Two score and ten years ago, on the afternoon of April 15 in Brooklyn, N.Y., the Dodgers (resident National League baseball club of that borough) sent a black man out onto the field to play first base for them.

His name was Jack Roosevelt Robinson and he was, in this century, the first black man to take part in a Major League baseball game. It was a momentous occasion, not only for the sport - then still the "national pastime" - but for the nation as a whole. The word was out: Segregation must be outlawed.

This summer, with the game in its doldrums and the fans apathetic, the people who run the business of baseball have decided to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the game's integration with all the bombast and fireworks at their disposal. They seem unaware of the irony that surrounds such a celebration, but then, irony is not part of the huckster's arsenal. The descendants of the men who kept "Negroes" out of "white" baseball since the days of Jim Crow are now embarked on an orgy of sentimentality and self-congratulation.

I thought about this as I tramped around the Brooklyn campus of Long Island University a couple of weeks ago, following the motley sessions of a three-day conference titled "Jackie Robinson: Race, Sports, and the American Dream." For the old Dodgers fan and civil rights activist alive and still kicking inside me, it was an event not to be missed.

A Brooklyn Rap

Three days filled with baseball talk, baseball memories, and baseball players are almost more than a fan can bear, especially in the company of other fans, turning every thought not only into a baseball utterance but into a Brooklyn rap.

In the (approximate) words of Ron Gabriel, Dodger Fan Club president, "The only Dodger is a Brooklyn Dodger, the only Dodger blue is Brooklyn Blue, the only Dodger fan is a Brooklyn Fan, and the only Dodger stadium is Ebbets Field. . . ."

An entangled web of nostalgic loyalty and pugnacious possessiveness binds these fans together. I'd like to say "us fans" but I realize this would be a distortion. I cannot belong to their fraternity for it is exactly that: a fraternity.

The Old Redhead

Women have no place in it. Befitting American mythology, they have been confined to the role of stern mothers calling their sons in from the baseball fields of summer or prying them loose from the radio and the seductive voice of Red Barber. Even though I myself spent endless afternoons keeping score on homemade scorecards as I listened to the Old Redhead on my red, white, and blue Emerson radio, I will always be excluded from the club.

You can read all about it in Roger Kahn's recent "Memories of Summer," yet another spinoff from his unforgettable "The Boys of Summer." Kahn is the paradigmatic Brooklyn Dodger fan - an urban white male getting on in years, a New York Jewish liberal who providentially turned journalist to give voice to Brooklyn Dodger fans everywhere - even those now dwelling in the Diaspora, be it Manhattan, Miami Beach, or Malibu.

Stories To Tell

It was Roger Kahn who gave the keynote address at the conference. He owns the Brooklyn Dodgers of the Golden Age, he is their friend and foremost chronicler. His stories come from the heart and we never tire of them.

"Storytelling" is a prism through which baseball enters our souls and makes itself at home there. It combines the exploits of our heroes on the field of battle with the intricate patterns of cold statistics and the "once-in-a-lifetime" events that define this game as no other. Mickey Owen's dropped third strike, Bobby Thompson's home run, the ball that went through Bill Buckner's legs - such moments are played back by our memories until we die or our memory fades to darkness.

Before Kahn spoke, needless to say, the politicians had their say. They are as ubiquitous at these occasions as the advertising banners that flutter above their heads: Chase Bank, McDonald's, and TWA, polluting the view to remind everyone of the bucks they spent to sponsor this event - which cost us $90 a head!

To Be America

We heard Brooklyn Borough President Howard Goldin, Congressman Charles Schumer (a hero among his fellows in Washington for advocating gun control - a subject about as welcome in America as affirmative action) and Mary Pickett, a member of the City Council.

Articulate as a preacher and old enough to wear a hat, she remembered just how it felt when Jackie R. made his debut - "to make America be America" - she said, quoting Langston Hughes.

And then Rachel Robinson, widow and keeper of the flame, appeared briefly - a heroine most deserving of the cliche'd accolade that "behind every great man stands a woman." She spoke her piece, which she has surely spoken a hundred thousand times and always in good humor. She is calm and confident, and nurtures the legend with infinite grace.

Self-Congratulations

As she spoke to the hushed crowd, I began to suspect that we were in for a celebration of white tolerance, white virtue, and white nobility.

This became clearer as the conference wore on and questions from the audience repeatedly reinforced the subtext. "Why don't those millionaire black players today honor Jackie?" "Why aren't there more African Americans here to celebrate with us?"

Dozens of papers were presented during the course of the conference, but I couldn't possibly hear them all since many readings - by writers, journalists, historians, even psychologists - took place concurrently. I did my best to catch a sample of the voices that might invoke a picture of Jackie Robinson that went beyond the usual ones.

I wanted to see not the icon but the man. Not the solitary black face in a sea of white ones, nor the posed shots of the happy family, meant to assure us they were "just like us."

Paul Robeson's Son

The first person to inject some bite into the proceedings rather than skating by on sentimentality was Paul Robeson Jr., whose topic, "Robinson and Robeson: Same Goals, Different Styles, 1943-1949," drew me like a magnet.

Paul Robeson - who appeared on the American scene earlier than Jackie Robinson - had been one of my childhood heroes. In him, the artist, athlete, and political activist met in rare conjunction.

I had met him when my stepfather conducted and he sang "Ballad for Americans" at the Robin Hood Dell in Philadelphia and when he played Othello on the New York stage. This was long before he became a reviled outcast in this country, exiled by witch-hunting "patriots" to seek refuge in Europe and the Soviet Union. He has never been vindicated or rehabilitated, even though signs and symbols of his football glory have grudgingly been restored to him.

Not Opposites

The most unforgettable aspect of his persona had been his voice, and it was with a small shock that I heard it issue once again from his son's throat. Paul Robeson Jr. has none of his father's charisma but he was the most intellectual of the speakers I heard, not excluding all the professors.

He came to teach, not to indulge in nostalgic memories. Giving us a historical overview of the fateful years of change between the Depression and the McCarthy era, he did his best to try to prove that Robinson and Robeson did not represent opposite poles in black life. He pointed out that Jackie's testimony before the House UnAmerican Activities Committee was carefully phrased not to attack or denigrate the great singer.

Robinson, so Robeson said, was between a rock and a hard place, but did his best not to fall into the trap the committee had prepared for him. He would not play the good Negro to the bad nigger.

