What are the chances? Two bottles bearing messages are tossed ashore after a tempestuous late summer storm. They are found one day, and 15 miles, apart (one in Amagansett and one in Southampton) by small children exploring the beach.

With the seas as rough as they were last Thursday and Friday, it's not surprising the waters would yield up a couple of treasures like these.

But what if both bottles originated in Shanghai? That's a long and tangled route to travel. And what if they were dropped into the sea on the same day, by the same person, Wang Zhao-Da, and contained the very same message?

Then what would the chances be?

Find In The Foam

On Thursday the ocean was still rumbling with storm when Susan DeVito walked along Indian Wells Beach in Amagansett with her four children, stepping to avoid errant waves and debris that had come in with the tide. She kicked a bottle out of the foam.

It looked no different from any other Seven-Up or ginger ale bottle - just another piece of garbage, until her son Adam, 8, spotted something inside. It was every young adventurer's dream.

Dear the friend:

When you recieve this letter, you must find that I am from the remote place - China. I am Chinese, I was born on Oct. 7, 1979. I am studying in Ting Chao Middle School, Nan Hui, Shanghai, China. . . .

I like collecting stamps, playing all kinds of balls, swimming. . . . Do you know Chinese? Understand?

. . . I hope you can make friends with me. I am waiting for your letter. I believe this bottle will reach the remote opposite place and I believe you will write the back letter, too. I'm waiting.

. . . The Remote Friend: Wang Zhao-Da

Oct. 7, 1996

Adam, his brother, Connor, 3, and his twin 6-year-old sisters, Emily and Stasia, took the bottle back to their grandparents, Viola and George McClancy, in Amagansett. Mr. McClancy said his first thought was that it was probably a fraud, but he noted the bottle was definitely of a foreign make and suggested that his grandchildren take it to the newspaper anyway.

In Southampton

The next day in Southampton, as Morgan and Rolf Lehman of Meadow Lane walked on the beach with their babysitter, Rebecca Dersteine, they came upon a similar bottle. The children had no way of knowing then, but the message was exactly the same as the one found by the DeVitos the day before.

After The Star E-mailed a Shanghai newspaper, a reporter there confirmed that the letter, at least, was legitimate.

"He put some bottles in the sea a year ago and now is very surprised to be informed of this story," the reporter wrote of Zhao-Da via E-mail yesterday morning. (Zhao-Da does not have his own E-mail address.)

How Could It Be?

So how did both copies make it to the same shore after such a lengthy journey? Did a mariner aboard a trade vessel drop young Zhao-Da's bottles into New York Harbor, where they could easily have been pushed east to the South Fork beaches? Were they tossed to sea at Montauk Point by Chinese tourists on vacation? Or did they truly chance to navigate the high seas by the same route, perhaps tethered together with a piece of cord until the pounding waves drove them ashore this week?

"The most probable route is in a suitcase," Charlie Flagg of Brook hav en National Laboratory said yesterday. Dr. Flagg holds a Ph.D. in physical oceanography and is an expert in world ocean currents.

To reach the shores of eastern Long Island from Shanghai at all, the bottles would have effectively circumnavigated the world almost twice, Dr. Flagg said. And though the chances that the tiny vessels managed to make it from China to these shores were "so narrow as to be implausible," he said, he did offer an educated guess on a possible path.

They would have traveled north from Shanghai via the Kuroshio current into the North Pacific. There they would pass to the south of the Aleutian Islands and journey down the west coast of North America by way of the California current.

They would then head west again along the Equator through the Indonesian Passage and into the Indian Ocean, where they would be carried south somewhere near Madascar and enter the circumpolar current.

Assuming they got that far, the bottles would then move west off South Australia, and past Cape Horn almost to the African coast, but would be caught in the Benguala current in the South Atlantic. Eventually they would have been carried across the Atlantic by the south equatorial current, where they might have drifted west to join the coastal current off north Brazil, and then into the Gulf Stream.

Stands By The Suitcase

"They could have been kicked out of the Gulf Stream, made their way across the slope sea gyre, and then across the Continental Shelf, which is no small feat," and finally ended up on Long Island, Dr. Flagg said.

He recalled a similar bottle story a few years ago in which a bottle found on the California coast had supposedly been let go in the Finger Lakes of New York. He was highly skeptical of the truth in that bottle tale and is of this one too. "Phenomena of this sort, equally unlikely, have occured before, and in both cases I stand by the suitcase theory."

The Lehman children, just 3 and 5 years old, are too young to understand how far away China is, but their father, Robin Lehman, has been puzzling over the bottle's journey all week. "The fact that two were found just 20 miles apart, I find that amazing."

"If it's a hoax," Mr. Lehman said, "they did it very well and more power to them."

