Drivers irked by slowdowns caused by recent road construction just west of East Hampton Village: Get ready - this is only the beginning.

Details have begun to surface about the rest of next year's long-awaited $5 million State Department of Transportation repair of Route 27 leading into and through East Hampton Town.

The work, according to state and local officials, is part of an even larger upgrade here, though the job's next phase - costing about the same - now is slated for 2001. The last major improvement to Montauk Highway here was in 1970.

This is "a good start," Chris Russo, the East Hampton Town Highway Superintendent, said on hearing that under way by February, weather permitting, will be the repair and resurfacing of the highway between Norris Avenue, just east of Bridgehampton, and Eastgate Road in Wainscott.

Notified Albany

"A better start," he added, though, "would be all of Route 27," including east of Montauk Village to the Lighthouse.

The work schedule, originally slated to begin three years from now, was moved up after East Hampton Town and Village officials and Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. complained to state transportation officials in Albany earlier this year.

The Bridgehampton-to-Wainscott stretch will be clean and smooth by Memorial Day, transportation officials promise, when a hiatus in the work will allow summer traffic to proceed as normally as possible.

Then, beginning after Labor Day, workers will tackle the highway from Georgica Road to Buell Lane, and, skipping some of the village's commercial core, from Newtown Lane east to Skimhampton Road - finishing by next November.

Repaved Shoulder

What is going on now is a 500-foot-long widening of Route 27, by 12 feet, 250 feet east and west of Stephen Hand's Path, where a new left-hand turnoff will be. Included is a repaving of the shoulders. The shoulder on the highway's north side is being entirely rebuilt to accommodate the new lane.

Workers are expected to complete that $800,000 job, which they began in mid-September, by year's end, "barring awful weather," said Brian Hoffman, a Transportation Department planner in Hauppauge.

Meanwhile, a new 1,000-foot lane for waiting cars has been created on Shelter Island at the South Ferry approach, complete but for landscaping, at a cost of $200,000.

Most of the improved highway will see an additional two layers of asphalt, raising it about 3.5 inches, which will entail raising roughly 60 "leeching basins," or drains, by the same measure. This, except on Woods Lane near Town Pond, where the roadway will rise only by 1.5 inches, and drains will not need adjusting.

Protect Pond

The hay bales at the Stephen Hand's Path worksite are there to prevent sediment from running off into Georgica Pond, Mr. Hoffman said. He added that between Newtown and Egypt Lanes, road workers will grind 1.5 inches of asphalt off the top and replace it, to avoid resetting the curbing there.

Traffic will be able to stream alongside the road work, albeit somewhat more slowly, by using existing shoulders, officials said. The only exception will be in front of the Jewish Center of the Hamptons on Woods Lane where the road is too narrow. Sometime in early fall, workers will close that portion of the road for about four days when drivers will have to use Toilsome Lane as a detour to Buell Lane.

Because of the residential character of the neighborhoods lining much of the highway, officials said there would be no weekend work, and no nighttime construction.

Contractors, Mr. Hoffman added, also have to maintain adequate access for emergency vehicles.

Lights, Turn Lanes

In 2001, the road improvement is expected to continue - at least to Cranberry Hole Road in Amagansett, though not farther, as of now, according to Erik Koester, an assistant regional director of the Transportation Department.

Mr. Hoffman said department planners will consult with town officials in the meantime about such matters as additional traffic lights and turn lanes. For his part, Mr. Russo recommended a turn lane at Daniel's Hole Road in East Hampton and at Abram's Landing Road in Amagansett.

Mr. Russo also noted that the Cranberry Hole Road bridge, which falls under joint jurisdiction of the Long Island Rail Road and the Town of East Hampton, is in need of repair as its "concrete abutments are decaying." Estimating the bridge job in the "millions," he said, "Someone has to do it."

Missing First Vote

East Hampton

November 10, 1997

To The Editor,

It is rather ironic that your article "Youngest Don't Vote" was apparently reported and written on the same day that my advanced placement United States government and politics class was discussing the problems inherent in political participation? Among the topics that we discussed that day were electoral and nonelectoral forms of participation, and how voting rates are often an inaccurate predictor of political participation in our system of government.

We compared American participation rates to those of other industrialized democracies and found that our participation rate in nonelectoral forms exceeds our voting rates. The entire process of electing officials in the United States is a voluntary activity in which the burden of eligibility falls entirely upon the individual and not the government (the "motor-voter bill" notwithstanding). Yet my students pointed out the fact that, compared to other industrialized democracies, citizens in the United States participate in politics at a far higher rate than our European counterparts.

My students were dismayed by the fact that your article implied East Hampton High School students were not being taught the virtues of our civic obligations. They felt that nothing could be further from the truth. Although all but one of my 23 students in this advanced placement course are 17 years old, most participate in nonelectoral forms of political activity, from community service to working on campaigns. The one eligible student was accepted to a leadership conference in Washington, D.C., after the deadline for absentee ballots applications had passed. He felt very bad about missing his first vote.

The primary focus of my advanced placement course is to examine national political processes and policy implications. To partially quote my statement that my course deals with local politics "only tangentially" is narrowly accurate but broadly disingenuous. Although my class deals with the policy implications of national legislation upon local conditions, unfortunately we cannot delve deeper into the intricacies of local politics, because the terminal examination for the course is one taken by 50,000 students nationally.

I believe that you invited a false inference when you stated that my colleagues and I made "registration forms available" to the students. In fact, I said to your reporter that we make very certain that our students are indeed registered to vote by the time that they leave our high school. My colleagues and I mail them ourselves. It is unfortunate that my words were distorted in that manner.