Is It Capitalism?

Listening to him, I wondered, not for the first time, whether the one insurmountable barrier between "race" and the "American dream" is politics?

Could it be that America allows its black heroes a place in the pantheon of the dead as long as they didn't threaten the system by trying to overthrow its economic assumptions? Do we forgive all "transgressions" (even those by a rebellious Malcolm X?) as long as they don't undermine the bulwark of capitalism? Did this question too hover over the conference - in Keats's words, "noiseless as fear in a wide wilderness?"

The relative scarcity of black faces among participants and audience at the conference was critically remarked upon, time after time, as though the black community bore the fault of it. Any number of New York's version of "good ol' boys" noted the shallowness of the current crop of millionaire ballplayers - as though every single one was an African American.

Who Knows Better?

Vince Coleman's disrespectful remark (to the effect that he didn't know Robinson and didn't care that he didn't) was hauled out again and again. Only once did someone place it into a different context.

At a panel of journalists, moderated by Newsday's Stan Isaacs, a young black female reporter for The New York Times stood up and declared that it was not up to white people to tell black people in what shape, manner, or form to honor Jackie Robinson.

Do we really believe that they know less about Jackie Robinson than we do? she asked. How dare we claim to know their minds and hearts better than they themselves? (And why, one might add, should inner-city youth love baseball, which shuts them out of lily-white suburban neighborhoods, and builds stadiums far from its precincts?)

For Our Sins

Both panel and audience were stunned into silence and then, after a few defensive retorts, the topic was quickly dropped. Pete Coutros, a baseball writer of the old school, trying to bridge the moment of discomfort, told his story of Gil Hodges's funeral, where he saw Jackie (who had himself but a year to live) press his fingers to his lips and then gently touch his teammate's coffin with them.

Once again, you see, the black man comes to redeem us. That's our deepest need and it's why we're here today.

He has died for our sins.

Peerless Preacher

A more conciliatory spirit was evoked by Buck O'Neil, a relic of the Negro Leagues, catapulted into stardom by his appearance on Ken Burns's "Baseball" documentary. O'Neil is a peerless preacher of peace, an old-fashioned storyteller, fully aware of the charm and power of his performance. No doubt he issued talking from his mother's womb.

White people (myself included) adore him. He got a standing O when he finished speaking, way past his allotted time. But he is far too self-assured and honest to "tom" it up. He turns the answer to every question into a moral lesson.

Gently refusing to "tell the funniest story you know about Satchel Paige," he repeated the one he told in "Baseball" concerning the pilgrimage they made together to the slave auction blocks on an island off Georgia, where Satchel mused on the tragic fate of their ancestors.

Shared The Field

(As I stood outside the lecture hall where he had just spoken, Buck O'Neil strode past - an old athlete still trim and fit and dapper at 84 - and said, "Hello, little lady, and how are you today?" I must have looked at him with the beaming eyes of a small girl, for he said, "Let me give you a great big hug," which he did, leaving me giddy with pride and pleasure.)

The big event of the convocation was the ingathering of old ballplayers that took place Friday afternoon. The auditorium was packed. Nobody captivates Americans like athletes and movie stars. Indeed, the cast was stunning.

Among the old-timers who showed up were Stan Musial, Bob Feller, Bobby Thompson, Tommy Henrich, Joe Black, Ralph Branca, Bobby Bragan, Clem Labine, Johnny Podes, Gene Hermanski, and Joe Pignatano - fabled names to those of us who came of age in the '40s, they are also the men who shared the field with Jackie Robinson, and several of them had not been pleased to do that at the time.

Behind Closed Doors

You wouldn't know it now, of course. They have mostly rewritten history to comform to present public standards. In private, the likes of Slaughter and Feller (inducted into the Hall of Fame the same year as Robinson, he reputedly did not wish to share the stage with him) may well go on expressing hard-edge bigotry.

But Slaughter does it at the local bar and Feller at the country club. One's a cracker, the other's a "gentleman" and longtime spokesman for corporate America. Which is where the trouble lies. The Bud Seligs and Fred Wilpons of the game have a power ol' Enos never had, but Enos takes the heat.

Baseball's boardrooms remain sanctuaries of whiteness and nobody knows the skulduggery and the racism perpetuated behind those closed doors.

How Flawed It Was

The generation of ballplayers who followed the old-timers to the dais knows the situation only too well. Here were men like Frank Robinson, Lou Brock, Donn Clendenon, Ed Charles, Ozzie Smith, and Larry Doby, all of them black. In their suits and ties they might be taken for doctors or lawyers.

They choose their words carefully. They know they must. Maybe another door will open. Someone asks if there's still racism in the clubhouse. "You must be kidding!" says Ozzie, the Wizard, some gray in his hair.

And so the day draws to a close. I do not want to say good-bye. What has occurred here today touches me deeply. It reflects and confirms my immigrant youth - assimilating America's collective memory. I didn't know how flawed it was until Paul Robeson came along, and I didn't know if it could ever change until that day in April when the Brooklyn Dodgers sent Jackie Robinson to bat.

Silvia Tennenbaum is a writer who lives in Springs and a frequent contributor to The Star's letters pages.

A handful of Montauk residents have objected strenuously to the East Hampton Town Trustees' push to manage shellfish beds, wetlands, and beaches in the easternmost hamlet. Unlike the rest of East Hampton, Montauk never was owned by the Trustees, although the panel acted as its governing body until about 150 years ago.

The rest of Montauk, as well as other town residents, will get the chance to speak their piece on the issue next Thursday night. Back-to-back hearings at 7:30 in the Montauk Firehouse will air versions of a law that would either designate the Trustees as stewards of Lake Montauk or succinctly state they have no jurisdiction.

The first proposal has the support of the Republican majority on the Town Board, the Town Republican Committee leadership, some baymen, and a majority of the Trustees. They all seem to believe the Trustees are best qualified for the job and that it would be more efficient to have one group manage all the shellfish beds in town.

However, the idea has raised some questions its supporters have so far sidestepped - "Why?" being only the most obvious. The Town Natural Resources Department and Shellfish Hatchery personnel seem to do a fine job of advising the Town Board on Lake Montauk's resources. In addition, the move is perceived by the opposition as part of the Trustees' ongoing grab for power. They note that there have not been any insurmountable disagreements between the Town Board and Trustees over townwide shellfish policy.