Michael Findlay, senior vice president and senior director of Impressionist and modern art at Christie's, is nowhere near as solemn as his titles may indicate. A fit and animated 52, he warmly welcomed a recent visitor to his new house in the Northwest area of East Hampton, an upside-down dwelling with treetop decks.

Asked over a plate of muffins whether collectors were in it for love or money, he said it was both.

"I tend to believe, and often quote, a wonderful collector named Emily Tremaine, who said that three elements influence collectors. One, a love of art. Two, the possibility that it will go up in value. And three, the social prestige art brings. Whether acquired venally - to impress people - or not, a good collection opens doors and actually enriches one's social life."

Collecting

And what distinguishes a true collector?

"Involvement in a work must come first," said Mr. Findlay. "Later, you can find out who created it and when and where, and how much it's worth. It takes a lot of courage to be the only bidder on something no one else seems to want; I admire that."

"Anyone can be a collector," he continued. "Start on a small scale. Begin with prints and drawings. And visit artists' studios. With a work of art, you must see the original - there is no substitute. It's the difference between eating a gourmet meal and buying Gourmet magazine."

A huge number of works are in private collections, of course, but when they come up for auction, Mr. Findlay pointed out, anyone can see them. Christie's preview exhibits, for example, are open to the public at no charge. "Not everyone is a potential buyer, and we even serve chocolates in Christie's wrappers."

Mr. Findlay, who played a leading role in the May 1990 sale in which Vincent van Gogh's "Portrait of Dr. Gachet" was sold for $82.5 million - still the most expensive work ever sold at auction - has specific responsibility for developing Christie's Asian market.

The job takes him frequently to Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and the People's Republic of China, where, he said, great collectors are just beginning to emerge.

Back home, he has helped to form the collections of Pamela Harriman, Alice Tully, Billy Wilder, and Richard and Dorothy Rogers, among many others.

Taste-Forming

His heady career in great art and high finance had humble origins. It began because he couldn't draw.

Born in Scotland, he was sent at age 11 to a boarding school in England, where the "brilliantly nonauthoritarian" art teacher divided his classes into drawers and nondrawers.

"The nondrawers were taught to appreciate art by a method I still subscribe to," said Mr. Findlay. "We were taken on ritual trips to London's major museums, told to look, fairly indiscriminately, to choose one painting we really loved or didn't love, and to articulate our reasons."

"It was the best education at the best point in time. I saw an awful lot of Old Masters as well as 19th-century and contemporary works, not in any quantifiable order. Tastes were formed."

"Some - for all the obvious Impressionists, particularly Cezanne and Manet - have not changed. Others have. I was quite dogmatic as a boy, and have become more broadminded since. I even learned to like Victorian painting."

College In Toronto

Afterward he won a scholarship to attend the then very small (now huge) York University in Toronto, handpicked by its faculty, he presumes, "to be a foreign student and stir things up."

The rudimentary campus consisted mainly of an old mansion, and the budding executive was put in charge of borrowing paintings from local collectors to hang on its walls.

"From 1961 to 1963, the Pop-culturally critical years I was there, I might as well as have been in Detroit in 1840," he said.

"Although I somehow managed to get involved with American jazz and the poetry of Allen Ginsberg, Toronto was puritanical, isolated, and totally out of touch with what was going on."

Early Gallery

With a few contacts and some curatorial experience, Mr. Findlay came to New York as a tourist in February 1964.

(His arrival, he recalled, coincided almost exactly with that of The Beatles. While he had worn the same English schoolboy hairstyle as long as he could remember, suddenly, in the eyes of New Yorkers, he looked like one of the Fab Four, whose invasion in a matter of weeks had been preceded by a blitz of publicity.

"Beatle!" people said, pointing to him on the street and either smiling or scowling.

After an exciting first two weeks, and "at the frighteningly young age of 19," he decided to stay. He cashed in his plane ticket home, applied for a green card, and went knocking on art gallery doors. One was opened by the dealer Richard L. Feigen, who gave him a modest job helping to organize exhibits.

In 1968, Mr. Findlay opened his own gallery, J.H. Duffy and Sons Ltd., one of the first in SoHo, in a building Mr. Feigen owned on Greene Street. "A nest for fledgling artists," it operated on a shoestring.

Involvement

Mr. Findlay's own art collection "started out as things I bought because they didn't sell and the artist needed supporting," he said. As a dealer showing young artists, he visited many studios, "and while 80 percent of the work was quite good, I had no passionate response to it."

"I have to be startled, and have that quality persist. Sometimes my reaction is so strong I can't tell if the work is atrocious or something new the artist is coming to grips with."

Sometimes, however, there is that rare, elusive "involvement."

