The "health foods" idea is not a new one. Consider, for instance, this from the East Hampton Ladies Village Improvement Society's 1939 cookbook:

HEALTH WHOLE WHEAT CAKE

1/2 cup butter

3/4 cup sugar

2 egg yolks, well beaten

2 stiffly beaten egg whites

1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour

3/4 cup milk

1/2 tsp. salt

2 tsps. baking powder

1 tsp. vanilla

Sift flour first, then measure. Cream butter thoroughly, add sugar gradually, then yolks and vanilla.

At least three times, sift flour, baking powder, and salt. Add alternately with the milk, the flour, and the butter mixture. Lastly, fold in the stiffly beaten egg white.

This recipe may be used either for a loaf or layers (the layers of course will be small). The oven, for layers, should be 360 degrees for approximately 25 minutes; for loaf, 350 degrees for about 40 minutes.The cake can be frosted with:

1 cup each finely cut dates and raisins

Suggestion of salt

1/2 cup well ground walnuts

1 tsp. vanilla

1 Tbsp. honey

1 pint cream, whipped.

Thoroughly mix salt, vanilla, honey, nuts, and fruits. Fold into the whipped cream and put, covered, into refrigerator for at least one hour before using on cake, as this will moisten fruits through. Use between layers and over top and sides of cake.

Mrs. Ruth Samuells Braem

Piping plovers nesting on the East Hampton Village ocean beach and as far east as Amagansett have forced the East Hampton Fire Department to cancel its July 2 Independence Day fireworks for the first time since 1960.

The display will be presented on Saturday, Sept. 3, during Labor Day weekend.

Piping plovers are a federally protected species. Plover nests are always a concern for officials in the spring. This year, late storms with high tides and erosion wiped out some nests and forced the plovers to begin anew, said Latisha Coy of East Hampton Town's Natural Resources Department.

Two chicks have hatched from a nest in front of the Sea Spray Cottages east of Main Beach, and the adult birds are incubating two more eggs, Ms. Coy said.

The chicks will not leave the area until 25 to 35 days after they hatch, which means the town's efforts to protect the endangered shore birds will continue for at least another month.

The United States Fish and Wildlife Service requires that fireworks be launched at least three-quarters of a mile from the nearest nest of the diminuitive shorebirds. Federal regulations prohibit moving the nests.

In addition, state fire code does not allow launch sites within an 1,100-foot distance of a house or other structure, which would rule out any alternate location for the East Hampton display.

"The larger the shells, the more distance is required from buildings," the East Hampton Fire Chief, David Browne, said yesterday.

If the department only had to worry about plover nests, it might be able to launch the fireworks from a spot between Main and Georgica beaches. "Unfortunately, we can't get enough distance there from the houses," said Larry Cantwell, the village administrator.

"We sent people out to measure all the other beaches trying to find someplace where we could move it," Mr. Browne said. The search was fruitless, he said.

Usually, Bay Fireworks runs the display from a site near the Sea Spray Cottages. "It's the first time we actually had sightings right there where they are setting them off," Mr. Browne said.

After learning about the plover nests earlier this week, the village and the fire department asked Bay Fireworks if it could launch the display from a barge, but it was too late to arrange for one, Mr. Browne said.

"We looked at a lot of options and none of them seemed practical or possible," Mr. Cantwell said. "I'm disappointed. I always enjoy the fireworks."

The display, which is sponsored by the fire department and supported by private contributions, is a big event for the firemen, Mr. Browne said. At houses along the beach near the display, there are private parties whose hosts have given generously to the fireworks fund. "I feel bad for these people," Mr. Browne said.

Even before news was out about the cancellation, he said, "I've had calls asking when the date is going to be for next year so they can set up parties."

The department will send a letter expressing regrets to all those who have contributed to the fireworks fund.

By 653 to 418, East Hampton School District taxpayers voted down a proposed $90 million bond to expand and improve the district's three public schools.

A new referendum could be presented to the voters as early as this fall, said Raymond Gualtieri, the district superintendent; immediately after the vote was tallied, in fact, a press release from the district called for a referendum in the fall. Six members of the school board promised to bring expansion plans before the voters in the next few months.

"We just have to do it again," Wendy Hall, a school board member, said Tuesday night after the results were announced.

About the same number of people went to the polls as in the school budget vote, which passed by a similar margin on May 17. Board members asked why people who approved the budget voted against the expansion plan, which would have involved building a new middle school, expanding the high school, and renovating the current middle school to be used for fourth and fifth graders and to house district offices.