As a community, Montauk has long insisted on its distinction from the rest of East Hampton and on going its own way. For that reason alone, it may turn out that what is right for Three Mile Harbor may not be best for Lake Montauk.

Before the Town Board reaches a decision, all five of its members should listen carefully to what Montaukers have to say and take their concerns into account. If it turns out the residents of Montauk feel the same as the handful who spoke out in March, the Town Board should respect their wishes.

Sometimes the wrong thing happens.

This week what was wrong was the resignation of Dr. Mary Hibberd, Suffolk County Health Commissioner, under pressure from County Executive Robert J. Gaffney. Her resignation was accepted as soon as the word got out, even before she had sat down to write the obligatory letter. She will be gone by the end of June.

Dr. Hibberd became persona non grata with the County Executive after she resigned from a "blue ribbon panel" he had set up to assess how the county could deliver health care to the poor cost-effectively.

There apparently were other reasons, too, such as her reported unwillingness to follow Republican Party protocol in hiring. In addition, Mr. Gaffney accused the Commissioner of creating a "shortfall" of several millions of dollars in the Health Department by being "late" in applying for state aid. Dr. Hibberd flatly denied this accusation and promised a full response before she steps down.

In a letter of resignation from the blue ribbon panel on April 29, Dr. Hibberd told Mr. Gaffney she feared it might "wipe out or [further] weaken" the county's nursing home and clinics, including one at Southampton Hospital.

The latter clinic, the subject of a front-page story in The Star in January, had been in deteriorating condition for years. In 1994, she brought Mr. Gaffney to the Southampton clinic to see it for himself, but no improvements were made.

According to a county spokesman, "Bob likes Mary," but blames her "management" for fiscal problems in the Health Department. Mr. Gaffney noted "eroded confidence" between them.

Dr. Hibberd has been running the department since 1992. Colleagues there use superlatives to describe their admiration for her. And, the medical care at the Southampton clinic was reported to be excellent despite its physical condition.

One blue ribbon panel member who is sorry to see Dr. Hibberd go is John J. Ferry Jr., M.D., Southampton Hospital's president. "She truly has a public health focus, and cares desperately about everyone - employees and patients," he said this week.

It is possible to measure cost, said Dr. Ferry, who has seen his own institution turn a profit. But what he called "outcome data," or effectiveness, is hard to come by.

Dr. Hibberd's resignation is symbolic of a widespread malaise. It is unconscionable that one of the richest nations in the world should be mired in debate stemming from the incompatibility of tight money and good medicine. All of us in Suffolk County are the poorer for her going, the poor even more so.

Wondering about the two signs that said "DNA" and were posted last week where North Main Street and Pantigo Road diverge in East Hampton?

They were directing vehicles to a house in Springs where a music video was being filmed. Made by a production company called DNA for the pop and rhythm-and-blues singer Mary J. Blige, the video eventually will be seen almost all over the world on such music television channels as MTV.

Despite the many vehicles, including white stretch limousines and several RVs, that converged on what is known to some in the community as "the round house" on Deep Six Drive, few were aware that a time-consuming and labor-intensive shoot was going on. Then again, those vehicles are not uncommon sights on the East End, whose architecture and landscape prove a popular backdrop for filmmakers.

A Hive

But much more is involved in filming a video. In this case, all the equipment used to shoot a feature-length film and many sleepless hours will result in a video of four minutes and 54 seconds, lengthy by song and video standards.

Shot April 30 and last Thursday, the video was made for "I Can Love You," a song off Ms. Blige's most recent album, "Share My World," released by the MCA recording label.

One who was involved estimated there were some 100 people working at the site, between makeup and hair artists, clothes stylists, production technicians, camera operators, caterers, the director and producer, the soundman, "extras," and of course Ms. Blige herself. Bright lights were visible to passing motorists and the many vehicles on the seldom traveled small street gave some clues that something big was going on.

Modern Lines

The owner of the house, a semi-retired photography dealer who asked that her name not be used, was put up in the J. Harper Poor Cottage in East Hampton for the duration of the shoot. She said she was well paid for the use of her house and protected by a security deposit and the production company's insurance, but did not divulge the figure.

It was curiosity to see what was going on, as well as a desire to visit her cat, that led her to return to her house last Thursday evening. The dwelling has been used for fashion shoots in the past, she noted, and is popular for such uses because of its modern lines.

Nancy Grigor of Amagansett, the owner of Hamptons Locations, found the site for the video. According to Ms. Grigor, the director was originally looking for a beach house with lots of windows. The East End seemed a logical choice since Ms. Blige lives in Huntington and DNA would be working out of its New York City office (it has another in Hollywood).

Just A Skeleton

When an ideal house fitting that description couldn't be found, Ms. Grigor rounded up other options and showed them to the director, Kevin Bray, only the weekend before the shoot. He went back to the city to confer with others involved, preferred "the round house," and the decision was made.

The recording label offers its objective, a general idea of what it would like to see in the video based on the song, and from there, the director said, he creates the video. "That's a skeleton and I just put the detail into that," said Mr. Bray, who amid the chaos last Thursday night took time out to speak to a reporter and pose for a photographer.

Except for one opening, the house is a circle with a small round pool and surrounding patio at its center. All along the interior are ceiling-to-floor glass panes, providing the director and cinematographer the perfect opportunity to shoot scenes that began at one end of the house and ended at another.

From Room To Room

"It's actually a very simple and elegant house," offered the owner. "You can't get a real good idea of it like this," she said from a room where she and other outsiders spent some time staying out of last Thursday night's rain and out of the way of the crew.

What viewers will see when the video is released will be Ms. Blige getting out of bed at one end of the house and making her way through the hallways until she comes to a party happening in the living room at the other end. There, goes the story line of the video, she meets a former lover, true to a common theme from Ms. Blige's songs about finding balance in love.

Interspersed will be other scenes also filmed at the Springs location. One was shot in the house's bathroom, where a deep round marble tub was filled with blue milk, it was said, for Ms. Blige to bathe in.

Rain Pains

Another scene was shot in the woods behind the house. To make the shot the director wanted, the camera had to travel exactly where the owner had recently planted ferns. They could not ruined, she told them.