"When I keep coming back, then a real communication is happening. The artist may have created the work for reasons having nothing to do with the reason why I am startled, but that absolutely doesn't matter; for me, at least, it is a masterpiece."

Family Man

Mr. Findlay's second marriage, to the supermodel Naomi Sims, lasted 17 years and produced a son, Bob, who lives in Santa Fe and is the apple of his eye.

"He publishes a scurrilous underground magazine called 'Flushable Applicator,' plays in a band, and is in the food service industry, a waiter at a coffee house where he also plays bongos for an acoustic guitarist. A very talented free spirit and vegan, he's been an animal rights activist since the age of 8."

Bob's father is now seeing the artist Victoria Wolfe, "a major element in my life." Her work was in a group show recently at the Parrish Art Museum in Southampton.

Art Runs In Cycles

According to Mr. Findlay, the art market operates in fairly predictable cycles of seven to 11 years. After a sharp decline - 1991 was the last time it hit bottom, he said - years of steady growth will follow, fueled by estate sales and speculation. That, he said, is the current trend, now perhaps nearing its close.

If the past is any indication, the cycle will end with a sharp rise in values that then causes the market to implode, and bottom out again.

"It's hard to identify which new collectors will still be refining their collections after 20 years as opposed to the apparently dedicated ones who will actually cash out after a couple of years," said Mr. Findlay.

"But," he concluded, "every cycle produces a few who are pulled in as speculators and stay as collectors because they actually like what they're buying. Amazing!"

Ask anyone who lives within a moderate radius of Boom Bistro in Sag Harbor if they're heard of it, and they'll tell you that "heard" is the right word - every weekend this summer, Boom and its neighbor, Chili Peppers, have been a party hot spot, with models arriving in limousines, loud music, body painting, and noisy young patrons overflowing onto the street in the small hours.

On Fridays there are DJs and dancing, on Saturday there's live music, on Tuesdays you can join in the ballroom dancing and partake of a free buffet, and Wednesdays there's a hopping employees night.

But what about Sundays, when the weekend is over and the models have washed off the body paint and put themselves in cryonic suspension until the next weekend? We went along at 7:30 p.m. to see how Boom fared on a quiet glitz-free evening.

Harried Servers

Well, first of all, it wasn't quiet, which surprised us but surprised the wait staff much more. There were only two waiters, who were completely swamped, and I think I heard one say that there was only one chef on duty - if that's so, he must have been carried out on a stretcher at the end of the night.

Needless to say, this meant that the service was less than ideal, though heaven knows they were doing everything at a trot. Another thing - however much a waiter prides himself on his ability to remember orders, when there's a table of six, all choosing different things, it's not a bad idea to swallow one's pride and write it down.

"He'll get something wrong," we said, and he did.

Reasonable Wines

Boom has an interesting wine list, arranged by country. And while there is quite a high proportion of more expensive wines, they are fairly priced. An outstanding 1990 Chateau le Loup St. Emilion Grand Cru, as smooth as silk, seemed a bargain at $28.

But what is the rationale behind the music? For most of the evening it was operatic arias interspersed with those moldy oldies that only the Three Tenors sing - "O Sole Mio," "Funiculi, Funicula" - none of which you could hear properly, had you wished to do so, which is unlikely.

There is a popular outdoor eating area, from which you can see the masts of boats in the harbor if not the water itself, and a huge, barnlike interior with exposed trusses. The bar and lounge areas are jammed on happening nights but seem sadly bare on Sundays.

Appetizers range from $7 to $12 and everything we tried was excellent. The produce is very fresh, of good quality and carefully chosen, and the presentation is very pretty.

There were two fine carpaccios: a lustrous beef carpaccio with artichoke, onions, capers, and olive oil over which roughly grated Parmesan had been sprinkled, and also delicate slices of tuna, which were lightly seared on the outside.

The poached salmon terrine, held together with a light lemony aspic, was outstandingly good, as were the fricaseed escargots with mushrooms, which came in a featherlight pastry bubble.

Ups And Downs

We tried the mixed green salad with goat cheese, which was fresh and very carefully dressed, and the onion soup, which was a universal clone but, apart from being a little sweet, was fine.

But we didn't bat 1.000 on the entrees, which range in price from $15 to $29 with 65 percent being over $20.

The two fish dishes we tried, both as fresh as could be, passed with flying colors: A grilled sea bass fillet with fennel and tomato puree was cooked to the point of perfection, with the sharp accompanying flavors enhancing the subtle flavor of the fish. The salmon came crisply cooked in the merest suggestion of a coating of some sort - maybe just rolled in flour - without losing any of its moisture. The accompanying asparagus, peppers, and tapenade were not a success.

The roasted duck breast came with a lovely sauce of honey, pears, and spices, and the roast chicken could not be faulted - crispy skin, tender flesh, and an excellent sauce.