"This means that some families voted against it," said John Ryan, a member of the school board.

For the first time, voting was held at two locations: the John M. Marshall Elementary School and the high school auditorium. Voters at John Marshall, many of them presumably the parents of elementary school children, whose children would attend the expanded and renovated high school, approved the referendum by four votes.

However, the vote at the high school proved to be much more lopsided, 482-244. Absentee ballots were 34 to 17 against the referendum.

"I knew the result once I heard the numbers from John Marshall," Ms. Hall said.

The expansion would have cost taxpayers an estimated $300 per year. This year East Hampton School District voters are already facing unusually high increases in village, town, and school taxes.

Dr. Gualtieri speculated that uncertainty about whether the Montauk and Springs School Districts would support extended tuition contracts with East Hampton was a bigger issue for voters. Pending state legislation would have allowed East Hampton and the outlying districts that send students to its schools to enter into contracts for the length of the 25-year bonds that would have financed the expansion.

Without the contracts, East Hampton would not be guaranteed revenue from tuition, or even the students to necessitate a large-scale expansion.

"Voters are very leery of spending money on a plan if they think there will be empty classrooms in the future," Dr. Gualtieri said. "That is the one concern that we didn't have an answer for."

The immediate impetus for the referendum is overcrowding at all three schools, as well as several smaller building projects that the school district faces. If the referendum fails again, the school district will have to lease new portable structures in addition to the eight it already leases, to accommodate the students who are now attending school.

Overdue roof repairs on the high school, and the removal of an oil drum on the Long Lane campus were other projects the bond would have paid for. If a fall vote fails, those two undertakings are expected to increase the 2006-7 school budget significantly.

"All of those projects will show up in the May budget," Dr. Gualtieri said.

On Tuesday night, the board decided to set up a special work session on July 5 to start organizing a fall referendum. The board and Dr. Gualtieri said they expected to put up some version of the current plan, which took five years to envision and bring to a vote. However, the plan might be broken down into a series of subprojects, each addressing one or two buildings at a time, in the hope that voters will pass a series of smaller referendums.

"I think that the board is going to consider what to do next; I don't know if they are going to break the plan down into its component parts," Dr. Gualtieri said.

Mrs. Hall, who has been on the board throughout the creation of the expansion plan, said she was unsure of the next step.

"There's no magic number, I don't think that $35 million would have passed," she said."I don't think that you can cut back, though, because everyone wants a comprehensive plan."

Amsterdam Beach, 122 acres of Montauk moorland stretching from the Montauk Highway to the Atlantic Ocean bluffs, will be bought for $16.5 million by East Hampton Town, Suffolk County, and New York State, and will become a New York State Park.

Officials have been trying to preserve the property since a seven-lot subdivision proposal was submitted to East Hampton Town in 2000.

A pristine maritime shrubland and grassland environment - an ecosystem classified as globally rare - the property has acres of tidal and freshwater wetlands, and ponds, meadows, and forest that provide a habitat for bullfrogs, snapping turtles, toads, and other reptile and amphibian species, including the protected blue-spotted salamanders, as well as nearly 100 types of native plants.

The Amsterdam Beach moorland, considered virtually undisturbed for much of a century, is covered with shadbush, highbush blueberry, and black cherry, with few, if any, alien invasive plants. The blue-spotted salamander population that lives in the Montauk moorlands is believed to be the only pure strain of the species left in New York State.

Six plant and animal species also deemed globally rare are found in the area.

The property supports a large number of wintering sea ducks and other shorebirds, according to the Nature Conservancy, which helped to focus attention on the property's environmental importance.

With 1,288 feet along the oceanfront, the tract is contiguous to some 2,400 protected acres stretching to the north and east, encompassing the Theodore Roosevelt County Park, Montauk Point State Park, Camp Hero State Park, the "Sanctuary" property, also owned by the state, and the Nature Conservancy's Andy Warhol Visual Arts Preserve. It lies just west of Deep Hollow Ranch, which is privately owned.

The majority of the cost will be contributed by East Hampton Town: $7 million, including over $6 million from the Community Preservation Fund and $989,477 from a federal grant obtained by Representative Tim Bishop from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Coastal and Estuarine Land Conservation Program. The county will contribute $5.5 million, and the state, $4 million.