No problem: The production crew built a bridge for the camera that passed over the stretch of ferns and allowed the shot to be made but left the ferns untouched.

Things were a little chaotic on the second and last day of the shoot, to a great extent because of the rain. Equipment set up outside (a camera was to sit atop the pool and pan around the inside of the house) had to be dismantled and moved to drier ground.

"I think they're running behind because of the rain," Ms. Grigor said. "It takes them hours to set up, and then it starts to rain."

Star Was Bummed

Not only did the rain mean problems with setting up and breaking down equipment, it also meant problems with "continuity" in filming. If the ground is glistening with water in one scene, it has to be the same in the next.

Also, because the rain was putting the shoot behind schedule, Ms. Blige was elusive last Thursday night, staying in her camper until the very second shooting was to begin.

"Because of the circumstances, the weather, I think she's a little bummed out," offered the director. "It's her video."

"This is a big production," he continued. "She's a platinum artist."

And, as Twinky, of the Brooklyn-based Picture Perfect Casting company, who picked the group of handsome male dancers who will also be seen in the video, noted, singers are not necessarily actors, and having to star in their own video can be a nerve-wracking experience.

Sleepless In Springs

Since the video consists almost entirely of night shots, filming both days started at night and went into the wee hours of the morning.

"I haven't slept for about 26, 27 hours," the production manager, Hannah Wittich, said when she took a minute to talk. "Actually, that was a while ago. Now it's probably more like 40."

All the work, bodies, and equipment aside, by early Friday morning, everything was cleaned up, the homeowner's belongings were returned to exactly where they had been before the crews arrived, and the crews and equipment were gone. If one hadn't witnessed the activity oneself, it might be hard to believe it even took place.

"You'd be surprised what a good job they do" cleaning up afterward, Ms. Grigor said of the crew. A few small marks on the house's carpet were the only telltale signs, and even those were to be steam-cleaned.

Otherwise, not a cigarette butt was left behind: They even raked the driveway on the way out.

We have received a bevy of facts from the Bureau of the Census in advance of Mother's Day, and don't know exactly what to make of them. Population trends, infant mortality, and the general welfare are noted, as is the fact that "the value of shipments of Mother's Day cards by greeting card publishers totaled $147.9 million in 1992, up from $80.2 million in 1987." This presumably indicates that the economy is strong.

Certainly, mothers deserve all the help and accolades they can get. It's gotten to the point where at least one mother of our acquaintance rues the day. She reasons that just as it should be Christmas every day insofar as good will and mutual fellowship are concerned, so should it be Mother's Day every day insofar as pitching in is concerned.

The Census Bureau tells us that the median age of women giving birth has gone up in the past 20 years, that in 1995 there were "nearly 10 million single mothers with children under 18," and that of the nation's 104.4 million women in 1993, 73.9 million of them who were 15 and over were mothers. The first fact indicates, we suppose, that this country is not at the moment in danger of overpopulation, the second, that single mothers in particular need help in rearing the next generation - help that our Government seems to be withdrawing by the hour - and the third, that the maternal instinct, like the economy, is strong.

Let's hear it for mothers. Where would any of us be without them?

In Frederic Tuten's new novel, "Van Gogh's Bad Cafe," a wall suddenly appears in a desolate vacant lot on the Lower East Side. Through the wall, which separates the past from the present, steps the beautiful, redheaded Ursula: photographer, morphine addict, and lover of Vincent Van Gogh.

It's a book to be read slowly; there are no wasted words. Each sentence is like a smooth chip of agate lying in the palm of the hand - its striations slightly off-kilter, complex and unsettling, but inalterably right.

The scenes set in Van Gogh's 19th-century Auvers-sur-Oise in the months before his death glow with color and richness of language, while those in the New York City of today are painted in mundane language and tones of gray.

The End Of Elegance

The contrast reflects Mr. Tuten's discomfort with the present.

"I feel a dreadful sense of closure," he said. It's not just the dumbing down of America, but an end of elegance, politeness, and civility - replaced by money and vulgarity."

"I find a deep lack of appreciation of fineness in painting, writing, and music - a fineness that springs from the general historical culture."

"I don't want to sound as if I'm pontificating, but I feel I've earned the right to say this because of my personal and professional investment in what I believed was a meaningful culture."

On The Margins

That Mr. Tuten is both passionate and highly articulate is apparent; his warmth and friendly enthusiasm are harder to convey in writing.

The culture he talks about was first presented to him by the professors of philosophy and literature who taught him at the City College of New York, both as an undergraduate and a graduate student, and their successors during the 30 years he himself has taught creative writing and literature at the college.

"They were wonderful people," he said of the post-World War II professors, "real intellectuals, some escaped from Germany, rare and beautiful people. They were part of a culture I still believe in, which is becoming marginalized as a principle of conduct and moral success."

"I think we believed artists in general had to develop through moral and ethical discipline, hard work, apprenticeship, and a slow and hard-earned maturation."

College: The Way Out

As a boy, trapped in poverty in the Bronx because his father had left home when he was 10, books became both a hope for life and a temporary escape from its dreariness. Later, it was C.C.N.Y., a legendary training ground for working-class scholars, that enabled him to achieve a lasting escape.

"I always wanted to be a writer, from the age of 8 or 9 - by 15, I was sending poetry to New Directions. But I also wanted to be a painter. So I dropped out of high school to study art - this was in the Bronx of the '50s, where only hoods dropped out."

But at the Art Students League, he discovered to his chagrin that he was no good, that art was too difficult for him.

World Of The Mind

While he never attempted another foray into the art world from the working end of the paintbrush, so to speak, art has remained a dominant influence in Mr. Tuten's life. He has written art criticism for The New York Times, Art Forum, and other publications.

Once he entered City College, which was free for students who could not afford to pay, he found himself among people for whom the world of the mind was what mattered. It was a world that had its own reward - not a material one, of course - and that was held in esteem by the community.

"It's as if the exchange was, you can be a man of culture and have honor and esteem; we'll have the money," said Mr. Tuten. "Now, intellectuals have no honor, no esteem, and still no money."

"Van Gogh's Bad Cafe"

In "Van Gogh's Bad Cafe," when Ursula passes under the mulberry tree in the back of the Bad Cafe and squeezes through the crack in the garden wall, she brings with her all the artistic passion and intensity of the 19th century.