In an election year in which a record low 32 percent of registered (not voting-age population) voters turned up at Suffolk County polls, it is not shocking that the "young don't vote," especially considering that the lowest turnout rate is in the 18 to 24-year-old age group. Their parents do not vote, nor do far too many of our fellow citizens. But to let stand the implication that the curriculum and instruction at our high school are responsible for this poor showing is to surrender to the "nattering nabobs of negativism," who too often portray too little of our high school's true accomplishments. Perhaps you could report more in depth on our students' achievements that are numerous yet often unreported in our local paper of record.

Sincerely,

TIMOTHY M. ROOD

History Department

East Hampton High School

Student's Choice

Amagansett

November 10, 1997

Dear Helen:

The article "Youngest Don't Vote" in the last issue of The Star seems to imply that the social studies teachers at East Hampton High School (with one exception) were somehow responsible for the level of voter apathy among the 18-year-olds at the school who were eligible to vote in the past local election. This implication should be corrected. With regard to some facts:

1) We provide registration materials and encouragement, including instruction in how to register, in our social studies classes. Part of that instruction involves using an actual voting machine. This is done at the end of the year, aiming at those who will turn 18 by the next election. However, whether or not the students actually register is the student's choice, not the school's responsibility. (This is in fact the reason why the League of Women Voters does not set up a voter registration booth at the high school, as the article points out.)

2) With regard to "following the curriculum," the 11th-grade curriculum focuses on national government and history, while the 12th-grade curriculum focuses on citizenship at every level of government for one semester and economics for the other. Local issues are discussed in these senior courses, but generally the first part of the course aims to teach the fundamentals - difference between liberals and conservatives, party labels, social class and its impact on politics, party policy stances, etc., - to give students the basic vocabulary and concepts necessary to discuss local issues intelligently and dispassionately.

3) The seniors enrolled in the advanced placement government and politics course are tested nationally (to earn college credit while they are still in high school) and so for that reason local politics is not part of that course. Therefore, it is entirely appropriate that local issues "come up only tangentially" in that class.

4) Current events are an integral part of our instruction in every one of our social studies classes - not just in Mr. Beudert's classes. Generally, these current events are international (for those courses aiming toward the global studies Regents examination and the advanced placement European history examination) or national (for those aiming toward the American history and government Regents examination and the advanced placement examinations in American history and government).

5) With regard to the numbers, I find it hard to believe that 57 students in our school are 18 years old. That would mean that one-third of the senior class (of a total of 170 seniors) turned 18 in the month which has passed since the October cutoff for school entrance registration, rather than the one-12th or so, which would seem statistically reasonable. (Students who turned 18 before October would have begun school in the year previous to this year's senior class and so been in the class which graduated last June.)

It is revealing that the only 18-year-old you praise by implication as an interested and active voter in your article, Christina Bernard, graduated last year, is now a college freshman, and voted by absentee ballot before leaving to go to college. Last year's graduates are the students you might have interviewed for your article, if you want to get a clear picture of how high school instruction impacts participation in the electoral process.

6) Indeed, Ms. Bernard's case raises an interesting point. Her "independence of spirit" which is featured so prominently in the article might be partially a product of her participation in advanced placement history and government courses at the high school. Why wasn't this mentioned, as a counterbalance to the generally negative attitudes of the other students you interviewed in the article? If by implication we get the "blame" for the apathetic students, shouldn't we get the credit for the good ones?

7) On the other hand, the fact that Christina's father is an active and intelligent member of the local political community was mentioned in the article; reading between the lines, one might with justice assume that her interest in politics was due to the guidance and nurturing which she had enjoyed at home, and thus had little or nothing to do with the instruction she had received at East Hampton High School. (The old "apple does not fall far from the tree" idea.) If that is the case, then apathy and suspicion about politics is something which also begins at home and by inference the problem cannot be solved by a few hours in school.

8) By ending the article with the statement that a senior class watched "a romantic comedy about a President and his social life" rather than discussing local issues on Election Day, your writer, Ms. Mead, left readers with the idea that instruction in that class is shallow and trivial. That was a cheap shot. I suggest that teacher is trying to engage students through their interests and their popular culture. As for the film, among other things, it is a compelling contemporary document on how lobbying works in Washington. And in its climactic moments, its President stands up for all the right things - freedom of speech, controlling automatic weapons, the sanctity of human life, and protection of the environment. That's a pretty good lesson.

Sincerely,

DAVID SWICKARD

Chair, Social Studies

East Hampton High School

Dirty Game

East Hampton

November 6, 1997

Dear Mrs. Rattray,

I was taught that you should not always believe what you hear. I now know that that is true. I was listening to all of those monotonous radio advertisements regarding the election of 1997, and I heard one that was completely bogus.

It said that Robert J. Savage spent more time in his private law practice than at his post as the East Hampton town attorney. I personally find that a bit hard to believe because I was his secretary. There were many days when I saw him for only a few minutes because he was off doing his job as East Hampton town attorney. He narrowed down his law practice because of his position as East Hampton town attorney. I think that it's sad that the Democratic Party, namely his opponent, Cathy Cahill, had to stoop to this in order to win.

I am aware that politics is a dirty game, but if you are going to sling mud, make sure you have at least some of the facts.

Sincerely,

MICHELLE M. DIGILIO

Charge Per Bag

East Hampton

November 9, 1997

To The Editor,

When I go to our "recycling" center I usually observe someone using it as a "dump." Last week, the driver of a Jeep Wrangler unloaded six bags of "garbage." I could see milk cartons, mail, and glass bottles in his see-through bags. When I pointed out that he "forgot" to recycle, he became angry and vulgar. This happens all too often.