Surprise!

But the pastas were losers. A penne with eggplant, fresh tomato, herbs, and spicy tomato sauce was as dull as dishwater and the linguine frutti di mare was really nasty tasting and had to be sent back.

The desserts did not seem fresh and were all awful.

Having discussed the prices and decided that they were a little too high for what was offered - $15 for a burger, for example - along comes the bill. To our surprise, every Wednesday, Thursday, and Sunday evening 50 percent is taken off the menu prices. Well, that perked us up.

At those prices, the meal was a bargain. In fact, while the last days of summer are here, you could hardly do better than to go early, choose carefully, and eat on the terrace on 50-percent-off nights. Unless, of course, you're a night life type, in which case you've probably been shoehorning your way through Boom Bistro's doors on Saturdays all summer long.

On the minus side, the big dining area was both stuffy and rather funereal (gemutlich is certainly not a word that comes to mind), the wait staff in a dither, particularly the man who hardly spoke English, and the food erratic - predominantly excellent but with irritating pockets of bad.

After hearing the umpteenth version of "Mustang Sally" at the Stephen Talkhouse's open jam night last winter and realizing the jam just wasn't the right venue for solo musicians and songwriters like himself, Gene Hamilton of Amagansett got an idea: Why not set up a spotlight purely for songwriters and original material?

He did, and out of the woodwork they came. What the massage therapist and songwriter didn't realize when he convinced the Talkhouse to host his "Acoustic Mondays" was that the night would turn into not only a showcase for new talent, but a winter oasis, where a family of performers and fans passed cold February nights together.

The warmth of that coffeehouse atmosphere has now been captured on a new CD produced by Mr. Hamilton, "Acoustic Monday Nite: Live From the Stephen Talkhouse."

Ten-Track CD

The CD's 10 tracks highlight most of the regular performers and demonstrate the diversity of personalities and musical styles the evenings have drawn. Designed with a collage of candid photos for the cover, the CD was unveiled recently at a special release party at the Talkhouse.

"Vibe, vibe, vibe, you know what I'm saying!?" says Mr. Hamilton in his trademark rasp to open the CD. The crowd obliges with an enthusiastic wail, and Mr. Hamilton launches into his comical theme song, "Squid," about his favorite culinary delight ("If I could take a gamble, I'd become a marine mammal, like a big sperm whale, 'cause they like squid.")

Mr. Hamilton returns before each song to introduce the performer.

Virgil The Frog Boy

More humor is offered from Tommy LaGrassa and Eddie Mac in Mr. LaGrassa's ode to a piece of graffiti, "Virgil." Sung in a nasal wail - more nasal than Bob Dylan's - the song gives a face to the famous Frog Boy immortalized in spray paint on a railroad trellis over Route 114.

He "wore a big cap and played the violin/With two webbed feet and legs so thin." Unfortunately, Virgil, who spent his time "on the roadside catching flies," is flattened by a car and winds up "on the roadside drawing flies."

The CD also spotlights the emerging Nancy Atlas, who quickly became an Acoustic Monday star with her pop-laced rock and more introspective folk.

Her track, "Believe in Me," a radio-ready pop song when played with her band, is slowed down on the CD, allowing listeners to savor its catchy melodic hooks and well-turned lyrics.

For someone like the ambitious Ms. Atlas - she is being considered by two record companies - Monday nights provide a valuable platform for exposure and trying out new material.

Another veteran songwriter who has taken advantage of the Monday night exposure has been Michael Hennessey, whose song "Lean Into the Wind" is one of the CD's strongest cuts. About life's pressures, the song features guitar playing that transcends the normal humdrum-strum style of most folk. In fact, the guitar breaks between verses almost evoke a Led Zeppelin ballad.

Most of the performers on the CD defy comparison, however, which should be a songwriter's accolade. The songs are mostly highly introspective and reflective of their performer's personalities.

Unplugged

Introduced as "Mr. Sensitive" by Mr. Hamilton, the versatile Matt Dauch contributes "Earthbound" to the CD, a soft, daydreamy number about a soul-searcher looking for meaning ("I think they forgot what happened to me/I look real hard and see/The miracle of God is waiting somewhere/But I can't catch it, because I'm earthbound").

Like several of the other artists on the album, Mr. Dauch is normally at home in a band. Mr. Hennessey leads the funk-and-rock-based Paragon; Emily Wilson and Jayson Zarecki, who contributed the bluesy "Shady Hollow," normally play as The Source, and Woody Kneeland and Mark Knight, whose "Twice in Time" stands as the CD's most intriguing cut, are half of the alternative rock unit The Realm.