The besotted narrator, a drab figure known only as N, watches helplessly as she burns up like a comet amid the dross, drugs, and mediocrity of the present.

As one of Mr. Tuten's students, Walter Mosley, has written, the book "is a testament to the sanity of the imagination."

On a more mundane level, Mr. Tuten came up with a metaphor for what he was trying to get across about the diminishment of the spiritual and intellectual life of America.

"The most recent and horrific manifestation of this world of profit and gain, of course, is the closure of Books and Company. Despite the pleadings of the most serious artists, poets, writers, and intellectuals in the city, profit without mercy won in the end."

Mr. Tuten seemed deflated by outrage for a second, but drew breath for more. "There was a deep sense of culture there and I felt it came organically. It wasn't imposed on anyone. The place that should close is the Whitney, because I think what they have done is cultural assassination!"

"I don't even regard the Whitney as an authentic museum," he added, "but a desperate showcase for the latest fashion. I publicly urge all people connected with American culture to boycott the place - if the curators had any courage, they would resign en masse in protest."

Books To Believe In

His arrows spent, Mr. Tuten then allowed the interview to return to its appointed track.

An advantage of his lifetime involvement with City College, he said, was a steady job, which meant he could write what he wanted. He has had a small output because he wanted to produce books he could believe in, books that would live up to those he admires, like Flann O'Brien's "The Third Policeman," Malcolm Lowry's "Under the Volcano," and Juan Rolfo's "Pedro Paramo."

In 1971, to much acclaim, he published "The Adventures of Mao on the Long March," which has just been reissued in paperback after being long out of print.

"Tallien: A Brief Romance," inspired by an obscure 18th-century French revolutionary, was published in 1988, and "Tintin in the New World," where the French cartoon character grows up and gets a sex life, in 1993.

Sense Of "Closure"

"Most likely, all my novels together, including all the foreign publication rights, have earned me what a hot young writer could have got as an advance in the '80s," said the novelist.

Outside, the trees were weighed down by blossom and redwing blackbirds, the sun shone, and green shoots pushed up through the earth.

"It's so pleasant to be here," said Mr. Tuten, who is an attractive, rumpled man who doesn't look as if he's filling the coffers of Hampton Supergym. "It seems wrong to sound so pessimistic."

"But even here in 'the Hamptons' - I hate to use that dreadful, generic word, like Gstaad or Monte Carlo - I feel this sense of closure. It threatens to become just a resort for multimillionaires' palaces, without an appreciation of the earth, the sea, the birds, landscape. . ."

Friends All Around

"I love this area more than anywhere else on earth," he said. In part that is because this is where his friends, most of them painters, live - Dorothy and Roy Lichtenstein, who illustrated the covers of two of his books, David Salle, Eric Fischl, whose tender illustrations run through "Van Gogh's Bad Cafe," Eric Kraft, and others.

"I have no children or surviving family," said Mr. Tuten, "but I've been extraordinarily privileged in my friends, and they have become my family."

He also counts himself lucky to have been in the company of many remarkable women - not necessarily lovers - starting from when, as a child, he was on a television show called "Youth Wants to Know," asking "hokey questions" of Eleanor Roosevelt.

Interesting Women

And what about the lovers?

From his first wife, Simone Morini, an older Italian woman "better looking than Ursula Andress" and a doctor in classical philology who changed his life completely, "there is no woman who has been important to me who hasn't stayed with me somehow," Mr. Tuten said. "I'm either haunted by the loss or nurtured by the memory."

"And if my heart has been broken a few times, at least it was by interesting women."

And, like his love of art, they have made their way into his books, which are all about love of one kind or another.

Ursula, missing Van Gogh and having found no reason to stay in 20th-century New York, tries to return to the past, but cannot. She goes back through the crack in the wall but melts away in a blur of light just as Van Gogh finds her.

Anniversary

As the painter settles down in a corner of a field - "Pure was the sky, an icy sheet caught in a sun of pale Dutch butter" - with Ursula's revolver in his hand, a flock of crows rises from the green mown hay.

Just such a flock of crows rose from a field in Bridgehampton one day when Mr. Tuten was passing on a bicycle, startling him by the resemblance to Van Gogh's "Wheat Field With Crows." Having later discovered the day was the exact anniversary of the artist's suicide, he started writing "Van Gogh's Bad Cafe."

So if we can't return to a past we yearn for, and the frenetic experience and fool's gold of the present leaves us unsatisfied, what's to be done? If you are Mr. Tuten, you rely of the sanity of the imagination and turn it all into books.

Back in the '70s I bought a beautiful wooden soprano recorder complete with a how-to book - I believe it was "The Trapp Family Recorder Course." I learned to tootle out a couple of tunes: "Red River Valley" and "Edelweiss" (from "The Sound of Music," of course). However, I never put in the time and effort required to master the small instrument.

I was vaguely aware that the recorder held a place in Renaissance and Baroque music, and I had heard it featured in the works of Bach with "original instrumentation," something that was becoming popular back when I embarked on the Trapp family course.

But it wasn't until Saturday evening, when the Recorder Orchestra of New York paid a visit to the Old Whalers Church in Sag Harbor, that I realized the recorder has possibilities never dreamed of in the 16th century.

Back In Style

Apparently, so-called "early music" is enjoying a revival. You can go into a Borders Books and Music store and find a number of CDs featuring music and instruments that have in the past been relegated to the domain of bespectacled musicologists.

Things like the crumhorn and the shawm, precursors to the modern-day wind instruments, are reappearing, and recordings of vocal styles like the Gregorian chant have risen to the top of the charts. What accounts for this would have to be the subject of another article, but suffice it to say if you have a sackbut buried in your attic, now is the time to dig it out and dust it off.

It's more likely that you have a recorder kicking around somewhere because one of your kids may have brought one home from the elementary grades and accosted your ears with it during the primary school recorder craze some years ago. It seemed that someone decided that plastic recorders would be useful in teaching children to play music, but I think it may have fallen out of fashion when somebody finally realized that this is not really an easy instrument to play.

Master Players

And not an easy one to play well. The recorder requires a good deal of training in breath control and fingering. It has remarkable dynamic capabilities, and in the hands of a master can be an exciting instrument and certainly not one to be underestimated.