We need to change the system. Let's abandon the annual fee and charge per bag of garbage dumped. We'd purchase stickers from the recycling office (say $1 for a small bag and $3 for a large) and place them on our garbage bags. The individual I referred to, for example, would have paid $18; had he recycled, he very likely would have paid $1. Perhaps this sticker tactic would convince others that recycling has value. It's very easy to spot those who really recycle. They have only a small bag of garbage.

Sure the logistics have to be worked out. But there are excellent programs to emulate. One is the very successful recycling center in the Town of Granville in Washington County, N.Y. Our town executives should take a trip and see this program in action. The resources exist to improve our very primitive system.

Sincerely,

SUSAN RAKOWSKI

Please address correspondence to [email protected]

Please include your full name, address and daytime telephone number for purposes of verification.

The gift shop and offices proposed by the Montauk Historical Society at the Montauk Lighthouse is a classic example of gilding the lily, and perhaps worse. The lily, in this case, is not just the Lighthouse, but the steep green slope of Turtle Hill on which it stands and the sight of the vast Atlantic beyond. To add this new construction to a national landmark in a wild and lonely place would be a mistake.

If built, the 2,565-square-foot building would be the largest structure on the site. The East Hampton Town Planning Board was recently told that the idea was to funnel people who are not interested in visiting the museum itself through the society's gift shop. A poor reason indeed, given a historical society's mandate to preserve and interpret the past. Money raised by gift shop sales ought not outweigh the mark this structure would make on the landscape.

The Lighthouse, its outbuildings, and surrounding land are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. This makes any change there subject to review under the State Environmental Quality Review Act. Changes to the site apparently also require approval by the state and the Department of the Interior.

Thanks to an involved community, the Montauk Historical Society and its active Lighthouse committee have been able to preserve the Lighthouse and the bluffs that support it. They have taken an aging keeper's house and created an exhilarating, first-rate museum.

Isn't it wrong to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on an addition that will intrude on the landscape? Couldn't the society ask for and win the concession at the existing state building just to the north? For that matter, why expand an indoor virtual display of Montauk history, as proposed, when the trails, beaches, and historic sites of the real Montauk are only a short guided tour away?

The thousands of people who gathered under the Lighthouse to watch the sunrise on Jan. 1 gave proof to Montauk Point's symbolic importance. The desolate beauty of the very end of the Island is already marred by a parking lot just west of the Lighthouse on Turtle Cove. It's high time to draw the line.

Although it would be hard to find a neighborhood that could be described as a slum in East Hampton, there are pockets throughout town where conditions are deplorable.

The 22 families and senior citizens who live at the Three Mile Harbor trailer park know what we are talking about. They live there because the rents are low, but cesspools frequently overflow, the drinking water contains a gasoline additive, and the situation continues to deteriorate.

The owner, Theresa Streibel of Montauk and Florida, collects about $330 a month rent for each homesite. That comes to some $87,000 a year for maintenance, operation, and taxes. Since that seems enough to keep the place clean and safe, we must assume that there are circumstances beyond her control that make it impossible. After years of tenants' complaints the trailer park is still obviously substandard.

Mrs. Streibel has been summoned to Justice Court twice, but, from an enforcement perspective, the town's effort to improve things has not been a success. Perhaps that is for the best.

Eight years ago, the residents of Lower Shepherd's Neck in Montauk pressured the town to do something about the overcrowding, garbage, rats, and leaking cesspool at Woodrow's Cottages. Three levels of government came down like a ton of bricks on the landlord and found themselves involved in an expensive chase through the courts for years afterward. Before it was over, the tenants, Latino families with modest incomes and small children, ended up homeless in the middle of a February freeze.

The town has withheld Mrs. Streibel's operating permit for two years, to no avail. This year it also withheld a permit for a trailer park at Lazy Point in Amagansett owned by Andrew C. Ingraham, who is, coincidentally, Mrs. Streibel's lawyer. His tenants have formed a tenants association to document the complaints and help them speak with one voice.

It took years for the Three Mile Harbor tenants, and only with the assistance of the Town Housing Office, to take matters into their own hands.

Because New York recognizes mobile home parks as a form of affordable housing worth subsidizing, the Housing Office was able to get the state involved. The goal now is for the tenants to form a cooperative, obtain low-cost financing to buy the property, and find grant money to correct the health code violations.

If the deal goes through, the tenants could see their living conditions greatly improved without an increase in their monthly costs, according to Nina Stewart, the housing director. Mrs. Streibel has had the park on the market for years at an asking price $575,000. An appraiser hired by the state has, however, said $360,000 would be more appropriate, given all the work that needs to be done.

As it turned out, the town wound up meting out harsher punishment to the tenants of Woodrow's Cottages, albeit inadvertently, than to the owner. Thanks to a law sponsored last year by outgoing Councilman Thomas Knobel that established safety and health standards for mobile homes, however, Justice Court can now fine an owner who operates a mobile home park without a permit as much as $1,000 per week - or impose a six-month jail sentence.

For two decades, East Hampton Town has had a good record in providing affordable housing. It has helped build rental apartments and single-family houses for those with modest incomes. Now the town is taking another, and innovative, step toward helping our residents help themselves.

Earlier in the year, the Lizan Tops Gallery in East Hampton presented the landscape of the East End as seen through the eyes of painters; now it is the turn of the photographers, in a show that will remain on view through New Year's Day.

Two of the most satisfying works are by a newcomer to East End shows, Richard Calvo of Westbury. In "Storm Watchers," two-thirds of the frame is filled with the swirling, leaden clouds of an approaching storm.

At water's edge on the flat beach, separated from the viewer by a shallow tidal pool and dwarfed by strand and sky, a couple stand together, watching.