With the "unplugged" format all the rage in the record industry now, a musician with a guitar and a song is no longer stereotyped as a simple folksinger. Perhaps that has been part of the appeal of Acoustic Mondays.

Mellow Cuts

A mellow cut like Brandon Burdon's "Victorious Donations," has the elements of a folk song - a stargazer reflects on growing up - but its chords and delivery are purely alternative-rock based. A folk fan could find strength in the song for its self-revealing lyrics, while an alternative-music fan could appreciate it for its haunting chords and unique vocals.

If there is one cut on the CD that does embrace all the elements of folk, it's Penny Ward's "Unavailable Gorgeous." In it, the singer portrays a wounded woman whose lover is having an affair. Her quirky vocal style and starkly honest lyrics make for a number at once sad and humorous.

Alfredo Merat and Carl Obrig also add something exotic to the mix, with their duet "Africa." With Mr. Merat's low, flamenco-inspired vocals, and Mr. Obrig's delicate soprano sax soloing throughout, the tune is atmospheric and fresh amid the more structured numbers on the CD.

As for the technical qualities of the CD, the recording is relatively crisp and clear, yet its highly structured format takes away somewhat from the spontaneity of the night, and nowhere do we get to hear the banter between audience and musicians that usually characterizes such intimate performances. (Actually, as Mr. LaGrassa's number fades out, we hear him remind the crowd, "Remember, flossing is no substitute for brushing.")

In any case, the CD gives recognition to those who have contributed to Acoustic Mondays and made it successful. Whether you've attended the shows or are simply interested to know what kind of songwriting talent is flourishing here, it's worth picking up.

Mr. Hamilton had 300 CDs made, which he plans to sell through Long Island Sound branches and possibly The Wall in Bridgehampton. Acoustic Mondays, meanwhile, continue to thrive every Monday night at 9 at the Stephen Talkhouse.

With a half-dozen exceptions, every city and county in New York has opted to join the state in suspending sales taxes on purchases of clothing up to $100 for one week, starting Monday. One goal of the suspension is to boost retail sales, in particular of back-to-school clothes, though shoes and sneakers, important items for school kids, are not included.

Here on the East End a savvy shopper will be able to save up to $8.25 per $100 during the one-week window. There is no limit on the number of purchases, which may be rung up separately in order to qualify for the exemption.

This would seem to be one of those rare exceptions to the no-free-lunch adage. In fact, a sales-tax exemption proved so popular when it was tried out in January that the State Legislature has decided to make it permanent at the end of 1999. The only ones who might object are retailers in the State of New Jersey, which has no tax on clothing and often draws New York shoppers because of it.

Everyone benefits from this action, consumers and merchants on Main Street or in the big malls. Don't miss the window.

Two promising young pianists visiting this country from Russia will return soon to Moscow not quite certain where they will spend the rest of their lives.

Vazgen Vartanyan and Dmitri Gordin gave a private recital at a birthday party in Sagaponack for Lukas Foss, the Bridgehampton composer and conductor. "They have enormous virtuosity," Mr. Foss said of the pair this week. "They are both terrific pianists."

The two are students at the venerable Moscow State Conservatory, the training ground for such piano virtuosos as Rachmaninoff, Gilels, and Richter. They are close friends as well as schoolmates, Mr. Vartanyan about to enter his fifth and last year of training, Mr. Gordin with two years to go.

Mirror Of Moscow

Last week, they took a quiet hour in Sag Harbor, where they were visiting friends, to talk about their American summer, spent mostly in New York City and on the East End. Both are serious, almost Tolstoyesque, with smiles hard to come by.

Staunchly committed to their music, they worry about what they described as their school's declining quality - in some ways a reflection of what is going on in their larger world, far beyond its walls.

"It's destiny, you know," said Mr. Vartanyan, a thoughtful, somewhat brooding 23-year-old of Armenian lineage, expressing a classically Russian fatalism. "I'm not sure that everything is up to you. Things happen. If something has to happen, it will happen."

Not The Same

Born in Moscow, he has played the piano since he was 8. His father is a retired sports coach, his mother an ophthalmologist. He has an older brother who has lived in Boston for six years.

"In the past," said Mr. Vartanyan, a veteran of several international piano competitions, the Moscow Conservatory had "the greatest teachers." But, he said, some of the most talented have died, and others have left.

"No one seems like a real musician," he lamented. "They don't have their heart in their teaching."

Why not? In part, perhaps, because members of the conservatory's faculty earn less than $100 a month - "and that's if they get paid," he said.

Just To Survive

He likened the faculty's situation to that of hundreds of Russian miners who have waited as long as a year for their wages. To survive, he explained, the music teachers give private lessons, leaving less time for attention to their conservatory students.