State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. said yesterday that he had worked for over a year to line up a state contribution and that originally only $2 million had been pledged. A federal grant for East End land acquisition is unusual, he said.

Although the $16.5 million price tag makes the tract the second most expensive ever purchased for preservation in East Hampton Town, after the 98-acre Shadmoor State Park property, which was bought in 2000 for $17.6 million by the town, county, state, and the Nature Conservancy, the cost per acre, $135,000, is lower than that of other significant purchases.

The Fort Pond Bay park, 22 acres on Navy Road in Montauk, cost approximately $281,000 per acre; 40 beachfront acres on Napeague cost $218,000 an acre; Shadmoor cost $189,000 per acre, and the 57-acre Duke property on Three Mile Harbor in East Hampton cost $210,000 per acre.

The Suffolk County real estate division took the lead in negotiations over Amsterdam Beach with the property owners, 96 Meadow Lane, a limited liability corporation of which Peter Knobel of Colorado is a principal, and committed to a $5.5 million stake in the land buy in April.

Robert Jessup, a Laurel developer who was originally a partner in the land, and who developed the Beach Plum subdivision on Napeague, no longer owns a stake.

Although an equal three-way partnership among the three government entities had originally been planned, the State Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation said on June 8 that only $4 million in state money would be contributed. East Hampton Town officials agreed to make up the difference.

Passive Use Planned

The property will be managed by the state, under a joint management agreement among all the parties. A management plan has not yet been discussed, but only passive use, for activities such as hiking, is planned.

The East Hampton Town Board will hold a public hearing on the deal at Town Hall at 10:30 a.m. on Friday, July 1. County legislators must still formally approve the purchase with a vote, which is expected to take place on Aug. 9. Review of the contract by the state comptroller and attorney general's office could take up to four months.

Christopher Kelley, an East Hampton and Riverhead attorney who represents Mr. Knobel and 96 Meadow Lane L.L.C., said that two development proposals for the property, one to create a seven-lot subdivision, and the other to create one large, estate-sized house lot, are still pending before the East Hampton Town Planning Board.

His client, he said, had agreed to sell the property for preservation at less than market value because he and his wife wanted to protect the environment. An appraisal had set the land's value at $18.5 million, Mr. Kelley said.

The entire parcel was listed several years ago with Allan M. Schneider Associates for $16 million. Potential buyers, none of whom pursued a deal, included a Japanese group that considered the land for a golf course, a religious organization, and developers who envisioned a hotel and restaurant. It was scheduled several times to be sold at auctions, none of which took place.

Amsterdam Beach has long been included on East Hampton Town's Community Preservation Fund list and is considered a priority. The town is also eyeing other oceanfront and moorland tracts in Montauk, including 40 acres off Old Montauk Highway, 20 acres near the Montauk Shores Condominiums at Ditch Plain, and 96 acres owned by Dick Cavett and Carrie Nye. The town board approved a $750,000 purchase of 13 acres off South Greenwich Street in Montauk owned by Joseph Farrell after a public hearing last Thursday.

Milk was sold in quarts and pints, with a choice of

"A" milk from the Jersey cows and "B" milk from

the Guernseys.

The Sherrill Farm in the 1930s, home of Sherrill's Dairy, was a spread of about 25 acres at the home site - between Springs-Fireplace Road and Accabonac Highway - 20 acres of additional lands on Cooper Lane, Cedar Street, and Egypt Lane, and 30 acres of woodlands in Northwest Woods. The farm had been in the family since 1792.

The home site consisted of a big farm house, two large barns (a horse barn and a cow barn), and a collection of smaller barns and outbuildings, together with a windmill and woodpile.

The cow barn, with its huge hay storage and two silos full of corn silage, was the hub of the dairy business. Here the milk was cooled, bottled, and kept in a large walk-in icebox.

In those days, milk was sold in quarts and pints, with a choice of "A" milk from the Jersey cows and "B" milk from the Guernseys. Heavy cream was separated and sold in half-pint bottles. Early in the morning, the delivery truck was loaded with cases of milk and cream for customers around the town. Local delivery was made by horse and wagon.

Some years later, as business grew, pasteurization equipment was added. When homogenized milk became popular, the dairy had a supply of homogenized milk processed at a local plant.

The dairy business expanded exponentially in June, July, and August, with the arrival of the summer colony. We delivered to the large houses on the ocean side. Many local businessmen, including my father, would meet prospective customers as they stepped off the train in East Hampton and solicit their business.