Change Of Mood

In the other, showing sedges in shallow water, the mood changes completely. From the milky surface, some fronds leap upward and some curve over to touch the water, combining with their reflections to form an amazing abstract composition of loops, curls, swoops, and circles.

It is perfectly titled "Joie de Vivre."

Mr. Calvo is rigorous in his composition, whether it shows pilings in a bay, geese walking through snow, or, in "Last Day of Winter," three trees at the top of the frame cropped in mid-canopy.

Ken Robbins's East End is the one we all know, but it is moodily different in a way that forces you to rethink the familiar. The colors are somber, hinting more at the past than the present, and even a line of weekenders waiting for a Sunday Jitney takes on an elegiac and wistful quality.

Mr. Robbins hand-colors black and white prints with a small palette of muted pinks, chartreuse, and robin's-egg blue. Some have a light patina of scumbled texture, added during the developing process, which softens some features while leaving others sharp-edged.

The photographs transmit a certain sadness, a lament for something lost. In Mr. Calvo's photos there may be distant sounds carrying across the fields or water, but those of Mr. Robbins are wrapped in an almost impenetrable silence.

Animate Trees

Infra-red photographers can be such hams - using the technique to produce endless spooky and unsettling effects - that it is a delight to meet one of restrained subtlety. Gary Bartoloni's infra-red sepia silverprints are handled so delicately that the process is hardly detectable.

Perhaps this is because he is also a botanist. He first used the process, which reveals the levels of chlorophyll in leaves, to diagnose sickness in trees.

And in his dreamlike landscapes, it is certainly the trees that hold center stage, almost animate in their intensity.

Tulla Booth

In "The Wise Man," for example, a maple spreads its twisted, top-heavy branches, half-choked with creeper, from a thickened trunk; sunlight burns through the undergrowth and the leaves leap into white flame.

Mr. Bartoloni's countryside is also familiar, but here it is new and glowing and cleansed of human contact. In these visual parables of the sanctity of nature, there is also an environmentalist's crusading voice.

Tulla Booth, who is known for her giant photos of flowers, often captured through different-colored filters, here shows some colorful landscapes, including an interesting composition of bare trees and dry grasses called "Winter Fields."

Barbey's Morocco

After a first course of Long Island's tranquillity, Bruno Barbey's photographs of Morocco at the Sag Harbor Picture Gallery are like a Madras curry.

A French photographer who has been a member of the renowned Magnum photo agency since 1965, Mr. Barbey was raised in Morocco and has exhibited all over the world. This, however, is his first show in America - a coup for Sag Harbor and a tribute to this small but knowledgeable gallery.

Mr. Barbey's Morocco is one of narrow back streets and broken cobbles, crumbling walls and flaking paint. But primarily it is a country of color - magenta and yellow headdresses, hennaed fingers, walls of turquoise and cobalt blue, a courtyard the color of a ripe pear.

Cats And Shadows

There's a wonderful shot of a girl running down a cobbled street, captured in mid-stride between two sea-green doors. The honey-brown of her dress and the black and white robe of another girl are reflected in the colors of two cats sitting on a wall in the foreground, and the shape of one of these cats is exactly echoed in the black shadows which fall across the street.

It had to be chance, but it looks deliberate.

In "Shrine of Moulay Idriss," a group of elderly men and women sit or crouch beside an elaborate tessarae wall in a composition as formal as a Fra Angelico. In a natural chiaro scuro, cream and white details of their costumes leap from the humid darkness of the narrow street.

In an alleyway in the Blida quarter of Fez that is no more than two feet wide, the sun penetrates the gloom and touches an old man, whose djellaba is the same color as the walls and the sand beneath his feet.

Ocher, Russet, Crimson

In another shot, a black-robed man sits on a curb, his face in his hands, against the background of a glowing russet wall covered with handprints, the mark of Fatimah. It is spectacular.

There are Berber women with painted cheeks, ocher goatskins drying in the sun, fishing nets of maroon and crimson, a glimpse of the red interior of a cafe, a donkey with a television set strapped to its back, the flashes of gunshots from mounted celebrators at a royal wedding, and a shot from above of two women cleaning out a mosaic fountain.

Mr. Barbey, who uses the cibachrome process to produce his rich, saturated colors, has led an adventurous and dangerous life - a deep-sea diving assignment led to a four-year paralysis - and something of the vigilant loner comes through in this show, which is not to be missed.

Dan Welden lives in Noyac, up a potholed, narrow path through the woods, reminiscent of Vermont. At the end of the path stands an elegant house with a twig-lined second-floor balcony and welcoming, buttressed porch. The house has the raw look of something built by hand, one beam at a time - and, indeed, Mr. Welden built this tri-level, comfortable place himself.

A compactly built man in his 50s, he was piloting a blue wheelbarrow piled with firewood toward the front door when his visitors arrived. Inside, he fed a few logs into a gray-blue masonry stove, made from soapstone, in a living room that features mismatched antique chairs and a comfortable old couch.

The house, while seeming like a work in progress, also has a calm, comfortable, lived-in feeling. The radiator shell from a 1932 Ford hangs high up on one wall, near a beautiful wasps' nest - unoccupied, of course - that Mr. Welden's companion, the art teacher Kryn Placke, gave to him for his birthday.

Collaborations

Dan Welden has taught at a number of universities, and he has exhibited his work widely, both in the United States and abroad; he has over four dozen solo exhibits to his credit.

But he is also well known locally as a maker of prints, at his home-based Hampton Editions. He has collaborated with artists including Willem de Kooning, Robert Dash, David Salle, Eric Fischl, and dozens more.

Josh Dayton, a painter who lives in North Sea and who worked on a series of prints with Mr. Welden in the mid-1980s, said, "I think he's a great teacher. I learned a lot from working with him. What's most interesting about Dan is that his work with artists tends to draw a lot out of them. He makes them try to do something new, something adventurous."