And so it is under the fingers of master players that the Recorder Orchestra of New York has teamed up to take the recorder out of kindergarten and onto the concert stage. Under the direction of Ken Andresen, the orchestra is one of only two performing recording orchestras in the United States.

Mr. Andresen is himself a recorder player and an arranger, and he was joined on Saturday night by 20 other Recorder Orchestra members playing a variety of recorders.

Spreading Out

The evening opened with Mr. Andresen's arrangement of "Music Divine" by Thomas Tomkins, a composer of the late Renaissance, and in this work we hear the recorder in its customary historical context.

After the piece, Mr. Andresen assured us that the Recorder Orchestra is not "relegated to what recorder players have been in the past: holders of the position of early music." Rather, he said, they have "spread to other kinds of music, and we'd like to think there's nothing we can't perform."

He emphasized that the evening's program was designed to reflect the range and versatility of the recorder. In "Midsummer," by Edward MacDowell, a 19th-century composer, a recorder was featured which towered over the rather tall man who was standing to play it. Next to him stood another performer working with a long boxlike instrument which resembled a birdhouse. These turned out to be contrabass recorders, the latter being one of recent design.

Like A Choir

Four alto recorders were featured in a concerto by Georg Philipp Telemann, a work of three movements in the standard fast, slow, fast form of the late Baroque and early Classical eras.

Mr. Andresen chose the next piece, "Ave Maris Stella" by Edvard Grieg, because "the realm of the Romantic was not touched by recorders in the past." In this arrangement by Norman Luff, who often adapts pieces for the Recorder Orchestra, the hymnlike quality in the opening was aptly carried off by all instruments. Each recorder voice rose and fell with gentle control through difficult dynamic and tonal ranges. It was as if the group became the Recorder Choir of New York. Lovely.

Mr. Andresen next had players demonstrate the various types of recorders, from the tiny soprano garklein to the contrabass, a physical range between six inches and six feet. The orchestra bravely attacked "Christus, der is mine Leben," an arrangement by Mr. Andresen of a chorale of J.S. Bach in which the full complement of recorders is illustrated.

Venture In Fun

Skipping ahead a few centuries, we were treated to what Mr. Andresen called "a venture in fun," a Dennis Bloodworth arrangement of "Tangerine." "I'm not sure this was meant to be played by recorder," said Mr. Andresen, "but we are going to do it anyway."

For my part, I'm not sure what the composer, Johnny Mercer, would have thought of it, because with the full company of recorders playing there was something reminiscent of a calliope in the result. But it was a bold move. Clearly, now that the recorder has broken out of the confines of 16th-century music, nothing will stop it.

After intermissions, we were back to the courtly style of recorder playing in William Byrd's madrigal "This Sweet and Merry Month of May," a return, as Mr. Andresen put it, to the "roots of the recorder."

Most Beautiful

This was followed by "Six Russian Folksongs" by Anatoli Liadov, wherein performers and instruments seemed to find a comfortable place. This was the most beautiful playing of the evening.

The arrangement by Friedrich Von Huene and Mr. Andresen allowed each recorder voice to sing rather than struggle as they seemed to do in some of the evening's works. The Russian songs were an audience favorite, and I hope Mr. Andresen will incorporate more such works in further performances of the orchestra.

He chose to follow this admirable selection with the disconcerting "Fuge aus der Geographie" ("Geographic Fugue") by the 20th-century composer Ernst Toch, a spoken work where orchestra members surrendered their instruments for musical "scripts" and pursued one another through seemingly endless recitations of names of cities and countries.

Jangled Nerves

This was a puzzling departure from recorder playing and I am at a loss to understand its inclusion in the program. Perhaps it was intended to show the versatility of the performers, but I was under the impression that it was the scope of the recorder that was the subject of the evening.

Nevertheless, we were snapped back to recorder reality with "Diligam Domine" by Jan Sweelink, another Norman Luff arrangement, which soothed my jangled nerves after the Toch piece.

The evening concluded with "After You've Gone," another attempt at jazz that left me feeling as if I had just departed a carnival midway. I was not so much disturbed by the un-recorderlike nature of the piece as I was by its selection as the last work of the evening. We may accept placing the recorder in new territory, but I think it is better to leave the audience with a more noble recorder resonance to carry away from a Recorder Orchestra performance.

A New World

The members of orchestra are to be commended for their masterful playing, but Mr. Andresen's fine stage presence did much to make the evening a success.

He evidently realizes that most audiences need to be educated about both the history of the recorder and the need to keep it on the musical scene. I admire the pluck of the orchestra in exploring new empires for the recorder, and the work of Mr. Andresen and other composers in arranging music for the instrument. It's a new world, and the recorder belongs in it.

As part of The Star's ongoing series on real estate, each week will include a brief look at the market in a particular hamlet. We start with Springs.

There is a strong sale market in every area of Springs, according to Melanie Ross, president of Cook Pony Farm Real Estate.

Though prices in the hamlet have "historically been on the low end," she said they were beginning to move into line with prices elsewhere in town. She noted that affordability coupled with lots of waterfront brings buyers - both second-home and year-rounders - to the hamlet.

Reginald Cornelia, a broker with Blue Bay Realty in Amagansett, said he had "quite a few" Springs houses in contract. "I'm not saying it's a seller's market, but if you price your house reasonably, you'll find a buyer," he said.

"People are beginning to realize there are some very good buys in Springs," and that the beautiful parts of the area insure that they will get a lot of bang for their buck, said Mickey Dion, a broker at the Amaden Gay Agency in East Hampton. School taxes on the high side don't seem to be a deterrent, several brokers said.

Rentals Sluggish

"For anybody who wants to be on the water, it's the best buy around," Ms. Dion said, adding that Clearwater Beach and Lion Head, with their private marinas, Gerard Park, and areas near Three Mile Harbor such as Briarcroft Drive seem to top many a seeker's list. Ms. Ross added Louse Point to the list.

As in other parts of town, Springs summer rentals had been "sluggish," Ms. Ross and Mr. Cornelia agreed, though both expect them to catch up before Memorial Day. Ms. Dion said Springs's secret attractions were country stores, bay beaches, and tennis courts.

There is plenty of land left to build on in Springs, said Ms. Ross, from a lot just under a half-acre listed at $45,000 to 2.9 waterfront acres for $395,000, with builders attracted to low-end parcels on which to put up houses on speculation.