The milk-customer base was such that it could support three other local dairies: Hardscrabble, Tillinghast, and Gould. In the Maidstone Park area of Springs, my father would contact Alfred Haessler's father, who would recommend his friends as customers.

Seeking out new territory took us down to Gurney's Inn in Montauk, a small resort at that time, and we were able to supply them adequately. To make the trip more profitable, extra milk was added to sell to campers at the Hither Hills State Park. When my father made this delivery, he was sure to stop at Little Inn on Napeague Beach and treat us to a candy bar, so this was a popular trip.

The summer was for us kids a time of enjoyment. I would spend hours with some of the neighborhood kids splashing in the cow trough, a 20-foot-long square steel container that had once been used at the Parsons Ice Plant as an overflow basin. It was fun to create giant tidal waves and watch our handmade toy boats ride up and over these manmade tsunamis.

In June and July, some of the farm lots were harvested in hay, and after the cutting and hay-making, the cows were put to pasture on these lands. After the morning milking, they were herded and driven to one of these noncontiguous lots to graze until it was time to drive them back to the barn for the afternoon milking. After a trip or two, the lead cow knew the way and the rest followed.

But someone had to drive these cows and patrol their movements in order to keep them off lawns and out of flower gardens along the way, and then, when in the pasture, close the fence. Neighborhood boys and girls often volunteered to do this job.

One lot in particular, Hook Lot on Egypt Lane, was especially interesting. It necessitated going under the railroad trestle and crossing Montauk Highway. Traffic would stop, and not proceed until the last cow had crossed.

The family, during the free time between hay making and the corn harvest, would go to the bay or ocean for bathing and relaxation. We had a sailboat moored in Three Mile Harbor. Most Sunday afternoons we sailed to Sammy's Beach for picnics.

About the end of August the corn harvest began and it was silo-filling time. When the machinery had been set up and the wagon loads of corn stalks arrived at the farm, a lot of kids would show up to watch. Some of them got into the action, riding on the corn wagon, helping to put the corn onto the conveyor that fed the silage cutter, or getting into the silo to help tramp and pack down the silage uniformly as it was distributed.

After school began in September, the fascination waned for most of these kids, but for me, the work continued until the job was done.

In the fall, after all the crops were in, an afternoon break in the daily dairy routine was a time to explore stubbles and fields with the dog and shotgun, and to enjoy the sport of upland hunting. Sometimes a covey of quail or a pheasant was flushed; then came the art of leading the birds and squeezing the trigger.

Sometimes my father would combine shooting with field work. One of his lots, a section of land he hired from Mrs. Childe Hassam, was put up in corn shocks to be husked after the ears had dried sufficiently - a great place to shoot pigeon doves. These birds were tricky flyers and when flushed by the dog would flutter off the ground and dart around the corn shocks. Quick action and skill were needed to hit one.

Most winters, the farm would be covered with snow. Warm days often brought rain, which combined with the melted snow to form a pond in the watershed in back of the barns. When the temperatures remained at freezing levels, we had wonderful skating. The neighborhood kids learned to skate there, and after school skaters would gather for fun and socializing. Sometimes skating parties would last into the evening.

Skaters would gather sticks and loose limbs to build small bonfires to add to their comfort and enjoyment. The pond lasted for weeks, and got bigger with the late-winter thaw. My mother, with some maritime background, had my father launch his rowboat and there she taught my sister and me to row a boat.

The boat-in-the-pond idea caught on. Neighborhood kids would launch homemade rafts - Huck Finn style - and float them on the pond.

One imaginative boy cut a barrel in half lengthwise. When he boarded this half-barrel boat and shoved off, the laws of physics betrayed him. I was observing this exercise from a distance and watched this cow-pasture sailor scramble ashore soaking wet, taking his boat with him.

In the spring, my father was sending out letters to former dairy customers in New York City and getting names of new people from real estate agents to solicit new business. In between time, land had to be prepared, grass seed sown, corn planted, and fences around the cow pasture repaired.

Around the farm, there was always something to see and do. A working farm was an attraction. During the early-morning milking, a town policeman would interrupt his patrol to refresh himself with a taste of milk and tell a story or two. At the afternoon milking, visitors would stop by to gossip, and kids would play in or around the barns.

A former neighbor told me a few years ago, "Those days we played in the barns, flying our kites in the fields, sloshing in the cow trough, and knocking golf balls all over the place kept us all well and happy."