Early Attraction

Because his parents died early, Mr. Welden's grandparents raised both him and his younger sister. He was born in the Bronx but moved to Babylon when he was still young.

"My grandmother, who died a few years ago, was blind. She never saw any of my paintings, but she loved them anyway. She was a motherly, nurturing person, filled with all of the love she could possibly give. She would ask me to describe a painting, and then say, 'Oh, it's so beautiful.' "

It was in fifth grade that Mr. Welden became atttracted to art. He had "a motivating teacher,"Augusta Hoffman. She would leave "a pile of paper in the classroom. When you were finished with your regular school work, you could draw. She would say, 'Draw a historical event.' I learned history that way. She gave me the tools and the initial support, the rewards and everything that comes with making art. She led me toward learning the necessities of being an artist."

Five Necessities

As his cat, Turbo, climbed onto a nearby chair, Mr. Welden quoted the composer Robert Schumann's list of the five things necessary to any artist, which he took with him from Ms. Hoffman's classroom.

"First, you have to have inspiration. Second, you need the right tools to work with. Third, you need support from friends or parents or colleagues. Fourth, you should have some sort of reward - it's not very important to me, but perhaps a reward in the form of a prize, or cash. And the fifth - well, the fifth thing is that there is no fifth requirement. There is no reason to make art. You just simply have to do it."

"In high school, I drew and painted, but I wasn't all that interested in becoming an artist because there was a guy who was so much better than I was, an artist named Gary Viskupic. He was fantastic, an incredible draftsman. He still is. He made one of these tiles," Mr. Welden said, walking into his kitchen. The kitchen's floor includes 200 individual tiles that bear images drawn by as many artists, all friends of Mr. Welden's, most of whom live on the East End.

In Munich

Later, Mr. Welden switched high schools. In so doing, he said, "I became the Gary Viskupic of that school. I became more serious about art." He then attended Adelphi University, where he was class president, earned bachelor's and master's degrees in art education, and in the meantime got married.

He and his wife went to Europe for two years, and Mr. Welden studied at the Akademie der Bildenden Kunst in Munich. A teacher named Kurt Lohwasser was Mr. Welden's mentor and friend at the academy, and, although he had learned something about printmaking at Adelphi, it was in Munich that he came under the spell of the process.

In 1971, Mr. Welden and his wife returned to the United States. They have two children, and have since divorced.

Mr. Welden bought his Noyac property in 1980. But his first exposure to the East End had come much earlier. "When I lived in Babylon, I was a Newsday paperboy, and each year Newsday would treat their top paperboys to a week of camping in the Northwest Woods. I was the only kid to come home with two trophies: for archery and tennis. Archery, because I could hit the target. Tennis, because no one else showed up, so I won by forfeit."

Mr. Welden taught at the State University at Stony Brook for eight years, as an assistant professor, but failed to gain tenure.

"It was one of the biggest blows of my career. According to them, I wasn't well-known enough. I didn't have a New York dealer. It had nothing to do with teaching. Nothing at all. My classes were always very well attended - in fact, I had the best enrollment in the department. But that didn't matter."

An Artist's Artist

So Mr. Welden moved on, to Central Connecticut State University in New Britain, where he worked as artist in residence. He has since taught at Long Island University, as a visiting artist in its summer master workshop in art, and at Suffolk Community College.

In the last dozen years, Mr. Welden has established himself as the printer major artists seek when they look to collaborate with someone who is not only technically gifted, but who has an aesthetic sense.

"Working with Dan was sublime," said William King of East Hampton, an artist who made 250 monotypes at Hampton Editions in the late 1980s. "It was two summers of paradise."

"He gets you to do things you didn't think were possible. He manages to get things out of you that you can't predict," said Roy Nicholson of Noyac, a painter who has also made prints at Mr. Welden's workshop. "He has a wonderful rapport with other artists, and he works in an intuitive way. It opens up avenues of creativity."

Mr. Fischl agrees. "You work with a printmaker like Dan because of the riches of the collaborative process. He figured out a way to take the way I draw and expand it into another medium." Mr. Fischl and Mr. Welden worked on a serise of five etchings a few years ago.

Toxic Tools

Mr. Welden also designed a program in printmaking, "Artists in the Schools," sponsored by the Board of Cooperative Educational Services, that sends him to schools on the East End as well as schools in New Jersey and upstate New York.

He is concerned about the toxic effects that certain art tools - inks, for example - can have on people. The late Arnold Hoffmann was, in his view, made ill by the very medium in which he worked.

"I've always been concerned about health and safety, partially because of my dear friend Arnold Hoffmann, who was really affected by the chemicals that he inhaled while making silkscreens. Between smoking, and inhaling those fumes - it's going to do you in, sooner or later."

Low-Tech Process

"I developed these water-soluble techniques as a way to keep more toxicity from getting to me or into the environment. It's a very exciting thing for artists to be in the workshops I give" on non-toxic materials, he said, "because it gives them new ideas."

An exploration of his downstairs workspace revealed three presses, each featuring a wheel like a ship captain's that is rotated to draw a sheet of paper through rollers, and thus impress an image.

It's an extremely low-tech process, although Mr. Welden's use of non-toxic materials has made him an innovator in the world of printmaking. He travels frequently to teach groups of artists how to use the pigment, both in the United States and abroad. He is a particular favorite in Australia and New Zealand.

He has led workshops on the use of non-toxic materials locally and out of town. "Every time I do a workshop, it seems like there are two more groups that are interested," he said. "It snowballs. Not that I would want to do it every day of the week. But it's very rewarding."