Though large areas of Springs have been subdivided into relatively tiny lots on old subdivision maps, large tracts around Accabonac Harbor have been preserved. Other areas, such as the 165-acre Jacob Farm, between Neck Path and Accabonac and Red Dirt Roads, have been eyed for some type of preservation. The Town Open Space Plan recommends that it be used for a clustered subdivision, with more preserved areas than usual.

Young Settlers

The market for houses priced between $150,000 and $200,000 has picked up, said Ms. Dion, with the "younger contingency" of year-rounders looking in Springs to settle. "It's not the busiest part of town," said Don Sharkey, a town building inspector who heads to Springs once a week. Mr. Sharkey, who checks on renovations and new construction, said Springs seemed to have less construction going on than Montauk, Wainscott, and Northwest.

According to the department's records, in the first quarter of this year, nine building permits were issued for new houses Springs.

Another indicator of the community's growth, the Springs School, has seen its population of approximately 550 kindergarteners through eighth-graders remain steady over the last year or so.

According to a Board of Cooperative Educational Services enrollment projection prepared for the school, which looked at real estate and population trends, it can expect to see a slow but steady increase in students over the next few years, with a total of 600 or so in 2006, with the bulk of new students entering the primary grades.

The Barnes Country Store on Fireplace Road in Springs has changed hands, but the signs of change are just now beginning to show up.

Dottie and Clarence Barnes, the longtime proprietors of the neighborhood deli, retired in January and handed the reins to their daughter, Barbara La Monda, and a partner, Lenny Weyerbacher. The two bring experience and a fresh perspective to the business.

Ms. La Monda grew up in the business. She has been minding the store, so to speak, since she was 16. Mr. Weyerbacher, a former nightclub and restaurant manager, has worked at the deli for the past three years.

He said he sought advice from an old friend when it came time to update the store's offerings. For a week or so, he "shadowed" Stanley Klasik, who owns a deli in Setauket, picking up ideas.

The Barnes store now offers self-serve coffee and hot dogs, a changing hot-sandwich menu, and egg specials as a result, Mr. Weyerbacher said. Hot pretzels, muffins and biscotti, new salad cases filled with homemade salads, and an expanded grocery and drugstore section are other changes.

The new owners are early risers, so the store continues to open at 5 a.m. to host a gathering of early-morning fishermen. Beginning today, Mr. Weyerbacher said, it will stay open until 8 p.m. seven days a week.

All In The Family

The store is still a family affair, with Kathy Barnes, Ms. La Monda's sister-in-law, continuing to serve customers. The rest of the staff is still at work as well.

He and Ms. La Monda are "in it for the long haul, until retirement," said Mr. Weyerbacher this week.

Mr. and Mrs. Barnes are "delighted," he said, that the store could be kept in the family. It was 30 years ago that the couple, both of whom were born in East Hampton, were beckoned back from a short move to Virginia by the news that the store was for sale.

They bought the business and Frank Saskas, Mrs. Barnes's father, bought the land next door, to run a Mobil service station.

This is the second article in a series examining various aspects of real estate on the South Fork.

Private land conservation is a South Fork territory in which a lot is happening, although few people ever hear about it. Even fewer understand it.

Jon Grossman, a developer and vice president of the Windward Group real estate agency, became involved, like some others, inadvertently. Trying to decide whether to build a house for speculation on two Accabonac acres he had bought, or heed the warning signs from the salt marsh and cedar forest that cover most of it and rid himself of a risky project, he ended up doing both.

Land Swap

"We had all the permits to build. But the more time I spent up there, the more I felt funny about it. It's such an environmentally sensitive piece of property that I felt I should find some way of preserving it," said Mr. Grossman.

"I'm not a philanthropist, though. I needed to come out of this with some kind of return."

He called Paul Rabinovitch, director of land protection at the Nature Conservancy's East Hampton office, and offered to sell.

Coincidentally, Marjorie Jonas of Amagansett had recently donated to the conservancy a three-acre lot nearby, on Red Dirt Road in Springs, which the conservancy determined had no ecological value.

Mr. Rabinovitch proposed a swap.

A multifaceted deal that took a year to craft ended up merging Mr. Grossman's parcel into the nature preserve around the shores of Accabonac Harbor. The preserve is being created one lot at a time by the conservancy and East Hampton Town.

Tax Benefits

Ms. Jonas's gift made her eligible for an income tax deduction, which she could use to offset any capital gains tax from the sale of her adjacent house lots.

Mr. Grossman got a three-acre lot on which to build a house and a break on the property taxes for that lot through a conservation easement.

To cover the difference in value between his waterfront lot and Ms. Jonas's upland one, the developer also got a $60,000 income tax deduction he can spread over six years, and a $10,500 "boot" - a cash payment - from the conservancy.

Private land conservation is the purview of land banks such as the Nature Conservancy and Peconic Land Trust, environmental organizations such as Group for the South Fork, and a small number of tax lawyers, private planners, and accountants.

Spurs To Preservation

The financial incentives they offer to individuals for preserving all or part of their property include outright gifts, phased-in gifts or purchases, land swaps, bargain sales, conservation easements, the sale of development rights, and reserved life estates, which allow the donors to use their property for his lifetime while removing it from the taxable assets in their estate.

More than 2,000 acres in East Hampton Town have been preserved so far through such private means. And, with limited funds available to buy environmentally fragile land outright, the town's current plan for 700 as-yet undeveloped parcels here relies more heavily than ever on those methods.

Few Can Afford It

Outright acquisitions such as New York State's recent $4.18 million purchase of the 340-acre Sanctuary property in Montauk, a deal the Conservancy negotiated, are increasingly rare. So are outright purchases by private nonprofit organizations, which are almost entirely dependent on donations.

Gifts, such as Deborah Ann Light's to the Peconic Land Trust of 20 acres of woodland and orchard at Stony Hill and 193 acres of farmland at Quail Hill in Amagansett, are also the exception. Ms. Light had expected to leave Quail Hill to the trust in her will, but changed her mind and signed over the deed two years ago.

"There are only so many people with hearts of gold walking around," said Mr. Rabinovitch. He pointed out that most property owners, like Mr. Grossman, cannot afford to give their land away, income tax deduction or no.

Income Tax Breaks

As a result, various other tax incentives have been developed over the years and have received the approval of the Internal Revenue Service and other taxing agencies.