Edwin L. Sherrill Jr. was born and raised in East Hampton. He is a member of the East Hampton Village Board.

Gretchen Menser, who is not only one of the few women chefs on the East End but who has been in her job, at East Hampton's Rowdy Hall, only since last summer, will be the guest chef on Friday, Jan. 9, at the James Beard House in Manhattan.

An invitation to cook at the Beard House is a coveted honor among C.K.O.s, chief kitchen executives.

Ms. Menser will prepare a four-course lunch using many local ingredients. It will begin with wild mushrooms and caramelized sweet potatoes, rolled in red chard leaves, and grilled Long Island duck liver.

Pan-roasted New England shellfish comes next, followed by Amagansett oyster-mushroom salad with preserved goose breast. The main course will be stewed monkfish, with a dessert of cranberry spice cake with hard sauce.

The meal, which will start at noon, costs $45 for members of the James Beard Foundation, $55 for nonmembers. Tickets are available through the foundation, at 167 West 12th Street.

Back in East Hampton, Ms. Menser has added new items to both the lunch and dinner menus at Rowdy Hall.

Lunch, which is served every day, will now include omelettes of the day, a classic Reuben sandwich (corned beef with sauerkraut and Swiss cheese), and grilled knockwurst and bratwurst with sauerkraut and pototoes.

New additions to the restaurant's dinner menu include pan-seared monkfish with Little Neck clams, veal stew, grilled 16-ounce ribeye, grilled leg of lamb, and a vegetarian dish of eggplant, zucchini, dried tomatoes, and yellow squash.

Della Femina on North Main Street in East Hampton has a new, lower-priced bar menu for the winter, with items ranging from $6 to $10.

It includes a green salad, fried calamari, oysters on the half-shell, tomato risotto, spaghetti with baby clams, grilled burger and fries, and side orders of vegetables.

The bar menu will not be served Saturday nights or holidays.

The Maidstone Arms, also in East Hampton, will serve lunch seven days a week through the winter and dinner on Thursday through Sunday night.

In Southampton, 75 Main now offers a self-serve breakfast station Saturday and Sunday mornings, beginning at 9:30.

TRICENTQUINQUAGENARY.

Quite a mouthful. And quite a number of toothsome little words can be found inside it. How many can you find?

The Star will give an appropriate prize at the end of this month to the wordsmith who can make the most words out of "tricentquinquagenary."

No two-letter words or proper nouns, please.

Send entries to Word Contest, Box 5002, East Hampton 11937.

A word of warning: A few entries received to date appear to be computer-generated, which we had not foreseen and which cannot be put in the running for the prize. Contestants will be asked whether their lists are indeed theirs - the honor system applies.

Because of this, the contest has been extended for two weeks. The winner will be announced in the issue of Feb. 19.

When East Hampton Town celebrated its tricentennial in 1948, Riborg Mann, a village resident who was an executive of Path‚ News, arranged to have a film crew on hand to record the parade and the historic pageant that followed.

Organizers of the 350th anniversary would very much like to see that old two-reel movie, to help in the planning of this year's celebration.

There's only one problem. The film has been missing for years.

"The last time I saw it was around 1950," said John Meeker, a retired East Hampton School District Superintendent, who narrated the film from a script written by Enez Whipple, then the director of Guild Hall.

"At that time it was kept at Village Hall, which was an old bank. They still had a vault where they kept some of the memorabilia. They lent it out to local organizations for several years until it disappeared."

"Everybody talks about it, but we haven't been able to find it," said Bruce Collins, who heads the commemorative celebration.

While the anniversary committee has searched for the film, it has apparently overlooked a valuable source right under its nose.

"We represent Path‚," said Joe Lauro, a partner in Historic Films, an archival service based at Goodfriend Park in East Hampton. "If anyone will have it, it will be us."

Mr. Lauro promised to research the newsreel company's archives to see if he could find the footage, but did not hold out great hope.

"A lot of that stuff has turned to dust," he said.

According to Mr. Lauro, Path‚ typically filmed national stories for its weekly newsreels shown at theaters across the country.

"But if a big event was going on in a certain area, they would shoot a special edition and only show it locally," he said.

Mr. Meeker doubts that many copies of the film were made.

"There's a possibility that some of it was shown as part of their news," he said, "but I think Riborg Mann . . . did it as a favor to the village."

The committee did receive another kind of pictorial windfall, however, when James Strong, the retired owner of the Strong Insurance Agency, turned over about 30 slides he took on Parade Day 1948.