A print by Mr. Welden from his "Sheepwalk" series hangs in the honored place in the living room, over the hearth - it is a strong, slashy work, more pronounced in its execution than most of his works. Mr. Welden is an artist whose pictures are largely about texture and color; they have emotional resonance but they also speak of the process that allowed them to exist.

"I've been working with artists around here since 1978. The first was Gina Knee," Mr. Welden said. Next came work with Mr. Dash, which led to his working for two years on a portfolio of prints by artists including Willem de Kooning, Elaine de Kooning, Jimmy Ernst, Dan Flavin, Syd Solomon, James Brooks, and Mr. Dash that was sold to benefit Southampton Hospital.

"Working with all of these different artists over the years has been very nice, but when I was working with Bill de Kooning, I was afraid that I would start painting like him. It has been scary in a way. If I were working with other artists on a regular basis, I would lose it."

But Mr. Welden has his own style. It shows in his house, in the way that he carries himself, and of course in his art.

Richard Minsky, a resident of Short Beach Road, urged the North Haven Village Board in a letter read at a board meeting on Oct. 7 to "condemn and demolish" his neighbor's house, calling it a "turquoise monstrosity."

But the owner of the house, Angus Bruce, calls the color a "seabreeze green" and insists, correctly, that the village has no legal purview over the hue of paint he chooses.

The Village Board of Architectural Review and Historic Preservation does, however, review and approve all village building plans before a building permit is issued.

In Mr. Bruce's case, the plan listed the exterior color as gray, and it is that, as well as alleged violations of the Village Code, that Mr. Minsky has been complaining about for almost a year.

Trees Threatened

Mr. Minsky, in several letters sent to Al Daniels, North Haven's building inspector, and to the Village Board over the past year, has alleged that clearing on the Bruce property exceeds the maximum allowed by law, and was done too close to the property line.

"I had to stand there in front of the bulldozer so they wouldn't cut down our trees," Mr. Minsky said, adding that his 30-foot wisteria was destroyed when a fence which exceeds height and setback requirements was built.

Mr. Minsky complained that bamboo was planted to revegetate a border area and threatens a 100-year-old chestnut tree on his property. Though the Village Code does not outlaw bamboo, it does say that areas should be revegetated "in kind," preferably with native plants.

"We moved into this community because of its rural nature," Mr. Minsky explained last week. "We felt we were protected by the Village Code."

Welcome Gesture

Mr. Minsky, who said he purchased and planted a tree on the Bruces' property as a gesture of welcome to the community, feels "deceived." The Bruces' house is for sale, he claimed, and was built with a quick turnover in mind.

Mr. Daniels, who investigated Mr. Minsky's initial complaints, refused to issue a certificate of occupancy for the property because of the alleged violations, though Mr. Bruce and his wife, Lauralee, reside in the house they built there.

Lauralee Bruce, who said the couple is in litigation regarding the property, referred all inquiries to their attorney, Dennis Downes of Sag Harbor, who did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Violations still exist, said Mr. Minsky at a Village Board meeting on Monday. He cited a shed and a stockade fence that are, he said, too close to the property line.

Neighbors Met

He registered his support for the proposed addition of a code enforcement officer to the village payroll so that matters like this could be investigated and acted upon more quickly.

In a written report to the board, Mr. Daniels said that he met with Mrs. Bruce on Oct. 24 to discuss the "unauthorized clearing and revegetation, and the shed location."

"She assured me she would expeditiously rectify these matters so that they comply with the Village Code," he wrote.

"I notified the board seven months ago. . . ." said Mr. Minsky on Monday. "This is a law . . . I don't see why a summons wasn't issued. Why should anybody else in the village follow the code?" he asked.

Village officials are redrafting portions of the Village Code that they've called "unenforceable," particularly clearing regulations. Board members discussed the continuing problem of excessive property clearing on North Haven Point lots as well as illegal clearing of adjacent village property and the dilemma of how to seek redress on Monday.

"It's like Swiss cheese," said Mayor Robert Ratcliffe of the law. "If you go to court, you'll get thrown out."

"Isn't there a fine for violating Village Codes?" Mr. Minsky asked.

Withholding all building permits and certificates of occupancy for North Haven Point properties may be a temporary solution, the board proposed.

Proposed Laws

Meanwhile, officials will urge the village attorney, Anthony Tohill, to review the proposed tighter laws.

Also at Monday's meeting, the board adopted revised guidelines for public comment, making the rules more stringent than those adopted in September and moving the 15-minute public comment period to the start of the meeting.

Speakers "shall not be loud, boisterous, or unpleasant either to other audience members or to the board," and may speak no longer than three minutes.

"Those unable to address the board in a civil manner will be denied the opportunity to speak and may be removed from the meeting," the guidelines state.

AMAGANSETT

Milne to Giacomo and Margaret DeFilippis, Surf Drive, $400,000.

Chanes to Mathew Lefkowitz and Kyle Dupre, Skimhampton Road, $625,000.

BRIDGEHAMPTON

H.B. Co. to Stephen and Susan Breitenbach, Little Noyac Path, $247,500.

Kelman to Charles and Patricia Penwell, Tiffany Way, $595,000.

Cummings Jr. to Douglas and Alison Greenig, Jennifer Lane, $905,000.

EAST HAMPTON

Manning to Lorraine Schacht and Sharon Mandell, Georgica Road, $1,150,000.

NORTH HAVEN

Bernhard to Michael Nobiletti, On the Bluff, $495,000.

NORTHWEST

Synergistic Marketing Inc. to David Axelrod and Merle Birns, Northwest Road, $290,000.

Stollerman to Roxine Fischler, Bull Path, $545,000.