For that same $100, a tourist can buy an evening out at Moscow's clubs - unaffordable to most Russians, including the two young pianists, who receive a $12 a month stipend and said they were fortunate to be living with their parents. Student housing, they said, was "horrible - dirty and old."

"Either you have money, or there's nothing to do," said Mr. Vartanyan.

In the United States, on the other hand, the pair said they sensed "stability" - "lives with personal freedom."

Best For A Career

Mr. Gordin, 22, is Jewish, the only child of a high school math teacher and a gynecologist. Tall, handsome, and a heavy smoker, he has three times visited his paternal grandmother and an aunt, who moved to Israel in 1991. He has played the piano since he was 6.

"I love Israel. It's very special there," he said. "In nature, it has it all," desert in the south and verdant farmland to the north. But, he said, "I don't think I can make a career there."

On the other hand, he described his native Russia as "a jungle," an "uncivilized place" where people "are not good to each other," and where, even when they stand in line (which they do a lot), they press together, jockeying for room.

"It's tradition," said Mr. Gordin with a shrug. In America, he said, "people leave space."

In Moscow, he went on, "everyone is afraid" - of organized crime, a well-documented growing problem, and of being "shot on the street."

Missing Middle Class

"We have no middle class left," said Mr. Gordin. He said the assets of at least half the members of the moneyed class - about 1 percent of the population - came from "blood or crime money."

"There are a lot of really good people who deserve better," he concluded.

You don't have to be Russian to observe, as Mr. Vartanyan did, that artists have "a hard profession that makes you sensitive, and . . . vulnerable." Most Russians, though, "are looking at a wall," he said, "and they will live there all their lives."

Post-Soviet Russia

Not so, probably, for himself and his friend. "We know we can change our situation," said Mr. Vartanyan.

On Sunday, in a New York Times report on film-making in post-Soviet Russia, Naum Kleiman, the director of the Moscow Film Museum, confirmed the pianists' sentiments.

In an "old Russian tradition, going back to Peter the Great, we're in a constant war with the past, we're looking ahead with hope to the future, and we don't pay attention to the present," he said. "But the situation today is . . . new."

"Imagine being asleep for 70 years, waking up, and the first place you're standing is on the edge of a roof. It's a little hard to keep your balance."

The last two weeks before the Labor Day holiday, with roads and beaches more crowded than they were all season and the hours of daylight beginning to wane, are accompanied by an almost perceptible heightening of sensibilities.

Time is precious as the days run down to the wire. Parking spaces in particular rouse passions. Someone steals a handicapped sticker from a 78-year-old man's car while he's at mass; someone else stands in a vacant spot to save it for a friend and a car tries to push her out of the way. A visiting family despairs of finding a place to put the car and pitches a picnic on a dreary road shoulder instead. No one wants to waste the final moments of August making fruitless circles around a packed lot, so the East Hampton Village Police cordon off the big one behind Main Street to save them the trouble.

Labor Day is always a bittersweet occasion, especially in a resort community. Coming this year on the very first day of September, while a tumultuous summer is still at its height, it is doubly so.

The East End is full of people who feel strongly about this particular holiday. Either they cannot bear to see it come or they cannot wait.

Anyone who has feelings of loyalty toward East Hampton as an idyllic summer retreat (and who doesn't?) should go to see Guild Hall's current exhibit, "Childe Hassam: East Hampton Summers."

The paintings of Hassam, the popular American Impressionist who was born near Boston and did his artistic apprenticeship in Paris, describe many of East Hampton's best-loved landmarks, including Home, Sweet Home, the Hook Mill, the Maidstone Club, and the Devon Yacht Club.

The show of 65 works (including paintings, watercolors, etchings by the artist, and vintage photographs of places depicted in the paintings) also features a film made in 1932 by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, showing the portly, well-heeled artist during the last years of his life at his home on Egypt Lane.

Productive Old Age

This well-conceived and beautifully executed exhibit is not particularly exciting for the artworks it showcases. There is little variation within the oeuvre, and some of the thinner works seem little more than highly competent magazine illustrations. Nevertheless it is fascinating, and ultimately satisfying.

Hassam was a great success in life, and his old age in East Hampton was both happy and productive. If his work was not particularly innovative during this period, at least it featured moments of joyful inspiration.

The two earliest works at Guild Hall date from 1898, when the artist was 39, nine years after his return from Europe, where he had absorbed the ideas and techniques of the Impressionists with complete success.

Only A Visitor

One caveat: In the desire to associate Childe Hassam with East Hampton, the show's guest curator, John Esten, and the Guild Hall press office have been somewhat overzealous in rewriting history. Hassam did not, as the press release would have it, "work on the East End of Long Island from 1898 to 1935."