Mr. Strong, home from the University of Michigan, grabbed his Argus 35-millimeter camera and strolled down to the parade route on what was a bright, sunny day.

"I sat in one spot and took pictures of the parade going by," he said. "It was only one roll."

And a good roll it was. His photographs captured floats including impeccably designed models of Home, Sweet Home, the East Hampton Methodist Church, and a working blacksmith shop.

There are shots of Judson Bannister, the East Hampton Village Mayor at the time, the East Hampton Town Trustees riding, appropriately, in a dory, military honor guards, and Girl Scouts. There is a fine one of Norman Gould, an East Hampton dairyman, milking a brown Swiss cow while riding on a float.

The anniversary committee has had prints made of the slides.

"We want to put them in a book and show them to groups in town and let them know what was done," said James Brooks, chairman of the parade committee. "When you look at the work that went into some of those floats, it's amazing."

While the anniversary committee has been so far unable to track down the professional film, it has landed a pair of amateur films, one of the 1984 parade, sent by Mary Louise Crommett of Tarpon Springs, Fla., and another with brief footage from the 1924 celebration of the 275th anniversary, showing a pageant on which some of the later celebrations were loosely based.

"Whether [the 1948 film] can be used in any capacity, I don't know," said Mr. Collins. "The problem of trying to show it is, it goes by very quickly."

Averill Geus, a committee member, agreed the parade passed by too fast, but said the film provided valuable glimpses of a number of other events that took place during the celebration, including a pageant that followed, a clambake overlooking Gardiner's Bay in Springs, and the dedication of the town's Indian Wells Beach in Amagansett.

"The only thing missing is the strawberry festival in Wainscott," Mrs. Geus said.

Yet another film showing portions of the 1924 celebration and scenes from East Hampton life in the '20s that was made by Hamilton King, an East Hampton artist, has so far eluded the committee.

But Ralph Carpentier, a member of the East Hampton Historical Society, said he believed the film would be found in the society's collection.

"We showed that film at the firehouse in 1980, or maybe a little before that, and it was turned over to the society," said Mr. Carpentier. "Maybe they don't know they have it."

According to Mrs. Geus, for years, "it was stored in the basement of The Star, but Everett Rattray discovered the stuff was highly flammable."

The editor, fearing the film could burst into flame and destroy the paper's wooden building and its collection of old newspapers and photographs, had it removed for reprinting onto more stable film stock in the late 1950s, Mrs. Geus said.

Mrs. Geus said there was other archival material as well that would be useful to the committee.

"There was a photographer from Life magazine," she said. "This woman was everywhere, she was on top of buildings, she was on her stomach, taking pictures all day. And no one has ever seen a single shot."

Mr. Brooks said he had already written to Life, requesting a check of its archives for any material it may have.

"I'm very surprised they didn't make more copies of this stuff," he said.

The chief executive officers of Southampton, Central Suffolk, and Eastern Long Island Hospitals have asked the supervisors of the five East End towns to consider establishing a tax that would help them to avoid closing their hospitals.

At the most recent meeting of the East End Supervisors and Mayors Association, the three C.E.O.s, whose hospitals form the Peconic Health Corporation, said that their hospitals could close if their financial health failed to improve. They have been making the case to the group for the past year.

"What we've been exploring is various ways to make our hospitals more viable and survivable," said East Hampton Town Supervisor Bill McGintee. "What happens to this region if Southampton Hospital shuts down?"

"The state is moving forward with a plan similar to BRAC for community hospitals," Mr. McGintee said on Monday, referring to the base realignment and closure commission of the Defense Department, which has compiled a list of military bases targeted for closure. He said that he and other supervisors hoped to defend the hospitals from such a process operating on a state level.

State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. confirmed that a state commission had been formed as part of this year's budget and reiterated that it was "equivalent to BRAC." Its mission will be to recommend the streamlining of health care providers and hospitals and it will present a list of recommendations for closure.

Mr. Thiele said he suspected that, like the military base closure list, the hospital list will be accepted as a whole or rejected as a whole, to eliminate arguments once the list is finalized. Nonetheless, he said he could not imagine that the East End hospitals, given their relatively isolated geographic location, would not be considered essential.

Donna Sutton, a spokeswoman for Southampton Hospital, said that the "purpose of the meetings with the East End Supervisors and Mayors Association was to discuss the operations and the financial challenges the Peconic Health Corporation faced."