Posener to Don Lasker and Russell Nobles, Milina Drive, $195,000.

Gershkowitz to Elizabeth Tops, Powder Hill Lane, $523,000.

Cedar Woods Ltd. to Taylor and Sheila Smith, Owls Nest Lane, $160,000.

SAG HARBOR

Sands Jr. to Michael and Alice McGrath, Noyac Road, $527,500.

Hanson to Nicholas Quennell and Grace Tankersley, Garden Street, $248,000.

SAGAPONACK

Dayton to Sutton Hoo Inc., Daniel's Lane, $1,000,000.

SPRINGS

Miller to Richard and Sharon Burns, Briarcroft Drive, $330,000.

WATER MILL

Crowley to Kevin Mancuso, West Trail Road, $307,000.

Pasbjerg estate to Frederick Marek, Holly Lane, $2,600,000.

Patrikis to John and Margaret Martinez, Wood Thrush Lane, $250,000.

The gannets were diving into the surf for the first time on Sunday morning, and so were the big bass. As a result, the leader board in the Montauk Locals surfcasting tournament for striped bass has changed.

Bob Jones remains in first place with a fish caught on Oct. 10, and Fred Kaulkstein's 34-pound, eight-ounce bass remains in second.

A 33-pound striper taken from the surf on the backside of the blow Sunday by Dennis Gaviola has taken over the three spot much to Steve Carmen's dismay. Mr. Carmen had pulled a 31-pound bass out of the surf just 15 minutes earlier during the same blitz Sunday morning between the Lighthouse bluffs and the spot called Jones's.

Gannets Diving

Dennis Gaviola's brother Joe, despite hours spent perched on various rocks around Montauk and Shagwong Points, remains out of the running, to his brother's great satisfaction. He said that Sunday, for the first time, nature offered the kind of late fall signs that add up to big fish. "It didn't last long, but the gannets were in the surf and big bait was being pushed in."

Dave Marcley, another locals competitor, caught a 27-pounder on his first cast. Mr. Marcley, who said his arms got tired after reeling in a number of big fish, offered Dennis Gaviola his rock midway through the flurry. It was shortly afterward that Mr. Gaviola hooked the third- place fish.

Joe Gaviola said that about 10 bass weighing in the 20-pound range, and three weighing over 30 pounds were landed during the Sunday morning session.

Steve Kraemer of Montauk reports great striper action at Shagwong Point as well. He boasted a 30-pounder on eight-pound test line over the weekend.

Slow Going

The good surf action has just about replaced the season-long production in Gardiner's Bay. Harvey Bennett of the Tackle Shop in Springs reports slow going during one of his "cast and blast" sessions last week. It's how he refers to his combination bass fishing and coot (scoter) shooting outings he enjoys this time of year. The shooting was good, the casting was "didn't raise any," Mr. Bennett said.

He added that bass were still being found at Plum Gut, and flounder could be had by dropping a line off the docks in Three Mile Harbor.

The Lazy Bones party boat, which sails from between Tuma's and Salivar's Dock in Montauk, continues to have very good luck with bass. The Bones runs two trips per day and Kathy Vegessi, first mate, reports anglers reeling in 15 keeper bass (over 28 inches) in the morning, and 13 during the afternoon trip.

Tuna Vanish

The day before, it was 10 keepers in the a.m. and 16 in the afternoon. Fishermen were using diamond jigs for the most part, with some drifting live eels. The Bones has been fishing in the rips off Montauk as well as Shagwong Points.

The search for offshore tuna among sport fishermen has just about ceased. Between regulations and mysterious migratory patterns, local tuna boats have not faired well.

John DeLuca, otherwise known as Johnny Marlin, said the water was still pretty warm offshore, but that a recent trip for tuna found only blue sharks. One of them was near world-record size, he said, well over 300 pounds. Mr. DeLuca said he and his crew decided not to bait the big blue because the waste (few people eat blue sharks) would not be worth a possible record.

A 19-year-old woman who police said was sexually assaulted after a man slipped her a date rape drug at a bar in Montauk said on Monday that the treatment she received at the Southampton Hospital emergency room was like "a second trauma."

The doctor she saw in the emergency room that night did not call East Hampton Town police to report a rape or sexual assault victim, according to East Hampton Town Police Chief Todd Sarris. Chief Sarris said that he did not know if she had even been given the option of calling the police from the hospital.

"That's unacceptable," he said yesterday. "Common sense would dictate they would call us so we can get the evidence we need," he added. In general, hospitals ask rape and sexual assault victims if they want police to be called, the chief said.

The woman, who will be called Marie to protect her anonymity, said on Monday that the doctor did not perform an internal exam or blood test, did not collect forensic evidence, and did not test her for the presence of a "date rape" drug. He did not offer her a morning-after pill or preventive medication for sexually transmitted diseases, Marie said.

"I felt I was violated by him as well. He didn't do anything for me," said the young woman, who was interviewed with her mother present.

The woman, who lives in Washington State, said she went to the bar on the night of Aug. 14 with a 21-year-old friend she was visiting in East Hampton, who will be called Jane. They were accompanied by three male friends. Jane, who accompanied Marie to the emergency room, said that the doctor didn't seem to believe them. "He was even questioning our having been in Montauk," she said on Tuesday.

According to Marie, she drank one glass of wine before going to the bar with her friends. At the bar, she drank a vodka with pineapple juice, ordered a second, and drank about half of it.

She became disoriented and confused, and was led from the bar at about 12:30 a.m. on Aug. 15 by a man who had sexual intercourse with her outdoors, not far from the bar, police said. Marie said that her memory of the evening is only fragmentary, and she does not remember talking to the man before finding herself led outside.

