and should obtain it as a "gift" from the town.

The Town Board's lack of interest - or has it been ability - in protecting the taxpayers in this fiasco is incredible. Think it unbelievable that the authority was allowed to spend more than $4 million without having to deliver a full accounting?

Go to the movies. This would not be the first time the public was sold an attractive and expensive bill of goods and been told there were no icebergs in the sea.

"Margins"

Mary Parker Buckles

North Point Press, $23

Recently, I've been staying at a friend's house on Gardiner's Bay while some work is being done to my own house deep in the woods. And so it was with a keen sense of familiarity that I delved into Mary Parker Buckles's new book, "Margins."

She begins the book by sharing her discoveries when she and her husband move into a house on the Connecticut shore of Long Island Sound.

As an inlander from Mississippi and self-trained naturalist, she makes discoveries 24 hours a day and is filled with wonder and excitement at the ever-changing landscape of the Sound. She says, "Simply to stand here and look out is to be entertained."

Science And Magic

So too I have been waking up every morning to something new: a huge flock of double-crested cormorants only in front of my house, as if a special gift to me; the arrival of the winter sea ducks, driving whitecaps and the ever-present wind.

This unique book, which is enhanced by beautiful photographs, all by the author, explores the shores of Long Island Sound in a nontechnical but quite scholarly way. The author refers to her approach as idiosyncratic and intended to "complement those voices that speak out for the Sound in more technical or political tones. . . ."

It is organized into four sections - land, air (really birds), water, and intertidal zone - which she weaves together artfully with her sometimes journalistic and sometimes artistic observations. Or, in her own words, "the work is about both science and magic."

Wild But Altered

I particularly enjoyed her descriptions of the setting of Long Island Sound and her review of its glacial history. Throughout the book she connects the land to the sea and reinforces the importance of thinking and planning for the Sound's protection by linking the land and the sea:

"The Sound and the land that holds it evolved together, having been conceived together in the earth's womb, then delivered in stages - of land that was first scarred, smoothed, and shifted by the passing glaciers and later set pulsing with salt tides."

Much of the land section of the book is entertaining and should be familiar to most of us on the South Fork. She describes learning to live in an area that is still wild but altered - that is, living with Canada geese, deer, and Lyme disease.

Great Horned Owls

Throughout the book, her own observations are augmented by a remarkable range of references from Aristotle, Shakespeare, and Chaucer to contemporary colleagues such as the East End's own Sam Sadove and Mike Scheibel of the Nature Conservancy's Mashomack Preserve.

In fact, there are so many interesting and diverse references to nature that it would have been interesting to have included a bibliography of her sources in the book.

A very unfamiliar account is the chapter titled "Owls." By an incredible stroke of good luck the author was able to witness an extraordinary act between two great horned owls. Great horned owls are large, conspicuous, and probably our most common owl.

Spellbound

The author cites a biologist who estimates that in parts of the Sound's northern and western shores, these owls nest every two to five miles. But despite the conspicuity and commonness of great horned owls, we really know very little about them.

The author attributes this to "the most familiar elements of owldom - mystery, ferocity, and dramatic vocal sound." We lack a holistic view of the bird because of the "owls' nocturnal lifestyle and penchant for privacy."

I was spellbound as the author described watching one owl pin down another and gouge out one of its eyes with its stiletto-sharp beak. This fight to the death between two males occurred on Jan. 8, around the time when this species begins to set up mating territories.

Owl Pellets

The author believes that her presence eventually broke up the fight and the subjugated bird won its freedom. Questionable freedom for a bird that relies on excellent binocular vision to hunt.

The trills, screams, and calls of owls are so transfixing that I have noticed that once people have heard them, they seem subtly changed for life. You can't really have a chapter on owls without describing owl pellets - the regurgitated remains of the owl's feast of mice, rats, small birds, and sometimes frogs.

I have even witnessed a great horned owl take a small rabbit. A photograph of an owl pellet resting daintily in an oyster shell is typical of Buckles's artistry.

The Osprey's Recovery

The story of the osprey and its heroic recovery from D.D.T. contamination is told. Anyone not familiar with this remarkable tale and the importance of the East End of Long Island, particularly Gardiner's Island, will learn a lot from this chapter.

Dennis Puleston, a Long Islander and founder of the Environmental Defense Fund, is the author's main resource, although she cites many other osprey experts. Puleston has studied the Gardiner's Island ospreys since 1948 - a record for continuity.