In fact, until 1919 the artist, whose best seaside work was done on Appledore Island off the coast of New Hampshire but whose haunts also included Gloucester and Provincetown in Massachusetts and Old Lyme, Conn., visited East Hampton only occasionally. From 1919 until his death in 1935 (that is, in the last 16 years of his life) he made East Hampton his summer home.

Throughout this time, however, his permanent residence, like that of many East Hampton summer people, was New York.

Which Seaside?

Apart from the 1898 "July Night," a night painting with a distinctly uncharacteristic pre-Raphaelite feeling, the works are entirely Barbizon in feeling: bright, highly keyed Impressionist paintings that describe the dazzling light of seaside in high summer.

The only problem is, it doesn't seem entirely like East Hampton light. The works that seem to correspond most closely with actual light conditions here are those that depict houses and gardens in town, where dappled sunlight filters down through the elms and horse chestnuts.

Those which are least representative of the light one actually encounters depict bay or ocean views across open swathes of golf course - these seeming, in their luxuriant orange and cobalt palettes, more worthy of St. Tropez or Cap d'Antibes.

"Adam And Eve On Montauk"

This tendency is taken to its ultimate excess in one of the most singular images in the show, a 1924 allegorical painting, "Adam and Eve Walking Out on Montauk in Early Spring."

In this extraordinary image, Adam and Eve tread nude, accompanied by sheep, across the moors surrounding Lake Montauk, under warm, crystal-clear skies. Anyone who has actually spent time here in early spring (or, for that matter, late spring) will surely be amazed by this image.

The exhibit is well-documented, allowing viewers to compare Hassam's images of houses with photographs dating mostly from the mid-1920s. The photos are themselves quite interesting, showing East Hampton in the days before it was tamed by lawn mowers, asphalt, and privet.

Hassam As Printmaker

Another delight is the survey of Hassam's prints (though not even the elegant 60-page catalogue can inform us if these are etchings, engravings, drypoint, or some combination of the three), which delineate the beautiful sun-dappled streetscapes and architectural landmarks of East Hampton through line rather than color.

Hassam was an accomplished printmaker; though his images have a certain lack of focus, they describe light beautifully.

One of the most touching images in the show is a watercolor created when the artist was 74 years old. The little painting shows Hassam, in a bathing cap and trunks, plunging into the ocean at the Maidstone Club. It is called "Through the Breakers on His Birthday, October 17th, 1933."

This image, and a late, vivid, Matisse-y painting of "Mrs. Hassam's Garden at East Hampton (July 4, 1934)," suggest that Hassam's last years in East Hampton were very happy ones indeed.

There is something slightly nightmarish about 19th-century cabinets with all of those little nooks and hidden drawers. They presume an order, a hierarchy of place and space that no longer exists in our own Prozac-soaked sensibility.

I remember a knobby oak sideboard in my parents' house that stood god-like at one end of the dining room. It had a dozen different doors and drawers, half of which were perpetually stuck from humidity. (I recall a set of marrow spoons lying at the back of one drawer. Black with tarnish, the long narrow spoons had the sinister look of surgical instruments.)

The panels were carved with woodland scenes of hunters and a nymph disappearing into the deepest cut of Gothic shadow - too remote even for a boy's imagination to chase.

Distractions

Like most people I learned to ignore the cabinets and chairs in museum galleries (except the Reitvelds and Wrights). They were distractions to be bumped into when you were backing up to look at a painting. The chair with overstuffed upholstery and a velvet rope tied between its arms couldn't compete with the night scene by Whistler or the headless nude by Rodin.

We hardly know what to do with a free-standing cabinet anymore. There are too many places for dust and neuroses to collect. Freud and Gropius did away with the need for so many secretive little chambers. We expect total exposure in our furniture and architecture. Pieces are either built in as part of the greater whole, or stripped down to their structural components.

Our furniture is no longer designed to intimidate and amaze.

Elaborate Cabinetry

The current exhibit at the Vered Gallery in East Hampton, "Living With Art - The American Esthetic Movement 1875-1900," reminds us of how it used to be. The show is a mix of 19th-century paintings, photographs, prints, and art pottery, but a group of cabinets by the Herter brothers steals the show. For once, it appears that the paintings serve as a period backdrop for the furniture and not the other way around.

The German emigre furniture makers Gustave and Christian Herter managed to crowd an entire universe of meaning into their elaborate cabinets.

One of the pieces included in the Vered show is framed in ebonized wood with marquetry borders of various stained woods. It is one of the most dreamlike pieces of furniture I have ever seen.

Pure Theater

Narrow vertical panels at either side are painted with funereal themes: amphoras with masks and flowers. The top of the cabinet is made of Mexican onyx. The muse of the cabinet is set into the center panel - the profile of a woman's face cast in bronze. Each panel discloses a successive act of some domestic ritual that we are no longer familiar with.