Based on her behavior and the amount of alcohol she had drunk, police said that Marie had probably been given a "date rape" drug at some point in the evening.

Jane said she was with Marie "all night," leaving her alone on the dance floor only for about five minutes, and then Marie "was gone." Marie returned to the bar about 40 minutes later, Jane said, and told her what had happened, while "crying hysterically and almost hyperventilating." Jane called her parents and the three of them took Marie to the Southampton Hospital emergency room.

Arriving at around 3 a.m., they told hospital personnel that they thought Marie had been raped, Jane said. She remained in the examining room with Marie while her parents sat in the waiting room.

"I remember telling the doctor that we hadn't been drinking that much and I thought she might have been drugged. Her eyes weren't focusing," Jane said. However, the doctor did not test her for "date rape" drugs such as gamma hydroxybutyrate, Ketamine, and Rohypnol, evidence of which leaves the body quickly, and must be tested for as soon as possible.

Jane said that Marie was still acting in a confused manner and told the doctor at one point that the man might have sexually assaulted her but not necessarily raped her. She made it quite clear to him that she had been assaulted, however, Jane said.

Marie said that she repeatedly told the doctor that the man had hurt her inside, and showed the doctor where the pain was coming from, on her lower abdomen. When she said, " 'Maybe it's just nerves,' " the doctor agreed, Marie said.

When Marie was examined the next day at John T. Mather Memorial Hospital in Port Jefferson she was told she had a cut on her cervix.

While at the Southampton Hospital emergency room, Marie agreed with Jane that she should have a full exam and that the doctor should check for forensic evidence, using a sexual evidence collection kit, commonly called a "rape kit." But when the nurse brought the kit into the examining room, the doctor said, " 'That won't be necessary,' " Marie said.

"He kept telling us that if we wanted a rape kit done we should go UpIsland," Jane said, adding that she wasn't sure what he meant.

The doctor did perform an external exam, noting that Marie had " 'some bruising' " on her thighs and offering to give her medication for anxiety, Jane said. He then sent her home with instructions to " 'rest' " and to call East Hampton Town police if she wished to file a report. He also provided her with the number of the Victims Information Bureau Hotline, Marie said.

A little more than a day later, on the afternoon of Aug. 16, Marie and Jane visited East Hampton Town police to file a report. The detective they spoke with "was mad that the hospital hadn't called police," Marie said.

Marie said that the detective called the hospital and made an appointment for the " 'head nurse' " to perform an examination using a rape kit. When Marie, Jane, and the detective arrived at the hospital, they were told that the head nurse was in a meeting, Marie said, and in fact she never appeared.

According to Sharon DiSunno, the hospital's vice president of quality management, the nurse did not appear due to an "employee misunderstanding," for she had left explicit instructions with staff members to call her out of the meeting when Marie arrived.

Jane said that another nurse became angry at the detective and called him " 'lazy' " for not taking Marie " 'UpIsland' " for an exam. Chief Sarris said that town police usually take rape and sexual assault victims to the rape unit at Mather Hospital in Port Jefferson, where nurses are trained to collect forensic evidence and provide medical care after sexual assault incidents. In Marie's case, however, police decided that forensic evidence should be gathered as quickly as possible - more than a day had passed since the incident.

"They were not cooperating," Marie said of the Southampton Hospital staff, "and the detective decided to take me to Port Jefferson." At Mather, a nurse performed a full internal and external exam, collected forensic evidence, took Marie's blood pressure, and tested her urine and blood. The nurse also gave her preventive drugs for sexually transmitted diseases, including gonorrhea, chlamydia, and hepatitis B, and a 30-day preventive regimen for H.I.V.

She was also given a "morning-after pill," The examining nurse told Marie that she had a cut on her cervix.

"Thank goodness she went to the hospital again. She was cut pretty badly inside," Jane said.

The detective, Marie, and Jane left the hospital at around 10 p.m.

Alyson Ryan, a coordinator at Mather Memorial Hospital, said that preventive drugs must be given to victims of sexual assault or rape within 96 hours of the incident. She also said that the New York State Department of Health had issued a protocol to be followed for "acute care of adult patients reporting sexual assault" in emergency rooms.

According to section 2805-i of the Public Health Law, "sexual assault evidence shall be collected, unless the patient signs a statement directing the hospital not to collect it."

In addition, the protocol for care of victims of sexual assault says the following: "Providing consistent, comprehensive care and evidence collection must rely on the patient reporting that she has been sexually assaulted, rather than the emergency department staff's analysis of the patient's allegations, and whether these allegations constitute assault or rape."

Ms. DiSunno, who said she would be violating privacy laws if she said anything about Marie's specific case, would only say that hospital procedure in the case of sexual assaults is "based on terminology that the patient uses." She would not elaborate any further, but said that the doctor who examined Marie on Aug. 16 was a "superb physician" and "did his job." Marie and her mother filed a complaint against the hospital with Ms. DiSunno last week.

The Southampton Hospital doctor "could have messed up my life," Marie said. "The medications they gave me [at Mather Memorial Hospital] were so important," she said.

Marie had words of praise for the East Hampton Town police detective who took her to the hospital and wrote the crime report, calling him "amazing."

Police recently reported that a similar incident occurred at the same Montauk bar that Marie had visited, the week before, on Aug. 7. A 39-year-old Locust Valley woman ordered a drink, became disoriented and confused, suffered from fragmented memory, and was led from the bar by a man who had sexual intercourse with her nearby.

Police said the two incidents did not involve the same man. The man who led Marie from the bar was in his mid-20s, about six feet tall, of medium build, with short dark hair. The man who assaulted the woman from Locust Valley was in his mid-40s, stood about six feet tall, and had straight, medium-length blond hair.