Although osprey numbers are back significantly (not to pre-D.D.T. levels, however), the protection of the water quality of our local waters and thus the fish on which this bird entirely feeds, as well as their Southern wintering grounds (East End ospreys have been documented to winter as far south as Brazil) is far from assured.

The Value Of Seafood

There is something truly majestic about the osprey and the author rightly asks, "Does anyone who can recognize the birds not love them?" An ornithologist is quoted as saying even "New England clammers, normally reticent men, wax garrulous when ospreys are mentioned."

One of the things we've learned from local polling is that people value open space and clean water because it provides fresh seafood. This value rates as highly as drinking water and higher than recreation. Obviously we all enjoy eating.

Ms. Buckles provides a fascinating description of the Long Island Sound oyster industry, including interviews with Frank M. Flower and Sons in Oyster Bay and the Tallmadge Brothers company in Norwalk, Conn.

Chilly Soft Sculptures

As in the rest of the book, she provides an amazing collection of facts (adult eastern oysters filter 100 gallons of water a day) with a wonderful personal experience: "I absolutely love this food. Being presented with a dozen oysters on the half shell is like being given a collection of edible, chilly soft sculptures, each of them unique." She does not comment on whether oysters are aphrodisiacs.

Speaking of sex, in what could have been a technical, dry explanation of the salt marsh - the true margin between the land and sea - the author recounts the wild sex in the novel "Spartina" by John Casey:

Place And Process

"In the night love scene, he and the woman who shares his passion for the marsh rise from its primordial ooze like humankind emerging from the sea. But not before they've painted each other invisible with the slick black mud . . . mud is erotic stuff, as spa owners and other professional mud merchants well know."

The salt marsh has been described so often that I was somewhat skeptical about what Ms. Buckles could possibly add that was new. I was pleasantly surprised. Ms. Buckles makes an important statement reminding us that a salt marsh, in addition to being a place, is also a process. Her description of a marsh is poetic and accurate:

Optimistic And Energizing

"It is an open yet private world - part prairie, part water - with much of its life bound up in particles too small to notice or too quick to catch."

"Margins" is an enthusiastically optimistic book. Ms. Buckles refers to it as her love letter to the beauty and vitality of the Sound. It is an energizing book and truly fills a niche in our natural history literature.

After finishing it, I kept thinking how quickly we could solve the many problems confronting the Sound and other local waters if all 8.5 million people who live in the Sound's watershed would read "Margins."

Sara Davison is executive director and vice president of the Nature Conservancy on Long Island.

Donna Shalala, Secretary of Health and Human Services, took one look at Dr. Richard Seed on TV over the weekend and said she thought "mad scientist." It's not hard to see why, even without seeing what the man looks like.

Dr. Seed, who has announced a plan to open a human-cloning clinic, sounds more like an evangelist than the physicist and Harvard Ph.D. that he is.

"God intended for man to become one with God," he intoned last week when announcing his project. "Cloning and the reprogramming of DNA is the first serious step in becoming one with God."

The extraordinarily named Dr. Seed, an independent fertility researcher with no current academic affiliation, is seeking believers who will put up the money to get his for-profit clinic started. He has doctors and "volunteers" already, he says, though not the $1 million he estimates it will cost to produce the first human clone.

"If I find a customer who will pay for it, he or she goes to the top of the list," Dr. Seed declared.

Leaving aside the serious ethical questions involved, does this sound like a serious scientist engaged in the kind of research that will advance human potential? Or is Dr. Shalala's instinct correct? Are we dealing here with a Dr. Strangeseed?

Whichever the case, human cloning is once again, a year after Dolly the sheep, the focus of world attention - this time urgently so. Nineteen European countries have entered into a pact to ban it, and this nation will almost certainly enact a similar law in short order.

For that much, at least, we have Dr. Seed to thank.

There has been some wailing and gnashing of teeth among motorists and grumbling among mechanics now that New York, in compliance with Federal standards, has launched a more stringent emissions test for passenger vehicles in the metropolitan area, including all of Long Island.

By next November, the new test, which is being phased in, will require that vehicles be placed on a dynamometer, a treadmill-like device that can measure all emissions more accurately as well as nitrous oxide, a pollutant that is given off only when a vehicle is moving.

By all accounts, the new emissions test will be much harder to pass; the Federal Government has estimated that 20 to 30 percent of all vehicles now on the road will fail.

Many drivers are upset because they will be required to pay $35 for an inspection, up from $19 last year, and face the very real prospect of costly repair bills to keep their cars on the road.