Mr. Thiele said he has introduced legislation to allow a local referendum on the matter of a hospital tax, but does not think that it will be voted on this year. If the bill is passed, the towns can hold a vote.

"I do worry about the hospitals' financial health and ways to help them stabilize. . . . It's critical that they be there," he said.

If voters were to agree to a tax, Mr. McGintee thought that it should be unanimous across the five towns. Mr. Thiele's legislation allows a separate taxing district for the distinct region each hospital serves. If East Hampton and Southampton both agreed to the tax, they could go ahead and offer financial support to Southampton Hospital. If one or both of them decided not to support the tax, neither would be liable. Likewise, if Riverhead voted to support Central Suffolk Hospital, their vote would not be affected by the two South Fork towns.

Mr. Thiele said there would be some overlap and not everyone who benefited from the use of a given hospital would be taxed for their support, such as residents of Brookhaven Town who might use Southampton Hospital. "It's rough justice, yes . . . but the way the legislation is drafted roughly mirrors the service areas."

No one interviewed was willing to discuss even preliminary figures or percentages for the tax.

Senator Kenneth P. LaValle, however, said yesterday that he would be reluctant to support a new tax.

The five town boards will discuss the subject at a meeting this summer that is being coordinated by Southampton Town Supervisor Patrick A. Heaney. In February, Mr. Heaney was skeptical of the proposition. Such tax districts would be "extremely difficult to achieve," he said, adding, "I don't think it's politically desirable."

Mr. Heaney said then that Southampton Hospital was losing money because of a "great number of people who use the emergency room and don't pay or don't have health insurance. You'll be subsidizing the emergency room of the local hospital for the benefit of people who are not paying for its services. It's a difficult thing to ask residents to do."

Southampton Hospital has a debt of $40 million it needs to finance in two long-term bond issues at 7.45-percent interest that cannot even be prepaid for another five years and even then with significant penalties. Southampton also had $7 million in uncompensated care costs in 2003.

In addition to debt service and other issues unique to Southampton, all of the hospitals told the mayors and supervisors that managed care and the state's Medicaid structure were causing lasting damage to their financial results as well as their ability to reimburse vendors and get competitive prices from them.

Changes in the state's reimbursement rates for Medicare will cost Southampton $350,000 this year. Hospital executives told the supervisors and mayors that if the state's Medicaid payments were more like those in Connecticut and Massachusetts, they would not have as much of a financial burden. Mr. Thiele said in February that proposed cuts in the state budget would cost Southampton Hospital $814,000 in 2005 and more than $4 million over the next five years.

Southampton Hospital will release its financial results at the beginning of July. The board of directors has already seen them, according to Ms. Sutton, and the annual report is being printed this week.

The mayors and supervisors were warily supportive of the hospital's proposal. Most said that they would wait to see how voters reacted to the idea, adding that the manner in which the new tax was explained would be key to its success.

Although towns can impose taxing districts without voter approval, those involved thought that in this case, a referendum was the correct and indeed the only politically viable course.

Sag Harbor Village Mayor Ed Deyermond said that he had reservations about the issue. "There's still unanswered questions about the data that was presented." A referendum, he said, "is the way to go. Put it out to the people."

East Hampton Village Mayor Paul F. Rickenbach Jr. called the proposal "extremely sensitive subject matter. It's the case throughout the state that a lot of medical institutions suffer dramatic financial losses."

Mr. Rickenbach said that as an official, he would defer to the town board's determination. "The feeling and flavor of the board of trustees is that they would support their recommendation."

Speaking personally, however, he said he would like to see each hospital's mission statement and determine what services might be consolidated among them. If the community were to be taxed for the hospital, it could want to have a greater say in its operation, he said.

Mr. Rickenbach pointed out that the tax proposal is not unique to eastern Long Island. Westchester Medical Center, for example, accrued $200 million in operating deficits over the last four years. Westchester County has reacted by agreeing to give the hospital $25 million a year, and the state will increase its Medicaid disbursements to the hospital. A bill to increase the county's sales tax by one-eighth of 1 percent was introduced in the Legislature. The state will convene an oversight board to keep watch over the hospital's finances.

Sometimes it's hard, while driving down Montauk Highway or sitting on the beach at Accabonac Harbor, to imagine East Hampton as it was when fishing families used the sugar pine from fish boxes to add on to their houses and wagon wheels rolled along the roads instead of four-wheel-drives.