Here is an example of cabinet-making as pure theater: a cross-fertilization of all the arts into a single gesture of utilitarian use - an object that could be stared at for hours but also hide the cutlery. It is hard to imagine what sorts of household treasures could have been worthy of such enshrinement.

There are nine other examples of the Herter brothers' work in the Vered show, including a side cabinet designed in the Japanese influence with simple black frame and cherry wood panels; a fire screen; bookcase; a library table, and dining chairs.

East Hampton Progeny

Christian Herter's son was Albert Herter, who, with his wife, Adele, owned the estate called the Creeks in East Hampton (which is now Ronald O. Perelman's), and whose son Christian became Secretary of State.

The show also includes many late 19th-century works that complement the furniture. A powerful nude by Thomas Eakins from 1869 hangs in a little back gallery. The Eakins painting which may be a self-portrait, is surrounded by a revealing series of albumen print photographs from the 1800s taken by Eakins as studies for his paintings.

His naked subjects strike oddly camp poses: "Two Students Post in a Deathbed Tableaux," "Nude Youths Boxing," "Motion Photograph of Unidentified Model."

Landscapes, Too

There are also several etchings by James MacNeill Whistler and an oil painting by Childe Hassam. Two large pastel drawings by Walter Shirlaw (c. 1892) were done as studies for allegorical murals at the Columbia Exposition in Chicago.

The East End's landscape is well represented with drawings by Oscar Bluemner of the windmill in Bridgehampton and the beach in Westhampton. There is a splashy little oil of a girl with a red bow on the beach by Edward Potthast (c. 1900) and a perfect watercolor-and-gouache study of the Montauk Lighthouse by Thomas Moran (1880).

"East Hampton Pond With Ducks" was painted by Bruce Crane (c. 1881) with a reckless vigor of sweetness and light. It shows Town Pond long before the days of the Jitney. A group of ducks waddles along the banks of the pond with the bright imprint of a child remembering her first summer outing.

The Star carried a meaningful statistic in a front-page story last winter that bears repeating as another summer ends: Fifty-two percent of the houses in the Town of East Hampton now are second homes. That represents a combined year-round and second-home population of 25,000. A 1996 update of the Southampton Comprehensive Plan estimated the year-round and second-home population of that town at exactly 50-50, representing a population of 90,000.

Second-home owners, not to be confused with the rest of the seasonal population (vacationers at motels and bed-and-breakfasts, house guests, and day-trippers), now have at least as big a stake in what happens on the South Fork as year-rounders.

Land preservation perhaps tops the list. East Hampton and Southampton Towns have said and done a lot in the last year to bolster the preservation of open lands. Bond acts have been approved in each town to raise $5 million for acquisitions. In Southampton, a special tax was approved that is estimated to raise another $18 to $20 million over the next 20 years.

In East Hampton, the town and a coalition of interested organizations hope to see a "transfer tax" law on the November ballot that would put 2 percent of the sales of improved properties over $250,000 (and vacant land sales over $100,000) into a dedicated fund for open space.

All this is to the good, but it is far from adequate.

As many voices and as many dollars as possible will have to be raised if the South Fork is to meet the challenges of explosive growth without falling from grace. Those voices and dollars have to found in the political arena.

For example, at press time it was still unclear whether Governor Pataki was going to sign the legislation allowing the East Hampton transfer tax to go to referendum. Under pressure from powerful lobbies elsewhere, it seemed possible that he would act against this town's best interest, even though a strong coalition which includes representatives of the real estate industry here has fought for the measure.

On Martha's Vineyard, conservation groups recently called for the rate of preservation there to be doubled. Unless another 5,400 acres can be saved from development through a variety of means in the next decade, they say, there will be losses "to the Vineyard's character, additional pressures on open space, declining quality of water and shellfish, and tax increases to support municipal services."

The cost of such preservation? An estimated $270 million, or $20,000 an acre. That's a fairly low average price per acre for coveted parcels on the South Fork.

Three weeks ago in The Star, the former Assemblyman Arthur J. Kremer - a savvy politician - explained why he chooses to vote in Bridgehampton rather than Manhattan, where he also lives.

"A vote counts more here than in any other place," he told us. "Elections are decided by a handful of votes, and I don't want mine to be swallowed up."

Mr. Kremer may have been thinking about the effect of a single vote on state and national elections, while we are particularly concerned with the influence second-home voters are apt to have at home.

Although it may be heresy in some quarters, it is our belief that those who have made a commitment to the South Fork by building or buying a second home here must become active participants in local decision-making, that is, in the democratic process, if we are to save the goose that laid the golden egg.

The way to start is by registering to vote. The deadline is Oct. 10.