Although mechanics might be perfectly willing to collect the higher fee and accept the repair jobs that will surely follow, they are unhappy about having to spend over $40,000 on the equipment required for the new test.

Like it or not, it is time to do something about the air pollution that is choking our cities, and, as scientists now tend to agree, contributing to the global warming that poses a real long-term threat to our ability to survive.

There is one caveat. The new test would appear to place a heavier burden on those of the working poor who have to rely on old cars to get them to and from work.

While it is true the new test will provide some leeway for older cars that cannot possibly meet today's standards, the bar is too high. If their cars fail, owners will be required to spend up to $450 on emissions-related repairs to qualify for a one-year waiver from the new standard.

One solution would be a longer phase-in period, perhaps up to three years, for older cars. The extra time would give low-income motorists time to upgrade their mode of transportation while insuring that their old jalopies, which often border on unsafe, will be off the road in a timely fashion.

Sapore di Mare will be closed until spring, after several winters of opening on weekends.

The decision to close, combined with a confusing message on the answering machine, have apparently revived the lingering rumor that the restaurant was sold and that Ronald O. Perelman, whose estate, the Creeks, is nearby, was the buyer.

The Post's "Page Six" reported his "rumored takeover" on Monday.

Pino Luongo, the owner of Sapore di Mare, was in Florence this week on business. The staff in his Manhattan office said they knew nothing about any sale but would certainly be in the loop if there was any truth to it.

A spokeswoman for Mr. Luongo also said the answering machine message had been changed so would-be patrons would understand the eatery was only closed for the season and not for good.

Future commercial growth in Amagansett - where to allow it and how to control it - will be a matter for the public to debate next week, as the East Hampton Town Board holds its first public hearing on the Amagansett Corridor Study. The hearing is scheduled for 10:30 a.m. Friday, Jan. 16, at Town Hall.

The 300-page study, commissioned by the board more than a year and a half ago, sets forth recommen dations designed to guide development in the village core and along a significant portion of Montauk Highway to the east and west.

Recommendations range from zone changes to the construction of more sidewalks. When adopted by the board, it will become part of the town's overall Comprehensive Plan.

No Commercial District

The Town Board has already eliminated some of the potentially controversial recommendations in the document - most significantly the "planned commercial district" proposed east of the village.

The town also disagreed with creating "central-business" zoning around Brent's General Store and extending small residential lanes off Main Street to serve potential future development behind the Amagansett Library.

The board still has one major question to grapple with, however: What about the Bistrian family's 42 acres of vacant land behind the municipal parking lot?

Road A Possibility

The Bistrians have had a long-pending request before the Town Board to rezone a substantial portion of that land for commercial use. It is now residentially zoned, with provisions for affordable housing.

Any significant development on the former farmland, whether commercial or residential, is likely to be accompanied by the opening of a new road from the adjacent Windmill Lane, the study suggests.

The town owns a right-of-way running from Windmill Lane to the back of the municipal parking lot. Windmill Lane residents have vehemently opposed such a road.

Open Space Preservation

The Corridor Study suggests leaving the Bistrian property's zoning intact - that is, with one-acre minimum lots and the possibility of more densely clustered affordable-housing units - and adding the designation of an agricultural district. The latter would insure the preservation of open space in any future subdivisions.

Under current zoning, up to 80 affordable housing apartments and 46 single-family houses could be built on the Bistrian property.

As for the roughly 25 acres east of the village that had been proposed for "planned commercial" development, the plan offered no alternatives.

Housing Possibilities

Six acres of that land, just east of the Amagansett I.G.A. complex and north of the highway, is currently zoned for "central business."

The rest, running all the way to Bunker Hill Road, has the same zoning as the Bistrian property, and has been the subject of discussions about possible affordable or senior housing.

Under current zoning, the commercial portion of the land could house up to 130,000 square feet of new commercial buildings, and the residential portion (with its affordable housing designation) could house up to 152 affordable apartments, 42 affordable houses, or 21 market-value houses.

The Corridor Study also addresses other properties such as the Amagansett Farmers Market site and Lorne Michaels's property adjacent to the Miss Amelia's Cottage lot, but recommends against zoning changes proposed by their owners.

Scenic Character

The bulk of the study focuses on planning strategies to retain the vitality of the village while protecting the scenic character along the highway.

Copies of the plan are available for review at the Planning Board and Planning Department offices at 300 Pantigo Place.

In addition to the hearing on the Corridor Study, the Town Board has two minor hearings on the agenda for Friday, Jan. 16, on modifications to the town's urban renewal maps.