They are not, however, without their critics, who sometimes say these incentives are little more than new tax dodges for the rich.

But, said Robert DeLuca, president of Group for the South Fork, "we have to assume any land that is available for development will be developed. And we will all pay the price for the increased need for services - schools, roads, fire protection, and so forth - through suburban growth and higher property taxes."

"The income tax break these donors are getting should be a secondary consideration for us here," he said.

Robins Island

The roughly 395-acre conservation easement covering all but 40 acres of Robins Island in Peconic Bay will reap the island's owner, Louis Bacon, a multimillion-dollar income tax deduction for the gift of the easement to the conservancy, said Randall Parsons of LandMarks Associates, a land-planning firm based in East Hampton Village.

Voluntarily encumbering a property with an easement meets the criteria for a proportionate reduction in property taxes as well.

But, said Mr. Parsons, the Robins Island easement, filed just three weeks ago, will not only insure the island never has more than one dwelling on it but also preserve its historic use as a nature preserve and hunting lodge, and allow environmentalists and biologists to study there.

"Bargain" Sales

Among other preservation methods, bargain sales are becoming increasingly popular. There, a property owner who sells to a conservation group or municipality for less than the full market value may take an income tax deduction for the difference, considered a gift to charity.

The owner could also use the "loss" to offset any capital gains tax that comes due from the sale of that property or another.

East Hampton Town recently bought 25 acres of tidal wetlands at Soak Hides Dreen, which empties into Three Mile Harbor, and from a bargain sale will soon get the chance to expand the holding by 4.5 adjacent acres, for just $28,000 an acre.

Soak Hides Dreen

The owner, Martin Forma, bought about six acres there in the 1970s, intending to build a marina someday. The zoning in those days might have allowed it, but not now.

With the land encumbered by the wetlands and precolonial remains of an Indian settlement, "he never would have been able to build a marina, but he could have spent a lot of money trying," said Mr. Parsons, whose firm was hired to help Mr. Forma "liquidate."

The town is buying part of his property for $125,000, less than the market rate. A resident of Nassau County and Florida, Mr. Forma will have a considerable nest egg as a result and his heirs will not have to pay taxes on the land. The deal closes within two months.

Mr. Forma is also selling two small cottages on the remaining land to the tenants who have lived in them for 17 years, for about $58,000 each. The Town Housing Office has helped the tenants get financing and kicked in $7,300 in Federal Community Development funds to cover their closing costs.

Mr. Parsons said the Forma arrangement was a model of its kind, showing how low-density development or none at all can make good financial sense for an owner.

And, because it satisfies community needs - to preserve wetlands, create open space, curtail development, and create affordable housing - such a proposal is far more likely than a subdivision to win easy approval, said Mr. Parsons.

Tradelands

In some cases, the land involved in a bargain sale or given as a gift is not environmentally fragile. Called "tradelands," those properties are deeded over in the expectation that they will be sold to generate cash.

Such was the case when Ms. Jonas donated her three acres, making her eligible for the charitable gift deduction and giving the Nature Conservancy a means to raise money for (or, as it turned out, leverage) the purchase of some fragile land.

The late Willet Whitmore made a gift to the conservancy of about two acres off Indian Wells Highway in Amagansett, now part of its 200-acre Double Dunes Preserve. Dr. Whitmore made the gift over seven years, though, giving the conservancy an increased partial interest in the land each year and taking the deduction for the gift.

Montauk Sale

In a shrewd move, he had the land reappraised each year. Each appraisal showed a slight increase in value. That meant Dr. Whitmore was able to take larger and larger deductions, said Mr. Rabinovitch. And, by giving away the property, he too relieved his heirs of part of their inheritance tax burden.

In another version of a phased-in transfer, the conservancy is taking the last available opportunity to expand its 10-acre Montauk Mountain Preserve by buying 1.8 acres from Sigrid Owen and her son, Christopher Owen, in two installment payments.

The no-interest deal will allow the sellers to spread the income from the sale over two tax periods.

Farmland Preservation

The preservation of farmland raises a special concern, for the land not to be just preserved, but actively farmed, and conservationists have created special tools as a result.

Most common is the purchase of development rights, which allows a farmer to continue farming and compensates the farmer at the same time for the loss of potential income, from selling off the land as house lots, for example.

However, some local farmers who have taken money for development rights have later felt themselves unfairly restrained by the conditions of the agricultural easement placed on their land.

Henry Schwenk, who sold the rights to his 60-acre Hardscrabble Farm, said he ended up with a retirement fund but still worries that zoning regulations and the limits of the agricultural easement will someday put the farmer who now leases his land out of business.

Long Lane

Mr. Schwenk owns another 40 acres on Long Lane and offered the rights to the town, but said this week he was undecided.

"The town, the county, never mind what they say. They don't give one damn about agriculture. They want to preserve the vista. . . . I have to say, the real problem is, you can't legislate farmers," he said.

The town's $560,000 purchase of development rights preserved 16 of the 20 acres at Cagramar Farms, mostly horse pastures on North Main Street. There, the town paid Joseph Martuscello not to develop 14 of his 17 lots.

Cagramar Farms

Mr. Parsons was hired by the town to negotiate with Mr. Martuscello, who insisted he be allowed some moneymaking use for his land or the deal was off. Eventually, a watered-down version of Mr. Parsons's proposed winery law was adopted, and Mr. Martuscello is planting wine grapes this year.

He took less than the market value for his house lots, $40,000 apiece, raising the possibility of a tax deduction for the loss, but also had other options.

A related Town Board resolution said the town would take any steps necessary, including condemnation, to preserve Cagramar. The proceeds from an involuntary sale - one made, for instance, under threat of condemnation - are entirely exempt from capital gains, said Mr. Parsons.

"Like-Kind" Parcels

Additionally, Mr. Martuscello used the $560,000 from the sale to buy "like-kind" properties, meaning investment properties, nearby on North Main Street. Within a couple of weeks he owned two parcels zoned for business, possibly a restaurant to complement his winery someday.

Capital gains are entirely deferred if the seller buys a similar property of greater or equal value, said Mr. Parsons.

"Mr. Martuscello is a tough businessman, but he has a soft spot for agriculture. What happened at Cagramar Farm should be a model. Maybe it took someone like him to make us cover all the bases," said Mr. Parsons.