But those who have lived here a long time, whose childhood, adolescence, and middle years span times of sweeping change, have often heard firsthand, from parents or grandparents, of such things. These people are the town's living links to the past.

Two oral history projects now under way are preserving the stories and voices of some of East Hampton's older residents, whose recollections, whose very mannerisms and expressions, conjure up a different day.

On Videotape

The Autumn Project, whose name was inspired by a John Donne poem, is being conducted by Kyril Bromley of Springs, a professional photographer, and Julia Mead, news editor of The Star.

"Albie Cavagnaro was probably the real impetus," said Ms. Mead. "I've had a couple of older friends who died. I've thought probably a hundred times that somebody should have tape-recorded him - he had this idiosyncratic way about him."

Mr. Cavagnaro, the longtime proprietor of Cavagnaro's Bar in East Hampton Village, died in 1995.

"I see this as being a sort of homespun, old-fashioned oral history project, but using videotape," said Ms. Mead. "People telling their stories."

Storytellers

"What we want to preserve is not just what they're saying, but how they sound and look," she said.

"Hearing someone talk - it's a different impact than reading something in a book," said Mr. Bromley. "It's especially important for young people in the next century."

The project, whose costs are minimal, is being underwritten by East Hampton Town's 350th Anniversary Committee.

Tony Prohaska, a longtime East Hampton resident, has teamed up with Martha Kalser of Amagansett, a video producer, to form the History Project, a nonprofit corporation which has also begun to record the life stories of residents with long memories.

History Project

Two who are already on tape are Carl Jennett, who was in command of the Amagansett Coast Guard Station off Atlantic Avenue during World War II when Nazi saboteurs landed within a mile of headquarters, and Barbara Lester DiSunno, who shared her recollections of Amagansett's Poseyville Lesters.

The History Project aims to conduct and film up to 50 90-minute interviews. The tapes will wind up eventually in the Pennypacker Collection of the East Hampton Library.

Computer Database

Historic photographs and print materials will be collected and donated as well. Early interviews recorded on audiotape will be transcribed.

The project intends to cover, among other things, farming and fishing, the Springs art colony, and the days of Prohibition.

Carleton Kelsey, the longtime Amagansett librarian and former East Hampton Town historian, who was one of those interviewed, sits on its board, as do a number of other prominent local historians.

Long-term goals of the History Project include the creation of a computer database with an index to subjects and topics. The project has been awarded a $2,000 grant from the East Hampton Town Board, and will seek Federal and state funding.

Milton Miller

For the Autumn Project's first video, Capt. Milton C. Miller of Springs, 82, sat down at his kitchen table to talk about his life and times.

Including trips to the Atlantic Avenue beach in Amagansett and to the boat he fishes from now, the interview lasts an hour and a half - longer, Ms. Mead said, than most of the others will be.

"Milt was such a good storyteller that we couldn't bear to edit it out," she said.

An interview with four siblings in the Walker family of Wainscott, Roger, Henry, Mattie, and Clara, was the next to be filmed.

A Family's Eyes

The format, which will be followed throughout the series, focuses on the storyteller, with cutaways to relevant photographs and visits to significant locations.

"What I'm hoping is that [the interviews] will give the history of a place, but give it through the eyes of a certain family," Ms. Mead said.

Many of those asked to participate react with surprise, she said. "They don't realize that they've seen history . . . they just think it's been their own lives."

When the camera goes on, however, "It's almost as if they've waited to tell the story."

Each interview was filmed and edited with LTV equipment and will be aired on the public access channel. Mr. Miller's was recently shown.

After several have been produced, Ms. Mead hopes to make them available to the public, perhaps through libraries.

Both the History Project and the Autumn Project seek to cover the gamut of the East Hampton community, both both its hamlets and its residents. Ms. Mead said she was particularly interested in obtaining interviews from black residents, "who have an interesting history that isn't told very often outside itself."

Sense Of "Urgency"

The Autumn Project has about 50 people on its list to talk with.

"Every once in a while I have to take a name off because somebody's gone," Ms. Mead said. "There are a lot of people born and raised here who are in their 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s who have a lot to say. Once that generation is gone, East Hampton becomes something completely different. I feel a sort of urgency about it."

Plans are to continue the venture beyond the town's anniversary year, she said.

Both series of tapes will form an archive that will help viewers to recognize and maintain, as Mr. Bromley said, "the presence of the past in the present."